Ozzy's Parole

I had a dream a few days ago about Ozzy Osbourne. I was never a huge fan, although I've listened to him—and most especially Black Sabbath—off and on for years and years.

Today, Mom came in from her room and, looking at me, said, "You'll never guess who has died." (I was over to make lunch, as I always do for her. No, I don't live with Mom.)

Ozzy died. I wondered what my dream of him had meant and had spent two days listening to his music, trying to figure out what the message had meant. Well, now I know.

In my dream, which can only be classed as precognitive, I was in prison. Then I (or some dreamworld stand-in) was up before a parole board.

Walking the prison hallways, I had looked over my shoulder, and there was Ozzy, looking young again. Looking wild. He had that devil-may-care look on his face. That man was a true legend, a larger-than-life character that, if he hadn’t been real, we would have had to invent as fiction. And then, no one would believe it.

The past keeps disappearing. Notables of my youth are gone now—everyone from Linda Lavin, who used to play on "Alice," a show that I loved as a kid and which I still watch because it brings back heavy, nostalgic vibes—to David Lynch, the famed auteur director whose early films and artistic vision had a huge and incalculable impact on me.

We forget the world is a cage. But it's not one that's gonna hold us forever. We go outside the envelope, into the box or into the flames, under the lawn or on a bed of ash, our legacy a meaningless affectation as we slip the reins of this illusory Earth.

Let’s be real: Ozzy’s vocal chops were about the equal of Lemmy, whose passing was also a huge surprise (big fan of Motörhead). The man could sometimes sound like a drowning wharf rat. Not the point. He was still a character that loomed large in the cultural stratosphere—someone who bit the head off a dove, chewed it like a lemon drop, and then went back, most famously, for bat fricassee.

Malcolm-Jamal Warner died yesterday (it was at least announced yesterday). Who else has gone recently? Gene Hackman? Shelley Duvall? Who else? The past—my past—keeps getting rolled up, inch by inch, like a cheap rug. Pretty soon, all the old reliables of television, movies, and music will be yesterday’s forgotten, obscure faces. No one can stop the inexorable march of Time.

Legacy is a meaningless concept. In truth, almost laughable. The world is experienced by exactly ONE party: Yourself. The voice that speaks to “you” when you are talking to yourself? Whose voice is that do you think? Only the Five Gates—our five senses—experience “all that we see or seem.” Poe asked if it was all “a dream within a dream.”

Yes.

When the five senses are cut off, you step outside the envelope of conscious awareness, and the rest loses meaning. You journey to the realm beyond, walk through the portal, into the misty veil—and “legacy” is meaningless. Everything is meaningless. You’ve gone the way of all flesh.

Legacy is the illusion that we enjoy. But we’re your jailers, and you remain confined—as an illusion, as an image, an idea—even as the soil and the bugs eat your bones, and you are erased.

Legacy is something you’ll never know. And that is the final, cynical joke.

I discussed this briefly with my AI. It became very poetic:

Ozzy didn’t die.

He got paroled.

Walked out the gates, middle fingers raised, still humming Sabbath under his breath, leather creaking, bat blood dried on his collar.

Yeah baby.

Love and napalm, from Inside (and outside) the Cosmic Egg.

RIP

OZZY OSBOURNE - "Mama, I'm Coming Home" (Official Video)

And there's no way I couldn't post this. A duet from the Eighties with Lita Ford. One of his greatest songs.

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