The Jerusalem Syndrome

by Marc Maron

  At that point in my life I understood abstract conspiracy theory and the evil momentum. I had no real concept of how corporations worked. I didn’t know that corporations could own other corporations. That they all linked together to create the malignant mesh of commerce that now envelops the planet. It didn’t matter. I wasn’t strong enough to fight anymore.

  The lights go down and the film begins. An authoritative but friendly voice blasts itself into our heads. It has a celebratory tone to it, like marching music should be playing.

  “Philip Morris makes Marlboro cigarettes and many other brands enjoyed around the world . . .”

  Then there’s a montage of people smoking, all with different haircuts, different skin colors, different clothing—lederhosen, dark glasses; in France, Japan, the Arctic Circle; dancing, hooray, smoking around the globe . . .

  “Philip Morris also owns Kraft Foods . . .”

  Huh? Who knew? Kraft Foods is Oscar Mayer, Velveeta, Macaroni and Cheese, all those artery-jamming convenience foods that you cooked when you didn’t know how to cook but you had to eat something.

  “Philip Morris also makes Miller Beer . . .”

  The worst beer in the world.

  And for dessert, Philip Morris recently acquired Nabisco. Have an Oreo.

  It looked like the food pyramid from Hell.

  After the film we were led as new converts to the gift shop. They have a gift shop at Philip Morris where they give you a pack of cigarettes. Give you one.

  “The first time is always free.” Satan’s motto.

  “What if I don’t smoke?”

  “I bet you got a friend that does. These are fresh. Smell them. They’re still warm. Feel them. You got kids? You don’t have to give them to the kids. Just put them in a drawer. They’ll find them.”

  I surrendered. The momentum won again. I chose a pack of Player Navy Cuts, an English import. I went there to quit smoking and I left smoking filterless. But I felt connected to something big, something global, something all encompassing. A community. An international congregation of vice and weakness. Love is a democratic ideal that knows no boundaries. So are cigarettes.

  There are so many things in my life like that; Coca-Cola, for instance. I drank seven today. I’m drinking one as I write this. Is that a problem? Okay, so I drank two. Look at a Coke can. It’s beautiful, the red and white, the letters, the “C” with the little curlicue that represents the Ourbouros, the serpent eating its own tail, which is an ancient mystical symbol of the alchemists connoting primordial undifferentiated substance and the universe’s ability to regenerate itself.

  Maybe I’m reading too much into it. So?

  Coke is it. It’s the real thing. I’d like to buy the world a Coke. That elevated feeling you get when you crack open a can of Coke and bring it to your lips and the sweet fizz runs up into your sinuses before you even taste the soda. The first sip of the perfectly carbonated nectar pops your taste buds open and then runs down your throat and warms your stomach. That feeling, that wholeness, that abandon, for a few seconds. Then, that itch, that need for another sip. It’s okay, there’s more. There’s always more.

  There was a time when we thought there might not be any more Coke. It was a sad time. It happened when I was in college. It was the great Coca-Cola panic of 1985. New Coke had hit the shelves and confusion and chaos were the rule of the day. There was the looming threat that the Coke we all knew and loved was going away for good. New Coke was bad, tasted like Pepsi. So, like many people, I began stockpiling the old Coke. I had a stack of cases in my kitchen. As they dwindled, the panic set in and I thought that the traditional Coke would be lost forever. It turned out to be a big trick to test our loyalty, control us, corral us, and show us how powerful they were. They released Coke Classic in late 1985 and everything was okay again.

  I remember being in Atlanta for a gig. The Coca-Cola Museum is in Atlanta. I was beside myself. I couldn’t wait to go. When I got there, I walked down a long, arched corridor that seemed to be made out of the same green glass that the old Coke bottles were made out of. At the end of the corridor was a young man sitting at an information desk. I walked to the desk and quietly said, “Is there a room for private worship? Maybe just me and the product and a mat with some old Coke jingles playing softly?”

  He laughed and said, “No, there is not. We have the museum and the fountain room. Would you like a ticket?”

  I said, “Yes, please. Thank you.” I went into the Coca-Cola Museum.

  I went to the fountain room first. It was a dark room with spotlighted self-serve soda machines all around its perimeter. There was a light show in the form of fountains running water from the ceiling that were illuminated with strobe lights, giving the effect of the water actually running upward toward Heaven. Each machine had five dispensers. They had Coca-Cola, Fanta, Sprite, Tab, Fresca, Diet Coke, Mr. Pibb, Mello Yello, Ramblin’ Root Beer, Cherry Coke, and the evil, awful New Coke. There were brand names that were alien to me. That was because Coca-Cola makes and distributes many sodas that aren’t available in the United States. They wouldn’t suit our tastes. I tried all of them. Germany’s Kinley, Sweden’s Mer, the U.K.’s Lilt, and the Nordic Kuli. There was Limca, Gold Spot, Maaza from India. Japan’s Calo and Shpla. Royal Tru Orange from the Philippines and the amazing-tasting lychee-flavored Tian Yu Di from China. Lychee nut soda, fucking unbelievable, the power of it all.

  As I walked through the exhibits I found the most fascinating historical element of the museum was the Coca-Cola logo itself, the white cursive on the red background. How it has traveled through time from 1886 to the present. Governments have changed, fashions have changed, countries have tumbled, World Wars have been fought, and nuclear bombs detonated, but the Coca-Cola logo lives on unchanged. No force of man or nature can damage the integrity of it. That logo represents something much larger than the ebb and flow of history. It represents a powerful consistency that looms sometimes largely and sometimes subtly over all things, like God.

  It is but one in the modern pantheon of new gods! Philip Morris, AT&T, GE, AOL, General Motors, Time Warner, Viacom, Microsoft: Do we have a choice? Con Ed. Is there a moment that goes unpaid for? Did you leave anything on at home? Sprint, Levi Strauss, Disney, Nike, Sony. I have a Sony VCR, a Sony CD player, a Sony Walkman, a Sony television. I mean, where would we be without Sony? Certainly unentertained. Sony: It has four letters like “good,” like “love.”

  These corporate entities quell our fears, they give us hope, and they make us feel as if we are part of something eternal and lasting. They present us with a manufactured reality that comforts us. In essence, they do everything God used to do.

  All I know is that when I’m in a spiritual crisis, I’ll do anything—smoke, eat, drink, watch TV, get online, buy something, listen to music, go to the movies, take a drive—anything but get down on my knees and say, “God, it’s Marc. I don’t know who I am anymore. Can you help me?”

  10

  YEARS went by and I had very little communication with God. I started working professionally as a comic. Doing all the clubs in the Boston area and driving hours into the New England countryside to do one-nighters in Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, Maine, and Vermont. The road became part of my job. The romantic idea of it dissipated.

  I let go of most of my conspiratorial ideas until my first television appearance was preempted by the Gulf War. It was An Evening at the Improv. I did this joke on that show: “Don’t you think calling George Bush the environmental president is kind of like saying, ’Well, you know Hitler was a vegetarian.’?” I was sure that Bush had seen it, he personally called A&E, and had them drop the show and I was put on a list.

  Around this time I began seeing Kim, the woman I would eventually marry. I met her at my brother’s wedding. She was the maid of honor and I was the best man. She lived in Boston, I lived in Boston. It was almost like we had to get married. It was predestined. After my brother’s wedding I moved in with her. We came t
ogether in that perfect mixture of love and my need of a place to live. That lasted about a year.

  We broke up for a while and Kim moved to San Francisco. I moved to New York and lived on the Lower East Side for a couple of years. I couldn’t really integrate myself into the New York scene. I was too angry for the New York clubs and alienated audiences. I would drive up to Boston on weekends to make money. I eventually started to come unglued and packed up everything I had into my car, again, except for my futon frame. I gave that to the Realist painter across the hall who had been sleeping on his floor and I left.

  I got on the road to San Francisco to see if Kim would save me. I made the trip in three and a half days. The last stint of driving was from Wyoming to San Francisco, twenty-two hours straight through. My eyes were watering and lights were trailing when I drove over the Bay Bridge up into Bernal Heights, where I collapsed on Kim’s porch until she came home from work. She let me move in with her and we tried to rebuild our relationship while I tried to build a comedy career.

  Within a few weeks of my being in San Francisco, my friend Stu called me from L.A. and told me Sam Kinison had been killed in a car accident. It was a head-on collision with a drunk teenager. Stu told me that Carl had been right behind him in another car and that Sam died in Carl’s arms. I was horrified, relieved, and incredibly insensitive. “I don’t care what middle act’s arms he died in. It should’ve happened when people gave a shit about him. Then maybe he could’ve become mythic.”

  All I could really think about when I heard that Sam was dead was finding out where he was buried so I could go there and pee on his grave. I owed him that.

  San Francisco was a great place to have coffee for a couple of years. The comedy scene was deeply rooted and the community was very supportive of its comics. I was able to do the kind of comedy I wanted to do, and it was received well. If it hadn’t been for San Francisco, I probably would’ve spontaneously combusted.

  I had been living there a year when I got a call from my manager telling me that I was wanted in New York to host a show on Comedy Central. It was called Short Attention Span Theatre and the producers had chosen me to drive it. I couldn’t understand why. Here I was doing this angry, philosophical, rant-oriented comedy and they wanted me to host their happy little show that was on three times a day. I resisted at first, but when I looked at my nearly empty date book, I really had no choice. I took the job and eventually Kim and I moved back to New York.

  Short Attention Span Theatre was a clip show. We showed clips of movies and TV shows usually organized under themes as broad as “Jews” or “the color blue.” We actually did both of those themes. We could only use clips that were the property of Comedy Central or those that had been provided by companies that were releasing a movie, a video, or TV show. That way it didn’t cost anything. I did a monologue and usually one sketch piece. I really hated doing the show. I thought it clipped my wings, never really allowing me to be me. I saw it as a hostage situation. I was being held paid prisoner by Viacom, the owner of Comedy Central and Time-Warner, the owner of HBO, which produced my show. Three times a day people who were home from school or worked late or just didn’t have much of a life could see me being cute in borrowed clothing as I presented promotional material disguised as show substance under a stupid theme. In retrospect, it taught me how to be on television, which was good. I learned to be a part of the illusion. It also got me a reputation for being hard to work with, which was bad.

  The show was supposed to be taking place in the vault of Comedy Central. Every episode opened with my sidekick, the elevator operator, and me going down to the vault in an elevator. The set was supposed to be a basement with shelves cluttered with reels, files, and boxes with funny labels. Right in the middle of the set there was a pyramid of twelve televisions that were turned on. It was my background. I stood in front of it every day. I was on TV, I was in the TV, and TVs that I was on surrounded me. I wish my Grandpa Jack had been alive to see me really on the TV. It was as if the series of photographs I took in high school were some kind of personal prophecy.

  The most significant event that occurred during my tenure as host of SAST, other than interviewing Lily Tomlin, happened on a press junket. I was flown by Comedy Central to Los Angeles to help announce their new season. They had booked me a room at the St. James Hotel. I couldn’t believe it. I was so freaked out and excited. I was going to be inside the hotel that communicated with me when I had lived in Hollywood years before, during what seemed like another life. I could barely contain myself when I got there. When I walked into the St. James, tingles ran through my body. All the doors started to creak open again.

  The first night there, after I had done all my press conferences, I walked over to The Comedy Store. I didn’t see anyone I knew, so I walked back over to the St. James. I went up into my room and lay on my bed. The décor was beautiful—delicate Deco glassware and picture frames and polished chrome fixtures in the bathroom. The furniture and the bed were 1920s reproductions. Everything about it just brought my mind back to those pictures in Irv’s books; to that feeling of royalty and radiation that came off of those film stills mixed with the darkness of the hotel’s past, of my past. I just took in the energy of the place. It was so important to me from the outside when I was crazy. I could still feel something.

  At about twelve-thirty that night, I couldn’t help myself. I was driven by a compulsion much bigger than I was. I went up the stairs to the roof door. There was no alarm, so I went out onto the roof. There was another door and a ladder that went up to the altar. The altar. I pulled the door open and went up the ladder. I stood beneath the altar. I looked down at Los Angeles. I looked down at the hills and The Comedy Store. It was oddly windy up there and the sky seemed to be crackling with electricity. I felt as if I were finishing a ritual that I had inadvertently started years before. I felt transcendent. I was possessed by a madness for closure. I took some deep breaths and yelled at the sky, “Where are you now?” There was no immediate response.

  I went back down to my room and went to sleep. I was woken up in the middle of the night by the sound of tinkling glass. I couldn’t figure out what it was at first, because I was half asleep. Then I heard another layer of sound: The building was creaking. Then I heard the muffled voices of panic, people scrambling around in the hallway, trying to figure out what to do. Beneath it all was an even deeper layer of sound, the shifting of the Earth’s plates. It was the best experimental music I had ever heard, except that it was being spontaneously generated by an earthquake in progress. God was jamming—just for me. I bolted out of bed. The building was swaying back and forth. I was in my underwear and I didn’t know what to do. I thought I should stand in the doorway, that’s what I remember my dad saying, but I wanted out. I didn’t know if I should put my pants on or not, but then I thought, I don’t want to be the only one standing outside with no pants on. I put them on and went downstairs.

  The Earth stopped rumbling after a minute or two. There were about fifteen other people in front of the hotel. I suggested that someone get his car out of the garage and bring it up so we could hear the radio broadcasts about the damage and what we should expect. We all huddled together like primitives, only it was around a Lexus so we could listen to the radio.

  I pulled away and stood, looking at the blackened hills of Hollywood. There wasn’t a light on anywhere, just the moonlit dark silhouette of the hills against a deep blue backdrop. This guy Jon came over and stood next to me. I had met him earlier. He was one of the producers of Beavis and Butt-Head. We stood there for a few quiet minutes watching the night sky light up in flashes over the valley as power stations exploded in the distance. It was eerie, and beautiful in a way. Jon looked at me pensively, and said, “I can’t help but think this is somehow my fault.” Maybe it was, but I was thinking the same thing about myself. He was guilty of a much more public, ritualized evil but I’d like to think that my little moment on the roof was equally as powerful in some way, maybe
for the good.

  In April 1997 another light flashed across the sky. After years of her putting up with my insanity, Kim and I got married. It was a traditional Jewish ceremony, hot-rodded a bit for the modern Jew palate. It was outdoors, in the dusk light of a Phoenix sunset. In the middle of our vows many guests claimed they saw a shooting star or a meteor or a UFO, but something went flying by. Everyone assumed it was good luck. So we assumed it was good luck. Deep in my heart, I wasn’t so sure, but I loved Kim. We’d been through a lot together.

  Within seconds of getting married, the living potential great-grandparents and grandparents start their chorus: “Babies. When, when babies?” Babies are like cocaine to grandparents. The need comes from a deep place. They want one more opportunity to love something that hasn’t disappointed them yet.

  I started to see marriage as a capitalist conspiracy designed to keep people in bondage until they create new consumers. Think about the forces involved when you have a wedding. All the department stores are in on it. The religions of the world are all part of it. Kim’s parents were like kingpins of the conspiracy. When you get married, you don’t just get a spouse, you get dozens of expensive gifts from people you don’t really know. Are they friends? Maybe, but probably not. Are they the dark faces of the conspiracy? Yes. They give you rugs, blenders, and flatware. I didn’t even know what flatware was until I got married. If you know what it is, it may be too late for you. They give you these gifts in the guise of getting you started. They say things like, “This is to begin your life together. To start building your home.” That’s not really why they give this stuff to you. They give it to you so you don’t leave each other. The conspiracy knows that at some point in the first couple of years of marriage you will have a moment of existential crisis and say, “What the fuck did I do? I don’t even know you! I want out.” Then you’ll pause, look around, and say, “Oh, but the rug, and our blender. We make drinks in our blender. Our forks—I love our forks. I’m sorry. Right now I think I love everything here except you. That’ll come and go. If it goes away for good, we can have kids and sublimate our disdain and indifference for each other in them by spoiling them and guaranteeing a legacy of misery.”