Radio Jesus

 by 

Crispin Day

Ah… Spirituality!  Want it,  love it,  sing about it,  poeticize it,  paint it, read about it,  talk about it, feel it, but in the holy name of Ra, do NOT experience it. 

If it is already too late, there is only one option.  Spin it.  If you can’t polish it and make it marketable, nobody wants to hear about it. 

There I was, stuck in heavy traffic on Lincoln Blvd.  I was hanging out the window of my un-air-conditioned, please-let-me-die car, panting and wondering how long it would take me to cover the next three blocks to get to the sugary soda oasis promised by the 7-Eleven sign.

Then the radio caught my attention. 

Up until then, it had been the typical LA rock station fare—groovy tunes separated by the sharp-witted and inane banter of DJs and commercials alike.

But suddenly, the honey-tongued jockeys got more than they bargained for.  All they wanted was to give away some tickets to an ecstatic caller.  Instead, the poor souls found themselves waist deep in the mess of reality. 

The caller told the DJs that her brother had just died that week.  The DJs made a half joking comment, not yet sure of what they had heard.  The caller proceeded to explain that she had been, “praying for his healing,”, was quite hopeful that it would happen, and was deeply disappointed that it did not (obviously).

After a painfully quiet and awkward pause, The DJs response was to crack several jokes, laugh at their own jokes, make a passing comment about how they didn’t believe the universe “worked that way” (what way?), and ended the call by dishing out some har-har punch line like, “I’m going to kill myself if I don’t stop talking to you!”

Cut to commercial and the sound of empty souls orbiting the icy planet of Blunt Head Trauma .

Obviously, I have no idea if said caller was a spiritually inept wacko or a wise and all-seeing guru.  There wasn’t enough information to go on.  But I was shocked at the callousness of the response.  I quickly realized that in most social settings, any kind of authentic spiritual expression doesn’t fit the bill of popular appeal.  Positivity is best received without substance.  Compassion is a liability.  Honesty is never the best policy if you want to make friends and keep them.  Death is for the obituary column and not the public forum.  Hurt is for super-duper support groups but KEEP IT THE HELL OFF THE RADIO. 

Ultimately, spirituality is just like sex.  Nobody wants the real story.  Hollywood’s version is simply far better.  Sex among average people is boring.  It needs a spin. Males a la rippling muscles and perfect teeth matched with shapely runway model vixens is what sex is all about. 

Nothing would ruin a sex scene like seeing someone crouching to take off a pair of socks; someone with dirty fingernails struggling to open and put on a condom.  And no one wants to acknowledge that there is actually stuff to clean up when the act of passion is over.  Sex is better without all the reality.  And the same goes for spirituality.  We want the ethereal and tingly feelings, but we don’t want the mess.

Oddly enough, all this reminds me of a bunny story:

It just may be that everything worth learning I picked up when my Mom read me Watership Down by Richard Adams;  a story chronicling a community of bunnies who one day leave their comfortable warren at the prophetic urging of one of their crew.  They go searching for a place to establish a new warren, and at every turn encounter adventure and danger.

At one point, the rabbits visit a warren where the living is easy.  Carrots and lettuce magically appear every day, there are fences to ward off the attack of predators, everybody is well-fed and loving life. 

Because of this Warren’s life of ease and leisure, the arts have had an opportunity to develop.  Songwriters and poets perform nightly in all the hip rabbit holes.  Shockingly, however, the visiting rabbits find that most of the poetry and song is thematically dark.  Despair, suffering, pain, and death are given rich expression in songs and poems.

After spending more time in this strange but pleasant Warren, the visiting rabbits find out a dark secret.  Every now and again, a rabbit disappears.  No one talks about it, but it keeps happening.

As it turns out, rabbits were being farmed.  They lived the good life because the farmer supplied all their needs.  The tradeoff was that every now and again the farmer nabbed himself a rabbit.  The rabbit culture couldn’t face their own reality, except through music and the arts.

Naturally, the visiting rabbits in the story turned tail and got the fuck out of Dodge. 

The point of the story?  Welcome to LA radio!

In the hour of radio listening prior to the spiritually-distraught-caller fiasco, I heard Nirvana express the angst of the human soul, Rage Against the Machine raise fists at global corporate greed, and the Smashing Pumpkins give voice to existential despair.

The irony? 

Apparently, genuine and authentic expression is fine and good.  But keep it inside of the arts.  As long as Billy Corgan is singing about it, you don’t have to talk about it.  And if you can’t contain yourself, write a poem.  Sing a song.  Make a movie.  Draw a picture.  Do a little dance.  Make a little love.  Get down tonight. 

If you insist on talking about it, you’ll get treated like the idiot you are.

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