Gandhi’s dead already,’ Jason protested.
‘Poor Gandhi-doggy, living with such a boring old pedant,’ said Haley irritably.
Barny drifted away from the park bin and Jason’s thoughts returned irresistibly to the frustrations of his career. In his twenties, driven on by the belief that bad news was infectious and optimism self-fulfilling, he’d been in the habit of saying things like, ‘all the signs are good … the record company is really interested … we should close the deal before Christmas’. The discovery that he was known as ‘all-the-signs-are-good Jason’ put an end to his assumed cheerfulness. A period of tight-lipped silence was soon followed by his present policy of talking very generally and bleakly about ‘economic conditions’.
At thirty-two he was getting too old for a big break in rock music; perhaps he’d been too old for a long time. It was his birthday soon. As an Aries he was supposed to be explosive, ambitious, driven and shallow. Haley said that even Jung thought there was something in astrology. Jung thought there was something in everything. He even talked encouragingly to his kitchen equipment, just to be on the safe side. Haley also said that thirty-three was a really crucial age, when Christ had been crucified and Buddha enlightened, but Jason didn’t want to start a world religion, he just wanted to make a record – and then start a world religion.
He frowned sensitively and sang into an imaginary microphone. Like phosphorescence in a churning sea, bulbs flashed from the adulatory crowd beyond the edge of the stage. His face caked in make-up, his eyes blinded by the sting of sweat and the glare of spotlights, he no longer shifted about restlessly in his diffident and troubled skin but blazed with the certainty that he had become a turbine for momentarily transforming the frustrations and desires of a million raw souls. He closed his eyes and inhaled the exhilarating liberation of fame, and his new identity, a mirage of falsehood and calculated carelessness, stood up and walked away like a confident ghost from the corpse of his old uneasy self.
Yes, yes, he wanted it so badly. He kept his eyes closed to sustain the vision a little longer. To become completely phoney and to be worshipped for it, and then to be thought ‘real’ because he gave in to his wildest vices. He threw back his shoulders and felt himself grow taller. Bliss, it would be bliss.
Barny, who could not be expected to know that his master had transformed himself into a global icon, one of those truly famous people who are recognized everywhere, in Vanuatu and Kathmandu as well as the King’s Road and Fifth Avenue, barked feebly by his side.
Jason, realizing that he was on Clapham Common rather than the stage of the Hollywood Bowl – he thought fondly of Johnny Rotten saying, ‘Do you ever get the feeling you’ve been ripped off?’ when the Sex Pistols left after playing only two songs – started running homewards clapping his hands and shouting, ‘Come on Barny!’ to his exhausted pet.
Tomorrow, he and Haley would be flying over the Hollywood Bowl, not in order to gulp down the nectar of his stupendous popularity, but on their way to a workshop to repair their ailing relationship. As soon as Haley had suggested the workshop, Jason had started to feel that things were really about to happen for him musically, but he was in no position to refuse. She might throw him out of her house.
She had recently declared that their relationship was ‘totally sick’ after going to a Co-dependency Group on three successive Wednesdays, and returning home with a grisly new friend, Panita, who believed that ‘self-satisfaction’, as she called it, was the aim of life and that it could only be achieved by violently breaking off relations with everybody she had ever known, including ‘old selves’.
‘She should break with her new self while she’s at it,’ he had commented sourly.
‘I think that’s a
‘Poor Gandhi-doggy, living with such a boring old pedant,’ said Haley irritably.
Barny drifted away from the park bin and Jason’s thoughts returned irresistibly to the frustrations of his career. In his twenties, driven on by the belief that bad news was infectious and optimism self-fulfilling, he’d been in the habit of saying things like, ‘all the signs are good … the record company is really interested … we should close the deal before Christmas’. The discovery that he was known as ‘all-the-signs-are-good Jason’ put an end to his assumed cheerfulness. A period of tight-lipped silence was soon followed by his present policy of talking very generally and bleakly about ‘economic conditions’.
At thirty-two he was getting too old for a big break in rock music; perhaps he’d been too old for a long time. It was his birthday soon. As an Aries he was supposed to be explosive, ambitious, driven and shallow. Haley said that even Jung thought there was something in astrology. Jung thought there was something in everything. He even talked encouragingly to his kitchen equipment, just to be on the safe side. Haley also said that thirty-three was a really crucial age, when Christ had been crucified and Buddha enlightened, but Jason didn’t want to start a world religion, he just wanted to make a record – and then start a world religion.
He frowned sensitively and sang into an imaginary microphone. Like phosphorescence in a churning sea, bulbs flashed from the adulatory crowd beyond the edge of the stage. His face caked in make-up, his eyes blinded by the sting of sweat and the glare of spotlights, he no longer shifted about restlessly in his diffident and troubled skin but blazed with the certainty that he had become a turbine for momentarily transforming the frustrations and desires of a million raw souls. He closed his eyes and inhaled the exhilarating liberation of fame, and his new identity, a mirage of falsehood and calculated carelessness, stood up and walked away like a confident ghost from the corpse of his old uneasy self.
Yes, yes, he wanted it so badly. He kept his eyes closed to sustain the vision a little longer. To become completely phoney and to be worshipped for it, and then to be thought ‘real’ because he gave in to his wildest vices. He threw back his shoulders and felt himself grow taller. Bliss, it would be bliss.
Barny, who could not be expected to know that his master had transformed himself into a global icon, one of those truly famous people who are recognized everywhere, in Vanuatu and Kathmandu as well as the King’s Road and Fifth Avenue, barked feebly by his side.
Jason, realizing that he was on Clapham Common rather than the stage of the Hollywood Bowl – he thought fondly of Johnny Rotten saying, ‘Do you ever get the feeling you’ve been ripped off?’ when the Sex Pistols left after playing only two songs – started running homewards clapping his hands and shouting, ‘Come on Barny!’ to his exhausted pet.
Tomorrow, he and Haley would be flying over the Hollywood Bowl, not in order to gulp down the nectar of his stupendous popularity, but on their way to a workshop to repair their ailing relationship. As soon as Haley had suggested the workshop, Jason had started to feel that things were really about to happen for him musically, but he was in no position to refuse. She might throw him out of her house.
She had recently declared that their relationship was ‘totally sick’ after going to a Co-dependency Group on three successive Wednesdays, and returning home with a grisly new friend, Panita, who believed that ‘self-satisfaction’, as she called it, was the aim of life and that it could only be achieved by violently breaking off relations with everybody she had ever known, including ‘old selves’.
‘She should break with her new self while she’s at it,’ he had commented sourly.
‘I think that’s a
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