A Better Universe

Leaning Away From My Better Angels...For A Moment.

Have you ever quietly wished someone dead? I’ve always prided myself on my desire and my ability to be a diplomatic voice in the room. To act as a bridge between opposing ideas and translator at large as we navigate through the weeds. I suppose I have understood for much of my life that it’s through communication and cooperation that we can potentially arrive at a place that is clearer than where we came from. Being in a band for 30 years now has shown me, for better or for worse, so much about what it is to be in a “chosen” family dynamic. We have our moments of celebration, where we clink glasses, cheer and embrace around shared accomplishments. Then we do our very best to lean into one another around the inevitable moments when things don’t go according to plan and we are asked to test our capacities for adaptation. This part is more the rule than it is the exception, and if a family dynamic doesn’t learn how to adapt around swiftly changing landscapes they’ll be lost in the woods and destined to malfunction and ultimately fade into obscurity. The moments between the peaks and the valleys are of equal importance and I’ve learned over the decades that these areas of stasis are just as crucial to familiarize oneself with.

Yet, in the event that every attempt at diplomacy, patience, adaptability and compassion have been exhausted, and one is left with only the same human dilemma staring at them in the face and defiantly holding onto a position that seems antithetical to one’s existential approach, we are faced with a conundrum of sorts. A problem that hastens a further sequence of problems. A SNAFU, incarnate, as it were.

Ever met this person? Did you ever encounter someone so far gone in their malignant narcissism and self aggrandizing, self assured egomania that all you could do was take a deep breath and walk away? Of course you have, you see a potential “them” in the mirror each day. We are all born with the stuff needed to back-step into a septic righteousness and become intoxicated by our own, sometimes myopic point of view. Why is it that we have a tendency to give voice to such demons on our collective shoulder? Sometimes we even give them power, and on occasion we’ll grant them societal power! Imagine that devil that sits on every shoulder, counterpoint to the better angels of our nature, allowed to fully morph and metastasize into a living, breathing incarnation of our more base, reptilian self. Slap on a suit and tie, comb its hair, teach it a few tried and tested semantic magic tricks and voila! Our very own modern, cultural dystopia unfolding before our eyes. It speaks in hypnotic but infantilizing repetitions, prosthelytizing, evangelizing and tribalizing at any chance it gets. The demon no longer lives on his shoulder, it’s in the skin now! It tugs at its host’s brain stem and animates his limbs, possessing him with messages we’ve heard before, but now are spat out in novel dialects, custom made for ears susceptible to the lesser angels of their nature.

Have you ever wished that that “someone" would die? Would that even solve the problem? For if they found an audience so eager and ready to glutton themselves on the message, could it not be argued that there will be yet another wolf in wolf’s clothing waiting in the wings to rush in and fill that void? I found myself in the teeth of this dilemma recently and I struggled with the ethical problem that was clinging to its heels.

Then, shortly after locking horns with this philosophical bull, I met the person whom I’d come to this unfortunate impasse with in a dream.

“I met you in a dream

and in the dream you died,

I slow danced on your grave

and I got all teary eyed.

I woke up with a smile,

wiped the tears away,

I wished that it were real.

So it goes, so I’ll say, I’m sorry but

it’s a better universe without you in it.

Did you read the book or did you just see the movie?

Every breath you take is just a waste of air.”

I suppose what I am attempting to say is that no one is immune from these feelings. As well, not one of us isn’t occasionally tempted by the proverbial devil on the shoulder; that petty, taunting, tribal, short-sighted and righteous little asshole that has been with us since we descended from the tree tops and began chatting amongst ourselves about sex, eating, danger, dancing, drugs, tools and who’s in charge around here. What differentiates us from our distant genetic relatives (among other things) is our ability to hear the devil on our shoulder but then tell it to shut the fuck up and/or even ignore it completely. It’s not as if the devil doesn’t have some good points here and there, he can definitely throw a great party and his taste in music seems to be more interesting than his inverse, stationed on the other shoulder donning tiny wings and a tunic. But given too much unchecked freedom, that tiny man-goat in the cheap suit will run amok and grant itself king of kings. Making some measurable sub-set of humans around him quietly wish he’d choke on a chicken bone. Ironically, it’s the devil on one’s shoulder that would wish ill upon his agitator, so here we find ourselves in a bind. But here is where the dream space can act as a window letting air out of what are deeply complex and sometimes unspeakable emotions.

Do I wish ill upon my fomenter? I do not. I can say that with confidence. But what if they met an untimely demise in a liminal, imaginary space? Say, for instance, in a detailed dream: a house carried by some cyclonic event from the Great Plains fell upon my striped socked tormentor, crushing the breath out of them forever…what then?

Then, inside the relatively safe confines of said dream-scape, I’d weep a single tear from each eye, mourning the unfortunate feeling of cosmic gratitude and my internal glee at said tornado’s impeccable aim. I’d wipe the tears away and dance a slow but celebratory jig on the place where this imaginary beast was buried. Of course, in this dream I would have the kinetic prowess of a modern Fred Astaire and the nine-eyed talking flowers living amongst the mossing gravestones would swoon and giggle with glee, all to the sounds of a song entitled “A Better Universe.”

“You can’t bottle a dream,

oh, chimera for hire!

But if I could I would,

some unknown amplifier!

So now I lay me down,

I promise I’ll behave.

But if in my dream you’ve died

then I’ll dance on your grave.

I’m sorry but…

It’s a better universe without you in it.

Did you read the book or did you just see the movie?

Every breath you take is just a waste of air.”

Brandon Boyd

A Better Universe