WE interrupt your otherwise enthralling lecture about the meaning of life and its ability to hide under snails for a special word about religion. Not just any religion all of them. All at once, with no commercial interruptions or pauses for prayer and reflection. The master of all cosmos is even now beaming the message direct from the sky palace into my frontal lobe. I have no choice but to type, and type quickly for the message sears my brain tissues with its righteousness even as it passes through.

In my capacity as the vocal piece for the great and all powerful, all knowing, all seeing cosmic master I tell you that these words come from HE and only HE, not to be confused with any lesser, more lower case, Hes that you may come across in your cosmic journey from cradle to grave. For simplicity sake he will call him the Diagesis, and the Diagesis rules all.

Or so he says.

Personally I’m frightened by the concept of voices talking to and through me and the particulars of what they are saying. It can be troublesome to decide if what I am thinking is really my thought or the thought of The Treat One. How am I to know if Vincent or TGAP are speaking to me, perhaps this is all just a mild case of schizophrenia and that it will all fade away with some sleep or exercise.

I forget how that works with you people.

To curtail further head scratching and desperate mumblings and pointings, I will come right out with it; Diagetic studies are troubling. How am I to determine if things that are happening in my head are conscious actions or unconscious? Do I really have people in there that are separate or part of me? Did Caesar have a nasty problem with internal voices and seizures or was God (a god, not really a question of WHAT god) telling him things.

Is that music part of the ambiance or is it coming from that car radio? Is that a sultry, mood setting voice over or am I talking out loud? Some of these questions I could maybe answer, others I don’t suppose have much in the way of answers.

But they all have a common element – they all exist in a plane of meaning. A level. A floor with an elevator called meaning running between them.

There are probably simpler ways to explain the process of diagetic thought to you, but there aren’t many that get you thinking about it with as many headache-inducing side effects as asking you to question your belief in religious divination and prophecy versus mental fragility.

One man’s voice is another man’s divine savior made manifest. And one writers character is another writers subtextual commentary on the roles of Marxism in modern societies notion of feminist psychotherapy. And it really isn’t just a matter of perspective.

Although some things can masquerade or be mistaken for other things, there are many that cannot and should not be mistaken.

Its still confusing. Let’s try a different approach.

Two men walk into a bar, the third one ducks.

Bada-ching!

But the mental restructuring necessary for that ‘joke’ to function is no different then the reconstruction necessary to know what a diagetic level is.

Have you ever gone to a movie, or read a book where it seemed like there was something else going on there. Where it seemed like no one was saying anything about the struggle between the lower and lower-middle class but you can’t stop thinking about that time when you and your friend Lyle’s relationship was forever sundered when your parents wouldn’t let you speak to him simply because he lived in a mobile home across town? How can a movie about sky-diving gunmen make you suddenly think about Lyle, when it had been thirteen years since you last spoke? Could it be subtext, could it be a fluke, could it be Keanu’s lack of ability to spit out a line without sounding distant, confused, and a comatose?

We may never know.

But what I would recommend is that you pay a little attention to the next random thought that pops into your head when you are watching TV or reading. There might be something else going on there something between the lines, underneath the treacle and the paint.

Something with meaning. Something with intent. Something of the divine?