Standing in the foyer, sending text messages to a love interest young enough to be my daughter living a thousand miles away in a real American city. Not a suburb where this mansion sits, rather, a metropolis.

No longer can I be the lover, however. My lovin’ days are behind me. Not by a choice of my own, and most certainly not by god’s. If there were a god like this, she would not be so concerned. She would have other strings to pull; more important lives to wreck. Mine is smaller.

Standing in the foyer is the logical end to the stagnant world in which I find myself. Waiting on the wind. It moves so inconsistently just the same as I move you. Waiting for things to be different, for courage to emerge thus affecting change. Unti then I am stuck. Not quite

You can’t predict who is next. Next in a good way. Yet it’s always someone with a story, a subjectivity that matches yours, or not. That becomes the quest. If there is a god, let her send that to me. If not, let me see it.

In the foyer, surrounded by air, dressed for success, acting the part. She has found her ultimate. I’ve yet to even define mine. But it’s beyond the walls and cherry and the marble. It is, perhaps, beyond this year. But sometimes, we can hang our coat on patience and believe in its reward.

Let me restate my take on atheism because I more evidence has come to light. A true atheist never needs to reveal himself. The question has never crossed his path. An atheist is ambivalent.

When we lose loved ones sometimes we start talking about seeing them again in the afterlife. It gives us comfort to think that we can have a familiar feeling once again, even if only in an alternate reality. I’ve heard atheists and nihilists argue this as something they don’t believe, therefore there is no god.

Doesn’t matter, because again they’re arguing another person’s belief in god. There are some faiths that don’t have a heaven or a hell. If your belief is one opposed to an afterlife, then why not join one of these?

Essentially, most atheists and nihilists want a reason to be different. They want attention, so they try stirring the pot with their beliefs. Any argument against religion is worth having. But, being one who tries living in reality, I’ve got bigger fish to fry.

I regularly meet up with a special girlfriend. We used to date, and mate, but now it’s only once a year, at a monastery in the highlands. Usually in the spring, the April full moon. Last time we met, I told her everything, about how I ached without someone to love. This was the first time we didn’t mate, because I ached for someone else. She knows.

Religious people are also idol worshipers. The difference between an emo nihilist atheist and a religious person is really difference between definitions of god. The religious person has defined some kind of god that works for him. More likely, he accepts the god that many others before him have already defined.

The atheist demographic, however, has no god defined. So they turn other things into gods. Only when these gods are human or institutional we call them icons. The emos worship filmmakers, songwriters, authors, and sometimes even characters.

I know. I wanted to be Otto from Repo Man for a while. I totally idolized David Lynch after Blue Velvet. I so wanted to be Paul Westerberg that I grew my hair out all frizzy, dressed in khakis and thrift-store suits, and even worked as a janitor for a while.

This had been my plight for so long. Something told me I needed to worship. I didn’t want to be a Jesus freak so I chose tangible things that infiltrated my world. Artistic things, which were my filter.

But when you’re primarily introverted you don’t thrive on outside influences. You become the outside influence. The world already had a fictitious Otto, a real David Lynch, and about all it could stand of Paul Westerberg.

Ironically, none of these guys would ever idolize themselves. They are not the type to have idols. They’re introverts whose energy is internal. They don’t look to outside influences.

Even better, the prophets and saviors, if they were even real, had the same characteristic. They were free thinkers, original thinkers, whom others followed others continue to follow.

Perhaps that’s the way this thing plays out. This is the 80 / 20 rule. The minority of people do the work, the thinking and the lecturing while the majority worships them.

Creative people are introverts. Their clients are extroverts. The musician is an introvert. The crowd is full of extroverts.

With my first wife, I went through these phases where I didn’t want to communicate. I only wanted to create. She wanted to go to concerts. I’d go along, but always thought I was better than anyone on stage. Except for Iggy Pop, of course.

Extroverts dominate our world by a ratio of about 80 to 20. Most of us get our energy from the outside. This is why we are so easily sold. We are consumers. We watch TV and go to movies. We worship icons of pop culture. We like football. We vote, sometimes. We are the 80 percent.

Carl Jung says DJs are pussies

Not exactly “we” because I’m in the 20 percent. We are producers. We are the entrepreneurs. Where does it come from? I don’t know. I really don’t. My la-la spiritual friends claim it’s divine inspiration. I just think it’s how I’m wired. I observe. I process. I regurgitate.

I have a close friend who has a PhD in political philosophy who once told me I am the classic philosopher. I carve rocks into abstract shapes because I have to. Making music serves the same purpose. I don’t say these things to be some arrogant dickwad either. This is my truth.

My visceral reactions to entertainment lately are directly tied to this. I realize I process the world differently from most. It wasn’t wrong for me to be sitting through concerts convinced I was a better songwriter than the guy on stage. Yet, I hated myself for this shitface attitude I carried with me. It’s who I am.  I don’t need other people’s output to give me energy. It comes from here (I’m thumping my chest now).

This is why I continue to believe photographers are not artists. Neither are DJs. I fukken hate DJs. They both play with things that other people, true introverts, already created.

My friend Tim, back in our 20s, got a tattoo of Miles Davis and John Coltrane on his arm. Not bad, I thought. I dig both those guys. But now I get to thinking about it with my recent rants on idol worship. It’s fucking stupid.

It’s retarded to worship any one or any thing. There’s a huge difference between acknowledgement and worship, and most of us miss the fucking point.

Granted the morons willing to buy a magazine with Trista and Ryan (who the fuck are these people?) would never have enough investment in anyone or anything to tattoo it. Some may go far enough to get a t-shirt or a bumper sticker. But these are the same people who, if they ever get any ink, get a Jesus tattoo. Same thing as Tim’s Coltrane.

My nihilist friends are totally into their nihilist icons, whether it’s Ayn Rand or Boyd Rice. The irony is you can’t, by definition, have a nihilist icon. These dopes idolize nothingness, they think they’re so fucking smart, but they don’t get it. The joke is on them. Dense little cocksuckers they are.

There was a time in the 70s when Dylan would perform in whiteface because he wanted to separate himself, the person, from the music. Every account of Bob Dylan says that he’s very shy, almost reclusive. In a time when idol worship and rock stardom were at an all-time high, Dylan insisted on just being conduit for expression.

But idol worship has reached a new pinnacle. A lot of my artist friends do just the opposite of Dylan’s intention. They latch on to another artist (insert genre here) and turn it into an obsession. Most importantly, they don’t distinguish between the artist and the art.

This is childish. It puts the cart before the horse, per se.

I am a liker of Barack Obama. I think he’s a genuinely good guy, a smart man. He is, for my money, more virtuous than any spiritual person out there. In a few weeks, he’ll become the president. This is the ultimate in stardom.

At the same time, I’ve observed that companies like Disney are in the business of creating superstars.This is one example. There’s an entire sector of the economy around this. But with these manufactured celebrities, they are packaged and shoved down our throats. Then, once we accept them, we are sold their virtues.

Obama had the virtues first, then he became a star.

Idol worship is so fucked up. Artistically and creatively, I tend to go in phases these days. Sometimes I’ll gravitate toward a certain film genre for a while, same thing with music styles, etc. But I never, anymore, worship any of these people. They pull down their pants to shit just like I do.

Blinded by the light, whack off like a douche, you know, the rumor in the night.

We live in a fantasy world. Either it’s the Christians with their god, or it’s everybody else with their TVs and movies and romance novels. We’re all looking for Santa. We’re raised to expect it, and it never comes.

They’re all fables, which are meant to teach lessons. But we think this is all there is. The make-believe is real. Jesus is a fable. So are all the prophets. Take them for what they’re worth. They have a lot to offer, but you have to accept they’re make-believe. Just like Michael Corleone and Holden Caufield and Hawkeye Pierce. These are composite characters designed to represent a human condition, a tranisition, an experience.

We confuse the ends with the means, but especially the religious types. They treat their god and their Santa the exact same way. I’ve been good, Santa, give me what I want. Most of them are too dumb.

The nihilsts also disappear into their worlds of fantasy, through whatever shit they’re into. It’s the same game. They use it to validate their own shitty feelings toward themselves.

Live in reality, the both of you. Stop this shit. I hate you all.

When my marriage broke up, my wife took a trip to Europe with the guy she had been banging behind my back. When she came back to the house, I had moved out. Left a pile of junk where the kitchen table was. She later told me she had never felt so empty as she did when she came home from that trip to find me gone and my stuff gone along with it.

You are that emptiness. Part of me still wants them to fail. The better part of me could give a shit less.

I remember listining to it when we were together. Every relationship has its doubts, but I always connected with the line “I don’t want to leave her now, you know I believe…” I may have wanted to leave her at times, but never would have done it. Sure I looked, thought, and wondered. But I just cared too much.

Not too long afterward, George Harrison left his wife Patty Boyd.

All Things Must Pass.

The argument with an atheist will 99 percent of the time turn into an argument against religion. Big fucking deal. I can have that argument all day. You’re a neophyte if you want to base your belief system on being against someone else’s perception of reality.

I know a lot of spiritual people, and they baffle me. Their entire world is based on a puppet master pulling strings for them. This guy is such a micromanager that he gets us parking spaces, he lands us jobs, and he always “has someone better” lined up for us when we get our hearts broken. The spiritual types have it all defined, from the Buddha to Jesus to Moses to Allah, or to some grand combination of them all. They’ve got a cafeteria-type of savior.

These people are impossible because you can’t have a straight fucking conversation with any of them without their imaginary friend having a seat at the table. And it’s always something like, “you’ve got to have faith, Martin. Things will be better for you if you only have faith.” That, of course, is based on the assumption that “things” are not “better” already.

Theirs is a case that proves my point. We don’t seek god unless we’re faced with some calamity. All these people have either been severely fucked at one point in their lives, or they were born into some faith that they never question. In this case, their parents should be burned at the fucking stake.

But there’s another group of people who have been severely fucked at some point, and these are the atheists. To their credit, these are the more intellectual types. The religious types are usually too dumb to even question it.

But here’s where they got it wrong: they knew just enough to be dangerous. They had some kind of definition of god similar to my spiritual friends. It most likely came from their dumbass parents. But they probably had some notion that their imaginary friend would make things good again, then when things went south, they rebelled at the very notion.

I applaud their cause, but there’s a fatal flaw in this judgment. They are fighting someone else’s conception of god, and typically someone’s naive idea of it. Any time you argue against religion, you are arguing against someone else’s belief system. You are not arguing an original thought, and you’re certainly not arguing against the existence of something unknown.

It’s almost like arguing that conservatives don’t exist because Fox News is a bullshit operation.

People, babies especially, do not believe in a god. It’s not human nature. We only do it because those before us derived some concept of the unknown. If you want to argue with me that there is not some kind of unexplained energy out there, then go right ahead. I don’t see what you win. Some of us have a sixth sense, others don’t.

Yet, my spiritual sissy friends insists that whatever it is, it’s got some benevolent goodness about it. Fine, if that make you happy, go right ahead, but consider that every expectation is a resentment waiting to happen.  Many of my atheist friends operated under the same assumption of benevolence, then used their misfortunes as a basis for insisting it doesn’t exist.

Regardless of its existence, it’s not gonna turn the red lights green for you.

The Greeks had many gods, each explained away some phenomenon. Once we began to understand the physics of lightning or the origins of our oceans, we didn’t need those gods any more. Then came Jesus, who became the god of everything else, especially fate. We have so much anxiety about our fate, whether it’s happened already or is “destined” to happen, we need someone to pin it on. Our aforementioned prophets fit that role.

Why not simply divide your world into two buckets: the known and the unknown? I can deal with my knowns. My unknowns can solve themselves and come back when I’m ready for them. The very nature of diety worship has been to explain things we don’t understand. Both the atheists and the believers miss this point entirely.

“You know, I may have bought a new pair of shoes today. The only reason I stopped by is because you’re so god damn cute.” I say. “There’s got to be a lucky guy, no?”

“Well I’m kinda seeing someone,” she says.

“My grandfather sold shoes at Nordstom, you know.”

Quiet. I open my phone to the add a new number function in its phone book. I hand it to her. Back it comes with a new entry – Audrey.

My amends continued tonight with Susan, a redhead from two years ago. She was the one who was supposed to be my last girlfriend. She told me I was immature and unable to commit. No shit? We talked for 2 hours.

You know how she ended our call? She says I’ve got a big heart, I’m sincere and I’m generous.

She says, “I’m sure people have told you this before.”

I say no. I’ve been told that I’m hot and that I’m funny, but I’ve never been told I’m sincere and genuine with a big heart.

That meant a lot to me. She also told me how much she misses fucking me.