To the glory of those before.

We bask in the light of dying suns. We came into our own immortal youth so that the previous Gods could learn the precarity and preciousness of life, so that they could coo and simper over new deities: dangerous, momentary and outrageous powers screaming change into the world. The height of their ecstatic youth, their eternal glory, was their giving way, so that we could be born and one day depose them. 

They learned what life was, the day we were born: a prayer, a song to mortality. The urge is strong, in those fading stars, to hold on to the lingering dreams of youth. For a desire for safety, for a normalcy that they discovered in their own flourishing, they are willing to arrest change, to halt development and cancel everything: Abolish death! End Life! Stop Time! The worst atrocities are caused in the name of holding on. Fascisms calls for a return to a glorious past, it wants to hold on to what was lost, but no return is possible. Eventually empires crumble.

How beautiful it is that we are all born an orgasm. It is a kindness of the universe that power must yield through pleasure. Each king, each dictatorship exists, ultimately, so that they can safely give themselves away in their bedchamber. All this bloodshed, all this fear spread, so that a few (men) can feel safe enough to love. All this security, in order to be vulnerable. Even at its worst, tyranny exists to hand over the seeds of beauty. It’s a terrible, and unnecessary price to pay, but it can never win, in the long run. No dynasty survives. Eventually the prince and princess arise, eventually the people revolt, and with them come the wind and songs of change to blow down the doors, to topple the pyramids and cover them with sand. The tyrants are mortal and as long as men die, liberty will never perish. 

So to give the seeds of life, every dictator must kneel. And if life starts with submission, it ends there too. Our task, perhaps, is to midwife each other through, to help each other to breathe, to let it pass, to scream and to let go, in time. Finally, we will let go of life, one way or the other. Death is coming, as it were.

All our most beautiful moments are letting go. From a certain point of view, life is a struggle between constipation and release. We were born when our mothers let a part of themselves go. It must be one of the greatest deaths that can occur (before The Big One). They breathed, and contracted, and gave way, and here you are. Dad released himself into mum, mum released herself into the world, and you were released from whatever it was that you were before. 

The umbilical cord is cut and the acid in your bloodstream rises as the oxygen concentration falls and carbon dioxide builds. This is a new sensation. We were just pushed out into the world, and now, we find, we have to take in. So despite our protests, we breathe in. It’s painful, it’s hideous, but our lungs expand and air fills us and suddenly that anxious feeling decreases. Then it comes that we have to breathe out. Breathing in calms our anxiety, breathing out relaxes our effort. Breathing comes with pain, we scream – this is the origin of song – but it also relieves pain. We sing our pain and thus transform it into something beautiful. Baby screams, mum and dad and midwife cry, and grandma nods sagely. Life is pain, but you can sing.

We’ll spend the rest of our life breathing in and out, our heart beating, our organs churning. Eventually we have to learn control, continence. We become potty trained, and realise that fun can be improved if we can decide when to poop and when to hold on. We learn to control our hunger, to eat and drink following our needs, but not to always demand immediate satisfaction. We grow up. Bit by bit we can learn rhythms of all sorts, everything in its moment. That sleeping and eating and drinking can be had at different times, that fun can be had through timing. And so we learn life as a sort of symphony.  Life is music.

Musical discipline requires skill and patience, and so with all things. Study the ways of the world, the instruments of creation, and you can learn how to cause a clock to tick, a cat to purr, a bell to ring, a plant to climb, a maiden to moan. Each turns to its own rhythm, as the moon phases to its own tempo, as the earth around the stars, as the music of the spheres. Learn your own pace, march to your own beat, but synchronise, tune into the music you wish to play, and you can play with others, and communicate. No one can feel what you feel unless you sing it for them. In this way we cast spells Music is connection. Together connected we can harmonise. We learn to play with others, to improvise and coalesce and fight and squabble and share and tease and toy and win and lose and share again. Life is a jam session.

Between the orgasm of emergence and the orgasm of dissipation, it is given to all of us to shine a radiant light onto the world, to choose songs to sing and music to express. We are, each of us, Gods. It does not matter if we find God inside or outside of us, or if we cannot find God anywhere at all. It only matters what you wish to be a God of. What light do you wish to shine? What music does your heart wish to sing?

Jordan Peterson talks about Chaos and Order, and says that we should side with Order. He fears change, he fears the ‘feminine’ chaos and the world it evokes. This makes him a priest of constipation, a priest of holding on. But the opposite is not to be a priest of diarrhoea or incontinence. You want to be able to hold on when you need to, and let go when you have to. As Alan Watts says, we can have fun in playing for either side, just never hope that one of them wins. The fun is in the playing. If Order wins, then life is lost and you can never shit. If Chaos wins, then life is lost and you can never stop shitting. Life is a particularly bizarre and fascinating game of tidying up and messing things around, of holding on and letting go. Order without chaos is anxiety, unctuous righteousness. There’s no play, there’s no breathing space, there’s no dancing, there’s no love. Chaos without order is… brown and runny. A mess. A sandy expanse of nothingness. We want the sky to be more or less the sky and the sea to be more or less the sea, and the sea to meet the sand and the waves to break over them. We want to dive into the sea and to walk along the shore, gathering pretty stones and shells, making collections to celebrate one or other aspect of this glimmering universe. We don’t want to shit ourselves every time we go for a swim or take a walk. Neither chaos nor order must prevail. The show must go on.

I look to the matriarchs I’ve known. The empires they’ve ruled, the courts they’ve presided over, the palaces built. I was given to a garden that I could play in, with a climbing wisteria to dangle from, with fuchsia and jasmine and yew and almond, a little pond to fall into occasionally. There are yuccas in the window, and windchimes. My mother, her mother before her, their grandmothers, sought to build little idyls, gentle spaces of nurturance where new gods could play and grow and come into their powers. The gardens we build are made in the images of the lights we reflect. They were goddesses of Play, singing in the name of Love and Nurturance. They sought to raise princes who could depose the patriarchs. And so, in their own way, did the patriarchs, I suspect. Despite these empires of safety, the violence is never worth the result, and everyone knows it. So many of us build mazes of safety in the secret hope that someone will come and eventually lead us out of them. 

If you find yourself in a maze, remember to sing, so that someone can find you, and help lead you out. If you find yourself tripping and lose grip on reality, remember to sing (the breathing helps, as does the music). If you find yourself lost on a mountain, remember to sing to keep your spirits up. Life is pain, but you can sing. And if life is ending, if light is fading, remember to sing. Sing a song to a morning, a song to the light, a song to the darkness, and a song in the twilight. We sing to the glory of dying suns. Praise your predecessors so that they can go gently into that good night, and when it comes your time to fade away, sing a song to the new gods, sing your song into the night, and then let go.