I'm a Storyteller

Religion involves a lot of hindsight. The gods move in mysterious ways, you can never predict what they're going to do or how they're going to do it. Humans can only reflect on past events and say "God must have done this so that we can learn from it." This usually occurs after a tragedy or time of crisis because people couldn't possibly believe that God would put them through something so horrible. There MUST be some explanation, He/She/It is not evil.

My own system is not immune to this so my conclusion is that our brains NEED an explanation just to be able to cope with the overwhelming fear that if this is all meaningless then why go on living. It just so happens that my explanation is never "This must be God." I receive new information and use it to look back and say "Maybe I did/said THIS because of THIS." The strange thing for me is trying to figure out why I did/said the thing in the first place. I definitely had a reason to do what I did or said in that instance but hindsight and introspection allow me to say "Maybe I really meant something else." I couldn't possibly have known that there would be some future significance (impossible to predict the future, remember) but could I have known? I never asked the "Could I have known?" question until later in life. There were just some events in my life that really stood out in my memory and as I developed my life philosophy these memories came flooding back with new and powerful meanings.

At that very crucial age of 14, I became reacquainted with the girl that would become my wife (we'd known each other since the second grade). We were in junior high, sitting on the bench where my friends always gathered at lunch. She was expressing interest in me as a potential boyfriend by asking me questions about myself but I was totally oblivious to her coming on to me at the time. One of her questions really struck me as she asked how I identify myself. "So, what do you do?" she asked, "Your brother plays music, and the other is a skater, what are you?" "I'm a storyteller," I answered without hesitation. The response was almost immediate and I definitely had a reason to offer my answer because I had been making up and writing stories since elementary school. But its significance really shaped my entire life afterwards. I am a storyteller. I've tried to ignore it, trepidly pursued it, but the compulsion has never left me. I'm telling these stories now and I've never felt such enjoyment in doing anything else. Stories are my life. Stories are the essence of all life, and I'm a storyteller.

Oh-oh-oh it's Magic

I love comic books. My brothers and I collected them when I was young in the early 1980s. We were reading the heyday of the Chris Claremont/Dave Cockrum X-men, the Marv Wolfman/ George Perez New Teen Titans, and Frank Miller's Daredevil. We even collected the independently published Elfquest, The Spirit, and Cerebus (although the adult themes of these comics had to be revisited later in life for full comprehension). I lost interest as I became a teen because I was too punk rock to read comics. Just before high school, everyone around me turned into a punk or a goth. I had lost my singular identity and quickly had to alter my image to not look like everybody else. Comics were my salvation. I started collecting again and even fashioned a new wardrobe with shirts of comic book characters and designs by the artist M.C. Escher.

I started collecting every title I ,well, my grandma could afford. Mostly superheroes from both DC and Marvel Comics but the store I frequented, Comics Unlimited, also stocked a variety of new independent titles and had a large selection of back issues. I would usually pick up number one issues for investment purposes and this also got me in on brand new stories. One such title opened my eyes to comics as literature at a time, 1989/1990, when comics were still seen as kiddie fare. A guitar player we knew at the time, Alexander, had once asked me about a comic called Sandman so I was familiar with that title but never sought it out. One day I walked into my comic shop and picked up the number one issue of a book called Shade, The Changing Man by Peter Milligan and Chris Bachalo. It was an acid-fuelled road trip published by DC Comics when they were first venturing into comics for mature readers and I was immediately hooked. The shop even printed a flyer when Shade came out to highlight similar titles by the publisher: Sandman, Swamp Thing, Doom Patrol, Animal Man, and Hellblazer. The men behind these stories became my favorite writers and have cult followings now, but at the time I was constantly arguing the superiority of their multi-layered stories against readers of Quasar or The Infinity War. Alan Moore, Grant Morrison, Jamie Delano, Neil Gaiman, and, later, Garth Ennis. Check out anything they've done, it's brilliant. The first 25 issues of Animal Man constitute the greatest story ever told in comics. A few years later, DC Comics created the Vertigo imprint for all their mature reader books which is still going strong today.

My logical world of randomness and odds was thrown out of whack by the introduction of a new concept, magic. Alan Moore introduced the magician, John Constantine, in the pages of Swamp Thing but I became familiar with him when he was already having his own adventures in the comic Hellblazer by Jamie Delano. (Yes, there was a shitty movie called Constantine with Keeno Reeves but please be like me and pretend it doesn't exist, it has nothing to do with the comic besides the title character from what I've heard.) John Constantine was no top hat wearing magician, he was a crusty, chain-smoking, trench coat wearing Brit. He conned demons and murdered his friends, anything to to keep himself alive. You never really saw him actually "do" any magic, he just understood its history and laws and could make it work for him as needed. He was all attitude, swagger, and a little luck. Fucking awesome. This was one of the first, if not the first, quotes I ever memorized:

"He dances on the edge of the known, like a crazy man, pitting himself against Heaven and the Pit, because he is John Constantine; and because he is alive"
Neil Gaiman
The Books of Magic, Book III, 1991

I used to reverse the last two lines though. It just sounded cooler to me: "Because he is alive and because he is John Constantine." He's crazy, that's just him. Garth Ennis took over writing Hellblazer at issue 41 and, unbelievably, the stories got even better. By that time, I was living in Oregon and calling Cypress to discuss how awesome a comic book was with my friend Otto (the only other reader I knew at the time). I wanted to be John Constantine. To be outside all boundaries and to be able to manipulate this power called "magic."

I became very interested in the Occult and picked up books like The Necronomicon and The Satanic Bible. Actually, I had my friend pay for The Necronomicon because I didn't want to be "cursed." I hadn't yet realized the meaninglessness of everything but this did reveal to me that things like curses and spells weren't real. I read other books about nature magic, crystals and things, but never truly believed it was real so the "spells" never worked for me. This reading, coupled with the stories of John Constantine led me to formulate my own understanding of what magic was and how it worked.

Magic is not chants and spells. Magic is the will of the mind. More specifically, it is the will of the subconscious mind. You focus on a desired outcome and then never think about it again. If you constantly focus on what you want then it won't happen because you're already telling the story in your head and creating an ending. It is impossible to predict the future so you automatically negate the possibility of success by trying to predetermine the outcome. You should think of the desired outcome once and then forget it. If it comes into your head, don't focus on it, try to think of something else. This increases the chances for success because you're not trying to force your will onto reality, you're just allowing it to happen. The story will unfold exactly the way it's supposed to, not always the way you desired, but the way it's supposed to. You don't even have to try.

These revelations completely changed my worldview. I now had magic to work with and manipulate. This also lead me to write my own words of wisdom:

"Do you know how you do magic? You don't."
David Ege, 1991

I know.

The darkened room hummed with an orange glow. Ugnaughts scurried about flicking switches and checking levels amid the belching fog. Boba Fett and a squad of Stormtroopers led Han Solo, Princess Leia, and Chewbacca to the carbon freezing chamber of Cloud City. The freezing process was designed for cargo but Darth Vader planned to test it on Han Solo before capturing the Emperor's prize, Luke Skywalker. As the troopers approached Han, the Wookie sprang into action in an attempt to save his companion. But before a shot was fired he was quieted by Solo who charged him with the mission of protecting the princess. The growing attraction between the pristine princess and the rugged smuggler erupted in a passionate kiss. As they were pulled apart, Leia felt a sudden compulsion to voice her feelings at this moment of imminent death.
"I love you," she cried.
"I know," Solo replied.
The Empire Strikes Back, 1980

I, like most people, always took this as a sign of the arrogance of the pirate, Han Solo. In recent years I have come to change my opinion largely based on the relationship I have with my best friend of 24 years. We grew up down the street from each other but our troubled teenage years led to his moving to live with his mom about 20 minutes away. This doesn't sound very far now but at 16, with no vehicle, it could have resulted in us never seeing each other again. He started at a new high school and made a new group of friends. Now we can see that this was for the best because we managed to graduate but we could have easily parted ways if we BOTH hadn't worked hard on remaining friends. It must have been at this stage that we learned the value of reciprocation in a relationship. It was never one-sided with one person doing all the travelling or calling, we both made the effort. There was even a short period after high school when we stopped speaking for undisclosed reasons (parents and spouses may be reading this) but the relationship remained. This was like a band that just needed to break up to remind themselves how special the relationship was, eventually we'd be back together. And sure enough, we were.

Nowadays I call him brother rather than friend and I take advantage of his skills and generosity but he knows I'll get him back. Maybe not immediately, but it's coming. I know I owe him. Through it all I don't think we've ever told each other how much we love each other (except in moments of sloppy drunkenness). We just know.

I like to think now that this is what Han Solo was saying. Princess Leia had never told him what he meant to her and she didn't want him to die without knowing. His response was not so much arrogance as confirmation. "I know," you don't even have to say it. I already know. Saying the words can be reassuring to both speaker and listener and I'm not saying that you shouldn't tell people you love them. I'm saying that we should all strive to reach a point where everything we do reminds those special people how much they mean to us. And if in some desperate moment I feel the need to tell my best friend "I love you," I would hope - hell - I would expect his response to be "I know."

Pray to the Odds

When I was a teen and first developing a philosophy of life I was already sure that none of the existing religions would work for me. There were too many people believing too many different things for me to say "This is the definite answer to all the philosophical questions of life." I hadn't actually come into contact with a large number of people with different religious backgrounds (I had a Jewish friend in elementary school) but I seemed to know and understand that people believed different things (did my mom teach me that?). Without any foundation providing a preconceived notion of the universe I just gathered the information around me and made a logical conclusion of how it all worked. The universe is totally random. Some things happened to some people and some things happened to others. There was no ryhme or reason to it, it just happened that way. There was no question of Why?, it just happened that way.

"Why are we here
Because were here
Roll the bones"
Neil Peart
Roll the Bones, 1991

All I questioned was how do the things happen. Well, there's a chance something WILL happen and a chance that it WON'T happen. Two possible outcomes give odds on whether an event will go one way or the other. I believed in odds not gods (I was also very taken with the wordplay in the rhyming of the two words). Many factors influence the outcome that we have no control over so we can only hope that the odds are in our favor. We can't do anything to alter them, all we can do is wait to see how things turn out. It's totally random.

I must also admit that around this same time I was already into challenging what people thought they "knew." I enjoyed saying and doing things that made them think, probably because I knew that I didn't "know" anything so why is everyone walking around so sure of themselves. They just never took the time to ask that vitally important question, Why? Why do I think like this? Why do I act like this? Why do I believe this? This may sound like a lot of deep thinking for a 15/16 year old but I had been getting high on marijuana since I was 13 and I ditched a lot of school which gave me a lot of free time to sit and think (being in my mom's garage still puts me in this mindset).

I was very lucky, and proud, that I did not become one more of the mindless "sheep" roaming the high school halls. Going into junior high I was trying very hard to fit in with my older brother's surfer/skater crowd because I just wanted to be accepted. Within a year, upon entering 8th grade, my oldest brother transformed me into a punk rocker (Thanks, Steve!). Black clothes and spiky hair were rare in 1987 in my school and I really had a chance to stand out. I wasn't like anybody else and it felt good. From then on I knew that I didn't want to be like anybody else. At that crucial stage when I was developing my own identity, I based everything I did on the fact that no one else was doing it (I still do). My identity was defined in opposition to others. I didn't believe in gods just because everyone else did. Show me some evidence, convince me. No one could. I'll believe in my odds, thank you very much.

Do Deeds of Song!

The city of Minas Tirith was burning. Minas Tirith, last bastion in the West, defended by the descendants of the Kings from across the Sea. Sauron, the Dark Lord, had unleashed the full onslaught of his war and the land of Mordor was emptied. The Dark Army filled the Pelennor Fields outside the gates of the city with trenches of fire and engines of war. The people had the will to resist but not the strength. They had called for aid from their allies in the North, the Riders of Rohan. The Mark of Rohan was a kingdom of horsemen who honored the ancient pact of friendship and set out to war following their king, Theoden. But the messenger telling of their coming was killed and the people of Minas Tirith had no idea if the Riders would come. The Riders reached the fields, 6000 strong, just as the great battering ram, Grond, smashed the gates that no enemy had ever passed. With blaring horns, the Riders broke upon the backs of the enemy who were revelling in the fall of the gates. The tide seemed to turn as the Black Captain, the Lord of the Nazgul, was slain, but King Theoden was also killed in the melee. Before he died he passed the crown to his sister-son, Eomer, who became king in the midst of battle. Although they were outnumbered, the ferocity of the Riders still seemed like it might win the day. But lo! coming up the the Great River was a fleet of black ships with black sails carrying more servants of the Enemy. The cause was surely lost with these reinforcements and King Eomer had to make a decision. To run and save his people if he could, or do what had to be done.

"Stern now was Eomer's mood and his mind clear again. He let blow the horns to rally all men to his banner that could come thither; for he thought to make a great shield-wall at the last, and stand, and fight there on foot till all fell, and do deeds of song on the fields of Pelennor, though no man should be left in the West to remember the last King of the Mark. So he rode to a green hillock and there set his banner, and the white horse ran rippling in the wind."
J.R.R. Tolkien
The Return of the King, 1955
The Battle of the Pelennor Fields

How do you react when faced with a challenge? A challenge you can not win? How do you face the everyday challenges of life? All the thankless things that you do just because you know you have to do them?

You stand. And fight. And do deeds of song. Not just the bare minimum. Not just enough. You should strive to do things that others would praise and make songs about if only they knew what you went through. But you do not do it because others will remember and sing of it, you do it because no one will ever know. You do it because you will know. In your heart and mind you will know that you did your best. And that is the only place that anything truly matters.