SO IT’S A RAINY DAY IN PITTSBURGH, AND I SIT IN BED IN THE BUS GAZING OUT OF THE WINDOW AT A COUPLE OF MUSTARD SUSPENSION BRIDGES THAT FLOAT OVER A MUD BROWN RIVER. I CAN SEE THE MODERN BALLPARK OF THE Pittsburgh Pirates and a little farther downstream the stadium where the Steelers play. We are parked outside the Byham Theater and I have nothing much to do all day except read and sneeze and give exciting interviews. Our team has been magnificent. Every one of them. We have been working very hard on the road shifting this show from city to city, and I have to say I don’t know how they do it. We drive into town overnight and set up a complete show in about six hours: that’s set, sound, lighting, props, instruments, merchandise, and wardrobe. We stage a full two-hour musical review, sign merch for at least half the audience, and then pack the whole thing up and hit the road within an hour and a half of the curtain falling. It’s incredible, really. People are looking a little tired, but their spirits are magnificent. Gilli is irrepressible. Skip can work twenty-nine hours a day and then say, “You know, I had a really great day.” They have used the Internet to organize “street teams” of fans to spread posters and leaflets around their local towns. I am breathless with admiration. And gratitude. If I had an extra ration of rum I’d break it out.
I used to say when I lived in France that the meaning of life was to find a decent plumber, which I eventually did, though he turned out to be Dutch. Now I think it is to surround yourself with people who are better than you are at what they do. And I am a very fortunate man. I am a fortunate man with a cold, alas. I woke up streaming. I suppose that’s the drawback of too much audience contact. But I do like meeting the audience after the show. They are touching and tender and affectionate.
I am an Alzheimer’s agnostic. I can’t remember whether I don’t believe in anything or not.
I am enjoying my friend Bruce Wagner’s new Hollywood novel Still Holding. It’s very funny and beautifully written, though it makes me slightly anxious, reminding me of the nutty place in which I live, but then I always think of myself as living in California and not Hollywood, which is a bit saner. The book is about celebrity. He writes about both look-alikes and real stars. Cameron Diaz and Drew Barrymore both feature, and the central character is clearly based on Richard Gere: a Buddhist movie star with a charming smile, although hopefully with a different story line, since Kit Lightwood is casually bashed on the head by a vindictive fan and undergoes severe trauma. The book is also a discussion, and a very erudite one, about the arcane world of Buddhism, and it reminds me that though I claim onstage to be a bullshit Buddhist I am really nothing of the sort.
It’s the hierarchies of heaven that bother me. All those lost souls waiting to swim into the vagina to be reborn. Who runs all that? And it’s the same with the western religions; it’s the sheer size of the bureaucracy required to monitor everyone’s behavior every second that bothers me. Why would anyone go to all that trouble? Why not just let them die and have DNA modify behavior over time? Both Eastern and Western philosophies seem to believe in the perfectibility of the individual soul, the one through reincarnation and the other through rebirth in Heaven. The Hindu goal is to escape the misery of rebirth, but I never really understood what was quite so bad about living in human form on this planet. The Christians, similarly, want us miserable sinners to escape from this vale of tears and sit in Heaven enjoying milk and honey. Well I quite like it here. I think it’s quite good, don’t you? Yes, we fuck up, but wouldn’t you rather be here than sitting around for eternity on a diet of milk and honey (yuck) surrounded by the self-righteous? I like a nice miserable sinner now and again.
I am a lapsed anti-Catholic.
I have to confess that I am a praying atheist. Each morning before I do my yoga I invoke the five major religions of the planet: Christianity (Lord’s Prayer), Buddhism (Om mane padme), Hinduism (Hare Krishna), Judaism (Shalom), and Islam (Allahu Akhbar). But who do I think I’m talking to? Is this just superstition? They can’t all be right, can they? Religions are ancient attempts by mankind to come to grips with some of the great moral questions of life, as we evolved from our animal state and before we had any clear idea of what was going on in the universe. I don’t wish to be circumscribed by two-thousand-year-old philosophical ideas any more than I would want to be cured by two-thousand-year-old medical practices or be forced to agree with the scientific ideas of Nought B.C. So, why am I here?
Why are we here?
What’s life all about?
Is God really real?
Or is there some doubt?
Tonight we’re going to sort it all out
For tonight it’s the Meaning of Life.