I am stolid stoic at best; and I would disdain to conceal my views and aims among the exuberant zealots, passionate politicians, blustering bureaucrats. Let them tremble at this ambivalence; I do not edit the histories, I do not abridge morality, I do not prioritize peoples.
I would tell you that I believed in nothing, but even that is too firm, too concrete, too ethical. Call it heartless, spineless or drudgery; I simply do not have the strength or the obliviousness to form an ethos; so I would like to assume the title of an Idiot.
In this Idiot’s estimation, there were only two men who ever saw humanity for what it was, William Shakespeare and Karl Marx. This is a composition on the Armenians and since neither are Armenian or alive; an Idiot’s perspective will have to suffice. I’ll speak in anecdotes, and if I am vague or confusing...than you can either pass my title to yourself or strengthen my holding.
On the Armenian Church, I have very little understanding, perhaps that means I hold I rather strong understanding. Maybe it is because I am an Idiot (not Marx or Shakespeare), but I never saw why anyone would hold this faith. However, the reason for my confusion isn’t quite apparent. The years of murder, disease, massacre, genocide, tyranny, disease that have been inscribed in Armenian history have the genetics of divinity written in scruples.
The Armenians are something like a stabbing victim who thanks the dagger; perhaps a floating dagger. The closest encounter I ever heard of to an Armenian run-in with the afterlife was an old Sparapet named Vasak Mamikonian. Vasak might have had an iron will or a fervent cause, but a few missteps led to him being flayed by the Persians around 350 AD. Flaying involved carving off his skin, while alive, then filling it with hay. I figure that should hurt something awful. I would have to imagine an event like that to be pretty close to a dance with the devil. Fears make us traitors; but I’d respect that faith.
So that’s my stake in the Church (or the Opium fields). Perhaps were all no better for having heard the incorrigible ranting of a second hand sophist. But since this is my hour upon the stage, I will continue to be a poor player with the understanding that I outlined that earlier. Let me speak on the kissing cousins or inbred sisters or whatever repulsive relation deemed suitable, but I would say nationalism and religion would share that disgusting relation.
Some time in the early twentieth century, there was a Soviet Union that emerged. Though Shakespeare never birthed a society, Marx did and from his criticisms of nationalism, they simply formed an overwhelming one. This was outstanding and wonderfully successful venture; and my second story is about an Armenian film director Sergei Parajanov. He would make films that if you perhaps showed to 500 people, maybe nine would understand, and eight would be lying. Anyway, his films were far too inciting for Soviet strife; take for instance Sayat Nova, which brilliantly chose to rouse the normally conservative Armenian people by citing one of its most famous bards as a homosexual. Or the way he drove to the Armenians to the brink of revolution when he concocted Ashik Kerib...a movie which featured no spoken dialogue. Surely this was the kind of broad reaching banter that would bring the Soviet ideology to a shattering collapse. So in 1973, Parajanov received a most suitable five year prison sentence for "the rape of the communist party" and all his sound and fury.
I should pause before I dwindle even further. If these anecdotes came off as cunning, perhaps it is because I have held too convenient a stance. To sit on a ubiquitous, yet intangible perch, and bruise those who stand firm. But what more could you expect from a tale told by an idiot, full of struts and frets. An Idiot, and a hypocrite to be accurate...Marx, being one of my two recommendations, yet spawning my second story. My intentions were always this irrelevant; as I said, I come from no ethos, no belief, no morality. I think we would all be willing to accept that deduction; or perhaps, only the truly telling tales...are the ones that signify nothing.
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