34: Revelation

Rousseau and Marengo Part 3 --------------------------- The acquisition of arcane ideas is not uncommon among celebrities. For many artists whose positions have been attained by questioning the statue quo, the attraction to alternative ideologies – circumventing the mainstream in a paddle boat of their own devising, yet still riding the current, no matter how minor – is often a matter of course. But for many of his fans, the Tommy Rousseau they knew, the princely rinser of frauds, the hanger-out-to-dryer of the corrupt, the singular hero who held no hostages, who followed no one, who allowed no others to follow, the shadowless man in a world filled with shadows, this Tommy, their Tommy, was as far from the spirit of OTIS as could be imagined. But as more and more stars seemed to deflate like old balloons left over after the party, and OTIS came in like a clean up operation long overdue, the betrayal the fans felt, ameliorated by incessantly wilder postulations, was eventually warn to a slouch by fatigue and resignation. The years in the Inner Sanctum seemed to fly by, as much due to repetition as to the apparent continuity of official life. Whilst he continued to make his movies the managerial duties were handed over to OTIS, all in the name of unburdening: OTIS now took the credit and OTIS took the revenue, too. Tommy was content in his containment for a while, having something larger than himself to believe in, but having given up on his illusions and the vanity of outward gain, the vanity of inward gain started to nag. The days were filled with the emptiness of routine and having offered his hand to a thief who had also taken his word, he was wed to weeks of silence at a time. Though the years did seem to develop into some kind of scheme that could be labelled training, it was only in the final session of the week that he felt a rumbling of some kind. These weekly ‘Great Imaginings,’ where OTIS attempted to harness the power of the group, to direct all of its inner willing to make something appear, to bring something into existence out of nothing, out of the nothing that OTIS had managed to scoop out of them. The apprentices entered into it with a certain jaw clenched assertiveness, Tommy, more than anyone. He had many stretches in solitary confinement to ‘iron out the kinks’ and rectify his addiction to ego, breaking down the spirit into so much confetti to fill the void. Mirrorless months led many in this Pantheon of pretenders, to shine their spoons; a rub on the leg, the breath of life, and there, they could gaze at their bloated impressions, like so many moons circling the planets of their selves, still gleaming as their egos refused to eclipse. From the time of The Great Gifting, which hadn’t seemed so great at the time, and in retrospect didn’t seem so great either, the promised upward mobility had transpired to be not so much ‘upward’ as ‘horizontal,’ the ladder taking on the exact proportions of the dinner table designated to the apprentices. Ralf Tremmens was at the head of the table on that day. He had won big at the Globe Awards and was twitching in apparent unease under his new laurel leaves, quite aware that in this realm you were barely king for a day. The apprentices were talking, as was common when a shift in the ranks had occurred, about the methods of accession. The golden oldies, with barely a marble between them, sat on the highest pedestal shining on their spotlit stage like an open chest of treasure. Between them and the apprentices was the table of the Informed, higher in rank and higher in stage. To look at them you would think they were stars, but in fact there was nothing swoonable about a single one of them. And so, just as it’s the province of middle managers to decide on the fate of greatness, the O. T. Is, all cunning and coagulant, kept the apprentices apertured in fruitless pursuit. Stuck in this endless award ceremony where everyone was robbed of their reward (eventually), Tommy’s mind was somewhere else. Ralf announced ‘Wealth be with OTIS’ and the reply of ‘Wealth’ bounced back, which would have come across as vulgar if it weren’t for the fact that these once richlings had been reduced to puppet paupers all dancing to the tune of OTIS. As the gravy was passed down the ranks, only a dribble left when it reached his beef, Tommy idly eyed the stately gallery of pre-cursers hung around the room, all sworn into the cause sotto voce, now stomach-less in their own searing somewhere. It had a taste of the grave about it. The founding mothers and fathers, though perhaps foundling would be more apt, a great orgy of originators all painted in one pallet as if they were truly a contemporaneous conspiracy of co-creators - and signed by a certain Elsabeth Marengo, the portrait painter of the day. The cast included notables such as Margret Blandings (expert of inner expansion), Bartholomew Plug (invoker of vortices), and Tjhom Kartoffell (aggrandiser of personal gravity), to name but a few. In prime position was a larger than life portrait that was rustic and regal to equal degrees. Seemingly repainted from an old brochure, the face bore signs of a clownish expression, mute though open mouthed with gold crowns shining like crows eyes in a windless night. Standing in an oak lined study, though lacking any of the leather bound books one would expect, the study with its empty shelves looked more like a sanctuary lit by a sacred fire. His finger, poised on a disheveled manuscript which lay on a heavy lectern, gently pointed to the initials O.T.I.S. This manuscript, though fancifully rendered, was in fact a founding text of the Inner Sanctum. The official truth, commonly accepted with raised eyebrows, had an origin story worthy of the wide screen. But the unofficial truth is perhaps worthier of a slight detour. Dr Scroff, as he was known at the time, made his career out of the unseemly sport of Boffin Baiting, buying the death spoils of recently deceased niche-idols, objects guaranteed to garner the interest of geek investors, he would send them to auction and pose as a person of like interest, raising the bid to breaking point, and then, acting the noble loser, walking away with a briefcase full of cash. One morning, nosing through the obituaries like a prize truffle hunter, he unearthed a moving eulogy by one T.M. It read: ‘Our spiritual father has passed. He, who taught us how to fall, he who taught us how to rise again. His brief candle now out, the flame lives in us.’ Following his sources he arrived at the address of the deceased to find the charred remains of a small wooden structure protected by a circle of swaying trees that seemed to whisper among themselves as he entered through what was once the front door. Splashing water on the ashes, accompanied by several garbled oaths, and searching for any salvageable trinkets, he espied a sudden flash of gold. Wiping the soot away he revealed a pair of bright yellow, comically oversized, fire retardant pantaloons and wrapped inside was a manuscript, typed with handwritten corrections and annotations. It was a dead cert. The bidding started and he sat back as warring factions battled it out raising the bid beyond his expectations. But as they began to flag the goadings of greed bade him to enter the fray. When the gavel came down at 1 million, his hand raised like a perjurer at trail, the auction house broke into a wild zooish hubbub. The baiter had been baited. His tail between his legs, he looked to the manuscript to come up heads. And so, reading it for the first time, he found that it supplied him with the method and the meaning, for held in his hands was nothing less than a quasi-training manual for the art of Innerology. Standing now in an offish circle were several of the Order of the Informed, these general gatherers of knowledge who were generally quite unknowledgeable about any knowledge that they had gathered. The chief general of the general gatherers, Suspirio Scrofa, who had a mouth like an unkempt graveyard, was about to elaborated on another one of his Notes from Life. Just bristling for everyone’s attention, Oh I have one for you, you’ll really find this quite the biz. Well, you know, I used to own, lets just say, a very exclusive car dealership. Of course, you’d have your Tippins and Fishshanks, Pelushis and Gavelins, you know, the normal clientele, but then you’d also have the nouveau riche, thugs by any other name. These ones, you know, they feel judged, they still feel the mega-tons of social inequality weighing down on them, and wanting to believe that they have risen above this, that they have reached the Elysian floor of Hotel Exclusive, where they can breath in the fresh air of acceptance, they insist on paying at the bar, even though its free. You can tell as soon as they walk in: The vulgarity of overcompensation. The rich in spirit walk with open arms, the rich in wallet walk with a limp and their hands stuffed in their pockets. If you treat them like worms they’ll be so eager to prove you wrong, that they’ll spend big. I had one poor worm I’d insulted so badly that he bought the whole showroom, in cash! They have no sense of proportion. They think they’re so individual, but actually, there’s nothing original about any of them. If only they realised they were copies, then perhaps they would begin to be something real. If only they would open their eyes! As he said this he opened his eyes as wide as he could and stared around the circle, sucking them all in to the closed circuit of his enterprise. Ah, actually, that reminds me of one of your lines Tommy, What was it? No, hold on, hold on, I’ve got it: You can copy a fool, but you can’t fool a copy. Now I like that, that really has something to it. They all laughed in glottal agreement, but not Tommy. We can imagine a close up of his face, minute muscular shifts articulating his thought process; a slight widening of the eyes, an almost imperceptible lowering of the jaw; shock registering involuntarily; brief tremors from an unexpected attack: the copy, contrary to quip, has realised he’s been fooled.