The Trash Show,
parts 1 and 2

solo performance-turned-musical

excerpt

I learned a lot of eco- and moral philosophy at my uncle’s knee. [[Mom and Jae’s Interlude]] He’s a squat punk rocker with a shaved head and an ear he once glued back on after a bar fight got out of hand. Nobody knows more about life than my uncle Jae, and he too does not recycle. He says it is because recycling is simply man’s attempt to lengthen and sustain his death-grip on the planet.

JAE: The whole green movement is bogus; the environment would obviously be better off without humans, so the sooner we can landfill ourselves into an early grave, the better.

He would tell me this in our kitchen, quoting Crass and swearing like a sailor. He’s a refugee of the gangs in old Detroit, and he is known to most of his friends as “Hate,” though he has always been Uncle Jason to me. He’s not my real uncle of course; my mom met him when he was performing a midnight satanic ritual in the cemetery across the way from our house. She sensed the presence of his troubled youthful energy, and somehow she set him and his punker friends straight with her white magick. I don’t know the details of the story-- I just know the metaphysical cliff notes version. My mom then became his mentor, philosophical and spiritual guide, and his best friend. As soon as I was born, Jason became my uncle, and my philosophical and spiritual guide.

I admire the heck out of him. Once he told me that:

JAE: Ideologically, you remind me a lot of myself, except that you have faith in people and hope for humanity, and I don’t.

What is that supposed to mean?

JAE: You’re the next generation of anarchist. You could actually make a difference with your ideas. I’m too old and bitter to do anything like that.

Well, if you’re so bitter about it, maybe it’s not worth making a difference. Maybe nihilism is a wise stance to adopt.

JAE: Don’t say that.

Why not? You’re the living embodiment of that idea.

JAE: Yeah, but you don’t want to end up like me.

Oh, you’re just some “do-as-I-say,-not-as-I-do” type of guy? Like every other fucking capitalist hypocrite.

[storms off]

To view The Trash Show in its entirety: