Brother Theodore Speaks

Ladies and gentlemen, ladies and gentlemen, can't you see what eating does to us? This morning, this very morning, I found a picture of myself when I was three months old. What a change. Frightening!

Now you say life with out eating is bunk. I say your sin-eaten butcherous notions, that's bunk! You say nutrition is essential to your diet. You say it gives you zest and zeal and a coat of healthy flesh. I say it gives you diarrhea and constipation! I say, it gives you pipple-popples and slushy pips!

Just punch a finger, that's right, just punch a pinky into that healthy flesh you talk about, the dent will stay there till the cows come home to roost. And they wont come home. They can't come home. They have no legs! You tore them off and ate them. Remember!

My friends, unfortunately the desire to eat is widespread. An evil instinct, a feverish impulse, to polish off nutrition. A bestial urge to fill your belly and the bellies of your loved ones with eatables and edibles; with paraphernalia and cadaverous things. A world teeming with paunches, filled to the brim, or half the brim, or three fourths to the brim, or seven eighths to the brim, or nine tenths to the brim, with that vile, that obscene, that tragic substance called Food!

Can't you see! Food filthifies the saliva of your spittle! Food sends you staggering to the bathroom! The Foodists way of life is lunacy. It is filling what is empty and emptying what is full. A mockery punctuated by the clatter of dishes and flushing of toilets. The human race, my friends, to which so many of you belong, looks to me like a bad joke, a boo-boo of nature! A miscarriage of the primal mother!

Stop eating tonight! Its hard to break with traditions and give up your pre-conceived ideas, I know, but let me ask you a simple question, and then let me answer it. What has eating done for you? I'll tell you! It has changed you into flotsam and jetsam. It has thrown you into an orgy of self destruction. It has made chaos the law of your life, and loneliness and despair...a death in life, from womb to tomb, anguish, from cradle to crypt, tears! Your body, your mind, your soul, cry out for help and you swallow another pill and say "Shut up body! Shut up, mind! Shut up, soul!" But they wont shut up.

Fungus! Decomposed protein! Scrofula! Disgruntled liver bile! Riddle their way through your blood, cripple your anatomy, mutilate your metabolism, leading to obesity and adultery and opening the door to Lockjaw, Housemaids knee, and compulsive, uncalled-for laughter!

You want health...do you have it? You long for love... do you have it? You yearn for peace...do you have it? Your way of life my friends, your way of life, has failed you time and again! Might it not be wise to try another way? My way. The La La Bhagwan Shree Mu' Ukah Padahya way! I don't eat. I inhale the light of the sun, the beams of the moon and the breath of the wind. I live on the smell of daffodils. Wont you try it?

I need fellow crusaders! I need you, my friends. You, with your splendid intellects! The world needs you! Your loved ones need you! Wont you help me! Help you! Help Them! Hallelujah!

(The above text was transcribed after several visits to the 13th Street Theater in New York's Greenwich Village where Brother Theodore ( aka Theodore Gottleib) was performing. His inspired performace was witnessed by all with both nervous hilarity and profound delight.)

"It is my sincere wish that after my death my head be severed from my body and that it be replaced witha bouquet of broccoli. It is the artist in me." -Brother Theodore(1906-2001)