Hallucinating (30 page)

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Authors: Stephen Palmer

Tags: #Fiction, #Science Fiction, #General

BOOK: Hallucinating
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Next they play Midwinter White, Midwinter Night, its tempo a fraction faster than the previous song; just like they did at Stonehenge. They chant, they sing, they finish.

Chant For Imbolc is up next, and they downtempo this one, knowing that the next two songs must build, to then leave space and momentum for the majesty of the final song.

"Yo! So, you liking this out there?" Nulight asks his audience. No reply, of course. The aliens bob up and down, as before.

They play Step On The Green next. Lacking audience reaction, Nulight worries that they may not be playing at their best, for at Stonehenge the participation of the audience contributed to the success of the gig. But here, he reminds himself, it is the songs that count, and the way they convey those precious melodies.

Gotta keep the 'Henge vibe. Gotta repeat what they did there.

"Right," he says. "Put Your Foot In My Slipper is next."

The beauty of this tune is that its verses can be repeated seamlessly, using the same two-line chorus ad infinitum, but this time they play the standard version. Nulight nods once each to Sperm and Kappa, so that after they've played the penultimate chorus, the song ends.

Buddah. The last tune. Is this set really going to do anything for the aliens?

Nulight picks up his trumpet and plays the theme. Sperm and Kappa's dual guitars launch into the underlying chordage of Theme Twenty One, and from then on time seems to stretch out as the glorious music builds and builds, the trumpet riff repeating, never changing, never losing its glory, while the harmonium plays a fluttering harmony over the whole. Then, too soon, the guitars fade, the trumpet ceases, and all that is left are the notes of Jo's harmonium fluttering down the octaves, then whispering into silence.

They have played pure humanity to the aliens.

Now what?

Nulight surveys the ocean of aliens before him. Their impenetrable expressions mean nothing to him. There is movement in faces, yeah, eyes blinking and skin rippling, but what does it mean? To Nulight, nothing.

Then the aliens begin to float away from the stage, and it is like a tide going out. In only a few minutes the chamber is almost empty, just a distant dribble of blue aliens exiting through the hole in the wall. The NPTers are left alone on stage.

"Is that it?" Kappa asks.

Nulight shrugs. "To be honest, I'm not sure."

"Have we done it?" Jo asks.

"Done what?" Nulight replies.

Jo glances at the hole in the wall. No aliens remain in the chamber. "I don't know," she returns.

"Is that it?" Kappa repeats. "Was that our big chance?"

"Maybe they'll offer us a record deal next," Sperm suggests.

"Yeah, like no way
I'm
signing," asserts Nulight.

...the next four sections can be read in any order. They do not constitute documentary evidence of what happened after the alien gig, since they all consist of private mental sensations and reflections, but I will use my authorial voice from the point of view of each character. Hope that's okay...

Suddenly Nulight is falling. The fireflies are back, sweet as ever, landing on his tongue like flakes of fruit-coated manna, sensorium overload, synasthesia. Is he falling or rising? He feels ale, tastes brown, hears hops.

Long Tibetan trumpet in front of him. He is hearing the mellifluous ripple of Eliza Carthy again. He is back on solid earth, and Dartmoor, dark and chilly, is all around him.

He was not hallucinating.

It was
real.

...noodling. N.B. this is an authentic Zappa word...

Suddenly Jo is falling. But because her head is so large she is able to crawl into her right ear and curl up in comfort around her brain, which is crackling as if it is being fried in sunflower oil. The problem, however, is that she does not have the necessary concept with which to cushion her landing.

Jeez... better start looking. She pushes her cardigan sleeves up to her elbows, removes her Accurist, which she throws out of her left ear, then removes and throws away the silver bracelet that she wears—through her third eye. It leaves a bruise in the centre of her forehead. Then she begins delving inside the grey and spongy matter of her brain.

There... an interesting recollection of Llangollen that she had forgotten. There... an image of going on holiday to Goa with the other three members of Hanging Gardens Of Fungus. There—oh, a nice abstract one!

"The purpose of love," Jo's brain explains, "is to facilitate the appearance of other human beings in a mental model. It is the method of mapping real other people, wholly independent of the self, into that model. Communication, the method of attaining union, is the means of making superficial or practical models, as required, but love is the way of introducing real human beings fully into a mind. The experience of love is the experience of union. Thus, loneliness is unbearable because true understanding of the self and of life is inextricably bound up with the true understanding of others."

"Uh-huh," Jo says. She wants love, but she has never found it.

"Then you'd better listen to me," her brain continues. "Love is the paradoxical experience of union while preserving the integrity and independence of those involved. Love requires freedom to exist; without freedom it would be a tie of necessity, not a bond of interdependent liberty. Love and freedom and understanding are all, therefore, conceptual equivalents. And, Jo, love is not an emotion, no, it is a
source
of emotion, a cognitive understanding that
inspires
emotion. People do not feel a love emotion, they feel joy, compassion, wonder, elation. Love is not the transitory evaluation of reality that is emotion, it is the deep understanding created over time of another person, or of people—or of any real thing."

"But there are many forms of love that don't involve freedom and understanding," Jo remarks.

"Such forms," her brain replies, "are
experienced
as love, though in fact they are constraining ties. In these cases, the loved person has the function of filling gaps in a character, of ameliorating some deficit. This introduces tension, anger and fear. Such ties are lines of control acting between people who are inauthentic individuals, and in these cases, the cases of possessive love, love is blind. It is blind because the deficits of wholeness are experienced so painfully. Paradoxical love, however, is not blind. In fact it is the very opposite. Just as emotion enables human beings to see better, love gives them an improved experience of others, since it is the very experience of the truth of these others and not the perception of some surface quality. Thus, there is no envy or jealousy in true love, since when it exists it is always between authentic individuals."

Jo hears what her brain is saying, but she knows that despite the positive vibe of this concept it is not the one that is going to save her. Better hurry: she can see the ground approaching and she is going to
crash!

She plunges her arm deep into her frontal cortex and pulls out another concept. What about this one?

"Very few people," Jo's brain begins, "never experience laughter bubbling up within them. Laughter is contagious when people are in a group. It can be stopped only by extreme self-control. It is an integral part of life, much appreciated and sought after. Humour is sometimes even quoted as being the characteristic of humanity, so it is very significant, yes? Now, humour is an emotion, a communicative reaction to some evaluation of reality. It wells up from the unconscious, imparting its message to the self and to others."

"What kind of evaluations do you mean?" Jo asks her brain.

Her brain replies, "Humour is a reaction to three broad types of phenomena in reality; confusion during life, strangeness and the unknown, and pain. Yet these three things share a common feature at a still deeper level of explanation. They are all inexplicable to the human mind. Since understanding is the foundation of the human mind, it is essential to have some mechanism for diverting, neutralising or changing these three aspects of reality. Without some profound method of expressing non-understanding to the self and to others, human beings would be unable to cope with the limitations of their own minds. Humour is a crucial adaptive quality, a way of finding union with others in the face of the inexplicable. And this is why it makes people happy, makes them feel joy. To experience non-understanding is distressing; it gnaws at the foundations of consciousness. So humour is a positive, joyous, affirming emotion, diametrically opposed to isolation and gloom, for it has the function of reversing the unbearable experience of non-understanding."

"Okay," Jo says, "what about the first type of phenomena?"

"Confusion during life is the experience of reality
as it really is,
independent of the human mind, a place where things go wrong, do not do what they are supposed to do, in short, where the unexpected and annoying happens. In reality, inanimate objects break and seem to lead perverse lives of their own, little mishaps happen, and the unexpected lurks in waiting. Experiencing these things, human beings find they need a way of reacting to them without thought; they need an emotional reaction more profound than can be provided by the intellect. Without humour, the experience of these aspects of reality would crack the foundation of their mental models, since these models could not cope with the sometimes chaotic real world."

"And the second type?"

"Strangeness," says her brain, "and the unknown too, since they are both by definition not within the mental models of human beings, require an emotional reaction when they are encountered. The minds of human beings are ordered, coherent, containing reasonable models of reality; but when reality is bizarre, or not known, a dilemma appears. Such separation between reality and a mental model requires a reaction through emotion, because the experience cannot be ignored by the mind. So an unavoidable emotion, laughter, emerges. In this way people are able to cope with phenomena that, by their very nature, are not immediately understandable. Resolving the paradoxical, the incompatible, the odd, creates humour."

"Right, I see," Jo says, nodding. "And the third type?"

"Physical pain too is inexplicable, in the sense that, because it is so terrible, no human being can imagine where it comes from and why it happens. Pain requires a psychological response to complement the physical agony. This complement is the emotion of non-understanding, which articulates feelings to the self and to others. Okay, pain is usually physical, but it can also be
social
pain such as embarrassment, or having some hidden truth told to others. Humour is required to divert or sublimate the experience of painful non-understanding—the sensation of an abyss between what a person experiences as true about themselves and what has been revealed. The knowledge imparted by humour is one neutralising both the pain and the non-understanding of the pain."

Jo considers all this, then says, "So you're telling me that jokes are a method of expressing some hidden truth? That the essence of such jokes is to imply something that cannot be directly said?"

"Oh, absolutely," her brain answers. "Jo, as everybody knows, to destroy a joke you simply have to
explain
it, rationally." 

Jo nods. That is true.

"Not only that," her brain adds, "this sensation of non-understanding, which is rooted in mental models, also gives rise to the
individuality
of people's senses of humour. Since each person experiences their own model of reality, each one a unique creation, what they do and do not understand is rooted in the coherence and accuracy of these models, and also in their life's experience, leading to individual senses of humour. Humour is the most profoundly cognitive of the emotions. All deep human problems are approached with humour. It saves humanity from psychological annihilation by consolidating what is already modelled and by deflecting or neutralising the awful experience of the inexplicable. Humour is therefore crucial to psychological stability. Humour unites human beings, unifies them, and allows them to identify with one another. That universal experience of the human condition, to not-understand, is shared by people through humour."

"You're right!" Jo says. "It's possible to laugh at yourself, isn't it? People who can laugh at their own foibles and imperfections are consolidating their mental models of themselves, reacting to the experience of a truth. Laughing at yourself is a form of self-identification. The knowledge imparted by laughter is of the stability, coherence, and freedom of the self. Those who can't laugh at themselves can't because their selves are laboriously constructed in the face of inhumane circumstances—fragile selves—for which the experience of the truth, even by the soothing method of humour, is unbearable."

This is the concept that Jo needs! Suddenly she is rolling about on damp Dartmoor turf, laughing so much there are tears in her eyes. In fact she has laughed so much she has survived the pain of the impact. Chuckling to herself, she struggles to her feet and looks up into the starry heavens.

Bit of a cold wind tonight. She shivers.

She was not hallucinating.

It was
real.

...this is really horrible...

Suddenly Sperm is falling. He is in free-fall, like some pioneering aeronaut thrown from his high-altitude balloon, but the odd thing is that, as he falls, he realises that his body is getting more hairy. And he loathes hair. It all began with a hatred of beard and moustache and shaver (girlfriend trouble), that after a few years got out of hand and slightly more obsessive than maybe it should have... it really was
bad
girlfriend trouble, and then there were all those pointy-topped friends—

So as he is falling his body is getting more hirsute, and he realises that the dilemma he faces is this: the more hair he grows the more air resistance there is on his body, and the more cushioned his landing will be. But, on the other hand, the more hairy he will be. But then, if he does not grow hair, he will be killed on impact.

So he grows hair, though he disgusts himself. (This is bringing up some really heavy emotional baggage.) First of all he grows a good wad of pubic hair, that he wraps around his lower legs and feet. Meanwhile the hairs on his thighs go berserk, so that his lower half looks like that of an ape. His chest hair is wrapped like a cummerbund around his torso and waist, concealing a bit of a pot belly, while the hairs that used to grow on the back of his shoulders have extended and cupped themselves, forming a kind of shaggy parasol, that drips black ink into the air. Sperm is in fact being smothered by his own hair. His smooth body is being wrapped in a hirsute prison, from which he knows he may never escape. His hands and arms are invisible behind a thick screen. Soon, the black ball around him is so dense he cannot see out of it. He is trapped by himself. His demon has him in its grasp.

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