Jake Horsley Unplugged

Jake Horsley Unplugged:

A Neo-Gnostic Takes on the Matrix

By Elizabeth Wu

"We are all slaves. The existence of money alone proves that. You can't do a single thing in this world without money, and to get money you have to do what someone else tells you --sell your time, sweat, blood, whatever, enslave yourself just to buy a little bit of freedom to do what you want. Everybody knows this world is a prison. But it's such a comfortable prison, most people prefer not to think about it, let alone the possibility of escape. We prefer to tell ourselves we're free, taking refuge with all the other slaves, huddling together inside the big lie of consensus reality. People think that because they get paid they're not slaves, but the opposite is true. Since we need money, we don't have any choice but to be slaves. The only alternative is to become a criminal. Or become famous."

So speaks Jake Horsley, self-styled pseudo-voodoo-gonzo-guru. Renegade preacher or enlightened fool, his mission is to sow his wild oats of wisdom anywhere he can find fertile ground or a willing audience. With his thin angular frame, shaved conical head, piercing blue eyes, mystical tattoos, blood red army jacket, camouflage slacks and army boots, he looks less the legendary sage on the mountain and more like an alien in combat gear. As befits a pop prophet with messianic aspirations, he has an aura of mystery and a satirical bent. It is difficult to discern whether he is serious about anything he says, let alone the true motives and intentions behind his words. One thing is certain, however: Horsley is a man out to make a myth of himself. Besides being an inspired writer, filmmaker and film critic, his latest book suggests he may even be "The One." What is "The One?" In Horsley's own terms, becoming "The One" involves "preparing for the onset of lucidity."

photo by Mike La

"I am preparing to awaken in the dream, and then to awaken from the dream."

As far as I can ascertain, "Being The One" entails "seeing through the code" of consensus reality and introducing a new perspective, a new vision, a way out for those ready and willing to embrace it. How's he going to do it? For starters, he has written a handbook, due to be released this April Fool's Day. Matrix Warrior: Being the One works on the assumption that everything in the 1999 movie The Matrix is true of modern-day society. It elucidates the means by which ordinary mortals can free themselves from the emotional and psychological bonds of self-and-society-imposed values. Its main premise is a bitter pill indeed. In his book, Horsley argues that humans are slaves, locked in a prison world woven out of our own dreams, thoughts, fears and desires. He claims we are at the mercy of vampiric entities that, in tandem with our apathy if not our help, have constructed a system whereby our own energy (mostly in the form of emotions) is channelled and consumed. The book proposes that our ignorance is tantamount to consent, and that only by becoming aware of the trap can we break free of it. Fortunately for humanity, "The One," is here to offer another alternative to a slave existence (besides a life of crime or fame, that is): the path of the Lucid, one who sees clearly and who values individual freedom above all else.

The idea that the material world is all an illusion is an ancient concept included in both Hindu and Buddhist doctrines. So in this regard, Horsley has thousands of years of tradition to back him up. It's the part about invisible, soul-sucking beings that seems slightly less conventional and ventures into the weird and, some might say, paranoid. How much of this is meant to save souls and how much is meant to sell books is difficult to determine. When asked whether he actually believes he is "The One," Horsley declines comment and simply tells me to read his book. Like a super-hero protecting his secret identity (or an astute businessman protecting his interests), he wraps himself in a cape of grandiose ambiguity. Maybe it was reading too many comic books as a child; maybe it was his teenage love affair with Hollywood; maybe it was a male adolescent desire to conquer the world that never faded; or maybe he is exactly what he refuses to say he is. Whatever the case, Horsley's message is plain: Watch out Keanu, there is a new "One" in town.

Self-proclaimed "avatar of atavism," Horsley makes no bones about the nature of his mission. "All I can say is, it's not any system that is the enemy; it's reality itself. War, destruction, disease, crime, insanity, terrorism, these are all symptoms of a single disease: modern society. You don't blame the symptoms, you address them in order to get to the real problem. The real problem is that humanity is asleep. It is being driven by suicidal urges, by an unconscious death wish that goes so deep most of us aren't even aware of it, save through its effects. The modern world with all its evils is merely the expression of this deep-rooted desire. Obviously, something's got to give. When the dreamer awakens, the dream dies. Until this world is stopped, humanity can't even begin to be free."

Every would-be world saviour has his humble beginnings, and Horsley is no exception. When it comes to personal history, he is both evasive and candid. When asked where he is from he jokes, "I was born in Anhedonia, but I haven't been back in years." Anyone familiar with Woody Allen's Annie Hall (one of Horsley's favourite films) might recognize the term. Anhedonia is a psychological state that prevents a person from enjoying life.

Joking aside, Horsley elaborates by describing what he regards as a formative childhood memory. He was sitting in the backseat of the car on his way to the fair, filled with excitement and anticipation. Suddenly he realized that in a few hours he'd be coming back again and the whole experience would be over. This gave rise to the feeling that none of it was real anyway. After that, he recalls that any time he felt happy, he would get an overwhelming sense of unreality, and his happiness would turn into despair. To maintain his sanity, he says, he had to make a constant effort not to think about the feeling of "living in a dream world."

Perhaps for this reason, as a child Horsley took refuge in the make-believe world of comic books and motion pictures. An adolescent passion for Clint Eastwood ignited an enduring obsession for American movies. He would spend ho urs making lists of favourite actors and films, drawing imaginary movie posters, and writing screenplays (poor ones, he might add). Pauline Kael's When the Lights Go Down opened up for him a whole new appreciation for film writing and criticism, and he began writing capsule reviews about every movie he saw. At 15 he began to dream in earnest of becoming a filmmaker; he nurtured that ambition for another five years, at which point, as he himself puts it, "real life took over."

Before it did, at the age of 20, Horsley's ambition took him to New York, where he spent time working on an existential screenplay about a serial killer, called "Ed is Dead." He bought a car and drove cross-country to California, his pilgrimage ending in Hollywood. Instead of being discovered, he caught what he describes as an "energy draining virus" and was confined to a Holiday Inn room for three weeks. Once strong enough to check out, he returned to England and, after a short stay in Bath with his mother, moved to Edinburgh. It was there, by his own account, that he "collided with the real world" (in the form of a woman). Shortly after this, a friend (astrologer Lyn Birkbeck) turned him on to Carlos Castaneda's best-selling series, and he discovered a new obsession. As everyone knows, these books (10 in all) detail the experiences of a sceptical anthropologist-turned-sorcerer's apprentice who learns about alternate realities under the tutelage of the Toltec shaman don Juan.

"Frustration, disillusionment, and the need to seek out another perspective led me to Mexico. The books of Carlos Castaneda gave me a name, a place, and an intent: to learn Spanish, go to Oaxaca, find the bench that don Juan and Carlos hung out on, sit there, and see what happened." He chuckles and grins wryly. "I never found it, but I sat on every bench on the square just to be sure. I stayed in Mexico for two more years and met certain individuals that opened up new possibilities to me and confirmed what I had already suspected. The sorcerer's view is like a spiral; once you accept the possibility of magic, everything you believe is thrown into question. And the more you question what you believe, the more magic comes into play in your life."

After Mexico, Horsley, ever practical, began setting up a refuge for the Apocalypse with a "fellow sorcerer" in Taos, New Mexico. "The best-laid plans of mice and megalomaniacs always go awry. Personal circumstances in the shape of a romantic cataclysm caused me to abandon the project and flee to Morocco to seek total destruction. I'm not a suicidal type, but having lost my will to live, I sought out adversity, discomfort, and hardship in the most direct fashion. Hence I chose Morocco, a place where I knew everyone would be really nasty to me. And they were. I went there with nothing but a crystal, a poncho, Crowley's The Book of the Law, and a broken heart. That was the turning point."

After seven months of self-imposed destitution, Horsley made his way back to Europe, spending time in Paris, Pamplona, and Amsterdam. There he wrote The Blood Poets: A Cinema of Savagery, a "quasi-academic" (Horsley's words) two-volume study of cinematic violence. His Hollywood dreams rekindled, he headed for California; but once again real life intervened. Denied entry by US Customs for once having admitted to marijuana use, he was obliged (in his own words) to "resume [his] magical Mexican odyssey." From there he continued south to Guatemala, where, he says, he "was administered the red pill." Having thus confirmed the illusory nature of reality, circumstance again forced him onto the road. This time he found himself back in the homeland; it was 2001, and 14 years had gone by since he first left.

Horsley muses that, in retrospect, the reason he came back to Britain was to renew and fulfil his long-forgotten ambition for filmmaking. Naturally, his work is imbued with the same sense of unreality that haunts his everyday life.

"I've always had quite a tenuous grip on reality," he says with a sigh. "Reality, on the other hand, has proved to be very possessive and jealous a mistress. It has taken me a long time to get free from her clutches, but I think I've finally managed to dump her."

Horsley's first project, The God Game, consists of six individual half-hour documentaries filmed on digital video in a raw, expressionist style. Each short is an investigation into one person's idea of reality, dreams, life beyond the self, death, God, and what it all means in a post-modern schizophrenic world. His most recent work, Beauty Fool, is a dark comedy he both wrote and directed, regarding the treacherous nature of desire and the futility of romantic love. Whatever the medium, Horsley's aim is the same: to stimulate, provoke, disturb, and awaken the audience by propagating his unconventional ideas.

And he is just getting started. The late Pauline Kael, revered in the film world, called Horsley "a marvellous critic." In her review of Blood Poets, she wrote: "Jake Horsley seems to arrive out of nowhere, yet here he is--an almost fully formed and only slightly stoned sensibility. ...He's not just a hothead, he's a hardhead, too." In typical Aries fashion, Horsley rams through his projects with amazing speed and tenacity. He took only two weeks to write Matrix Warrior and signed a contract with Orion Publishing the following week. The entire process took only eight months from conception to publication. Likewise, he filmed Beauty Fool, a full-length digital film, in two weeks this past February, and he intends to have it ready for screening by May. Apart from a five-minute interview dealing with screen violence on MSNBC's Nachman last fall, Horsley has kept a relatively low profile. Now, with the one-two punch of the book (which comes out in anticipation of the first Matrix sequel) and the feature film, Horsley looks set to explode onto the scene.

"I am going to perform the greatest disappearing act of all time," he says with a gesture of mock grandeur, "I'm going to turn myself into fiction." He pauses dramatically. "The world is the beholder. Once enough people have an image of me in their mind's eye, I can disappear with impunity, and no one will be the wiser. That's how the warrior escapes the matrix."

Even so, one may ask, why the big show, the publicity, the propaganda, if all he wants is to disappear? As a stand-in for Neo, obviously Horsley's got his work cut out for him. Somewhat perversely, he refers to his task as "spreading the virus."

Horsley seems to have a fascination, almost a reverence, for biological disorders. At times, he even comes on like a crazed physician, or maybe just a witch doctor. He explains, "Cancer is when cells develop ego. They become conscious of themselves as separate from the body, and hence ariss the possibility of revolt. It's not a conscious decision to revolt, however. The mere fact of becoming a separate organism is in itself revolting." His lip curls as if in disgust. I am suddenly face to face with Neo's nemesis, Agent Smith. "Humanity is a cancer," he says without emotion. Just as quickly, Horsley's expression changes again and he smiles, seeming less like a Gatekeeper than a car salesman. "And the cure is the Divine Virus."

Before I can absorb the full effect of this bleak diagnosis, Horsley anticipates my next question. "What is the Divine Virus?" he asks in a gently mocking tone. "The trouble with that question is it assumes that everything is subject to language, to rational understanding. The virus is the solution to that particular madness. It is a primal awakening that occurs in the cells, and as such it is accompanied by the annihilation of reason, and of the personal self. That's what makes it divine."

Despite his atheist upbringing, Horsley is beginning to sound either like an advocate of New Age Darwinism or the avatar of some bizarre new religion. He denies any such affiliations. "I don't subscribe to anything, not even to my own belief system. I think religion is a useful crutch, but like any product it has its sell-by date. All popular religions are now clearly obsolete. Belief is a kind of slavery anyway."

Any belief? Isn't belief what being "The One" is all about?

Horsley grins obligingly and qualifies his previous statement. "Except for the belief that nothing is impossible. I just don't believe in limitations. God as we know it has become another fixed item on our ego-driven itineraries. As such, he's as powerless as we are to really change anything."

And yet "The One" has this power, right?

"You said it, not me." (Coming from a man who humbly assured me, "I'm not God, I'm only his human embodiment," Horsley sounds suspiciously like the last human embodiment of God when he was interrogated by unbelievers.) "If you can think of a thing," he continues, "then it must exist. Or at least it soon will. Being the One is like that. Thoughts are living things. If you think you're the One, then you are."

When I suggest there must thousands of people out there who think they're "The One," most of them on anti-depressants, Horsley is not discouraged. "Of course the proof is in the pudding," he admits. "Other people have to believe it too; otherwise, instead of a One-to-Be, you are just a wanna-be." He smiles coyly. "The One has to live up to the hype."

Horsley may not actually believe he's "The One," but as far as I can tell, he appears to think he's in the running. In one last attempt to gauge Horsley's seriousness, I ask what exactly it would take to make him "The One."

He pauses, apparently savouring my curiosity, his mischievous eyes peering out from an otherwise deadpan expression. Just as I think I've finally pinned this nebulous Neo-Gnostic down, Horsley shrugs and resumes his ineffable air of ambivalence.

"Book sales."

Matrix Warrior: Being the One is now available in hardback from Gollancz Books, Orion Publishing, and paperback from St Martin's press, at all self-respecting book dealers for only £6.99 or $13.95, respectively

Elizabeth Wu is a freelance investigator from Cincinnati, Ohio. She is currently on the move.