Revelation 4

 Revelation 4 

from Jon Bill Swiftmahr’s* commentary on Revelation (in the Incoherent series, published by Rantrage Press, 2014, p. 53) –

DOOR NO. 1

IV. After this, I looked up and saw an open door. And the voice I’d heard earlier, the voice like a trumpet, motioned to me. “Come here,” it said. “Let me show you the future.”

     ² And I was spun around by the Air, and when the spinning stopped, I saw a throne, hovering. And on the throne: ³ It looked like Jasper and Carnelian and around them a rainbow as in Emerald City. ⁴ And around it, 24 more thrones and sitting on them 24 old men, dressed in white with hair like spun gold.

     ⁵ From the main throne came flashes of light, a babble of voices, and thunderous drumming. In front of the throne were 7 columns of fire. “These are the Spirits of God,” a voice said. ⁶ And swimming in the lake also in front of the throne, clear as glass, were ⁷ a lion, an ox, and a man, and flying above them an eagle. ⁸ Each had 6 wings and each wing had 1,000 eyes (24 wings and 24,000 eyes), and the eyes were singing “Who Was and Is and Is to Come.”

     ⁹ And whenever the quartet sings, and the wings and the eyes on the wings, ¹⁰ the 24 old men fall on their knees, so they’re never sitting, they’re always falling onto their knees and always throwing their spun gold hair into the lake, ¹¹ and singing, too in their old man voices “Who Was and Is and Is to Come.”

Notes

4. It’s back to the future for John Patmos though his future is the ghost of Apocalyptic Past.

   3. Jasper and Carnelian. Some of the scholars that hold that Patmos John’s visions transcend time believe this to be a reference to the vaudeville team (actual names Eos O’Day and Dämmerung Wehnacht, active 1919-1928) whose gags included Jasper’s removing - with great clatter and squeak - tools from various of Carnelian’s orifices, a hammer from one ear and an anvil from the other, saws from his eyes, a chisel from his nose, a two-edged sword from his mouth, and an adze from his anus.

   5. seven columns. Orthodox commentators continue to insist that 7 means 1 and columns is singular. (Pax nonatarians.)

  10. always falling on their knees. The writer is clear he is not to be taken literally, as the 24 old men can’t be simultaneously sitting on their thrones and falling on their knees - unless there are 48 of them with one leg apiece (a proposal by Madeleine Blatant in The Literalist (Vol. 8, No. 4 - 1986).

Commentary

This much is true: every weeknight I go to bed just before twelve, whether I’m tired or not. Usually, though, I am, and I go right to sleep. Before long I’ve fallen into a dream that pulls me this way and that until I’m pulled apart: I wake up and go to the bathroom; I get back into bed and dream until morning - trolley cars and subway trains, empty classrooms and cathedrals, a mockingbird on the rail and a crow in the magnolia outside my window. I’ve never had a dream like John Patmos’, so precisely and chaotically literary, “The Vision of God on Their Throne Pastiche.”

     First, the dreamer standing at the open door and the doorman with the voice of a trumpeter swan, “Come into the future.” And the swan holds the door, the dreamer walks through. Then, the crowd of smoke, sound, light, and mirrors.

     Heavy metal from God’s throne, the music between the gags of Jasper and Carnelian, and jerking and twerking to the music the Seven Spirits of God beloved of the nonatarians, the atonal singing of the old men in the blonde wigs they snatch off their heads and throw into the sea to be devoured by the ox, the lion, the man, and the bird, “The Night Has a Thousand Eyes.”

     The reader can only stand outside the door, listening to the sweet Bobby Vee hit clubbed to death by Iron Maiden; perhaps, he (the reader) peers around the corner of the jamb: there he sees none of this, only words on a page. It’s only words on a page, thank God.

     I wake up from my dream, and I look out the window: there’s a mocking-bird on the rail and a crow in the magnolia.

11.02.17

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 * 2015’s “the angriest man in the Bible biz” (Roiling Stone)