pasithea

During the summer I read Faust and a couple of variants of it. The basic premise is a guy makes a deal with the devil, gets a fabulous life for a while and then is whisked off to Hell.

Last night, while talking with a friend, I realized that really happens.

In the 80's, a lot of rock groups signed contracts with record companies. They got an expense account and could live like rock stars. Fame, fortune, getting puking drunk every night.

But then the devil came to collect on their debts. A lot of times, the record company over-produced albums and the rockers never saw a dime, they went into debt with the record company and that debt had to repaid in their own sort of living undead Hell, doing concerts in lousy places in the midwest, rehashing old songs that you've played a hundred times before, growing slowly older, stuck with the lyrics you wrote just out of highschool, they become the living dead. Poor bastards. I mean, they're only people and I'm sure there are some that like guys that used to play football, they still think they're gods, but imagine if it were you... Would you want to be rehashing your art from when you were 19, wearing the same clothes you did in highschool?

I never saw anywhere in the bible where God says he's no longer going to show us his powers but I've heard religious people say God not showing himself to us directly is just to test our faith. But what about the devil? If he wants to lead us astray, certainly he'd use whatever means he could. If I said, "I'd sell my soul to the devil to find a nickel over there on the sidewalk within the next two minutes." surely nine times out of ten there'd be a nickel over there, wouldn't there? It's just too easy and too tempting to refuse.

I tried this twice and found no nickels. Of course, I'm sure there's some convoluted 'logic' to explain this. Like, if you say something like this, you already doubt God and the devil not providing a nickel makes you doubt God more so he gets you anyhow. Though if the devil is pride, arrogance, greed, lust, etc, this hardly seems to fit his profile.

Anyhow. Enough rambling. I just thought the parallels between Faust and the RIAA were interesting and might be worth making into another retelling of this story.