Life is like a dancing Santa Claus

I first heard of Brain Eno about ten years ago. An old painter mystic friend of mine, with whom I had developed a habit of discussing over a glass of beer the meaning of life and other spiritual matters, once gave me Eno’s 1978 record “Music for Airports”.

If my memory serves me right, he also added that Eno’s music was inspired by the heavenly spheres in general and influenced by some special divine force in particular – Satan or angel Gabriel – I don’t remember exactly who was the alleged author of this musical piece.
He had this strange and now, when I come to think about it, mad theory that most of the songs out there, and especially the overplayed hits you encounter in the Billboard charts and see on the music channels of MTV or VH1 and hear on your local radio station, are really about God. Popular culture reveals some aspects of the divine reality. In fact, almost everything that exists in some hidden way contains a coded message about the great divine string-puller behind the scenes. The same applies to the realms of books and images, paintings, cinema and any other artistic expression, idea or philosophy.
Let me give you an example of what he meant.

When Robert Palmer sings about a woman he finds “simply irresistible” , what he is actually doing unknowingly, of course, is singing a love serenade to God. Or to be more precise, an angel, let’s say angel Michael, is declaring his unbounded love for God through the voice of Robert Palmer. Now, if you switch off your critical faculties and empty you cynical ammunition, if only for a moment as I have done for the most of my conscious adult life, and listen to the lyrics carefully, the theory actually makes quite a bit of sense. What we get then is this, instead of listening to the spirited meowing of an old cat and his desire to copulate with an attractive female, we hear the voice of an angel singing praises to that “mythical, anything but typical”, “simply unavoidable and irresistible powerful force”, that “deserves the applause” – and commonly goes by the name of God.

Palmer’s “Addicted to Love” is about Mary, the mother of God, who sings about her now legendary encounter with the Holy Spirit that happened in Bethlehem.

Other singers and artists are also guided by the divine hand. So, for example, the soul-moving and heart calming performances of the Irish songwriter and singer Enya are a testimony of Satan’s great musical abilities. In her previous life Enya was a martyr, who suffered great injustices and hardships. For her miseries in the past, the heavenly court decided to reward her poor soul with a life full of riches and harmony. Today she lives a blissful and magical life in Manderley castle and sings beautiful melodies, which only the dark Lord – the Great Morning Star – is capable of composing.

Jesus is particularly active producer in today’s music industry. He stands behind many popular artists and film characters and his personal products and brand names include:

Mick Jagger and the Rolling Stones (their famous hit song “I can’t get no satisfaction” is really about Jesus complaining to God the Father about the boredom and the lack of entertainment in heaven), The Beatles, Madonna, Michael Jackson and many more. Elvis Presley was a masterpiece, a true chef d’oeuvre created by the charisma and the heavenly touch of Jesus.

As a quintessential heretic and a disturber of public order, a reformer of common values and traditional beliefs, Jesus excelled in forming and designing rebel-types. So it came as no surprise to me, when I was informed by my artist friend that Marilyn Manson also heavily relied on the assistance of Jesus to create his wild and monstrous image.

I was told that Jesus in his own time looked and behaved somewhat similar to Marilyn Manson of today. He had a magnetic stage presence, the crowd went bananas when Jesus hit the floor.

My friend also told me that John Travolta is said to represent Jesus in the movie “Get Shorty” and that the movie “Life of Brian” is widely recognized in heaven as a personal autobiography of Jesus and is critically acclaimed as a historical documentary of the events that happened around the year zero.

Now, most of the songs are actually nothing but praises and hymns to the stunning greatness and the ineffable perfection of God. Beyoncé’s “Crazy in Love”, Kelly Clarkson’s “Since U Been Gone”, Dido’s “Here with me” and many more are all about angels who express their deep love and need for God.

Lenny Kravitz’s Grammy award winning song “Fly away” was said to be really composed by Adam, not the human Adam, but the angel Adam – the spiritual father of our species – , who first originated the idea of the world as it is today – with its share of meaningless suffering and miseries, but also hopes, dreams and joyful ecstasy. The song is about his desire of flying away from heaven and crating his own little world of games and fantasy. “Let’s go and see the stars The milky way or even Mars Where it could just be ours.” – listen to these lyrics and imagine an angel dancing and shaking his wings in the corner. His wish came true and our planet was created. So only he – the angel Adam – is really to blame for all the craziness and marvelous nonsense around. The angel Adam was also the real composer of Nelly Furtado‘s “I’m Like a Bird” in which he declares his mentality of playful ignorance and his love of life – “I’m like a bird, I’ll only fly away I don’t know where my soul is I don’t know where my home is.”

According to my friends theory, many famous musicians and performers in reality are unconscious messengers of the divine word. Their road to glory and fame was literally built on the wings of angels. This is how it was done: first and foremost, the heavenly agents were interested to get their message across. They wanted to inspire the masses and to drive the listeners (read:us) to take action in the direction they found most agreeable and which was in concord with the great experiment that had started on the planet earth. So they used whatever means possible and necessary to achieve their goals. All the tricks of sweet melodies, hypnotic rhythm, catchy lyrics, great looks and dazzling talent were pulled out the bag to seduce and inspire you, me and the Chinese dude from the province of Guangdong that life is worth living and worth fighting for. A song can change your life. So can a book, a movie or an idea. Actually many things can change your life, if you think about it. Out of all the improbable things that could change your life, you would never have guessed that this very blog and this very post might do it as well. But strangely it has and it will. Everything you read and experience will have some lasting effect upon your brain and on the way you see the world, be it positive or negative, be it minuscule or enormous, momentous or trivial, but an effect nonetheless. After reading this your life might never be the same ever again. Words have great power to trigger intense emotions and they can motivate you to action.
As hard as it may sound to believe, I am not making this all up, my artist friend truly revealed these things to me with a straight face and honest, cute little pussycat eyes.
I last met him three years ago. He still believed in his theories. In the meantime I had grown skeptical and thought he was mad. But he somehow managed to get a decent living. He painted and wrote about his theories. Many people admired his wisdom and bought his books and promoted his art. And most importantly, he was happy. So he said and I had no reason to doubt it. Despite being a poor bachelor well in his 40s, still living in the old house with his parents, he enjoyed life like few people do.
I used to enjoy drinking beer and tee with him. We would philosophize for about an hour and then go our separate ways. Like a young disciple and a naive admirer I would ask him many questions about life’s deepest mysteries, the angelic hierarchies and the divine world. He would patiently answer all of my inquiries and often would say something that touched my mind in a profound way and left me as if in a trance for the rest of my day (if not for the rest of my life).
He was fond of saying that “angels look at us like we look at the deer. They cannot understand us, but they sense that we understand something more about God than they do.”
Once, when we had just about finished our drinks, he pointed to the funny toy figure near the front window of the cafeteria and exclaimed: “Life is like a dancing Santa Claus”.  As I listened to the merry sounds of Jingle Bells and observed Santa twisting his hips and shaking his belly, for a moment, I thought he was right.