Full Circle – Back To Bill Hicks

I first encountered Bill Hicks around 1990. A girlfriend introduced me to him and sat me down in front of one of his shows. After five minutes, I realized this guy had something special. We watched him whenever he did anything on TV and got hold of any videos we could. He was simply awesome. Next to him, other satirists and comedians looked pretty superficial. Hicks’ humour was brutal, expert and dark. Everything he said was real. His routines on religion, drugs, government, war, censorship, society and the media were hugely cathartic for me. Despite exhibitions of intense venom, he also revealed a genuine empathy for fellow thinking humans and offered a ray of hope for all mankind in the shape of his own blend of neo-mystical philosophy.

At that time, I wasn’t aware of the new world order agenda and to what extent all their insidious shit was actually affecting my daily world. I felt a pale discord at some level and I knew reality wasn’t right somehow, but I thought it was all part of an existentialist sensitivity that’s just a natural consequence of insight. Par for the course in anyone who seeks out the truth of existence. The world is shit when you can see it’s core. As a constructive counterbalance, I found myself heavily into philosophy, psychology and metaphysics. It was comforting to know that other people had felt the pain and uncertainty of life, and more importantly, had the guts and intellect to so lucidly express it.

In the following years, my exploration led into other more esoteric areas. Shamanism, Zen, entheogens, spirituality, quantum theory. There is a golden thread of wisdom that runs through each discipline. Now, all roads seem to converge at quantum theory, DNA, 2012, consciousness transformation and dimensional shifting. The pursuit of truth and transcendence (the main reason we’re here) never fails to intrigue and mesmerize in its unfolding.

So there I was, lying on a picturesque stretch of Scandinavian coastline, when I played some Bill Hicks on my iPod. Rant In E-Minor, to be exact. This is what I heard as I absentmindedly scrolled to a random section of the album.

Hicks: “I'll show you politics in America. Here it is, right here: I think the puppet on the right shares my beliefs. I think the puppet on the left is more to my liking. Hey wait a minute, there's one guy holding up both puppets! Shut up! Go back to bed America, your government is in control. Here's Love Connection, watch this and get fat and stupid. By the way, keep drinking beer, you fucking morons.”

That’s it, right there. All you need to know. If you want more data, go get all the right books (they’re lying around at Waterstones, Borders and Amazon) and read them. Open your eyes and look around. Digest and distil. You will arrive at the very same message that Hicks nailed fifteen years ago.

Hicks knew that the America he was living in was a totalitarian nightmare. He spotted it early and intuitively understood how the US fascist machine operated while continuing the charade of a free democracy. Much of his act was built on an innate contempt for the US government’s treachery and deceit. Perhaps the best illustration of this is seen in Hicks’ incredulity over the government’s handling of the Waco Siege of February 28^th 1993.

Hicks: "I thought the whole thing was an absolute disaster and a debacle. And if any of you had been watching public access and seen the footage which was not shown on any major news media source… of the tanks, Bradley tanks shooting fire into the compound. Which I think went against the party line story, which was that they shot tear gas in order to help the mothers and the children to get out to convince em, while they’re destroying the compound, they’re getting mom and children out, you see. The soft sell is definitely the FBI’s way. And anyway, so the major news said that the Branch Davidians started the fire, if I’m not mistaken. Correct me when I go off the story here. … all they did was shoot in tear gas? And yet I’ve seen with my own eyes, and my squeegied third eye, footage of a Bradley tank shooting fire into the compound, which… isn’t that odd that no major news source has picked up on that? You think that’s news worthy? Cos that basically means that the government, from the FBI, the ATF, up to Janet Reno, including Clinton, are um… liars and murderers. Ha ha ha ha ha. And, wait there’s more. I mean the implications are vast. You know, if the ATF and FBI had any honour, if there was any honour left or dignity on this planet, they would commit Hari-Kari, while first admitting what they’ve done, and they’d kill themselves. Because they are liars and murderers. ‘Oh we had to bust the compound down cos we heard child molestation was going on.’ Yeah if that’s true how come we don’t see Bradley tanks knocking down Catholic churches? I’m talking if child molestation is actually your concern. ‘Well there was a methamphetamine lab on the..’ No there wasn’t. And not one child came out of there saying they were molested. Not one child. They don’t want the voice of reason spoken folks, cos otherwise we’d be free. Otherwise, we wouldn’t believe their fucking horseshit lies, nor the fucking propaganda machine of the mainstream media and buy their horseshit products that we don’t fucking need and become a third world consumer fucking plantation which is what we’re becoming. Fuck them. They are liars and murderers."

Another good example of Hicks’ awareness of the elite's control can be seen in the following routine.

Hicks: “I have this feeling man, 'cos you know there’s a handful of people who actually run everything. That's true, it's provable, it's not... I'm not a fuckin' conspiracy nut, it's provable. A handful. A very small elite run and own these corporations, which include the mainstream media. I have this feeling that whoever's elected president, like Clinton was; no matter what your promises you promise on the campaign trail blah,blah,blah… when you win, you go into this smoky room with the twelve industrialist capitalist scum-fucks who got you in there...and you’re in this smoky room and this little film screen comes down. And a big guy with a cigar goes... ‘Roll the film.’ And, it's a shot, of the Kennedy assassination, from an angle you've never seen before.....that looks suspiciously off the grassy knoll. And then the film screen goes up and the lights come up and they go, to the new president… ‘Any questions?’ ‘Err, just what my agenda is?’ ‘First we bomb Baghdad.’ ‘You got it.’”

Some of Hicks’ most controversial routines suggested a positive drugs message. This was at the height of the ‘war on drugs’ propaganda that the USA was undergoing at the time. Hicks referred to it instead as a ‘war on personal freedom.’

Hicks, doing a mock newsreader piece: “Today, a young man on acid realized that all matter is merely energy condensed to a slow vibration... that we are all one consciousness experiencing itself subjectively. There's no such thing as death, life is only a dream, and we're the imagination of ourselves. Here's Tom with the weather.”

Hicks, speaking of psilocybin mushrooms: “I’m glad they’re against the law, cos you know what happened when I took ‘em? I lay in a field of green grass for four hours going ‘My God… I love… everything.’ The heavens parted, God looked down and rained gifts of forgiveness onto my being, healing me on every level – psychically, physically, emotionally. And I realised our true nature is spirit not body, that we are eternal beings and God’s love is unconditional and there is nothing we can ever do to change that. It is only our illusion that we are separate from God or that we are alone. In fact, the reality is that we are one with God and he loves us. Now if that isn’t a hazard to this country. You see my point. How are we gonna keep building nuclear weapons, you know what I mean? What’s gonna happen to the arms industry when we realize we’re all one? Ha ha ha ha ha. It’s gonna fuck up the economy. The economy that’s fake anyway. Which would be a real bummer, you know. You can see why the government’s cracking down… on the idea of experiencing unconditional love. Isn’t it interesting that the two drugs that are legal – alcohol and cigarettes – the two drugs that do absolutely nothing for you whatsoever. And drugs that grow naturally upon this planet, drugs that open your eyes up to make you realize how you’re being fucked every day of your life. Those drugs are against the law. Wow! Coincidence? I don’t know. I’m sure their motives are pure.”

Hicks achieved a lot in his life and was truly ahead of his time. He started early, appearing on stage in his teens and performing right up until the month before his death from pancreatic cancer in 1994. He was 32. I like to imagine he’s now revelling in his liberated spiritual form, and maybe even taking a long, well deserved vacation before going onto new adventures in other realms. Long may he continue to enlighten himself and others.

To end, here’s some prescient optimism from Hicks.

Hicks: “The world is like a ride at an amusement park. And when you choose to go on it, you think it's real because that's how powerful our minds are. And the ride goes up and down and round and round. It has thrills and chills and it's very brightly coloured and it's very loud and it's fun, for a while. Some people have been on the ride for a long time, and they begin to question: Is this real, or is this just a ride? And other people have remembered, and they come back to us, they say, 'Hey – don't worry, don't be afraid ever, because this is just a ride ...' And we ... kill those people. Ha ha, 'Shut him up. We have a lot invested in this ride. Shut him up. Look at my furrows of worry. Look at my big bank account and my family. This just has to be real.' It's just a ride. But we always kill those good guys who try and tell us that, you ever notice that? And let the demons run amok. But it doesn't matter, because – it's just a ride. And we can change it anytime we want. It's only a choice. No effort, no work, no job, no savings and money. A choice, right now, between fear and love. The eyes of fear want you to put bigger locks on your doors, buy guns, close yourself off. The eyes of love instead see all of us as one.”

Check out more of Hicks’ work. I’d particularly recommend Rant In E Minor and Arizona Bay.