Heavy Metal told me we are nearing some sort of end, a long time ago. You heard it too, the tolling of the funeral bell.
We had a a little bit of fun with it, huh? Sad fun, but fulfilling. Sometimes I read some of my past words, but what kills me are the comments.
I don't know if you know, but in Greece, deadly terrain and cruel waters often get nicknamed with fairly positive sounding names. This simple dialectic irony is more ancient than any other human thought because it is driven by the most ancient feeling we have.
An edge of a cliff where women and childfolk were driven to suicide rather than be captured by invaders may be named 'the hill of the beautiful daughters'. A sea path that crushed the ship of many an Odysseus might be curiously dubbed 'the fair chance passage'. You get the drift, but do hold on as it gets treacherous...
Heavy Metal is like that, but in reverse. It pretends to be about terrible things, but it Negates the thesis. Ostensibly we were inspired by the darkness and horror packaged within a safe aesthetic experience because it was a containable darkness and horror. We glanced, sideways, inside the wound of existence and we headbanged. I have no regrets on that front, I think we did well, friend.
However a realization is dawning upon humanity now that cannot be assuaged through crayon blood ablation and tough guy leather biker poses on the back of the jewel case. An end to what we perceive as our world seems to be emanating its premonition with an undeniable, existential certitude.
The end is demanding recognition, and the only way a demand for recognition plays out is, ultimately, with a master impressing their truth on the servant. We won't headbang our way out of a climate apocalypse but I am sure we will try.
I'm not going to presage the disaster to come with the classical fetish of the hobbyist writer (purple prose, I'm talking about purple prose) there's enough warning & admonition in any of yours, mine, our favorite arts to cover the issue a thousand times over. Perhaps I may be allowed to use my own poetry, only once, I hope you will forgive me - but otherwise, yes, there will not be a 'top 10 heavy metal songs about the apocalypse' running in the background while we discuss.
If anything, I want us to look upon ourselves, curious and full of wonder, and to notice the phantom scars of a myriad of 'false endings' we have headbanged our way through, full of dark exuberance. I want us to contrast that to this oncoming demand of recognition of the true end of things. It feels different, doesn't it? As meaning falls apart, there is bitter and there is sweet, but one is fleeting and it's the other that we'll have to hold.
Or, perhaps I have nothing to really say, I just wanted to write a little bit, a little bit of unstructured poetry about how it feels to recognize this dynamic, myself, but not alone... I want to turn to my subculture - perhaps that's all that this was ever about, a child Helm, feeling lonely on top of the head of a 40 year old man.
I wanted to tell you that I am thinking about meanings. I am sensing the end of the road for the human experiment, I am contemplating the thing no human was ever equipped to shoulder... but yet, collectively our total function is to shoulder... this, right? We wanted to be free. This is our meaning.
You'll help me one last time to work this out a little bit, why not? It's just me and you in this room, at this point.
Since it's just us, I'll tell you this: I am certain you feel it too, I don't have to explain it too much to you. You heard the funeral toll a long time ago and your heart was filled to the brim with that emptiness. A power from nothing, a freezing flame, a rotten seed of undead vitality. You headbanged the head away until only steel remained.
We told ourselves that meditation on the toll of the funeral bell will make us strong, and make us prepared. The black metal nazi wizards are still on this vain and futile kick, invoking belial and tiamat and psyduck and begging for dark power to destroy... no Goddess will help a creature so pitiful that it masturbates to the stench of dying children.
But the nazis aside, the ones we will meet in the street, again, and have our turgid passion play out once again... we, on the other side, we were just eaters of culture in a world in moral cryostasis after world wars and holocausts and massacred godheads... we leave behind our defiant freedom from everything but ourselves.
The rest will happen as it happens and we will do what we will do, in a way that cannot be stopped or changed.
As the tension waxes and our meanings fall, I recognize you and make no demands, I hope you will remember me, also
