The Unholy City (2002)

The Unholy City (2002)
1 The Player Who Takes No Chances
2 You Do Not Own Your Own Head
3 No One Knows The Big News
4 Welcome To The Unholy City
5 The Name Is Nothing
6 Nobody Is Anybody







1.
THE PLAYER WHO TAKES NO CHANCES
There is a greater blackness
And many would wish to see

There is a greater blackness
Than most would care to contemplate

There is a greater blackness

Those who have tried to tell of the blackness
Have always found their words turned into nonsense
Those who have tried to tell of the blackness
Have always found their memories, lost or transformed
Into doctrines and philosophies
They never intended
Or possibly their bodies and minds as they conceive such things
Lost forever in the blackness
That few would wish to see, and most do not dare to contemplate

There is a greater blackness

Perhaps in their final moments they may realize
Or be shown, that they were, after all
Only unknowing players in a nameless endless game

Only unknowing players

And after these souls have been thrown screaming into oblivion
No voice remains to tell the score
Save the howling voice of the blackness

There is a greater blackness
There is a greater blackness

No voice remains
No voice remains
No voice remains

2.
YOU DO NOT OWN YOUR HEAD:
there are so many heads in the world, wherever you go there are heads, every day there are more of them sprouting up in the blackness.

At one time there was nothing at all, only blackness; and then, within the infinite space of that blackness things started to develop.

But as soon as those heads came along nothing much has happened -or nothing worthy of note: the whole world reached its peak and turned into an enormous heads factory.

Everyday there are more and more of them sprouting up in the blackness -which was there at the beginning -the blackness that, perhaps by chance, began to produce all these heads, and continues to produce so always calling out for more heads to carry out the business it wants done, its black voice roaring across the infinite black space of its heads factory.

But none of the heads has any ideas about the blackness that surrounds them or the blackness that hides itself inside each one of them."

3.
NO ONE KNOWS THE BIG NEWS
For all practical purposes almost no one is concerned with The Big News.
They have other things, more urgent matters, inscribed within their skulls, and all kinds of business to carry out.
Their heads are just too heavy with so many plans and schemes, thousands of tasks that will not allow them to focus on anything that is so strange, anything that is so uncertain.
They have no time to confront some ultimate revelation.
They have no desire to find out so incredibly Big News.
Such a thing would take everything they know and arrange it in another way altogether, telling a story so different from the one that is already familiar to them.

No one knows The Big News

Yet The Big News is always there.
Like a tiny voice on a radio it chatters away through heavy static in a darkened room where people are trying to sleep, filling their heads with plans and schemes, inscribing thousands of tasks and urgent matters inside of their skulls, all kinds of business to carry out - little errands, oddjobs, atrocities both great and small - all of which, when taken together, arrange things a different way that compose a secret story that no one cares to make their concern, yet The Big News is always there.

And so few will ever seek to discover, and none of them will ever be allowed to tell, that we ourselves are the dark language in which The Big News is forever being written.

4.
WELCOME TO THE UNHOLY CITY
In some form or another, everyone must pay a visit to the Unholy City.
There is simply no avoiding it since everything has been designed to lead you to this place.

Any road may present a detour that unexpectedly sends you on your way into a great barren landscape where only a sliver of horizon wavers in the empty distance and no road signs exist to hint at your destination.
Any hospital may be equipped with the special elevator where someone wheels you inside and then quickly abandons you.
As the doors clamp tightly closed you finally notice that there are no buttons to push, no controls of any kind.
This is when the elevator begins to move, dipping and twisting like a carnival ride, taking you toward the Unholy City.

After enduring such episodes, or others of a similar sort, you may only wake up screaming, vowing to never again close your eyes in sleep.
Or you may fall into a fever that no thermometer is able to indicate and from which there is no recovery.

In more extreme cases you begin to glimpse a blackness like none you have ever seen, and wonder for a time whether this blackness is inside your head or outside, which makes no difference once it begins to compose the outlines of the Unholy City you're about to enter.

5.
THE NAME IS NOTHING

"The Unholy City" is a convenient misnomer.
For one thing, it has none of the usual features which define a city of any size, and might be better described as a small town or village; an out-of-the-way place long gone to see.

Unlike cities both ancient and modern, the unholy city has never been marked on a map.
It is merely an ever changing name without a location, and is far more likely to find it's way to you, than you are to find your way to it - unless of course, you have been provided with special instructions that lead to an infinite barren landscape and end in the heart of nowhere.

As for the quality or characteristic of unholiness, this is also misleading, a nominal facade designed to make things interesting for a world born out of blackness, where nothing holy or unholy has ever existed, where nothing exists at all except dreams and fevers and names for nothing, the creations, so to speak, of that original blackness which pulls itself over every world like a hangman's hood over a condemned man's head.

6.
NOBODY IS ANYBODY

Those of us who reside in the Unholy City, who sprouted out of the blackness of an old root cellar, or sprayed forth like dark ashes from an unclean chimney,

Those of us who are permanent citizens of the Unholy city, are neither Angeles nor Demons
Although we are sometimes called upon to play such parts, for the purpose of some game that has been going on since the world began, acting out our roles in a drawn out, intricate stage show that we will never understand, nor ever care to understand.

Nevertheless, we are really not so different from the tourists who sometimes visit our little town, and sometimes stay with us forever.
Who are also born of the same blackness as we were, as everything was.

Still there is one respect, in which we, the inhabitants of the Unholy City, diverge from all others in this world, who are so caught up in the game that is going on, who identify so completely with the parts they have been given to play in the stage-show universe, that they actually believe themselves to be somebody or something.

We on the other hand, suffer from no such delusion
We are nobodies.
We are nothings.

And even to speak in such terms maybe claiming to much for ourselves. Which is to say that we are just like everybody else.
While they without ever knowing or suspecting the true facts.
Are just like us.