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KEN (quietly): Are we on air?
CLARENCE (shakes his head at KEN, cuts off the song and commences the broadcast): Good evening, Ken... (Stops short.)
KEN: Good evening.
CLARENCE: I mean, eh... Good evening, residents of Ken! Good evening ladies and gentlemen... (Falters again.) Today it appears I’ll be hosting an unusual broadcast of which you all were warned just a moment ago. For those of you who would like to see us live, I’m streaming this broadcast on my YouTube channel Mount Joy Jazz Room. I’m not taking any calls during this broadcast, so, please, follow the link in the message, join the chat, leave your comments and questions, we’ll discuss them later on. Today, as those of you, who are already joining us on YouTube, can see, we have a special guest! It’s the man of the day, Mr. Ken, a doctor from Brisbane, his timely information led Sergeant Platt to the capture of Ira Kelly, aka Mr. Hate, this afternoon at Judy Nelson’s house. Mr. Ken, as he told me, came here to make a testimony before the people of his namesake city. Please, proceed, Mr. Ken,.. the jury is yours.
KEN: Thank you, your honour. Good evening, everybody.
(Pauses. CLARENCE silently prompts KEN to continue talking.) Thank you, CLARENCE. My testimony will not be about psychopath Kelly or myself, it will be about you, it will concern every one of three hundred and forty-four residents of Ken, children and parents, men and women, black and white, all equally. (Pauses again.) I have imagined this talk a thousand times and never figured out the right words I should say to you to make you believe me, to make you listen to me. So, listen to me, Ken, listen to me carefully. You see, we live our lives, love, hate, desire, aspire, despair, achieve, fail, help, hurt, give birth and die.., die inevitably and die senselessly.., whatever we do, the outcome of life is death. Let us admit it: life makes little sense to people who don’t know the answer to this one question ‘What is death?’. And senseless activities never bring satisfaction. All religions, philosophies, arts and sciences have been humanity’s desperate attempts to make sense of life by trying to fit a key to this ultimate puzzle ‘What is death?’, and everything else, apart from philosophical searches for the everlasting soul within our flesh, arts and sciences, has been humanity’s equally desperate attempt to cover up, to screen off the eternal failure in finding this answer. If you knew, if only you knew for sure what lies beyond death, what awaits you there on the other side, if you felt at heart that here is the true answer like two times two equals four, who of you would go on acting as he or she has done up to this point?! You would be set free all at once.., you would never again in your life feel fear and doubt; fear and doubt, these two
constant companions of each of you, they are the shackles
on your legs, the poison in the cup of life, the needle sitting in your hearts: every time you try to take a full breath of the joy of life, this needle gives you piercing pain at which you instantly shrink back and breathe out and check yourself. This needle arrests in midflight your every joy, every venture, every good impulse, and you think, ‘How can I be so glad, so bold, so naive!?’ Joy will pass, youth will pass, there will be sorrow, illness, loss, loneliness, disability and finally your own death, which will put a stop, and for many even a sudden stop, to all your aspirations. And the worst part is that there’re a few billion live examples before your eyes proving to you this point. You can’t be obliviously happy one day at a time like some true believers might have been long ago or like children are, you all want eternal, universal, ironclad, deathproof, scientific happiness, but all you get is a life in doubt and insecurity. You fear for your spouses, your children, your parents, your own good, and you doubt them and yourselves constantly, because you are afraid of the future, because the future, even the most brilliant future, has the grave at its end. Think, that if you were absolutely sure like two times two sure at heart that the grave is really your final stop, you wouldn’t be doing anything in your lives at all. What would be the reason, where would you get motivation to learn, to work, to have children, to feed them to the same dead-end grave? No way! We would have long since gone from the face of the Earth drunk and opiated! In fact, our very existence, our very reason, our very will to be prove that the grave is not the final stop! ×