How about “Ben,” then, they ask the daily assembled: or is that too familiar, sounds too much like a kid, a household pet that died once? Whatever comes to your mind, first thought best, no thought at all. How about Benny, or is that much too familiar? Or Bennie? Schlemielsounding, maybe, loserish — like a goy who’s owed you money for moons, who’d trust in a Savior named that, all wrong.
Because the whole packaging thing’s about as dead as dead, and Gelt knows from what he’s talking — or only acts the part — done with his pacing around Ben’s towered room he’s just standing by a window like sitting down’s bad for his image. Nowadays, he says, it’s interface we’re dealing with, no options save those supplied by dream, information so instant it becomes knowledge, raw access, then faith, the here and now, am I making sense: give them what They want, They suddenly want it. BetaBen. Abrasurprise. Instantly transferable, remoldable, no, forget the mold, authenticity’s what it’s about, verisimilitude…and then the magic, the ability to fashion from pure idea, or from nothing at all, golem, am I right, Ben, am I right — anyone want to pucker on a moustache, I’ll get the boss. At any rate, and they’re so high lately (you know what I’m paying in property taxes alone? scrawls one of the respondents in the space left wilderness wasted, labeled Comments & Complaints — on what my wife calls our beach house and it’s not even on the beach, it’s in Gainesville?), adaptability’s the thing, evolution. To be protean. Choice. Any change. The mundane scratched out in itch, a rash erasure copied from the person desked one over, to either side, a bubble snub of the unsharpened tip. On a scale of one to infinity, rate how much you’d fork over to be saved in the space provided by your nonexistence, the void. All spoonfed, except exactly what to copy, what to write if not just to crumple, snowball let it rip — to tear out the eyes with the tongue; to tap the temple with pencils, which are sidelocks dipped in ink — what to answer, then, having an inkling or lead that the best answer’s only a question in return. Most correct.
The tagline’s BEN: BELIEVE (they’ve spent a hundred grand on that alone, in cigartongued copywriters, tricolor billboards, airwave campaigns on the hour), and it flits through the mind, in one ear never out the other, stuck in the middle as if a malignant lump, to further dull the gray to submission. Why, because one day the world will end, and you’ll need Him, says taskmaster of ceremonies John Johannine, a tall, straight, imperturbable corpse or undertakermaterial he’s bald with strong jaws, whom you might remember from such programming as — announcing an overly processed approximation of divinity into the microphone, his chazzano profundo echoing specially effected with much reverb superadded to age the voice deep into the gaping mouth of the miraculous past, to fill with its bass and one true faith conviction Madison Square Garden, at capacity crowded two to a seat then ten across the aisles soldout. He’s introducing Ben cued off the cards a nubile intern holds aloft in the interest of career advancement. There’ll be others, Johannine stalling, stretching, raising the pitch as Ben Himself rises: slowly up from below the stage on a horned altartype platform pistoned amid the hiss of whitedry ice, flashpot pop, and the dazzle of strobes…others upon others, smothers schmothering forever, Johannine contorted breathless to a grimace as if he’s had one too many whiffs of the sour breath of his own business, but know this: they’re only pretenders to thrones, intoning impostors, the fakiry fake; don’t be fooled, don’t be led astray sheepish, there’s only one, there’s only one Him…who else are you going to turn to when the going gets tough, he gets the nod from Mada in the wings:
Abas & Imas, applause, allages kinder, I give you — Benjamin Israelien. Violins verklempt in unison. Just lunaticker as His head peeks over the stage then above the audience as if a heavenly what, not a sun, not a moonstar, just a — thing, outlined round and piffpuffily inflated, even if only shadowed from behind an illuminated screen, an exteriorized veil, this stark antependium. Good evening, New York. God Bless You, New York, and God Bless the United States of Affiliation, gevalt. And throughout all this intro — a drumroll, please, the house lights dimming down; brass roaring up, a throb of late German Romanticism; its seven trumpet fanfare executed by a snatch of Local 802 Satchmos, uniformed in smoky tuxes and tented satin yarmulkes kinked to hold, numblipped, shakyfingered on the valves. A screen, it’s smoked over our eyes…it’s been said: the screen is the eye of God and we are all looking upon Him and seeing only us, then soon listening and hearing us, too, our last reassuring murmur, roundly smattered applause — it’s a movie, a moving walkie talkie. An explosion, and can’t you almost feel it how loud and how huge. Rapidly cut scenes of the holy insaned, sootrobed forms in mad escape from the falling height of skyscrapers, flame and ash and the swandive of window glass, the whirr of sirens surmounting the whiz of fighter aeroplanes above; firefighters below, cradling newborns suckling thumbs, swaddled saved in the folds of the new twotone flag (black & white or blue & white, it’s both the same without color; He can’t be sure of anything; it’s dark, it’s the veil), a standard being raised everywhere lately, in this stadium, above this lesser Garden. Hatikvah’s sounded in a new arrangement, solemnly heavy on the schmaltz. An anthem without a country to call its tune, saccharine and slow. That’s the Q. for the pan out. It all pans out in the end, nu — to shatter the fourth wall, which is the brick blindfold tied over the eyes and ears of the audience, the veil of our own disbelief…as a knighted actor, Sir what’s his face, was also in what’s its name, with her you know the one I’m talking the redhead and, between me and you now doing hackwork, nude mostly and with outlandish accents for free money the whore the prostitutka, her exhusband’s exboyfriend playing Israel Israelien doneup in a doublebreasted beige suit with undone silk tie patterned with the two stripes and a star straight off the rack of the last casualwear warehouse left in the Empire State, he’s staring hard summoning his method, descending into the depths of his own loss, divorce, disappointment, addictions Rx, why, and zee to gaze forlornly into the void of his son’s, his only son’s bedroom and
Take 1…ACTION!
I am your father.
Cut.
Take 2
I am your—
Cut.
Take 3
I am—
Cut.
Take 4
I am your fat—almost had it that time…
Cut.
Take 5
I—
Cut.
Take 6
Cut.
Take 7
And cut! megaphones Schlomo “Slo-Mo” Spielgrob, a director touted as The Next Schlomo Spielgrob, even though he’s the one and only — recently rehabilitated enough to be making movies under such an assumed name — he sits down in his foldup chair, strokes his oneday, halfmooned beard, pokes his fingers anxiously through his glasses without lens, then takes from his head that bent brim Yankels or maybe it’s the Metz cap a popular model with the sidelocks attached, stuffs it on the bell of the megaphone he sets atop a cooler between seated Ben and Johannine — His hired and handgreased mouthpiece, His spokesperson recontextualized to spokesmensch, a misrepresentation of public face this graceless humbly mumbly, alldenying interpreter and press secretary, this shuffler of jobs, positions, titles and sheafs of chaff, former Chief of Staff to President Shade, whom you might remember as Ben’s future father-inlaw, here played by a respectably graying, growlingly jowled paunch of an actor whose name might’ve been Oscar itself, who’d done the president in ten previous projects. Ben desultory in His own chair foldedout, its sixpointed star decal peeling from the backing, He’s gnawing at the lip of His foamcup, complimentary with its water or what He’s shvitzed under the studiolights; His script wilting on Johannine’s knees as the latter with quickdraw of the wrist passes highlighter through the lines, for any they want to censor, delete. Security twitchy at their holsters, which are empty when not loaded down with props. A cast of hundreds shivering, coming down with a light fever’s headcold, incipient flu, from yesterday’s hours spent in summery shorts and themed tshirts out on a forlorn frozen stretch of Brooklyn beach, Seagate, was it, the board-walk’s breakdown that’s standing in for Joysey. He walks on water, He steps in dreck. He turns water to spoiled wine, fish into moldy loaves. Around, a mustering of extras for the next scene set earlier, thousands of them and their years bundledup in garb, into centurial gabardine, silken caftans topped with pointy turbans trimmed brilliantly in fur as if in the religious return of the sumptuary and its lex as yellow as fear; others who only look and sound and dress and act like them, or as they were, or as they’re being cast and played, except they’re not getting paid (though neither were the dead)…