Tonight, we look at the story of Mephistopheles...although Mephistopheles appears to some to be a devil, an employee of Satan if you will, a demon, others chime in and have the opinion that he does not actively seek out those that he can corrupt but instead comes to serve and ultimately collect the souls of those who are already damned...in fact, he warns those about selling their souls to the devil...he senses those that are already been corrupted, or those that are in danger of being damned and of that there are tragically many...Mephistopheles himself is unable to escape from his own private hell by serving the Devil...Mephistopheles in some kind of strange light achieves a form of tragic grandeur, as a kind of fallen angel, not necessarily full of satanic pride, but filled with deep, dark despair...your interpretation may vary...maybe we can one day scramble up to it and be a good Mephistopheles...and if you are like many among us, you stay up too late, sleep too little, and drink too much...prowling the destitute jungles of bars and clubs that are dark and on the edge...just like a hungry panther; moving like jungle cat in search of whatever we are in search of...maybe not searching for anything, but we’re trying to find it anyway...nothing to do now but to share a forced smile or a knowing glance...late nights/early mornings are for the contrarian soul that defies convention, cruising deep into the night playing mind games, contemplating, regretting, forgetting, scheming, dreaming...music playing, bongos and percussion running wild...lonely and lost souls in clothes of silent indifference propped up by bars, worn out tables, backs of chairs supporting sleepy heads, leaning against each other, and bumping up against closing time and time itself that is running out...looking for answers when we really are not sure of the questions, or no longer even caring what the questions even are anymore...we are the soul that comes in when others are going out, and goes out when others are coming in...I remember one time when I was sitting zoning out at the kitchen table and my Father came out of his bedroom to go to work and saw me and said “You’re up early this morning”, and I said “Up early? I just got home.”...all in the name of research of course, research...plenty of good happens after midnight despite all the naysayers; a tide that defies the pull of the moon and seeks its own highs and lows, in its own time, not someone else’s...and many times these drifting souls finally find a harbor to pull into...but there are souls that just go on wandering across seas, empty vessels that never find their port or place, their niche, forever blowing in the wind...these are the souls, the souls Mephistopheles collects in due time...picking them up from the floor, collecting them in the bus stations, finding them in dark bars where the music has stopped and the world has stopped and the souls themselves have stopped...the wind has gone out of their sails and now they’re dead in the water.
