An Interview With God

by Akim Reinhardt

3QD: The old cliché about a guest needing no introduction never seemed more apt. So instead of me introducing you to our readers, maybe you could begin by telling us a little bit about yourself, perhaps something not so well known, a little more revealing.

God: I am, I am.

3QD: Indeed. But what about your early years? We don’t often hear much about your childhood. What was it like to emerge from nothingness? Or did you precede nothingness, first creating the void and then all of the somethings that filled it up? Or, as some speculate, were you and the great nothingness one and the same? Did you, personally, go from nothing to everything?

God:

3QD: Perhaps too difficult to talk about. We’ll let that be. Nonetheless, you quite literally burst onto the scene, creating everything in 6 days. I don’t think it’s worth getting into your sense of time versus human constructions of time, but whether it was six of our days, or six of yours which might be billions of our solar years, it was a phenomenal debut in the truest sense. Bigger than Elvis’ first single, the Beatles first album, or Justin Bieber’s first YouTube video. More gravitas than Shakespeare’s first play, Henry V, Part II. More charisma than Julie Andrews’ screen debut in Mary Poppins. Scarier, in many ways, than Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, which she wrote when she was just 19. Better received by the public than Gary Coleman’s turn as Arnold “What’chu talkin’ about, Willis” Jackson on Dff’rent Strokes. More disorienting, in many ways, than Joseph Heller’s Catch-22. Some would even say more impressive than Orson Welles’ screen directing/acting debut, Citizen Kane, which he pulled off when he was almost inconceivably young, only 25 years old. But here you were, creating the entire universe and everything in it as your first known work of art. How did you handle that? Were you able to maintain a sense of normality, or, like so many young artists who receive so much fame and praise so quickly, did it damage your sense of self or impede how you related to others?

God: Read more »

Monday, February 9, 2015

This Essay Is Not About American Sniper

by Akim Reinhardt

American SniperI was gonna write something about the Clint Eastwood film American Sniper. Seems like a topic of the Now. Something the internetting public can really grab onto and scream about.

Clint Eastwood: Sentimental warmonger, or artist of more nuance than leftists and pacifists can discern?

U.S. sniper Chris Kyle: Troubled war veteran of humble origins whose experiences are a sharp prism for viewing America's exploitative class divides and tragic foreign policy, or a remorseless, racist killing machine who's murderous life and violent death reflect much of what's wrong with the nation?

That kinda thing. People love that sort of stuff. Gets ‘em all jacked up, clickety-click. Plus, I just saw the movie and have some ideas of my own. But you know what?

Fuck it.

I don't wanna talk about moral ambiguity. I don't wanna dissect global politics. I don't wanna filter through the finer shades of artistic vision, intention, and reception. I don't wanna delve into any of those abstractions. I don't wanna tap society's pulse and jump on the topic du jour. You know why?

Because life is meaningless.

As I sit down in front of this keyboard, I can't bring myself to care about what 3QD readers want or would enjoy reading. I can't be bothered to speculate on what type of essay might once again garner me a citation by Andrew Sullivan's Daily Dish or land me back in the Huffington Post.

None of that matters. Because nothing matters. Nothing at all.

Meaning and truth are just illusions that humans chatter about incessantly because they can't stomach the sheer meaninglessness of it all.

The Earth is a snowball of cosmic debris. The possibility of life on it is a longshot accident that came in like a broken down nag in the 10th race at Aqueduct Racetrack in Queens (a real dump if you've never been). To consider the evolution of single cell floaters into multi-cell life forms is a far more boring prospect than even the droning monotone of the dullest high school biology teacher could suggest. Just that jump took over two and half billion years.

The rest of it? Some dinosaurs, some meteorites, some mammals, and us.

Read more »