Gabriel’s Horn

Are you fucking kidding me?  Let me see if I’m crystal clear on this… White America shouldn’t vote for Obama because they would only be casting such votes out of “white guilt,” believing themselves thereby exempted from charges of racism.  To quote columnist Steve Sailer of The American Conservative, “So many whites want to be able to say, ‘I’m not of them, those bad whites… Hey, I voted for a black guy for president.’”  More importantly, Black America shouldn’t vote for Obama because, like Kramer denying runway lights in the movie Airplane!, “That’s just what they’ll be expecting us to do!” 

Even worse is Obama’s failure to back down on the subject of responsibility.  I mean, shit, Jesse Jackson’s already expressed a desire to emasculate the man, what more is it gonna take?  Emory University assistant professor Andra Gillespie says it best: “People could say if Barack can succeed and someone can’t get off the stoops in the hood, it’s their fault, and it has nothing to do with systemic racism.”  And if we’re going to defeat systemic racism, the last thing we need is some black dude in the oval office doing… whatever it is they do there.  It’s not important.  Hell, it’s not even germaine to our discussion. 

Strangely absent from this article: Obama’s political views which may or may not qualify him for this nation’s highest office.  But, hey, who needs political views when a single glance at skin color does it all?  What, you want to judge people on content of character or something?  Who thinks like that?  Don’t be naive.  No word yet on whether pundits question that a vote for John McCain could harm relations with the elderly in our great land, but the writing’s on the wall.  What the hell do I know?  I can’t even say I’m not a racist because I totally hate Klingons.  I’ve never forgiven those bastards for the death of Kirk’s son.  They’re animals, and I wish they’d just get in their goddamned Birds-of-Prey and go back where they came from.

This may well be my favorite headline.  Ever.  It’s brilliant, really… upon further inspection, it seems that we’ve been shipping “brassieres, cosmetics, bull semen and possibly even weapons [my italics]” to Iran.  Possibly weapons.  Also, possibly ninja monkeys trained in nuclear physics and feng shui.  Possibly.  But definitely the bras, the make-up, the bull cum and, most horribly, the cigarettes.  This, then, is the mechanics of a bloodless coup; when we march into Tehran, we will find our enemy out of breath, weilding only possible weapons.  Their women will have been brought up to American standards of attractiveness and breast buoyancy as their heathen cows are being co-opted by our bravest bovines’ seed.  God bless America.

“I’ve never seen a vest with so many pockets.  What the hell does he need that many pockets for?”

“Shrunken heads of his enemies.”

“Prescription bottles.  Drugs to dull the pain.”

“I mean, I understand he’s a photographer, but does he really need that much film?”

“I’m more worried about that beard.”

“Does look a bit weird.”

“It’s growing just under his chin.  It’s creeping me out.  I think it might be a squirrel; it just crawled up his vest and nestled there to get out of the sun.”

“How many fucking pictures is he going to take?”

“It feeds his strength.  You know the primitive fear of photographs stealing souls?  It was based on him, that camera and that vest.”

“Right.  That’s what the pockets are for.”

—————————————————

“Is she ever going to leave?  She’s been clinging to him the whole time.”

“I’m not sure he even knows she’s there.  He hasn’t looked at her once.”

“I’m not sure she knows she’s there.  She has the most blank expression I’ve ever seen.”

“She’s like the color beige.  Absolutely nothing sets her apart.  Can’t miss her in contrast, but she just adds nothing to the scheme.”

“She’s like a little blonde leech.”

“She’s attached to him like a remora.  He was cruising by one day, staring straight ahead with his cold dead eyes, and she just latched on.   Those other folks are like pilot fish; they attend his needs, but he could care less.  You watch.  That dude gets hungry, he might just eat one of them.”

“Wish he’d eat her and clear the way.”

“Nah.  Can’t get to her at that angle.  Beauty of nature.”

“Go distract her.”

“Can’t.  Never mess with a shark’s remora.  He may not be aware of it now, but try to pull it off and he’s likely to frenzy.”

“Go for the gills.  It’s their weakness.”

Welcome Summer.

I’m on the scene of a multiple shooting; three four-point bucks have been involved in yet another pheromone-related drive-by. I’m wondering if the vacation was enough -enough to put up with this. One is dead on scene, laying on his side; the cops all agree that it was one hell of a clean shot. The other two bolted and are currently being tracked by blood and spoor. It’s been at least a half-hour since the shooting; despite the patient age, I get Medical Direction to call it in the field.

“God, I hate this job.”
“Somebody has to do it, man.”
“Christ, look at that rack. Probably hadn’t even rutted yet.”
“They get younger every year.”
“Doesn’t matter now. In a few days, they’ll mount this one.”
“Hang on.”
“They found them?”
“One of them. About two miles from here. They say he’s still got a pulse.”

Upon arrival, it doesn’t look good. With the monitor on, it’s obvious we’re gonna work this one. It’s not easy. You know how difficult it is to intubate a deer? Of course you don’t. I get it, and it’s one more ring of hell getting the damn thing secured. Partner’s pounding on the patient’s chest like it’s going to make a difference, but we both know the whole code is just for sympathy. Still, this one is airlifted out thirty minutes later; we’ve done our part. Hardly even a yearling. Fuck. Whatever, they caught the shooter.

“They weren’t even targets. He was after an eight-point a hundred yards east. Damn shame.”
“How many times do we have to tell them?”
“He’s got a permit. Really nothing to be done for it.”
“If only…”
“No, man, I know.”
“If only they’d worn Safety Orange.”
“They’re young. Think they’re immortal. What are you gonna do?”
“Hell, I don’t know.”

It’s true, I don’t know. Search and Rescue looks for the third victim for hours with no success. Poor bastard could be anywhere; with any luck, he’ll turn up wide-eyed but unharmed some days later. It’s no longer my problem. At three AM, the search is abandoned until well after my shift is over. The detective on scene is still chewing his cigar, sizing up the event. Despite our differences, I like this detective; we seem to share a similar outlook on these things. We stand and stare into the forest with sleepless, narrowed eyes.

“God, I hate this job.”
“Somebody has to do it, man.”
“That last one… it’s iffy. It’s really iffy.”
“So, what do we got?”
“We got one dead, one critical and one MIA. Blame the season, I guess.”
“Oh, the humanity.”
“Zoology.”
“Whatever.”

There were no deaths. 

There were no motor vehicle collisions.  No falls or diabetic emergencies took place; there were no behavioral crises, no chest pain, no MIs, no CVAs.  There were no miscarriages, no GI bleeds, no overdoses; no respiratory distress, no respiratory arrest.  No one was shot.  No one was stabbed.  No assaults took place.  However much alcohol had been consumed was, I assume, successfully slept off.  I didn’t have to confirm asystole in two leads, for any one.  I put no ET tubes in.  I pushed no drugs and started no IVs.  I calmed no one.  I treated no one.  When my head hit the pillow at eleven-thirty that night, I was still confused.  There was little worry, though; at this station, I had never slept through the night.  There would be calls, of course there would, and they would probably come right after I fell asleep.  None did.

I woke up this morning at six o’clock, shaking my head at the sheer madness of it.  A day without calls?  Life pitched a no-hitter?  It’s the functional equivalent of opening up the paper to find that, in lieu of anything to report, there are nothing but pictures of kittens on every page.  Stretching, I made my way to the kitchen and poured a cup of coffee; for once, I didn’t have to make it.  Six o’clock is late.  It’s very late.  Hell, I go off duty at seven.

“Did you guys go out last night?”  It’s a customary question, and almost invariably poorly phrased.  The question, until today, is not did we go out, but how many times?  It is meant to prompt a recounting of any calls that didn’t involve an engine crew as back-up.  I stood there in the kitchen, took a sip of coffee and winced.  Save lives and property, they do, but these guys can’t make a good cup of coffee.  I shrugged.  I had nothing to report.  It was almost embarrassing.

On the way back to my bunk, I started to become concerned.  Deeply concerned.  What if this was it?  What if emergency services were no longer required?  Could this be the beginning of a trend?  I wasn’t sure what to do with myself.  What would I do without human misery?  In our troubled American job market, how would I provide for my wife and children if everyone just up and stopped being sick or injured?  I was beginning to think that Death really had taken a holiday, and that Pain and Suffering had gone along for the ride.

I checked my e-mail to find that my older son’s mother was on her way to two funerals.  It’s her birthday today.  I remembered to work on an e-mail to my best friend who text messaged me to let me know he was finally, physically, on his way to Iraq.  I remembered that Iraq is not a happy place right now.  I recalled that some people had died there.  I believed it might have been intentional.  I was coming back to terra firma and, really, thank God.

The oncoming medic (my relief) came in and I explained the situation to her; she was as amazed as I.  Handing her the radio, the tones went off.  A call?  I thought, you have got to be fucking kidding me.  She said she’d take it, said that at least one of us deserved a perfect day.  A birthday interrupted by Death, clearly back in the game?  Pain and Suffering back in play, best friend at war?  Tragedy back at bat in the city of my employment?  I was once again in familiar territory.  Perfect?  Hell, yes!  Relieved, I went to the bathroom to stare at myself in the mirror -and you were worried.  It was silly but for a few minutes there, I was.  I was so happy I could have cried.  I might have; it’s none of your business.  I walked back out to the kitchen for a warm-up on the coffee, sat down at the table and opened up the morning paper.

There were no kittens.           

There was a time when I did not listen to Lenny Kravitz.  There was time when, like many of you, I dismissed His style as derivative and His lyrics as trite.  There was a time, in short, when I did not believe.  In the grim days that followed my separation from my first wife, I was adrift and without purpose -so much so that even writing “I was adrift and without purpose” did not strike as either derivative or trite.  I felt that I had no purpose, and that I would never know happiness again.  As with most men tossed out on ears whose selective deafness could no longer be tolerated, whose wandering eyes would be taken back no more, I moved in with a friend and got down to the troublesome business of round-the-clock drinking and the pathetic soul-searching depression one develops in an attempt to look somewhat abashed.  It was early on a dreary Sunday (which, if you know your weather portents, is a precursor to Stormy Monday, after which… you know what?  Forget it.) that I pressed play on the stereo, believing one of my reflective and weepy discs to be still in rotation.  Instead, what I heard was a disc my kind friend had been listening to as I slept one off.  What I heard was Lenny.

Over the five minutes and forty-two seconds which followed that fateful push of a button, my life was forever changed.  The song was “Let Love Rule,” from the album of the same name, and as the scales fell from my eyes (and ears), I was finally opened to the redemptive power of Lenny and His Message.  The First Church of Lenny was founded that following Sunday.  At first, our only intent was to gather together to reflect on the Truth, on the Message, to bask in the awesomeness that is the Light of Lenny.  Later, it was clear to us that while Lenny is sufficient to Himself, we might better serve His Message by bringing it to others -by calling it to their attention.  After all, had I not hit that button at just that providential moment, I would have remained in the dark.  Remain not in the dark, brothers and sisters, for it is cold and icky and hard to find your drink.  Come forward into the light.  Come forth, for you are called by Lenny.  Your lives can be changed, too, brothers and sisters.  You can be happy.  You can be healthy.  You can be loved.  But if you want it, you’ve got to believe.

It should be known that Lenny Kravitz is the child of Sy Kravitz (producer, Ukrainian) and Roxie Roker (actress, African-American).  In the rare event that you miss the importance of this fact, let me state that Lenny Kravitz (named for his Uncle who died fighting for freedom in Korea) was, as a result of this pairing, breaking down the walls between us before He was even conceived.  Clearly, the man was born to this, destined to change our perceptions forever.  As to the apocryphal tale that, as a child, He was one day missing and later found in the Studio, saying only that He was “about” His “Father’s work,” I can only say that this is both metaphysically and factually true and should be considered canon.  This is to say nothing of the concert in Anaheim where he fed the crowd with three packs of Sun Chips and two strips of lemon-grass tofu.  His first commercially successful album was released on Virgin Records.  Make of this what you will.

Today I would like us to take a good look at the very song that is our ministry’s foundation.  As Lenny has come full-circle from “Let Love Rule” to “It’s Time For a Love Revolution” (and it is), we would do well to consider the early days of His teaching, when He had few followers, but -even then- all Truth.  It is evident in His musical style.  It is clear in the simple force of His inarguable lyrics, for it is always with the greatest simplicity that the most complex matters are made understandable.  Turn your CD cases to Lenny, Chapter One.  We will be covering this line by line, brothers and sisters.  Listen, and see that He is good.

“Let Love Rule”  as laid down by Lenny Kravitz

“Love is gentle as a rose”

Yes, the rose is our accepted emblem of what is beautiful, what embodies Love itself in both its most transcendent and earthly manifestations.  Heretics have been quick to state that every rose indeed has its thorn, but they would be wrong.  Every rose has many thorns, any one of which might cause pain, but this is not Lenny’s point.  This is not His Message.  Pain is taken as a given, like the eastern concept of Samsara; Lenny sings to us from the very rock upon which we stand.  Forget pain.  We know pain.  The rose is beautiful, and gentle, like Love, but its material protection in the form of thorns only makes it more powerful against that which would attempt to destroy it.  And so we move from what is gentle to what is strong.

“And Love can conquer any war”

I defy you to disprove this statement.

“It’s time to take a stand”

We have been complacent for too long.  We have wallowed in our own filth.  We have conspired with dark forces.  We have cowered, collaborated and compromised -all to no avail.  No, brothers and sisters, Lenny will have none of it.

“Brothers and sisters join hands”

He calls all of us to come together with Him.  He calls us as siblings, as family, and we are duty-bound to oblige Him.

“We got to let Love rule”

Notice the use of the inclusive “we.”  Lenny does not hold Himself apart, despite His wisdom.  He is one of us.  He is with us.  By this inclusion, we are to throw away early notions of aspiring to Lenny’s obvious and demonstrable coolness.  Lenny states flatly that, as one of us, His coolness resides in each of us already; however, it is in this line that we bear witness to the crackling energy of the Divine within His voice, and we tremble in fear at what may come.

“Let Love rule
We got to let Love rule
Let Love rule”

It is worth noting that Lenny only sings the middle line above, the chorus itself with its imperative “let Love rule” is toned down from a musical build-up which threatened to tear our mortal minds apart with the celestial revelations it contained.  He may initially separate us, brothers and sisters, but He will not destroy us.  Any musical follow-through at this point would be cataclysmic, but Lenny is -above all things- merciful.  The Truth will shake the pillars of the earth, yea, but it is His intent to open our ears, not deafen us for eternity with Love’s thunder.

“Love transcends all space and time”

From the fear that forced us to huddle together and shake in the cold darkness of our former lives, we must admit that Love is beyond our understanding.  What we had believed before is as nothing.  Religion belittled us, insulted us.  Science has failed us, abandoned us.  Yet Lenny pulls at the very thread that binds us all into a single, damnable volume.  We understand nothing of our place in the universe.  We understand nothing of the universe itself.  Lenny instructs us: the universe is as nothing.  Love is beyond such a notion.  Paradoxically, Love is also the universe.  Dig that.

“And Love can make a little child smile”

What would our lives be without the joy of children?  Bloody awful, that’s what.  Love, in its simplicity, is readily understood by children.  Love is taken in and given out with no loss in translation.  We would do well to be as children, brothers and sisters.

“Can’t you see?  This won’t go wrong”

He humbles Himself to ask for our attention, but make no mistake about it, brothers and sisters; Lenny is talking about a revolution.  If you had any doubts before, put them away.  Lenny is bringing the Truth, hard and fast and in your face -there will be no way around it.  The Truth cannot fail.  This time, there will be no need of sacrifice, no talk of lying down.  This time we will not fail, if we will only listen to the Message.

“But we got to be strong”

Here we have one of only two caveats in the Message.  As before, we have rested long enough on what we erroneously believed to be laurels.  We have been tyrannized by false comforts.  Now is the time to gird our loins -they need girding!- and stand, hand in hard, arm in arm, shoulder to shoulder, et cetera, etc. & c. against the oppression that has been visited upon us.  Now is no time for the meek.

“We can’t do it alone”

This is the second of the caveats, and it cannot be emphasized strongly enough.  Again with the all-inclusive “we,” Lenny is pointing to a higher power, a thing greater than ourselves without which no possible future is… well, possible.  He is, of course, talking about Love.  Lenny does not come with nebulous others; He does not bring us angels or trouble us with distant prophecy.  What Lenny brings is simply what he states: Love is all.  Without Love, there is nothing.  His voice again shakes with the terrible might of the infinite, and again it threatens us.  His human tongue is strained by the Divine majestry we are even now receiving, but we are spared even unto a second time by the Prophet.  Again is the chorus.  Again He sings to us as one of us, leaving the command to lesser apostles.  Do you feel it brothers and sisters?  Well, do you?

“We got to let Love rule
Let Love rule

We got to let Love rule
Let Love rule”

Oh, yes, the lyrics have ended, but the lesson is not over.  Following a sax solo of such breathtaking funkiness that it cannot be described, we poor fools spared a guitar solo by the Lenny which surely would have sent us to the Final Judgment, there is the outro in which Lenny’s barely-restrained Voice of the Eternal finally loses all ability to be comprehended by humanity.  Having delivered his first and greatest lesson, Lenny, now exhausted, begins uttering the most pure and unadulterated Truth in something that is nearly, but not quite, screaming, scat and speaking in tongues all at once.  You will hear.  You will listen.  You will be redeemed.  Believe.