BRAD PITT: Lock the back door of your soul. Keep out the bad guys.
T.S. ELIOT: No. I don’t think that’s what matters. If you’re indeed awake, and you know, if you’re among the Carpathians, well, that’s just something you’ve got to deal with. Rouse thyself, you know? Fight the good fight. Keep up the…
BRAD PITT: Bullshit. That’s nothing but flighty propaganda produced by a naïve sense of entitlement and righteousness.
T.S. ELIOT: Riiiii…chus, dude.
BRAD PITT: Fuck you. Ok. Now. If I go floundering off to war, and you know, I get myself all tangled up in some pretty serious-cum-life-threatening situation, you know, well, I’m at fault really, right? I’ve put myself in the so-called line of fire, and, you know, it’s not fair to blame something else, even if, you know, even if that something else is the state, and, you know, the state started this whole damn thing, you know.
T.S. ELIOT: I do? If I already know then why are you telling me?
BRAD PITT: Fuck. Seriously. Do you ever listen? Or just wait for your turn to speak?
T.S. ELIOT: I’m not sure. Anyway. What if you didn’t have a choice in this whole going-off-to-war scenario? What if the state that started the whole damn thing made you go? Are you at fault for being born in the state? You can’t control where it was you happened to have been born…you know.
BRAD PITT: That doesn’t matter. You’ve enjoyed the products of the state. You’ve reaped the benefits of citizenship. Your life was made what it is by the happenstance of you being born in the state.
T.S. ELIOT: So you owe them your life? That’s some real inconsiderate crapola.
BRAD PITT: That doesn’t matter.
T.S. ELIOT: You’re really fond of that phrase, aren’t you?
BRAD PITT: When Ceasar calls, you listen or you die.
T.S. ELIOT: But beware the Ides of March.
BRAD PITT: Okay. Now you’re just being silly.
T.S. ELIOT: True. But it gets me a long ways in this society.
BRAD PITT: Being funny?
T.S. ELIOT: Yeah. People appreciate a good joke.
BRAD PITT: That wasn’t really that funny, you know.
T.S. ELIOT: I do. But, you know what I’m saying. There is a high price our society will pay for good humor. A comedian is highly regarded. The kid who can make the other kids crack up on the playground. The guy in the back of the class being clever and witty. The charming dude who makes the girls laugh. People want to be entertained, to have a good time, and people love to laugh. Anyone who can make them laugh will be very rich.
BRAD PITT: That must be why you never have any cash.
T.S. ELIOT: Could be. I don’t know. When I was a kid I was pretty funny. I don’t know what happened. Maybe I’ll stage a comeback.
BRAD PITT: Like when you tried saying, “out of this world,” all the time, you know, trying to make other people start saying it too. Like it would catch on and become the next big thing. How’d that work out for you?
T.S. ELIOT: Ahem. No. Not like that. I bet you I could be funny if I wanted to. I’ve always admired Groucho Marx, you know that? Even had him and his brood over for dinner once. I could be entertaining, become the laugh of the party. Make them guffaw in the aisles.
BRAD PITT: Sometimes the things you say are just way too non-sequiturish for me.
T.S. ELIOT: That’s a matter of taste. The bile of my moods spills indigo. The courtroom of my headaches holds water like a cactus. There is no more room for us in forever. Crepes are shit.
BRAD PITT: Is this you trying to be funny? Because it ain’t going over too well, buddy.
T.S. ELIOT: Seriousness will not do.
BRAD PITT: Oh god. Not that again. Don’t start talking about carving from fresh marble. Please. I beg you. Be funny!
T.S. ELIOT: So, well, you see, there’s this guy, and, well, this here guy, well, um, he’s got this seeing-eye dog, and…wait…oh yeah, so, this guy, well he’s this blind guy, and he’s…no…so this guy here, well, he’s my uncle, my blind uncle, and he’s got this dog, you see, and…
BRAD PITT: Ah. You are FUCKING RUINING this joke!
T.S. ELIOT: Hey. Don’t get all CAPS on my ass. My funny bone hasn’t been exercised in a long time. It’s damn rusty.
BRAD PITT: On your ass? Funny bone? None of that makes any fucking sense. Come on man. Give it another go. I want to hear Mr. Seriousness-Will-Not-Do be funny. Just the thought of you trying to be funny is actually quite humorous.
T.S. ELIOT: Really? Maybe that’ll be my shtick. I’ll be this super-serious, straight-faced guy who tries to be funny, but isn’t, and in the process of trying to be funny, and failing at it, makes people laugh.
BRAD PITT: Sorry man. I think Andy Kaufman beat you to that a long time ago. But nice try. Just tell the fucking joke. I want to hear you do it correctly. I’ll be the judge of your funniness.
T.S. ELIOT: Who the fuck are you to judge me?
BRAD PITT: I am the world. I am the children. I am the one who makes a brighter day so…
T.S. ELIOT: Ok. Ok. Stop. I’ll tell the fucking joke.
BRAD PITT: Yippee!
T.S. ELIOT: The sun is its own music.
BRAD PITT: Wha…?
T.S. ELIOT: Sorry. Just warming up. Ok. So I’ve got this uncle who’s blind. And he’s got a seeing-eye dog that’s totally blind. They don’t go anywhere.
BRAD PITT: Ugh. That was terrible. You are really bad at this joke telling. Maybe you should try some physical comedy. Or just do imitations or something. Can you talk with an accent?
T.S. ELIOT: Well yousa sees, I a jus, well, isa like dis, jes?
BRAD PITT: Well, that rules that out. I guess maybe seriousness will have to do for you.
T.S. ELIOT: Wow. I feel bad. Real bad. There’s nothing left to do. I’m a lost cause.
BRAD PITT: We could argue politics.
T.S. ELIOT: Nah. I’m too tired. The piano of my dreams is out of tune. The hardware of my life is busted. I’m bored. I’m ill at ease. I’m discontented but too lethargic to do anything about it.
BRAD PITT: Why don’t you whine about it?
T.S. ELIOT: Sure. I could make a cup of coffee. I could ingest amphetamine tablets, preferably those of the high-dose XR variety, and I could sip on the lees of my thoughts six ways from Sunday, and I could talk until my brain goes on vacation, and I could placate my desires with false representations of myself, and I could will away my will power, and I could never sleep again. But who cares? I don’t. So why should anybody else?
BRAD PITT: Because, because, because, because…of all the blankety blank things he does.
T.S. ELIOT: Thanks for not swearing around me. I am very delicate when it comes to such matters.
BRAD PITT: Has anyone ever called you a bemoaner before? That’d be a good appellation for you. The Bemoaner. What a sobriquet.
T.S. ELIOT: Thou think I doth make plaints too many?
BRAD PITT: Thou dost plaint much my good sir, but tis too? In sooth, only He on highest can think it so.
T.S. ELIOT: Ah fuck. Fuck it. Really. Just fuck everybody. Every last sonofabitch alive. Fuck ‘em all!
BRAD PITT: Right on brother. We must fight against the dying of the light. Rage! Topple over daisies! Do not ever refrain! Well, except when maybe going kind of sort of gentle into that good old proverbial night. Then maybe add a dash of posey to your whimsical nature. Ahem. I mean, ahem.
T.S. ELIOT: That’s not a real sound that people make: ahem. I’ve never heard anyone do that. It’s like some kind of literary device or something. What the fuck is with that? Seriously. It’s fucking annoying.
BRAD PITT: You’re one pissed off guy right now, you know that?
T.S. ELIOT: That’s because you are pissing me off! And I’m not in the best of moods anyways….and the drugs are not helping…they’re like intensifying everything, and things seem like way more of a big deal then the should be, and I’m fucking TRIPPING FUCKING BALLS HERE FOR CHRISTSAKE!
BRAD PITT: Wow. Caps. It must be the psilocybin talking. I knew I shouldn’t have let you eat that whole omelet.
T.S. ELIOT: If I cannot dictate the means of my employment I will henceforth cease to work. Tie all compound words to the traintracks until they relent, until they give up their ghost and...
BRAD PITT: Train tracks is two words my friend.
T.S. ELIOT: Fuck!! The sound of the color of your voice has dozens of halos around it, and there is light in music, there is forgetting in my memories…I cannot make distinctions. I do not have to exist.
BRAD PITT: Ok. Calm down. Let us find a safe place to exist in.
T.S. ELIOT: La…la deed dah…la dee-motherfucking….DAH!
BRAD PITT: Get a grip my good man. We will make piecemeal of the stars.
T.S. ELIOT: Ah. I am melting into the environment. I am the landscape.
BRAD PITT: Yes. Yes. That is more like it.
T.S. ELIOT: I’ve stopped wondering about the way this all will unfold. Death is not the end.
BRAD PITT: At last. At long last. Just a way to stop worrying, to put a lid on the boiling pot of anxiety, to wreck the ruin of whatever you’ve got left of the memory of her eyes, to be left alone, to be smoothed out and well-rested and made capable of easiness.
T.S. ELIOT: This is not like anything.
BRAD PITT: The murmuring susurrations of vividly alive verdurous flora unpunctuated by any rhythm except the flowery flyways of masterfully artless alertness held in the comforting helping hands of a power higher than high could ever imagine.
T.S. ELIOT: Commas are for pussies.
BRAD PITT: Damn straight. Now we are finally getting somewhere. They’ll be pie in the sky when you…
T.S. ELIOT: There are atrocities in the light bulbs. A mistake in the grammar of lucidity leaves the forswearing to the laws of chance. I am the sandwich’s ham without the cheese. I am a lone letter in some abecedarian lovelorn diction without an alphabet to go home to. I am footsteps without ground. I am loose change. I am the scrunch between the tying skin of Siamese twins.
BRAD PITT: Not the end.
T.S. ELIOT: Not the end.
BRAD PITT & T.S. ELIOT: Death is not the end.
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