Sometimes, when the lights go down, and the crew is hushed around me like little sheep, and everything is calm, for just a second I can feel the camera's eye like the stern gaze of an impassioned lover. The whole studio feels electric --- like being drunk on Christmas --- and there is this incredible sense of fulfilled expectation--- of throbbing desire mixed with calm repose. It is hard to describe. I guess it's like looking out upon a snow-covered field at dusk in red lingerie.
Then, just before the red light goes on and the director says roll, there is this quiet sussurrus, a whispering in my soul. It is a distinct sensation, halfway between kindness and iniquity.
[Psychiatrist asks if "it" is the desire for fame.]
Now, you listen to me you psychiatric punk, and you listen to me good. We've been over this before, and I am not going to cover this again.
It is not fame. My name is known far and wide in this land of neurotic mothers and steady public television contracts and over-ambitious early childhood education programs. The knowledge of my exploits has been sown broadcast in many kingdoms. If that is how people of your ilk and stature define fame, then I have more fame than you could even dream of. So what I am describing is far from the desire for fame. Oh no no.
It is a glorious stirring, a strange and beauteous hunger. It feels like I am thirsty, but not for anything tangible and obvious like what a person of your low mien is thirsty for--- like wine spritzer or diet root beer. I thirst for something both beautiful and useful, something that could make sophisticated intellectuals cry with reverent happiness in one minute and in the next minute fell the strength of ten strong men.
What do I seek? Certainly not the hopes of "a long and satisfying career." [low cynical laugh] ... ha, ha ha.... what you call 'career' is a convenient but deceitful fiction. It is effective enough at getting the upper middle class out of bed in the morning. But to one such as myself, it remains a lie straight from the darkest hell.
Now, I know what you are thinking. And if you care for your life, you will not dare tell me that this feeling is a repressed desire for love. I will punch you if you say this. I'm not kidding you.
[Psychiatrist states that he does not believe that "it" is love.]
For the longest time, as you know, this desire eluded me in the same way that the study of psychology seems to escape you. And then last week, at the taping, it hit me. These parents, these oppressors, only pay $19.95 plus shipping and handling for Internet orders of my DVDs. And here I am, selling my body to these people--- here I am, pouring out my being in word and image so that their dyslexic children can learn the alphabet --- and what do I get? Below-market rates.
When I think of this, my feelings of futility are endless, like I have spent my whole life herding cats, or teaching blind children to read normally, or orchestrating the collected sheet music of John Cougar Mellencamp. Am I the naked breasts of capitalism fluttering aimlessly in the breezes of progress? Or am I a red chemise of exploitation covered with rainwater beside the white chickens?
Both. I am both.
But then that moment comes. The lights go down. The crew is hushed. The eyes of the camera are trained upon me. And the feeling comes, that hopeful stirring. And I know what it is.
I need to charge these bastard parents more.
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