“... the vision was as if someone was tearing a hole in the ... sky ... and luminous cylinders began forming in the ripped patch. These cylinders seemed to be interconnected, revolving slowly at first but then accelerating. Black marks appeared on the cylinders which disappeared and a trickle of fat black drops began falling out of the blue sky, a few at first but then in a quickening torrent. The black rain
... That vision of the black rain says very clearly, to me at least, that we live in a world where most of our artists, writers and communicators are obsessed with perversion, crime and violence and this obsession is, in itself, leading the world into a growing disorder.”
(Tom Davies, Testament)
It was in the Year of Our Lord Two Thousand and Eight that I was caught up to the seventh heaven and burdened with a vision of our calamitous present. This vision was seared on my memory and has guided my actions ever since. I recount it, now that the battle has been fought and the danger has ebbed, as a warning to future generations.
I was flicking through the digital channels one evening when my plasma screen suddenly multiplied to fill every wall, ceiling and floor in the room with myriad images from the programmes showing simultaneously on a hundred plus separate channels.
The angel that was to become my spiritual guide, Gogol Tomasiah, whispered a question in my ear as I sat stunned by the suddenness of this image multiplication and overwhelmed with the mass of information presented. “What is there in common across all of the programmes and images you can now view?” he asked and immediately I possessed the ability to process multiple images and a memory that became photographic.
I scanned the screens viewing soaps, news, comedies, sports, plays, documentaries, reality shows, games, music videos, cartoons and films searching for commonality among the diversity of genres. In a matter of seconds I laughed, shed tears, mourned, experienced thrills, fear, elation and boredom seeing family arguments, drunken fights, martial arts, torture techniques, abusive language, sexual predators, demonic possession, terrorist atrocities, murder investigations, football hooliganism, child soldiers, rioting protestors, police aggression, self-harming, drug abuse, automobile accidents, plane crashes, knife crime, insults and mockery. I spoke the answer before I knew it.
“Violence.”
Immediately I was raised by Tomasiah to look down from a height on the multiple screens forming my room. The cables from each screen sub-divided like tree roots and connected screen to screen in a vast web of wiring which generated a everlasting relaying of images from screen to screen to screen. The beating of a pensioner in a soap instantly triggered an image of youths attacking an elderly woman on the news which was closely followed by a documentary with fly-on-the-wall images of the actions of those attacking the elderly. Their rooms were seen to be littered with posters of action heroes and when not on the streets they were to be found shooting up and beating up when game playing online. Images chased one another from screen to screen constantly triggering new images in an ever-changing spiral of violence which never yet issued in orgiastic release.
Tomasiah raised me still higher until I could see that the entire web of wiring emanated from a common source. Each cable was ultimately hard-wired into a gigantic, monstrous head throbbing with ideas and images telepathically transmitted through the web of wiring to be blazoned on screen; each idea and image triggering a thousand and one reactions and responses across the interconnecting screens.
Tomasiah was whispering in my ear once again. “This is the head of the romantic Nietzschian superself, humanity come of age in violent self obsession, self absorption and self interest.”
As I watched black marks began to form on the surface of each screen oozing and coalescing into fat black drops which fell from the screens as black rain. These drops rapidly pooled, with the pool growing in size until it became a stream, then a river and then a torrent flooding from the room into the wider world.
I saw this flood sweep over the prayers of the righteous, the preaching of protestants, the writings of theologians and I heard a voice from heaven saying, “Whom shall I send and who will go for me?”
I answered, “Every word I have spoken is tainted and unclean and those among whom I live use words that corrupt and desecrate.”
Tomasiah held a book in his hand and said, “Let me teach you how to speak.” As he opened the book I saw the story of Israel unfold from its earliest beginnings in the call of Abram to the Exodus, the wilderness wanderings and the Promised Land. I saw the story of a people called out to be a light to the nations, Israel’s story, and from that people I saw one man come to retell that selfsame story through his life and death and life again.
Under Tomasiah’s guidance I descended to the room of screens and directly into the black torrent. Barely able to keep my head above the poisonous ink in which my body was submerged, Tomasiah implored me to speak.
In my panic I spoke what I saw on the screens and my words became black flies which swirled and swarmed about my head pushing me under. The black rain was in my eyes and in my mouth. My eyes stung from its poisons and my tongue tasted its acrid, oily horror. My head filled with scenes of violence – shootings, stabbings, bombings, suicides - I sunk under its swell my nostrils filling with its glutinous slime and then, not a moment too late, I finally understood what I had to say.
In a moment of insight and revelation, I saw a victim of this tide of violence and spoke of the victim that I saw, naming the elderly woman and the effect on herself and her family of the attack and robbery inflicted on her. As I did so, my head was raised above the acrid swell, I breathed the air, and a fleck of gold appeared in the coal black waters.
Rapidly, I spoke of the neighbour who heard the sound of the attack, who called the police and who tended her wounds. I spoke of the paramedics who brought her to hospital and the medics whose skills healed her. I spoke of the family who brought her flowers, grapes, magazines, love and the hope that sustained her. As I told their story and retold this story of violence as one of compassion, the flecks of gold in the black waters conjoined and became a shaft of light piercing the darkness.
I continued by retelling the story of her attackers in terms of the deprivations that had mounted around them from birth and the teacher who refused to give up on them and was finally able to reach them in the guilt that followed their arrest. I retold violent video games by means of compassionate passers-by caring for their victims and sacrificing themselves to embrace the violent. I retold soap family conflicts as confrontations with truth resulting in forgiveness. I retold murder trials as acts of restorative justice.
I spoke for the victims - spoke “for the aching ones whose wounds cannot be nursed / For the countless confused, accused, misused, strung-out ones an' worse” - and read into their stories people of compassion and care and, as I retold stories in this way, the shafts of golden light began to push back the darkness of the black rain’s falling.
Then Tomasiah showed me that the water had become crystal bright. It now flowed from the Throne of God right down the middle of the room. Trees appeared in each screen planted on each side of the one River, producing twelve kinds of fruit, a ripe fruit each month. The leaves of the Tree are for the healing of the nations.
Tomasiah said to me, "The words you have spoken are dependable and accurate, every one. The God and Master of the spirits of the prophets sent me to show what is taking place and to tell all, 'Yes, I am on my way!'”
Tomasiah continued, "Don't seal up the words of this prophecy; don't put it away on the shelf. Time is just about up. Let the black rain go all out in pollution, but let the wright storytellers reread the stories of their times and turn back the polluting tide.
Let them tell it and think it and speak it and breathe it and reflect it from the mountain so all souls can see it. Stand on the ocean until you start sinking, know your song well before you start singing, cause it's a hard rain's a-gonna fall.”
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Bryan Ferry - A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall.
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