THE WORD (La Palabra: originally published in Dentro
de la Viñeta – the Spanish journal of comics)
#1 -
So, another
blank page of possibility, another intolerable void, another virgin snowfield
just begging to be trampled and despoiled with words.
What is this
embarrassing disease? Where did I catch
it? Who made me the slave of this
irresistible urge to inflict my interior babble on any unwary ear?
If I could
identify the sick culprit, I would hunt him down unmercifully and raise his
head on a pole.
One thing's
for sure, it was another writer: perhaps R. L. Stevenson, perhaps Jules Verne,
or perhaps the bastard who wrote all those "Biggles" books I read at
the rate of two per week in 1962. You
probably do not have "Biggles" in Spain. Count yourselves fortunate.
Writers should
be herded together into libraries and incinerated with their disgusting works.
A little
harsh, you say?
Well, you are
not the one sitting here in this toxic office on a Wednesday afternoon in
summer, sucking up heart-wrenching doses of coffee, nicotine and THC, listening
to the human beings outside partaking of fresh air and civilized society. If I were not detained by this vile business,
I could be out there with them: strolling, flirting, whistling, bantering,
arguing, fighting, having sex, fishing, driving, cooking—enjoying myself…
If only I had
listened to my father.
"For
Christ's sake, boy", he'd say to me when I was young -- curled in a chair,
face thrust into a book, inhaling the insidious infection spore by musty spore
– "Get out and play football with the normal kids!"
Back then, I
despised him as a Philistine; one merely jealous of the rich, paper-backed
world of danger and adventure for which I was so eager to spurn the safe,
comfortable, 1950s post-war English suburban life he had so lovingly provided
for me to grow up in. Now, as the
electronic Millennium rolls over us, my children read nothing longer than
street signs or advertising slogans and communicate, verbally or by e-mail, in
unpunctuated sentence fragments—and I couldn't be more pleased.
At least I
haven't passed the virus on to them; disturbed their untroubled sleep with
dreams of treasure islands or dead blondes; forced them to inhabit foreign
bodies and distant geographies and empathize with lives and circumstances alien
to their own. At least I haven't
infected them with restless dissatisfaction; offered the illusion of escape
from mundane tedium; planted the seeds of virulent ideas in unsuspecting minds,
or revealed the dangerous possibility of freedom through imagination, which has
tormented my own life since I admitted The Word into my consciousness and let
it multiply and fester there.
No, my children
are spared all that misery. How about
yours?
Watch
them! Warn them! Stop up their ears and put out their eyes!
The Word is
bad and weird and it will make them crazy.
Writers should know better than to pass it around with such profligate
recklessness, of course… but did you ever meet a responsible junky, one who
didn't secretly wish to ensnare some innocent and lead them into the swamp of
their own lost cause, merely for the sake of company in their addiction?
Stop reading
this now! Go to the park! Play football!
Still
here? Then it's probably too late for
you. You are probably already condemned
to a lifetime of immersion in the silent babble; lost in the impossibility of
making sense of the senseless; doomed to follow The Word wherever it may lead
you, sampling its delightful deceits in guilty solitude.
Heh!
The Word is
THE GREAT SATAN. I'm currently writing a
comic book series about it. Don't read
it! Don't buy it for your kids! It'll suck you in, bleed you dry and spit you
back out, mad and disillusioned, naked and defenseless in a cruel and ugly
world.
But, if you
are interested, in the months to come I will tell you more about the agony and
ecstasy of this work's development. I
will describe the horror and suffering of the creator's life with unflinching
honesty, following the creative process from conception to publication, in the
earnest desire that others may benefit from understanding of my own misery and
avoid a similar fate.
"In the
beginning was The Word. And the word was
"LIE".
©1999 Jamie Delano