[images stolen and cropped from the official NIN flickr site.]

999,999 is not quite there yet. It’s a number I aspire to, a number that I’m looking forward to. At the same time, I’m already there. A slow twist, and then I feel 1,000,000 miles away. I don’t feel anything at all. It’s a bit of an anthem, but for what? Christ is died, Christ is risen, Christ will come again? Not bloody likely. It’s more like, “Hey, remember when I was skinny and hungry and drunk and angry? I’m still totally that guy, just beefier, healthier and more productive.” And yet, I feel oddly safe, rocked in a cradle of nihilism, or something. Not yet bruised, not yet broken.

Okay, okay. I’m Letting You believe something that isn’t true. The energy is there, and it’s there from the beginning. But three songs in, my chest still intact, my breath still beating and my heart still breathing, I can still feel the cool breeze of some faraway pair of open doors, creating a draft to reach me all the way in row two.

Trying to figure out what it’s about, this calmness of demeanor, this paleness of comparison. I’ve never personally had a problem with self-Discipline, at least about most things. Give me something to not do, and nine times out of ten, i can not do it. There is always that exception though. And though I like hip-shaking and booty-breaking as much as the next bloke, I’ve got a hankering for some spankering, some body slamming action to get the party started, for real this time.

And just when I start to lose faith, as I try to save myself but myself keeps slipping, the annual March of the Pigs steps right up to march, push and crawl right up by the knees to right where I’m standing. And the crush is precious. To feel my body pressed to you, you here in row two, to feel this exquisite danger, taboo and timeless. Well, actually, I think you can date it back to somewhere in the mid-seventies. The drum-thumper is playing bicep games and the guitar lords are not stopping and starting at yr convenience. Piano plucks, pluck pluck, tinkle tinkle. Yes, I do feel better, thanks for asking.

Head Down, in prayer or in nausea, I have to remember: This is all a dream. None of you are real. There it is again: That classic love of nothingness, that desire for void-ity, that embracing of dead fate. It really is admirable, at a distance, though I can’t imagine walking around in that matrix for more than fifteen minutes a day. Paranoia like that has a way of infecting the torso, of making the heart metamorph into a large raisin.

To the others I know that it seems like I’m one of The Frail, I’m actually much Closer than you think to tearing a hole in the sky. I’ve got my hands up, but no one’s pointing a gun anywhere near a part of my body, small or large. I can muster up energy at a moment’s notice. And the best part of waking up is the realization that, “hey, we got some boogie-down boxspring symphony happening here. so why not let’s share it?” Strobe action. This is the only time I really, etc. etc.

An affirmative nod, and away we go. This could’ve been different. It could have been a little more red blue, and little less black white. A little more pink grey, a little less open shut. Covered in hope and vaseline I am a monkey with a wrench banging it against my head to try to make sense of that fact that I tried and I Gave Up. It took you to make me realize that there’s as many paths as there are dreams to find. Something something, steady systematic decline. Yeah.

The Corona Radiata is a white matter sheet that continues caudally as the internal capsule and rostrally as the centrum semiovale. [reference omitted]

To you, it might just look like a plastic bit of imitation ivory, but to me, this is The Warning we’ve been waiting for all along. Do we want an engraved invitation? Do I want a gawdy souvenir? No. I’m happy with a raft of laptops and pixelated men in black describing to me the apocalypse in four verses, three chora. In that sense, I’m just a Vessel for a much larger message. Kill the president. Kill yr TV. Kill those urges. The future is clean and does not misstep.

Three and a half ghosts, you might say, come back to haunt us with middle class taunts. 5 Ghosts behind glass, 6 Ghosts in the sand, 19 Ghosts in a kind of prison made of outstretched hands. Underneath it all, a jazz bastard Piggy comes bleeding through, just like old times, just like soft crimes and best intentions, sitting on my chest. It’s a jump jam to a neverland of rare emotions, a slow build into the anti-ether of a drum solo (finally!) and away we go again. Let’s fucking dance like there isn’t a marimba on stage, let’s dance like our past lives depend on it, let’s dance until we’re dead again.

When you eventually do die, there is a wash of static that covers yr eyes, and you return to the bits and bytes of The Greater Good, that energy sink in the sky. And pretty soon, from all of those inevitable waves of grain, you find some teeth, a mouth, a hand and a microphone. Then the bottom of a pair of eyes. Lyrics borne of progress, slow death, morning breath. Music forged in the fires of dead xylophones and decaying concrete block rocked beats. But yeah, that’s just my oPinion.

I gave up trying to figure it out, cause my head got lost along the way. Oh, how I Wish this was that. But it’s not, and that’s alright, cause it really sums up the state of all fears: it’s a big time hard line bad luck fist fuck, and who’s on the receiving end? Not all of us, that’s for sure. Forget the tombstones, forget the verbs, forget the swollen hearts and the angled arguments. Just drink it in. It’s like 4 cans of red bull shot through a potato gun.

At this point, maybe it’s useful to slow down a bit. Let’s get our groove on, shall we? We’re all in this together, we’re all beholden to the same Terrible Lie, we’re all driving towards Vegas in a ’52 cadillac with bogus license plates and a fucking trunk full of drunk juice, and laughers and screamers. “Bounce with me,” says mr. drummer man. To which mr. bass replies, “watch me go.” To which mr. guitar says, “fuck all y’all, this is my fucking ball game.”

At this point it seems important to note that words can kill. Written wrong, the right combination of words in just the wrong grammar can become a goddam gifted cudgel. Drop it like it’s double time appropriation, I’ve got my fist I’ve got my plan I’ve got Survivalism. So don’t make me come over there and show you how to dance. I’m not that well versed in the art of locomotive maintenance and the politics of elbows. What I do know is that with enough firepower, even a relatively benign shuffle step can seem like a call to war.

Bombs dropping. The sky falling. Dangling lights being swung like the bodies of hanging dictators on the five o’clock news. The Big Come Down, isn’t that what you wanted? As much as it’s hard to imagine making such an intense connection with a group of people in a steel cage, it totally happens. Swinging lights, a swung beat, and coming down hard on the ones and threes. Ouch.

But all of the 31 flavors of Ghosts have not yet evaporated, and it’s still okay to put away the meat gloves, at least for a minute, if Only. In that span of seconds, there’s still a chance to grind yrself to a goodly pulp, to bare yr teeth and maybe bite The Hand That Feeds, if you get to feeling randy enough. Now we got a fucking hoe-down on our mitts, a good old fashioned happening going on right here. And as the non-existent disco ball descends into the maelstrom, we can taste the gloss of all its imaginary mirrors, reflecting back a blue and green laser light symphony.

And finally, here we are. In the bridge from the chorus, a lone crowd-surfer crouches upright on the sea of bodies. He is in deep control, unperturbed by the instability of his platform, he remains upright as he points to Trent, maybe makes eye contact. “Bow down before the one you serve, yr going to get what you deserve.” He says this while pointing, an arm-outstretched in a pose worthy of the Stratford Festival, his Head Like A Hole into which the dreams and nightmares of the evening’s MC have been poured, and solidified. And then it’s over.

An agonizing wait. Just wait. There’s more. No really. Jesus Christ, can you motherfuckers scream or what? The arena is not much more than an Echoplex, amplifying what little enthusiasm these yokels want to show. What, do you think an encore is just yr God Given right? You think just because you’ve been Good Soldiers up to now that it’s yr time to take a siesta? Fuck that noise, and fucking make some already. We wouldn’t want the man to be Hurt, now would we?

Eventually, it comes to this: A burning cityscape with smokestacks acting as streetlights and solar flares creating dramatic shifts in perspective. In This Twilight, I realize that it’s kind of pointless to sum this up in any coherent way. Were you there? I wish you all were. Then I might not have to bother you with all of this self-indulgent blather.