Current 93 - I Have A Special Plan For This World
When everyone you have ever loved is finally gone,
when everything you have ever wanted is finally done with,
when all of your nightmares are for a time obscured,
as by a shining brainless beacon, or a blinding
eclipse of the many terrible shapes of this world.
When you are calm and joyful and finally entirely
alone. Then in a great new darkness, you will finally
execute your special plan.
One needs to have a plan someone said who has turned
away from into the shadows, and who I had believed was
sleeping or dead.
Imagine he said, all the flesh that is eaten, the
teeth tearing into it, the tongue tasting its savor,
and the hunger for that taste. Now take away that
flesh, he said, take away the teeth and the tongue,
the taste and the hunger, take away everything as it
is. That was my plan. My own special plan for this
world.
I listened to these words and yet I did not wonder, if
this creature whom I had thought sleeping or dead
would ever approach his vision, even in his deepest
dreams, or his most lasting death. Because I had
heard of such plans, such visions, and I knew that
they did not see far enough. That what was demanded,
in the way of a plan, needed to go beyond tongue and
teeth, and hunger and flesh. Beyond the bones and the
very dust of bones and the wind that would come to blow the
dust away. And so I began to envision a darkness that
was long before the dark of night, and a strangely
shining light that owed nothing to the light of day.
That day may seem like other days. Once more we feel the tiny legit trepidations, once more we are mangled by a great grinding fear, but that day will have no others after. No more worlds like this will follow, because I have a plan. A very special plan. No more worlds like this, No more days like that.
There are but four ways to die a sardonic spirit might have said to me: there is dying that occurs relatively suddenly
there is dying that occurs relatively gradually
there is dying that occurs relatively painlessly
there is death that is full of pain
Thus by various means they are combined, the sudden and the gradual, the painless and the painful. To yield with four ways to die and there are no others. Even after the voice stops speaking I listen to it to speak again. After hours and days and years have passed I listen for some further words yet all I heard were the faintest echoes reminding me: there are no others, there are no others. Was it then that I began to conceive for this world a special plan.
There are no means for escaping this world that penetrates even into your sleep and there it's substance. You're caught in your own dreaming where there is no space and held forever where there is no time. You can do nothing what you're not told to do. There is no hope for escape from this dreams that was never yours. The very words you speak are only it's very words and you talk like a traitor under its incessant torture.
There are many who have designs upon this world and dream of wild and vast reformations. I have heard them talking in their sleep of elegant mutations and cunning annihilations. I have heard them whispering in the corners of crooked houses and in the alleys of narrow back streets of this crooking creaking universe. Which they with their new designs made strait and sound, but each of these new and ill-conceived designs is deranged in his heart. For they see this world as if it were alone and original and not as only one of countless others whose nightmares all proceed like a hideous garden grown from a single seed.
I have heard these dreamers talking in their sleep and I stand waiting for them as on the top of a dark and flight of stairs. They know nothing of me and none of the secrets of my special plan, while I know every crooked creaking step of theirs.
It was the voice of someone who was waiting in the shadows, who was looking at the moon and wait for me to turn the corner, and then turn a narrow street and stand with him in the dull glaze of moonlight. Then he said to me, he whispered, that my plan was misconceived that my special plan for this world was a terrible mistake because he said:
"there is nothing to do, and there is nowhere to go
there is nothing to be, and there is no-one to know"
"your plan is a mistake" he repeated.
"This world is a mistake I replied"
The children always followed him when they saw him hopping by. A funny walk. A funny man. A funny funny funny man. He made them laugh sometimes. He made them laugh, oh yes, he did, he did, he did, he did, he did, he did. Oh how he made them roll. One day he took them to a place he knew, a special place. And told them things about this world, this funny funny funny world. Which made them laugh... sometimes. He made them laugh, oh yes he did, he did, he did, he did, he did, he did. Oh how he made them roll. Then the funny little man who made them laugh, sometimes he did, revealed to them his special plan, his very special funny plan. Knowing they would understand and maybe laugh sometimes. He made them laugh, oh yes he did, he did, he did, he did, he did, he did. Their eyes grew wide beneath their lips and how he made them roll.
I first learnt the facts from a lunatic. In a dark and quiet room that
smelled of stale time and space. There are no people, nothing at all like that. The human phenomenon is but the sum of densely coiled layers of illusion each of which winds itself upon the supreme insanity that there are persons of any kind when all there can be are mindless mirrors. Laughing and screaming as they parade about in an endless dream. But when I asked the lunatic what it was that saw itself within these mirrors as they marched endlessly in stale time and space he only rocked and smiled. Then he Laughed and Screamed and in his black and empty eyes I saw for a moment as in a mirror the formless shade of divinity in flight from its stale infinity of time and space and the worst of all of this world's dreams: My Special Plan for the Laughter and the Screams.
We went to see some little show that was staged in an old shed past the edge of Town. And in its beginnings, all seemed well. The miniature curtain stage glowed in the darkness, while those dolls bounced along on their strings, before our eyes. And in its beginnings, all seemed well. But then there came a subtle turning point which some had noticed and I was one, who quietly left the show, though I did not, because I could see where things were going as the antics of those dolls grew strange and the fragile strings grew taut with the tiny pullings of tiny limbs. The others around me became appalled and turned away and abandoned the show that was staged in an old shed past the edge of town. But I wanted to witness what could never be. I wanted to see what would could not be seen: the moment of consummate disaster when puppets turn to face the puppet master.
It was twilight and I stood in the grayish haze of a vast and empty building, when the silence was enriched by a reverberating voice: "All the things that this world," it said," Are of but one essence, for which there are no words. This is the greater part, which has no beginning or end. On the one essence of this world, for which there can be no words, is but all the things of this world, this is the lesser part, which had a beginning and shall have an end. And for which words were conceived solely to speak of the tiny broken beings of this world," it said. "The beginnings and endings of this world," it said, "for which words were conceived solely to speak of. Now remove these words and what remains?" it asked me, as I stood in that twilight of that vast and empty building, but I did not answer. The question echoed over and over. But I remained silent until the echoes died and as twilight past into the evening, I felt my special plan, for which there are no words moving towards a greater darkness.
There are some who have no voices, or none that will ever speak, because the things they know about this world and the things they feel about this world, because the thought that fill a brain that is a damaged brain, because the pain that fills a body that is a damaged body, exist in other worlds, countless other worlds. Each of which that stands alone in an infinite empty blackness for which no words have been conceived and where no voices are able to speak. When a brain is only filled with damaged thoughts, when a damaged body is filled only with pain and stands alone in a world surrounded by infinite empty blackness and exists in a world for which there is no special plan.
When everyone you have ever loved is finally gone,
when everything you have ever wanted is finally done with,
when all of your nightmares are for a time obscured,
as by a shining brainless beacon, or a blinding
eclipse of the many terrible shapes of this world.
When you are calm and joyful and finally entirely
alone. Then in a great new darkness, you will finally
execute your special plan.