Ever heard that song When I Paint My Masterpiece?
Not many people have actually. It’s probably a bad reference.
http://youtu.be/wq2e7DPhyHg
Someday everything’s gonna sound like a rhapsody... when I paint my masterpiece.
The power that drives the song is this idea, this intense certainty, that everything’s finally going to be right with the world – peace in my mind and the girl by my side – when I paint my masterpiece… and not a second before.
Such a poetic idea. This battle, this constant striving and pushing. Killing yourself in the pursuit of some abstract thing that only you can see or even begin to understand. Sacrificing everything else in your world for it. It might take a hundred years and it surely will be the toughest and most arduous road imaginable but eventually you’ll get there and everything will be different… when I paint my masterpiece.
I believed it.
Only trouble is, now I’m a little bit older I’ve come to realise something deeply depressing that neither The Band nor Dylan even hinted at in the midsts of all this romantic rhetoric.
The something is this: painting your masterpiece is the easy bit. The real struggle begins when you start trying to get people to look at the fucking thing.
The problem is they’re all out there struggling with their own masterpieces and they don’t have time for yours. It interests them not a jot. Why would it? Your masterpiece represents nothing to them, no struggle, no journey into the abyss and back. It’s just another pointless thing cluttering up the universe.
I finished painting my masterpiece in January 2011. It is called The Bells Of St Mary’s. It is a funny, romantic, philosophical, supernatural, spiritual, fantastical play about a dead man. It is set at Christmas. You’ve all seen A Christmas Carol and It’s A Wonderful Life… well, think of it as the next one in that set.
For people who’ve only got 30 seconds of interest remaining, this is the précis:
Dying was by far the most interesting thing that ever happened to Jimmy Henderson. His life had been a 0-0 draw, a dull grind, a 25-year stalemate of few highs and few lows which neither triumph nor disaster seemed to want to get involved with. Death was a blessed relief. Or it would have been, were it not for the fact that there was now the little matter of an eternal afterlife to struggle through. Jimmy’s mediocre life was just about sufficient to scrape into the ‘paradise’ of heaven, but far from feeling blissful and free, he soon finds himself just as awkward, out of place and useless as he did on Earth and his numerous disappointments and failures – notably his inability to fully capture the heart of his soulmate, the magical but agonisingly elusive, Mary – follow him around Heaven like a black cloud. The good news for Jimmy, though, is he now has somebody other than himself to blame. The bad news is that somebody is the Lord God Almighty. And he doesn't take criticism very well.
For people who’ve got about 5 minutes of interest remaining, here's a few random scenes:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k1jKvgzIRYs
I believed it.
Only trouble is, now I’m a little bit older I’ve come to realise something deeply depressing that neither The Band nor Dylan even hinted at in the midsts of all this romantic rhetoric.
The something is this: painting your masterpiece is the easy bit. The real struggle begins when you start trying to get people to look at the fucking thing.
The problem is they’re all out there struggling with their own masterpieces and they don’t have time for yours. It interests them not a jot. Why would it? Your masterpiece represents nothing to them, no struggle, no journey into the abyss and back. It’s just another pointless thing cluttering up the universe.
I finished painting my masterpiece in January 2011. It is called The Bells Of St Mary’s. It is a funny, romantic, philosophical, supernatural, spiritual, fantastical play about a dead man. It is set at Christmas. You’ve all seen A Christmas Carol and It’s A Wonderful Life… well, think of it as the next one in that set.
For people who’ve only got 30 seconds of interest remaining, this is the précis:
Dying was by far the most interesting thing that ever happened to Jimmy Henderson. His life had been a 0-0 draw, a dull grind, a 25-year stalemate of few highs and few lows which neither triumph nor disaster seemed to want to get involved with. Death was a blessed relief. Or it would have been, were it not for the fact that there was now the little matter of an eternal afterlife to struggle through. Jimmy’s mediocre life was just about sufficient to scrape into the ‘paradise’ of heaven, but far from feeling blissful and free, he soon finds himself just as awkward, out of place and useless as he did on Earth and his numerous disappointments and failures – notably his inability to fully capture the heart of his soulmate, the magical but agonisingly elusive, Mary – follow him around Heaven like a black cloud. The good news for Jimmy, though, is he now has somebody other than himself to blame. The bad news is that somebody is the Lord God Almighty. And he doesn't take criticism very well.
For people who’ve got about 5 minutes of interest remaining, here's a few random scenes:
JIMMY:
What the? Where…
GAZ:
Let me guess, where am I?
JIMMY:
Um… yeah.
GAZ: (sighs)
Every single person, the same bloody question. I mean, is it really that ’ard
to figure out? Open your eyes. What does it look like?
JIMMY:
Some sort of waiting room?
GAZ:
Bingo! Some sort of waiting room. Well done.
JIMMY:
But… what am I doing here?
GAZ:
Waiting. Same as everyone else. You got your ticket?
Jimmy
looks down and sees he is holding a ticket. It reads:
Jimmy Henderson
Born 23/05/1984
16:04 – Died 18/12/2009 08:09
please retain
this receipt as proof of death
JIMMY:
No, no… this can’t be right. There must be some sort of mistake, you see…
GAZ: (shakes head) Why are you newly-deads
always so bloody confused?
JIMMY:
I really don’t think that I’m…
Gaz
hands Jimmy the roll of parchment.
JIMMY:
What’s this?
GAZ:
Your obituary.
JIMMY:
(turns parchment over) It’s
blank.
GAZ:
’Course it is, pecker’ead. You ’aven’t written it yet.
Gaz laughs and walks over to his desk.
JIMMY:
You mean I have to write my own obituary?
GAZ: (rummages in desk drawer) Well, it’s not gonna
write itself, is it? Besides, who in the world’s better qualified to do it than
you?
JIMMY:
No one, I guess, but…
GAZ: (returns
with pot of ink and quill) There
you go then. Get cracking.
—
JOHNNY:
(agitated) So, we’ve sledged down
Everest, hung out in the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, dived off Rainbow Falls…
LOGICAL
MAN: Have you taken him sky-fishing yet?
JOHNNY:
Yep, day one. We sky-fished off the edge of Cloud 9.
JOHNNY’S
DAD: (proudly) I caught a 20-pound
bald eagle.
LOGICAL
MAN: Wow.
JOHNNY’S
DAD: Big as a mountain lion, it was.
JOHNNY:
We’ve done everything. (to Jimmy)
You’ve experienced every last glorious thing that Heaven has to offer and you
still haven’t cracked a smile.
—
GOD:
So let me get this straight. You’re accusing me, the Lord God Almighty, of
providing you with an incompatible soulmate.
JIMMY:
In so many words, yes.
GOD:
What nonsense. It’s physically impossible for you not to love your soulmate.
JIMMY:
And I do love her! I love her with every ounce of my heart and soul and I always
will. The problem is she didn’t love me.
GOD:
The very notion is absurd.
JIMMY:
You tell me then. Why weren’t we together?
GOD:
Ask yourself.
JIMMY:
I have been asking myself! I’ve done nothing but ask myself for the past ten
years and I’m sick of it. That’s why I’m asking you!
GOD:
Ok, fine. If that’s the way you want to play it, I’ll get the tapes.
JIMMY:
What tapes?
GOD:
The tapes of your life, of course.
God reaches under his desk and produces a
cardboard box full of dusty, old VHS tapes.
GOD:
Here we are.
JIMMY:
(peers into box) You mean to say
you’ve got my entire life on tape?
GOD: (proud) Every second of every life that
ever walked the Earth.
JIMMY:
And you’re still using VHS?
GOD:
Actually, I’m still in the process of converting to VHS. Half the library’s
still on Super-8. And now I’ve got Magic Alex telling me VHS is passé and I
should go over to DVD. Whatever that is.
JIMMY:
That’s on its way out too. It’s all Blu-Ray now.
GOD:
Ray Who?
JIMMY:
Blu-Ray. It’s like DVD but just a tiny bit sharper.
GOD: (shakes head) You humans just can’t stop
tinkering with things, can you?
—
GOD:
Don’t believe everything you read, Jimmy. And before you ask, I didn’t build
the Universe in seven days either.
JIMMY:
So how long did it take?
GOD:
Considerably longer than that. I think it was about four and a half billion
years, give or take.
JIMMY:
Bloody hell! That is a long time.
GOD:
And I suppose you could have built a whole universe quicker, could you?
JIMMY:
No, but…
GOD: (suddenly angry) It’d take you that long
to build a flipping Wendy house.
JIMMY:
Sorry.
GOD:
Just look at what you did to my cakes.
JIMMY:
So where did they get seven days from?
GOD:
How should I know? You know what Christians are like. Bunch of liars and
cheats. I tell you, some of the stuff they’ve said about me down the years;
stuff that could have been very damaging to my reputation, I might add. Floods
and plagues, vengeance and wrath. Smite this, smite that. Sacrifice your son.
It’s downright libellous, that’s what it is. The Holy Libel, that’s what they should call that book. (pause) Nothing proves the obvious
insanity of the human race better than religion. They’re all mental. All those
stories, all those rules. Don’t cut your hair; don’t covet thy neighbour’s ass;
don’t eat meat on a Tuesday… or whenever it is; don’t use contraception; don’t
drink; don’t have abortions; don’t masturbate. For crying out loud, I thought
that was one of the greatest gifts I gave you people! Animals don’t impose any
of these rules upon themselves, you know. They just live.
JIMMY:
But their lives are devoid of meaning.
GOD: And
yours isn’t?
—
JIMMY:
Don’t worry. I’m working on another plan.
JOHNNY:
(sighs) Why do you always have to
have a plan? Just ask her out. Look, I’ll show you. You just say: Mary, would
you like…
JIMMY:
Yes, thanks Johnny. I do know how to ask a girl out, you know.
JOHNNY:
Come off it, Jim. If I had a penny for every girl you’ve asked out, I wouldn’t
have enough to rub two pennies together. (pause)
In fact, I wouldn’t have enough to rub one penny together.
JIMMY:
Just because I don’t ask out every bit of ankle in a hundred-mile radius.
JOHNNY:
You don’t ask out any bit of ankle in
a hundred-mile radius.
JIMMY:
There’s more than one way to cook an egg. You just go diving in like a bull in
a china shop, whereas me, I lurk in the shadows, biding my time, ready to
pounce…
JOHNNY:
Like a rapist.
JIMMY:
No. Like an assassin!
JOHNNY:
Why do you want to assassinate them?
JIMMY:
It’s a metaphor, you idiot. It means I set my sights first, do my research,
work out a plan and then I make my
move.
JOHNNY:
Only, by the time you do, the entire human race has gone extinct.
—
JIMMY:
I wasn’t scared.
GOD:
No, of course not.
JIMMY:
I was thinking about our friendship.
GOD: I
know.
JIMMY:
And I didn’t want to put her in an awkward position.
GOD:
That’s very admirable.
JIMMY:
I was trying to figure out a way of asking her…
GOD:
That didn’t involve actually asking her.
JIMMY:
Precisely! Anyway, Ben Foster asked her while I was thinking about it and…
GOD:
The rest is history.
Pause.
JIMMY:
(angry) She bottled it too! She could
have asked me to the prom just as
easily. Why is all the onus on me to make things happen?
GOD:
Because you’re the man and it’s the man’s job to do these things.
JIMMY:
Ooh, that’s a very old-fashioned sort of attitude.
GOD:
Well, what do you expect? I’m 100 billion years old! I’ve got a right to be
old-fashioned. I like a man to be a man, not a big, yellow-bellied wimp.
JIMMY:
Maybe if you’d given me the tools.
GOD:
What more tools could I have given you? I gave you eyes, ears, a brain in your
head, two arms to hold her with, legs to chase her with, lips to kiss her with
and something nice to fill her up inside. (God
winks at Jimmy) Perfect fit, by the way. No sex like soulmate sex. (Jimmy sighs) Made to measure… literally.
JIMMY:
You’re disgusting.
God chuckles.
—
GOD: (dejected) Why is it that everything you
humans make turns to shit?
JIMMY:
That’s a bit harsh.
GOD:
Nothing works properly. Now take the things I make. The sun, for example.
Imagine if that kept fucking up every twenty minutes. Or the atmosphere. If the
atmosphere failed as often as a Ford Escort, say, the human race would be wiped
out every other day.
JIMMY:
Some of the stuff we make’s pretty impressive. What about the iPod?
GOD:
Bah! iPod? That’s just a gimmick, that is. Magic Alex got me one of them and it
broke after ten minutes. (God pulls his
iPod from a drawer and slams it down on the coffee table) Cheap, human
crap. Nothing’s built to last.
Jimmy looks at it, flips a switch and hands it
back to him.
JIMMY:
You had it on hold.
GOD:
What? Don’t talk sh–
JIMMY:
It’s working now.
God stares at it sceptically.
GOD:
Well… I’ll warrant it’ll be knackered again in a couple of hours. (the screen goes blank) There you go,
see? The screen’s gone.
JIMMY:
It’s just switched itself off. Press one of the buttons.
GOD:
There aren’t any buttons.
JIMMY:
In the wheel.
GOD:
What’s the wheel?
JIMMY:
This bit in the middle.
GOD:
Oh, that stupid thing. I could never get the hang of that.
JIMMY:
It’s easy.
GOD:
You need a bloody degree in computer programming to operate the bloody thing.
I’d only just got used to the cassette. Now that
worked.
JIMMY:
But a cassette can only hold ninety minutes of music. Don’t you think it’s
amazing that this tiny thing (holds up
iPod) that’s no bigger than a cigarette packet, can hold 40,000 songs on
it. Just think of that. All that music, trapped in that tiny little box.
GOD:
You think that’s good. (God rummages
around in his drawer) Take a look at this. (he produces a conker) What do you think that is?
JIMMY:
It’s a conker.
GOD:
Wrong. It’s not a conker, it’s a horse chestnut tree! Just think of that! A wooden structure, 40 ft high,
covered in tens of thousands of energy-storing, food-providing leaves,
supporting the lives of millions of
creatures. And it all comes from this little brown ball. Makes your iPod look a
little bit sick, don’t you think?
JIMMY:
Let’s just say they’re both good, shall we?
GOD:
You see, what you humans don’t understand is that you can make things, sure.
You have made many useful and practical things that have stopped you having to
work so hard, but they all have one thing in common, these things.
JIMMY:
What’s that?
GOD:
They lack soul. You see, only the Lord God Almighty – and that’s your name, not
mine – can make things with soul. Go and have a look at the Pyramids and then
go and have a look at Ayers Rock and tell me which one’s better.
JIMMY:
Alright. The Pyramids are quite good as well though.
GOD:
Symbols of power, that’s all they are. All my stuff is love, all your stuff… (he pokes Jimmy in the chest)
JIMMY:
Hey! I didn’t build the Pyramids.
GOD:
All your stuff is about power and
hate. Every bit of incredible technology you create, sooner or later, is used
to kill people. You start off with stones and arrowheads and you end up with
hydrogen bombs and cruise missiles. You already have the ways and means to blow
up the Earth and every living thing on it; pretty soon you’ll find a way to
blow up Heaven as well… and me too, I daresay.
JIMMY:
Not necessarily.
GOD: I
should have intervened when I had the chance. I should have stopped it. The
very first time I saw a monkey crack open a nut with a rock I should have been
in there, all wrath and vengeance. (pause)
Next universe I build I’m gonna remember that. Tools are bad news.
JIMMY:
Next universe?
GOD:
That’s right. Just as soon as your lot finally knacker this one, I’m gonna
build a new one, a better one. And it ain’t gonna be run by humans either.
JIMMY:
No?
GOD:
No. You had your chance. The new universe is gonna be run by dogs. They never
let me down.
And for those of you with a whole hour to spare, this is where you can buy the whole masterpiece and read it in its entirety as the artist originally intended:
It will cost you £6.99 but that’s cheap for a masterpiece. Nobody knows how much the Mona Lisa is worth but I’ll warrant it would cost you at least twice that… maybe more.
It will cost you £6.99 but that’s cheap for a masterpiece. Nobody knows how much the Mona Lisa is worth but I’ll warrant it would cost you at least twice that… maybe more.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k1jKvgzIRYs
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