I was reading Donald Fagen’s “Eminent Hipsters” today, a hugely enjoyable ramble through his life and his mind and I came across the story of Steely Dan’s brilliant song “Godwhacker”.
Turns out, it was the story of Fagen’s elderly mother whose life ended in a welter of confusion and tragedy as she was consumed by Alzheimers. A gang is convened to enter the kingdom of heaven in order to take out God, who allowed all this to happen. Fagen surmises that no one could argue that if the mission somehow succeeded it would be regarded as justifiable homicide.
I can understand that, even allowing for the likelihood there is no heaven. I would love to be on the mission, perhaps to stand in front of God and ask him what he was thinking about. The great creator, omnipresent but also omnipotent. I might even show him some mercy if he asked me nicely, admitted it was all a load of nonsense after all. “I was here,” he might say. “But I just float around watching things go on. That Big Bang was great to watch, you know. Something out of nothing. Who’d have thought?”
It’s a bit extreme, though, taking a hit squad. I don’t know if Fagen thought about how to get to heaven in the first place. Assuming he worked it all out, who would he choose to go on it? I am not a violent man by nature. I’m having second thoughts already. What if he’s actually a nice guy who just had a predilection for floods, famines, fiery serpents? He might have been having a bad day, or maybe a few bad days. Anyway, he did let Noah, at the age of 850, to build a great big ark in which he housed a pair of every single species of animal ever found and perhaps many that weren’t. I reckon Noah did this when he was sober, mind you, and not lying naked with his sons. But who would want to see a pissed up 850 year old man naked with his sons?
I can see this hit squad though, perhaps led by Jack Regan, kicking down the Pearly Gates. “Nah, come quietly God. We’re the Sweeney and we haven’t had our dinner. Take him away George.”
It might make a good film though. Completely fictional of course, just like the bible itself.
1 comment
Mr fagen refers to guitarists as myself as noble savages , this entwined with his genetic Jewish paranoia negates him from god whacker entitlement , in fact I suggest his leaking of the plan gave Ariel Sharon that massive stroke . I suggest there is only one god and I know this to be true because he made a movie and told me so. The sooner christiano Ronaldo and the holy trinity get it on the better
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