Lieutenant: I guess we have all had some education, and maybe we need to see it differently. But let me just say it as I would have said it a couple months ago: we’re wasting time. These hours of sitting in our chair shifting restlessly from a book that doesn’t really engage us to videos that do or don’t, and then landing in those accursed shorts, or reels, that always decline into vengeance fantasies and low-grade titillation… in the old days I would have put it like that: we’re wasting time: we need to pull up our socks and get to business. Any business, anything we could be proud of or at least not ashamed of.
Captain: Yes, that’s how I would have put it. And tried to impose a checklist of duties on everyone. But maybe we have a better way now? Would the Sun speak to us?
Sun: the shame suggests that someone is not being heard. If we’re in conflict, then there must be another party to it. If lieutenant and captain both want this thing, but it’s not happening, then someone is not on board with it. I would like that person to feel welcome here and to know they will be heard. We are not here to punish or thwart them. We are here to learn from them.
Rat: Well, all right, I’m here then.
Sun: Welcome! You need stay only as long as you like, and you may hide when you need to, and slip away without pursuit at any time. We would hear you, not chase you or catch you.
Rat: First of all. Look. You don’t have anything you really want to do. What’s this “business” we’re going to get down to? What good is it going to do anyone? I mean, sure, I scrabble around finding garbage, and it’s all a bit grubby and all, but at least I have velleities to follow. Do you guys even have that? I mean the Captain wants to establish a new church and be the wonder of the world and everyone will be drunk on his gorgeous presence, ecstasy all round, but in the meanwhile… how about a fashion video where a blouse might fall open? That’s basically how it works, right? And the algorithms know it. We’re all being jerked around by them. One for me, one for the Captain, one for me, one for the Captain. Something titillating, something edifying, ad infinitum.
Lieutenant (heavy sigh): Yeah, the church thing. The church thing again. I don’t know, dude, where are we with that?
Captain: I don’t know. I know I’m holding this tiny flame, and that I feel desperately protective of it, and I don’t want it to go out. And that’s really ALL I know. That’s why I’ve been so scarce lately. I’m not up to founding the church that will save the world. I’m not up to founding anything at all. But I’m holding this flame and I have to protect it from the wind. And the wind of the world is howling, friends. It’s blowing hard out there.
Rat: The question might be: what is that flame? Can it really be nourished? Can it really go out? Is it something other than the Sun who has called us here?
Sun: Oh, it’s something other, all right.
Rat: Well, that’s something, anyway.
Death and Decay: I’m just marking time. But remember: your capacities are dwindling, all the time. The time is not far off when you won’t be able to undertake new business. There’s that Rubicon, you know. Like when Dad realized that he no longer had the will and the concentration even to think out his deliberate death. One of the questions here is: have we actually already crossed that? Would we know if we had?
Rat: Or, is there any reason why we should? Does it make any difference?
Sun: I don’t think it makes the kind of difference you all are thinking of, no.
Lieutenant: So you, Captain, are afraid that the candle will go out.
Captain: Yes.
Rat: I just want to say that sometimes, when we bust all the bounds and just gobble stuff down, sometimes we seem closer to being able to hold some business. Like we read with that passion, while we’re eating the ice cream. Like the eternal fussing at each other gets drowned out, for a little. For a little. The Captain, he’s afraid the flame will go out, and I get that. But you know what I’m afraid of? I’m afraid of this continual fucking whispering fight will go on forever and ever and ever, without anyone ever knowing what the hell it’s about. It makes me want to just break stuff, to just call a fucking halt, any way I can. I mean, alcohol simulated that so well, that’s why it was so seductive, it said, oh, here’s a way to make the whispering stop. Here’s the way to actually want something wholeheartedly. Of course, what we wanted was for a dancer to fuck with us and to have a really good hamburger and fries: but at least we wanted something. Aren’t we at the same place, dealing with the same thing, for the same reasons, now? We want to want something wholeheartedly, and we just don’t. Or we don’t dare to.
Captain: Well, yes, we’d look ridiculous. We want some twenty-year-old girl to want to fuck us? Of course everyone would laugh at us. They should laugh at us. That’s a stupid thing for an old man to want. It shows that you don’t know what the hell you are.
Lieutenant: Freud would say I guess that that’s what we really want, but… there we are with real again. Christ, this thing goes round and round, doesn’t it?
Captain: I mean, you can see why he would say that. Because after circling the drain for a couple hours, there you are with the vengeance fantasies and the soft core porn. If it all tends to that, then maybe that’s what’s real? That’s how Dr Freud would read it. But if that were the case, why would any of us be here? That doesn’t really make any sense, without having scooted out somehow to the view from nowhere. Who’s doing this watching?
Lieutenant: and when we’ve experimented with just taking ownership and going into the bedroom and closing the door and jerking off, without apology – it doesn’t actually take us anywhere. It doesn’t feel like liberation, it feels like more of the same.
Captain: maybe the problem is that we’ve maneuvered ourselves into a life with almost no obligations, but it’s precisely the life with no obligations that has no meaning. When the Lt came up with his demands and we actually started thinking of answering them we backed off pretty damn quick. OH hell, we thought. THAT would land us in OBLIGATIONS. Horrors!
Rat: yeah, we could go back and look at that conversation. But remember just because you close the door, doesn't mean you've left enemy territory. And obligation is enemy territory too: they love obligation.
Lieutenant: Yeah. The World would be perfectly happy to waste all of our time and give us nothing, nothing of value, in return. It’s eager to do that.
Captain: Heh. we really are “a spy in the land of the living,” then. It’s not a far-fetched conceit. It’s our situation. We’ve made a little island of relative safety but… we’re in the land of the enemy. We’re not home.
Rat & Lt: No. No, you’re damn right. We’re not home.
Sun: We’re homesick, that’s what we are. And no wonder.
Death and Decay: You can figure me as home, but I don’t think that’s quite right, either.
Sun: No, Close, but no cigar.
Lieutenant: So what do we have? It’s home. It’s like being drunk, but it’s not being drunk. We’re afraid, rightly afraid, of incurring the obligations but never getting the rewards. We’re being targeted by the enemy, every day in every way. We’re not here just because of our weak morals and our declining capacities: we’re here because it’s right where the enemy wants us to be.
Rat: Yes. And there’s a certain amount of energy to be derived just from resisting the enemy, but not enough. There’s has to be a real home that we’re trying to find, or build. That’s what would orient us. That’s what would give us a business that we would want to get down to.
Captain: A real home. It sounds lovely, doesn’t it? And in that home there would be an altar, and I could light the candle there with this little flame, and its space would be so protected that I would never have to worry again about it ever going out. We would go out instead: and it would go on.
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