This all feels peculiarly familiar.
You sit in a dressing gown, listening to the police officers explaining your options. There are two of them. Both are extremely deferential. The only word you can pick out is 'career', only because both police officers keep repeating it. You're used to knowing when someone wants to ask you for an autograph but are either too shy and embarrassed to ask you or prevented from doing so by professional decorum. You wonder if you should offer these police officers an autograph. You look at the mug of coffee in your hands. You have no memory of who poured it and handed it to you. It has grown cold. You think about how wonderful it would be if you could become a liquid and drain into the mug, mingling with the coffee. It would be Christ's mug of coffee, he would drink it and, like some kind of breakfast communion, you would become one with his flesh. No more society, no more media, no more right or wrong.
You realise the police officers have stopped speaking. They are awaiting a response from you but you have missed whatever their question was.
You say 'Would you like an autograph?'
Weeks later, you're sat on a chair of moulded plastic in a large white room. Surrounding you are fellow rehab patients. You are all discussing the various different forms of mental illness which have driven you to do the terrible things you have all done. The man currently speaking, a movie producer, used a three-iron to smash the windscreen of his own car to prove a point during an argument with his brother-in-law. At nights you and this man sit in one of the medical supplies cupboards and drink cans of beer you have your personal assistant smuggle in and tell stories about your pasts.
Two weeks later and you are released. Your agent has arranged for you to be interviewed by Oprah Winfrey. You are sat in the green room, waiting for the interview to begin. You know that, when you walk out in front of the audience, you will be required to demonstrate a superhuman level of remorse for the things you've said and done. Within you, however, is an almost apocalyptically strong urge. You could walk onto the stage unrepentant, proud of your actions. Both options seem equally true. So much so that, by the time the studio assistant calls for you, you feel panicky and unwell.
Do you want to:
Sit and repentantly describe your actions and motives to Oprah, her studio audience and the wider audience, restoring yourself to your former life?
Run onto the stage with a crude Swastika daubed across your chest?
You sit in a dressing gown, listening to the police officers explaining your options. There are two of them. Both are extremely deferential. The only word you can pick out is 'career', only because both police officers keep repeating it. You're used to knowing when someone wants to ask you for an autograph but are either too shy and embarrassed to ask you or prevented from doing so by professional decorum. You wonder if you should offer these police officers an autograph. You look at the mug of coffee in your hands. You have no memory of who poured it and handed it to you. It has grown cold. You think about how wonderful it would be if you could become a liquid and drain into the mug, mingling with the coffee. It would be Christ's mug of coffee, he would drink it and, like some kind of breakfast communion, you would become one with his flesh. No more society, no more media, no more right or wrong.
You realise the police officers have stopped speaking. They are awaiting a response from you but you have missed whatever their question was.
You say 'Would you like an autograph?'
Weeks later, you're sat on a chair of moulded plastic in a large white room. Surrounding you are fellow rehab patients. You are all discussing the various different forms of mental illness which have driven you to do the terrible things you have all done. The man currently speaking, a movie producer, used a three-iron to smash the windscreen of his own car to prove a point during an argument with his brother-in-law. At nights you and this man sit in one of the medical supplies cupboards and drink cans of beer you have your personal assistant smuggle in and tell stories about your pasts.
Two weeks later and you are released. Your agent has arranged for you to be interviewed by Oprah Winfrey. You are sat in the green room, waiting for the interview to begin. You know that, when you walk out in front of the audience, you will be required to demonstrate a superhuman level of remorse for the things you've said and done. Within you, however, is an almost apocalyptically strong urge. You could walk onto the stage unrepentant, proud of your actions. Both options seem equally true. So much so that, by the time the studio assistant calls for you, you feel panicky and unwell.
Do you want to:
Sit and repentantly describe your actions and motives to Oprah, her studio audience and the wider audience, restoring yourself to your former life?
Run onto the stage with a crude Swastika daubed across your chest?