Blaze is Not Forrest Gump.
I know. I know. I have been getting emails, posts on the comments page, letters, messages from those aliens in my head and subtle signals in the sunrise and other natural phenomena all asking the same question.
Where is Blaze?
Guys, I cannot tell you what I didn’t know. It is as simple as that. Blaze had gone, disappeared, no word no strange odours, no rocks on my roof at 4.00am to go surfing even though we had actually just gone the day before and it was springtime crap. Even his brother Gatesy who himself has been hiding on the planet’s deepest oceans could tell me nothing other than the fish weren’t biting although I doubt Blaze had anything to do with that.
But last night I had a dream and Blaze was in it. Now some of you will think that this is nothing more than the result of a hot humid night and a large serve of Chinese too close to bedtime. But I am not so sure, it seemed so real and so well Blaze like, it is hard to believe it was not some sort of message.
You will recall that Blaze returned from Indonesia named Blaze again [long story see https://www.chestbeatingbyword.com/home/2019/7/3/sticks-and-stones
to understand the full shenanigans] but then he quickly went off the radar again. Vanfuckinganished in fact. For a while I was concerned then I just kind of forgot about it. Yeah I know that sounds a bit average but life rolls on and besides you can’t kill Blaze. He is like Michael Myers in Halloween so I was not that concerned. Besides Gatesy was unperturbed as well, yes that is how he put it.
Anyway in the dream Blaze and I caught up in a café in suburbia far from our usual comfort zone, surrounded by mums in new sports wear with prams. It seems Blaze was trying to keep his whereabouts a mystery. The man himself was wearing a Metallica T shirt and I know his heart was breaking because the upcoming Metallica tour had just been cancelled due to Kirk Hatfield having to enter rehab. I had my Opeth T-shirt on so I guess it is safe to say that as two middle age men in t-shirts featuring metal bands in a suburban cafe surrounded by yummy mummies, we were hiding in plain sight.
The Metallica thing might also explain how along with the coffees he ordered a vanilla slice the size of a house brick that he ate in about thirty seconds. Grief needs feeding and looking at him I could see he had put on a kilo or four. If he was grieving that hard so as to eating those slices every day I could see why.
“Where you been, man?” I asked him once he actually swallowed the last sugary wad.
Blaze got all mysterious. I can always tell cause he tilts his head to one side and suddenly gets a faint pirate voice going. “Well I can’t really say but let me you show you this. “ he points to his mobile. I got closer to look at the screen. He has some news footage from Channel Nine that he hits play on. It was a video of the Hong Kong street riots. It looks like it was shot on the night when rioters and police were clashing in the HK airport terminal.
At first I didn’t see what he was on about. In the foreground of the video police and rioters are exchanging pushes and punches. In the background western tourists with horrified expressions on their faces are in a queue at a hire car rental stand. Then I saw it, in the car rental kiosk behind the counter serving a western family was Blaze. The camera catches the second when he looks up and smiles at the Dad as they hand over the credit card.
“What the fuck,” I begun to say but Blaze held up his hand and just said, “Wait.”
He swiped up another video. This time its footage of Boris Johnson making a speech outside the British Prime Minister’s residence at 10 Downing Street. There is a light breeze blowing Boris’s wispy blonde hair and a look of excitement on his big boofy face. Nothing unusual there but then the camera pans left and catches an English policeman who would normally be out of camera shot. Even with the silly English Bobby hat on Blaze is recognisable. He has his hands behind his back and is rocked back on his heels. When the camera catches his face I swear he mouths the words “You’re nicked, toerag!”
Straight Down The Barrel!!
“How the fuck did you doctor those?” I ask, bursting into laughter.
“That’s hurtful, they are not doctored at all. Give me your phone.”
So I give blaze my phone and the last footage we find on the ABC by accessing the app on my phone. They are real.
The last footage is of Scomo and Trump smirking at each other while the Pratt son hosts the opening of a carton factory in the state of Ohio, the heartland of the USA. At one stage the cameraman pans across the workers in their safety vests and trucker caps cheering on three blokes who don’t really give a fuck about them other than how their lives will make their own dreams fulfilled. There at the end of the back row is Blaze wearing a Make America Great Again cap. Of course he is clapping furiously above his head, only breaking his applause to put his little fingers in his mouth to whistle. I happen to know he is complete shite at whistling like this but you can’t tell from the soundtrack.
“WHAT THE FUCK, BLAZE?!”
Blaze just shrugs, “I know, I have trouble believing it myself. And I can’t explain it either. I just simply fall asleep and dream and then when I wake up the dream is real. I’m there in the videos just like I dreamt it.“
I thought for a moment.
“Yeah, but why the fuck are you dreaming about being the rental car clerk, a Pommy copper and a worker in a fucking cardboard box factory? By now I’d been picking some more exciting possibilities to dream about. “
“I know weird isn’t it? I thought that myself. Just last night I went to myself, “Right this time when I dream I want to be backstage hanging with Slayer on their farewell world tour which that night was playing in Rio. And I fucking ended up being a truck driver driving a semi that carried the light rigging, sitting outside with the engine running waiting for the show to end.”
I started to laugh. Only Blaze could have this magical power, to be a real life Forrest Gump and be at historical events and still not make anything much out of them at all.
And that is when I woke up.
It was all a dream of course. Blaze is not Forrest Gump. He is just a man like the rest of us. As for where he has been. Well he has been nowhere man. Just like the rest of us, he has been getting through life day by day, doing the day to day things like we all do – birth, school, work, family, death etc. etc. That’s where he has been. At least that is the message I get.
And by the way despite what everyone else seems to think,Blaze and I both agree that the movie Forrest Gump is a complete load of steaming crap.
