Now that you're here I want to ask you a question.

Who is running the show?

Fair warning this is strong material, and a little bit dark, turn back if need be.

What do I mean by the show? Well it's probably the best metaphor I can muster, to give accessibility for a wide variety of people in this moment. We have lived through a time with television, and now the internet - and this time has given us a powerful metaphor. The metaphor of the 'show' or the 'channel' even.

So welcome to the show, or the channel. A youtube channel is a particular person or persons that aim to give you information, or just some sense of things with images and sound and words too. You click on it and it tells you a story. This is the pinnacle of human consciousness right now. Is that astounding or depressing?

The show is your life, it's the TV show that makes up your experience. I say it's a TV show because it has a premise, and characters, it has a script too. So if we can pick up that metaphor and use it as a tool, then we can ask ourselves who writes the script. Who contrived of this whole way of being, and decided it was the best things for human beings to be concerned with? It sure beats me, and it also seems to be a convenient distraction.

Distraction being the major tool of the magician, sneaky sneaky.

source

If this is a show, we could also ask who is filming the damn thing

Who is doing the lighting? Who is editing it and mastering the audio? The quintessential thing we do with our 'spare time' not obliged to earning money tokens is...

go and watch a movie

Sit down and be exposed to a picture of life that we can project ourselves into. Leaving a lifeless body in the chair, now tell me this isn't the matrix.

We seriously need to talk to makeup and wardrobe

All of the little things that make the show look and feel and sound and seem like it is. Mechanics, mechanations, adjustments, some intentional and some just a matter of course.

All of these things are highly specific actions which make the show 'seem' like this. You wear your hair in a very particular way, you find exactly the right pants to fit your particular legs and ass. You talk in a particular way. Camera angles, angels. GET THE SHOT, post it, like and subscribe.

We put on the show - so to speak. Now you tell me who is this show for?

There is some sense that someone is watching us - there is some sense that we are percieved. Who is watching us and what kind of impression do we want to make? Does that even matter? Some people will tell you confidently to be yourself, then go right back to hitting the gym, smashing protein, and worrying about what people think of them.

We need to dig deeper my fellow badgers

Who on earth (or beyond earth) is watching us?

Is it people, simply just other people? Or is it a fractured piece of ourselves - some idea of how other people are seeing us? Wasting our days looking in a mirror, never sure who is seeing or being seen. Doubtful and needing reassurance, we easily let an outsider tell us what to look for.

There's that game again - it goes like this. There's a 'right' way to live this life - let's be clear: you don't know what the right way is. You need to ask me, I will decide and I will approve. Meet the requirements, fulfill the objective, ascertain the object. Solve the puzzle, win the game. Find the next thing, and the next, and the next. Don't slow down to see the context, just find the next. Run along rabbit - find the next (nexus, nest).

(THIS DESCRIBED DYSTOPIA FOR CREATIVE EMPHASIS ONLY)

Is there actually some conversation going on here? Clearly there has to be 'us' as the star of the show, but who is the conversation with? Perhaps it's the camera man, or the audience as it were. Some people say 'god', as if to describe a shrouded figure that lives in the unknown. Whatever way you slice it - the known and the unknown has a conversation. Where do you place yourself on this spectrum of madness?

This is the metaphor, a world of contrivance which we use to make a statement - and what kind of statement does it make? One of the biggest exercises in human attention right now is the idea of celebrity - the idea of the super star. What the hell is a star? It's a sun but it's super far away, it's twinkling in the night sky and looks beautiful. Beautiful but we could never possibly reach it. It would take light years. Why the fixation? I don't tend to worry about what's happening in Texas, when here I am in New Zealand.

I'm seeing stars

Things are beautiful in an imaginary land, perfect. It's a scenario that doesn't include you. You are the observer, you are the outsider, forever hoping to be accepted into this thing that you are not. We have to get the fundamentals right if we want to cut reality in half.

Who wrote this script? MAIN THEMES: powerlessness, division, fear. Ship it.

Striving, struggling, hoping, dreaming, we place our own selves far away and never see what's up close. We never see ourselves, and never consider ourselves important. Because there is the pre planned script which says this is your life, accept it, get in to character and receive one dose of approval. A hollow congratulations to verify that you have indeed followed instructions from an unknown source.

You have now been verified and we will allow you to move forward one square in the game. Stuck inside a square, on a square board, circles in our hearts. The small dog monopoly piece broke free from the board, and in that moment art was born.

This reality has become dangerously fragmented, people are looking deeper and deeper into dark corners in order to see themselves. It seems obvious yet we seem to miss the obvious, we wouldn't even conceive of it. Stop searching, in fact stop everything for a moment. Just be still and let the breeze move you.

Fuck the stars, they are just models - literally

What kind of simulation are they modelling? Be like this and 'people' will love you. Last time I checked it was mostly bots. Money, beauty, recognition, all of the best things. Confirmation that our self centered psychosis really is true, we really are amazing and need not quiet ourselves to the overwhelming nature of life.

Repetition, rinse and repeat, modes and accepted ways of seeing, simulations. The star is an actor, playing out a script. An algorithm, a data feed. Hungry mouths need information. The star is no freer than you, perhaps even more enslaved - they take the absurdity to brave new heights.

Why does a civilization idolize pretenders? Want to be them, want to marry them. Give me just a sprinkle of your stardust, I play the part of the poor beggar in this life. Beggar and King, equally just scripts - now tell me who chooses which you play?

Elections, Erections. Phallic symbols of power and disconnection. The same game again and again. The same play, the same result. Get outraged, be happy because A or B won the game. My side won, I'm a big fan. I blow hot air around all day. Incessant humming of the 'civilized world'. Return to your tower and be suppressed, the parties over - now be depressed.

The illusion of choice is the perfect play. It's the perfect TV show to describe the action of having power and affect on reality. Watching that show, we sit silent and dopey. The show goes on. We give our life over to something else, god knows what it is.

When will the point come

where we say, OK I get it, I can choose which story I want to pursue - so after thinking about it for a while I prefer this one. I prefer to be content and here right now. I prefer to not play such complex games, I prefer to be happy in my own skin. I prefer to not really know why anything, and just play around for the simple enjoyment in it.

Here comes the doubt and the fear, where did that come from? It must have been a lifetime of people telling us to play along and follow the script, or perhaps just being surrounded by people who are afraid of deviating from what is know and acceptable.

Why do we trust rule makers so much? Why do we trust people who aren't even comfortable in themselves?

Look a rule maker in the eye and ask them 'who are you?' Open up the void and see them tremble before the unknown. You are this unknown, feel the shiver of your untamed power. Now get back to work.

What of our own solar magnificence. Let's break the spell for a moment and contemplate our essential radiance. Surely just as someone else is a star, there can be a burning orb a bit closer to home.

Radiance, warmth, we these things badly - a feeling of being utterly at home, needing nothing and writhing in ecstasy. Yet somehow caught up in a complex game of seeing our own burning orb outside in another person. Obsessed with finding the one. Played out like a TV show for us to nod along to and forget. Binge watch the next series, clock in a few more hours in the game. Collect experience, gold and items. Distraction, refraction, distortion. Perception.

We Have Choice

We have perception

Can't we drop the damn thing for a moment and just breathe in...

• Such an ever unfolding

• Such a not knowing, yet knowing

• A continual happening

• A continual changing

• Seeing and sensing

• Responding

• Maintaining

• Expanding

• Remembering and forgetting

Do you remember me?
Do you remember our playful days?

Sweet emotions, tender
No expectation marred our innocent joy
I cry now and reach for your hand
Grasping nothing but emptiness

In the space between two things or two people, I find silence
And in the silence I stop asking stupid questions

Questions like...

Who is running this show?