Whiskey Sermon #1
by CHRIS TOLIAN
Photography ©2004 Fred Ellis

There’s a rage, a fucking rage that slips up into your head and screams and screams for you to live.  To really live here.  Now.  All experience and truth and beauty and love.  A violent rage that glories in opening eyes, coloring in the gray.  Break the fucking sun to pull down the light and shove it into every corner, on every face, so that none of it can go ignored.  A rage to find beauty everywhere, in everyone and everything.  A rage to live the music and the words, to breathe the truths, to drown in the people around you and dance and make love to the divine in them.  To fuck so hard that your soul feels it and sings out in shimmering beatitude.

A rage to live balls out and drag the world kicking and screaming with you.  Fuck, man.  Find the divine in yourself.  That little patch that transcends all this.  Rage verging on nihilistic righteousness, that catches hold and burns you up.  Spitting fire and trailing comets that lick at everyone you meet.  Wake up!  Wake up to the world around you.  To the people that draw you.  In them you’ll find passion and peace.  Love and despair and enough beauty to break your heart forever.  The solid force of real emotions, the burning shuddering orgasm of real sensations.  Undying truth of humanity.  The divine animal.  Perfect in our imperfections.  Our balance.  Our insane blending of potential and flaws and strength and weakness.  Beauty and truth.  Divinity. 

Goddamn yeah, baby-o.  Show it to the world.