Laughter cured my depression over the course chosen of free will by civilization at the onset of the twentieth century. Laughing, I felt free, released, uncaged for the first time since I became the immortal Pi. I was not free, of course, not yet; but it felt that way. This made me happy. I was on a roll. I was in 'the zone'. I was ready to rock. The times, they would be achanging; the world, she would be aturning ugly over the course of the next twenty years, hence I demurred, erring on the side of the beautiful aesthetic. Gods create beautiful things, crafted in the fires of the sublime Qualitative Dynamic, or they create nothing at all. Period. Ugliness, on the other hand, is typically a mortal, mundane, mediocre attempt to create something beautiful, is normally nothing more than a half-hearted stab in the dark at the divine. True, I'd created the demon Hitler; however all I'd only enlightened him, which is beautiful no matter what the outcome in and of itself. Hitler's elevation to rank and power came strictly from mortal wonts and whims, and nothing else. If not him, as I said, someone else would have stolen the stage. The world clammored for a good fight, and Hitler would give it to them. Hitler was rising to power now, as Germany rebuilt after the fall of the Kaiser Wilhelm and World War One. Einstein had flown Germany and taken relativity with him. Gandhi was in India, spinning his wheel and speaking the truth. Dali painted truth hidden in the wraps of the sublime. Humanity was moving along in the only direction it knew, simultaneously moving towards ultimate eternal existence and total anhiliation. Forward never straight, evolves fractal-like life. Civilization would, in the next two decades, walk up to the edge of the abyss, spit, and realize their full, free-willed potentiality for extinction. They would call this 'progress', as usual. To say the least, things would be turning vulgar with the barbarians at the gate and the bureaucrats at the helm, and vice versa. Indeed. The world required the sensual touch of a beautiful woman to bring them to their senses, required the fragrance of the finest flowered petals, silken-soft and sultry to soothe the beastial wail of their weltanschuang angst rising like the blood pressure of a Catholic pope caught midst the throes of a Pagan fest. The industrial world was giddy with power, would grow giddier as time passed, would damn near blow themselves to Kingdom Come, all in all, merely to prove a point, merely to prove who was the biggest rooster in the barnyard, so to speak. 'King of the Dunghill', the mortal expression goes, enscribed in stone in the collective consciousness like an epitaph on a dead king's sarcophagas. This was a 'male' thing, of course. With this in mind, I materialized in Los Angeles, California in 1929 fully beset upon the creation of a Goddess. Although intelligent, enlightened and a brunette, she would be best known for being a ditzy, blonde 'bombshell'. Again, this was a male thing. When I came upon her, aged 3.14 years, her name was Norma Jean Mortenson. She would be known to the world, however, under the moniker Marilyn Monroe, would be far and away the most aesthetically pleasing avatar I would create. Throughout history women have managed to make marks in an otherwise male-dominated game. Women like Joan of Arc, Beryl Markum, Amelia Earhart, Madame Marie Curie, and so on, have earned the respect of patriarchical historians. These dilligent souls were dedicated to greatness, to rightousness, to excellence, were beset upon their inclusion into civilization's Hall of Fame. And they made it. It required Marilyn's wonderful wiggly swagger and childlike beauty, however, to really get their attention. Civilized society, afterall, was crafted entirely around the designs of horny, mediocre men, otherwise known as the Ruling Classes. Humanity collectively accepted the concept. This was Humanity's first Great Mistake. There would be others, of course. Up through the twentieth century, though, the only way for a woman to really garner the collective attention of the World of Men was this: Sex. Aphrodite, she knew this, and made the best of an ugly thing. Sapientia knew, as well, yet ultimately opted for a good book instead of an orgy. She grew old in peace, and relative obscurity. She was wise. What a woman! This path of wisdom was not to be Norma Jean's, I'm sorry to say. Like Aphrodite, like the Wiccan witches of Welsh and Salem, like Joan of Arc, her demise would be brutal and violent and brought about by the hands of mortal males. And why? Because beautiful, intelligent women intimidate ignorant men. As does anything else they fear, for that matter. As I said, I laughed like mad, in lieu of sobbing. _ _ _ Los Angeles was a jungle, even in 1929. And as I had looked out of place in Springfield, so here did I fit right in. Ragged prophets, wild-eyed mystics, winos, junkies, hookers, eccentric millionaires and anal retentive Victorians all crammed together, ready to slit each other's throats, that was L.A., then as now. The clothes were different, the city a little less polluted, but otherwise it was business as usual. Without a doubt, this was a period monstrous upheaval in Los Angeles, and in every other urban hub, as well. Prohibition was failing miserably, the gangs ran wild in the streets meeting the enourmous demand for bootlegged liquor, the St. Valentine's Day Massacre happened in Chicago -- things were going sour. Then as now. The states were in a state of near insanity, exhausted from the strain, the social tension brought on by the rhetoric of staid Victorians, who held not the slightest notion of why they did what they did, but they did it anyway in the name of 'virtue', and a queen they'd never known, this Victorianism lay at the foundation, juxtaposed at the jugular against the rhetoric of intellectuals, who were more angry than enlightened. They were angry because the Victorians had tried to subjegate their craft to fit its rigid social standards. This prospect didn't set very well, and after the end of the World War One, the exhausted Victorians had given the helm to the Intellects. This wasn't helping, either. The intellects were building a bureaucracy the called the Great Society. Bureaucracy remains the ultimate ugliness of all human creations. Soon the stock market would crash, Wallstreet would fall deep into a great black trough, there would be a run on the banks, and the Great Depression would begin. Indeed, America needed something beautiful. And I found that something, that someONE, sitting at her mother's feet on a brightly beaming summer afternoon there in The City of Angels. Her mother was hanging the washing out to dry. The soft white linens and cotton dresses billowing in the wind, the little girl sat there, legs extended, pretty pink dress, playing in the lush Kentucky Blue Grass, which was green, of course. I held the penny in my hand as I approached the two there on the lawn. "You've a lovely daughter, Mrs. Mortenson," I said. She turned and looked at me. She saw an older man, tall, with curly white hair, blue eyes and copper-colored skin, smilling the smile of the clearest azsure sky. She looked at me curiously for a moment, suspiciously sizing me up, then returned the smile. "Thank you, sir," she said, "but how do you know my name?" "The mailbox told me," I said. "I see." I knealt at the little girl's side and looked into her eyes. She was a goddess in the making, even then. She was divine. "What's your name?" I asked. She looked sheepish, said nothing. "Norma Jean," her mother said, "she's shy." "A shiny penny for the shy and beautiful Norma Jean," I said, placing the coin in the palm of her outstretched hand, "to bring you luck." She closed her hand around the penny, became a goddess by and by. The change was so subtle that her mother took no notice, went about hanging the washing. We shared a brief, silent moment together there, Marilyn and I. "Good morning, Marilyn, Mistress of Love and Desire. Arise and blow eternal kisses to the silver screen dawning of the oncoming era! Show the world lucid sensuality. Illume the lavendar light of loving's grace, pure, pristine and primordial in a world run amok. Give them what they came here for. Show them how the story goes -- what makes them hot, what gives them the itch and the irresistable desire to scratch it. Madame Marilyn of the Cosmic Grind and Shimmy, make them love, not war. Carry the weight of the Woman's Burden as though it were a canary feather across the threshold of the divine. Marilyn soft and saintly, Marilyn fresh and fine, find the others incarnate, give them respite and reverie, and forever remain my wife, wholly united, one in mind, one in love, one in the harmonic resonance immortal. As our love for one another knows no limits, so run the depths of love in life and living. Show them loving for its own sake. Loving as opposed to war. Loving as one true path of rightousness. Loving as the ultimate unison, loving leading to grace and wisdom, loving living learning light. Marilyn, diva divine, quell the fears inside them, and with sad whispsers and shy kisses lead them gently from the night," I said, bid her mother good day to took my leave of the little girl sitting there on the lawn, staring Pi-eyed at the sky. It was beautiful. Beautiful, but I had yet to get over that moment of leaving my incarnates so quickly after incarnation. Beautiful, yet I wanted to stay with them, nurture them, answer their questions, kin to kinder, father to child. That was never to be, however, because the questions were answered in the ascension. There remained only understanding, which is entirely an individual effort. Each and every human holds in their skullcap the hardware to realize 'immortality'. They call this hardware a 'brain'. The brain is a transmitter and receiver, ultimately, just like a radio. My job has been to simply alter the frequency. Immortality, as I said, boils down to the quantum harmonic chromodynamic resonation, and the human brain's relationship to it. With focus, humans can learn to 'adjust' the frequency, the sensitivity of their mind, as one adjusts the knob and finds a favorite radiostation. The trick is to learn to use it. Your mind, that is. Radios are easy. Your mind is easy, too. Simply enough, it takes practice, patience and concentration. You think and you think and you think and then one day WHAM! Youunderstand. Then you choose a frequency of your own volition. It's that simple. Wake up! Wake up! Wake up! _ _ _
In the dim-lit corridors of creativity, where shadows dance with the echoes of forgotten dreams, Kevin M. Cowan weaves a tapestry of sound and silence, ink and code. His words, like whispers in the night, unravel the mysteries of the human condition, while his melodies linger like the haunting refrain of a lost song. As a technologist, he crafts digital realms where the past and future collide, each keystroke a ghostly imprint on the fabric of time. In this noir tapestry, Cowan stands as both the architect and the wanderer, forever seeking the elusive truth hidden in the spaces between the notes and the lines.
Kevin M. Cowan is a writer, technologist, and artist whose work spans novels, AI development, drumming, and filmmaking. From his fiction roots in Nebraska to experimental media projects and cutting-edge AI, Kevin blends storytelling, sound, and code into one creative continuum. Explore his world — one story, rhythm, and idea at a time.
Music. Video. Visuals arts. All composed or curated by Kevin.
Neo, Archive Guide
