Art Lies, Volume 11, June-September 1996 Page: 8
50 p. : ill. ; 28 cm.View a full description of this periodical.
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Exhuming the Body of God
L et's play a game of virtual
archaeology. We can explore
some real events and conditions
in an entertaining fashion and look at
old things through brilliant new lenses.
Our new technology reveals for us that
which we have always known. Com-
puters have helped us to discover an
ultimate pattern to chaos. Chaos the-
ory tells us there is order even where
the complexity is too great for our
comprehension. This parallels the
vision of ancient man when he sought
order, explanation, and created reli-
gion. God stands at the apex of
ancient wisdom, and his body symbol-
izes the juncture between the intuitive
and the scientific. Though the body of
god is very old, his death is so recent
as to simplify our task of uncovering
him. Our lack of reverence and our
brief memory and attention spans
make his grave a perfect place for
simulated exploration.
In acknowledging the brevity of
our memory, let's set up our game
with a careless romp through recent
Western history. The death of god
under the pens of Nietzsche and Marx
made the modern era possible. With-
out god, we were free to think and act
in ways we considered new and
enlightened. We erected hasty, shiny
new apparatuses above his steaming
corpse, and a general euphoria pre-
vailed. This euphoria was quickly
crunched by our hard new machines
of commerce and war. When the
smoke cleared enough for the shadow
of the bomb to emerge, we quickly
scampered to the surrogates of com-
merce for comfort.
As we have lately discovered, our
surrogates are only rigid, terry cloth
covered structures that may or may
not provide nourishment. These
ragged structures now litter the grave-
site, and identifying and removing
them has been the order of business
for the last thirty years or so. The
lengthy process of clearing the grave
will continue even as we start our dig,
since terry cloth is still being pro-duced. In fact, ever newer and more
plastic creations are waiting to be
moved in over the area already
cleared, adding to our sense of
urgency. Thus we have the back-
ground for our mythic task. We must
begin to dig.
It seems we have begun at the
head of the grave, for our first discov-
ery is a gargantuan skull. This god-
head provided a source of authority.
The vacant eye sockets once beheld
all that we were too small to see. From
this omniscience proceeded laws
which, though confining, at least pro-
vided some necessary limits to our
hyperactivity. We know that a lawless
human is a monster, but even the laws
of divine origin can be used as
weapons. Forgiveness was devised to
mitigate the power of law. This con-
cept resides within our next discovery,
the rib cage.
The rib cage once contained a
heart which had greatly enlarged over
time. This enlarged heart may have
contributed to his death, since religion
and philosophy struggled with the
irreconcilable problem of an all forgiv-
ing entity of love which allowed ran-
dom misfortune and evil to exist. This
was due to the giant misperception of
the triumph of individual will over the
natural course of events. Our slowly
evolving concept of god could not
keep pace with our increased ability
and appetite to manipulate our cir-
cumstances. We should consider the
meaning of our next find in this con-
text.
A great deal of sifting is neces-
sary to uncover the scattered parts of
the hands. These tiny bones are
extremely numerous, indicating an
incredible number of fingers on each
hand. This enabled our god to operate
a vast and powerful network of events
which, although often incomprehensi-
ble, was generally perceived in com-
forting terms of paternal determination
and control. It is here that we once
generally acknowledged our ultimate
lack of control over nature andaccepted a certain sense of humility.
Our most inspired sense of
humility, however, comes from the
towering height of the body. Now we
uncover the leg bones of god which
are impossibly long. At one time he
would stride through the universe, cre-
ating the intervals of time as well as
material existence. At one time sci-
ence found little to support these
ideas, though they made for simplified
comprehension among the masses.
Now it may be seen that these poetic
explanations could have had a modest
insight.
Although we are about to uncover
the last of the physical remains, our
exploration is far from complete. The
feet of the body are still located at the
ends of the legs. They show signs of
extreme wear and degeneration. Sup-
porting the overly large head and
torso with diminished circulation
undermined the capacity of the feet.
The feet did not grow with the body.
Perverse amounts of adulation may
also have weakened the overworked
heels and arches. It should be noted
that the toes have been obliterated by
kisses.
Pull back now and review the
entire skeleton. The most astonishing
fact about these remains is that they
exist in a supernatural state of duality.
The body of god is split apart. We are
forced to acknowledge that we have
been examining only the body of the
Western god. For the purposes of our
study, the bodies will remain in two
distinct forms.
The carnality and materiality of
the Western god brought on his death
considerably earlier than that of the
Eastern god. But the Eastern god suf-
fered from a fatal commercial virus.
His battered body, eyes taped open,
can be found propped up and pho-
tographed with today's newspaper. His
death is kept secret, like a rebel leader
maintained to support the confidence
of the soldiers. Wax effigies of the
Western god are often used in the
same manner. These rotting, meltingArtLie 11 -- -- June - September 1996
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Calledare, Donald. Art Lies, Volume 11, June-September 1996, periodical, June 1996; Houston, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth228042/m1/8/: accessed April 19, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; .