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
Hi Helm.
ReplyDeleteGreat to read another PoS post! I may not always agree with you but I salute you. I've had so much blissful exhaustion and personal discovery over the years with your posts here. Hell, my wife and even rented a car once and drove to the Walls of Jericho(ruins in Palestine) in wonder of cultural curiosity after your posts highlighting the Teutonic album. It is no small satisfying challenge trying to engage with your post exploring and charting "The Poetry of Subculture." The biggest challenge for me is to "do the work" make one's HM album. I try to be humble to the muse. Needs more work. I think I'm making progress. It does help me when life throws pressing curve balls that I can't ignore...but there's only infinite time in one's life.
About your observation of The Final Hour...yeah, the end is nigh on many fronts the earth's climate – loved illustrations of Greek water body origins.
Funeral bells...yeah, metal and Heavy Metal has many of those "meditations." I'm partial to Metallica's For Whom the Bell Tolls.
Delightful to contemplate your Burial work. Not the feel good uppity tempo traditional heavy metal I frequently enjoy. Somber. Dramatic. Organ so effectively paints the funeral setting. Gorgeous production. Disturbing pixel artwork. Makes me want to re-visit Demon's Unexpected Guest. I digress. Let us focus. Currently listening again. I listened about 5 times so far. Inhuman scream... malignant color...spitting...mmm so vidvid and raw to visualize in an ending. I think the classic Greek dramatists must smile on your work.
Well, the last three stanza express the main point for me.
The last words my dad said to me before he died in 2017 was a too brief phone call conversation ending with him asking me "Have you been able to practice your art? I liked that he was concerned to ask me about that. "A little," I responded. I felt ashamed that I hadn't performed better with the "light" or talent or borrowed time I have be given.
Yes, we must be bold and have some humor as we create our arts. That's a good line...ruin it with laughter...The staging reference in your song made me think how Shakespeare expressed we are all performers and portrayers...the lyrics to Rush's Limelight. Your works seem to have much more will towards malignant crayons, Telamchus, than I measure in my will at this point in art.
A buzzword for me is the idea of "wonder" because it makes me wander off comparing how other artist have expressed "light"
for example. Manilla Road's "Lords of Light" "Mountian of Wisdom...Helicon(the song):
Then came the logic,
Truth of all life
The gateways of Magik,
Are centered inside the mind
Power and wisdom,
Knowledge and eight fold law,
The music of the gods,
Lives on Helicon
Hahahah, sing it Mark Shelton. Hails.
You know, for years I wondered what Jon Arch meant by Arcana awaits....it was so stirringly sung, so inviting. So I tried stirring and steering in my own way. Here I am years and tears later. Yes, here we are as we used to read Zero express.(Good ole' Zero. Loved his work. Too heady for me but I loved just being a fly the comment walls...and here comes the amusing whisper to my ears....who made who, dear reader, Helm dear?
Are we not the products of our environments, our pantheons, our hērōs?