Iris Veiled
Chris Youngblood July 25, 2024
“I don’t wanna hear the noises on TV, I don’t want the salesmen coming after me,
I don’t want to live in my father’s house no more.
I don’t want it faster, I don’t want it free,
I don’t wanna show you what they’ve done to me
I don’t wanna live in my father’s house no more.
Because the tide is high
And it’s rising still
And I don’t wanna see it at my windowsill.”
-Arcade Fire Windowsill
What do you see when you look out your window?
What do you see or feel when you walk, run, hike?
Do you believe the lies they tell you?
Or do you know they are lies but laugh anyway?
Too tempted to look away at the flag draped truck burning on the Turnpike?
Trying to attach meaning to a false fairy tale; the so called “end of an era.”
All eras die, epochs born.
Some of us thought it would be mid 2000s. Disillusioned by that tower moment, Babel falling, but the creatures still speaking the same tongue and yes; scattered throughout the Earth.
So we argued with each other about insignificant details while Baghdad and Fallujah burned.
And the poppy fields of Afghanistan thrived.
And Skull and Bones talking heads ran a race against each other; what a choice!
Some of us tried to free Peltier and Abu Jamal.
Some of us went back to sleep, a bunch of Raymond K Hessel’s with no Tyler Durdin sticking a gun in our face.
A lost generation that one; for years wandering the desert of work, family and dread.
Until hopium came along to give us reprieve.
Ripping the mike from Bill Hicks and taking on his saying of “Go Back to Sleep America.”
But now, are you sleep walking?
Do you follow the Carnival from town to town while sitting in your pod?
At least long ago you could walk within the hall of mirrors and look at yourself.
A view of the macabre, a walk through the uncanny; feeling, knowing, experiencing.
And you could still buy the Apple Pie after exiting the tent.
Now, it’s just beamed in. But make no mistake, Something Wicked This Way Comes.
Have you tuned out long enough that when you tune back in, you’re amazed at how much older the wizard is?
That’s freedom.
Can you not help looking or not help sunning?
Can you not help buying in or not help feet connecting greenbacks?
Can you not help viewing the talking box, in your room, sitting on your hand, not in it, for now?
Or can you not help looking out your windowsill?
Did you buy the Apple Pie after the July 4th Carnival? Do you still do that?
When will it be enough? When will the dopamine be rejected, vomited out with the virus?
The Hall of Mirrors in your Living Room, so much easier now.
Fear lives there. Some don’t even realize they seek it.
The end of an era, which was all a carnival ride.
Some of us had to actually walk, crawl through that hall of mirrors, face our illusioned self, the false clone we were built into.
Then we burned it down and walked out.
This Digital hall now metastasizes, spreading Octopus arms wide.
But we can look away, walking amongst the Tube Tombstones adjacent to the tent.
Going to write about where we’ve been, where we are and where we are going.
It’s a Three Parter, that whole Triadic function within the ALL thing.
Coming Soon (enough).
This is not your father’s house. It never really was.
That’s freedom.