Midnight Gospel/SETI/wu-wei undercurrent/After Life
On the recommendation of my stepson Mike, I watched the Netflix animation “midnight gospel”. The show is from Pendleton Ward, who you will know as creator of such stoner classics as Adventure Time. Adventure Time was ostensibly a kid’s show watched by adults who liked the colourful and imaginative good vibes. The first episode of the more adult oriented Midnight Gospel follows the adventures of a interstellar blogger who teleports himself into a simulation of one of many earthlike planets (SETI would approve) where unfortunately various apocalyptic type scenarios seem to be taking place. In the many worlds theory, which I first heard of on the name of a techno cd in the nineties, and was reminded of in the Eels documentary (side note Mark ‘E’ Everett’s grandfather pioneered this concept, pretty cool…), god that was a long sentence… in many world’s theory, as ‘explored’ memorably on intolerable cod-philosophical rom-com Sliding Doors (I can’t forget) at moments of decision, different outcomes arise, so in one universe you go to the pub and meet the love of your life and in another and in another you stay in and play video games and get baked and watch Netflix cartoons, and that meeting never occurs (or would it happen later? Is there an inertia or magnetism to significant events?) Anyway, this wasn’t quite what the program was showing, rather different planets in the same universe, but if these rambling thoughts don’t get you thinking yourself, then don’t bother watching Midnight Gospel, because the whole thing is just this space vlogger hanging out with the president of the USA (who notably has Hunter S Thompson type glasses) talking about drugs policy and Buddhism and a host of (I think) interesting stuff while dealing with a zombie scenario with surprising ease and calm. This I reckon is the true message of all the waxing lyrical about meditation. They need transport and they find a hot air balloon and get in just as the zombies are clawing at them (Mr President has been dispatching said undead with style and aplomb) They find a lady giving birth and end up stumbling in their truck across a pool where she gets the water birth she wanted. Things just happen without planning while they chat calmly in the midst of chaos. Hooray for wu-wei.
Talking of Zen, as they kind of were, I watched season two episode one of Ricky Gervais’ droll tragicomedy After Life, which shows the life of the character Gervais plays after the characters wife has prematurely died. In the first series he stumbles through his existence in a state of depression, acting out, and taking it out on those around him, until a couple of friendships suggest the beginnings of redemption. Season 2 and realistically, he’s still suffering. He decides to be more ‘Zen’ but is appalled when his brother in law asks him to a meditation group. He goes along but can’t stomach the New Age pretension of the teacher, or his repeated sniffing which is never fully explained. Gervais’ character’s refusal to participate in a performative ‘spiritual’ farce is more zen than it appears. The character feels fleshed out and real, probably because there’s a lot of Gervais in it: his character is staunchly Atheist, and the title After Life is ironic. After life there’s nothing.
My mum sent me a link on the family Whatsapp the other day that turned out to be broken. She said “I couldn’t stop laughing”. What the link led to on facebook was fifteen minutes of Russell Brand and Ricky Gervais in a semantic God/existence debate swamp, trying to help each other out and keep their point of view across. It was an interesting discussion, but didn’t have me rolling on the floor ROFLing (forgive the acrimonious acronymic tautology there, it was for emphasis — could be worse, I could have used the absurd ROFLCOPTER, an ungainly vehicle for describing mirth if ever there was one) when I asked her what she sent, it was a video of Trump with a joke advisor spliced in rolling his eyes at Drumpf’s inanity and dribbling foot in mouth idiocy. I kind of preferred the video my algorithm sent me, because it reinforced a frustration when friends that I’ve admitted to belief in some kind of God taking me for projecting a sky father rather than having an abstract understanding of a pantheistic oneness in a higher dimensional state that is at the same time temporally trapped or rather embodied in all of us and nature and the cosmos in the illusion of separation when in fact through a mechanism to a large extent defined by string theory is part of one infinite field that is omnipresent and eternal, as Bill Hicks said, consciousness experiencing itself subjectively. So if any well-meaning rationalists want to offer me the option between God or Science in a juvenile binary way, I’ll tell them I want both thanks very much. But then I could just not call it god and say the Universe and sound like one of those spiritual people that is too grown up for religion, equally derided by rationalists like Gervais who are not prepared to speculate what exists in the unknown because we don’t know about it and what we don’t know doesn’t exist, like a kid hiding behind their hands thinking the world has vanished, which in one sense it has. Or I could just say I believe in reality, which as the nihilists will explain to you, is nothingness, endlessly generative infinite void which is everything, and out of which all temporary form appears, for a moment.
