It’s
a picture of Quetzalcoatl eating a bloke. I’ll get round to why you might want
to look at this slightly unpleasant, slightly manga-phallic image later on. To take
you there here’s an overlong anecdote about the 2001 UK census. Enjoy!
Here
in the UK (that’s UKOGBANI’s informal name btw) it is mandatory at 10 year
intervals for all adult citizens to truthfully complete a census so that the
government is able to form a realistic picture of for whom they are to devise
policy. Amongst the information compiled on employment and marital status etc is
a section devoted to religious identity. Now when I filled my 2001 UK Census,
where I should have ticked the ‘No Religion’ box I instead started to fill out
the ‘Others: Please specify’ box (if that indeed is what it is called, I can’t
really remember). I got as far as the letter J then stopped abruptly as I
quickly re-thought out, not my deeply-held religious beliefs of which I had none
but my relationship to this entire human insitution. I had intended, like
many others like me, to write ‘Jedi’ in that box as we believed that if enough
of us wrote that we subscribed to this fictional monastic martial discipline
then the authorities would then have to include ‘Jedi’ as a box on its own
alongside Christianity and Hinduism and that lot on the next census form in
2011. Perhaps we were too immersed in our science fiction belief system to
realise that the authorities were not some giant unthinking machine that would
easily allow our student prank to slip through its logic programs or whatever.
Anyhoo
I wrote the letter J and then I thought about what I was doing. Even if I had
no religion, was I to be so dismissive of thousands of years of human culture?
Even classical Marxism, where religion is viewed as part of the structure of
oppressive class-based society and therefore to be abolished, acknowledges that
religious writers have been a positive and progressive force in advancing human
society and that in many ways the Communist Parties that followed Marx’s lead were
inferior tribute acts of the institutions of Christian collectivism that had
sustained stable (if violent and violently unfair) societies for hundreds of
years. Plus I fucking hate Jedi’s. Actually that was the main reason. Yes, the
only reason. I think Marxism had been pretty much debunked even in my
slow-witted 20th century brain by then. Don’t worry. It’ll be back.
So
I was left with this useless letter J and it was irrevocable. I had to
find another religion quick and it had to begin with J. I could have gone for
Jainism which is a perfectly good religion but given my general ignorance of it
and failure to even begin on the Jainist path, it seemed a little dishonest. In
the end I plumped for Jazz. Now I’m well aware that Jazz is merely a kind of
music but it did seem to offer at the very least a lifestyle and a set of core
values that aren’t entirely dissimilar to a belief system. There is a vague
notion of personal freedom, of living for the moment and the ambition to
achieve states of extra-normal ecstasy and self-abolition through immersion
in the music. None of this applies to Trad-Jazz of course. You know, the straw hat
thing. It’s nice and everything but….you know what I mean. Even you
Trad-Jazzers out there.
It
was a bit thin I’ll admit but it was nonetheless mine uniquely and this was
before I’d even heard Coltrane play. I felt pretty smug then about the 2001 census I
can tell you but somehow knew in my heart of heart of hearts that even that
pure evocation of whatever you humans call spirituality was not going to see me
through to 2011. Jazz had pointed the way but to what? I followed its path
through the dark times after the emancipation, emerging in its recognisable
form between the wars and infecting late industrial culture changing everything
it touched, merging with pre-existing folk culture creating hybrid forms
glowing with colour and freedom that
continue to proliferate and evolve into forms beyond even my understanding.
The
Afro-European cultural renaissance with Jazz at its core altered our visual as
well as our audial culture which provides me with a thin veneer of continuity
with which to explore my next religious awakening. Now I’ve probably talked about
it enough in this blog and elsewhere so to cut a long story short, in the 2011
census I filled in the ‘Others: Please Specify’ box with the word KOOSISM.
Which, as we all know, is the worship of the trans-dimensional rainbow lizard
whose appearances in the 90s cartoon show DEXTER’S LABORATORY are like
beautiful 2D shadows of the multi-dimensional reality human apparatus cannot
yet perceive. (Dexter’s Laboratory of course was an allegorical drama of the
eternal conflict between order and chaos played out in the texts of many a
human religion). The Rainbow Lizard in the form of the serpent was venerated on
the continent of Australia by the pre-European population, as was Quetzalcoatl the
feathered serpent in Mesoamerica (or QC as he likes to be known) and another cold-blooded friend still makes
an early appearance in the holy texts of the Abrahamic faith who fail to acknowledge
that he rightly calls out their invisible deity as a big liar and frees the new
human race from his direct enslavement, ultimately setting them up as masters
of the Earth. We still debate the rightness of that policy, you know.
It
did occur to me that my conversion from to Jazz to Koosism was also a happily
alphabetical progression that I intend to continue in the next census assuming
by that point I haven’t succumbed to proper faith or orthodox atheism. Next
time I intend to write LAGOOPINISM in that box which is of course an extremist
and currently heretical form of Koosism. It will be the job of you, my one
follower (thaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaanks!) to at that point assume the leadership
of mainstream Koosism and try to erase my influence in the
development of that one enlightened religion while I spend 10 years working out
what I can believe in that begins with the letter M. If I and UKOGBANI are
still going in 2161 I’ll finally give in to a proper religion like
Zoroastrianism or Zurvanism which are kind of where it all began anyway,
especially in terms of the still currently dominant monotheism. It is dominant
too and will doubtlessly remain so as long as I live regardless of the
disrespect I continue to show it. If I am entirely wrong and there is one God
then he can practice what he preaches and bloody well forgive me.
He wouldn’t give a shit anyway, surely? If there is an entity which created all
of this do you think any human mind has the power to comprehend what it might
be up to? As I have stated elsewhere you might as well throw cheese down the
well to appease the thing as it makes as much sense as anything you do. Or you
might just try and be nice to your fellow life-possessors as Koosism teaches.
Well
that was a long and pointless ride wasn’t it? Well heres some music that is as
the title suggests an ancestor of and a descendent of Jazz. Firstly there’s
this instantly recognisable melancholy classic from Erik Satie and secondly
there’s a cracking song from the first album from Firehose whose punky-jazz
influences are probably more evident on other tracks on this album but this is
my absolute fave. Hear me!
