Faith can endure centuries of failure.
Even though so many of his ancestors had unsuccessfully tried to kill me, King Vikram hauled me on to his back and said, “Today’s the day I kill you, you foul vampire.”
-If you must, O’ King, I said charitably. “Before you do that, let me tell you a story, at the end of which I’ll ask you a question. If you speak the answer, I’ll fly away. If you know the answer and keep silent, your head will burst into a thousand pieces, in which case you will find it impossible to bite your fingernails properly.”
-Hummph, said King Vikram.
-Listen up O’ King, I said. Arvind was a young boy in the city of Chennai in India. He wasn’t a mature person, I regret to say. Why do I say that? Because he argued frequently with the girl he dated.
His girlfriend once said that eggs were white with yellow centers. He argued right back insisting that eggs were in fact yellow with white circumferences. His girlfriend once said, Oh look at that swan, it was once an ugly duckling. Arvind laughed. He said, Ugly ducklings live and die ugly. They never get become beautiful swans.
Once, he and his girlfriend saw a video of Kurt Cobain playing Where Did you Sleep Last Night.
Arvind told his girlfriend that in this age of rampant commercialism, Kurt Cobain was an authentic singer. His girlfriend disagreed. She said that if Kurt Cobain was really a 100% authentic, he would sing not Where Did You Sleep Last Night, but a song called Sweat, Oh Sweat, Under the Lights.
Blasphemy against God was forgivable. Blasphemy against Nirvana was idiocy. Arvind promptly broke up with his girlfriend.
Tell me O’ King, I said. What did his girlfriend mean when she said Sweat, Oh Sweat, Under the Lights. And was Arvind justified in breaking up with her?
-Arvind was an idiot, said King Vikram. His girlfriend was completely right. Over the years, human beings have been increasingly caught up in the notion of authenticity. But authenticity is in itself more a condition to aspire towards. It is a desire rather than an actual state. If Kurt Cobain was100% authentic, he would have at that very moment sung about it being so hot and sweaty under the glaring studio lights. The correct word I would use to describe Kurt Cobain would be “sincere”. As a species, sincerity is something that we can all aspire to. It is a more meaningful and fulfilling notion than some imagined concept of authenticity.
-Well spoken, O’ King, I said. But now that you have spoken, I will fly away. As I flew away, I thought of Kurt Cobain. The man was sincere as hell and I doubt if you could find a talent like him in heaven.
