Double Feature

What is a celebrity but a peasant dressed as a god? They are named 'Idols' for a reason, after all.
 
The people gather to worship at the feet of a living statue. Many would die to be the subject of such adoration. Many have died to be the subject of such adoration.
 
What is a funeral but the worship of a corpse? 'Do not speak ill of the dead,' They say.
 
They gather to mourn the idea of something, someone, so that they may engrave a shallow image of them into their minds. 'Do not tarnish that image', is what they truly say. You never hold open caskets for those who die in fires.
 
What is a statue, but a corpse? A figure captured in stone, unable to breathe.
 
Urban legend says that crooked salesmen dig up graves and cover the corpses in plaster to sell. We flinch, but it remains the same- they are buried, unseen and unheard, under layers and layers of chalk.
 
What is an Idol but the statue of a corpse? They gather and worship what never was and never will.
 
An image, frozen in time, beautiful and dead. A deity forged in the collective hallucination of someone beautiful and perfect and good. If you look for long enough, you can almost convince yourself they're breathing.
 
You cannot sin if you are dead. You cannot sin if no one can see you. They do not want to see you, the ugly, marred, sinful thing you are.
 
 
Worship is not love. A god cannot be held from up in heaven. A corpse cannot feel a kiss.
 
Churches hold funerals because there is no greater act of worship than being made perfect in death.
 
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Celebrities are all dead, and their bodies are puppeteered by the ugly thing rotting inside each and every one of them. An everlasting dance, the illusion of connection played out for the audience.
 
That ugly thing will never see the sun. It is ugly, and sinful. But nevertheless, they yearn for it, the selfish sinful thing it is.
 
Can you kiss someone through a mask? Lips meeting plastic.
 
Can you hold someone through a glove? Skin meeting plastic.
 
Can you see someone through a screen? Eyes meeting plastic.
 
It's all just layers and layers of plastic. You wrap yourself up so they cannot see your flaws, but in doing so prevent them from seeing you at all.
 
When the shrink wrap suffocates you, that is when you truly become a celebrity. Once the rotten thing you were born into is dead, and what people see you as is all you are.
 
And you hope it rots quietly.
 
And you pray it rots quietly.