Crazy Earl
EARL: I’m kinda tryna dull my feelings. Like how your mother tries ta fight back tears when she sees ya spit fire at ‘er like she didn’t even birth you. Ungrateful. Tryna dull the ungratefulness of this hard planet and silence that constant endless roaring. So aggressive. Why you gotta be so aggressive all the time, man? Like the little voices on the subway and the screechin’ and the clatterin’ n’ clammerin’ isn’t enough to reckon with? You gotta add your own to it always? (beat, a nod to himself) Nobody understands the power of silence till the world around them won’t shut up. Peace. ‘Aint nobody seem to got time for peace these days. An all I’m askin’ for is a piece of peace. I mean, how ridiculous is dat? Right? You feel me, man. It’s in that piece of peace that we actually got da space to understand all that noise. People think they gotta be louder to be heard but they don’t. They gotta be quiet. Everybody wants to know what the quietest person in the room is thinkin’.
--An’ I DON’T mean those mothafuckas on their cell phones – slave to their screens. They’re not bein’ quiet, they’re bein’ dominated. Absorbed, distracted and buried. They might as well be sleeping. In fact, I sometimes think that’s exactly what’s happenin’ to ‘em when their eyes stop blinkin’ and their mouths lag a bit and their thumbs spin like propellers….It’s like live R.E.M. Except when you’re dreamin’ you’re actually releasin’ somethin’ and when you’re plugged in you’re just crammin’ and crammin’ and crammin’. More information, more likes, more photos, more evidence of ME floatin’ up –up in that electric cloud….(looking up at the sky)
See – it’s not really a cloud though. It never rains!
Kinda gives a new meanin’ to that expression, “When it rains, it pours,”… cause god forbid some of all that evidence of you was gonna leak out of that cloud you put so much blind faith into….Ridiculous….
Nature operates the sky. Man operates that electric vortex we spend a good third or half our day pourin’ our energy into. “Sharing”, or so we think. More like showin’ off – and/or fakin’ some kind of façade existence. Some image of you. Image. Pfft….
You no longer have to forge your way on this Earth. You could take a selfie on the top of a mountain it took climbers 5 years to summit from a ride on a helicopter and post it on Facebook and nobody would be the wiser except you and your soul and that thing we’ve all forgotten exists called a conscience. There is no room for a conscience in the cloud. Nah, man. You gotta buy more storage for that. Way more than anyone could afford ‘cause the sacrifice would mean wakin’ up to their own actual reflection. Not that one angle from which they stare at themselves when they’re takin that selfie and adding another piece of meaningless information into a world that doesn’t even really exist…
And THAT is what I want a piece of peace from. That. From the active participation in the meaningless.
You gotta be a watcher in order ta understand life. But we? We’re all consumers. We’re all on the offense or the defense 100% of the time. Nobody’s bein’ the referee. We’ve been taught that way. We’ve been told to show our knowledge not use it and so we do. We’re guided by the hand and by the media into our own disconnected prophecy while the real prophets are left shiverin’ in the street because dey aint got da moral imbalance to propagate and prostitute their wisdom to the masses. An’ since we’ve been taught to only listen to the loudest voice, we can’t even value those who are not shovin’ their idea of the world down our throat and in our faces like–
LOOK AT ME
LOOK AT ME
LOOK AT ME.
I only mean something if you
SEE ME.
…bullshit.
You only mean what you see in your minds’ eye and how you take care of those around you. And that all begins with silence my friend. Silence.
So will you let me just sit here for a second? Come on, sit with me. I won’t hurt you, I promise, I’m not aggressive. I learned my lesson. Hopefully you did too. If you were listening…
MOLLY: I was.
EARL: Well damn, girl! You’re da first one this year. Most people just laugh me off and call me Crazy Earl. Yeah – I’m crazy. I’m crazy about the truth. Not too many people crazy about that these days. And who’re you?
MOLLY: I’m the girl that takes all those selfies from the same angle. Usually from the left, because I’m partial to my left side ever since my mom tried to make me a righty in the third grade…
EARL: Why would she do a thing like that?
MOLLY: I don’t know. ‘Cause she wanted me to be more normal.
EARL: Well, you’re an angel. I ‘aint never met a normal angel in all my life. And that’s a compliment.
MOLLY: Thanks.
EARL: So why’d you stop here today, angel? Pay me a visit?
MOLLY: I’m sad.
EARL: Sad? About what?
MOLLY: About my loneliness. About my inability to be selfless. About my generation.
EARL: Yeah – well, dose are some real problems you got there. But why you gotta be sad about ‘em?
MOLLY: …
EARL: You gotta relax. Didn’ I JUS’ tell you? Peace. You gotta find you piece of peace.
MOLLY: Yeah, I can’t seem to find that in myself. Too many voices. I don’t like to sit still. My mind works better when I’m always moving.
EARL: Yeah, well. If you’re always movin’ how do you know where you’re goin?
MOLLY: I don’t. I kinda let life pull me.
EARL: Fo’ real?
MOLLY: Yeah. For real.
EARL: Huh. Well then you’re more like me than you even know.