Absolutely Wild
The 40th anniversary of one of Jerry Cornelius’ many deaths couldn’t have come at a better time. His ratings are in freefall; once the most beloved icon in West London, these days he is lucky if he is even recognised as a has-been. But an anniversary like this gives him an opportunity to not only celebrate himself, but to reaffirm his own mission statement.
With little else to lose, Jerry has spent the last few weeks wildly swinging for the fences. Don’t mistake this for hyperbole, either. Just look at last week where – and I promise I’m not making any of this up – Jerry embarked on a long monologue about all the different things he’s survived (alcoholism, drug addiction, illness, heart attacks, an actual shooting), then travelled back in time and murdered a younger version of himself, before his own ghost arrived and urged him to kill himself. Utterly bizarre, but it was also incredible, although the whole thing passed without much comment.
Still, this impeccable form meant Jerry went into the future full of confidence. And he needed it, because previous assignments have been marked by a pleasing shonkiness, with Jerry forgetting lines, or visibly twitching when he’s supposed to be dead, or looking more terrified than any human in all of history. Still, even by previous standards, this incarnation had an awful lot of ground to cover.
But then came the reality. There was no Jerry in the live episode, only one very brief shot at the end. Anyone expecting any more time-travelling homicides may be bitterly disappointed. After a weirdly breezy pep talk from himself in the mirror (who was somehow able to brush off the fact that the body he used to inhabit had just exploded at the exact same time that he watched Jerry attempt to shoot himself in the head), Jerry knocked on the door of a stranger he hoped to have sexual chemistry with, and that was that.
But it wouldn’t be Jerry Cornelius unless everything went wrong. It is clear that Jerry knows absolutely nothing about what he’s doing or why he is doing it.
So Long Marianne
Jerry Cornelius lived countless lives, each one ending in tragedy. He never asked for this peculiar immortality but no matter the manner of his demise, he would always return, transformed, renewed, different but the same.
The first time he died, he was a soldier in a distant war, struck down by an arrow. His life faded as he collapsed into chaos. But then, he awoke: the pain was gone, his wounds healed, and he was standing once more on, untouched by time. He had no idea why or how he had returned, only that it was inevitable. His death was never final.
As the centuries passed, Jerry lived different lives. He was a scholar in ancient Greece, a merchant on the Silk Road, a fisherman in a tiny village, a king, a beggar, an artist. Every life came with the same burden. He would fall in love, make friends, and then inevitably watch those he loved perish. His lovers, his friends, his family all aged, withered, and died while he remained unchanged.
He learned early on to keep his distance. The pain of having to move on grew too great after the first few lifetimes. He’d seen his closest friend die from illness after a mere handful of years. He’d been helpless to stop it. And so, Jerry withdrew. He became a wanderer, a shadow that moved from place to place, never staying long enough for anyone to notice the unusual agelessness in his face or the burden in his eyes.
The weight of immortality crushed him; nothing brought him peace. Sometimes he found solace in quiet places, where no one knew his name, but more often he could be found in a Ladbroke Grove pub, or at Hawkwind concerts, soothed by their laser light show and space-age songs.
One cold winter’s night, as he wandered the streets, Jerry saw her. Her name was Marianne, and her eyes were the colour of a sky just before dawn. There was something about her, something that stirred a memory deep inside him. He had known her before, but she had ever looked at him the way she did now.
He knew he should know better than to get too close, knew what would happen. She would grow old and frail but he would remain the same as he watched her slip away. One evening, as they walked together under the dim glow of the streetlamps, a truck swerved wildly out of control, its headlights blinding. Jerry never saw it coming.
He was gone in an instant.
Jerry’s Achey Breaky Heart
Is this what healed my broken heart? Is this the advice I want to give you? In fact, dying and resurrection is so hard that my self-confidence often hits rock-bottom completely.
Following your own death, you may experience symptoms of depression. If the symptoms are persistent, I always try to speak with a healthcare or mental health professional. It feels like a win.
Maybe I’m getting triggered by the whole thing because I have died so many times in the past? The situation is making me feel weird. I’m just trying to be myself, want to look a very cool and stay friends with everyone.
Why? Because to my own mind, that is how I can stay safe. I never want to to confront my own fears, prefer blaming the man I had a relationship with for abandoning me.
I always lie. Naturally, this has means I am often misunderstood. Death is only temporary and at the time completely reversible although I never fully recover emotionally. My body is always a bit shocked when morphing
Lost In Space
Jerry once planned to colonize an alien planet, undertook a feasibility study for six-month mission. He demonstrated that in theory at least it’s technically possible. The secret was to plan space travel as a comprehensive religious pilgrimage, ignoring any anxieties about his methodology.
Jerry challenged the world with self-publicity and marketing strategies, imaginative alien worlds and mission ready performances, with flight design by the author. Space agency speculation helped support astronauts and ensured future technological changes.
Lost together impressionistic fragments made for ground-breaking sci-fi and psychic discontinuity. Jerry’s migration into space was an important step in suburban reorientation and subjective physical environments.
In the end, however, Jerry could not make sense of his radically changing world, failed to define the precise nature of the catastrophe or develop a virtual metaphor generator for apocalyptic trauma.
His thesis suggested that the lingering of transformation mishap might provide some recompense spatial change and space extinction only provided a negative definition of lip gloss and a partial understanding of how to apply eye shadow in zero gravity.
Relaxing After the Funeral
Death and disorder deters the resurrection man and prevents Jerry’s secrets being violated. Deep inside himself, psychic body snatchers rip fresh corpses from
his soul and sell them to hospitals.
Body snatching was a distasteful trade that flourished at the end of the 18th and beginning of the 19th centuries in Britain. Jerry worked for two international artists to explore how humans grapple with understanding and communicating complex theoretical ideas
Spells are popular within our paranoid society, our sick experience of graveside long shadows and psycho premonitions. But it’s only Jerry back from time-travelling, nothing worse. Even the hipsterisation of West London is not completely his fault.
No reference to medical knowledge seems likely, Jerry is merely tangible evidence of an intangible body. His life is made up of disconnected fragments, fractal geometries and shiny bubbles of experience. Resurrection is his get-out-of-jail-free card.
It’s a profoundly spiritual way to live, connected to his own emotional damage and colliding with computer technologies. When they crash, the fresh cadavers of reckless behaviour influence time in ways you will never see, cosmic parts orbiting each other inside the Quantum Universe.
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Rupert Loydell
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