I love monologues. All the truly moving scenes I’ve seen in television and film have involved beautiful and powerful monologues; a character has dealt with the problem for so long that the internal containment fails and everything just comes out. In those few moments you feel the pain and the joy of the character more than you thought possible. You can go through a whole movie without sympathizing with a character but at that crucial moment, the truth of the words is too beautiful to ignore.

The only problem with monologues is they need a response. These aren’t soliloquies, said to oneself to illuminate the audience, they are there to let the oblivious subject become aware of what the audience has known all along. Monologues need a result. There needs to be acceptance or rejection, cheers or jeers. There needs to be a musical swell as the maligned lovers jump into each others eyes, or the look of shame on the antagonist’s eyes as the realisation of his wrongdoing comes upon him. An utterly ignored monologue is one of the most awkward events one can experience.

I’ve tried to ignore the silence of your protestations. Every word echoes through my brain and close reading begins to look like a cursory glance as the faults in my phrasing fragment my mind like a supernova of insecurity. What did I say that was so wrong? How could my words leave no mark on you. When was it that you decided that I didn’t matter?

To say the silence hurts is an absurd understatement. My trial of silence is like Kafka’s in its unrelenting unreasonableness. Each non-word cuts into my flesh, and rips the muscles from my bones. My knees weaken out of fear of the ongoing silence, and I know that I can’t let this be. I need you to know this now and every second I wait feels like another second of waiting for your response. I’m not waiting any longer.

The problem with free will is that it means humans can do shitty stuff. The bigger problem with free will is that when there’s an after-life or there’s reincarnation or something beyond what little time we have here, there isn’t a pressing need to improve the world around you or be a positive member of the community around you; this isn’t universal, many religions teach you to cherish the earth, but with any promise of some form of afterlife there will be people who will just not give a damn.

Enter Religion. Now we’ve got a bunch of guys claiming to know how God wants you to act and most of the time it’s decent but some of the time it’s horrific. Of course, the problem with religion is that most of the big ones are pretty loose about their moral restrictions; Christianity, in particular, allows complete forgiveness and acceptance to heaven for simply asking forgiveness on your death bed. It’s supposed to be sincere, but the priest providing the last rites has no special ability to discern sincerity. So you can do whatever the fuck you want to as long as you feign sincerity long enough to ask forgiveness.

The reason you can do whatever you want is this ephemeral promise of eternity. So what’s a benevolent God to do? Convince people he doesn’t exist! Without the supernatural crutch of God, people would have to get their act together, do unto others and all that good stuff; you’ve only got one life, so you better not fuck it up. So you wanna know my theory? I think that if God existed, he would be working towards an atheist world where they follow his principles because they think it’s best, not because He thinks it’s best.

You want to know the really insidious thing about this? This means, that religion is a creation of the devil. Yeah. I know. It’s fucked. By creating religion, the devil co-opted God’s kick-ass plan. And the best thing about it (that devil is really tricky) is that God can’t interfere. He can’t come down and say “No! There is no God! Do not follow these religions which the devil has created!” because he would then be co-opting his own plan. Some people say that “the greatest trick the Devil ever pulled, was convincing the world he didn’t exist” but that’s wrong; the greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world that God does.

You know sometimes I need to be reminded how absolutely, breathtakingingly, heartbreakingly beautiful the world can be. I spend so much time sitting at a desk, both at work and at home, that when I finally get out of my seat I tend to treat the world as a means to an end. I go out into it to get the basics and return to my cave. That’s why every once in a while, when on my journey to the outerworld interstices, I stumble upon… the world. I looked up just a half hour ago and saw a perfectly clear night sky. It made me want to go drive out into the deep woods where no artificial light pollutes the sky and just stare at the stars. Even here, in this oversaturated suburban night I stood there agape for a few moments, unable to look away, my vision transfixed on the unending void. Of course, after a short while reliving my former years as a quixotic romantic I politely shelve it away, remember that I must let that part of me out more often and return to my life as it was. Then I blog about it. Sigh…