(COMES COMPLETE WITH A NICE NOTE FROM GOD!)
by John Skipp
Dear kids –
If you’re like me, then life has probably beaten you half to death, and more than once.
If it hasn’t, you’re either one lucky motherfucker, or you haven’t been leading a very interesting life.
If you’re a horror writer – or are wanting to be one – then I suggest that you take those savage glimpses of hell as thank-you notes from God.
As in:
“Dear __________,
“I’m sorry you suffered. It sucks, doesn’t it?
“But you made it this far, baby!
“GOOD FOR YOU!
“Since you’ve volunteered to chronicle the dark side and ass end of human experience, I thought I’d deal you up some research material. Not more than you can handle. Just more than you can stand.
“In case you hadn’t noticed, there is NO END TO SUFFERING. No bottom you can hit, where it all levels out. What you think is the bottom – what you HOPE is the bottom – is just another trap door, caving horribly downward.
“And it just gets a whole lot deeper and darker, from there.
“But please remember – because this is important – that if there is no bottom, then THERE IS NO TOP.
“No end to how high you can rise.
“That’s what infinity means.
“And as you may have noticed, I’m ALL ABOUT the infinity.
“So explore, and express, and tell the truth of what you’ve found. That is your job, and your duty: the one for which you volunteered.
“As a writer, and a human being, you are my eyes and ears. You are my nose, my tongue, my sensitive skin. You are my soul, my mind, my emotions laid bare.
“You are the instrument, the conduit, the lifeline here on Earth by which I communicate the pain and joy and sorrow and courage and sheer enormity of being alive.
“Your job is to feel it. And try to understand it.
“And then get it all down, in black and white and color, so that others might respond to it.
“This is how you help each other find your way home.
“THANK YOU VERY MUCH FOR DOING SO.
“Yours most appreciatively,
“God”
Anyway, that’s the memo I’VE been gettin’!
Which brings us back to the title of this piece.
I could itemize a trillion atrocities for you, plucked from the news, and the history books. If there’s one thing the human race is great at, it’s fucking itself over in astonishing ways.
Baby-raping! Father-stabbing! FATHER-RAPING! (Thank you, Arlo Guthrie!)
But if I had to take my pick, I’d quote cynical chanteuse/troublemaker Sandra Bernhardt, who wisely said:
“Love is the only shocking act left.”
Think about that for a second, okay?
LOVE IS THE ONLY SHOCKING ACT LEFT.
In a world of hurt, why would that hold true?
I’ll give you an example of why the phrase took hold, for me.
When 9/11 happened, I was one of the only people I knew who wasn’t shocked.
I was devastated, and horrified, yes. I had two friends – who I REALLY LOVE – who narrowly avoided death that day: one who showed up late for work at the World Trade Center, as a result of food poisoning; and another who – also by reason of illness – cancelled her flight on the plane that wound up crashing into the Pentagon.
And to this day, I’m not sure if I lost anybody I used to know.
But I wasn’t shocked. I really wasn’t.
I was more like, “I can’t believe it FINALLY HAPPENED!”
I couldn’t believe that it had taken so long.
When I lived in New York City – over 20 years ago – I was constantly waiting for the other shoe to drop. Constantly waiting for the Big One to take us all out.
Because I knew that we, as a species, were more than capable of it.
I’ve been waiting all my life for the End of the World. Not because I want it – I really, really, really don’t – but because hate and injustice and self-righteous bids at vengeful retribution are very much a part of the human condition.
And many people hate America – and all that it stands for – whether they ought to or not.
And even many AMERICANS hate New York City – and all that it stands for – whether they ought to or not.
So hate and horribleness were already part of my Active Possibility Index.
What shocked me then – and what shocks me still – is how fucking beautiful so many of us are.
How beautiful, in the face of horror. How courageous, and empathetic, and kind.
How we rose to the occasion.
To me, THAT’S what horror writing is all about.
Otherwise, this literature we love is pretty much like picking scabs. It’s easy, and icky, and blood comes out. But so what? Who fucking CARES, if nobody cares?
We do.
That’s who.
And that’s why it’s important.
I’m takin’ my memo from God to heart. Even if my brain just made it up, and SAID it was from God. (Wouldn’t be the first time THAT happened!)
Insofar as I can tell, we are here to tell each other the horrible truth. And then we’re here to comfort each other. God’s open eyes and ears and mouths and skins and thoughts and feelings.
Sharing the fucking love.
And helping each other rise.
If that doesn’t matter, then our fiction doesn’t matter.
And neither do we.
But I beg to differ.
So all I’m saying, tonight, is:
GIVE IT UP, BABIES! GIVE IT ALL TO THE CAUSE!
So that, someday, we might find our way home.
It’s something to shoot for. And I hope that you do.
Yer very good pal,
Skipp
P.S. – As I wrap this piece, the fireworks are blaring all over America.
They are very pretty.
And so are you.
Feel free to prove it, every chance you get.
The only shocking act left is love.
14 Comments, Comment or Ping
Sully
Man, you must’ve hated the New Years that rang out the 60’s. I hear Peter, Paul and Mary when I read your stuff. Maybe God, too, but He hasn’t sent me any memos lately on account of we only talk in sign language. I guess while you were interpreting the extended divine digit as the classic flip-off, I was thinking He was trying to tell me He was Number One. So my life is kind of a celebration. No use for religion as such, but I do mine it for horror lots of times. And I guess we end up in the same place, Skipp. Celebration. Thanks for showing me another road. And cheer up, guy. Y3K can’t be that far away.
– Sully (Thomas Sullivan)
Jul 5th, 2006
John Skipp
Dear Sully –
And here I thought I was bein’ PERKY!
Rest assured, I am of good spirits. HARD-WON good spirits, but good spirits nonetheless.
And your joyful noise is a consistent smile-bringer.
If this struck y’all as a Mopiness Tract, then I have clearly failed.
“UP AND AT ‘EM!”, is all I’m sayin’.
With acoustic guitar a-strummin’,
Skipp
Jul 5th, 2006
Rick Steinberg
Beside the fact that you far more eloquently, passionately, and vividly than I could addressed the material I was thinking about for my post on the 22nd, I liked what you had to say.
I lost five good friends in the Pentagon that day, and like you was only surprised it had taken that long to happen.
By the time I got to checking my e-mail that horrible day, I discovered that one of those friends who had already perished in flames had written me a brief note in the few minutes between what happened in New York and what would kill him in Washington.
“The other shoe just dropped,” Jimmie wrote me that morning he was bound to die. “But what a beautiful day it was before. I wonder what kind of day it will be tomorrow morning?”
And it lies, in part, with us the writers, to answer his question.
Great essay, Skipp. Really nice.
Jul 5th, 2006
Elizabeth Massie
Skipp….wow wow wow. I absolutely love what you say here. It strikes the deep internal chord and resonates. I agree with you and you said it beautifully.
Thank you!!!
Beth
Jul 5th, 2006
Sully
“Mopiness tract”? Naw. I was just pickin’ up the “down”-beat in what you were saying about being…er, upbeat. As a con-man mentor of mine used to say, “Ain’t no day without night.”
Excelsior!
– Sully (Thomas Sullivan)
Jul 5th, 2006
David Niall Wilson
Anyone who lives in America and knows even a small slice of the history should not have been surprised by 9/11 unless it was surprise that a foreign nation did it and not some of our own. During the Civil War, near Norfolk, tens of thousands of Union Soldiers were put to death and buried in a trench. The Native Americans, the Japanese, the weak, the poor at sports, the insane, the handicapped - in short, anyone who could be taken advantage of — has been — often in the names of progress, God, and the American Dream. It’s naive to even consider this a safe world…it’s a dynamic, ever-changing miasma of human emotion, pain, selfishness, love, and inspiration, and you can get caught up in swirls and eddies, or tsunamis…all depends on the cosmic deal of the cards…
Great essay, Skipp…
Dave
Jul 5th, 2006
Frank Wydra
Gee. Ain’t God grand, going out of her way to help us like this?
Guess what I’m seeing is that old saw, imagine the worst and reality will be better. Every rose you stop to smell has a bee at its center waiting to launch a sting.
Maybe for some. Not for me. I prefer the Miller beer commercial, “Life is good,”
Frank
Jul 5th, 2006
John B. Rosenman
Share the fuckin’ love. Yeah, baby. But I thought it was spelled “Muthafucka.” At least that’s what I tell my students.
Enjoyed your words, bro. And I’m happy your two friends were sick that day. You’re absolutely right that life can be unspeakable agony, a bottomless, yawning pit of misery. But love is the key. Some of us are really nice folks with a vast ability to love and to serve. And as God revealed to you, we should tell the truth. Tell it as fully and beautifully and perhaps as ugly as we can.
Jul 5th, 2006
Mark Rainey
Excellent stuff, Skipp. Once in a great while, I get this terrible feeling there’s nothing seriously wrong with you.
–M
Jul 5th, 2006
Harry
Yes indeed dood
Jul 5th, 2006
John Skipp
THANKS, EVERYBODY!
That was less an essay than an emotional blowout. Believe me, I know.
But if it meant something to you, I’m incredibly glad.
Yer pal (who might even be SANER THAN I LOOK),
Skipp
P.S. — Mark? HEE HEE HEE!!! That’s one of the weirdest and best compliments I think I ever had!
Jul 6th, 2006
Scott Nicholson
Thanks for the boost, John! I needed that.
Scott
Jul 6th, 2006
Justine Musk
I’m a day late & dollar short in coming with my comments to this, but this ties in with something I’ve been thinking about of late — the whole idea of moments of grace, states of grace…
Tangled thoughts I’m having, and can’t really work them out here, but your essay made me think of one of my favorite cinematic moments — in Michael Mann’s COLLATERAL — it’s a noir thriller of course and there’s all this death and chaos and destruction and the good-hearted protag. is at a low moment trapped in a cab with this brutally efficient sociopath hitman and they’re roaring through the bleak Los Angeles night — and as they wait for the traffic light three coyotes saunter across the road — and the light picks up the gleam in their eyes — and somehow it’s this amazing thing to see, strangely beautiful, and the men watch this, stunned, and neither of them says anything…and then the light changes and the car rolls on and they never say anything about it. A lesser filmmaker never would have put the moment in there, or even been persuaded to edit it out because it doesn’t really Forward the Action — but that moment really made the movie (excellent movie) for me, and gave it this moment of transcendence…A moment of unexpected beauty and grace, found there in the eye-gleam of foraging urban coyotes, viewed by a hitman and the man he’s likely to kill before the night is out…that one moment said so much about the nature of man, and the nature of Los Angeles itself, and as fucked-up as these things are, the filmmaker/storyteller is still fascinated by, still in love with, both. He can’t help himself. It’s why he does what he does.
No matter how dark our stuff gets, we need those moments. Those glimmers. Because they are real, they exist, and to deny them is just as blind and senseless an act as denying the world’s legion of horrors.
Anyway, I thought your essay was a gleam in a coyote’s eye. Loved it. Thanks for it.
Jul 6th, 2006
Mari Adkins
Wow. Beautiful essay. Thank you.
Jul 9th, 2006
Reply to “THE ONLY SHOCKING ACT LEFT”