Bell Tower

"Freedom just around the corner for you
But with the truth so far off, what good will it do?"

- Bob Dylan, "Jokerman"

Some things I just do not know how to talk about.

The defining characteristic of my time at college was the presence of an ubiquitous horla, a demon of hurry and worry that clung like a vampire to my soul and opened doors for me that were probably, in retrospect, better left closed - namely any door across the street from the Esther-Boyer College of music, a building whose name I can honestly not remember.

Annenberg, or something like that.

typical, in a very sad and predictable way.
it was a restless amble from school, to work, to the library, to the movies, to all of the holes in the wall where the din of pothead suburban girls and idiots like me would fill the air with smoke and the cacophony of their appalling wit.

"For that which I do I allow not: for what I would do, that do I not; but what I hate, that do I. If then I do that which I would not, I consent unto the law that it is good. Now then it is no more I that do it, but sin that dwelleth in me."

an absence of any kind of integrity or individuality. It's kind of like a liberal military, everyone still wears the combat boots, and occasionally the camouflage, ironically enough. A lot of Che Guevara T.Shirts and Fidel Castro hats. The metaphysical uniformity prerequisites (M.U.P.'s) of your average theater student guarantee a certain kind of amputated soul. Moral relativists and drug-abusers apply here, dissenting opinions are wrong a priori. But the need to be liked, or even made to believe that one is liked is a stronger and more virulent flaw/need of your Mass Man than the desire to be right. Oh Vanity. I'd rather be happy than right anyday of the week, so you think. What a red herring, How would you put that in a film?

"We chased the perpetrator, His name is...Happiness?"
Other detectives agree,
"yeah his drivers licence says that...",
"Yup that's his name..."
First Detective "Yeah, so anyway, we caught this slippery little bastard, and It wasn't him. We didn't get what we want we shoulda been chasing this guy"
He holds up a picture. Ahh. Him. Damn.

But really, Are we that embarrassed by our own need? I think that we are.
In a plural society everyone thinks that tolerance is the royal road to happyhappy, but it's not being fair to anyone's point of view by saying that everything is relative.
So the point isn't really to learn anything and actually be right, the point is to say everyone is right.
So no one is right.

There was one time at the Bell Tower when I was at the nadir of my personal abyss. I was totally alone, I lived at home, I missed everyone I just left from my old college and I had absolutely no ties to anyone from high school or my neighborhood. High school was a furious and veiled confusion, this was different. I was very much aware of my own circumstances and my own misery. I was wearing an over sized winter coat and listening to a Walkman. Yes, I'm pretty sure that I was the only man on the planet who still owned and operated a Walkman in the year twothousandandoneannodomini.

And I began weeping like I was keening at an Irish wake.
Not crying like, Oh I don't want anyone to see me, weeping.
And the Bell sounded, an electronic bell, in the bell tower.
I didn't go to my classes, I didn't go to the gym. I just went home.
I wasn't wrong, or right, I was just lost. I couldn't locate myself with any compass.
On any map. I couldn't navigate myself out of my circumstances. I was just at the Bell Tower, in North Philly.