What’s Grand Old Jack?
I recently submitted my poem Grand Old Jack to citizen trans* project, which highlights trans and gender non-conforming people’s responses to living in These Unprecedented Times. This piece was first drafted in January, just before I became bedridden for a week and ended up writing a thicc multi-paragraph prose piece that I’m still tweaking and playing with as it continues slow-roasting (it’s still got some chew and I want it to fall off the bone).
I had fallen in love with Ethel Cain’s latest album “Perverts” around this time, too (see: my gut reaction to ‘it’s not that deep’). Thus, I was greatly inspired by her work. It really is happening to everybody…
I hoped this poem would reflect what “it” is, but I’m still uncertain of the answer to that question. I just know it’s happening, and I can feel it happening, and everyone is able to feel it happening, and it’s happening to you too.
We must either succumb to it or fight it, one might assume. Yet, there is a secret third option, as there usually is: accept “it” as it is, and continue on with the flow of things. “It” will continue on and change with time, just as we do. (Or, perhaps more accurately, our perception of it will change. Everything must be filtered through the lens of personal experience.)
Anyway, here’s an essay about the various meanings of “Grand Old Jack” as the pilot to what I’m calling Spelling it Out, a series in which I’ll write entries detailing the analysis/backstory/easter eggs of any published poems I’ve written.
So… why “Grand Old”?
It’s a play on Grand Old Party. Next question.
Why “Jack”?
Imposter Jesus name — like “Josh” in length, but less accurate a translation of the Hebrew name (source: my mom literally got a degree in Bible).
Clever readers will pick up on how this inaccuracy gives away that Jack is not the True God, as it were, but a false god. But I argue that everyone at the cross was so desperate for their savior to come back that they would have believed anything vaguely resembling a miracle. Jack may have begged to be taken at face value, this is possible, but it’s narrator bias to describe it such, as well. I imagine that Jack was actually kinda bad at acting and didn’t have a plan outside of “get people’s faith back by pulling a stunt that might not work because I can’t bear the pain of not believing in something.”
The masses didn’t actually have a need for proof, either. Surely, deep down, some must have known it was all a ruse. Surely, since the appearance of Jack, a seed of doubt was planted in their hearts. He’s not quite Jesus anymore… but he’s still good ol’ Jack. He’s good enough.
Other valid “Jack” associations include: the Union Jack, jack-shit, jack-off, under the jackboot.
Who is Mags?
Mary Magdalene. Next question.
What are the 24 and 48 hours about?
Imagine all of the followers who were of strong enough conviction to witness Jesus’ crucifixion standing around immediately after he yells in otherworldly agony and dies. What would these people do after watching the so-called son of God cease to draw breath?
What would you do? Wouldn’t you wait for any small chance for his chest to rise again? Wouldn’t you want to? Imagine you among that crowd, and people start sitting down, watching Christ’s body, limp. Maybe a dribble of shit goes down his leg, putrid proof of his personhood. Wouldn’t you, too, sit to see whether he returned? It’s nine hours to this place by foot, and three hours ago you sent your wife and two daughters, Cherith and Abilene, away on donkey so they wouldn’t see the violence and bloodshed. Not that you believed such a thing against Christ was possible — but you were compelled to go and seek this forbidden knowledge, this unfathomable tragedy. And now you can either walk nine hours home all the while grieving your savior and reason for living, or you can wait for the impossible.
No, you wait for Christ to breathe again. You have to keep believing. So everyone is waiting out the three days from when he is supposed to emerge from the tomb.
In the canon, Jesus told his disciples at the Last Supper he would be resurrected. It is up to reader interpretation whether “Jack” specifically was aware of this plan. I personally like the idea that he didn’t know about the plan, but he felt the need to do SOMETHING by day two, and it coincidentally/divinely lined up with what Jesus told the disciples. “Life has a funny, funny way….”
Pre-cut traps? What?
Traps as in trapezius muscles. His pre-lashed-39-times shoulders, but in a dumb little slant-rhymey way.
What does die Vorstellung mean?
It’s German for an imagination, idea or illusion. It’s in German because. Um. Historical precedent, let’s say.
Is Brave New Wasteland an allusion to “Brave New World” by Aldous Huxley?
Yes and no. I haven’t read it, though I know what it’s about, and I think its premise at the very least makes for apt comparison to our contemporary world. It’s more in reference to the title’s source, in Shakespeare’s The Tempest, in Act V:
“How beauteous mankind is! O brave new world,
That has such people in ‘t.”
So, hands/knees, heart/head, mouth/mind… intentional replacements?
Absolutely.
Also, head was originally intended to have a double meaning. But I didn’t want to make this explicitly about how Re-schmublicans can’t keep it in their pants, so the line became less graphic. One can still choose to extract both meanings from the head. It must be noted, however, that anybody with any bodily configuration can be bad at keeping it in their pants. Perversion is a gender-neutral act.
Why does Grand Old Circus give their lions “cabbage-cabbage soup à la king”?
I’ll put it this way: We are the Pride. The Pride’s food source is controlled by these incompetent ringmasters, so they slap fancy titles on what’s supposed to be sustenance but is in reality a disgusting excuse for a meal (no hate to cabbage — I love munchin on those leaves like a farty little bunny boy). Also, I like the allusion to “cabbages and kings” from Lewis Carroll’s “The Walrus and the Carpenter.” Also, “Nothing goes better with cabbage than cabbage.”
Finally, what’s implied by “Then it started happening to everybody”?
Aye, there’s the rub.
P.S.
And, yes, Jesus may not have been a celebrity, but he has become one, much in the way that Marilyn Monroe and Shakespeare are posthumous celebrities. If I can purchase child-labor-made merch with your name, image, or likeness on it, you’re a celebrity. Contrarily, whom among us has not invoked the saintly name of Kobe in ritual paper-ball basket-toss?