tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26301661441906370022023-06-20T21:00:35.705-07:00The Concrete VoidSnowblindedhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06242023366792085291noreply@blogger.comBlogger28125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2630166144190637002.post-71252726856438504402018-08-03T11:53:00.002-07:002018-08-06T10:16:30.901-07:00Psychology - The Middle Path of Experiential PsychologyIf one takes a broad perspective on the development of Western psychotherapy, looking in the broadest possible terms at everything that has been written under the umbrella of “psychology”, the most natural way of dividing the field is between those thinkers who predominantly sought to use subjective observations about the nature and behavior of their own mind to establish an understanding of how all human minds work, versus those who sought to use the outward manifestations of human consciousness, typically research generated by scientific studies and brain imaging, to better grasp what lies within. Owing to the former's reliance on the experience of a single mind and the latter's foundation in experimental research, we can call these two camps experiential and experimental psychology.<br />
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At our current point in the development of the field, experimental psychology has attained near exclusive dominance. It would take a concerted effort against the current for a student entering one of our university's psychology programs to emerge with a background in Freudian or Jungian analysis. There is good reason for this, for in the early half of the twentieth century, we experienced the effects of an institutionalized system of inward-oriented psychotherapy, and the end result was that the unrestrained and scientifically unfounded musings of Sigmund Freud took on the power to imprison people against their wills and subject them to viscous electroshock treatments and in some cases even lobotomies, despite little to no evidence of either practice's efficacy.<br />
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<span style="white-space: pre;"></span>The purpose of this essay is not to try and affect some kind of regression back to this period in our history. Rather than looking at experiential psychology as it was previously put into practice, I seek to explore whether there is anything of value in the approach as a whole that cannot be found in it's research-oriented cousin, and whether there is a means of putting these advantages to use without repeating the mistakes of the twentieth century.<br />
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<span style="white-space: pre;"></span>Before I can get into all that, however, the first task before me is to give clear demarcations on what falls under the terms experimental and experiential psychology. For the former this is relatively easy. A workable definition is: any cognitive discipline that seeks to come to an understanding of the human mind through either the observation of the organ which produces thinking (the brain) or the outcomes of research framed around the scientific-method and it's hypothesis-method-experiment-results approach.<br />
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<span style="white-space: pre;"></span>A clear-cut understanding of what does and does not fit within the domain of experiential psychology, however, is a bit trickier, because there is a substantial amount of material written under disciplines that, in the West at least, are not normally classified as psychotherapy, but fit perfectly well beneath this standard. The best way to begin clarifying what does and does not fall within experiential psychology is to provide a definition for the term, so I will start by doing just that. Experiential psychology is the directing of cognition towards a greater understanding of itself and, from these inward appraisals, the nature of cognition as a whole. This definition is a little bit messy if you start trying to disassemble it, especially the phrase “directing of cognition”. To phrase it slightly differently, we could say “the human mind is capable of self-assessment, and many thinkers have sought to use these principles of self-assessment to understand not just basic thoughts and feelings, but the mechanics by which the mind operate. These thinkers are experiential psychologists.” This definition is even fuzzier than the first one, but were I to attempt to give an absolutely precise definition, it would take dozens of pages, and it would differ from the one William James' gives in “The Stream of Thought” only in a few key areas. We all, however, possess an intuitive understanding of how “my mind” is a separate entity from “your mind”, how each of these minds experiences states of “thinking” and “consciousness”, and that these thoughts can be directed towards things. This intuitive understanding will work fine for my purposes, and any attempt to go into further detail will only bog things down.<br />
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<span style="white-space: pre;"></span>This definition, fuzzy though it may be, clearly goes well beyond the depth psychology of Freud and Jung, or even the broader field of early psychology as a whole. It includes a huge variety of systems of mental self-assessment that have arisen over the span of recorded history. All of it's subdivisions, however, share in common the approach of using the experience of subjective consciousness to examine itself, and from the basis of these examinations lead the subject or other human beings into superior states if consciousness.<br />
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<span style="white-space: pre;"></span>The most obvious members of this school are the psychological theorists of the past who possessed an inward rather than outward focus. This includes the work of people like Freud and Jung, in addition to a great host of related thinkers who did not attain enough followers to merit a separate school of thought bearing their name: the functional psychology of William James, George Herbert Mead, and John Dewey; the historical psychology of Norman O. Brown; the biosocial psychology of Gardner Murphy; the Gestalt school; and the great many depth psychologists who don't neatly fit within the two main camps, to name just a small portion of it’s varied membership.<br />
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<span style="white-space: pre;"></span>Beyond just thinkers explicitly labeled as psychologists, experiential psychology also includes work from the domain of philosophy. The most obvious members are Husserl and the phenomenologists, but much of existentialism, particularly the work of Kierkegaard and Nietzsche, focuses not on external truths, be they scientific or metaphysical, but on how to condition the conscious mind to best engage with the external world.<br />
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<span style="white-space: pre;"></span>Finally, and, as I will argue, most significantly, there are the contributions to experiential psychology wrought by the worlds religious traditions. This assertion is likely surprising to a great many readers, and unfortunately, in order to delve further into why I feel this way, we need to make one more clarification of the terms I will be using.<br />
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<span style="white-space: pre;"></span>As with any system of classifying things that do not naturally lend themselves to classification, including the splitting of psychology field into experimental and experiential, my effort will unfortunately ignore the many shades of subtlety that characterize these longstanding intellectual traditions. These crass divisions, however, serve a didactic purpose by giving a clear a means of presenting a corpus far too broad for anyone to completely master, so long as we keep in mind that these divisions are only tools and not absolute truths.<br />
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<span style="white-space: pre;"></span>With that caveat out of the way, one can look at the world’s religious traditions and see two major threads running through them. A Western reader whose understanding of what a religion is comes largely from the “big three” monotheistic traditions will no doubt be more familiar with what I will call the dogmatic component. These are the teachings that focus on either truths about the nature of the external world, typically truths which are not readily apparent to empirical observation, or guidelines for proper behavior. Like experimental psychology, these elements are focused on the world outside the subjective consciousness, but unlike modern science, they are typically founded on appeals to authority rather than replicable data. As far as Judaism, Christianity, and Islam go, this has come to be the dominant form of religious expression. It has become so pervasive in the Western consciousness that many people regard it as the entirety of the religious experience. For instance, if you were to ask a person on the street what the purpose of an ancient mythology was, the default answer is “to explain the things about the world they did not understand.” That, in the Greco-Roman tradition (by far the most familiar form of mythology to laymen), the strange, uninstructive, often bizarrely sexual tales vastly outnumber those that meet even the most liberal definition of didactic is never given much thought, likewise the almost deliberately anti-explanatory character of the ancient Mysteries.<br />
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<span style="white-space: pre;"></span>The dominance of the dogmatic vein of thought in Western religion is neither absolute nor an essential characteristic of the tradition. Even today there are undercurrents in each of the three monotheistic religions that focus not any truth claims regarding what surrounds us, but on the understanding and modification of the conscious mind. This can be called the mystical component. While centuries of church rule have done much to crush the Gnostic, Cathar, Bogomil, and even the Manichean strains of thought in Christianity, both Islam and Judaism have been significantly more tolerant towards inward exploration in their adherents, as can be seen in the acceptance Kabbalah and Sufism, which prioritize understanding of the divine by means of the inward exploration over the understanding of the sacred through external means.<br />
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<span style="white-space: pre;"></span>In the East, however, this pattern of dogmatic dominance is flipped on its head. While there are a number of exceptions, such as Confucianism, Nichiren Buddhism, and the Mimamsa school of Hinduism, the far greater emphasis of Eastern thought is placed on the transformation of consciousness. I am not the first person to see the strong connection between these traditions and Western psychotherapy, especially in the manner the latter was practiced during the first half of the 20th century. To quote the opening chapter of Alan Watts’ “Psychotherapy East and West”:<br />
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If we look deeply into such ways of life as Buddhism and Taoism, Vedanta and Yoga, we do not find either philosophy and religion as these are understood in the West. We find something more nearly resembling psychotherapy. This may seem surprising, for we think of the latter as a form of science, somewhat practical and materialistic in attitude, and of the former as extremely esoteric religions concerned with regions of the spirit almost entirely out of this world. This is because the combination of our unfamiliarity with Eastern cultures and their sophistication gives them an aura of mystery into which we project fantasies of our own making. Yet the basic aim of these ways of life is something of quite astonishing simplicity, besides which all the complications of reincarnation and psychic powers, of superhuman mahatmas, and of schools for occult technology are a smoke screen in which the credulous inquirer can lose himself indefinitely. In fairness it should be added that the credulous inquirer may be Asian as well as Western, though the former has seldom the peculiarly highbrow credulity of the Western fancier of esotericism. The smoke is beginning to clear, but for a long time its density has hidden the really important contributions of the Eastern mind to psychological knowledge. </blockquote>
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The main resemblance between Eastern ways of life and Western psychotherapy is in the concern of both with bringing about changes of consciousness, changes in our way of feeling our own existence and our relation to human society and the natural world.</blockquote>
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<span style="white-space: pre;"></span>In the opening to a lecture variously titled “Following the Middle Way” or simply “Middle Way”, Watts puts things more succinctly:<br />
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I want to start by reemphasizing the point that, what are called the religions of the East, the ones we are discussing: Hinduism, Buddhism, and Chinese Daoism, they don't involve that you believe in anything specific, and they don't involve any idea of obedience to commandments from above. And they don't involve any conformity to a specific ritual, although they do have rituals, but their rituals vary from country to country and from time to time. Their objective is always not ideas, not doctrines, but a method. A method for the transformation of consciousness. That is to say: for a transformation of your sensation of who you are.</blockquote>
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<span style="white-space: pre;"></span>This consciousness-first approach contrasts itself from the course of the Western intellectual tradition, which has by and large viewed the vagaries that separate how we actually perceive reality from it's idealized “true nature” as something that can be ignored. Essentially, so long as a person either verbalized their agreement with a certain thinker's stated positions or was capable of regurgitating relevant information in a classroom or occupational setting, this was enough to constitute belief and knowledge. The East, by contrast, has always recognized that there is a difference between the acknowledgment of the truth value of a particular statement and/or the wrote knowledge of it's existence and the psychological impact that came from truly embracing such a position down to the roots of one's thinking.<br />
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<span style="white-space: pre;"></span>To give a concrete example: if I were to agree with the philosophical system put forth by David Hume, then I would also be accepting the notion that there is no way of making a valid inference concerning the truth of the statement “seven seconds from now the world will explode.”, even one of probability. However, Hume's disciples would never dream of making an effort towards the development of a consciousness that truly engages with the world under the assumption that, likely as not, it could be gone a moment from now. Were they to encounter a man who was deeply agitated for this very reason, they would almost certainly regard him as insane. We can see Hume’s aversion to adopting a state of consciousness that reflects his philosophical positions in this passage from his Enquiry:<br />
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I am confounded with all these questions, and begin to fancy myself in the most deplorable condition imaginable, environed with the deepest darkness, and utterly deprived of the use of every member and faculty. </blockquote>
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Most fortunately it happens, that since Reason is incapable of dispelling these clouds, Nature herself suffices to that purpose, and cures me of this philosophical melancholy and delirium, either by relaxing this bent of mind, or by some avocation, and lively impression of my senses, which obliterate all these chimeras. I dine, I play a game of backgammon, I converse, and am merry with my friends. And when, after three or four hours' amusement, I would return to these speculations, they appear so cold, and strained, and ridiculous, that I cannot find in my heart to enter into them any farther.</blockquote>
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<span style="white-space: pre;"></span>This can be contrasted against the writings of Nāgārjuna, perhaps the most important figure in Buddhist philosophy save Gautama himself. The central issue of his Mūlamadhyamakakārikā concerns the concept of svabhāva, which, while possessing some similarities to the notions of substance found in Aristotle’s writings, i.e. the essential nature of a thing (i.e. the i.e. of a thing), it differs in a very significant way: thinkers in the Madhyamaka tradition regard the idea of a fixed essence as not only illusory, but also as an innate construction of human consciousness that must be overcome. The rational arguments for it’s nonexistence are put forth as a means to aid the mind in breaking from of it's faulty patterns of thinking, not simply to force it to recognize the truth value of a particular assertion. To quote Jan Westerhoff’s summation in “Nāgārjuna’s Madhyamaka”:<br />
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Even though I argue that understanding svabhāva as substance occupies the most important place in Nāgārjuna’s arguments, one would be ill advised to regard it simply as some variant of the concept of substance found in the Western philosophical tradition. This is because svabhāva has an important additional cognitive component which is completely absent from the concept of substance as it is usually conceived. The notion of svabhāva is regarded as a conceptual superimposition, as something automatically projected onto a world of objects that actually lack it [in other words, when staring out across your room, your mind, without any intervention of conscious thought, will project the idea “dresser” on a chance and constantly fluctuating arrangement of atoms that in fact has no permanent “dresser-essence” which can be taken as an essential characteristic of dressers. Rather, there is only a convenient but fundamentally inaccurate association between similar things that allows for easier navigation of the world]. Unlike the notion of substance, svabhāva is not just a theoretical concept of ontology but rather a cognitive default, an addition that the mind unwittingly makes when trying to make sense of the world. This cognitive understanding of svabhāva makes clear why Madhyamaka [Nagarjuna’s school of Buddhist philosophy] metaphysics (unlike metaphysics in the Western tradition) is not a purely theoretical enterprise but something that also has to be put into practice. If svabhāva is an automatic mistaken suiperimposition, we cannot just get rid of it by going through arguments attempting to show that svabhāva does not exist. We will also have to train ourselves out of the automatic habit of projecting svabhāva onto a world that lacks it.</blockquote>
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<span style="white-space: pre;"></span>Within Buddhist philosophy the recognition of a set of truths is merely a precursor to the extensive regimen of meditation and self discipline needed to effect a true change in understanding. In other words, the ultimate goal is the modification of consciousness, which makes it much more in line with what I have called experiential psychology than either philosophy or religion as they are usually understood in the west.<br />
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<span style="white-space: pre;"></span>The question that naturally arises is whether these disciplines can truly affect the changes they seek to induce, given that the past century has seen research psychology unquestionably surpassing the Western branch of it’s experiential cousin in efficacy. In today's world, no unbiased observer would recommend that an individual in need of cognitive assistance seek out a Freudian analyst over a behaviorist, so why should the Eastern schools be any different?<br />
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<span style="white-space: pre;"></span>As it happens, the very tools used by experimental psychology have, in recent decades, produced a massive body of evidence showing unequivocal benefits to the Eastern practice of meditation, with hundreds of studies indicating both substantial changes to the brain structure of long term meditation practitioners as well as noticeable improvements to certain brain functions in the course of even a few weeks of practice. I will provide a <a href="http://twistedunkindandnumb.blogspot.com/2018/08/psychology-sampling-and-summary-of.html">reasonable sampling of these studies</a> alongside, to the extent of my ability, an accurate but layman friendly summation of their results, as an accompaniment to this essay for any who wish to verify these claims.<br />
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<span style="white-space: pre;"></span>My imagined interlocutor may now be bringing up the argument that, in the same way the medicinal benefits of a particular plant, once verified by our rigorous testing procedures, will enter into the body of Western medicine, so too can meditation practice, stripped of it’s mystical and esoteric framework, be safely incorporated into a fully secular health regimen. However, this idea neglects that there are divides between the approaches of modern science and Buddhist psychotherapy that are at the moment unbridgeable. To believe that our command of the science of human thought has reached such a state of advancement that it can move as a mechanized division through spear wielding villages of other intellectual traditions is a hubris worthy of Greek tragedy. Our current understanding of neuroscience and modern psychology is nowhere near capable of fully subsuming all that is encompassed in the Eastern ways of liberation. To clarify this limitation I believe a few more examples would be appropriate.<br />
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<span style="white-space: pre;"></span>A central tenet of every branch of Buddhism is the concept of no-self, no-ego, or “no persistent identity”. While different traditions use different words, I believe the Theravāda term anattā, owing to its precision and clarity, is most useful for my current purpose. To give the most basic outline of this position, it asserts that everything we describe as a “self”, or with the terms “I”, “me”, or “mine”, is, in actuality just a fleeting aggregation of a handful of elements such as sense perception, volition, and awareness, each of which are in a constant state of flux. However, like svabhāva in the Madhyamaka tradition, this is not a concept that is designed to be simply intellectual accepted. Rather, Theravāda meditation practice seeks to induce massive alterations to the way the human consciousness experiences and understands itself*, that, alongside similar changes to the perception of impermanence and suffering, lead to the state of consciousness the Theravāda Buddhists call Nibbāna.<br />
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<span style="white-space: pre;"></span>Now, Western science can indeed engage with these concepts in a number of meaningful ways. For example we can compare Buddhist claims of there being no single component of our self-identity that remains fixed to our modern understanding of the constant state of change and growth that our brains are in. We can examine and produce research that shows how the systems of meditation designed to halt the ego-identity bring about changes to the physical brain structure. However, what we cannot do is accurately map the full extent of the cognitive change that occurs as the sense of self is abandoned. In other words, if two people to show up in a lab, one who had wholly broken from what Theravāda Buddhist's call the fetters of identity view and conceit (sakkāya diṭṭhi and mano) and one who had not, we would have no means of stating, prior to any assessement of the two individuals, “these traits within the brain structure will be present with the person who has come to a state of anattā, and will not exist in the person who has not.”<br />
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<span style="white-space: pre;"></span>But wait, you may be saying. Just because the Buddhist tradition has proven that it can induce some cognitive change does not mean that every claim that it makes should automatically be accepted as infallible. Can we truly know that the state of anattā exists? What about the fact that there is clearly some cognitive benefit to the kind of fundamentalist Christianity that denies evolution, man-made climate change, and whole swathes of our scientific achievement. Would I support everyone abandoning our technological advancements for the kind of biblical literalism endorsed by Calvin? While I will delve into the question of what circumstances it is and isn’t appropriate to accept the cognitive boons of a tradition over it’s obvious drawbacks in the coming paragraphs, for now it is worth noting that there is a significant difference between these traditions and that of Buddhism: the claims to heightened states of consciousness made by the Buddhists can be empirically verified by observing the difference in outward behavior between those who claimed to have approached or reached them and those who have not. This is best exemplified in the personage of Thích Quảng Đức.<br />
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<span style="white-space: pre;"></span>In 1963, as an act of protest against the government of Ngô Đình Diệm’s Catholic government, the Mahāyāna Buddhist monk Thích Quảng Đức set himself ablaze in the streets of Saigon. This act is not just significant as a striking visual protest, though as far as acts of protest go few can equal it. It is also visceral proof of the efficacy Buddhism's core objective, which, as the Cula-Malunkyovada Sutta’s parable of the poisoned arrow indicates, is not any specific doctrinal position but the elimination of suffering. This does not mean the elimination of pain, and the distinction between the two is explained in great detail in the Sallatha Sutta, which contains Buddhism’s other famous arrow parable. Simply put, the Buddha asserted that by following the rigid and demanding disciplinary regimen of mediation and self control that he espoused, a person could reach a state of consciousness whereby, while still subject to the negative sensations that go hand in hand with existence, be they physical pain or emotions like greed and envy, one could experience these sensations without the deep rooted mechanisms of aversion and attraction that typically define our relationship to stimuli.<br />
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Now, I’d imagine everyone reading this has seen the famous picture of Thích Quảng Đức’s self immolation, but not nearly as many have seen the recording. If you have the stomach for it, the video can be found on YouTube, and, should you choose to watch it, you will be presented with powerful evidence for the Tathāgata’s claim that the suffering most people believe to be inextricably bound with physical pain is in fact something that can be overcome.<br />
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As it so happens, I have a deep personal acquaintance with Western medicine’s greatest achievement in the suppression of the suffering associated with physical pain: the opioid family of painkillers. I have seen many people descend to that liminal point between life and death where blue spiderwebs reach out from the lips and consciousness comes in brief bursts that quickly evaporate back into oblivion, and I can assure you that, so long as the person in question was, like Thích Quảng Đức, alert and aware of their surroundings, no matter how much morphine/heroin/oxycodone/etc was put into their system, were they doused in gasoline and set ablaze, the result would be a frenzy of agonized ululations and panicked flailing. Yet Thích Quảng Đức was able to hold his posture in a perfect lotus position: back straight, head upright, eyes fixed ahead of him. I do not believe that you will find a single medical professional who would claim that such a reaction is possible solely through the use of modern medicine. At best, one could sever all of the nerves that communicate pain to the brain, but as I said above, what we are seeking is an example of heightened resistance to suffering, not a lack of physical pain, which merely serves as a readily available metric that, unlike despair, hatred, etc, can be visually confirmed without the aid of instruments.<br />
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So, at least as far as Buddhism goes, we have a discipline of self-inducing cognitive change from within whose efficacy, at least as far as many schools of meditation go, has been proven by the tools of modern science. Yet these traditions employ metaphysical speculation that has either been disproved by our current understanding of the world, or else stretch the limits of a skeptical observer's credulity. What are we to do with this apparent contradiction?<br />
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<span style="white-space: pre;"></span>The answer that many will suggest is exactly what has been occurring within the field of psychology over the past decade or so, a large scale secularization of those elements of Buddhist psychotherapy that have benefits that can be charted by our available instruments alongside the discarding of all that cannot. This approach, however, lifts science’s role from an investigative tool into a dogmatic vehicle in it’s own right. As I pointed out above, we do not have any means at our disposal to verify the link between the vast majority of the psychological changes induced by Buddhism, particularly the high level states like the jhānas or satori, and the corresponding physical changes within the brain. While there have been a number of indicators pointing to substantial differences between the minds of laymen and advanced practitioners of the Dharma, nobody of any scientific repute would claim that we are even close to being able to conclusively say “An extended period of practice in this Buddhist tradition produces these changes within the brain and these changes alone.” To use a metaphor from the Buddhist tradition, our current research into the matter is as grains of sand as compared with the teeming banks of the Ganges.<br />
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<span style="white-space: pre;"></span>Until a wholly secularized program of practice can reliably produce minds as resilient as Thích Quảng Đức's or as compassionate, attentive, and free-floating-amidst-the-world's-turmoil as His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama, we must regard the corpus of research into Buddhist liberation practice as merely indicators of their efficacy and not viable regimens in and of themselves. If, a few decades down the line, this changes, and we start seeing people emerge from the delightfully named William James Hall at Harvard with an equanimity that rivals the monastics, then a revaluation would be completely appropriate.<br />
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<span style="white-space: pre;"></span>I suspect that many people will find such a suggestion unsatisfactory. There are no doubt those who will note that the path of the jhānas culminates in a deep link with something called a formless realm, and conclude that, since such a realm cannot be observed, the entire path is somehow faulty. However, this assumes that, like the Western scientist, the Theravāda monk’s objective was an understanding of the outside world. In fact, his goal from the start had been the inducement of inward change. The idea of a realm outside the reach of matter was not, as it has been for post-Nicene Christianity, the result of an attempt to come to an understanding of the external world, but a means of mastering the world within. For confirmation of this distinction in Buddhist doctrine, I again refer the reader to the Cula-Malunkyovada Sutta. The simple but perhaps frustrating reality is that the concepts one needs to accept in order to pursue the paths of yet-unequaled cognitive change and those that are needed to come to an accurate understanding of the world around us do not always line up with one another.<br />
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<span style="white-space: pre;"></span>Seen thus, the idea of a formless realm is not a relic that can be easily discarded, nor can the pursuit of the state of mind known as the jhānas is stripped down for parts, as it is the product of a longstanding and deeply rigorous process of psychological experimentation focused towards a method of practice that leads the practitioner to a superior states of consciousness. The meditations on the formless realm are inextricably linked with the states of liberation that come from them, and the only true way to rid ourselves of their necessity is not to disprove their correspondence to the external world, but to discover a mechanism more effective at inducing the changes readily apparent in advanced practitioners of Theravāda Buddhism.<br />
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<span style="white-space: pre;"></span>If then, there appear to be two separate worlds of thought, one that focuses on the world without and the correspondence to replicable experiments as the metric by which a given statement’s value is assessed while the other looks inward to the cognitive changes that a particular position or practice can induce, is there any way of bridging the two worlds? Are we stuck making a choice, as so many Westerners have, between being hard-thinking men and women of science who objectively look at the facts of the matter or inward searching mystics bent on breaking loose from the pesky constraints of reality? I believe the answer to be no, and I will spend the remainder of this essay exploring my attempt to reach a synthesis between the two.<br />
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<span style="white-space: pre;"></span>In many ways, I believe the situation that we now find ourselves in bears much in common with the struggles faced by Prince Gautama after he abandoned the household life and entered the forest. According to the accounts of his life as they have been passed down to us, he gave up the hedonistic excess of his fathers palace with the intent of seeking liberation, only to discover in the forest mystics a harsh brand of asceticism that gave the outward impression of spiritual attainment but in fact did little to advance him towards his goal of a state of consciousness completely free from suffering. Thus, as he meditated under the Bodhi tree, he formulated a middle path that struck a balance between the mindless pursuit of pleasure on the one hand and the rigid rejection of the body on the other, calling this course the “Middle Path”.<br />
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<span style="white-space: pre;"></span>I believe that any Westerner who earnestly seeks a goal comparable to Gautama’s (though likely less far-reaching) finds themselves in a similar dilemma. On the one hand they are faced with hundreds of systems of spirituality that have become so enamored with Watt's smoke screen of perceived mystique, esotericism, and novelty that they have taken to harvesting the twigs and tree bark while leaving the heartwood of mental liberation intact. People who then try to construct homes from this mess of chips and branches and are shocked when the rest of the world mocks their shoddy hovels. On the other hand we are presented with a system of thought that, despite it's outward claims to value evidence above all else, refuses to acknowledge the unfortunate reality that sometimes the rigid outlook of a purely mechanistic, Newtonian universe is not always the best means of inducing improvements mental health. Thus I propose what I call “the middle path of experiential psychology”. To explicate that path, in homage to the Lord of the Shakya clan, I present the reader with four axioms that I believe will offer an intermediary between the two extremes:<br />
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<span style="white-space: pre;"></span>1) At the present moment, and for the foreseeable future, an approach to the human mind grounded entirely in neurology and experimental psychology cannot illuminate the more nuanced layers of human cognition.<br />
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<span style="white-space: pre;"></span>To give a concrete example of what I mean, I would suggest that the reader turn towards their bookshelf, pick a particular book, and rest one’s eyes on it while paying attention to what transpires in their mind.<br />
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<span style="white-space: pre;"></span>What you experience will likely be a subtle effect rather than something earth shattering, but careful attention should produce a certain awareness of what is transpiring within your mind. Assuming one has read the book in question, you will likely, though not necessarily, experience a vague recollection of what you underwent as you did so. This will probably be couched in simple sensations: a basic feeling of positive or negative, the faintest fringe of what insight, excitement, or boredom it offered, or perhaps a muted recollection of a single particularly striking section. If the book has not been read, what will arise is likely a concatenation of whatever factors led to its purchase alongside a host of sui generum: things like its reputation, the half-formed understanding of it’s basic plot, or even mundane things like the sibilance of the author’s name.<br />
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<span style="white-space: pre;"></span>Now all this in and of itself is the product of an enormously complex chemical reaction within the brain. One so labyrinthine that, even if neuroscience continues advancing at its current rate, we would likely be unable to fully comprehend in the span of centuries. But there is far more going on than just the psychological associations of a single book. Consider how, even when focused on that one item, the books immediately to either side of it also reach out into the mind to a certain extent, presenting an even more muted variant of all that was described above, and so on in descending potency for everything present in the immediate visual field (save certain objects that may stand out, such as something new or out of place, which will naturally receive a greater share of attention).<br />
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<span style="white-space: pre;"></span>Now let us suppose that there is a human being sitting in a laboratory on the other end of the planet, where a team of neuroscientists have developed a mechanism that gives them complete control over all facets of his brain that, at the present moment, are understood. Variables like the quantity of Dopamine antagonists currently bound to the receptors, hippocampal theta activity, and neuroplasticity. Do you suppose that, given perfect control over all this, the neurologists could induce that man, who had never seen your bookshelf, the exact cognitive experience you underwent when you looked upon it? Clearly not.<br />
<br />
<span style="white-space: pre;"></span>What could a neuroscientist do to a person hooked up to such a machine? Certainly there would be a great number of options at her disposal: through the manipulation of epinephrine and testosterone she could make you suddenly angry, while similar manipulations of oxytocin and serotonin could produce empathy and fellow-feeling. In terms of your perceptions, she could no doubt induce the kind of extreme distortions that something like lysergic acid brings about. However, could she suddenly shift the color or shape of a single object in your field of vision while leaving the rest intact? Could she induce within you, at the sight of some random stranger, the association with the precise memory of a kind and tender act by your mother towards your childhood self? More importantly, even with this total control, could she manufacture a state of consciousness that, to the extent possible in a brain evolutionarily wired for strife and conflict, was able to navigate the world free from the poisons of anxiety, despair, misery, torment, terror, hatred, dread, and so on?<br />
<br />
<span style="white-space: pre;"></span>Of course she could not. At best she could give a vague approximation of the most basic sensual components that attach themselves to human thinking (the nuanced state of aversion or attraction that one experienced), but as to the sweeping web of minor associations that is totally unique to each of us, such a reproduction would be impossible. Thus we must admit first and foremost the limitations faced by neuroscience and experimental psychology if we are to understand the benefits that can be obtained from alternate approaches.<br />
<br />
<span style="white-space: pre;"></span>2) The objectives of experiential and experimental psychology are fundamentally different.<br />
<br />
<span style="white-space: pre;"></span>I wish to be absolutely clear that I am not, as Descartes, asserting any kind of separate substance or entity, say a spirit or soul, that remains elusive to the grasp of experimental studies. What I am saying is that, per the first axiom, the gulf between what we experience in our consciousness and what we have come to understand about the world beyond it (including of the instruments that are responsible for producing our consciousness as seen from MRI scans and journal studies) are so divided that at not time in the immediate future can we expect anything to come along that will bridge them.<br />
<br />
<span style="white-space: pre;"></span>Experimental science, at it's core operates under the principle that the rigorous, controlled analysis of the outward behavior of things can produce deeper insights into their nature, while experiential psychology seeks to, in the best of cases, use what it's practitioners have empirically verified of their own subjective experience to devise a path of action that leads others to changes in their consciousness, often with little concern for well this course lines up with the world beyond individual thought.<br />
<br />
<span style="white-space: pre;"></span>Each of these disciplines has advantages and disadvantages, but to present things in the most general way possible, I would say that the greatest boon of Western science is the way that it's advancements stack upon itself, so that, unlike a Buddhist neophyte, a person who is entering university or going to a doctor's office does not have to start from the same position that Newton, Lavoisier, or Lister did, but can, with substantially less effort, reap the same understanding that his predecessors struggled to attain. This heightened understanding can then be transmitted even to people who have no knowledge whatsoever of the discipline in question, such as when a complex course of cancer medication is provided to a person with no medical background.<br />
<br />
<span style="white-space: pre;"></span>Conversely, experiential psychology's great boon relates to the inverse of this. The reality is that there are many things about your mind that no amount of effort by another human being can fix in you, and the same systems that allowed for such marvelous advances in medicine are woefully inadequate at dealing with the subjective element.<br />
<br />
<span style="white-space: pre;"></span>To give an example of how experiential psychology can produce modes of practice that are capable of a very different set of results than the Western approach, we can again turn to Theravada Buddhism, where there are a large number of comparatively minor meditation practices that have been crafted to meet individual circumstances, as compared to other Buddhist sects. Most of these obscure meditation techniques are designed to a specific problem hindering the mental development of a student. To Western eyes, likely the strangest of these practices is charnel ground meditation, which is designed to aid those with an aggrandized view of their own body's beauty. The student in question will enter a meditative state where the subject is a freshly deceased corpse, preferably an attractive one (in ancient India, people who could not afford burial were left out to the elements in fields known as charnel grounds). The practitioner would spend a week closely observing the process of decay that this once beautiful body undergoes while repeating to himself the words “I am not immune to death. This too will happen to my body.”<br />
<br />
<span style="white-space: pre;"></span>Now for obvious reasons, this is not a field of meditation that has received any scientific attention, but for the purposes of this example, let us say that it only achieves the desired effect of a greater perception of impermanence in the 1% of the population that possesses the greatest perception of their own beauty. Let us further ignore all the problems I brought up in the first axiom by assuming that we know an increased perception of impermanence produces discernible increases in gray matter concentrations within the left hippocampus.<br />
<br />
<span style="white-space: pre;"></span>If all of the above were true, and we were to set up an experiment with a null hypothesis of no hippocampal change, an alternative hypothesis that charnel ground meditation will produce observable increases in gray matter concentration in these regions, and a significance level of 0.05, then regardless of how many people we tested, we would never get results that broke the p value.<br />
<br />
<span style="white-space: pre;"></span>While the precise genesis of these more specialized meditation programs is not known to us, it seems likely that they were born from a relatively advanced Buddhist practitioner (whether it be the Tathāgata himself or one of his successors) noting certain flaws in individual students, and, upon dwelling on the manner in which he was able to overcome those same flaws within himself, he advised his student on a technique that he felt was best suited to rectifying the flaws in question.<br />
<br />
<span style="white-space: pre;"></span>If this approach was successful, the student in question would be more likely to rise in the monastic hierarchy, and, owing to his recognition of the success of the aforementioned meditation technique, he would be likely to pass the teaching down to his own students. Over time this process would naturally fine tune the systems of meditation, honing them down to the ones that were most likely to bring success at their stated goal.<br />
<br />
<span style="white-space: pre;"></span>We can see then, how easily a school of experiential psychology can deal with specific, individualized issues through the application of an advanced practitioner's intuition and years of empirical self-observation. Compare this to the manner in which experimental science would have to deal with a similar issue. Given that a study requires a large number of people, and cannot reliably be performed on a singular subject, in order for a course of treatment to come into existence, we would first need a reliable means of categorizing this condition. Since no journal of any repute would take the intuitive guesswork of a single authority as an acceptable means for establishing candidates for a study, we would need a firm methodology of classification, either through observable differences in the brains of people who suffer from the issue, or a DSM-like criteria of rigid symptoms that may also be present in people who do not suffer from the problem in question. From there the long process of formal research would advance, but if any of the difficulties I mentioned above manifested themselves, the entire endeavor would grind to a halt.<br />
<br />
<span style="white-space: pre;"></span>Another way to consider the difference between the two fields is to look at the schools of meditation that have received extensive scientific validation. While their efficacy has been established, the only reason this has occurred is because scientists thought to look towards the long-established practices of the East. Imagine if, instead, there had never been any experiential schools, or at the very least that none of them had developed the idea of meditation. Can you imagine a researcher who had the idea that maybe the regular practice of monitoring the breath or the thought stream in a dedicated, formal manner might lead to changes in brain structure? Even if she had a lucky hunch, can you imagine her actually getting funding for as large a study as the ones listed in my research section? If, by some miracle, she was able to do so, everything would hinge on this one study picking up on the changes we have already noted, wheras the fact that there was an established experiential tradition gave early researchers like Richard J. Davidson a greater tolerance threshold for a dearth of findings. Owing to the journal systems lack of representation for negative findings, we cannot be sure whether there were any earlier studies that were not as promising, but it is easy to imagine such a situation.<br />
<br />
<span style="white-space: pre;"></span>Additionally, these first studies compared advanced, long term practitioners to non-practitioners and short-term practitioners. Without the aid of people who had been practicing meditation for decades it would have been substantially harder to produce the kind of data that ultimately lead a number of neurologists to dedicate their careers to studying meditation, and it is highly unlikely that the research would have ever gotten off the ground.<br />
<br />
<span style="white-space: pre;"></span>None of this is an attempt to downplay the innumerable advances that modern science has made that have unquestionably improved the life of human beings across the world. These achievements are simply staggering. However, just because we have made tremendous advances in many facets of mental health in no way implies that our system is either infallible or totally superior to other methods. Yet, were I to suggest to an zealous follower of our Western way of life that a man living sometime around the fifth century B.C. was able to devise an approach to living that, in certain ways, remains unsurpassed to this day, then, as often as not, my interlocutor will immediately begin asking whether I “really believe that people living in ancient India who had contact with the Buddha's teachings were really better off with all their disease and lack of medicinal knowledge than we are today?”<br />
<br />
<span style="white-space: pre;"></span>This is, of course, a false dichotomy. There is no reason to believe that a disciple of the Buddha, or a third century Gnostic, or even a twentieth century Jungian, did not experience states of consciousness that were in some ways preferable to our own and in some ways were severely lacking, and to act as though you have to completely forsake one to accept the other without providing any reason for this view is fallacious thinking.<br />
<br />
<span style="white-space: pre;"></span>There is no doubt that a person living in ancient India, Alexandria, or China had to contend with a host of issues that medical science has obliterated. However, I would again point the reader to Thích Quảng Đức's triumphal conflagration. If a person can endure such obvious pain without any outwardly apparent symptom of suffering**, is there any reason to think they could not endure an amputation or the numerous unpleasant symptoms of an abolished diseases?<br />
<br />
<span style="white-space: pre;"></span>Yet I do not claim that because a small minority of Buddhist monks have achieved a freedom from suffering that far beyond a typical Westerner, that the Buddhadharma should be taken up to the neglect of our modern practices. In order to reach the state of consciousness he was in when he died, Thích Quảng Đức needed to undergo a simply brutal regiment of self discipline that took decades to reach fruition, and neither myself nor likely anyone reading this is likely willing to endure all that.<br />
<br />
<span style="white-space: pre;"></span>However, if instead of regarding each system as something that has to be either wholly taken up or wholly abandoned, we simply recognize that the devotees of each experience in their subjective consciousness boons that the followers of the other system do not, then we are prepared for the task of asking ourselves not “Which sect to I take up?”, but “What elements of each system of internal modification best meet the goals that I have set out to achieve?”<br />
<br />
<span style="white-space: pre;"></span>3) The fundamental differences between experiential and experimental psychology have produced divergent paths leading to differing ends. Owing to these differences, contradictions may arise, but each approach is maximized towards its chosen objectives.<br />
<br />
<span style="white-space: pre;"></span>In “The Enhancement of Visuospatial Processing Efficiency through Buddhist Deity Meditation”***, Maria Kozhevnikov and her colleagues explored the effects of a school of Tibetan meditation known as Deity Yoga, a tradition where one affixes concentration on one of the meditational deities believed to reside within the body. The monks were instructed to perform computerized mental-imagery tasks both before and after meditation and were compared against a control group practicing open monitoring (or open presence) meditation, which, alongside focused attention meditation, is the dominant division that modern meditation research has made between the many divergent schools.<br />
<br />
<span style="white-space: pre;"></span>To quote from the study:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
The results indicate that all the groups performed at the same baseline level, but after meditation, Deity Yoga practitioners demonstrated a dramatic increase in performance on imagery tasks compared with the other groups. The results suggest that Deity meditation specifically trains one’s capacity to access heightened visuospatial processing resources, rather than generally improving visuospatial imagery abilities.</blockquote>
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<span style="white-space: pre;"></span>These results open up a fascinating field of questions. It is likely few, if any, of the people reading this believe that, were they to examine the southern channel branch of their heart, we would find “Ratnasambhava, in blissful union with Māmākī, yellow and radiant, holding a jewel and a bell”****, however, in order to successfully practice Deity meditation, a certain level of conviction in its premise is required (though how literal it has to be is a matter of some debate). Thus, were a person to desire the attainment of the states of consciousness induced by deity meditation*****, it is possible that belief in something that not only has no means of empirical or scientific verification, but also, in light of modern advancements, seems flat out ridiculous, would be required to take the shortest path to that state of mind.<br />
<br />
<span style="white-space: pre;"></span>This example is far from an isolated oddity. The Eastern traditions of experiential psychotherapy are rife with concepts that do not align modern science, but seem to be incredibly useful for advancing the practitioner to the desired mental states. An excellent example can be seen in the idea of Karma. Like the vast majority of modern Christianity's teachings, there is certainly a facet of this idea that exists to keep the less intellectually inclined members of society from wantonly destructive behavior, but it also has a more subtle component that, in a number of different manifestations, has found it's way into the program of nearly every Buddhist tradition. For many sects of the Mahāyāna, it is an indispensable tool for applying the doctrines of causality I touched on when discussing Nāgārjuna, so that the practitioner sees beyond the comparatively limited field of his own existence; in Theravāda Buddhism, it provides a counterweight against the concept of anattā to illustrate how, even though there is nothing permanent in the self, there is a continuous stream of cause and effect that binds us to what has come before; even Zen, that most irreverent branch of Buddhism, makes some use of the concept, as can be seen in Dogen's rather esoteric assertions on interdependent origination.<br />
<br />
<span style="white-space: pre;"></span>While I reiterate that the above is a crass oversimplification, and that there are other interpretations of the doctrine, such as the one put forth by Alan Watts, that presuppose a world composed entirely of, to use his own words, “the trip from the birthing ward to the crematorium”, but the vast majority of traditions assert some kind of supra-individual bond between beings, and while this idea flies in the face of scientific understanding, it's crucial position in Buddhist dharma provides strong evidence for the role it plays in attaining the states of consciousness Buddhists seek to reach.<br />
<br />
<span style="white-space: pre;"></span>Ultimately then, we have yet another unbridgeable gap, and, if we accept the notion that each approach can reach positions that the other cannot, e.g. that for a follower of the Buddha, a mastery of many Western scientific disciplines, and the command of the external world afforded by such an understanding, would require extensive modification to their ideology, while likewise a Westerner seeking to reach a state of consciousness that is detached from much of our human misery may well have to discard certain facets of what his society has achieved to maximize their results in that quest.<br />
<br />
<span style="white-space: pre;"></span>4) While conflicts may arise, it would be foolhardy for anyone seeking to pursue the path of experiential liberation to not make use of the many tools that Western science has provided him.<br />
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<span style="white-space: pre;"></span>Stephan Hoeller once referred to America as a “spiritual supermarket” where one can go through the world's total extent religious ideology, picking and choosing to your taste. This idea perfectly illustrates both the advantages and dangers of the situation we find ourselves in.<br />
<br />
<span style="white-space: pre;"></span>Excepting a few special cases like ancient India and Alexandria, where a great many mystical traditions flourished at once, the typical person born into an earlier civilization had a very limited control over what courses of experiential practice were available to him. In some cases, such as most of Chinese history or the middle Islamic caliphates, there might be some dominant strain of practice (Daoism and Sufism) and a secondary system (Chan Buddhism and Kabbalism). In other cases, such as Protestant Europe or Soviet Russia, there would be not options available at all. However, in the vast majority of cases there would be a single mystical tradition that was heavily bound to one's own culture, and you, as a member of that culture, would be bound to it, regardless of it's efficacy. In our current age, however, there is nothing stopping us from objectively assessing all of these traditions and drawing from each it's greatest strengths while abandoning the coarse, malicious, or useless elements.<br />
<br />
<span style="white-space: pre;"></span>Nothing that is, save the cognitive deficiencies that block humanity from engaging the world with anything close to objectivity. In actuality, the end result of this spiritual freedom typically bears far more in common with Boris Yeltsin's baffled and awe-struck trip through a Texas supermarket than the savvy coupon clipping excursions we may imagine, as can be seen in the ridiculousness of the New Age movement and the hedonistic Frankensteins they build by haphazardly stitching together any idea that tickles their fancy. In order to resist our natural tendency to choose the sweet tasting poison of the New Age feelgoodery over the demanding practices of self discipline that bring about changes to human cognition, we must first accept that we are hampered by the cognitive biases before we can curb their effects.<br />
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<span style="white-space: pre;"></span>How are we to know which of the paths available to us will lead to liberative states and which will bring us further into the great labyrinth of human misery? More often than not, the spiritual seeker ends up mired down in a morass of conflicting claims, and winds up so confused that they blindly follow the path of the first charismatic speaker who reaches out to them with unwavering devotion, and thus cults and extremist groups are born. There is, however, another option at our disposal. If we recognize that the ideological obedience these spiritual traditions seek to cultivate is nothing more than a mechanism for ensuring their continued spread, and instead seek to emulate the (often unrealized) detachment of modern science, where one holds to a complete willingness to abandon even the most sacred of convictions if there is sufficient evidence that they are not useful, then even if one's end goal is internal improvement and not external understanding, one can still be greatly served by the sciences and their methodology.<br />
<br />
<span style="white-space: pre;"></span>Thus we end up back at the question of how to best establish this synthesis, and whether we can reach a worldview that recognizes the limitations of our relatively infantile disciplines of neurology and research psychology while at the same time acknowledging the many problems that come with total alignment to religious traditions which lack perfect solutions to the problems of suffering or an exclusive concern for the creation of positive alterations to the state of human consciousness. In other words, we must ask if it is possible to walk into the supermarket and emerge with only those items that meet the nutritional needs of our body?<br />
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<span style="white-space: pre;"></span>I certainly cannot make the claim to have reached the advanced states of psychological liberation that can be observed in many lifelong practitioners of the mystical traditions, never mind being able to do so without reliance on unnecessary and often counterproductive dogma. I cannot even claim a fraction of the equanimity possessed by a man like Thích Quảng Đức. Nevertheless, I wholeheartedly believe that if we are ever able to scrape off the layers of bullshit that have become encrusted on our spiritual traditions, it will be with the aid of the sciences.<br />
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<span style="white-space: pre;"></span>For at least the immediate future, however, it will not be an absolute dependence. We must employ the sciences as navigational tools capable of leading us to an appropriate course, not as ab engine in itself. In four or five decades, it may be possible to only jump into spiritual practices that have been granted the seal of a respected psychologist, but that is not the case right now. If we lived in a time and place when neurologists could produce precise renderings of what the committed practice of each significant school of liberation does to the brain, and they possessed the understanding necessary to apply these patterns to the millions of variables that make one person's mind different from another's, so that they could, with a reasonable degree of certainty, provide a recommended course of practice that would minimize the suffering of a particular individual, then there would be no need to rely on our spiritual traditions, and I could close the essay as it stands.<br />
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<span style="white-space: pre;"></span>Unfortunately, we are not there yet, and until we arrive there, those who aspire to bring about states of advanced mental change will have to make use of their empirical observations to find a course that works for them, faulty though they may be. I will give a personal example to help clarify how I think one might be able to go about doing this. However, I do so with the caveat that my relationship with Gnosticism is not presented as any kind of idealized course nor even as a path that should be replicated, but rather as a single very fallible human being's personal attempt to grapple with the issues I have laid out.<br />
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<span style="white-space: pre;"></span>To begin with, it would probably help to give an overview of this fairly obscure tradition. Gnosticism may well have originated prior to Christianity's coming to prominence in the third century, from Jews that had grown wary of their God's supposed omnipotence in the wake of his failure to aid his chosen people during the First Jewish–Roman War, but it blossomed fullest in the aftermath of Jesus' rise in popularity among the gentiles, and all available documentation stems from its post-Christian period. While there are many different Gnostic sects, there are two major commonalities that link them into a single tradition. The first is the position that the God described by the Old Testament is a malicious (or at best ignorant and misguided) being, and the place we now find ourselves is a shoddily assembled replica of something far superior. The second, which is more important to my current purposes, is that Jesus of Nazareth was not the lone begotten son of the aforementioned God, but an enlightened figure offering us a means of breaking beyond his control via the inducement of gnosis, a Greek term for a variety of knowledge, often suddenly attained, that brings about changes in consciousness. This ideology, unlike that of the Christian sects that eventually won out and branched into the divisions we are familiar today, placed virtually no value in notions of faith and substantially less emphasis on a post-corporeal salvation. Instead, it focused on an immediate pathway to liberation from the oppression of this world, which could be attained in this very lifetime. As Jesus says in “The Gospel of Thomas”, Gnosticism’s most famous text:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
If your leaders tell you ‘Look the kingdom is in heaven,’<br />
Then the birds of heaven will precede you.<br />
If they say to you, ‘It’s in the sea,’<br />
Then the fish will precede you.<br />
But the kingdom is inside you and it is outside you.<br />
When you know yourselves, then you will be known,<br />
And you will understand that you are children of the living father.<br />
But if you do not know yourselves,<br />
Then you dwell in poverty and are poverty.</blockquote>
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<span style="white-space: pre;"></span>Such teachings, naturally enough, were not just a threat against the emerging orthodoxy and their doctrines of a deferred kingdom, but an existential danger that needed to be met with every available weapon at their disposal, which ranged, depending on the Church’s corporeal power, from slanderous treatises to heresiological witch hunts. Yet the teachings were potent enough to survive as an undercurrent to traditional Christian thought up to the early middle ages, with Gnostic offshoots like the Manichaeans and Cathars sprouting up and attaining some degree of popularity before being violently repressed. However, by the late middle ages much had been done to squash out this movement, and so, until the discovery of the Nag Hammadi codices in Egypt in 1945, there had been precious little to go on save the accounts of it’s opposition.<br />
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<span style="white-space: pre;"></span>Since that time, a small handful of disaffected traditional Christians, academics, and people interested in the expansion of consciousness have staged a very small revival of the sect, led in particular by the scholars Marvin Meyer and Elaine Pagels, and Bishop Stephan A. Hoeller of the Ecclesia Gnostica. However, owing to the fragmentary nature of even what has survived at Nag Hammadi, much guesswork has gone into restoring their practices, and, compared to other sects of experiential psychology, there is an exceedingly small number of Gnostic adherents.<br />
<br />
<span style="white-space: pre;"></span>Because of all this, there has quite naturally been no research into the psychological efficacy of Gnostic practices. Furthermore, even if there was a substantial interest in the tradition, it would be significantly harder to produce such research than it has been for meditation, for the latter lends itself quite well to the restraints of an MRI machine, while the Gnostic emphasis on deep, sudden insight and the psychological impact of ritual practices would is much harder to reproduce in laboratory conditions.<br />
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<span style="white-space: pre;"></span>What was it then, that guided me personally to an interest in Gnosticism, if, as I admit, I can produce no evidence that their teachings can induce states if liberation? In short, the answer is personal empirical observation. The chance occurrences in my life happened to have arranged themselves in such a way that Gnosticism held a certain appeal, and from this appeal emerged detached interest, which, on the strength of a single extremely potent experience, transformed into a personal conviction in the value of this school or liberation.<br />
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<span style="white-space: pre;"></span>To start at the start, I was fortunate enough, more or less by dumb luck, to have found myself pledging one of the very very few fraternities that has truly retained some sense of the strong ritualism that was, back in the nineteenth century, a defining characteristic of these organizations. It is beyond the scope of this essay to provide an overview of how truly transformative rituals effect a symbolic death of the practitioner before leading into a subsequent rebirth, or why this cannot be done without a sense that something is at stake (hence the efficacy of many tribal initiation rituals deemed by moderns to be pointlessly dangerous while the practices of the Catholic Church remain stagnant and moribund); nor does it serve my purpose to delve too long into how the practices of collegiate hazing can, if approached with the mindset of inducing a potent ritualistic effect rather than the aggrandizement of a few alcoholic's already-overblown egos, be yolked quite readily to these purposes. It suffices to say only that I had discovered the transformative authentic ritual can effect on the mind, and furthermore, that I did so in a wholly secular setting, yet still experienced something that was powerful enough to induce substantial changes in my consciousness. Though, if you are interested in learning more of the matter, I would recommend the writings of Eliade.<br />
<br />
<span style="white-space: pre;"></span>My old college fraternity, however, was not a Gnostic training ground, so this alone is not enough for me to stand by the tradition's efficacy. Especially since many other sects, particularly African and Native American traditions, place an equal emphasis on these transformative ritual. This experience did, however, lay a psychological groundwork within my mind. Thus, upon the chance discovery of an ancient, largely defeated religious tradition (by way Cormac McCarthy's western epic Blood Meridian, and from there The Teaching Company's Gnosticism course), I was primed me to accept the possibility that there might be something of value within it.<br />
<br />
<span style="white-space: pre;"></span>Now, in the intervening years between college, and today, things went, to put it mildly, downhill. Prior to February 2017 I had spent five years in active heroin addiction alternating between sober houses, living out of my car, my old bedroom in my parent's house, and occasionally even the woods. I had begun teaching myself meditation while still self-identifying as a nihilist because I had discovered that I could use the practice to better control my mind during extreme bouts of withdrawal, thereby preventing myself from engaging in the kind of reckless, desperate, and ill-conceived criminal behavior so often seen among addicts, buying me the time and mental clarity to think up more clever ways of scamming money.<br />
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<span style="white-space: pre;"></span>Regardless of how clever you are, eventually all heroin addicts who are not filthy rich find their way into the correctional system, and it was during such a visit that, as I lay detoxing cold turkey on my bunk, I underwent a powerful mystical experience that functioned as the axis on which I hoisted my life out from the mire it had descended into, and the experience manifested itself within the Gnostic framework.<br />
<br />
<span style="white-space: pre;"></span>I know that “manifested itself within the Gnostic framework” is unconscionably vague, but this essay is already far too long to delve into the intricacies of what happened at the Hartford Correctional Center, though if you are curious I treat the matter in detail in my essay “God in the Shitty Monitor Speaker”. The more important issue is the question of what can be made of such an experience. As I have stated ad nauseam, there are no shortage of mystical traditions that document experiences which bear much in common with what I underwent, so why is it that Gnosticism should be held in any special light?<br />
<br />
<span style="white-space: pre;"></span>The answer is that it should not. Owing to the great plethora of documented mystical experience across the major sects, it would be foolish for you to take a single piece of anecdotal evidence from a writer you have never met as grounds for making such an extreme decision as the adoption of a religious practice. Yet such evidence is one of the most significant metrics used by people who find their way into the branch of experiential psychology labeled by the West as religious. On the other hand, just because, at this particular point in history, there is no evidence one way or the other regarding Gnosticism’s psychological efficacy, this does not mean that I, a person who has empirically observed the transformative power of these experiences, should try to downplay what has occurred within my mind. Thus, someone interested in the process of inducing psychological change from within is faced with thousands of testimonies by people who have underwent mystical experience, and no means of gauging whether any particular claim is true, nor whether any particular system for inducing these states of consciousness is more capable than the others.<br />
<br />
<span style="white-space: pre;"></span>I believe that the sheer mass of these testimonies should push even the most incredulous reader to accept that schools of mysticism are capable of producing lasting psychological change, but that is about as far as this anecdotal evidence can take them. Thus, despite having undergone such a profound experience within the Gnostic framework, were a person to come to me asking what school of practice they themselves should take up, I would refer them to Buddhism, for there is indeed a large body of research that provides indisputable evidence that it's practices work towards their stated goals.<br />
<br />
<span style="white-space: pre;"></span>This research does not absolve one of the difficult responsibilities of choosing a sect that is right for one's own personal needs, for there would need to be a hundred times the research we now possess before we could start making claims that Vipassanā Meditation can universally outperform Zazen, or Deity Meditation is flatly superior to Samādhi. Nor does the current scientific literature imply that an aspiring practitioner of experiential psychology should exclusively focus on meditation, though such an approach is not necessarily wholly inadvisable either. Like it or not, the mystical traditions have always gone hand in hand with a deeply personal self-assessment, and one of the great historical functions of Gurus, Sheikhs, and sages has been in individually examining a student and offering personalized guidance, and in the age of the spiritual supermarket, this remains perhaps their great asset.<br />
<br />
<span style="white-space: pre;"></span>Each of us who wishes to take advantage of these ways of liberation must come to an honest understanding of our own needs and abilities, examine the demands and offerings of the wide range of experiential sects, and then, using the scientific research that is available to us that confirms or disproves the efficacy of these practices as a means of countering the all too human desire to go with what feels good in the moment or whoever makes the grandest promises, we must choose to the best of our abilities. If, twenty years from now, there is enough research confirming that a combination of Vedanta meditation and Native American initiation ceremonies can outperform Gnosticism in it's ability to bring about sudden mystical awareness, then it would be my duty as one who wishes to delve within my mind to discard their teachings. This is the middle path of experiential psychology.<br />
<br />
*<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>I am aware of the ridiculousness of using the word self to describe a state that is explicitly free of such conceptions, but, linguistic limitations being what they are, you will have to live with it. These limitations do not just apply to English, and both Theravāda and Mahāyāna scriptures (Such as the Śūrangama Sūtra) spend time dealing with the problem of using language that presumes a permanent, consistent self to describe a changing stream of thoughts and movements that happens to be bunched together under the word I for convenience.<br />
**<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>There is of course the question of how much the outward symptoms of suffering reflect the inward state, but, at the very least, there is substantial support for the idea that these visible manifestations are the best indicators of inward distress, especially from the animal rights movement, and even if you do not believe this, it is ludicrous to suggest that the staggering level of pain endured by Đức was something that could be entirely done by gritting one's teeth and powering through.<br />
***<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“The Enhancement of Visuospatial Processing Efficiency through Buddhist Deity Meditation”. Maria Kozhevnikov, Olga Louchakova, Zoran Josipovic, and Michael A. Motes. Psychological Science, 2009. http://nmr.mgh.harvard.edu/mkozhevnlab/wp-content/uploads/pdfs/Kozhevnikov_etal_meditation_2009.pdf<br />
****<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>”The Tibetan Book of the Dead”. Translated by Gyurme Dorje, Edited by Graham Coleman with Thupten Jinpa. Viking, 2005<br />
*****<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Remember, the study in question focused on only one metric of the practice, so it is not beyond the realm of possibility that there are many more mental boons specific to Diety MeditationSnowblindedhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06242023366792085291noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2630166144190637002.post-7971268148004061882018-08-03T11:33:00.000-07:002018-08-06T10:16:45.040-07:00Psychology - A Sampling and Summary of the Neurological and Psychological Research on MeditationThis is a small sampling of some of the recent research that has been done on the efficacy of meditation practice. I have tried my best to summarize the findings in a way that is understandable to a laymen (like myself) with misrepresenting anything, while bolstering my assessment with quotations from the abstract and results sections of the articles in question.<br />
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“Alterations in Brain and Immune Function Produced by Mindfulness Meditation.”<br />
-Non-Monastic, Immune System<br />
Davidson R.J., Kabat-Zinn J., Schumacher J., Rosenkranz M., Muller D., Santorelli S.F., Urbanowski F., Harrington A., Bonus K., Sheridan J.F.<br />
Psychosomatic Medicine, 2003 Jul-Aug<br />
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12883106<br />
Examined the effects of an influenza vaccine on two groups of people, one that had undergone an eight week meditation course and another that did not. The study found “significant increases in left-sided anterior activation, a pattern previously associated with positive affect, in the meditators compared with the nonmeditators. We also found significant increases in antibody titers to influenza vaccine among subjects in the meditation compared with those in the wait-list control group. Finally, the magnitude of increase in left-sided activation predicted the magnitude of antibody titer rise to the vaccine.” Showing “that a short program in mindfulness meditation produces demonstrable effects on brain and immune function.”<br />
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“Buddha's Brain: Neuroplasticity and Meditation.”<br />
-Monastic, Focused attention meditation, Open monitoring meditation, Tibetan Buddhism, Signal processing, Neuroplasticity<br />
Richard J. Davidson, Director and Antoine Lutz, Associate Scientist<br />
IEEE Signal Process Mag. 2008 Jan 1; 25(1): 176–174.<br />
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2944261/<br />
Examined the neuroplasticity, or "brain changes that occur in response to experience... from the growth of new connections to the creation of new neurons", in Tibetan Buddhist monks engaged in long term open monitoring and focused attention meditation. The findings indicated numerous differences in the brain structures of these monks in comparison to normal people, including “alterations in patterns of brain function assessed with functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), changes in the cortical evoked response to visual stimuli that reflect the impact of meditation on attention, and alterations in amplitude and synchrony of high frequency oscillations that probably play an important role in connectivity among widespread circuitry in the brain.”<br />
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“Cortical Thickness and Pain Sensitivity in Zen Meditators.”<br />
-Non-Monastic, Zen Meditation, Pain Sensitivity<br />
Grant J.A., Courtemanche J., Duerden E.G., Duncan G.H., Rainville P.<br />
Emotion, 2010, February 10th<br />
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20141301<br />
Used MRI scans to examine the pain sensitivity of 17 Zen meditation practitioners against 18 control subjects. “Meditators had significantly lower pain sensitivity than controls. Assessed across all subjects, lower pain sensitivity was associated with thicker cortex in affective, pain-related brain regions including the anterior cingulate cortex, bilateral parahippocampal gyrus and anterior insula. Comparing groups, meditators were found to have thicker cortex in the dorsal anterior cingulate and bilaterally in secondary somatosensory cortex. More years of meditation experience was associated with thicker gray matter in the anterior cingulate, and hours of experience predicted more gray matter bilaterally in the lower leg area of the primary somatosensory cortex as well as the hand area in the right hemisphere. Results generally suggest that pain sensitivity is related to cortical thickness in pain-related brain regions and that the lower sensitivity observed in meditators may be the product of alterations to brain morphometry from long-term practice.”<br />
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“The Effect of Mindfulness Meditation on Painful Diabetic Peripheral Neuropathy in Adults older than 50 years.”<br />
-Non-Monastic, Pain, Diabetic Neuropathy<br />
Teixeira E<br />
Holistic Nursing Practice, September-October 2010<br />
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20706089<br />
Pilot study examined the effects of mindfulness as a relief mechanism for 20 patients with Diabetic Neuropathy, ten in each group. While there were no significant findings, “differences between the means were found on 2 constructs: pain quality of life and symptom-related quality of life.”<br />
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“The Enhancement of Visuospatial Processing Efficiency through Buddhist Deity Meditation”<br />
-Monastic, Diety meditation, Open presence meditation, Tibetan Buddhism<br />
Maria Kozhevnikov, Olga Louchakova, Zoran Josipovic, and Michael A. Motes<br />
Psychological Science, 2009<br />
http://nmr.mgh.harvard.edu/mkozhevnlab/wp-content/uploads/pdfs/Kozhevnikov_etal_meditation_2009.pdf<br />
Tibetan monks were split into two groups based on their meditation preference, Deity Yoga meditators “(focused attention on an internal visual image)” and Open Presence meditators “(evenly distributed attention, not directed to any particular object)”. They then performed computerized mental-imagery tasks both before and after meditation and compared against a control group that either rested or performed tasks during the intervals. “The results indicate that all the groups performed at the same baseline level, but after meditation, Deity Yoga practitioners demonstrated adramatic increase in performance on imagery tasks comparedwith the other groups. The results suggest that Deity meditation specifically trains one’s capacity to accessheightened visuospatial processing resources, rather than generally improving visuospatial imagery abilities.”<br />
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“Influence of Meditation on Anti-Correlated Networks in the Brain”<br />
-Non-Monastic, Focused Attention Meditation, Non-Dual Awareness, Functional Connectivity, Cerebral Cortex, Anti-Correlated Networks<br />
Zoran Josipovic, Ilan Dinstein, Jochen Weber, and David J. Heeger<br />
Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, 2012, January 3rd<br />
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3250078/#<br />
Examined the neurological differences between people engaged in non-meditative fixed attention, Non-Dual Awareness, and Focused Attention Meditation. The “results suggest that the anti-correlation found between extrinsic and intrinsic systems is not an immutable property of brain organization and that practicing different forms of meditation can modulate this gross functional organization in profoundly different ways.”<br />
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“Meditation Effects within the Hippocampal Complex Revealed by Voxel-Based Morphometry and Cytoarchitectonic probabilistic mapping”<br />
-Non-Monastic, Long Term Meditation Practitioners, Gray Matter<br />
Eileen Luders, Florian Kurth, Arthur W. Toga, Katherine L. Narr, and Christian Gaser<br />
Frontiers in Psychology, 2013, July 9th<br />
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3705194/<br />
Compared the gray matter characteristics of 50 people possessing long term meditation experience (~20 years) from various schools and traditions with 50 people lacking meditation experience. They found “significant meditation effects in the vicinity of the hippocampus, showing more GM in meditators than in controls as well as positive correlations with the number of years practiced” and “significant meditation effects were observed within the subiculum specifically. Since the subiculum is known to play a key role in stress regulation and meditation is an established form of stress reduction, these GM findings may reflect neuronal preservation in long-term meditators”.<br />
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“Mindfulness Practice Leads to Increases in Regional Brain Gray Matter Density.“<br />
-Non-Monastic, Inexperienced Meditation Practitioners, Gray Matter, MRI<br />
Hölzel BK, Carmody J, Vangel M, Congleton C, Yerramsetti SM, Gard T, and Lazar SW<br />
Psychiatry Research: Neuroimaging, 2011 Jan 30<br />
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21071182<br />
Examined the changes in the magnetic resonance images of the brains of “16 healthy, meditation-naïve participants” before and after an 8 week meditation program, comparing them with a control group of 17 people who did not undergo this training. “Analyses in a priori regions of interest confirmed increases in gray matter concentration within the left hippocampus. Whole brain analyses identified increases in the posterior cingulate cortex, the temporo-parietal junction, and the cerebellum in the MBSR group compared with the controls. The results suggest that participation in MBSR is associated with changes in gray matter concentration in brain regions involved in learning and memory processes, emotion regulation, self-referential processing, and perspective taking.”<br />
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“Neural Correlates of Nondual Awareness in Meditation.”<br />
-Monastic, Dualistic thinking, Tibetan Buddhism<br />
Zoran Josipovic<br />
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24033505<br />
Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 2014, January<br />
Examined the neurological impact of Non-Dual Awareness (NDA) in Tibetan Buddhist monks. Non-Dual Awareness references the state of mind where the largely arbitrary separations that often characterize human thought (self and other, the distinctions of objects being solid, clearly differentiated blocks of matter) are no longer present or are less rigidly adhered to. Study suggests the “involvement of a precuneus network in NDA.”<br />
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“The Neural Substrates of Mindfulness: An fMRI Investigation.”<br />
-Non-Monastic, fMRI<br />
Ives-Deliperi V.L., Solms M., Meintjes E.M.<br />
Social Neuroscience, 2010, September 9th<br />
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20835972<br />
Used fMRI scans to examine the brains of people engaged in mindfulness practice. Found that “significant signal decreases were observed during mindfulness meditation in midline cortical structures associated with interoception, including bilateral anterior insula, left ventral anterior cingulate cortex, right medial prefrontal cortex, and bilateral precuneus. Significant signal increase was noted in the right posterior cingulate cortex. These findings lend support to the theory that mindfulness achieves its positive outcomes through a process of disidentification.”<br />
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“Neurocognitive and Somatic Components of Temperature Increases During g-Tummo Meditation: Legend and Reality”<br />
-Monastic, Tummo meditation, Tibetan Buddhism, Temperature regulation, Electroencephalographic monitoring<br />
Maria Kozhevnikov, James Elliott, Jennifer Shephard, and Klaus Gramann<br />
PLOS ONE, 2013, March 29th<br />
http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0058244<br />
Examined the ability of Tibetan Buddhist monks engaged in Tummo meditation to control their bodily temperature. Consisting of two studies, one performed on experienced Tibetan Buddhist monks in the Himalayas and the other on students with no meditation experience, who were given and instructed in the use of the Tibetan vase breathing techniques. The axillary temperature and electroencephalographic (EEG) activity were then observed in both groups. They found that both the breathing system and the Tummo meditation contributed to the bodiliy regulation, and that “the neurocognitive component (meditative visualization)… aids in sustaining temperature increases for longer periods.”<br />
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Snowblindedhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06242023366792085291noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2630166144190637002.post-8489035068627499902018-06-12T18:59:00.000-07:002018-06-12T18:59:04.739-07:00Poetry - Anti-Heroin Chic Poems<a href="http://heroinchic.weebly.com/blog/poetry-by-patrick-jenkinson">Anti Heroin Chic: Pat Jenkinson</a><br />Snowblindedhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06242023366792085291noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2630166144190637002.post-12890693824208508822018-06-12T18:57:00.001-07:002018-06-12T18:57:18.441-07:00Music Criticism - DoomMetal.com Review Links<a href="http://doom-metal.com/reviews.php?album=3287">Mountaris - Desolate</a> (2018-03-30)<br />
<a href="http://doom-metal.com/reviews.php?album=3275">Spirit Adrift - Curse of Conception</a> (2018-03-30)<br />
<a href="http://doom-metal.com/reviews.php?album=3255">Godes Yrre : Inside The Whale</a> (2018-02-27)<br />
<a href="http://doom-metal.com/reviews.php?album=3246">Motherslug : The Electric Dunes Of Titan</a> (2018-02-20)Snowblindedhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06242023366792085291noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2630166144190637002.post-15096181018574771152018-02-09T20:49:00.001-08:002018-08-20T20:03:19.373-07:00Poetry - For Lisa<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="__DdeLink__9758_1625705258"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="__DdeLink__9745_1625705258"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="__DdeLink__9751_1625705258"></a>
<span lang="en-US"> What did you see in those houses?</span></div>
<div lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Those desperate
pretenders clinging to some half overheard bar tale of suburbia while
all around the seeds of hip-hop kleos bloom as lotuses in the puddles
that filled our plungers when nobody had 50¢ for bodega water</div>
<div lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span lang="en-US"> Did the silhouette
of a little girl twirl about your psyche the way we we spun our crack
stems at the tail end of a hit, not to make sure the last of the oil
ran down into the blackened chore but for the simple joy of motion?</span></div>
<div lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
I'm sorry</div>
<div lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
I'm sorry that when you
insisted we pull over and beg God for the cessation of the awful
torment, I only half echoed your desperate pleas while wholly bent on
how much time your diversion put between me and my elastic-wrapped
divinity</div>
<div lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
I'm sorry that when I
heard about your death, I felt nothing save the mild satisfaction of
having one more friend's name to throw upon an altar already sodden
with the blood of all I cared about</div>
<div lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span lang="en-US"> I'm sorry that the
God you cried out to chose for his grace the one who joyfully hurled
relapse statistics and barely understood French nihilism at every
glimmer of sacred truth that cut through our endless fog, while the
maggots devour your heroin soaked veins.</span></div>
<br />Snowblindedhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06242023366792085291noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2630166144190637002.post-15303401080753891362017-12-30T07:47:00.006-08:002018-02-09T20:50:29.354-08:00Music Criticism - Top 17 Albums of 201717. Fin - Arrows of a Dying Age<br />
16. Priests - Nothing Feels Natural<br />
15. Pallbearer - Heartless<br />
14. Jason Moran - BANGS<br />
13. Craig Finn - We All Want the Same Things<br />
12. Satan's Hallow - Satan's Hallow<br />
11. Kamasi Washington - Harmony of Difference<br />
10. Death Fortress - Triumph of the Undying<br />
09. Joshua Abrams and Natural Information Society - Simultonality<br />
08. Cameron Graves - Planetary Prince<br />
07. Tchornobog – Tchornobog<br />
06. Fleet Foxes - Crack-Up<br />
05. Elder - Reflections of a Floating World<br />
04. Black Cilice - Banished from Time<br />
03. Archspire - Relentless Mutation<br />
02. Cleric - Retrocausal<br />
01. Myrkur - Mareridt<br />
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(Write-up below)<br />
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<b>17. Fin - Arrows of a Dying Age</b><br />
This release is (as far as I can recall), the only straight black metal album that I have ever been able to put on during a workout. This may seem like a pointless reason to like an album, and a ridiculous reason to put it into a top albums list, but I think this fact sheds light on an interesting ability Fin possess in comparison to other black metal bands. To get at exactly what I mean by this I will have to take a quick step backwards. Metal, while often called harsh and dissonant by people who dislike the genre, is not Schoenbergian 12 tone music. While more dissonant than the mainstream, to be certain, like almost all genres of music, it has it's own peculiar brand of consonance, it's own system of producing pleasing sound that embeds itself into the subconscious of listeners and thereby perpetuates itself when said listeners turn to start bands of their own (sometimes without them ever realizing it). Now, some metal bands employ metal's particular styles of consonance more than others, and, while any attempt to divide this along subgenre lines will produce tons of exceptions, certain styles are more apt to aim for this consonance than others. On the one end of the spectrum you have traditional and power metal, on the other end you have black metal and tech death. In between these points, though typically a little bit closer to the dissonant end of the spectrum, are the melodic brethren of black and death metal.<br />
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If we look at the songwriting of a representative example of melodic black metal as compared to it's traditional cousin, say Dissection's "Storm of the Light's Bane", we see a couple distinctions that push the genre into more consonant territory. The first is that, as a whole (again, exceptions abound), melodic black metal has a stronger tendency towards the major scale and it's modes over either the chromatic, the other non-traditional scales, or the major scale with the addition of dissonant notes. The second difference is more important, though both are required for a true melodic black metal sound to form. Where traditional black metal typically tries to stick to as steady and regular a rhythm as possible in the guitar lines, often tremolo picking a single note for the exact length of a beat, or even a whole a bar, and then looping this simple pattern for the majority of a song, melodic black metal will make some slight but significant alterations to this approach. They will keep a fairly steady rhythm but change it just enough to give one note a greater emphasis. For instance, where a traditional black metal band might have played a riff similar to what Dissection used on "Where Dead Angel's Lie", written in the E minor scale (E, F♯, G, A, B, C, and D), and, on the opening tremolo riff, made up of a E, G, A, F# pattern, played evenly spaced sixteenths notes and switching up each beat, perhaps even breaking from the scale a bit to give the music a greater sense of hostility, Dissection instead shape the pattern into sixteenth note triplets, giving the E and A (the tonic and fourth) a greater amount of riff time than the comparatively harsher F# and G (the major second and minor third). This allows the sound a bit more consonance without sacrificing much of the black metal's trademark harshness.<br />
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So where do Fin fit in with all this? Well that is where things get interesting. I think the metal community as a whole was right to label this a black metal release and not a melodic black metal one, because, all in, the songwriting is mostly built around the more traditional style of riff writing, but the pseudonymous M.F. has a gift for finding just the right moment to jump over to something out of the melodic tradition. Now I don't want to give the impression that the band have invented the idea of blurring the lines between the two subgenres. It is rare to find an act on either end of the spectrum that doesn't push at least a little bit towards the other side every once in a while. It is not the idea of further blending these two closely related subgenres that makes "Arrows of a Dying Age" great, it is the way they go about doing it.<br />
<br />
So the foundation of this release is traditional black metal. Taking a rough guess, I would say that about half of the riffs on this album are straight BM fare. Typically either the aforementioned steady tremolo picking held fairly hard to the rhythm, or the kind of riff that starts off in a similar way but then switches to either an oscillating back and forth pattern at the end, typically via hammer-ons, or else doubling the rate of note change during the second stage. Bread and butter black metal stuff, almost always fairly dissonant. But then Fin will introduce a little flourish at just the right point. Perhaps a scale pattern in one of the major modes at the end of a tremolo riff, they might put a greater emphasis on the tonic (the note the key is in) a la the Dissection riff I mentioned above, perhaps a traditional bm riff but using intervals that are a bit more consonant than usual, every once in a while (but very rarely) they will introduce a riff that follows a easily discernible melodic line. Fin never lean too hard into these flourishes. They implement them at just the right moment so that their sound can retain the discordant qualities of traditional black metal, but use them just often enough to replace the typical sense of murky atmosphere native to their genre with a sense of drive and momentum. Also, the homage to Morricone's western soundtracks on the album's closer was something I never thought I'd here on a black metal album.<br />
<br />
<br />
<b>16. Priests - Nothing Feels Natural</b><br />
The first point of comparison that comes to my mind is X Ray Spex, both groups use the rough primitivism of punk rock as a launching point for a far more eclectic brand of assault than their contemporaries. The band combines Dead Kennedys-esque surf rock playing with a broad swathe of stylistic techniques from the modern (and pre-modern) indie rock scene: everything from the hooky-but-a-little-bit-dissonant bridge melodies to the Television inspired interlocking bass and guitar melodies to the Joy Division-esque rumbling-bass-line-with-the-guitar-playing-chords verse transition to rumbling-bass-line-with-complementary-riff chorus techniques<br />
<br />
The biggest link between Priests and X Ray Spex are their respective vocalists. Both Katie Alice Greer and Poly Styrene employ a style of singing, vocal phrasing, and lyric writing that at once borrows from and mocks advertising slogans. Both feature a surprisingly soulful vocal approach that at the same time just drips with punk's defiance, but filtered through an unconventional, unhindered, and unabashed femininity. I try to avoid reading interviews and other similar write ups on band's personal lives because I find it tends to interfere and does not add to the quality of the music, so I could be wrong about this, but I am pretty sure the track "Pretty White House" is a deliberate homage to Styrene on Greer's part. Everything from the vocal timbre to the subtle phrasing seems deeply inspired by X Ray Spex. The one thing about this release that I am not a big fan of is the fact that Greer has traded Poly Styrene's beautiful, self-depreciating sense of humor for a sense of introspection that fits in a bit more with the contemporary rock mores, but all in it is an great album.<br />
<br />
<br />
<b>15. Pallbearer - Heartless</b><br />
This one took a while for me to really lock into. At first I thought it was significantly weaker than their preceding two masterpieces. I tried really hard over the summer to like this album as much as the rest of the metal community seemed to, but I just couldn't. Then, around November, I decided to give it another go and suddenly I found that I was listening to an amazing album. A real danger of funeral doom is that the steady throbbing can lead to a sense of monotony, and I think Pallbearer's grandest achievement is that their gifted command of the art of songwriting allows them to take, what is my opinion one of the more constricting subgenre's of metal, and really wring everything that can be wrought from it through careful craftsmanship. I think one of the reasons that this album flew past me for so long is that the varied elements are so seamlessly interwoven that they can pass you by if you aren't paying close attention.<br />
<br />
To my mind, their songwriting approach, which uses gorgeous interlocking melodies which are in turn intimately tied to a slow relentless advance of thudding guitars, is reminiscent of Baroness. However, where Baroness seek to go for something like a blitzkrieg that comes from nowhere with an onslaught of destruction, Pallbearer's approach is more like that of the Red Army, or perhaps more fittingly Alexander I's army during the Napoleonic Wars, ever moving, but always just behind your field of vision, unleashing a trail of destruction that, unlike that of the German army, is tainted by the dark melancholy that comes with burning your own fields, yet always possessing absolute confidence that, sooner or later, its sheer monolithic size would overwhelm all who would seek to enter it's desolate, sprawling terrain. It's a shame we as music listeners don't spend as much time on broader retrospectives as we do on the "right now", because I could easily see this album creeping significantly higher in a hypothetical 2022's best of 2017 list.<br />
<br />
<br />
<b>14. Jason Moran - BANGS</b><br />
I find it a bit difficult to write about what makes Jason Moran unique and special because he is one of the benchmarks against which I compare other modern jazz acts. I will readily admit that I find my jazz listening almost exclusively centered around the period from 1950 to 1970, and that I only tend to check out modern acts that have received a decent amount of attention. That being said, to my mind the biggest defining feature of modern jazz is that, like the Indie Rock scene, the 21st century has been characterized largely by the decision to look backwards and see what new things could be done with the heritage that brought the music to this particular point in time (largely owing to the fact that, with both genres, it became all but impossible to push things in the direction of any particular extreme).<br />
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In this regard, what makes Jason Moran special is the sheer scope of what he can incorporate into his playing and songwriting. What makes BANGS so interesting to me is the effortless way it infuses such a broad variety of jazz traditions into it's sonic palate, particularly many of the oldest styles of jazz. In that regard this release reminds of of Mingus' "Ah Um", in that neither release abase themselves before nostalgia or homage, but both pull something inexplicably fresh and modern from traditions that are old and storied even by the standards of jazz. Of course, in Mingus' time, the kind of music he sought to emulate on “Ah Um” was on the opposite end of the jazz spectrum from the kind of experimentation he employed on “The Black Saint and Sinner Lady”, wheras for Moran both extremes are components of a far reaching traditional that can be mined for his needs. Thus the consummately traditional “My Father's House” is preceded by the avant-garde “White Space” and followed by “Conspiracy Blue”, a composition unlike any I have ever heard before.<br />
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<b>13. Craig Finn - We All Want the Same Things</b><br />
I have no love for the (apparently now former) New Yorker music writer Sasha Frere-Jones, but as much as I hate to admit it, his assertion that The Mountain Goats' John Darnielle and The Hold Steady's Craig Finn are the two greatest lyricists outside hip-hop was accurate when he made it about a decade ago, and, to the extent of my knowledge, remains accurate to this day.<br />
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While my heart has ample room for both songwriters, my preference is decidedly towards Finn. I regard The Hold Steady's "Boys and Girls in America" as the greatest rock and roll album of the millennium thus far, so you can take that as an acknowledgment of my bias. It is obviously impossible to provide any objective assessment of music, as there is no aesthetic criteria that can be established as valuable without reference to other aesthetic criteria (or if there are, they are very broad and foundational, like Pound's literary take on Occam's razor). However, there are certain consensuses that exist, and, paradoxically, when one dives into the more educated circles of musical knowledge, both the amount of stylistic disagreements and the amount of fundamental consensuses rise.<br />
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Because of my close personal connection to Finn's music (which is something very different from liking or even loving a release) you would be right to be a bit guarded with any grandiose assertions on my part on his abilities. However, I really do think that, so long as you accept some of baseline assertions regarding the art of wordcraft, ideas like "the more vivid an image that can be produced, the better", and "that which expresses something of depth and complexity is greater than something that expresses banalities", it can be said that Finn is a masterful lyricist.<br />
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The reason this is so important is that, unlike The Hold Steady, where Finn's words are bathed in glow of Springsteen-ian grandeur and Meat Loaf-ian bombast, his solo material pulls back that full band sound so that Craig's lyrics really take center stage. You can listen to any of The Hold Steady's releases ten times before you even start to notice the lyrics and another hundred before their depth and power really sink in. "We All Want the Same Things", by contrast, leaves you with no choice but to confront Finn's words, so if slice of life pictures of the deep pain and transcendent beauty of America's underbelly just don't appeal to you, this release will probably will not either.<br />
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This does not necessarily make this a weaker release than the best of The Hold Steady's output (though it is). If a song were to come out with the greatest bass lines, guitar riffs, piano melodies, the most intricate drum patterns of all time, the end result would be convoluted mess. Drawing one element to the spotlight allows that element, assuming it is done properly, to shine in a way that it would not even with magnificent accompaniment. This is why "God in Chicago", which features, for a vast majority of the song, nothing more than spoken word lyrics and a two chord piano accompaniment, is not just an album highlight or a career highlight, but a high watermark for music as a whole. I'll freely admit that some of the other songs on this release don't merit the kind of heightened attention this style of songwriting enforces, but the moments when Finn is really firing on all cylinders more than make up for the lulls.<br />
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<b>12. Satan's Hallow - Satan's Hallow</b><br />
This self titled debut is of such uniform quality that I believe one could use it as a constant in a mathematical equation, which would look something like this:<br />
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E/S = O<br />
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Where:<br />
S = Satan's Hallow: The rating, on a 1 to 100 scale, that you give this release.<br />
E = Eighties High Quality Average: The rating you would give a typical upper echelong traditional metal release from the eighties. I'm not talking about the absolute cream of the crop, the "Painkiller"s, "Holy Diver"s, and "Powerslave"s (or "The Number of the Beast" if that is more to your taste), but that rung immediately below it. The "Piece of Mind"s, "Fighting the World"s, and "See You in Hell"s. Obviously this is the trickiest number to produce, so I would suggest factoring out the bands you hold in particularly high esteem in comparison to the rest of the metal community, but, at the same time, these should be releases you highly value. A good benchmark would be to take your top thirty traditional metal albums of the eighties, cut out the top ten, and average that. As with S, this is on a 1-100 scale.<br />
O = Overrate Multiplier. This is the number that shows how much you tend to overrate albums from the 1980s as compared with new releases.<br />
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So if a person gave straight 100s across the board to every Maiden release from "Killers" to "Seventh Son", and likewise to all of Judas Priest's eighties output save "Turbo" and "Ram it Down", but only gives "Satan's Hallow" a 70, their Overrate Multiplier would be 1.42857142857. This means that you would have to either multiply every modern release by this number or divide every eighties release by it in order to get ratings that do not overvalue the golden age classics.<br />
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All of this is a long and convoluted way of saying that I believe "Satan's" Hallow deserves to be compared side by side with the absolute best traditional metal releases.<br />
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<b>11. Kamasi Washington - Harmony of Difference</b><br />
When it comes to the saxophone, I have a strong bias towards those who approach the instrument like a Norse berserker*, charging in to meet the chord changes head on and letting their battle cry ring wildly over the field. Think Pharoah Sanders, Albert Ayler, and of course my beloved Saint Coltrane. Naturally this affinity gives me a strong bias towards Kamasi Washington, but the amount of attention this man has gotten from outside the jazz world should speak to the fact that he is not a man who has only niche appeal.<br />
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The compositions on this album are interesting to say the least. The biggest criticism I have heard of it is that many of the them have a light, pleasant, almost poppy reliance on repetition, and I think it is true that in the hands of a lesser act these songs could have been rendered into elevator music, but if you take a Grand Caravan and shove an engine with as much kick as Washington and his band, particularly pianist Cameron Graves, have, the thing is still gonna fly.<br />
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One of the most interesting trends in 2017 has been an interest in a very particular style of 60's soul arranging that was brought to it's apex in Marvin Gaye's classic "What's Goin On?". The influence of that album can be seen in as diverse a selection as Kendrik Lamar's "DNA", Fleet Foxes' "Crack-Up", and this album's closer, "Truth". While Washington explored these styles on "The Epic", "Truth" has the feel of a grand crescendo, a point where these ideas were brought fully into fruition.<br />
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Meanwhile, songs like the album's opener "Desire" and "Integrity", explore the potential of what can be done with a single, brief phrase. Again I've seen him take some crap for this from critics, but nobody give Beethoven shit for his 5th Symphony, and anybody who dislikes Coltrane's later-period interest in exploring just how much can be wrought from brief melodic ideas obviously shouldn't be trusted.<br />
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Elsewhere, you get tracks like "Humility" and "Perspective", which stick firm to the hard bop tradition and showcase a band that clearly know it inside and out. "Knowledge" is interesting for the way it recontextualizes a theme that is remarkably close to the previous track in a totally different backdrop, and thereby provides an opportunity to explore the relationship between melodic ideas and their harmonic context.<br />
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The only fault I can find with this recording is that the brief songs, all less than four minutes save the opening and closing tracks, do not allow for as much opportunity for exploration as I would like, but this also makes "Harmony of Difference" an excellent album for people looking to get into jazz who may be intimidated by the ten plus minute songs of it's heyday.<br />
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<b>10. Death Fortress - Triumph of the Undying</b><br />
It might seem weird for me to say that the merits of such an aggressive album lies in its subtleties, but I believe it to be true. There is no single quality I can point to that led me to return to this release again and again while other black metal albums were quickly forgotten, but it's overall execution is phenomenal. The band I have heard them compared the most is to Immortal, and as far as Aversario's guitar playing is concerned here, the comparison is apt. He definitely picked up what I would call, lacking of a better term, his hopscotch tremolos, from the Sons of Northern Darkness, but there is more to Death Fortress than the ability to ape the gifts of one of black metal's great forbears.<br />
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It is difficult for me to put my finger on exactly what it is that sets Death Fortress apart, but, despite the style of playing being a very traditional black metal approach, there is a sense of grandeur here that is heard more often in the genre's melodic cousin. This may sound similar to my description of Fin's release, but the practical results could not be more different. Fin's modifications to the tradition bm palate seek to give the music a more visceral sense of movement, while this music aims at a somewhat modified version of black metal's trademark sense of atmosphere. To my ears, it suggests vast, desolate, snow covered mountains rather than dank forests and forgotten caves. I think it can be partially traced to the riff writing, the very impressive drum work, the production, and a certain difficult to quantify command of the nuances of their chosen genre.<br />
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<b>09. Joshua Abrams and Natural Information Society - Simultonality</b><br />
"Maroon Dune", this album's nine minute opener, gives the listener a working blueprint on what to expect from this album. The bass riff, which is the song's source of regularity and stability, confines itself entirely to two notes, but this is not some punk rock exercise in minimalism. Rather, like the great Krautrock pioneers of the 70's, Abrams and co. are interested in exploring how the steady regularity of a bare bones rock and roll rhythm can be used as a launching pad for experimentation. One of the most interesting things about "Simultonality" is the beautiful sense of subtlety in the experimental elements. This is not a traditional jazz release, where each soloist takes a turn in the spotlight. Rather different elements will flit in and out of the foreground: the guitar will add a simple accompaniment to the bass line and then hop into a few chords and jump back out, while the the various pianos, autoharps, harmoniums, etc come in with these brief, shifting phrases. The end result of this beautiful mixture of steady rhythm and delicate experimentation is an album that has all the intricacy of a free jazz release but with a regular groove that allows your mind to lock into it's pattern and ease itself into a trance-like state of receptivity.<br />
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<b>08. Cameron Graves - Planetary Prince</b><br />
This, like Cleric's "Retrocausal", is a late edition to my list, since I was not able to discover this album until mid December. Unlike Cleric's album, this was not due to it's late release date but my own inability to keep tabs on the world of Jazz. Nonetheless, despite not having as much time as I would like to really dig into this work, I still feel confident placing it on my best albums list. This because, while this is my first time hearing Graves fronting his own project (this is his debut as a bandleader), I have developed a significant appreciation for his playing style via his contributions to Kamasi Washington's latest two masterpieces. On "Planetary Prince", we see that Graves' innovative musical ideas are just as present as on Washington's work, including, among many other things, his very unique approach to melodic lines, long stretches of unyielding forward momentum, moments of classical influence, lightning fast arpeggios, and his tendency to drive his playing on until the notes come in piled one on top of each other.<br />
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That just leaves the songs themselves, and on that front this album is just as interesting. "El Diablo"'s theme is a two note pattern on the horns and a single chord played in a steady staccato style. Then, on the proceeding track, "Adam and Eve", we are presented by a lovely melody that incorporates a steady, pulsing note into a grand, beautiful melody. The pattern progresses into one of the most ornate introductions before transitioning into a theme with a traditional horns-shifting-a-single-phrase-up-and-down-in-pitch theme. There is something in these sparse thematic structures that reminds me a bit of the Canterbury scene's Soft Machine, and something in his arpeggios that reminds me of classical music, but at the same time, despite the influence of rock and classical on a structural level there is no denying that this release is a jazz record through and through, and an amazing one at that.<br />
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<b>07. Tchornobog - Tchornobog</b><br />
One of the things that really strikes me about this release is the unified vision behind it. The band have really committed themselves to going after this Slavic-deity-re-imagined-as-a-neo-Lovecraftian-horror idea, and everything about this album works towards this goal. From the lyrics to the music. From the band and album's title, to it's cover and packaging, which are some of the best I have see, featuring a really cool mural spread over both sides of the folding digipak, along with two beautifully produced booklets, one of lyrics and a "Dream Journal" that is really reminiscent of Lovecraft.<br />
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I don't know what it is about this (at least once) obscure Eastern European pagan God that has proved so fertile for creative endeavors, but besides being the most compelling and memorable of the deities in Gaiman's American Gods (save perhaps the One-Eyed One), there are like 10 metal bands named after the various spellings of his Tchornobog. But, besides Gaiman's excellent novel (seriously read it if you haven't), none have succeeded in this endeavor like this group.<br />
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As befitting a release dedicated to a deity, "Tchornobog" features vast soundscapes that all break the ten minute mark. The general term used to describe this album is black/death/doom metal, but as is befitting a release built around a non-Satanic, non-Norse diety, this music doesn't really fit within any established subgenre. Rather, the band present the different styles of metal so well dispersed that the mind never quite locks into a steady way of processing the release. They will hold onto a black metal styled riff for an obscene amount of time, and then shift into what I like to call death metal break-ups, where the music shifts to a simpler passage melodically, but unlike a breakdown, things are sped up instead of slowed down, only to choke the air out with a fuzzy doom passage, followed by a nightmarey (as in dreamy, but with an ever present sense of darkness) solo.<br />
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Another great thing about this release is the way it subtly implements instruments beyond the big three. Saxophones, trumpets, and cellos all make very slight appearances, typically just adding a brief touch of the odd that further enhances the sense of disorientation this release seeks to cultivate, the sense that you are in an alien realm, without ever drawing your attention to them. Finally there is Markov Soroka's (the songwriter and performer of all the main instrument parts) vocal performance. Here we see lyrics (and song titles) that owe quite a bit to Demilich being performed in a style that, like the rest of the music, is something I have never heard before, reaching at times into the realm of the most bizarre extreme metal vocals and then twisting just as easily into a more conventional approach.<br />
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<b>06. Fleet Foxes - Crack-Up</b><br />
I often find myself sounding a bit more Nietzschean (or heaven forbid, Randian) then I would like when discussing Fleet Foxes. My belief that the world of music, when looked at from a macro level, is composed of a series of shifting, dragging tides that most acts spend their careers either swimming with or against while a small minority make for a far off shore of their own imagining and an even more select group, by sheer force of creative will, manage to an erect an island of their own making amid the crashing waters, has all the markings of some half-baked, second rate Ubermusician theory, but I believe it all the same, and I think Robin Pecknold's work with Fleet Foxes is as good an exemplar of that final group as could be asked for.<br />
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As befitting a release that took six years to complete, "Crack-Up" moves at it's own pace. The sparse arpeggiation used on "The Plains" and "The Cascades" in 2011's "Helplessness Blues", have been expanded from brief portraiture to sweeping landscapes that stretch out before the listeners ears in all directions. Simple, stark arrangements of delicate chord sequences slowly unfurl themselves at their own pace, and then suddenly give way to grand, breathtaking crescendos. One of the great pleasures of the Fleet Foxes' music is how Pecknold is able to look over the vast expanse of popular music and then draw from it's depths and nuances the exact sounds that are needed to perfect his vision, almost like DJ Shadow's gift for finding beautiful passages that line up perfectly amid incredibly obscure old LPs, but on a cosmic scale. Of particular note is his decision to use the gorgeous instrumentation of late 60's soul, particularly Marvin Gaye's "What's Goin On?" beneath his gentle strumming patterns and eclectic instrumentation, especially on the second half of the album, to give the music a complex, ruminating sentimentality.<br />
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Yet one never feels, listening to Fleet Fox's music, that they are making a homage, or some motley collage of their favorite releases. This music is wholly Pecknold's, and it's Mariana depths, regardless of the make and design of the submersible used to plumb them, are the product of one of our greatest songwriters.<br />
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<b>05. Elder - Reflections of a Floating World</b><br />
The phrase "floating world" references a Japanese term for the isolated and decadent lifestyle of the Imperial (and later Shogunal) courts in medieval Japan. It is a fitting title, because just as the unparalleled decadence and cultural ostentation of this period of Japanese history stood out all the sharper in comparison to the meager, brutish lifestyle of the countries peasants, so too this album is made up of two separate worlds that combine to form a singular whole that is almost as complex and intriguing as they cultural tradition they named their album after.<br />
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There is nothing new about combining the droning assault of doom metal with melodic ideas from the psychedelic and progressive rock of the late 60s and early 70s, but Elder and particular have a real knack for creating inventive guitar guitar melodies that, when combined with the heavy, plodding bass, feel like an infusion of King Crimson's mythic dreamscapes with Black Sabbath's nightmarish visions. The whole effect reminds of of the image Yeats used in his poem "The Second Coming" of a falcon swirling about a great whirlwind as the falconer, caught in the middle of the funnel, struggles against the surrounding forces. We as listeners too find ourselves buffeted on all sides by the pummeling bass guitar while high above us, well beyond our reach, the guitar performs gorgeous arabesques.<br />
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<b>04. Black Cilice - Banished from Time</b><br />
Black Cilice have what I believe to be the most fitting band name I have ever encountered (save perhaps Crass). The medieval device for inflicting pain and discomfort on the wearer through small little spikes on the band that dig into the skin, accurately describes what Black Cilice are going for. As the cilice itself was meant for the extreme fringe of the Christian community, so is this music meant for the kind of person who responds to a perfectly innocent question about why someone would listen to something like this with a long rant about how metal is a reflection of the horror and suffering of existence rather than just saying that they like the riffs.<br />
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The first thing that one will notice about this album is the production. The big point of discussion in most comment threads about this band that I have seen is the low production value, which, strictly speaking, is not true. Access to poor quality production undoubtedly contributed to the abrasive sound of early black metal demos that inspired the mysterious man behind Black Cilice (I am assuming the project is by a single man based on the photos and album art), but in the year 2017, I can, armed only with a Warlock I got for 150$ at a pawn shop, a 130$ Indiana bass from a secondhand store, a 250$ R16, a 150$ Korg synth for drum programming and extra effects, less than 100$ worth of pedals, and a 60$ copy of Reaper, produce music that, while shitty sounding, at least has that "sort of almost passable" quality associated with modern low quality demos. However, I have no fucking clue how to even begin making music that sounds like this. I once accidentally plugged my bass into a mixing board with a built in bass distortion effect on while forgetting my line was still hooked into all my guitar effects, and the sound came sorta close to what can be heard here, but that is just the tip of the iceberg. The entire mix is clouded by a such a haze of fuzz that I legitimately believe it required more ingenuity on his part to create this then it would have to learn how to mix and master the album properly. There are places where I can't even tell what kind of instrument I am listening to, like that weird thing that pops up every once in a while on "Boiled Corpses" that sounds almost like he ran a synthesizer through a bunch of guitar distortion pedals (maybe he just routed the master through a distortion pedal).<br />
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There is more to this endless barrage of hostility than just the production though. The guitars will often hold incredibly simplistic (structurally, not technically) riffs for long stretches of time just to let the monotony drone into your skull. The drums, while competently played, are presented to the listener in a choppy sluice that is diametrically opposed to the crisp clear, easily identifiable even at 200bpm style recording typically used to capture such a blast-beat heavy style of playing. The vocalist, meanwhile, never seems quite sure whether or not he wants to line up his banshee shrieks to the meter of the music, typically coming in at the start of the measure but then just going on for as long as he feels like without any regard for consistency or whether he will line up with the bars.<br />
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All in, "Banished from Time" is one of the best pieces of unrepentant hostility I have ever heard.<br />
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<b>03. Archspire - Relentless Mutation</b><br />
In my entry for Satan's Hallow, I was a bit dismissive of the tendency of the metal community to overvalue classic releases in comparison to newer ones, but the reality is it is difficult to really get a grip for how certain releases will stand the test of time. Five years from now I may regret making such a claim, but I sincerely believe that Archspire's "Relentless Mutation" stands with the absolute upper echelon of technical death metal. Yes, I'm talking "Nespithe", "None so Vile", "Onset of Putrefaction", and (everyone calls in progressive death metal now a days but I still consider it tech death) "Unquestionable Presence".<br />
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Guitarists Tobi Morelli and Dean Lamb are fond of taking these brief little circular riffs that loop back on themselves and throw them into complex sequences and permutations that are endlessly inventive, which are then interspersed with hyper-speed scale run fills. While neither technique is unique to Archspire, they way they combine them and construct grand sonic monoliths is.<br />
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I think bassist Jared Smith may be my favorite second favorite Death Metal bassist after Atheist's Tony Choy (most of my favorite Death Metal guitarists are on the more traditional end of the spectrum, but when it comes to bassists I lean more towards tech death). He has an uncanny ability to anchor down the guitars at just the right moment and then unleash these absolute deluges that seep into the sound and produce an effect not unlike soil liquefaction, where the solid structure that rest upon his foundation suddenly gives way to total chaos.<br />
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Oli Peters' vocal work is far from a weak link in this presentation. I'll admit that to a certain extent, as the complexity of the instrumental sections rise, my regard for the role of extreme metal vocalists as compared with the rest of the band diminishes, perhaps unfairly. This is probably related to the fact that, unlike the instrumental musicians I have known over the years, I have never known the one close friend I have who does extreme metal singing to actually practice. Peter's vocal work acts as an excellent rebuttal to the opinions I have formed based on a single piece of evidence. While, unlike the guitars, bass, and drums, there are some people that have a natural knack for death metal vocals without any serious effort on their part, it takes the same disciplined control of the diaphragm and larynx required of a clean vocalist to produce these rapid machine gun lines he uses in time with the guitars, but with the additional risk of vocal cord damage that comes with this style of vocals.<br />
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Spencer Prewett's drumming does not stand out to me as much as the other parts, but it does not let you down either. Perhaps this has more to do with my lack of appreciation for drumming as compared with the other dominant components of music, but at the same time the mere fact that he is able to hold down the line in a band of this caliber speaks volumes for his abilities.<br />
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<b>02. Cleric - Retrocausal</b><br />
This year has seen me turn back to metal fairly hard after having spent a number of years immersed in jazz, krautrock, experimental rock, and other avant-garde kinds of music, so I was overjoyed when I first head Cleric's beautiful effort at bridging these worlds. If avant-garde, as the term was originally used, indicated the advance force of an army that does all the dangerous front line work, then Cleric are a rogue scouting party, who, on a covert mission to France, decided to say fuck it and launch an invasion of Turkey.<br />
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That word "avant-garde" is often used to refer to acts that incorporate a bit of electronic experimentation, but this, my friends, is the real fucking deal. It infuses the aggressive, bursting assaults of mathcore and tech-death with the expressive spirit of Albert Ayler and the complete disregard for convention of James Chance and the Contortions. The fact that it features a cameo by John fucking Zorn should speak to its experimental credentials, but it does not do justice to how well the band pull this off.<br />
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I am one of very select group of oddballs who plays mostly metal stuff on the guitar and bass and mostly jazz on the piano. While I myself have never been able to get the idea put to sound, I have always had a conviction that it would be possible to infuse jazz keyboards with metal guitar playing in a way that didn't water down either tradition, so you could have heard the sound of me peeling the jizz-encrusted underwear from my skin after I heard the almost Alice Coltrane-esque keyboard playing that opens up "The Treme".<br />
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This album, however, is far more than an infusion of jazz and metal. It incorporates elements from damn near every fringe tradition of extreme music. I already mentioned free jazz, technical death metal, no wave, and mathcore, but you can add to that post-hardcore, experimental electronic music, progressive metal, LaMonte Young style avant-garde classical, musique concrète, and whatever the hell you want to call John Zorn's unique brand of experimental music. Yet the end result is not some Twelve Foot Ninja style hammering together of a bunch of ill-fitting puzzle pieces, but a work that stands on it's own.<br />
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This is a release that really requires some time to dig into, so it is unfortunate that it came as late in the year as it did (it was released on December 8th, and I didn't have the chance hear it until the 19th), because it put me in the position of having to rush out a judgment without having listened to it for as long as I would have liked. Since I did not have a lot of time to dig into this release, and I have not yet had the pleasure of hearing Cleric's previous album, this is the first time I have encountered anything even close to this kind of sound, and it has been something I have always believed could be done, but never had any evidence to back that claim up, so unlike other times when I have severely over or underrated albums that have come out at the years end, I do not think that I will find myself regretting having listed this release as high as I have.<br />
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<b>01. Myrkur - Mareridt</b><br />
"I remembered the line from the Hindu scripture, the Bhagavad-Gita; Vishnu is trying to persuade the Prince that he should do his duty and, to impress him, takes on his multi-armed form and says, 'Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.'"<br />
<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>-Robert Oppenheimer<br />
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Oppenheimer's quote is one of the most misunderstood things that is regularly quoted by the general public. He is not saying that he himself had become the reaper, rather he is saying he felt just like Prince Arjuna the moment he witnessed the stunning manifestation of a God in all his divine might. When I heard Myrkur's gorgeous voice open this album: a melodic wail which transitions into plaintive folk-styled dirge, and then, after a few minutes of reveling in her splendor, leaps into the grating shriek that comprises the best female black metal vocals I have ever heard, I too realized that I was in the presence of the divine. This is not the benevolent, "all-loving", "creator of the best of all possible worlds" God common to the monotheistic west, but a God in the old traditions as seen in the fickle whims with which Homer's deities bestow boons and great suffering on a helpless humanity, or Kali, with two of her four hands holding a bloody saber and a severed head, while the other two made protective gestures and offered great gifts to humanity. Myrkur is at one the serpent spoken of the song of the same name, casting a spell of great misfortune on any who would dare approach her, as Actaeon bore the wrath of Artemis when he happened to glance upon her bathing, and at the same time she is the the all-mother who grants her unimaginable beauty to those who prove themselves worthy, as King Niall of Ireland discovered when he, dying of thirst, encountered and old hag who demanded to be kissed in exchange for water, and in doing so found himself confronted with the island's mother divinity.<br />
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I have heard few vocalists who impress me as much as Myrkur has. In her stunning ability to reach the upper echelons of classical, folk, and traditional black metal singing, she is able to infuse the best elements of all these traditions into a sonic palate that fits perfectly with the music she is making while sounding like absolutely nothing I have heard before. The infusion of clean, pleasing vocals that are not derived from folk traditions very rarely pans out, but much of this has to do with the fact that most vocalists have a specialized style that they will not try to stray from, whether it be clean or harsh. This will inevitably lead to clean vocalists encountering music that requires something harsh and being unable to match the mood of the music, or harsh vocalists growling over a sprawling, folk or electronic influenced passage that seems designed for a soaring high pitched voice. Myrkur not only possesses the ability to command all these various styles of singing, but she can infuse them into something that sounds whole and complete within itself, unlike many bands with a clean and harsh vocalist, who always give off the sense of being at odds with one another.<br />
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In addition to these amazing vocals, Myrkur also does all of the other instruments on this album, and here too she exceeds beyond my wildest expectations. Like her voice, her songwriting shows a breadth of knowledge that is amazing to behold. Her album never locks on one particular mode of expression for too long, but instead dances around a swirling gyre of influences too long to name. While their are no shortage of bands like this, the vast majority who attempt something like Mareridt create something that never captures the full might of the many differing genres they touch on. This is not the case here.<br />
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The album's opener, the titular "Mareridt", gives you a taste of he sublime operatic vocals, and her equally beautiful folkier singing, while the airy synths present one end of the massive spectrum of sound this release covers. In the sudden, punch-to-the-face jump into "Maneblot", we get to see the other end of the spectrum, with Myrkur's harsh black metal screeching, which is as good as black metal vox I have ever heard, coming in on top of a very traditional instrumental performance. The kind of steady, rhythmic tremolos, on-off alterations with a bar of trems followed by a bar of hammer-ons/pull-offs, and pounding blast beats that defined early 90s black metal. The fact that she is then able to bring back her singing voice in a manner that heightens rather than dilutes the beauty, as if one were walking through a gloomy forest and suddenly encountered a band of naked and bloodied wood nymphs, utterly perfect in their physical forms, dancing over a bound and gagged human sacrifice.<br />
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"The Serpent" strips the guitars down to bare bones chugging and tremolo patterns so that the attention to provide a sparse, open backdrop of Myrkurs dreamy, phantasmic vocal performance. "Crown" brings things down to a dreary, bass-heavy flat-line so that the stunning beauty of the chorus becomes all the more transcendent. Here we also see some more of the grand instrumental breadth of this album, with a two note violin pattern doing an incredible amount of work in heightening the atmospheric trance. The crescendo the song reaches at the end is worthy of special notice. "Elleskudt" is a return to black metal, but this time the approach is more in line with the melodic branch of the genre, with the interplay of the steady trems and oscillatory patterns reconstructed to be less steady and more riff-like. As always, the inhuman capacities of Myrkur's voice takes center stage, but the way in which she shapes the various subgenres of metal to craft the ideal field of battle marks her skill as a songwriter.<br />
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Painters will say that the empty space of the canvas is just as important as the subject. In a similar vein, Myrkur's decision to open "De Tre Piker" with nothing but her voice and then slowly build into a very open number with very low guitars, pounding war drums, and an alternation between her vox and folk instrumentals uses what it lacks to create an incredibly suggestive sonic portrait. On "Funeral", the guitars, fittingly, play a droning, bare bones dirge as Myrkur switches between the closest thing to conventional singing we see on the album and a lovely wordless backing harmony. "Ulvinde" moves to a sound that is closer to folk metal as Myrkur switches her vocals to a more fitting folk-derived style, occasionally stepping out to break into harsh wails or passionate surges in pitch.<br />
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On "Gladiatrix" we see Myrkur combining ambient electronic drones, folk instrumentation, almost doom metal heavy guitars, thudding war drums, classical violin interludes, and a shoegaze inspired singing style that all come together to a gorgeous collage of ethereal beauty. The following track "Kaetteren", a folk duet between a violin and a nyckelharpa, somehow feels like it is the perfect fit between the previous track and "Bornehjem", the album's haunting, droning, closer that features low plainchant and beautiful synthesizers beneath a distorted and demonic spoken word passage.<br />
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Throughout these varied stylistic approaches, the one constant is Myrkur's gorgeous voice, which reaches beyond the fragile limitations of genre and, like Helen of Troy, is of such beauty that it allows the human being behind it to ascend into the realms of divinity.Snowblindedhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06242023366792085291noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2630166144190637002.post-25812838335998708642017-12-17T11:36:00.003-08:002018-02-09T20:50:46.513-08:00Music Criticism - Bathory - "Twilight of the Gods"I am not saying anything revolutionary when I call “Twilight of the Gods” a masterpiece. Within the metal community the album is regarded as a classic, though, oddly enough, it does not seem to hold quite the same status in the broader music world, even when compared with other black/viking/folk* metal classics. Most of the people reading this are probably wondering why I would even bother to write something like this given that everyone who has even a mild interest in metal will encounter this album on nearly every best of list that covers a remotely relevant subgenre. The reason I think such an endeavor is worthwhile is due to an odd paradox I have noted when it comes to metal. Far more than any other scene I am familiar with, the metal community holds its classics in total veneration. People will go to great lengths to present detailed overviews and write ups to subgenres, and compared to most subgenres, there is a far greater emphasis on history in the metal world. However, while the amount of overview oriented material available about metal is truly phenomenal, there is comparatively little in the way of detailed analysis of specific works.<br />
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For some odd reason, even though the metal community absolutely adores its great treasures, there is not a lot of super in-depth discussion concerning them. Thus I do think that it is worth the time it took to prepare something of this size for an album that just about every metalhead knows by heart. My goal is not to turn new people on to the recording (though it would be great if I could do that) but to increase the appreciation of people who are already familiar with it.<br />
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I can think of no better album to provide such an assessment of than Bathory’s “Twilight of the Gods”. Quorthon’s early album’s are some of the most influential metal recordings ever made, but rather than appeasing the momentary whims of fans by sticking to the exact same thing that worked for him in the past, trying to force his sound into more commercial territory, or introducing some senseless gimmick to maintain his relevance, he created an album that takes all of the things he learned over his years as a trailblazer and solidifies them into a unique vision that sounds like nothing that has been made before or since, despite the best efforts of thousands of imitators.<br />
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There is a seamless blending of a vast variety of different music, from the expected subgenres like doom and traditional metal, to the folk music of his native land. No one element is ever thrust to the forefront, but rather, like the work of earlier rock musicians such as Bruce Springsteen, he uses each instrument to contribute to the whole without forcing our attention any of their singular achievements. In doing so he creates a more spacious style of music that never sacrifices the aggressive power of his chosen genre, and at the same time never finds itself cluttered with too much going on at once.<br />
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In the art world, the term Old Master exists for those skilled painters who, quoth the wiki, were “fully trained, …Masters of their local artists' guild, and worked independently”, in the years preceding the eighteenth century. While metal does not have enough of history behind it for this criterion to be applied literally, in the years since the term was created, our attention spans have shortened enough that two and a half decades of 21st century time roughly equal the same amount of centuries in an earlier age. Because of this, I believe “Twilight of the Gods” can be called the crowning achievement of an Old Master. Quorthon had reached the point in his career that his expertise in the music he was making was unequaled. He was regarded as the most significant influence by the bands of his native land that followed in his footsteps. Don’t believe me, check out Fenriz’ “Black Metal University” video or nearly any interview with an early Norwegian black metal musician (for some reason interviewers are drawn to questions about influences like pedophiles are to Disney World). Finally, his work was always completely his. While he borrowed elements from some of the nearby extreme metal scenes that fit what he was going for, they were always filtered through his unique vision for what he wanted to accomplish with his music. “Twilight of the Gods” represents the apex of all three criteria.<br />
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With that out of the way I will start things off by giving a little overview of each of the dominant instruments, which are of course the big four instruments of rock music: the voice, guitar, bass, and drums, in addition to the lead vocals, backing vocals, and lyrics. After that I will delve deeper into the individual songs before bringing things to a close.<br />
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In Quorthon's vocal work we can see a progression away from the conventional singing styles of both rock and metal in his early albums as he searched for a way to make his voice fit in with the sounds he was producing. In doing so he, along with his fellow usual suspects of early extreme pioneering Venom, Celtic Frost, Slayer, Bulldozer, and Sodom pioneered the way metal vocals are done to this day. More than most scenes, the metal community is perfectly happy to let a band rest on the laurels of early achievements, provided they hit anywhere near as high as Bathory's first three albums. Quorthon could have easily hit the turn of the decade putting out releases that aped the formula he brought to perfection in "Under the Sign of the Black Mark", while focusing on playing all his classic hits on the festival circuit every summer. I don't think I am straying into the unimaginable by suggesting that he would have made much more money if he followed that route. However he chose not to do so. As things have turned out Bathory is an embodiment of upper-echelon metal in terms of both the respect accorded to him and his actual talent, but plenty of bands have moved further and further into experimentation and found that they left their fan base behind. It's easy to forget now that his viking metal work has entered the canon but these albums really do fit the term avant-garde, not in the sense of a bunch of French people slicing their eyeballs apart and calling up ants from their hands, but in the original sense of an advance force of an army that goes ahead of the general body of the troops to perform (typically more dangerous) tasks necessary to allow the main forces clear passage.<br />
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Quorthon’s singing fits perfectly with the overall sound he was going for. Above all, I think the most basic goal for “Twilight of the Gods” was to take Norse mythology, and, either extracting key concepts that fit well with the heavy metal aesthetic or drawing from the ideological values presented in these myths, write original material that presents similar ideals. From there it was a matter of developing a synthesis of a number of different metal subgenres so that the various themes that the songs evoke, most notably a sense of epic scope, aggressive violence, and melancholy, are all augmented.<br />
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To that end Quorthon develops a singing style that suggests the grand strife of the titular conflict without resorting to the near-comic baroque of many Power Metal bands. He knew the limitations of his voice, and knew that he would not be competing with Rob Halford or Michael Kiske in the battle of the frequency ranges, but rather than attempting to do a half-assed imitation of Hansi Kürsch or retreating back to the harsh singing he knew he could do well, Quorthon decided to turn his limitation into an advantage. The thing about traditional folk music (regardless of its origin) is that it is by definition the music of the people, so it was sung by farmers in the field and tailors trying to relax in the tavern rather than professional singers who had the free time to fully dedicate themselves to perfecting their voice. This is exactly what Quorthon sounds like: the best singer in the village who is always called to perform during festivals, not the castrated eunuch who spends his days in the palace or cathedral treating the nobility to his glorious falsetto.<br />
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Quorthon’s voice is decidedly human, which fits perfectly with his turn towards a mythic tradition sung out by either warriors around a campfire or else skalds who, while possessing an impressive technical knowledge and memory, were not the product of the kind of formal training that later European singers would undergo. Some clever soul may be inclined to point out the contradiction in my assertion that a mythic tradition featuring giants, oversized wolves, serpents, and incredibly powerful Gods being somehow more human than later European traditions. I, however, like Carl Jung and Joseph Campbell, believe that the myth is a culture’s means of reaching into their collective psyche and expressing universal truths that go beyond the limits of traditional expression, yet shine in the hearts of every human being. Hence, to me at least, the visible imperfections of Quorthon’s voice do not clash with his subject matter but rather enhance it.<br />
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This humanity really shines in one of my absolute favorite elements in this album, the passion-wrought, voice cracking wails that Quorthon judiciously employs at key moments. I will be delving into greater detail regarding these beautiful lunges when I get into the song by song assessment, but for now I will simply say that they are a perfect means of combining the intensity of the high pitched wails seen in countless metal bands with the folk traditions he sought to emulate. Rather than flawlessly stretching his voice to the targeted pitch, Quorthon lets his throat undergo the natural scratches and distortions that occur when a normal human attempts to go that high, and then uses them as means of enhancing the raw intensity of the lines he wishes to draw particular attention to.<br />
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The backing vocals of “Twilight of the Gods” are an equally exceptional achievement. They at once evoke the ancient past and come off as entirely innovative. They contrast the heavier elements of the music while at the same time enhancing rather than diluting them. The melodic quality of these chants strikes the listener without standing out against the broader sound, unlike many other bands who try to incorporate "poppy" hooks into heavy music. They dig into your skull while at the same time succeed in evoking the same ideas the rest of the music is aiming at. They are variously employed as a chorus, a means of enhancing the lead vocals of a verse, or as a transitional device. All of these applications are magnificent in their own right and show off unique facets of not just Quorthon's songwriting chops, but, given that he multitracked all of the component vocals himself, his gift for singlehandedly crafting nuanced harmony, an incredibly difficult task when you don’t have a group of vocalists to work with and must rely on doing each voice one by one.<br />
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I don’t know what the music historians have to say about how the Norse sang in their pagan heyday, but I know that it isn’t much. Given that we have no idea what the music of Greece or Rome sound like (save Seikilos' Epitaph) and both of those cultures have stood taller in the western mind than the Scandinavians, there really isn’t much hope for accurately reproducing the works of a largely illiterate warrior culture. I don't know where my idea of what Norse music should sound like came from, likely a complex web of cultural influences, most notably metal bands and fantasy films, which are then weighed subconsciously by some unacknowledged set of criteria according to my trust in the source. However, based on this half-baked understanding, coupled with a little bit of knowledge in their poetic tradition, of which a large portion was either sung or chanted, and gut instinct, I have no difficultly believing that I would hear singing similar to these backing vocals if I found myself in any of the old halls. The approach used by Quorthon in arranging the backing vox would lend itself quite nicely to use as a refrain when the poet had finished singing a line. Think of the way a Chinese Guqin (table harp) is used after a line or verse of poetry, or the way African music uses call and response. An added benefit of this is that, given the social environment of the halls (where the sagas and poems were recited), it would provide a means of allowing the entire group to join in with the telling of the story.<br />
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Obviously this is all baseless speculation. The point is, unlike many viking metal bands, who take an instrument that (at best) could be plausibly dated to pagan times, and then use it to produce hooks and riffs derived from the western tradition (which even in its earliest medieval precursors postdates all but the last holdouts of Norse paganism), you can see that Quorthon put some thought into how he was going to connect his music with the traditions of his ancestors.<br />
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In terms of specifics, the backing vocals tend to be of two varieties, either wordless singing, which is almost always either straight vowel sounds, or vowel sounds fronted by a “w”, or else actual lyrics. There is a great deal of differentiation between when the two are used, and while it varies from song to song, the general pattern is that the vowel sounds are used as a way of augmenting a key sections of the song (often behind Quorthon’s lyrics) while the spoken lines are designed to draw attention to themselves.<br />
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Quorthon, perhaps more than anyone from the first wave of black metal, was responsible for taking the gritty, glorious filth of Venom and infusing it with a more competent, but equally harsh, level of technical proficiency. I think the biggest single innovation of early Bathory is the way Quorthon built up many of his riffs out of a handful of chromatic notes played mostly on the beats in a reasonably steady manner using super fast (especially for the time) tremolo picking. To illustrate what I mean, compare the riffs used in Slayer’s “Black Magic”, off 1983’s “Show No Mercy”, a fairly representative example on the heavy end of the early thrash movement, to the two main riffs used in Bathory’s “Possessed”, off “The Return”, from 1985. Both use tremolos, both have long stretches where either a single note (in Slayer’s case) or a two note pseudo-power chord (in Bathory’s) are held, and both use very dissonant melodies. However, the riff in “Black Magic”, has a much greater degree of rhythmic variety to it, having the fast parts on the open string transition into sudden halts when the notes are struck. Quorthon, by contrast, plays at the exact same rate from the start of the riff to the finish. The points where he transitions from one note to another are more regular too. On “Black Magic”, Slayer use an additive 4+5/4 meter (i.e. one bar of 4/4 followed by one bar of 5/4) that provides a sense of variety, where on the first part alternates between a beat of tremolo picking and a beat of the melody, and on the second part there is one beat of tremolo and four beats of a melody. Instead of something like this, Quorthon keeps the changes in his tremolo constant and plays exclusively in 4/4. The first riff repeats the same pattern twice over in each bar, while the second has a two bar pattern that has three beats of slower playing and five of tremolo picking.<br />
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This style of guitar playing turned the music from having a riff-centric focus to drawing the attention of a listener to a steady atmospheric drone that digs into the recesses of your mind. It would go on to define the early 90s black metal movement. While it is neither exclusive to black metal nor a requirement of the subgenre, if I had to guess, the kind of guitar playing Quorthon started developing on his s/t and “The Return”, and perfected on “Under the Sign of the Black Mark”, is the first thing that would signal to a listener that what they are listening to is in fact black metal. While there are plenty of black metal songs that do not use this technique, I can think of a few full albums that avoid it.<br />
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Now as I said before, to simply have a credit of that magnitude on ones resume would be enough for most acts to either spend the rest of their career retreading the same territory or else, their scene cred firmly established, they might move on to a more mainstream career. Quorthon does neither of these things. Instead he decides to take everything he has accomplished and totally overhaul his playing, creating a style that at once looks back to the guitar playing of early metal and looks foreword to what future viking metal bands would be doing. To give an example of this, lets look at a few examples of the variety of techniques employed on the title track. We can see examples of:<br />
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-A dreamy opening sequence that induces a sense of misty calm which he promptly obliterates once the electric guitars enter.<br />
-An acoustic guitar that plays standard chord sequence, nice consonant little fills separating different [line pairs] of the verse, and gorgeous folk-influenced fingerpicking patterns.<br />
-A ton of hard, steady electric guitar chord sequences that range from simply defining the chord at the start of the bar to rhythmically intricate riffs.<br />
-Riffs that alternate from the aforementioned chord sequences to single note melodic lines.<br />
-Chugging, on the beat, A, B, B, B, style riffs a la more traditional metal.<br />
-Some of the most beautiful solos in not just viking metal, or even metal of any genre, but all rock music.<br />
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All of this is fused together to create a unified style that remains consistent enough throughout the album to give it a sense of wholeness, while incorporating enough variety to keep the listener’s attention. You don’t ever see anything quite as aggressive as his earlier playing, but at the same time it is clear that the guitar work is built from what he learned writing his earlier albums, in addition to the sum total achievements of metal guitar playing up to that point.<br />
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The guitar solos on this album are not haphazard sluices of notes or stiff scale exercises, nor is there even a trace of incompetence in them. I'm not going to say the solos here are among either the most complex or the most technically demanding, if that is your sole benchmark for a great guitarist then there is plenty of tech death and prog that outshines him, but what I will say is that they possess a kind of natural fluidity that I think is gorgeous. It is the kind of playing that would lead a guitarist of vastly inferior skill to think that they had a shot of playing them with when in fact they are in fact miles out of his league (speaking purely theoretically of course). I am with the Daoists in believing that a guitar solo, as a general rule, sounds best when it doesn't drag every spotlight into the room onto itself. This does not mean a solo should be a background element, there is a reason they call it a solo, but when you listen to a guitarist who is more committed to the broader vision of the music than to his ego, the end result is almost always a sound that seems to flow naturally from the music itself rather than one that constantly tries to push itself above the flow in order to stand out. Technical proficiency should be a tool rather than the default mode of operating. When a skilled guitarist suddenly lets loose a burst of incredibly proficient playing that draws ones attention it is a thing of beauty (see the end of Under the Runes), but when the solo from start to finish is just a nonstop display of virtuosity that same skill becomes boring. When a sailor tries to force his boat to move against the wind the end result is that he gets nowhere, but when he uses the very force of the wind to skillfully tack, he can move in any direction regardless of where the wind is coming from. I am not suggesting that Quorthon has read a word of Laozi or Zhuangzi (I obviously have know way of knowing that), but he understands the Dao intuitively, which is the only true way to understand it (the Dao that can be spoken is, after all, not the eternal Dao).<br />
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Quorthon’s solos often implement the main melodic lines of the song, but he does not go the route of "Smells Like Teen Spirit" by simply imitating them, but rather uses the instrument and form to expand on the melodic sense of the vocals, adding notes and bends to give it the effect of an enrichment rather than an imitation. There is an ebb and flow in intensity that gives one the impression that they are observing a living thing, with the grand crescendos not being firmly tied to the underlying rhythm, but acting in accord with it the way waves rise and fall yet also act withing the framework of the shifting tides. Each time the underlying melody hits a significant chord, the solo connects with it. While it varies whether this is done with consonance or dissonance, the one constant element is the careful attention paid to how the melody relates and interacts with the harmony.<br />
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One of less discussed achievements of “Twilight of the Gods” is the use of acoustic guitars. One feels a sense of timelessness in his acoustic instruments that is very rare in any subgenre of metal. There is an effortless infusion of folk instruments and normal metal instrumentation that all but the most important black, viking, and folk metal bands struggle to emulate. Prior to this album’s release the best acoustic segments in metal were reserved for album openers, and they all had the same purpose, to lull the listener into a false sense of calm so that the force of the opening riff hits that much harder. After this album there are tons of bands that use acoustic instruments of sneaking pop hooks into their metal without losing any face. Here, however, we see neither of these extremes. The acoustics are sometimes used in introductions in the same way an 80s metal band would, but far more often they are integrated into the melody. The picking patterns he uses are gorgeous, but they never come off like he is trying to shove a pop melody into the clenched sphincter of the metal community.<br />
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The acoustic openers, far from being a means to an end, are constructed with such care in both their presentation and the integration with the heavier riffs that follow that they are able to provide an accent and overview to the character of each track. The fact that Quorthon can often reintroduce these opening riffs overtop the guitars later in the song shows how they are a foundation for his explorations rather than a cage.<br />
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The key here, I believe, lies in the effort Bathory put into producing acoustic lines that reflect the folk traditions he is drawing from. As I mentioned with the backing vocals, there is not a whole lot of evidence about what the music of antique and medieval Scandinavia sounded lie, and whatever work has been done by ethnomusicologists to reconstruct it (if any) lies outside my wheelhouse. However, despite the fact that neither Quorthon nor myself have any definite knowledge of what the music sounded like, I feel confident that his acoustic guitars have more in common with what an actual viking might play then the synthesized rebecs of many modern folk/viking bands. One of the standard pop idioms is to have a large variety of instruments playing a single melodic line so that the total harmonious effect is more far more pleasing than any of the constituent components. However, what we do know about authentic viking music is that is was typically performed by lone skalds or jesters (perhaps with some vocal accompaniment from the audience). This means that rather than relying on multiple instruments for their sound, they would have to play intricate (though static, unlike classical music) melodies complex and powerful enough for whatever instrument they held in their hands to provide all the backing music needed.<br />
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This can be confirmed by looking at the folk traditions that did survive past the advent of music notation and recording. Quorthon, however, takes these intricate folk fingerpicking patterns, and uses them as a building block for a much grander conceptual vision than the ancient traveling bards could have ever dreamed of. Future bands, with a clear path laid before them, were free to trod as recklessly as they wished, but here we see a recording of a man approaching his music like an expert gardener, carefully shaping the surroundings until all the elements fit together harmoniously.<br />
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Alright, I don’t have nearly as much to say about the bass as I do about the guitars, because it functions in a support role the majority of the time. As is often the case, it tends to stay fairly close to whatever the guitar is doing, and there are only a handful of places in the album where it really jumps out. As a side note I’ve always felt that if you play bass in a metal band at some point you made a decision to either keep out of the spotlight entirely doing the kind of work that holds the album together but does not capture much attention, or you went to the exact opposite pole and played stuff that absolutely demands the listeners attention. I know this can be attributed to cognitive bias (since the stuff that you notice stands out in your memory) but I have noticed it all the same.<br />
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“Twilight of the Gods” definitely falls into the second of those two categories, and this is not a bad thing. While the bass is hardly ever grabbing your attention (as I mentioned before, the guitars really aren’t either) it is always fulfilling a vital roles in the song, and the fairly simple riffs it plays are not a indication of any lack of prowess on Quorthon’s part, the line before the guitar solo on the title track proves that. Furthermore, he incorporates a wide variety of techniques in order to achieve this effect. On this album you can hear unison lines (where the bass plays a riff identical to the guitar), what I call semi-unison lines (where the bass either plays a riff that is almost identical to the guitar part, or plays along with the guitar for part of the riff and then branches off), steady one note per bar played on the 1 beat style minimalist playing, riffs that start out following the chord progression and then slowly expand into independent lines (or vice versa), and “plays the root of the chord but alters the rhythm between each bar” kind of playing, and sparing use of the sudden, rapid fire technically proficient bass fill.<br />
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The only major styles of playing commonly seen in metal that he does not use are the “melodically distinct but consonant with the guitar riff” approach and the “use a basic riff as a blueprint but constantly modify the melody”. Both of these, however, are the kind of thing that really draw the listener to the bass, and that is not what Quorthon is going for. Instead, Quorthon uses the bass to anchor down the guitars when they need extra force, fill some of the empty space when they are pulled back, augment the acoustics when it is necessary to do so, and in general provide the muscular system to the guitar’s flesh and blood that allows the album to progress forward.<br />
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Before I get into the drums I want to include the caveat that, unlike the guitars and bass, I have no experience actually playing them, and therefore, despite my best efforts to double check everything, there is a greater possibility of me making a mistake about the drums then the other sections. The likely place a screw up would occur is in the identification of the actual drums being used on a particular beat, as time signatures are something that is used in learning any instrument, and broader stylistic commentary is subjective. More specifically, any time there is more than one drum being played simultaneously, in addition to times when any of the numerous variety of cymbals and toms are used, there is a greater chance of error on my part. However, as luck would have it, the drums patterns on this album are are built almost entirely from the kick and snare, so it does not detract too much for me to focus on what I am more certain of. Before moving on, those that aren’t familiar with the concept of a time signature may benefit from watching <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qtvx57P4oKo">a quick video on the subject</a> or else skipping over the drum section.<br />
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The decision to have the lower end drums dominate the rhythm gives "Twilight of the Gods" a sound that is at once sparse and propulsive. I find myself reminded of the Spartans when I think about the drums on this album, in that their is an incredible sense of force present, but at the same time it is communicated in a very simplistic manner. When a delegation from the island of Samos came to Sparta with a long speech pleading for military aid against the Persian threat, the city's magistrates told them that by the time they had gotten to the end of the it, they had forgotten how it started. In response the Samians simply said "The bag needs flour." to which the Spartans informed them that including the "the bag" was unnecessary before agreeing to aid them. Similarly, on this album we see Quorthon asking about the necessity of anything but the most basic, muscular drums in metal. The decision to play in a style in which the beat is heavily emphasized gives the finished product an even greater sense of primitive power that matches very nicely with the rest of the music, lyrics, and overall theme.<br />
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This reliance on the kick and snare and focus on the beat does not imply a total absence of complexity. Throughout the album Quorthon uses a number of very intricate additive time signatures. The combined effect of this is very interesting. You always feel the album’s monumental drive, but when it is cast into a standard 4/4 mold it comes off with a sense of raw aggression, but that same power, when cast into an alternating pattern, projects the force into the realm of the mythic, as if one is witnessing a fearsome host of beings who march in a manner fitting their own transcendent nature rather than needing to conform to the steady left-right of human feet.<br />
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The lyrics of this album reward a deep understanding of Norse myth without coming off as too explanatory or obscure. While, if you are not familiar with this subject matter, you will not come away from this album with any kind of coherent picture of Odinism, even the middling knowledge I possess in the subject was rewarded with language that paints a picture of both the mythology itself as well as the psychological mindset of its practitioners. I would imagine a person with greater knowledge in this than myself would find these lyrics even more enjoyable. This is not a bad thing and far from pretentious or elitist. Someone with no understanding of Norse Myth will still be able to get some enjoyment from the way Quorthon paints scenes from earlier times, whereas if he had resorted to simply telling the Myths, then not only would more knowledgeable listeners find nothing of value in them, save perhaps a few missing gaps in their education being filled, but once these explanations had been absorbed the words would become dull and meaningless.<br />
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More importantly, the great power of this album’s lyrics come from what he sows in the mythic soil rather than the substrate itself. On the one hand you have the standard “warriors in Valhalla marching off to battle”, “hymns to the allfather”, and general mythic themes that have become standard fare in black/viking/folk metal. On the other hand, on songs like the title track and “To Enter Your Mountain”, we see Quorthon writing lyrics that take the ideals and images from Scandinavian mythology and using them as the driving force behind social and personal commentaries. Even songs like “Hammerheart”, which at first come off as your standard paean to Odin and the warriors who are found in his company, possess, like all great myths, an deep core that speaks to the human condition. In the case of the final track this manifests in the form of a admonishments not to fear the coming death that all humans must confront.<br />
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Ezra Pound, most concisely in his essay “The ABC’s of Reading”, describes poetry as being dividable into three essential qualities: melopoeia, phanopoeia, and logopoeia. Melopoeia is the basically musical quality of human words, or, “words are charged beyond their normal meaning with some musical property which further directs its meaning”. Phanopoeia is the ability of a poet to impress sensory and cognitive images on the human mind, or, “a casting of images upon the visual imagination”. Logopoeia refers to the numerous varieties of wordplay that one can engage in, or, “poetry that uses words for more than just their direct meaning, stimulating the visual imagination with phanopoeia and inducing emotional correlations with melopoeia”, or alternatively “the dance of the intellect among words”.<br />
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Of these three I think the melopoeia stands out the most on “Twilight of the Gods”. As in most lyrics (exempting say, a certain set forms, for instances some styles of blues standard), there is no consistent pattern a la pre-modern poetry, but this does not mean that the words are thrown about haphazardly. To illustrate this, I will take a stanza from the vocal high point of the album, “Under the Runes”, and break down the syllables. To those who have been a long time away from an English classroom, remember that / is a stressed, or long syllable and - is an unstressed, or soft one. Also keep in mind that, save in poetic forms like Iambic Pentameter where a stress pattern is deliberately heightened, the natural cadence of English does not always neatly separate between hard and soft, especially when there are gaps between the words, but this transcription is reasonably close:<br />
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/ - / - // - / - /<br />
Standing here now amidst the hell we’ve made<br />
/ / - - / - / - - / - / - /<br />
All signs of a wonder or to survive now seems to fade<br />
- / - - / - - / - / - /<br />
But I am a fighter and I still have my pride<br />
/ - - / - / / / / - / - - / - /<br />
They’re gonna have to kill me, by my own hand I refuse to die<br />
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The first thing to notice is that all of the crucial words (amidst, hell, wonder, survive, fighter, pride, kill, refuse, die) receive a stress mark. The second thing to notice is how, while there is no firm pattern, the middle portion of each lines receives far more stresses than the outside. Finally note that the stanza starts out with a pattern that is fairly steady and regular, then on the second line you get a few irregular beats which give the passage some extra punch (many of the stressed syllables are words that he is howling out), however, there is still an on and off pattern running through it. Then, on the third line, we see a repetition of that lovely, flowing soft, soft, hard, soft pattern that was used in the second line (”of a wonder” and ”am a fighter”) followed by more steady iambs. Finally the fourth line, the aforementioned pattern is brought back again (”gonna have to”), but this time it is in the middle of a far more hectic passage; a reflection of the protagonist’s passion that is mirrored by the intensity of Quorthon’s voice.<br />
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“Under the Runes” possesses some great phanopoeia as well, if the stanza:<br />
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“In great numbers we advance before dawn<br />
By the great hail this great fight is born<br />
Among the clouds now our black wings fills the air<br />
No more frontlines the holy battle is everywhere”<br />
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doesn’t cast a very vivid image in your mind, then I don’t know what will.<br />
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In terms of Logopoeia, there is none to speak of. This is fine. As Pound points out, this is the most recent addition to the poetic arsenal. You don’t see it in the Ancient Greek epics like “The Iliad”, which is a document of a fairly comparable culture to the Norse society Quorthon sings about. I don’t know enough to say with certainty, but if I had to guess one would not find any puns in the great sagas. I do know that wordplay would seem incredibly out of place in an album like this.<br />
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All in, unlike other Viking Metal this music does not come off as some elegy for times long past, but instead presents the Nordic Mythos as something present, a force with which to oppose the desolation and indulgence of the modern world.<br />
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The title track of “Twilight of the Gods” at once sets the thematic tone for the album and represents a departure from it. Save "To Enter Your Mountain", the rest of the albums lyrics deal explicitly with Odinism. Even "...Mountain" couches what is essentially a timeless subject matter in mythic terms. In contrast, the lyrics of "Twilight of the Gods" deal with the corruption of the modern world. Now those of you with some knowledge of Norse mythology may be inclined to point to the song's title and chorus as evidence of a strong Odinistic bent on this song as well, and this is where things get interesting.<br />
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For those not in the know, the twilight of the Gods is a key concept of traditional Norse religion. Better known as Ragnarök, it is a great cosmic destruction, in which the serpent Jörmungandr and the wolf Fenrir engage in an epic battle that sees all the big name deities die off and the entire planet plunge beneath the waters. I don't want to use the phrase end times because it is usually described as the climax of a recurrent cycle rather than as an eschaton, but I have heard it called both on different occasions. Regardless of the precise cosmology, for all intents and purposes the twilight of the Gods is the end of the world. All existence as we know it vanishes beneath the rising waters, save two humans and a handful of second-string Gods.<br />
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Anyone who made the connection between the Norse end times and the situation with our own polar ice caps, congratulations, you're thinking like Quorthon. In the lyrics to the title track, he uses this Norse mythological concept to rail against the corruption, short-sightedness, and decadence of the modern world. I am not going to pretend that he was the first person to figure this out. He wasn’t by a long shot. Nietzche titled his 1888 philosophical treatise "Twilight of the Idols" for the very same reason, and in it he cries out against the unrestrained excess of his own age. Since the reign of Queen Victoria we have only moved further in the direction Nietzsche warned against, giving Quorthon plenty of cause for a similar complaint. I am not going to say that Quorthon was inspired by, or even read, Nietzsche's work, because a number of people have had the same idea, and I would guess it to be even more prevalent in the land the concept came from.<br />
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In any case, regardless of where he picked it up from, his decision to open an album built around themes of Odinism with a track whose lyrics connect a key concept of the tradition with the failures of our own age (an age where the one-eyed God is conspicuously absent) was a magnificent one. By starting with an assault on modernity, he casts the rest of the album in title track's thematic light. While songs like "Under the Runes", if taken on their own, could be seen as an exploitation of the admittedly metal nature of the Norse mythos for the sake of cool sounding lyrics, this song instead places everything he describes afterwards in comparison against the world we live in. By extolling the virtue of bravery, he is also contrasting it to the cowardice of our present age. By extolling the virtues of a God that is used as an aid for a "a man [who] I hold[s] in [his] hand [his] fate", and not as a crutch, he is mocking the tendency of modern mainstream religion to cultivate blind obedience and unquestioning fervor in their followers.<br />
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The introduction, which I am going to define as the period from the start of the song to the second repetition of the backing vocals prior to the first verse kicking in, gives the listener a taste of the mastery that is on display here. I know most people would probably consider the point when the backing vocals kick in for the first time to be the transition from the intro to the main song, and I would not be surprised if, say, you went to a tablature sight and pull up the (as of November 2017 nonexistent) notation for this song, and found it marked like that. However, I am going to use this admitted unconventional demarcation because prior to the second iteration of the backing vocals, the song moves through a series of "build-ups", starting off barely audible and progressing in stages until it plateaus with the riff used for the verse.<br />
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"Twilight of the Gods" opens with silence. This empty void lingers for a while before the sound of wind, faint at first but slowly growing in intensity, enters. Next we get the slightest suggestion of the guitar riff, which in turn also builds until you are right in the middle of the intro. While I sincerely hate to say anything negative about the corpus of His Holiness St. Dio, blessed memory, it can be instructive to compare this use of wind to the opening of "Holy Diver". Before you grab the pitchforks, answer me one question. Don't think about it, just call up the first number that pops into your head. Ready. How many seconds to you have to fast forward before the actual song starts?<br />
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Most of the people reading this were probably able to get an answer in the general ballpark of the 1:20 mark (or 0:50 if they are more familiar with the version on some of his compilations). Now I can't speak for you, but I have never found myself fasting forward through the introduction of "Twilight of the Gods". That is because the entire song flows naturally out of its beginnings. You can go put on the video for "Holy Diver", and, while Dio should be rightly commended for his decision to stick to at least the spirit of, what to my unworthy ears seems like a mistake, he still needed to chop thirty seconds off of his buildup to make it even close to playable as a single. Can you imagine Quorthon being able to cut thirty seconds from "Twilight..." for any reason whatsoever? That is because the entire introduction builds up in a slow, step by step fashion to the main song. There is never a point where things "get good", but a slow but persistent march into the realm of transcendence.<br />
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Both the intro and outro remind me of the Ma-Xia school of painting found in China during the Song Dynasty. Like the affixes to "Twilight of the Gods", the Ma-Xia sought to make paintings that were dominated by empty space. From the perspective of the Western art tradition, where the way you paint a person is to have the top of their head just below the upper edge of the canvas and their feet at the bottom, this idea seems ridiculous. However, just one look at one of these paintings, such as this <a href="https://i.pinimg.com/564x/70/1e/48/701e48e6341e27e5b3d5b1b1f38f2df8.jpg">untitled work by Ma Yuan</a>, and the appeal becomes immediately evident. The mind sees the handful of objects that are painted into the work, in this case a few mountain peaks, some birds, and the faintest hint of clouds, and it tries to grasp at the contents of the unadorned space. The slight suggestions of mist and fog let the imagination run wild with what majesty lies hidden behind the cloud cover. So in a similar fashion the barely audible guitars and atmospheric noise cause the ears to grasp at contextualizing what it is hearing, only to require an intervention by the imagination in order to fill in the gaps.<br />
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While it could be said that there is an actual riff in this first part, it is never explicitly introduced. Rather than playing a riff straight, vamping on it for a while, and then switching to a new riff, Quorthon approaches the opening guitar part as if he were is skilled cunnilinguist: gently skirting around the edges of his subject, coming in for just a brief moment to give a brief sense of his intentions, and then moving back around to a simple suggestion of the pattern, letting the expectation for what is to come slowly and naturally build rather than charging in head-first.<br />
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This technique is contrasted rather explicitly in the title track's second riff. It features both electric and acoustic guitars, and both are as direct, blunt, and intense in their approach as an Einsatzgruppe at a small Ukranian village (or pretty much any military force that has crossed through the Ukraine). The electric guitar pummels the same chord for bars at a time, while the acoustic guitar plays a single chord at the start of each bar in a slow-strummed, almost harp-like manner. While none of this is particularly intricate (nor is it meant to be) it is counterbalanced by the very interesting time signature Quorthon employs.<br />
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The rhythm more or less uses an additive time signature of three bars of 7/4, one bar 4/4, and then two bars of 2/4. I say more or less because the difference between four bars of 2/4, two bars of 4/4, and one bar of 8/4 is not as firm many people think. If you pay attention to the accents, I think my original notation is probably best. However, despite the fact that convention would tell you not to use 8/4 unless it is absolutely clear their is no attempt at accenting the 5 beat, given that the rhythm is in 7/4 for the previous bars and the overall sense one gets is that an extra beat is being added to the final one, in my opinion it makes sense to think of the song following a 7/4, 7/4, 7/4, 8/4 pattern , at least in terms of contemplating its structure, even if that is not the proper way of noting it.<br />
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<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>So the basic drum pattern is an alternates between either a single kick drum on the beat, or a triplet, again with the kick drum, played during the length of a single beat. During the 7/4 bars, the triplets are played on beats 2, 6, and 7, while, using the 8/4 notation style, it they come in on the 2, 6, 7, and 8. You can see how considering it as 8/4 can be helpful for understanding, since that extra beat gives the effect of adding an extra bit of forward drive, like a free safety sprinting to make a tackle and then deciding at the last moment to deliver a running punch instead.<br />
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The contrast between the steady time and loose, free-flowing character of the first part and the rhythmically complex, firm, aggressive character of the second is absolutely wonderful. If a lesser act somehow pulled a prologue this beautiful out of their ass, when it came time to move on the listener would find himself underwhelmed by the song itself. Quorthon doesn't fuck around like that. He knows that he did something amazing out of the gate, but he also knows that letting up the momentum is for opening acts. So what does he do? Well, a couple things. First, he brings the time signature back to 4/4. This isn't a technical death metal album. He brought out that rather odd metric pattern for the overall effect it had, when paired with the rock hard guitar part, against both what came before and what came after. Before there was a delicate and intricately arranged acoustic part that varied itself on every repetition, which was contrasted against the steady pulse. The steady pulse in turn was combined with a complex meter, which, when juxtaposed against the riff of the third part, gives the listener a sense of settling into things while at the same time allowing him to boost the intensity by adding melodic and harmonic complexity.<br />
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The drums use a pattern where the kick drum plays on the first two beats, and then the snare is introduced for the second half. It follows a two bar pattern where on the first bar it plays on 3 and then on the second it plays on the 3 and 4, while the kick drum is used for the off-beats. This pattern breaks away, at least partially, from the standard way a kick and snare are used, which is to alternate them back and forth. Thus, during the end of the second bar, when we finally do get a back and forth, the effect is far more satisfying than it would be in normal circumstances. At the same time, the focus on these two drums maintains the laconic combination of force and simplicity that I described in the earlier segment on the drums.<br />
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On the guitar part, we get a two bar pattern that features two chords in the first bar, and then one chord and a little mini-riff in the second. While the guitar is playing this part, the bass is playing a line that is more or less in unison with the guitars. For the vast majority of the song the bass will perform this function, adding occasional extra notes or minor modifications to the rhythm of the guitar, but otherwise just acting as an unsung hero.<br />
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The other significant change from the second part to the third is the introduction of the backing vocals. As I mentioned earlier, I think that these secondary voice lines are one of the standout achievements in one of metal’s high water marks. People talk a lot about how the harsh vocals typically seen in black and death metal are a necessity because no other form of singing fits in with music that goes past a certain intensity threshold. This is not true. Like dropped tunings, they are a tool at the disposal of those who wish to create extreme music, they have a certain effect and that effect is an incredibly useful way for achieving a purpose. This does not mean it is the only means of doing so. Quorthon was one of the early pioneers of this style of singing on his first albums, and while the art of guttural vocals has produced innumerable varieties since those early days, the fact that many black metal bands still imitate the approach seen in the first three Bathory releases should be a clear indication that Quorthon was not one of those innovators who merely paved the way for other groups to perfect his initial forays, but one who, like Zeus, pulled a fully complete divine creation out from his head. And after having done such a magnificent job with his early vocals, Quorthon, like the protagonist of a Kung-Fu movie who returns to the very adversary who defeated him in the initial encounter with all the benefits of the training he has acquired, comes back to the question of whether clean vocals can be compellingly fit to extreme metal ready to spill blood.<br />
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I talked a bit about the backing vocals before and I will go into even more detail later on, so for now I will stick to the specific way he implements them in this track. They are pitched much higher then the deep hums seen later in the album. This fits with the overall theme of the song. It produces a sense of urgency that matches the agitated lyrics. This urgency also fits in perfectly with the rest of the vocals and instrumentation. I don't think anyone has heard those gorgeous voices come into the track and felt the sense of disparity that one often feels listening to, say, the clean vocals of an Atreyu song. These backing vocals not only fit in perfectly with the rest of the music, but they elevate the intensity of the whole (side note: there are literally no good synonyms for backing vocals).<br />
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The acoustic guitars, which had been noticeably absent during Quorthon’s spoken lyrics, are brought back during the little mini interludes that occur between stanza’s when there is no chorus present. They perform a similar function to what they did during the latter part of the introduction, playing chords in time with the electrics so that the crashing guitars come off more like the work of an ancient thunder god and less like a blitzkrieg.<br />
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During these interludes we also see the backing vocals shift up to an even higher register as Quorthon does a call and response pattern with them oddly reminiscent what you would hear between a pastor and his flock at a congregation that sings Gospel music, yet somehow not at all out of place in the rest of the music.<br />
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After one more stanza of lyrics we then get the actual chorus. I’m almost hesitant to even call it that, since the whole thing clocks in at a bit under ten seconds. However, despite that, I think that given the presence of the the lyrics during this stage of the song, and the fact that the alternation between this section and the one I describe above is the dominant pattern for this stage, the word is merited. He varies the riff and vocal pattern quite a bit during this stage. I won’t subject you to another scansion because I think it is pretty obvious that the way he sings this section is very different, however, I will give a brief treatment to the instruments.<br />
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For the longest time I thought that any riff where there is one note or power chord and then a repetition of a single note or a quick back and forth could be called a gallop riff, but in fact the term only applies to riffs that follow a pattern of either an eighth note followed by two sixteenth notes, or an eighth note followed by three sixteenth notes in triplet (so that the three of them take up the same time as two normal sixteenth notes). This means that there is not really a good term to describe the riff that Quorthon plays on both instruments, despite its prominence in metal. While he is playing an (A-B-B-B) pattern melodically, the rhythm is straight eighth notes. Still, its similar enough to a gallop that I felt it worthwhile to bring the connection up. The guitar is playing power chords while the bass echoes it with single notes, both in a high, low, low, low pattern (I really don’t feel like investing the time needed to take out my guitar and transcribe this the sake of a single paragraph of text).<br />
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The drums, meanwhile, also play in rhythm I described above, with the snare being used where the higher note/power chord is played (i.e. “A” in my earlier diagram) and the kick drum being used for the string of lower notes. This gives the whole section a sense of unity. The drums do not produce sounds clear enough for the brain classify into a singular discrete pitch, though both drums and stringed instruments have many overtones beyond just the note your brain locks in on. While your brain processes the mass of sounds that emerge from the guitar as a single note, the different tones produced by a single strike of a percussion instrument are so varied as to make precise identification by the subconscious impossible. However, you can perceive some drums as being higher than others, and the snare is definitely higher than the kick. This means that you get the sensation that the drum is mirroring the guitar in a similar manner to the bass.<br />
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A compelling reason for why I should have referred to this part as just a stage rather than a chorus is that, as soon as it is finished Quorthon returns to the regular verse pattern (with the addition of the acoustic guitar augmentation) for two bars. This is a textbook definition of how a chorus works, but then,the song returns back to the “chorus” before repeating the whole process for another loop. By calling it a chorus, I am not trying to say that this song follows a conventional pop song structure (unlike the much of the album), for this is obviously far more intricate, but I think in spirit it does what a chorus is supposed to do, i.e. acting as a sudden point of variance between verse repetitions so that things don’t get dull. I would not call the riff being played a hook a la conventional pop choruses, but I do think the sudden unity of the instruments gives the listener a sense of completeness that lines up fairly well with a traditional chorus. The biggest difference, however, between this section and a normal chorus is that the rapid oscillation between the two parts produces an effect more akin to riding in a boat over a series of waves rather than getting knocked down by a gigantic one on the shore.<br />
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In a similar vein, the instrumental section that follows the on and off section might not really qualify as a bridge, however in spirit it has a similar goal in mind. The typical desired effect of the bridge is to offer something that produces a noticeably different effect from the verse and chorus, so that when it comes in (after both aforementioned elements have already been introduced), it provides either a lull that allows the rest of the song to hit extra hard when it returns, or a place to introduce an element that is too disparate to fit with the regular verse and chorus.<br />
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What I call the bridge in “Twilight of the Gods” does not quite do either of these things. The guitar and bass riffs don’t pummel quite as hard as the chorus riff, but they are a bit more aggressive than the verse riff. The drums are also fairly similar in their pattern to the verse in particular. However, despite the fact that it is not a sudden drop or a drastic alteration, its function, to provide a change of pace between the verse and the chorus, given that the chorus itself features an alternation between a new riff and one identical to the verse. All this goes to show that Quorthon really knows what he is doing, and that he is skilled and confident enough to disassemble the traditional components of songwriting and rebuild them so that they fit his needs.<br />
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After this bridge section is complete, you then get yet another interlude where both guitars play a steady repetition of the same power chord/note, going through six different pitches before pausing on the tonic. Then the verse resumes, but this time around the backing vocals have been raised higher than they were before. The effect of this, when combined with the pause, is dramatic, which is why this technique is classic in the playbook of just about every derivative of rock or pop music.<br />
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We then go through another round of verse and chorus that are close enough to what I described above that I don’t need to go into them again, but when we get to the bridge, there is a dramatic change. Now, for the first time in the album, we see the backing vocals transition to singing actual lyrics instead of a vocalized harmony, while the lead vocals take over the wordless melodies. Before the vocal changes it felt like a fairly run of the mill transition, and then the sudden introduction of spoken words from the backing vocals produces a startling effect on the listener, which combines with the lyrics to create a sense of epic grandeur that feels very much like a climax.<br />
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However, Quorthon is not done yet, and the previous ascent was nothing but a single hill in the roller coaster. The acoustic guitars are brought back as the dominant melodic instrument, while the electrics are used to give it some extra punch at key points. Quorthon fingerpicks (I assume) a very pleasant series of argeggios, which, if taken out of the context (the thudding drums, guitar backgrounds, epic Norse lyrics) would sound like something you would hear played at a Renaissance fair. As I said repeated ad nauseam, there is a lot of guesswork involved in trying to determine what exactly the folk music of a given tradition sounds like, and because ethnomusicologists involved in both 10th century Scandinavian or 14 century English folk traditions don’t have a firm idea of what said music would sound like, one has to rely on the vague pastiche that has been embedded in the general publics mind as “traditional European folk music”. This is not necessarily a bad thing. Had Quorthon dedicated his time to perusing the Journal of the International Folk Music Council to try and develop a style of playing that reflected the true folk traditions as best as we understand them, I don’t think there is a single person reading this who has the necessary background to contextualize the music for what it is. At least he isn’t just using a dulcimer as an excuse to throw in a bunch of ill-fitting pop hooks.<br />
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While the acoustic guitar is going at it, the drums play a very gentle marching-band style pattern which ever so slightly builds in intensity as the guitars increase in frequency, until both have picked up enough momentum to come crashing into another crescendo, at which point the acoustics vanish and the song merges into a more intense interlude. Then, a dazzling bass fill that reminds me a bit of Spanish guitar playing announces the solo.<br />
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Quorthon starts out the guitar solo with a series of bends that echo the main vocal melody before suddenly slamming on the gas and driving into a style of playing that will echo the jagged intervals heard in a Slayer solo before sliding into gorgeous streams of consonance, evocations of the emotive high grandeur seen in people like the unfortunately named Jerry Fogle of Cirith Ungol, which reflect the epic power of his mythic subject, transitioning into dirgeful passages reflecting the malaise he feels at the modern world, and the searing technical proficiency aimed at by so many metal bands before morphing effortlessly into phrases someone who has been playing for a few months could get a handle on. Throughout all this the one constant is the fact that this is the work of a master craftsman who is at the height of his proficiency.<br />
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We then move onto the extended outro, which is built from the same elements, notably the slowly transitioning (before diminishing now increasing) acoustic guitars and the wind. I think the biggest thing to note here is that this is the opening track, and yet Quorthon decided to put a four minute outro on it that ends in dead silence. This is not at all typical, especially in the world of metal, where one typically uses the opener for the fastest and heaviest song on the album, saving the long complex numbers for the closing track. Quorthon, however, has never been one to let convention get in the way of building an album to his own vision, so he does not opt for that. As I said about the intro, I do not think of these extended bookends as filler. I feel they play a vital role in the overall sound. In the case of the outro, it allows everything that one has just observed to settle in, and gives the following track, “Through Blood by Thunder”, the setup it needs to slowly rise from the silence like a Phoenix.<br />
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The introduction of the second track is designed so that it could essentially be an album opener in and of itself, with its acoustic buildup and long spoken word section (note that I am lumping acoustic guitars and clean electric guitars together into this category for the purposes of this essay). This is important to note because, when taken with the title track, the overall effect is that the first song functions a self contained statement of purpose for the album, while “Through Blood by Thunder” functions as the start of the album proper. This is reflected in the lyrics as well, as we get a shift from a largely modern focus (albeit couched in instrumentals and terminology that alludes to the later lyrics) to one that looks towards the past in hopes of a solution.<br />
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Musically, this song establishes which elements introduced in the title track are going to be one-off forays and which are going to be the defining stylistic components of the album. In the later category we have the arpeggiated acoustic introduction followed by electric guitars, which are first used to punctuate key points of the rhythm and the acoustic melody, which then fluidly transform into a riff; the dominance of the kick and snare drum (though there is some use of cymbals here); the backing vocals as a means of heightening key points and sections of the song; and the use of the steady strumming of a single chord/power chord as a means of transitioning from section to section, among other things.<br />
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The two most interesting elements of this song in my opinion are the backing vocals and the guitar solo. I mentioned in the introduction that the backing vocals can be divided into two rough categories: wordless singing and lyrical singing, both of which have specific purposes. Here we see the distinction drawn fairly clearly.<br />
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When Quorthon begins to sing, we see the backing vocals come in wordlessly at the end of the second line. As Quorthon holds the final syllable of said line, Quorthons come in with a call and response style echo (remember that he does all the parts, including each backing harmony). I have occasionally encountered the idea among certain segments of the metal community that the black metal and folk metal traditions are the first subgenres of metal that have wholly extricated themselves from the influence of early American rock and roll (this idea is typically spoken by the kind of person who is extremely uncomfortable with the fact that the music they enjoy incorporates elements that were originally created by *gasp* black people). To say nothing of even the most rapid-fire blast beat’s debt to Max Roach, Fred Below, and Louie Bellson, one needs to only spend two minutes comparing recordings of black spirituals (such as <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mfiTOls-0N0">this one</a>) with what Quorthon does with his backing vocals here to see how ridiculous this assertion is.<br />
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These call and response style backing vocals, like those used in the old slave chants, provide additional emphasis to every other line, thus adding variety to the verse. This is not to say that Quorthon is ripping anything off. He takes a concept that has had strong currency in rock music since the moment rock music existed and infuses it with elements that allow it to be implemented in a way that fits his am bitions, in this case imbuing them with a deep, plaintive quality via long drawn out notes that fit well with both his Norse theme and the broader disdain for modernity espoused in the title track.<br />
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The chorus of the song then shows an inversion of this approach, where the backing vocals come in and sing the main line, while solo Quorthon provides the varied responses. Since the backing vocals are the most consonant (pleasing to the ear) elements of the song, this accomplishes an effect similar to the chorus of a pop song without sacrificing any of the force or integrity of the music.<br />
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The guitar solo, like that of “Twilight of the Gods”, begins with a very simple bend-heavy melody that alludes to the main riff without aping it. It then progresses forward in cycles of intensity and relaxation like waves lapping against the shore (because I’m sure nobody is tired of me using water metaphors to describe these solos). There are a number of distinctions between great guitar solos and mediocre technical exercises, but I think some of the most important are the way the solo interacts with the underlying melody of the song itself and it’s possession of a natural sense of it’s own broader rhythm independent of the song. All good soloists respond to the chord changes of the progression with their own melodic and modifications, great soloists can always keep the melody (or riff) of the song itself in their mind and constantly incorporate, modify, vary, converge with, and distance themselves from it as they play. The greatest of soloists will treat their work as a composition in and of itself, giving it its own character while at the same time doing all of what I mentioned above. As I’m sure you’ll have no trouble guessing, I think Quorthon falls into the later category.<br />
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For a more concrete example of what I am talking about, check out <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xjCgQGrH9MY">this</a> video of David Gilmour’s “Comfortably Numb” solo looped repeatedly fifteen second apart. Now, a great solo does not have to be designed so that it can be stacked in such a fashion, but the fact that said solo can indicates that Gilmour has a keen understanding of how his music relates to the repeating melody that underlies it. Now, in his case he chose to respond to that melody with a solo that is very deliberately regular in its changes, whereas Quorthon chooses to write solos that bunch up into these intense bursts and then sprawl out into gorgeous austere melodies the way a male lion will lay in wait endlessly and then suddenly spring from the brush with terrifying force, but both examples show how their respective guitarists forged their technical proficiency into something beautiful rather than squandering it on stiff scale runs or pointless flights of fancy.<br />
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With “Blood and Iron”, we really see how Quorthon takes the techniques and approaches developed in the first two songs and uses them to craft a full album. The first thing I did when writing this review was to go through each song a bunch of times and chart out the broader shape of the album. In doing so, I really came face to face with how much of this album is built around the variations in its implementations of key structural ideas. It sucks that the word formulaic has such negative connotations attached to it, and that their is no real word that describes the same concept but more positively (maybe formal, but to me that just calls up British gentry in coattails and evening gowns and not music with a strong emphasis on repeated forms). But if you think about it there is no reason for this. The restriction Quorthon imposes that almost every song features the vast majority of the devices seen here (save Hammerheart): an opening with an acoustic passage which transitions into a heavy passage built around a rhythmic chord progression, then moves on to a more riff driven electric guitar stage, perhaps preceded by a brief return of the acoustics, followed by a verse, then a chorus with greater backing vocal emphasis, and a guitar solo at the end; is far from inhibiting. The Prelude and Fugue form has a significantly greater constraint in what can and can’t be done with it, yet, even if you don’t know anything about classical music, if you encountered a person who said Bach’s “Well Tempered Clavier” was a pile of shit because all he did was write 24 Prelude and Fugues one after the other, you would know that person was an idiot.<br />
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As with Bach’s work, and the often more extreme limitations imposed on many entire subgenres of metal, these restrictions actually allow Quorthon to find greater expressive freedom than he would have otherwise. If there is not some kind of glue that holds the different songs of an album together, then it is just a collection of songs. Even the most bizarre, avant-garde, “all over the place” releases have a natural flow from song to song and certain unifying characteristics that make the album a single entity, assuming they are any good. Now these unifying elements can be firm, formal, and concrete or they can be loose and abstract, and each has their advantages, but to my mind the greatest asset in the former approach is that a skilled songwriter can really demonstrate how to express a vast spectrum of ideas over a short wavelength. Of course you have to be a gifted craftsman to really pull this off, as the more you limit yourself the harder it becomes to be inventive, and the easier it is to come off as formulaic (negative connotations intended), but at the same time assuming you are capable of succeeding, as I believe Quorthon has, the end result is all the more stunning.<br />
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The odd thing about having these kinds of patterns in place is that once the brain subconsciously recognizes them, it makes the differences between each implementation all the more striking. I don’t think the gorgeous way the backing vocals follow that gorgeous upwards-arcing melody during the bridge would be anywhere near as striking if you hadn’t been unconsciously primed to a certain pattern in the way said vocals typically function, only for your mind to be surprised when it doesn’t.<br />
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As with “Through Blood by Thunder”, I think the best way to continue my assessment of this song is to pick to standout elements and assess them in greater detail. That way I can avoid returning to the same territory too many times and I don’t end up with a novel-length writeup where I give each song as much attention as I gave the opener.<br />
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A real standout element of “Blood and Iron” is the acoustic opener, which takes place over multiple stages, which combine into a unified end result that gives the impression of a single introduction rather than a series of stages. The first part of the riff, like what we have seen prior to this, is a fingerpicked pattern that alludes to the future electric riff (albeit loosely in this at the moment). I would call what he plays a semi-arpeggio. For those who don’t know, a normal arpeggio is where you use your left hand to make chord shapes on the neck of the guitar, but then instead of playing the entire chord at once, you pluck out a pattern of individual notes, typically with the fingers and not a pick**. This is in contrast to a normal guitar riff, where the left hand will slide up and down the fretboard. Now this opening riff is not quite either of these things. It starts off with two two bar repetitions that, on the lower five strings of the guitar, feature the same position being held for the duration of each of the two phrases. On the highest string, however, Quorthon moves up and down the fretboard a bit, alternating fairly quickly between two different notes (not quickly in a speed metal since, but too quickly for it to be played as separate chord changes). This is a cousin of a well established move in the rock playbook where a strummed chord (i.e. notes played at the same time, not arpeggiated), is shifted in on the highest string (typically with a D chord to a suspended 2nd or 4th position), as can be seen in the opening riffs of Led Zeppelin’s “The Song Remains the Same” (the main riff, not that brief intro), Queen’s “Crazy Little Thing Called Love”, and many other songs in the classic rock canon. While doing it to a slower arpeggio rather than a fast chord sequence makes the end result more atmospheric and pensive rather than energetic, the intended goal is the same: to produce a greater sense of movement and vitality.<br />
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This four bar pattern is repeated a few times, and then a jagged chord is allowed to ring out alone over the silence to toll out the announcement of a new stage. This new pattern is very similar to the first, especially at the start, where there are two bar long patterns of chords being played in arpeggios with modifications to the highest note. The big difference is now each pattern is played back to back rather than going back and forth like before. After both of these patterns have been played twice, Quorthon switches to two different arpeggiated chord shapes, which he then goes on playing two times through like I previously described (for a total of eight bars, four per arpeggio pattern). These riffs, unlike the first two, do not feature any changes on the high E string. When combined with the extended duration of the passage, the sense of movement I described in the paragraph above begins to perceptibly still.<br />
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All of this solidifying, however, is just in preparation for the final stage, which is by far the most fluid. Unlike the previous patterns, which were arpeggios with slight modifications, Quorthon now introduces a fuller gambit of techniques to the riff. The dominant element is still the individual plucked chord notes, but they are now interspersed with strummed chords and hammer-ons, creating a vibrant sound. This is enhanced by the sense of rhythm, which, like the solos I described before, features an oscillating sense of intensity. Things will come to a complete halt and then shoot forward rapidly, again coming off like something with its own sense of propulsion rather than being enslaved to the metronome. Oddly enough, despite the more erratic nature of this riff, it at the same time provides a much closer outline to the shape of the electric riff that proceeds it, thus when it finally does come on, the steady, heavy chords give one the sense that the loose acoustic patterns are being hammered in place.<br />
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The other important element I wanted to talk about is the lyrics. I mentioned Ezra Pound’s three-fold classification system of poetry, which I think is as good a metric as any, where poetry can be grouped into melopoeia (essentially the musical quality of human language), phanopoeia (essentially the ability to produce an sense image in the imagination), and logopoeia (essentially wordplay). There is no logopoeia on this album, and that is fine, if not preferable, since this was the latest addition to the poetic arsenal, and is not seen in early poets like Homer, nor, would I guess, in the Norse skjalds. The melopoeia on this album is, as I said before, impressive, especially for someone whose native language is not English, as it is very difficult for for a non-native speaker of a language, even one who is as obviously fluent as Quorthon was, to grasp the subtle nuances of its natural rhythm, flow, and meter. However, at least as far as “Blood and Iron” goes, the phanopoeia is the standout element. Consider the following lines:<br />
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“The story tells of raging winds<br />
Black clouds gathered up high<br />
And of lightning striking from a<br />
Burning bloodred sky<br />
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The mountains crumbled to the seas<br />
Earth shook the worlds collide<br />
Ending the age of gods<br />
Giving birth to our time”<br />
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If reading those lines does not produce a firm image in your mind, like the sun’s light suddenly vanishing as ominous clouds cast a veil of darkness over you, only for your sight to be restored not by the source of this planet’s life, but by impossibly massive fires igniting a conflagration of the blackness above you, then as you turn to see where you can run for cover, all you can glimpse from the illumination of the glimmering flames as the surrounding landscapes that you thought were eternal crumble to ashes; well there really isn’t anything I can say to help you.<br />
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“Under the Runes”, is, in my opinion, side by side with the opener as the standout song of this album. This evocation of ancient warfare pushes the tensile strength of the aforementioned form I have described to its absolute limits. This is a fitting place for such an endeavor. The act of warfare is the most extreme circumstance a human being can find themselves in. While the modern world with its hidden snipers and constant danger of surprise IEDs has filtered out any of the old sense of valor, for most of human history it has been the greatest paradox: an event of unequaled suffering that somehow casts an unbreakable spell on mankind so that, despite knowing that even in the best of circumstances, the pains outweigh the pleasures, we still find ourselves drawn towards it again and again.<br />
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Quorthon, like Homer in The Illiad, refuses to shy away from either the enchanting power or the total misery of warfare. Just as the greatest poet (save Dante) demonstrates no difficulty showing this paradox in scenes such as when Patroclus, in a fit of battlefield ecstasy, charges down Thestor, a Trojan charioteer “crazed by fear.. Ramming the spearhead square between his teeth so hard he hooked him by that spearhead over the chariot rail, hoisted, dragged the Trojan as an angler perched on a jutting rock ledge drags some fish from the sea” (Fagles 16.478-89), Quorthon refuses to hide from our ears either the siren call of battle or the horrific fate of those who hear it, singing of going to the house of death with a “great hail” in one line, and then acknowledging that he is in the middle of a “hell” where any chance to “survive now seems to fade”.<br />
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The dominant vehicle Quorthon uses to showcase this polarity is his the vocal performance. All of the elements I have described in previous songs are firing on all cylinders: the acoustic opener is the most evocative and intricate in the album, jumping right into a full force hybrid of arpeggios, strums, and hammer-ons similar to what was employed in the final stages of “Blood and Iron”s introduction; the main guitar riff is the most emotionally-imbued in the album, employing the closest thing to a legit hook we will see at the exact point when the music needs the most significant response from the listener; the kick drums pound out a beat that feels like the steady rhythm of feet at the start of the song, and progresses into a frenzied assault on the kit that showcases what can be done with an emphasis on the two most fundamental drums. However, it is through Quorthon’s voice that the joy of Patroclus and the torments Thestor are brought to life.<br />
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With the opening line, "In great numbers we advance before dawn", we get lyrics that not only strike the perfect balance between suggestion and explanation, setting the listener up for what is to come while not overburdening the line with too much description. The delivery is absolutely perfect as well. Each line has a little pause in the middle of it that allows the statement to be divided into two parts of varying length. Here we have the four syllable "In great numbers" followed by the six syllable "we advance before dawn". I'm guessing many of the people reading this have listened to the album enough to have these words memorized, but try and put yourself back in the shoes of a first time listener who does not have any information about what the song is about, and for whom these first lines are their entire picture of the music so far.<br />
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Your first piece of information is "In great numbers", and then you get just enough of a pause to mull over who or what it is that is so amassed. This is sung with a passion that enhances the idea in your mind that whatever he is describing, it is important. Then you get to the second part of the line, "we advance before dawn". Again Quorthon is slowly letting the scene unfold in your mind. You now know that there is a massive group of people, likely an army, who are on the march in the early morning hours. Taking a closer look at how that information is delivered we can break this up into a further three parts "we", "advance", and "before dawn". "We" the first of the three pieces, lets the listener know that the "great numbers" being referred to is a group of people. The "before dawn" does an excellent job of enhancing the image, but is not intended to provide much new information concerning the narrative. Both these parts are sung very passionately, but pale in comparison to how he delivers the "advance". On this word he hear his voice straining at the intensity as he shoots upwards in pitch. This matches the importance of the word, which is the key to understanding that it is an army, and that this army is heading somewhere important.<br />
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Throughout the song we see Quorthon really fucking wailing. Far too often metal finds itself sitting at the polar extremes of vocals that treat the art of singing as a contest to see who can reach the highest number in answer to the equation of "(frequency at apex of pitch range) - (frequency at trough of pitch range) = x", or else get so caught up in the big picture of evoking darkness and brutality that they choose to abandon their humanity in the quest to be as guttural as possible. I don't have much interest in vocal acrobats who belt out clean perfectly pitched lines that wouldn't sound any different if you ran them through an auto tune or growls that become so harsh they lose the ability to deliver the slightest hint of nuance. I like my vocalists, to paraphrase Bill Hicks, to sing from their fucking heart. I wanna hear vocal cords tear not from overreaching their natural pitch limit, but from the sheer weight of the expressive burden being placed on them. I want my throat rumbling snarls to exist because they are expressing something that falls flat if sung in a pleasing melody. I want every flaw and imperfection in humanity to come flying out of my speakers coupled with the transcendent beauty that can only be produced by the human voice, and god damn does Quorthon deliver.<br />
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My favorite of his amazing deliveries is the line "Deep down in the oceans on land and way up in the sky". Compare the syllable count on each of these lines to the ones for the opening lines. Instead of four syllables on the first part we have six, and instead instead of six on the second we have eight. When extra syllables are added into a line by a capable sonic craftsman, the effect is typically to enhance the urgency, and that is just what we see here. The first part sees Quorthon just absolutely letting loose with that I'm-pushing-my-voice-to-its-absolute limits-and-I'm-not-going-to-do-a-damn-thing-to-try-and-cover-that-up feeling that I cream myself over. The second part starts out in a similar vein, but then switches to a cleaner style as he crams those last six syllables in. While I adore the aforementioned flourishes, I'll be the first to admit that they have to be employed judiciously, both in terms of how often they are used in any given song and in how many songs employ them on the album as a whole. Here we see a song that features Quorthon really going nuts, but even now he switches back to more traditional singing for long stretches. The clean and controlled backing vocals also do an excellent job of providing a counterpoint to his wild lunges.<br />
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In “The Hero with a Thousand Faces”, Joseph Campbell shows how the hero’s journey is a motif that is repeated across every society and culture. In this archetypal story, the protagonist finds himself in a world that is lacking in some significant way, which could be anything from a crop failure to the complete moral degeneration of his civilization. He then experiences a call to undertakes some kind of journey in order to alleviate this problem, often but not necessarily encountering helpful guides, malicious or benevolent deities, tempters/temptresses, and atonement along the way. One thing that is constant is that at some point throughout his journey, the hero reaches a point where he must enter the belly of the beast, and undergo a great trial which allows him to emerge with the mighty boon that provides salvation for his people.<br />
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“To Enter Your Mountain” is essentially the bare rudiments of this trajectory pressed into a seven minute song. He casts the listener as the hero, himself as the wise guide who shows the way, the society that surrounds us as both the thing that requires saving and the tempter that seeks to draw us away from our journey, and the mountain as the symbol for that which must be travailed in order for us to emerge with the great boon, which is the knowledge of how to truly live.<br />
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What it is exactly that said mountain represents is deliberately kept vague, for each of us has our own unique obstacles that must be surpassed to reach our personal liberation. What is explicitly stated is that in order to attain this end we must embark on a harrowing journey either inwardly or against the physical forces of the world (”with or without sword in hand”). This fundamental message has been repeated again and again every time human beings congregate in groups, from the Twin War Gods of the Navajo journeying to the home of the Sun God so that they can rid the world of the monsters that plague it to the man from Nazareth who had to array himself upon a cross in order to enter the sacred kingdom of his father; from the great heroes of Ancient Greece such as Theseus and Jason to the Thor’s quest to obtain beautiful for hair his wife Sif after Loki removed her original locks; from Prince Rama and Hanuman’s journey to rescue Sita from Ravenna the Demon King to Frodo Baggin’s quest to drop the One Ring in Mount Doom. Unlike the genre stories which go in and out of style in Hollywood, this archetypal tale does not ever become stale or boring so long as it is handled properly, and even boiled down to it’s essential components and put to music it still has undeniable force.<br />
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Unlike the typical form Quorthon has been employing, this song begins with the electric guitar playing a chord at the start of each bar while the acoustic guitar plays a riff that combines strums and small scale-based lines that are more horizontal (i.e. not a lot of big jumps) than the arpeggios. I think this goes fairly well with the broader themes of the song because I find it suggestive of the ancient and primitive, though I can’t produce any evidence for why I would feel this way, as most early forms of music are pentatonic and feature big jumps, with the subtle differences of the smaller intervals (such as in the modern major or chromatic scale) not coming until later.<br />
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Throughout the song there are a number of similar minor departures from what Quorthon has been doing, which, like the changes in the introduction, tend to be fairly small but, when taken as a whole, capable of casting this song as something distinct from the majority of the album. The biggest of these changes is the lyrics, which, like the title track, use the Viking motifs as a means of addressing the modern world. This juxtaposition between the ancient (the solution) and the modern (the problem) is also shown in the backing vocals. The chorus is sung wholly by them, and in English instead of wordless vocalizing, while their only role in the verse is a echo of some of Quorthon’s final words that sound far more modern than anything heard previously. Oddly enough, while the acoustic guitars are more horizontal (again, a melody formed of smaller intervals), the vocal line of the chorus has far larger jumps than is typical for them. Again I think this adds to the sense of contrast the song seeks to cultivate between the ancient and the modern.<br />
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Finally, there are two pieces of miscellany that I feel I must comment on, but don’t really fit well anywhere else in my analysis. The first is a very small touch that, while fairly minor, speaks to the level of care Quorthon took in constructing this song. In the final line of the pre-chorus, when he says “Trust me there is a never ending mountainside to climb for you too”, both vocals and guitars play an ascending pattern that lines up very nicely with the lyrics. Something like this is easy to miss, and I didn’t even notice it until after I started writing this, so I don’t want to give the impression that metal as a genre has a particular disinterest in them, but the only place I have ever really seen touches like this regularly employed is in the work of the upper echelon pop songwriters of the mid 60’s, particularly Burt Bacharach, who, for example, on “24 Hours from Tulsa”, structures the song so that the listener expects a resolution to the tonic (the key of the song) when his protagonist reaches the word “home” in “never come home again”, and then deliberately plays a less pleasant interval to match the music to the lyrics.<br />
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On the other end of the spectrum we have one of the few significant blunders of the album. The fact that the chorus does not use rhymes is perfectly OK in my book (I never thought they were absolutely vital anyway, save in providing a bit of structure for lyricists who don’t know what they are doing). However following the line “to enter your mountain” with “go into your mountainside” is just pure laziness. It basically a tautology, as if you were to judge it only by the new information that it provides, the only thing you can get out of it is that one should not enter ones mountain by burrowing underneath it. More importantly, it is also incredibly clumsy. Up until I started working on this piece and I decided to watch some interviews of him for research, I just assumed that Quorthon had likely written the song in Norwegian and then translated it to English, and that in Norwegian the word for mountain and mountainside are totally different, but Quorthon’s command of the language is far greater than even most Scandinavians (who as a rule tend to speak it surprisingly well). All this is a minor grievance, but I felt that if I was going to dedicate as much time as I have to jizzing all over Quorthon’s achievements, it was only fair to point out some of his faults as well.<br />
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“Bond of Blood” features an opening that uses the sound of boats and lapping waves in a manner that echoes the way “Hammerheart” (the album, not the song) opened. This is fitting, because on this track we see the most direct connection with the actual experience of a person residing in Scandinavia during the middle ages. “Twilight of the Gods”, “To Enter Your Mountain”, and “Hammerheart” (the song) all use the Norse myth as a means of engaging with the modern world, while “Through Blood by Thunder”, “Blood and Iron”, and “Under the Runes” all focus on the mythological elements of the Norse tradition, but this song instead tells the story of an unnamed individual during the years when the sight of Viking Warships was the terror of any coastal city in Europe.<br />
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As I have hopefully made clear at this point, the general pattern that these songs implement is a specific choice that is designed to give the entire album a sense of color, and, saving the closing track, it provides the framework through which to view it. “Bond of Blood” opens with the standard acoustic arpeggios, along with the backing vocals, and then adds in heavy chordal punctuation. The biggest difference here is that said chordal punctuation does not transition into a riff in the same way that it does on other songs, but retains the steady rhythmic nature common to the way Quorthon tends to introduce the electric guitars to the song from start to finish.<br />
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The result of this sparser approach with the guitars is that it really allows the bass to come through. The bass guitar, too, plays a very rhythmic pattern (as is typical), almost always playing on the beats and for large stretches of the song playing these little two note patterns. However, let loose from beneath the guitars, it becomes a pummeling force that drives the song forward instead of a support framework.<br />
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The other thing that I think is worthy of discussion here is the use of alliteration. Alliteration is the use of repetitions in the opening sounds of words, as compared to rhyming which matches up the final syllable. There are two kinds of alliteration: consonance and assonance. Consonance is the repeating of consonant sounds while assonance is the repeating of vowel sounds. Unlike English poetry, the literature of the Viking era used alliteration and not rhyme as an anchor, and as I said, this song in particular speaks to the life of people in ancient Scandinavia, so the fact that there is a greater amount of alliteration draws a connection between “Bond of Blood” and the ancient Sagas (which dealt with the exploits of heroes far more often than mythology). Of the two varieties of alliteration, consonance is more important for our purposes, but I want to touch on the assonance seen in the lyrics before I move on.<br />
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If you look at the opening stanza of the song, you can see plenty of vowel repetition (and yes, I am aware of how much I have had to repeat the word repetition in writing this). What I will do is copy each line and then give the ipa vowel identification beneath the first vowel in each word. If you can’t read the IPA it doesn’t really matter, the important thing to note is that unlike English, each character refers to one and only one vowels sound, so if you pay attention to how the different vowels repeat you will have all the information you need. The places where you see two vowel symbols next to each other are diphthongs, which are two vowels sounded so fast that they produce a single sound. Specifically it is the /aI/ diphthong, which is used for are word “I” or “eye”. If you don’t believe me about this try saying “ah” and “ih” one after the other and then speeding it up until they begin to merge.<br />
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Father who are in the sky<br />
a u a I ə aI<br />
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Hold thy hand above me<br />
o aI æ ə i<br />
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Mighty is the raging waves<br />
aI I ə e<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span> e<br />
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On which I ride<br />
Ɔ I aI aI<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span><br />
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Now, there are twelve vowel sounds regularly used in English, and while the seven we find employed in these twenty words are not inconsistent with random choice, if one looks at the pattern in which the vowels are laid out, we see a number of regular recurrences. The first line has three repetitions of the “a” (ah) sound. All four of the lines have the combination “a” (ah) “I” (ih) dipthong in them (with a double repetition at the end of the line), and three of the four have the “ə” (a) sound. Then there are seven repetitions of the “I” (ih) sound by itself, including three in a row in the final line. Finally, there is the doubling up of the “e” (ey) sound in the final two syllables of the second. Compare this to the single implementation of the “u” (as in food), “æ” (as in cat), and “ɔ” (aw) sounds, and the total lack of any other vowels, and you can see how deliberate this effect is. The fact that each of the two final lines have vowel repetitions at the start of the final words reinforces how that the effect was a creative choice on Quorthon’s part.<br />
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Before I get into the consonance, it is worthwhile to look at how alliteration is employed in the Norse Sagas. The two major works of Norse literature are the Poetic Edda and the Prose Edda, both by Snorri Sturluson. Now as I mentioned above, the consonance is way more important than assonance in the Norse literature. Now there is a bit of problem in that I cannot read old Norse, and so I do not know the precise sounds of the different words used in the Eddas, but I have spent a little time looking at its relative, Old English poetry, and it is my understanding that the later places a similar value to the former on consonance. Fortunately for me, the kind folks at Wikipedia produced a few quotations from the Sagas that highlight the consonant repetition, thus allowing me to quote a stanza for comparison without being afraid that I will look like an idiot for assuming that two letters are making the same sound when they aren’t (like the letter “c” in English). The repeated consonants are in bold:<br />
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Vaki, Angantýr!<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>vekr þik Hervǫr,<br />
(Awaken, Angantyr! It is Hervor who awakens you,)<br />
Eingadóttir<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>ykkr Tófu!<br />
(your only daughter by Tófa!)<br />
Selðu ór haugi<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>hvassan mæki<br />
(Yield up from your grave the mighty sword)<br />
þann's Svafrlama<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>slógu dvergar.<br />
(that the dwarves forged for Svafrlami.)<br />
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alliterative_verse#Fornyrðislag<br />
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The big thing to note here is that, while these passages are divided in half-lines, there is a common tendency to use the same consonant at the end of one half line and the start of the next. It is also common to see two words with the same consonant one after another. Finally, note that unlike an English rhyme scheme, there is no steady rule that needs to be constantly applied (i.e. like rhymes at the end of every other line). Now, Quorthon is restricted in that he has to do all his alliteration while still conforming to end rhymes (on the first and fourth lines), so his consonance is even less regular than Snorri’s, but you can still see it very clearly in the following stanzas:<br />
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Heading north after long a journey<br />
We have sailed for so very long<br />
Heavy seas endless sky above us<br />
Heading north going home<br />
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Brother who fell in foreign land<br />
Blessed thy soul a warriors<br />
Living on through your sword<br />
Now in my hand<br />
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Sister who for my return sings<br />
Shed no more tears for my well<br />
I can hear your voice clear now<br />
In the wind<br />
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In all three stanzas we can see the use of repeated consonant characters at the start of the lines, with the “H” sound repeated in three of the four lines in the first, and the “B” and “S” sound repeated in the first two lines of their respective stanzas. You can also see the repetition of consonants used in words that come in a sequence, though he typically puts a word between them, usually one that is a single syllable long. This minor difference can be easily chalked up to the differences between the two languages, as going too heavy on the consonance in English can give your words a sing-songy, “Dr. Seuss”-y quality that would not match the tone of what Quorthon is trying to convey here.<br />
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One of the great things about establishing a firm pattern as the foundation for your album is that when you do decide to truly break off from it, the results can be incredible. On the final track, “Hammerheart”, we see Quorthon departing not just from the patterns I have spent this essay detailing, but from metal itself. Instead, in one of the ballsiest musical choices I have ever seen, he chooses to take a piece from Gustav Holst’s “Planets” symphony and rearrange it in the style of a national anthem.<br />
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There are few forms of music that have fallen so far from the taste of regular listeners (i.e. the kind of music a normal human being would choose to listen to) than national anthems. You can find more people devotedly interested in the sole single of a one off No Wave group (one that’s not featured on No New York) than people who regularly and passionately listen to national anthems for countries that are not their own.<br />
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I cannot imagine that any of Quorthon’s family, friends, or associates would have told him that this was a good idea. If they did, it was in the spirit of the businessmen who told idiot-savant Timothy Dexter that it was sound business advice to send a shipment of coal to Newcastle England and a shipment of bed-warmers to India. If this is the case, then, like Dexter, who, through a strike in the country’s biggest coal producing region and the fluke luck that the bed warmers worked great for the manufacture of molasses, made a fortune from the suggestions, Quorthon somehow pulled an unlikely success from a quite frankly ridiculous idea.<br />
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Its worth taking a look at the Planet’s symphony, specifically the relevant passages of “Jupiter, Bringer of Jollity” (which can be viewed <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nz0b4STz1lo#t=02m54s">here</a>). Now the act of using elements of “The Planets” for a heavy rock composition is not new. In fact there have been a shocking number of bands, almost all either prog or metal, who either reproduce passages intact, or, like Quorthon, reinterpret them for their own purposes. Nile uses passages from “Mars, Bringer of War” as a basis for “Ramses, Bringer of War”, so do Led Zeppelin (on live versions of “Dazed and Confused”), Black Sabbath (the bridge on “Children of the Grave”), Diamond Head (the intro for “Am I Evil”), and King Crimson (in “Devils Triangle”). “Jupiter” is used by, among other groups, Yes (on “The Prophet), and Mannfried Mann’s Earth Band (on “Joybringer”). A more complete list of rock artists that employ some element of the symphony in their work can be seen <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Planets#Non-orchestral_arrangements">here</a>.<br />
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I can’t say with absolute certainty why this symphony in particular is singled out by so many groups over other similar works, but I can point to a number of contributing factors. It is part of the bombastic tradition dominated by Wagner and Mahler that so many music writers like to compare bands like Metallica to (for at least semi-valid reasons). It uses quite a bit of atonality so it does not give off the same dated, stiff vibe that say, a cover of a Classical or early Romantic period work might. Also, the symphony has remained a major influence on film scoring, and has thus embedded itself in our cultural consciousness through it’s influences (I myself was first introduced to it about a decade ago when it was used to hilarious effect in Season 2 of “The Venture Bros”).<br />
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Quorthon’s take, however, is very different from any of the other rock treatments I am familiar with. Like his predecessors (and followers), he sees the epic power in Holst’s work and seeks to capitalize on it, but the way he goes about it is very different from any rendition or rearrangement I am familiar with. Like I said before, it reminds me a lot of a national anthem. One of the many reasons for this similarity can be attributed to the fact that Quorthon sings the main melody of the passage he employs, and many national anthems tend to evoke a similar sense of the heroic as both Quorthon and Holst, but, unlike the symphony they use vocals for the primary melody. Many were also penned at roughly the same time as “Planets” (around the turn of the century).<br />
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In a callback to the opening song of the album, “Hammerheart” opens with a (much shorter) passage of wind sounds. However, unlike the title track, the moment the wind is done, we get both the vocals and the main instruments of the song introduced in a single burst. There is no acoustic introduction (or the entire song is the acoustic opener if you want to look at it that way), and no build up with electric guitars transitioning from punctuation to riffs. The drums are played in a classical rather than rock or folk style, meaning they are just pounded for emphasis rather than to establish a beat.<br />
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Now would be a good time to inform you of how unqualified I am to provide assessments of classical music. I can tell you that rather than using electric guitars (e.g. a regular guitar and a bass), he is using two varieties of bow instrument for a similar effect. Unfortunately the album’s liner notes do not specify these instruments, nor is there any information online as to their precise identity. I feel moderately confident in saying that the low register instrument replacing the bass guitar is a cello, and it seems likely that the higher register instrument is either a violin or viola.<br />
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Obviously this leaves me in the position of not being able to say all the much about the album’s closing track, but there are a few observations that are worth noting. One reason that I did not mention about this songs anthemic vibe is the way the backing vocals are merged in with the main vocals. Quorthon’s main vocal line is now echoed by the backing vocals in a low register during the verse, while, in the chorus, their is no single dominant vocal line, but instead it is a higher register set of harmonized voices that take over. In other words, the verse has something akin to the studio technique pioneered by the Beatles where similar vocal takes are piled on top of each other, while the chorus has the voices spaced further apart, giving it a fuller sound that gives the impression that multiple people are singing at once (even though it is all Quorthon). This is altered a bit during the later verses, when you essentially get a similar approach to what was done for the chorus, but in a lower register, placed alongside the lead vocals.<br />
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Finally, after a conclusion that really drives home the classical inheritance of this song, with the drum coming hard as the instruments reach a crescendo, we are treated to another long stretch of wind. Thus returning the listener to the desolate wastes of modernity that his mind is forced to inhabit during those long stretches between the glimmering moments when people like Quorthon can come along and induce an ascent from the profane.<br />
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The poetic tradition speaks of an epic not in it’s modern since of something monolithic and over the top, but of a capstone to an author’s work. The opportunity for a craftsman who has spent his life absorbing the nuances of a medium to take all that he has learned and apply it to an opus with a scope reaching far beyond the limits of a normal work.<br />
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“Twilight of the Gods” is not Bathory’s final album, it is in fact closer to the halfway point, but I nevertheless feel that it qualifies for the moniker. It draws from the milieu of 80's metal all the elements that Quorthon felt necessary for a grand commentary on the mythic tradition of his birth-land, while discarding all that was useless. Every detail of this album works towards this end, and because of that the work emerges as a singular entity of stunning beauty. I hope that any who have made it to the end of this essay have come away with a greater appreciation for that beauty.<br />
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*For the record, I am not a fan of the fact that the term folk metal is used as a synonym for metal that is mixed with Scandinavian folk instruments, especially when bands like Melechesh, Eluveitie, and Orphaned Land all make excellent music in their own countries native folk traditions. However, the reality is that the term folk metal is used to near-exclusively describe Norse folk metal, while any other traditions need their ethnicity explicitly stated, so I would look like an ignoramus if I wrote this article constantly making that specification.<br />
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**Those of you who look things they read up online may note that the formal definition of an arpeggio used on sites like Wikipedia says that the notes have to be played in an ascending or descending order. This is not, however, how the term is traditionally used. Unless you are involved in a discussion of classical music or talking to someone who has formal training, it is almost always colloquially used in the way I described, as can be seen if you scroll past the encyclopedia type resources and click on the links for guitar oriented websites, like <a href="https://www.guitarworld.com/lessons/guitar-tricks-eight-things-you-need-know-about-arpeggios">this one</a>.<br />
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Snowblindedhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06242023366792085291noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2630166144190637002.post-3147118058123005112017-11-29T05:21:00.000-08:002018-02-09T20:51:38.699-08:00Horror - The CageI suppose I should put some kind of explanation here, just in case this does end up making it's way to the outside world. Not that I hold out much hope for that, but at this point there isn't much else for me to do.<br />
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I wish I could tell you exactly how I ended up in this awful place. I really do. The last coherent memory I have is driving home at night down Route 81 with my wife Catherine in the passenger seat and my eight year old son Benjamin asleep in the back. After that there is this blur of impressions. Something about a road closure, a vague sense of nervousness, and then boom, I'm in this awful cell.<br />
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First thing I thought when I opened my eyes was that I'd been arrested for something and was in jail. However, while I've never actually been taken into custody, I'm pretty sure even the poorest lockups require some kind of bed to sit on and a toilet. All I have are a few awful smelling rags and a corner.<br />
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The more I look at this place the weirder it seems. The stones that they used to build it are not of the same material, and you don't need to be a mason to tell how incompetent the builder was. Then there's the door. Damn thing looks like it belongs on a submarine. It's a solid slab of metal with this weird bubble shaped viewing window at the top and no slit for food or anything. When I look out all I can see are the same black mold infested walls that surround me.<br />
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Then there is the fact that all my possessions, including my phone, were still on me when I woke up. That's how I ended up writing this. I know you're probably wondering why I haven't called for help yet, but I can assure you that was the first thing I tried. My phone is flatlined. Zero bars. No service whatsoever. It was dumb luck that I even ended up here. I had about thirty tabs open in Chrome and I was trying each one in turn to see if I could get any service, and I finally got it to load when I hit this tab. I quickly clicked the submit button so I could type out a message but I have no idea if it will go through, since I've tried other tabs since then and it's back to not having any service. Unfortunately this is my only communication with the outside world.<br />
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Finally, there is the most bizarre tapping sound coming from the wall. It has been going on nonstop since I woke up but I can't figure out what's making it. There are two distinct kinds of tap, one hard and one soft, almost like more code, but it's like 95% soft taps with only the occasional hard one or two thrown in at random.<br />
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I'm not gonna lie, I'm all but shitting my pants right now. While I am scared for my own safety, my biggest concerns are Catherine and Benny. I am far from a religious person, but, without any other action for me to take, I am praying my heart out that you are safe. If you somehow find this message know that I love both of you dearly.<br />
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Holy shit. I've been here for probably at least a day (though it's hard to tell) and I finally figured it out. The tapping is the alphabet. Each set of soft taps corresponds to a letter (1 = A...26 = Z), one hard tap is the end of a letter, two is the end of a word, and three marks the end of a sentence. Someone is trying to communicate with me. I'm gonna use this text field to keep track of all the letters since it takes so long to tap out each one, and I'll add my responses in quotes just in case anyone ever finds this.<br />
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LLO. HELLO. HELLO.<br />
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“Who is this?”<br />
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SAM.<br />
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“I'm Mitch. Where are we.”<br />
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TRAPPED. HE CAUGHT US.<br />
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“Who caught us?”<br />
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THE MAN WHO BUILT THIS PLACE.<br />
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“Why did he bring us here?”<br />
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I DONT KNOW. AMUSEMENT MAYBE.<br />
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“Is he just going to leave us here?”<br />
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UNTIL HE COMES FOR YOU.<br />
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“What will happen then?”<br />
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I DON'T KNOW. BUT NOBODY EVER COMES BACK.<br />
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“Are there other people here?”<br />
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YES. TWO.<br />
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“Who?”<br />
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A WOMAN AND A BOY. CATHERINE. BEN.<br />
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“That's my wife and son.”<br />
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I KNOW. THEY ARE HERE WITH ME.<br />
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“Can they talk to me. Please.”<br />
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CATHERINE IS TOO FAR AWAY TO REACH THE WALL. BEN IS HERE.<br />
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“Ben. Are you OK?”<br />
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DADDY.<br />
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“Sam. Is he hurt?”<br />
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THE LAST PERSON IN YOUR CELL HAD A MIRROR. HID IT IN CORNER UNDER RAGS. IF YOU PUT IT AGAINST BUBBLE SHOULD BE ABLE TO SEE US.<br />
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God oh god why. What did I do to deserve this. I found the mirror and put it against glass, and there was the woman I love bound and tied, her body breathing but her eyes dead. Shoved into her mouth was a long cord of entrails, which trailed across the floor until they ended at the severed torso of Benny, who was in the clutches of a wild eyed, matted haired man, naked except for the splatters of blood across his torso and the streaks of shit running down the back of his legs. He was bashing my sweet boy against the wall of the room. Bashing and bashing and bashing and bashing.Snowblindedhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06242023366792085291noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2630166144190637002.post-25886161755723104582017-11-27T04:51:00.001-08:002018-02-09T20:51:57.981-08:00Horror - That Which Listens from the Shadows<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Not every tribe of the first people made their way into the history books. While some of our cousins traded and warred with the white man when he arrived on our shores, some of fell back into the wilderness, far beyond the reach of his colonies. Centuries later, when the sprawl of the big cities pushed too close for comfort, we simply and quietly merged in with the rest of the population. I hear stories that there are still some of us living our native way of life deep within the forests of the northern U.S. and Canada, where the endless timber is still enough to conceal them from even the electric eyes floating in orbit.</div>
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I, however, was born to one of the tribes that came in out of the cold on its own about sixty years ago. We are called the Kowayanna (koh-I-ann-a). While my parents were born and raised in urban America, my grandparents were of the last generation to spend enough of their lives in the old ways that the traditions still stayed with them. My grandfather died before I was born, but ever since I was old enough to listen, my grandmother felt that she had a responsibility to keep our tales alive in at least one member of the new generation.</div>
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Most of my siblings and cousins did not find much value in my grandmother's old legends, but I was different. I was my father's only son, and he had grown up around men still skilled in the arts of tracking, hunting, and survival, and he had learned quite a bit from them. I myself never managed to pick up any of those skills, but I did acquire a deep love of the wilderness and the old ways of life while my sisters were cultivating an interest in malls and afternoon tv.</div>
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My grandmother used to sit with me for hours reciting the same tales she had heard growing up; stories about things she said even my siblings were not worthy of being told. Secret things. Ancient things. Things that stood waiting just beyond the limits of your sight when the veil of nightfall rests over your eyes.</div>
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There is a part of me that feels like I am betraying her by posting these stories online, but earlier this year she passed away at the age of ninety-three, and I know that most of her old friends from the tribe have done likewise. Soon enough every member of the Kowayanna old enough to have heard these stories in the wild will have departed from this world, and I cannot bear the thought of letting our traditions vanish with them, so I am putting them here for anyone who has the desire to learn of the hidden things beneath this country's bright, glimmering surface.</div>
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Many Americans who are not born of the first people, even those who consider themselves tolerant and progressive, hold the idea in the back of their mind that before the white man's arrival, this country had been a vast, empty space where no much interesting happened, and that things only started moving when gunpowder and sailboats came on the scene. This is not true. While we were certainly not building skyscrapers or billboards, the America of my ancestor's was a land that still possessed much of the magic that the planet had when it was young. The God's would still come down from above and talk to our great warriors. Beings lurked in the hidden caves and forests until night fell upon the land, and then they would emerge to slake their blood-lust on any person foolish enough to wander the dark and wild lands.</div>
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I know what you are probably thinking. These are quaint old folktales that have been rightly thrown out alongside witchcraft and human sacrifice, save a few times a year when they come back to life on your movie screen.</div>
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The truth is, while the old Gods have long ago departed to their sacred abodes, the beings of darkness let loose in their conflicts are not nearly as interested in returning to the place that spawned them. True, they have become more subtle, striking out only when they are sure that there is no one save the victim to witness their depraved acts, and then vanishing without a trace. Perhaps even they fear the power of modern tanks and atom bombs, or perhaps they are simply more at home in the deep forests that the American sprawl has been slowly advancing over. I cannot say why they act the way they do, I can only tell you that they are out there waiting for any lone wanderer to blindly stumble into their domain.</div>
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Think about how many grizzly murders there are where random people turn up horrifically mutilated and no sensible explanation fits. Or look at David Paulides' work cataloging the numerous unexplained disappearances in America's national parks. It's certainly true that there is a great amount of evil in our human family, but how often does the madness needed to be a serial murder mate with the cleverness needed to rack up a serious body count. Typically about once a decade. Compare that to the baffling amount of inexplicably violent crimes that occur every year all over this country.</div>
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Fearsome, wicked beings still move about America, and today I will tell you about one of them. When life was first created on this planet, the Gods were careful to craft a delicate balance that allowed all beings to thrive. While death is not a pleasant reality, without it all the natural cycles written into the universe itself would fall to pieces. There would be a surge in population until competition caused the planet's resources to dry up and misery became the law of the land. In the same way, I'm sure you would all rather have the eyes of eagles and a dog's sense of smell, but each creature was brought into this world with senses that correspond to the tasks it needs to do, while being otherwise limited so as to stop any one being from becoming too powerful.</div>
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However, there was one God who did not follow this code of balance. Where all the other deities sought to create a land where all beings could thrive. Tettomai (teh-toe-my) wanted to possess this world for himself. He cared nothing for order or limits, and crafted beings designed with only his perverse desires in mind. His works did not die of their own accord, but used dark and twisted methods for extending their life for as long as they could continue their cruel feeding methods. Where the life forged by the true divinities draws strength from air and water that flow freely, and when they kill another being, it is only their flesh which nourishes them, Tettomai's beings draw strength from the very essence of life itself.</div>
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One such being is called the Gala (ga-luh). One day Tettomai was wandering through the lands when the noise of a battle suddenly came to his ears. He wandered towards the sound and found himself amidst a great conflict between two tribes, and he was struck by how the screams of terror echoed through the air and then vanished into nothingness. He decided he would craft a creature that could draw nourishment from the wails and laments of humanity. </div>
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In order for his creation to better infiltrate the places where humans congregate, he gave it a shape similar to that of a man. However, the Gala does not have skin of flesh and sinew, but of the black ether in Tettomai's heart. Those who have caught a glimpse of it from afar describe a moving shadow, and this is no mere illusion. The Gala has no love of daylight, but possesses the ability to embed itself into the darkness and move at rapid speed across any surface not touched by the sun's rays. Hence the creature is usually encountered late at night.</div>
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Those lucky few who have survived close encounters with the beast claim that, since it is wholly dependent on its super-accurate sense of hearing, where a normal human being would have eyes, the Gala possesses only empty sockets that seem to go on eternally into the very heart of the night. The creature likewise lacks a nose or tongue, but does have a mouth with multiple rows of needle thin teeth. Given that it does not require normal nourishment, they seem to exist only for use in the creature's delicate work. The fact that it needs to remain in the often distorted shadows meant that its master had to give it appendages with many more joints than a human's, and those who have seen the creature move in the open describe full body contortions and strange twists that allow it to sprint through even the tightest of shadows.</div>
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As I said before, the creature can embed itself in the darkness. However it must emerge when it is time to strike, so while it seems to only prefer actually attacking after dark, those who know what to look for have seen a twisted figure lying motionless in unlit corners, waiting for true darkness to fall over the land so it can make its move.</div>
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Those who think that I am either making this up or that the Gala is just one of many ancient beasts that vanished into the abyss of history, know that it still walks these very lands, and that those who can read its signs can often spot its handiwork.</div>
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One such person was my grandmother. Back when she was young, she ran a shop selling your typical “vaguely Indian looking knick knacks” to the kind of people who claim that they aren't religious, but are very spiritual.</div>
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Back in the late 60's (I'm sure you can guess how much the hippies helped her sales), a young girl of maybe 17 entered the store claiming that she had felt a sense of dread all day and that she was worried about some other girl having placed a curse on her. My grandma was all set to sell her a dream catcher or some other hokey piece of garbage when all of a sudden she caught the briefest vision of an eyeless face within the girl's shadow.</div>
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Not wanting to speak out loud and alert the Gala to her knowledge of its presence, she wrote a note explaining that the girl must confine herself to a brightly lit room after nightfall and not enter any dark, isolated areas for at least a few weeks, so that the creature would get hungry and move on. She then handed the note over with her purchase and told the girl to read it right away in order for the charms to work.</div>
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My grandmother did not find out what happened to that girl until years later, when a bunch of subway workers needed access to the old control terminal of an inactive line. They ended up finding six corpses in that room, all of them so mangled as to be unrecognizable. She wouldn't have even made the connection if she didn't notice the tasseled jeans and faux leather vest she had seen her wear into the store that day.</div>
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Unfortunately for that girl, and the other victims, their choice of clothing meant that the police were not exactly chomping at the bit to launch a full inquiry. The lead detective said it was a bunch of kids who had gotten ahold of some bad acid and ended up getting lost in an abandoned rail tunnel, and then panicked and turned on each other. The coroner of course backed up his claim. Now I've done some chemical experimentation myself, and I've seen my share of bad trips both firsthand and in friends, but I've never seen someone so out of their mind on LSD that they severed their friends jaw off its hinges or drove a railway spike into a woman's genitals.</div>
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While I've never had the misfortune of encountering the Gala in person, once you know what to look for you can start to see its work if you pay attention to the news. I remember about three years ago a hiker disappeared without a trace as he made his way down the Appalachian. When he checked into a way-station the day before he vanished, people reported that he seemed agitated, always glancing back over his shoulder like he thought something was behind him. Those safety measures they got on the trail nowadays are really something, because eight hours after that lone hiker was scheduled to arrive at his next checkpoint there was already a team of dogs running down his scent.</div>
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Not that it woulda mattered, though. They could have sent out the search teams twenty minutes after he left the trail and they wouldn't have found shit. About six months later, some scientists tagging birds about eight miles from the trail found a cave that fascinated them for whatever reason. Inside they found our old hiker friend severed from the waist down, his fingers worn to stumps from blindly tearing at the walls.</div>
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Authorities blamed that one on bears, but I've never heard of a bear leaving that much good meat to rot. For that matter I've never heard of one tying a person up with their own entrails either.</div>
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At this point you may be wondering if I have any ancient Indian secrets for fending off such a creature. Well I got good news and bad news. The good news is that the Kowayanna do tell a story of one of our own who bested the creature. The bad news is that he didn't do it by wearing garlic around his neck. With the real evils of this world, there are never any quick fix solutions.</div>
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Teakawa (tee-a-cow-a) was an ancient war chieftain of our tribe, and one day he and his men were returning from a raid when they began to catch odd movements in the forest from the corners of their eyes. While a modern military commander sits in comfort well behind his own lines, among the Kowayanna it was understood that those who took command of a war party were expected to put themselves at greater risk than those who followed them. Because Teakawa was indeed of noble spirit, he had the rest of his men march ahead while he stayed behind to draw the creature's attention.</div>
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Now as I said before, the thing about the Gala is, while its sense of hearing puts anything you would see on Animal Planet to shame, the rest of its senses are dead. So, when twilight fell, Teakawa began standing perfectly still.</div>
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Now the Gala is a cunning being, and it knew it had been following men for almost a day, and that the one it had been trailing did not simply disappear on the spot. He could also hear the movement of the chieftain's heart and lungs. However, Teakawa had made sure to calm his mind and focus on producing slow, shallow breaths. This confused the Gala, but it had worked itself into a ravenous hunger in the long pursuit, and it was not about to give up because of the strange behavior of its victim.</div>
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The beast ran it's claws deep into Teakawa's tendons, but the war chief's heart and breath gave no indication of being disturbed, and he made no other sound. The Gala began to circle him, tearing open his skin in expectation of the scream it so desperately craved. Teakawa, however, gave no response to the tormenting blows. He stood motionless for an hour as the creature went about its twisted work, all while being perfectly calm and silent. The Gala, thinking that it had unknowingly fallen upon a God or some other great being, fled back into the darkness.</div>
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Perhaps you don't believe any of this. Perhaps you do. Regardless, I hope that if you find yourself walking alone late at night, and begin to see inexplicable movements in the darkness, that you'll have the same strength of will as my great ancestor when the Gala falls upon you.</div>
Snowblindedhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06242023366792085291noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2630166144190637002.post-43346125830832377712017-11-14T15:48:00.000-08:002018-02-09T20:52:25.642-08:00Music Criticism - Them, Patti Smith - "Gloria"<div>
The song "Gloria" holds the rare distinction of entering the canon of essential rock songs on two separate occasions. The original version by Them is a stripped-to-the bones torrent of raw sexual passion that paved the way for punk rock, and Patti Smith's version adds layers of depth to the song while maintaining its raw, primal, power.</div>
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Like much of the punk music it would influence, Them's "Gloria" is built on three chords, intermixed with a couple of open strums (when the strings of the guitar are struck without any of the frets being pressed), and, like the music of the punk bands that would follow in its footsteps, the song is a showcase for the amount of expressive power that a simplistic chord structure can produce. </div>
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There are no introductory elements, slow build-ups, or any delayed additions of instrumentation in the opening of Them's "Gloria", save the introduction of a barely audible two note organ part in the back of the mix on the song's fourth bar. Throughout the song the band really push the limits of what can be done with very minor modifications in song structure. Instead of something like an introduction to get listeners acclimated to the song, they hit the ground running. Them open “Gloria” with the whole band vamping the main riff at full force. There are two guitars present in a good chunk of the recording, and while you could technically call one a lead guitar and the other rhythm, since one is playing a melodic line and the other a progression of chords, for all practical purposes the chords are the dominant element, and the melody (which is nearly identical save a few flourishes) serves only to provide a little bit of ornamentation. The melodic accompaniment is only slightly different from the chords and bass, so I am not going to spend too much time with it compared with the other elements.</div>
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Before I go any further I'm going to have to explain a couple of key concepts. If you know a bit about music theory you can skip the next twelve paragraphs. If you don't, then learning the stuff I discuss in the next section, while a bit tricky, will pay dividends if you are interested in music, even if you don't play an instrument.<br />
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The first and most basic concept is consonance and dissonance. Consonance refers to notes that sound pleasing to the ear. Dissonance refers to notes that are unpleasing to the ear. You can remember this by looking at the prefixes, the “con” prefix essentially means unity, and it is used in congress, concord, conspire, conclave, etc. The prefix is used because it refers to a combination or series of notes that sound good with each other. The “dis” prefix is used for separation. Think disarray, dissect, disunity, discord, disjointed, etc. This prefix is used to refer to a combination or series of notes that sound bad together.<br />
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Now, there are different levels of consonance in music. In other words, you can imagine all the notes (A, A#, B, C, C#, D, D#, E, F, F#, G, and G#) as being arranged in a pyramid, where, at the top of the pyramid, the notes sound nicest (most consonant), and at the bottom they sound the harshest (most dissonant). Now, if you exclude the avant-garde, every passage of music has whats called a key. The key is the note that all the other notes are oriented around. The key can be any note, and each note has its own set of notes that work well with it. These notes are referred to as being “in key” with the key itself, which is also called the tonic.<br />
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So that is the biggest distinction on the pyramid. The bottom level are notes that are not in key and the next level up is notes that are, but you can keep going. To understand the next level up, you have to know that each of the notes in a key have a number in relation to the key itself, and that these numbers are called intervals. In the key of C major, the notes are C, D, E, F, G, A, and B (so no sharps). This means that C is the 1st, (again, usually called the tonic), D is the 2nd (also called a major 2nd), E is the 3rd (also called a major 3rd), the F is the 4th (aka the perfect 4th), G is the 5th (aka the perfect 5th), A is the 6th (aka the major 6th), and B is the 7th (aka the major 7th).<br />
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The reason those major/perfect titles are important is due to situations where a note that is not in key is used. For instance, if a song written in the key of C major has a C# in it, since D is the major 2nd, the C# would be called the minor 2nd. Now for those who are confused about why you only see sharps (#) when there are also flats (b), all of the sharpened notes can also be written as flattened notes, e.g. C# and Db are identical to each other. When and where you use sharp vs flat is not super important if you are not a musician, so I just used the sharps to keep things easier, since they are what we will use looking this song for the most part.<br />
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The other thing that needs to be understood is fairly simple, and that is the concept of chord. A chord is a group of different notes played at the same time. There are different kinds of chords, but the most common are major and minor (I know I already used the term major to refer to the key, but you just have to remember there are two circumstances where the terms major/minor are used.). The major chord is made up of the tonic (1st), the major 3rd, and the 5th. The minor chord is made up of the tonic, the minor 3rd, and the 5th. The reason you see the 5th and some variety of a 3rd is that certain intervals sound more consonant than others do. The 5th is by far the most pleasing, and both major and minor 3rds are ranked pretty high as well (behind the perfect 4th and major 6th in Paul Hindemith's ranking). The chords in “”Gloria” are all major.<br />
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Now, the vast majority of music in the Western tradition contains what is called a chord progression. This is a series of chords that are repeated throughout the course of a song or section. Even songs that do not have an explicit chord progression (i.e. they just have something like a guitar riff with no rhythm underneath it) usually have an implied one.<br />
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The chord progression in Them's “Gloria” (start to finish) is E major, D major, then A major. The E major chord is E, G#, and B. The D major chord is D, F#, and A. The A major chord is A, C#, and E. A quick note. While the words minor and major are used with both keys and chords, the term tonic is not. So when you are talking about the key you use the word tonic, and when you talk about chords you use the word root.<br />
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Now I want you to look at the notes of the A major scale. They are A, B, C#, D, E, F#, and G#. Notice how all the notes of the chords are part of the key. Thus the chords are the next level of the pyramid. In other words, if you have a song written in A major, but the chord progression has an E major chord in it, and while the rhythm guitar was playing said E chord, the lead guitar played a B, it would be in line with both the key and the chord, and thus at the highest level of the pyramid we have discussed thus far. However, if the guitarist played a C#, it would line up only with the key, and would thus sit one level below. If the guitarist played a D#, it would not even be part of the key, and would fall into the lowest level.<br />
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The highest level of the pyramid is just the root notes of the chords and the tonic of the key, and does not require further attention. There is, however, one final detail that needs to be explained before I can delve into the song itself, and that is modes.<br />
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Alright, so I wrote the last three paragraphs as if the song was in the key of A major to make things easier. It is true that all of the notes that are part of the key of A major are the same notes as the song's key, however, A is not the tonic. To try and keep things as simple as possible, you can think of each of the notes of A major as each potentially being the tonic, (i.e. the central note of the song) and when thhis happens it is referred to as being a mode. So, anytime the major 6th of a major scale is the tonic, it is called the minor mode. In other words, a song in the key of F# minor uses the exact same notes as one written in A major, it is just that the tonic is different. The tonic for “Gloria”, however is E, which is the 5th. When the 5th of a major scale is the tonic, the overly long word Mixolydian is used to describe it. So “Gloria” is in the key of E Mixolydian, or, as it is more commonly called, the mode of E Mixolydian.<br />
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The sound of the Mixolydian mode is closer to the major scale than the minor, but it is not quite as pleasant, and possesses a harder edge, and because of this it has been used in a lot of blues music. You can also see it in popular music that seeks to produce a more emotionally complex than the straight pleasure of a major key or the often maudlin sadness of a minor key, like The Beatles “Norwegian Wood”, Bruce Springsteen's “10th Avenue Freeze Out”, Bob Dylan's “Lay Lady Lay”, or Television's “Marquee Moon”. It is also used by metal bands who are searching for more mainstream appeal than can be found in songs using the harmonic minor, or chromatic scales. Signals Music Studio put out a good video on AC/DC's use the Mixolydian mode that can be found <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5kYsVpLtOmc">here</a>.</div>
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So with that out of the way lets go back to the notes in the key of E Mixolydian. There are essentially seven chords that fit really well with the key, and they correspond to the seven notes that make up the E Mixolydian scale (a term that, for our purposes, is basically synonymous with the E Mixolydian mode), E, F#, G#, A, B, C#, and D. The third of the seven notes doesn't concern us here, but each of the other six can be given a chord type (major or minor) and a roman numeral. The E major chord is I (also known as the tonic), F# minor is ii, A major is IV, B major is V, and C# minor is vi, and D major is the VII. The advantage of use these roman numerals instead of the chord names is that, regardless of the key, the numbers will stay the same. For instance, in the key of C, which is made up of C, D, E, F, G, A, and B, the E note comes third, so the E minor chord is the iii, (note that the iii is always minor).</div>
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So “Gloria” features a sequence of chords (called a chord progression) that goes E, D, A. Using the roman numerals this is called a I, VII, IV progression. Note that you will sometimes see this progression noted as I, bVII, IV, but I am trying to keep this simple so I won't go into detail about why that is. Regardless of how your write it, this is a fairly common progression in rock music, and can be seen in The Rolling Stones' "Sympathy for the Devil", Boston's "More than a Feeling", and Warren Zevon's "Werewolves of London".</div>
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The main guitar riff (i.e. the one that is a series of chords), played by Billy Harrison, is a simple, mean, beast that embodies of the explosive-energy-compressed-into-bare-bones-repetition approach that inspired later groups like The Stooges and The Ramones. Each of the chords are major, meaning they are composed of the root note (E for the E chord, etc), the major third (G# for the E chord. If you don't know/aren't interested in music theory don't worry about why the G is sharp, just remember 1st = E, 2nd = F, 3rd = G, 4th = A, etc), and the fifth (B for the E chord). I will use the O to indicate an open strum, which means the sound you get if you run your hand down all the guitar strings without touching the neck at all.</div>
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The riff goes as follows “E – E – E – E – D – O – A – O -” , where each of the chords is evenly spaced and lined up with the drumbeat. This means that unlike most riffs, which offer some kind of rhythmic variety (i.e. one note/chord will take up two beats and another one only half a beat), each note of "Gloria"'s guitar riff is spaced equally from the note before and after it*. If you are having trouble following any of this I would suggest looking at the <a href="https://www.songsterr.com/a/wsa/them-gloria-tab-s56333t0?c=10731">Songsterr tablature</a>, counting out the drum beats (1 – and – 2 – and – 3 – and – 4 – and - ) and noting how each chord falls exactly on those beats. </div>
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Such an simplistic approach was regarded as taboo prior to the rock revolution, because it was thought that playing the melody in a constantly steady rhythm will bore the listener through its repetitiveness. What rock and roll music proved, and what punk sought to refine, was the idea that if you strip down all the melodic elements to their bare essentials and place them overtop a dense yet simple beat, the end result is music that is just as emotionally evocative as any of the high watermarks of western civilization. Bach's fugue's can evoke a sense of connection with the divine, Ayler's improvisation can leave one stunned at the way his very soul seems bonded to such a unique form of melodic expression, but none of that can stimulate the animal base of the human mind like rock and roll. "Gloria" strips away more than any rock music had previously, making Chuck Berry's fretboard runs remind you of the very Beethoven and Tchaikovsky pieces he so memorably disparaged.</div>
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Ol' Chuck came onto the scene asking the world why we should bother with themes, variations, motifs, and codas when verses and choruses with the occasional bridge worked just fine. Them asked why we needed to bother with sixteenth notes, bends, and melodies that stretched past the beat. The Ramones came and asked why we should bother with adding and removing instruments. Finally Sonic Youth came around and asked, on "Kill Yr. Idols" why we should bother with any rules at all save the all-powerful steady rhythm. Then they realized they had backed themselves into a corner and moved on.</div>
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The transition from this song's verse to it's chorus could (and should) be taught in music theory textbooks as an example of how little you can change structurally while still creating one of the most dramatic transitions in the world of early rock. The tempo speeds up very slightly along with minor modifications to the drum patter, the bass riff changes very slightly, the vocals do most of the transitional legwork, and Billy's guitar really doesn't do much at all, There is a very minor little hiccup right as the verse jumps over, an increase in the volume, and very slight changes in the technique, but at the end of the day it is still the same “beat, offbeat, and nothing else” riff as he was playing during the verse. Yet the total effect is shattering.</div>
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After the chorus there is a two part bridge where we do see some changes in Harrison's guitar. During the first part he plays the second riff of the song, which changes up the melody and the way the notes are timed. In terms of the timing, he essentially pulls out the first and third offbeat note, so instead of playing on "1 - and - 2 - and - 3 - and - 4 – and - ", he plays the notes on the "1 - _ - 2 - and - 3 - _ - 4 - and - ", where "_" means he isn't playing anything**. In terms of the notes he is playing, rather than chords built from the tonic, major 3rd, and 5th, he plays only two notes at once (whether you consider this a chord or not depends on who you learned music theory from), split into two separate parts. </div>
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The first part, which covers beats 1 and 2, is made up of a B note and an E note, which are played on the two highest strings of the guitar. If you remember B is the 5th of the E chord, which is the note that has the most consonance (which basically means pleasure to the ear) with the tonic***. The first part provides a nice anchor point when compared to the second , though like the rest of the song, the music here is damn near bolted to the ground of consonant tonality, with the second part containing the only foray into dissonance.</div>
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The second part, which corresponds to the portion of the riff with the D and A chords, both starts and ends with just the D and A notes on the two highest strings. Since A is the 5th of D, and since the bass is essentially playing the root notes of the main guitar part (E, D, and A, remember root is the main note of a chord and tonic is the main note of a key) the total effect of these bookend notes is that the consonance is further welded down. However, in between those two notes there is a two note chord of D and G#. The relationship between these two notes is known as the tritone, and back in the days when more than a handful of people spoke Latin it was called the "diabolus in musica", or "devil in music", the least consonant pair of notes in the Western music system.</div>
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So essentially for the first part of the bridge we have a long string of super consonant two note chords, followed by the most dissonant of all possible two note chords, and then a final super consonant chord. The further you move away from consonance, the greater the tension, and the greater the tension, the greater the release when said tension is resolved. Since the entire song up to the point of that D/G# is damn near literally as consonant as you can get, the effect of jumping to the opposite end of the spectrum for a brief moment, like a Swedish hot tubber jumping into the snow before hopping back into the warm water, is rather dramatic.</div>
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The second part of the bridge features a another change in the guitar. This time, unlike every other part of the song, there is some variation between his repetitions. There is enough variation that the tabs and sheet music have quite a bit of disagreement in their rendering. Given that their are three slight modifications over the course of four renditions, and that none of the tabs I found (which all contain a single variant at best) play any of these renditions with complete accuracy (rather they are all attempts at summarizing the whole), I'm unfortunately back in the position of having to rely on my own ear for transcription, and I would be remiss if I didn't note that I have made mistakes doing this in the past.</div>
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While like I just said, there is a good deal of variance in this part, but it is limited to four notes/chords which are all placed in the same place on the beat, but vary in terms of the actual notes/chords that are being played. Be warned that using the essay format to break down this many separate elements can be a bit confusing. But I thought the best way to do this would be to break the riff up into smaller components and analyze them piece by piece.</div>
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Since the notes/chords I mentioned change, I will not be able to refer to them by their note letter, so I will have to use the variables "W", "X", "Y", and "Z". The pattern that they are arranged in when lined up to the beat is "W – and – 2 – X – 3 – and – Y – Z - ". To make this analysis a bit easier I am further going to break the bar into two even parts, i.e. "W – and – 2 – X –" and "3 – and – Y – Z - " and treat each individually.</div>
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The first part features a buildup over the first two repetitions that leads to the way the chords are played on the third and fourth. Because of this I am going to start with the third and fourth run and then show how the first and second lead up to it. </div>
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Now for both W and X on parts three and four Harrison plays three note major chords on the three highest strings on the guitar. In other words he is playing the same combination of tonic, major 3rd, and 5th that we have been working with from the start. The difference here is that he is using a technique that is most commonly seen in reggae and delta blues, where a sequence of high pitched chords are played that do not have the tonic note as their base. In all the chords I have discussed up to this point the lowest of the notes is the tonic. Since the guitar has six strings, the tonic will typically be reinforced by playing it on more than one string, and a standard chord almost always has the tonic at the foundation. This adds to the overall sense of stability that is typically sought after when one is using major chords. In contrast, here we see the fifth acting as the bass note. Since the fifth is very consonant with the tonic this does not have a tremendously off-putting effect, but rather adds a bit of variation and spices things up a bit.</div>
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One other thing to notice here is that W and X are E Major and D Major chords respectively (Now you see why I used WXYZ instead of ABCD). If you remember the main riff, an E Major chord is played four times over the first two beats, while D Major and A Major are played on beats three and four. One of the reasons I divided this bar in half for my analysis was to show how, rather than coming in on the "3" beat, the D chord come in on the offbeat after the "2". In other words he plays the chord half a beat earlier. Given that the pattern of "2 beats E major 1 beat D Major 1 beat A Major" has been drilled into the listeners head for the verse, chorus, and (to a lesser extent) the first half of the bridge, the effect is far more dramatic than it may seem. We once again see an example of how much can be done with a fairly minor change.</div>
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The first two repetitions of W and X essential build up to the chords of the third and fourth. Since I am already leaning way further towards the overly-thorough end of the spectrum, I will simplify this a bit (and certainly not because of any weakness in my transcription abilities). He is essentially just playing the tonic of the chords I described in the last two paragraphs. This gives the second part of the bridge a "revving up" effect, which contrasts rather nicely to the "pedal to the floor" way the song starts.</div>
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For the second part of the second part of the bridge (I know, I know. I'm fucking sorry, but I really think that this is the clearest way to explain things), i.e. the "3 – and – Y – Z - ", we see a simpler approach. Y and Z are each essentially two notes. Unlike the first part, this portion becomes less complex between the first and last two repetitions, but due to a small little puzzle that I can't quite work out****, I am going to treat all four repetitions as being identical. Y is a B note and Z is an A note.</div>
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The change from chords to notes gives an overall sense of simplification. More interesting however, is how the B and A relate to the normal chord progression. In the normal riff, an open chord is struck where the Y is placed, and the open chord includes a B note. Likewise on the main riff we see an A chord where the A note is. This means we don't have the rhythmic differences present in the first part. However, since the open chord is not really a chord of any particular variety (rather it is just a haphazard assortment of notes) the B note, while present, does not relate to the whole in any way. That means that it can really only be considered in light of its relation to the A Major chord and A note that immediately proceed it. In both cases it is the Major 2nd, which, while still considered consonant, is significantly less consonant than the 3rd or 5th. This adds to the overall vibe of "very mild and certainly not earth shattering change" that is present throughout the bridge, and the "look how much we can accomplish with so little" vibe throughout the entire song.</div>
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Now that the path of the song has gone over the bridge, we find the guitar absent on the other shore. For the second verse we see Them paring things down to just the bass, the drums, an organ riff for melody, and the vocals. The entire second verse proceeds without the guitar, and then, when the second chorus hits, the jump from the laid back and minimalistic verse to the charging, aggressive, and not quite as minimalistic chorus is one of those moments that can get your attention when the song is playing out of shitty PA speakers at the opposite corner of a bar while you are in the middle of a conversation. The chorus is played near identically to how it was done the first time around, but the change in context from the build-up seen in the first iteration to the sudden burst seen here makes it feel completely different.</div>
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After the second chorus is completed we get another run through of the first part of the bridge and then things end nice and neat on the tonic. Just like at the start of the song, there are no fancy outro parts or a big slowdown, they just run through the bridge, slam the brakes, and hit stop on the recording deck.</div>
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Alan Henderson's bass part, like the guitars, does not seek to break any new ground, save perhaps by having a firmer commitment to the fundamentals than his peers. Henderson's goal is simply to keep the melody of the guitar, organ, and vocals bonded to the chord progression and rhythm. As with most bass parts, Henderson does not play the chords themselves, or even any related combination of notes, but sticks to a single note at a time. Since the chord progression is E, D, and A, the bass parts of the song stick to the notes E, D, and A. Bass parts are always a little bit trickier to pull out than guitar parts, but I did my best to go through the whole song and I am pretty sure that he does not play a single note besides the three I just mentioned. Furthermore, I don't think he even shifts the octave on the three notes, meaning that from the start to the finish he uses three points along the fretboard to create music.</div>
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While he does play entirely within the range of three notes, and those three notes entirely correspond to chords that are being played on the guitar and notes that are being played on the keyboards, there is some variance in the patterns he plays. What is interesting about this is that the variance is not tied directly to the changes in the song structure, or to the changes in the other instruments. While none of these changes are massive, they add a slight bit of variety, and even if they are not something consciously picked up on, the subtle changes keep the forward momentum of the song going without the Wagnerian bombast of a chorus that is structurally different from the verse or chord changes that don't fall on the beat in a steady pattern.</div>
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Just to remind you, the song follows an "E – E – E – E – D – and – A – and - " pattern, where “and”s and numbers indicate that no new chord/note is being played. I am not going to note whether he is holding the note down during those gaps or muting the string (i.e. letting the note ring out vs. producing no sound from his instrument vs. creating a deliberately muddy effect by applying partial pressure), because that would require a more complex system of notation, and I'm already worried about overburdening the less theory-inclined as it is, though there are a few times where Henderson utilizes these elements. </div>
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So Henderson starts out playing a reproduction of the chord pattern, "E – E – E – E – D – and – A – and - ", so that the only beats he is not playing a note on are the ones where the guitar is playing an open chord. He does this for the first four bars of the song. While I said at the beginning that this song does not have any introduction, there is a very slight change that occurs around the fourth bar. Van's vocals come in at the end of the third, but he is essentially just leaning into the fourth, which is structurally when the sung part of the verse begins. This is a very common technique, if you haven't heard anyone do it before, pay attention the next time you are listening to music and you will see that it is done across nearly every genre, especially at the beginning of songs. The fourth bar is also where the barely audible two note organ part enters. Since the organ does not start until the third beat, what you have is Van's voice coming in just before the start of the fourth bar, the organ coming in at the end of the fourth bar, and the bass undergoing a minor modulation in between. Like I said it is not anything major, it goes from "E – E – E – E – D – and – A – and - " to "E – and – E – E – D – and – A – and - ", so one less E note on the first offbeat. The effect of this, beyond the simple fact that there is a change, is that it makes things slightly more punchy, since he comes to a full stop after the first E note. Next, the drummer stops doing the little marching band drum-roll he did on the fourth beat of bars two and four. However, since he only did this every other bar you don't notice the absence until the end of the fifth (if you notice it at all). Whether you consider the sum total of these minor changes to constitute a separate introduction or consider it the first phase of the verse is a pedantic distinction, but I think it makes more sense to consider it the first phase of the verse.</div>
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After the change, you get a long stretch where the riff alternates back and forth between "E – and – E – E – D – and – A – and - " and "E – and – E – E – D – and – A – A - ". In essence he switches between having an extra A note on the final offbeat or else just holding the note he plays on the 4 until the end of the bar. At the start of the second stanza (“she comes around here”), Henderson once again shifts to a slightly different pattern, this time "E – E – 2 – E – D – and – A – and - ". There is not much to say about this. You wouldn't notice unless you were paying attention for it, all it does is add the little bit of variance necessary to keep the aggressive advance of the song from getting bogged down in the mud.</div>
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He keeps this pattern going through the “G....L....etc” pre-chorus. Because the patterns vary so slightly and because the chorus has all the instruments really going at it (and because my speakers aren't that great), I can't say for certain that he starts his next change when the song itself switches over, but at some point during the chorus he goes back to the full "E – E – E – E – D – and – A – and - " seen at the beginning, and I do not think it would be unreasonable to assume this happens at the start.</div>
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As with the song itself, Henderson strips things down a bit for the bridge, playing a "E – and – 2 – E – D – and – A – and - " without holding the notes during the gaps for the first section. Now, if you remember from before, during the second part of the bridge we get the only point in the song where the guitar breaks from the “E on beats 1 and 2, D on beat 3, and A on beat 4” pattern. Also recall that the first half of the guitar part was composed of chords, while the second half was composed of notes. I am going to lay my diagram of the guitar part over my diagram of the bass riff so you can see how they interact with other, the (c) indicates a chord while the (n) indicates a note, as always the bass part is composed entirely of notes:</div>
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"E(c) – and – 2 – D(c) – 3 – and – B(n) – A(n) - "</div>
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"E – and – 2 – and – E – D – and – A - "</div>
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You can see that besides the fact that both parts start with an E, they really don't have much in common. If you remember from before, these chords are not the well-rooted major chords you normally hear, but instead little three string constructs that have the 5th as the bass note instead of the root. Since the lowest note on the guitar guitar chord is the most stabilizing, you shouldn't be surprised to find out that the bass E note (which is an octave lower) provides quite a bit of stability on this first beat.</div>
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However, that stability is thrown off kilter immediately afterwards. The next beat and offbeat are empty for both parts, then you get something interesting. The guitar comes in for its D chord (with A as the bass note), then on the next beat the bass comes in with an E. This is a full blown switch from the rest of the song, where the D comes in on the 3rd beat and prior to that beat it is all E notes. The bass essentially pushes the E note it was playing on the offbeat after the 2 up to the 3 beat, shoving the D that usually goes on the three forward to the next offbeat, and, taken in total with the guitar part, creating a back-and-forth between the D and the E.</div>
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On the 4 beat the bass does nothing while the guitar plays the B note, then both bass and guitar play A notes. The effect of this is to have stable bookends on an stack of notes that would topple over without them.</div>
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Taken in total, the second part of the bridge is even more dissonant than you would know just looking at the guitar part. It's not Sister Ray, but within the context of the rest of the song, where everything else is bolted to the “E-E-E-E-D-x-A-x” pattern, a change that would be mundane in other contexts is a powerful destabilization.</div>
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Befitting the general minimalism of the second verse, the bass is stripped down to its barest essentials, playing "E – and – E – and – D – and – A – and - " on the beats and nothing on the offbeats. It holds this pattern until the song gets to the second chorus, when it goes back to the "E – E – E – E – D – D – A – A - " that it played the last time around. You can see that since the bass part of the second verse was stripped down to the bare minimum needed to retain the skeleton of the chord progression (which the bass had to do, since the guitar is absent) when it doubles each of the notes in the chorus, it goes from the minimum to the maximum number of notes that keep be played while sticking the chord pattern and only playing on beats and offbeats. </div>
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The effect of this is two-fold. First, like other places in the song, it allows the band to make a large jump in intensity. Second, while allowing said jump to occur, the consistent adherence to the pattern gives both the verse and chorus a firm sense of rhythm.</div>
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When I listen to keyboardist Peter Barden's performance on this song, the first thing that enters my mind is Neil Young's quote: “I like to play with people who can play simple and are not threatened by other musicians thinking they can't play. And that eliminates 99 percent of the musicians.” ***** Bardens, who would go on to help found Camel and perform on their best albums (the s/t through Breathless), is no slouch on the piano. If you don't believe me just search YouTube for “Camel live 197x” where x is a number between 3 and 8, and you can see for yourself. I would not count him among my five or so favorite rock keyboardists, but if someone I was talking to did, I would not consider that a mark against their taste by any means. Here we see the man who would soon find himself feeling a bit naked if not behind at least five different keyboards/organs/synthesizers while on stage playing some of the simplest riffs in the history of professionally released music.</div>
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Seriously, I know it is a cliche to say that a particular song is so easy it can be played by someone who has never touched an instrument before, and that the reality is, unless you are particularly talented, even the simplest of guitar parts is going to require a few days of getting the feel for where the strings are in comparison to each other and getting to know how you pluck the strings properly before you can produce anything but perhaps a song or two from the first Godz album.</div>
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In contrast, about two minutes ago I decided that if I was going to write about this organ part I should at the very least know what he is playing. I sat down at my shitty Casio and thought to myself “given what I know about this recording, what notes would he likely be playing?” If you answered E, D, and A then congratulations, your catching on. Then I simply put the song on, listened to where on the beat the individual notes came in at, and played the note that corresponded to what the guitar and bass played on the main riff. With the exception of that little flourish he does on the second verse, I was able to transcribe the entirety of “Gloria”s organ part in less than half the length of the song itself, and assuming you have a keyboard, at least one functioning limb of some variety, and the basic sense of rhythm that is innate to human beings (I'm talking about some fancy percussive sensitivity here, I mean the thing that allows you to walk down the hall at evenly spaced steps) I am reasonably confident you can do so as well.</div>
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Bardens plays two separate phrases in the course of the song. The first one is the A note followed by the E note (or the E note followed by a long gap, followed by the A note if you want to be pedantic). The second is the E note, a brief little oscillation, the D note, and the A note.</div>
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The first part comes in at the end of the fifth bar of the song. Just so you don't have to go backtracking, the basic riff of “Gloria” goes “E – E – E – E – D – and – A – and -”. On the fourth beat of the bar he comes in with a matching A note, which is then followed by an E note on the first beat of the sixth bar, so that he is essentially playing two notes that are one beat apart, but what he is acually playing is spread out between two bars with three and a half beats separating them. Like I mentioned before, this organ part is barely audible within the mix, and it is only used to add the slightest hint of flavor to the song. It continues into the chorus and then cuts out on the bridge.</div>
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The second riff Bardens plays occurs during the second verse. Since the guitar is now absent, his role here is much more prominant then it was before, and this is evident in his more dominant position in the mix. Here his riff starts at the beginning of the bar and ends at its conclusion. He plays an E at the first beat, a little back-and-forth pattern on the offbeat of the second beat, a D on the third, and an A on the fourth. Again he is essentially just playing the tonic of each chord at the point when that chord is first introduced on the bass (and would have been introduced on the guitar had it been present). The little flourish is the only ornamentation here, and it is also the only part of the song that an absolute beginner might not be able to nail without any practice. That being said it is far from a Bill Evans phrase. All he is doing is hitting the D and C notes one after the other really fast. While I am not certain whether someone with zero prior experience could play it in time with the rest of the song, I am not certain that they couldn't either.</div>
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While relatively insignificant in the relation to the other parts of “Gloria”, I think we can see in Bardens' organ part the reason why Camel is so much better than the vast majority of prog groups. Despite the fact that I very much enjoy their music, and good rock keyboards in general, I did not realize that the man on this recording was the same one who recorded “Dunkirk” until, inspired by the vaguest of recollections, I decided to click his very blue name on the Wikipedia personel page for “Angry Young Them”. Part my failure to recognize Barden's name can be ascribed to the fact that the difference in style between this recording and the his later work caused it to be pretty far back on my mind's list of people who I know that might have worked on this song, but of part of it is that, unlike say Rick Wakeman, Bardens does not feel compelled to place himself at the top of every marquee. I decided to look into some of his solo stuff in researching this essay, and even when he plays live with a band that bears his name, he positions himself fairly far to the back of the stage, while the guitars are treated to frontal positioning. Again this is his own solo project we are talking about here. Compare that with Wakeman, who seems to think that the the front-center and front-right of the stage are the only places where he can make himself heard. I do not believe this is a mere difference in layout preference. Throughout Camel's lifespan they did an excellent job of placing the music first. While everyone in the group is extremely talented, you do not see any of the jockeying for who gets the longest solo, or competitions to see who in the band can blow through a series of scales the fastest. I always got the sense that everyone involved with the band cared much more about the sum total of the music than their individual performances, something that is often an issue with prog bands. That belief has been confirmed by the realization that Bardens is the organ player on Them's “Gloria”, where he is more than happy to have his contribution set to the very back of the mix and feels no compulsion to show off by shoving in an obnoxious solo.</div>
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Drummer John McAuley's work matches the simplistic yet energetic performance by the rest of the band. Throughout the song, he typically confines himself to playing on all the beats and offbeats and nowhere else. The exception to this are the points where he augments the pattern with a little drum roll on the fourth beat, which is his main device for adding variety to his performance.</div>
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His drums come in on the second beat of the first measure of the song, giving an effect almost like someone putting the pedal to the floor of a car with a misfiring engine, in that you get an initial sense of some motion and energy, but then a moment later you are shot forward at full speed. During the phase of the verse where Morrison has yet to enter, he performs a fourth beat marching band drum roll every other bar. Again this provides a strong initial momentum to the song. After the vocals start, and going all the way to the start of the chorus, he confines himself to a roll every four bars. This lessons the tension ever so slightly and gives the effect of a settling in.</div>
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McAuley and Morrison are the two reasons why the “G...L...O...R...I-I-I” pre-chorus has such a tremendous amount of stored energy. Van jumps in before the bar starts with “and her name is”, and then as soon as the bar kicks over McAuley does a partial version of the drum roll on the first beat and then immediately kicks the tempo up. He continues to increase the speed while the guitar and bass play on as usual, until a drum roll that would sound far more at home on a football field than in a rock song announces the chorus.</div>
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Now may be a good time to point out that of the various instruments employed in this song, the drums are the only ones that I lack even a rudimentary experience in. This is worth bringing to your attention because while McAuley continues to play just on the beats and offbeats (if you exclude the drum rolls) there is a change in the actual drums he is using when the song shifts into the chorus. This change has a big effect on the overall sound and for an assessment of this level of depth to simply not acknowledge that would be negligent on my part. However I lack the experience to shine any light on the exact nature of why the particular drums he is plays on the verse vs the chorus has the effect that it does, so a brief acknowledgment is all I can really give.</div>
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In regards to the drum rolls, McAuley takes a much looser approach during the chorus. Where before he performed them in a steady, predictable pattern, on the chorus he is deliberately more erratic. You get opening roll on the 1st beat, and then he does it again a little later on the 4th. Later still he devotes an entire bar to it, and then he once again goes back to the four when the chorus is about to end. All of these drum rolls are done in the more aggressive style I brought up earlier. The change in consistency matches the fact that the chorus is an eruption of passion and energy. Throughout the verse and bridge phases of the song there is a deliberate balance struck between maintaining a high energy and yet giving a sense of restraint which can be torn down for the chorus. Patti Smith's version of the song really runs with this, but it is still present here, and the drums are the primary vehicle of it's realization.</div>
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In keeping with this spirit, McAuley pulls things back a bit during the verse and bridge. He continues to play a similar drum pattern to what he played on the chorus, but slows things down again. A single drum roll on the fifth bar of the first part of the bridge strikes a middle ground between the madness of the chorus and the energetic restraint of the rest of the song. On the second part of the bridge he transitions to a pattern similar to what he played in the first verse, only with the marching band style drum rolls at the end of each bar. This is important because the missing guitar leaves a void that needs to be filled. By expanding the organ part and keeping a bit more energy in the drums (though an energy that has been restored to a predictable pattern) the band manage to fill some of the empty space will achieving an even greater gap between the verse and chorus' intensity the second time around.</div>
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Near the end of the chorus the drums transition to a choppier pattern that if anything has even more in common with a marching band than the previous pattern. This both adds a sense of variety and pulls things even further back so that the final chorus is all the more intense. The second run of the chorus is essentially the same as the first as far as the drums go, save the lack of the “building up” pre-chorus, so I won't repeat myself describing it, but at the end of the chorus McAuley closes out the song with a intense pattern that borrows some elements from Caribbean music. This bookends the intensity with which the song begins, so that the listener does not feel as though he has listened to something get born, mature, and then wither but instead that he has witnessed a supernova that burst into existence in radiant light and then instantly faded into nothingness.</div>
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Van Morrison is one of rock music's greatest vocalists and songwriters. Here we see the rare distinction of an artist who, in his very first recording session as a bandleader (though it was released on his second single), walked out of the studio having cut one of the greatest rock and roll songs of all time. While both his vocal and writing abilities reached their apex four years later with “Astral Weeks”, “Gloria” is not a stepping stone on his way to greater achievements, but the demonstration of his mastery of rock's fundamentals before he moves into the realm of experimentation.</div>
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As I have mentioned a number of times already, Morrison jumps in midway through the fourth bar of the song. His opening line are:</div>
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“Like to tell ya about my baby</div>
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You know she comes around</div>
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She about five feet four</div>
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A from her head to the ground”</div>
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Like the rest of the song, Morrison is at his most restrained during the verses, though he still possessions a very real force. The lyrics here serve to establish what the song is for, i.e. talking about his baby, and providing a brief description of said woman. To me Van's voice these first few lines is reminiscent of Mick Jagger's sexually suggestive drawl, but at the time of the single's recording (April of 1964) the only songs that the Stones had released were “Come on”, “I Wanna Be Your Man”, and “Not Fade Away”, none of which feature Jagger's more developed singing style, which means they cannot be counted as in influence. For that we would have to turn to The Kingsmen's “Louie Louie”, and to a lesser extent Elvis (who while suggestive, never quite attained the same casual suggestiveness we see here).</div>
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The second stanza:</div>
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“You know she comes around here</div>
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At just about midnight</div>
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She make ya feel so good, Lord</div>
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She make you feel alright”</div>
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sees Van starting to get a fire in his belly. This, as far as early rock music goes, is one of the most sexual suggestive lyrics to find it's way into a recording booth, and Morrison really goes the extra mile to make sure his audience has no misconceptions about just what goes on when this woman comes over at midnight that makes him feel so good. I know it is cliché to even bring this up, but limitations are often a blessing in disguise, and the restrictive cultural mores of 50's and early 60's led to a need to push vocals into new expressive terrain. The blueprint for these changes came from Blues, especially Chicago Blues, but there were unique challenges in creating a similar suggestiveness in music whose target audience included young white women. As long as he didn't use any explicit obscenity or direct references to the sex, Howlin' Wolf wasn't going to get investigated by the FBI for talking about how the little girls understand what he means by sneaking out the back door. Rock bands did not have that same luxury, as the incident with The Kingsmen proved.</div>
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Thus we have Morrison emphasizing the time of encounter and how it makes him feel by employing the soon to be unavoidable art of cutting from the regular vocal line into a pseudo-coital wail. </div>
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An interesting thing about these flourishes is their range in comparison to the rest of the melody. In his books on songwriting, which I highly recommend even if you are only interested in understanding song structure and not creating it, Rikky Rooksby, who I swear, despite his name, is not a washed up guitarist from an 80s hair metal band, uses the terms horizontal and vertical melody. I tried looking them up on Google but they are only used in the context of comparing melody to harmony, which is not what I am talking about. Rather, I am referring to the range of notes employed in the melodic line, which can be either large, aka vertical, as seen in the melodies Aretha Franklin uses, or small, aka horizontal, as in the vocal (and not the guitar) melodies of Jimi Hendrix songs. While this is not a common term, I believe it is a useful one, so I am going to stick with it.</div>
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Now, as with the majority of these mid-60s garage rock groups, Them's melodies are almost all horizontal. However, if we look at Van Morrison's later work, his vocal lines are as vertical as a wall. During these little passion howls, Morrison employs vocal jumps that are suggestive of his later work. When compared with the otherwise flat melody of “Gloria”, however, the effect of these leaps is far more dramatic.</div>
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This infusion of rock singing with sexual howls is then pushed even further in the pre-chorus, where the melody can be said to be outright vertical:</div>
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“And her name is G L O R I I I</div>
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G L O are I A (Gloria)</div>
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G L O are I A (Gloria)”</div>
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This is where things start to really cross into the extraordinarily sexual. Rather than simply suggesting intercourse through the vocal pitch and intonation, Morrison uses the increased tempo, intensified guitars, the lyrical subject (a woman's name), along with all the previously mentioned vocal devices to simulate the actual act of coming to a climax. The build-up of speed in the tempo is matched to the increased intensity of the vocals, as the individual letters of the name take on the character of the monosyllabic screams that indicate his approach. Even the name that is being spelled out suggests sexual release, gloria being the Latin term for glory, a delightfully blasphemous touch that Van may or may not have been aware of.</div>
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If the pre-chorus is the build-up to an orgasm, I'm sure you can guess what the chorus itself is. It's not as though the band is keeping it a secret. Instead we get Van screaming out the name of the titular woman (as well as asserting that he is going to shout it every night) as the band put the pedal down on everything and the song reaches it's crescendo.</div>
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One of the interesting things about the chorus is the way the band echo Morrison's vocals. Rock music has a long history of employing call and response, which first entered American music via the African-American Spirituals sung by slaves on the plantation fields. Through a genesis that is too complex to treat here (and beyond my expertise) it entered blues and folk music, where it was eagerly picked up by numerous rock acts. Patti Smith makes much more intricate use of the call and response in her version, but it is important to note that it plays a decisive roll in the key moment of Them's “Gloria”.</div>
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Next you have the winding down of the bridge and the pulling back of the guitar into a significantly less intense segment. However, since there are no vocals present I will move on, stopping only to point out the connection between the sexual climax of Morrison's choral performance and the sudden calm that comes over the music.</div>
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Van Morrison starts the second verse in a very restrained manner of singing, but quickly changes back into a style very similar to what I described in the first verse, though perhaps a bit more restrained. Again, this is to make the lunge into the final chorus all the more intense.</div>
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There is an expression seen in the fields of history, literature, and religion that refers to a particular event as the seal of it's category. The followers of Islam refer to Muhammad as the seal of the prophets, in that he is both the culmination of all the prophets who came before him and the most significant figure of the prophetic lineage. I've heard it said that Dante is the seal of the literature of the Middle Ages, since he brought all of the literary devices and approaches of that epoch to their highest point, which in turn paved the way for Petrarch to bring the Renaissance into the written word. In a similar fashion, I think it can be said that Them's “Gloria” is the seal of early rock and roll. It brings to completion the passionate, primal intensity of Jerry Lee Lewis, the defiant simplicity of Chuck Berry, and the sexual swagger of Elvis. From here, rock music will begin to shift into more experimental terrain. </div>
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Within a little over a year of this song's release the Beatles would release “Rubber Soul” and Dylan would bridge folk music and his own brand of experimentation with the rock scene, setting in motion the changes that the genre underwent in the mid to late sixties. I am not saying that Lennon and McCartney were sitting there listening to “Gloria” one day and said to each other that it was time to move things along, what I'm saying is that the world's cultural trends have a tendency to move in certain directions, and then when that direction cannot be taken any further, those who are looking to create something unique instinctively turn around and take things somewhere else. I believe that “Gloria” can be seen as the point at which the aesthetics of early 60's rock could not be taken any further. In Patti Smith's cover of the song we see what a musician born into the changes that occurred to the genre after this song came out could do with its core elements.</div>
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Nowadays a cover usually means a facsimile. Someone trying to map to different genres and instrumentation on an exact replica of an earlier recording. Even back then, outside the realm of jazz, the level of disparity between the original “Gloria” and Smith's modified rendition was rare. However, while on first listen their may seem to be very little in common between the two versions of the song, close analysis reveals just how much they share beneath the surface.</div>
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Unlike Them's version, Patti Smith's take on the song features a slow buildup that slowly rises in intensity rather than punching the listener in the face as the song opens. At the start of the song, the only instrument that is present if the piano. Now for those unfamiliar with the instrument, the traditional way to play the piano in jazz, blues, and rock music is to have the left hand play out a progression of chords while the right hand plays a melodic line. At the start of the song this is exactly what the piano does. The left hand plays an E chord on the first beat and a D chord on the second. Meanwhile, the right hand is playing an E note on the first beat, a D on the third, and an A on the fourth. I'll do another little diagram of this to give you a clearer indication, with the chords on top and the notes on the bottom, hopefully it will look familiar by this point:</div>
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E D</div>
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1 – and – 2 – and – 3 – and – 4 – and - </div>
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E D A</div>
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So far we have something that is nearly identical in terms of song structure and vastly different in terms of tone, harmony, instrumentation, and energy. Then Patti jumps into the mix with:</div>
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“Jesus died for somebody's sins but not mine.”</div>
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Now you may not have picked up on this at first, but these lyrics are entirely new. In fact, if you go back through the lyrics of Them's original, you will not find anyone mentioning the question of the soteriological value of Christ's passion at all. This line, when coupled with the aforementioned structural elements, should give you an idea of where Patti Smith is going to go with this. This is not going to be a rollicking, high energy keg party song, but is instead going to build something entirely new from the musical building blocks (and some of the lyrics) of the Them original. Another thing that it would be beneficial to keep in mind in this early stage is that Gloria is song not only written about a woman, but one that is written about a woman in such a way that it could not be easily sex-changed (her name is the chorus). Also remember that this song was released in 1975 (and first performed much earlier).</div>
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As the opening verse progresses, the piano gets looser with its rhythm and voicing. For those unfamiliar with the concept of voicing, the gist of it is that any chord will have the root, third, and fifth in a number of different octaves. Voicing refers to which notes of the chord are the played in relationship of highest to lowest (typically the root is lowest, followed by the third and then the fifth). We also see the introduction of bassist Ivan Kral, or perhaps even guitarist Lenny Kaye, who is credited with some of the bass parts though from this point on I will refer to all the bass parts as coming from Kral. Here we see whoever is playing bending the absolute shit out of the strings, to such an extent that it barely feels like you are listening to a bass.</div>
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While I had some difficulty in whether I should describe the opening bars of Them's “Gloria” as introduction, the way Patti Smith's version is structured makes such precise demarcations all but impossible. I am just going to say that the portion of the lyrics that discuss her defiant opposition to the salvific are the introduction while the transition to words that are at least somewhere in the orbit of Morrison's originals marks the beginning of the verse. In any case, at this stage you get a great picture of what Pound called phanopoeia, which he defined as the "casting of images upon the visual imagination": </div>
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“Jesus died for somebody's sins but not mine</div>
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Meltin' in a pot of thieves</div>
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Wild card up my sleeve</div>
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Thick heart of stone</div>
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My sins my own</div>
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They belong to me, me”</div>
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These lines and some of the ones that follow are adapted from “Oath”, a poem that she wrote and performed at poetry readings prior to recording this song. While there are no shortage of rock musicians who have tried their hand at poetry, Patti Smith and Leonard Cohen are the only two who had a gift for it, at least as far as names that would be familiar to most music fans go. Of the two my personal preference goes to Smith, though this has more to do with our shared adoration of dearest Ginsberg than any objective criterion. As a side note, if you are interested in seeing some of the poetry of all three of the names I just mentioned, as well as finding out for yourself whether other rock star's attempts at the medium are worth anything, the Alan Kaufman edited “Outlaw Bible of American Poetry” provides an excellent overview to this as well as the rest of the American counter-cultural poetic tradition.</div>
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While it can be debated whether Smith or Cohen is the greatest poet from the rock tradition, what cannot be argued (at least very well) is that Smith made the furthest strides in incorporating the poetic forms of the twentieth century into rock music. There is some confusion about the overlap between poetry and musical lyrics. The reality is that there are certain limitations in how you can poetically express yourself over a steady beat. At the same time there are also limitations to the forms used by most poetry prior to Whitman. As it turns out these limitations are rather similar, though not quite identical. If you can find it, Leonard Bernstein hosted and wrote an excellent episode of the 1950's documentary show Omnibus called “The World of Jazz” where he shows the similarities between iambic pentameter and the blues song, culminating with a performance of a Shakespeare sonnet over a standard twelve bar progression.</div>
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There is however, a large difference between the constrained verse of earlier poetry and free verse (as well as its variations). The entire purpose of free verse is to have the rhythm of the poem loosed from the constraints of repetition, so that the poem's rhythm has more in common with Hindustani Classical Music or the traditional forms of Japan. To once again refer to Ezra Pound, it is composed “in the sequence of a musical phrase, not in the sequence of a metronome.”</div>
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This of course means that it is incredibly difficult to get free verse to “stick” on top of any steady beat, and the problem is amplified ten fold when your beat is the hard, steady pounding of rock music. Yet Smith was able to do what few people could in incorporating free verse poetry and rock music in a way that does not dull either. Elsewhere on “Horses”, the album that features “Gloria”, most notably on “Free Money”, she crosses the line into lyrics that are completely free, but here she strikes a middle ground. In these opening lines you can see her avoiding any consistent, repeatable pattern in her phrasing, yet at the same time giving due deference to the steady turning of the bars. I think the best way to illustrate what I mean is to actually look at the first few lines, starting with the syllable counts of each one in comparison with the Them original:</div>
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Jesus died for somebody's sins but not mine: 11 syllables</div>
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Meltin' in a pot of thieves: 7 syllables</div>
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Wild card up my sleeve: 6 syllables (she pronounces wild in two pieces /waɪ:ʊld/)</div>
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Thick heart of stone: 4 syllables</div>
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My sins my own: 4 syllables</div>
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They belong to me: 5 syllables</div>
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Me: 1 syllable</div>
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vs</div>
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Like to tell ya about my baby: 9 syllables</div>
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You know she comes around: 6 syllables</div>
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She about five feet four: 6 syllables</div>
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A from her head to the ground: 7 syllables</div>
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You know she comes around here: 7 syllables</div>
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At just about midnight: 6 syllables</div>
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She make ya feel so good, Lord: 7 syllables</div>
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She make you feel alright: 6 syllables</div>
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You can see that, while Morrison does add a bit extra to the opening line, he, like nearly all other musicians, confines his words to a steady pattern that is aligned with the pattern of the bars itself. While it is not rigid enough to be called a form a la iambic pentameter, it still firmly adheres to the rhythm of the music.</div>
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If you look at the range of syllables, you will see that the lowest amount in a given line is six, and the highest is nine, and there is only one nine syllable line: the first one, whose higher density helps add to the initial punch of the song I described earlier. That gives a range of four syllables, and a range of two syllable if you don't count the first line.</div>
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Patti Smith's opening lines are very different. I will not include that final one syllable line in this because it is used more as a link between the introductory lyrics and the first verse rather than a line in itself. You still have a range of eight syllables (from four to eleven), which is double the range of Morrison's version (or quadruple if you don't count the first line).</div>
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When you compare how she arrays her lines over the beat, you get an even greater sense of the difference between the two. Remember that in Them's version Morrison starts that lines a little before the bar turns over but otherwise keeps to a one line per bar pattern. Brackets denote the start and end of a line, dashes at the start and end of a syllable note that they are the same word but enunciated on separate beats, while a steady dotted line (I know that's an oxymoron) indicates she is holding the note.</div>
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1 - and - 2 - and - 3 - and - 4 - and -</div>
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[Je- -sus died for</div>
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1 - and - 2 - and - 3 - and - 4 - and -</div>
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some--bod- -ies sins but not</div>
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1 - and - 2 - and - 3 - and - 4 - and -</div>
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mi-----------------------------ne]</div>
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1 - and - 2 - and - 3 - and - 4 - and -</div>
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[melt-</div>
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1 - and - 2 - and - 3 - and - 4 - and -</div>
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-in in a pot of</div>
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1 - and - 2 - and - 3 - and - 4 - and -</div>
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thieves]</div>
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1 - and - 2 - and - 3 - and - 4 - and -</div>
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[wild card up my</div>
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1 - and - 2 - and - 3 - and - 4 - and -</div>
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sleeve]</div>
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1 - and - 2 - and - 3 - and - 4 - and -</div>
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[thick heart of</div>
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1 - and - 2 - and - 3 - and - 4 - and -</div>
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stone] [my sins my</div>
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1 - and - 2 - and - 3 - and - 4 - and -</div>
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own] [they be- -long to</div>
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1 - and - 2 - and - 3 - and - 4 - and -</div>
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me]</div>
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1 - and - 2 - and - 3 - and - 4 - and -</div>
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[me]</div>
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The best place to start is probable the spacing of the lines. Rather than using the start and end of a bar (or a little before the start and end of the bar) as the device that marks out each line, Smith spreads her lines over the bars in a way that doesn't seem to be thought out at first, but, like the work of Pollack, uses the impression of disarray for a deliberate effect.</div>
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Four lines start on the first beat of the bar, one line starts on the second, one on the third, and one on the offbeat after the fourth. Regarding the last syllable of the lines, one ends on the offbeat after the second, while six come in at the first beat of the bar. Right away this establishes that while the turn of the bar is not going to be a tomb for Patti to bury a perfectly good poem by trying to shove it into a rigid rhythm, it is going to be recognized for what it is, a series of points that have greater and lesser significance within the steady repetition of the beat.</div>
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The next thing to look at is both how she packs the varied syllable lengths of each line into differing numbers of beats, e.g. the first line has eleven syllables and the words of the line are sung over ten beats of music. It is also important to note the length of the gap between each line, e.g. there are five and a half beats separating the end of the first line from the start of the second line. To help visualize this I laid out all three criteria side by side, along with the total number of beats of the combined line and gap.</div>
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“Jesus died for somebody's sins but not mine”</div>
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<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>11 syllables<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>10 beats long<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>5.5 beat gap<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>15.5 total beats</div>
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“Meltin' in a pot of thieves”</div>
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<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>7 syllables<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>5 beats long<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>3.5 beat gap<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>8.5 total beats</div>
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“Wild card up my sleeve”</div>
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<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>7 syllables<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>4.5 beats long<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>3.5 beat gap<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>8 total beats</div>
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“Thick heart of stone”</div>
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<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>4 syllables<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>4.5 beats long<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>1.5 beat gap<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>6 total beats</div>
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“My sins my own”</div>
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<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>4 syllables<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>2.5 beats long<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>.5 beat gap<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>3 total beats</div>
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“They belong to me”</div>
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<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>5 syllables<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>3.5 beats long<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>3.5 beat gap<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>7 total beats</div>
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Now I'll get into the reasoning for having some lines tighter packed than others a little later, for now the key takeaway is how broad the differences are between not just each lines syllable count, but also on how much time she spends on each one and how much of a gap lies between them.</div>
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The first line lasts two and a half bars, going from the first beat of this portion of the song to the midway point of the third bar. It is then followed by a five and a half beat gap, so that the first word of the second line falls on the final offbeat of the fourth bar. This is followed by three lines that are roughly five beats long each, which have three and a half beats in the gaps between them. There are two things that are crucial about the lyrics up to this point. The first is that there is a loose pattern in play here, where a number of syllables, which vary from line to line but are always fairly close ratio of beats to syllables, which are followed by a gap a little more than half the number of beats it took to sing the line itself. The second is that these are only rough approximations; vague outlines that tend to start fairly close to the first beat of the bar and finish somewhere near the end of a bar (typically a little afterwards).</div>
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And therein lies the crucial difference between Patti's approach to combining words and music in “Gloria” and that of almost everyone else. This is not like the poetry sections of “Free Money”, “Kimberly”, or “”Land: Horses/Land of a Thousand Dances“ where she lets loose a barrage of poetry while intentionally ignoring where each line starts and ends in comparison to the rhythm of the song. Nor is it like Them's version (and again pretty much every other rock/pop song) where the steady beat is the be all and end all of what defines a line, and if the words the lyricist wrote don't fit nicely then they'll just have to be changed. Here Patti gives due respect to the beat but does not prostrate herself before it. She had written versions of these words prior to recording it in Gloria, and the words and meter are slightly different, but while she did make some changes she did not take a hammer and pound a dearth or excess of words into the bar. Instead she takes each line and lays it overtop of the beat in such a way that it provides emphasis to her lyrics.</div>
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To illustrate my point let's look at the words of this verse that fall upon the beats themselves (verses the offbeats). “Jesus”, “died”, “somebodies”, “sins”, “but”, “mine”, “melting”, “a”, “pot”, “thieves”, “wild”, “card”, “my”, “sleeve”, “thick”, “heart”, “stone”, “my”, “my”, and “me” all come in on a beat, while “for”, “not”, “in”, “of”, “of”, and “sins” come in on offbeats. </div>
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Now, if you were to make a list of which words are most important and which words are least important in terms of the poetry itself (and not grammatical linkage), it would not look too different from this list. If it were me I might switch out the “but” and “a” from the first list for “not” and “sins” from the second, but besides that I would keep it as is. If you take into account the fact that the words come in a sequence and that any time you put two neighboring words on beats you have to leave a long gap between them, then you will see how much artistry went into this section.</div>
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On the subject of spacing, in the second part of this verse we get some very interesting stuff in terms of how packed the syllables are. Whereas all the previous lines had syllable counts slightly higher than the number of beats and a gap between the lines that was less than the length of time it took to sing the line itself, the “Thick heart of stone” line is four syllables long, spread out over four and a half beats, and is followed by a one and half beat gap. </div>
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One of the crucial advantages of free verse over both traditional poetic forms as well as song lyrics is that the variety in line length allows for a the poet a far greater control over what is emphasized. There are a countless ways that the variations in line length can be employed for poetic effect, but I am going to focus on two of them. </div>
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An example of when a shortened line is employed to mark the contents as significant can be seen in Keats' “Ode to a Nightingale”, where the iambic pentameter gives the lines rhythmic consistency through it's soft-hard pattern. The downside to such a regular meter is that each line has an equal weight, so the only thing that can provide emphasis are the words themselves. However, since “Ode to a Nightingale” is not strict iambic pentameter, but has a single line of iambic trimeter in each stanza (three feet instead of five), that shorter line naturally comes on stronger than the others, almost like when an interlocutor in a conversation suddenly makes a firm demand, or like the direct, tight quality of an advertising slogan.</div>
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The other side of this can be seen in Randall Jarrell's “Death of a Ball Turret Gunner”, where the first four lines come in unsteady groups of between ten and twelve syllables, so that when he hits that last line, which is fourteen syllables, the tone comes off as almost conversational, like it is just a random aside someone happened to slip in before they walked off, which is obviously in contrast to it's vivid subject matter:</div>
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“From my mother’s sleep I fell into the State,</div>
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And I hunched in its belly till my wet fur froze.</div>
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Six miles from earth, loosed from its dream of life,</div>
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I woke to black flak and the nightmare fighters.</div>
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When I died they washed me out of the turret with a hose.”</div>
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The addition of the underlying percussion of rock music adds an extra layer to this. The opening line of the song is eleven syllables while the following two are seven. In this context (i.e. a confrontational statement followed by two images) such a disparity helps define the first line's differences in comparison to the other two, and gives it the effect of a statement of purpose. But the beat is also in play, and as I said before all three of the first line have a fairly similar ratio of syllable count to number of beats to length of gap, whereas the fourth line is spread out over more beats than there are syllables, and it is followed by a gap that is one third the time it took to sing the line. So you have a sudden shift into a more spacious delivery of the line itself with a tightening of the space between each line. The effect of this is similar to what I described with “Ode to a Nightingale”, where the listeners intuitively perceives a greater significance to the more spacious line than the others.</div>
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This fourth line establishes a new rhythmic approach that is taken even further with the following line. “My sins my own” has four syllables two and a half beats long and a half beat gap. It stands at the opposite end of the spectrum from the opening line in terms of its syllable count, how tightly the syllables are packed, and the length of the gap, yet they both employ these divergent approaches as a means of marking themselves as significant. Of course it is not a coincidence that “My sins my own” is the response to the first line provocation, while the lines in between are designed to produce an image in the listeners mind that enhances the effect of the transgressive theology.</div>
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The shortening of the gaps lets the lines bunch tighter and tighter together, so that, where the opening lines of the song come off at a leisurely pace, by the time we get to the end of everything is rushing out. After the half beat gap that follows “My sins my own” we get a line that is five syllables long and spread over three and a half beats. The line, “They belong to me”, comes off in a manner similar to the final line of “Death of a Ball Turret Gunner” in that by taking a powerful statement and expanding the syllable count and how quickly it is sung, and presents it in a deliberately conversational, matter of fact way.</div>
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Now that I've gone over the rhythm and meter, I'd like to look at the words themselves. As I said before the six opening lines can be thematically divided into two parts. The first and final two lines deal with expression a theological idea, while the second and third lines present images that contextualize the aforementioned idea, and the fourth is halfway between the two and performs a bridging function.</div>
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I hate to keep using the word theological to describe the first group, but I cannot think of a better choice. On the one hand, it uses an idea vital to the salvific doctrine of nearly all surviving Christian sects and presents an radically differing interpretation. On the other, it does not aim for any broader application outside the wholly personal, and in fact deliberately avoids the sort of all-encompassing interpretations you would see in Augustine or Aquinas. </div>
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The choice to say that “Jesus died for somebody's sins”, if taken directly, could be interpreted as a tacit acceptance of the position that Christ's death on the cross was responsible for the redemption of humanity, but that would be missing the point. The key word in the first line is “somebody's”. If you were to replace that word with “humanity's” or “the world's”, then you would be looking at something that could be regarded as straight theology, or at the very least something in the realm of William Blake or Camus. However, instead Smith chooses the word “somebody's”, a word so vague and casual that it stands against the Sunday school vocabulary of the rest of the line like Kareem Abdul Jabbar in Munchkin Land.</div>
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The word choice is deliberately impertinent, and by choosing such a commonplace term Smith is essentially confirming the irrelevance of broader religious ideas and the centrality of the personal, and that the broader ideas used to present herself in the way she does only matter insofar as they can be used to express what she wishes to express.</div>
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And what is the personal statement she wishes to express. Well I can't say it any better than she can. Her sins are her own. They belong to her. It is a statement of radical accountability and defiant will. A doctrine that asserts the powerlessness of humanity against sin's that they had no personal control over and a redemption they played no part in is used to contrast the total responsibility she takes for her actions, including the actions she is going to describe later in this song.</div>
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Next we get to two lines which provide a graphic depiction of hell. Rather than advance any kind of linear narrative progression, these lines enhance the conviction behind what she has said previously. They amplify the defiance I mentioned above by following the salvific doctrine she espouses to it's limits and then refusing to flinch away from them. Rather than having narrative value, their value is phanopoetic, presenting vivid images which contextualize the other lyrics.</div>
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The first line describes the specifics of the torture that, if one accepts the doctrines of mainstream Christianity, one will endure if one adopts Smith's attitude. The second provides a description of how Patti will be attired as she undergoes this torment. To grasp the significance of this put your mind in the perspective of someone in the early 70s (and the cultural touchstones that would be recent to such a person) and pull up the first names that come to mind when you read the words “outlaw figure”. More likely the names and images that popped into your head came from a tradition of figures that started with Brando in “The Wild One” and progressed through the Hell's Angel's and Easy Rider to the Ramones, a tradition which is famous for a very particular style of dress that includes leather jackets, denim or leather pants, and a number of accessories, including the stowage of an item of particular significance, typically cigarettes or playing cards, in the rolled up shirtsleeve. So again, we get an image that reinforces the atmosphere of defiance, and by choosing just a wild card (instead of the whole deck), she brings to mind all the obvious connotations that come with the word wild. Why else do you think she would use the shittiest, most useless part of a deck of cards besides maybe the thing that explains the rules is name dropped so often in rock songs.</div>
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The choice to use thieves as the sin she is being punished for is significant. The obvious choice for this particular song would be lust, but Patti is chooses to take a more suggestive route. Again it might be helpful to take a trip into the counter-cultural tradition that Patti was active in to get a feel for why the choice of the thief is so important. Beginning with the Beat generation, we see both Kerouac and Ginsberg romanticizing Neal Cassady's numerous arrests for stealing cars as an act of a person who is taking all the joy that he can by force from a dry and sterile world. The pavement on the interstate highways was still fresh and the car was still a symbol of American prosperity, so in their eyes Cassady's actions were that of a man who was hell-bent on experiencing the vast expanses of the world around him at the expense of any other concern. A little later on the thief enters the consciousness of the 1960's counter-culture. The best example of this can be seen in Dylan's and “All Along the Watchtower”, where he describes a joker, i.e. one who draws the laughter of others, and a thief, i.e. one who takes what does not belong to him, approaching a watchtower filled with people from every station of life, who “don't know what any of it is worth” prepared for a great confrontation. So, in the context of “Gloria” we can see the Patti's decision to cast herself with the thieves instead of the lustful as an assertion that by acting on the desires expressed in this song, she is taking joy and pleasure from a world that has condemned the particular manifestation of joy described in the song.</div>
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The line “Thick heart of stone” serves to indicate that, even suffering eternal damnation for her actions, Smith does not feel any remorse for them. It is followed by the recapitulation of the ideas brought up in the first paragraph that I dealt with previously. Then we get to the final line of this introduction, which is simply the word “me”. As she says this, the song transitions to the verse, making the “me” the hinge of the changeover. This is effective because the previous lines have all dealt with the idea of personally taking charge of one's actions and their consequence, so inserting a dramatic shift on the word “me” emphasizes the personal importance.</div>
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Now, if I had to guess, the question that is burning in the minds of most of the people (if any) who made it this far is “What the hell does any of this stuff have to do with the frathouse anthem you spent the first half of this article discussing?” While I cannot give a complete response yet, I promise that this question will not go unanswered. It may be helpful to divide the song into three parts: the intro and false-stop outro, the verse, and the chorus. Of these, the first group is the furthest from Them's “Gloria”, while the latter is closest, with the verse falling somewhere in between the two. So now that we've arrived at the verse, let's look at the place where it bears the most in common with the original, the music.</div>
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So, as the song changes into the verse we get two E chords on the guitar, both timed to the “me” and both on the first beat of consecutive bars. This is a forceful way of announcing the presence of the guitar into the mix. In fact, it announces the presence of two guitars, one doing rhythm and one doing a riff. Unfortunately, while Patti Smith and Lenny Kaye are credited with playing guitar on the album, it is not made clear which is performing which part. To further complicate things, bassist Ivan Kral played guitar on some of the songs, but the liner notes do not specify which. If I had to guess Kaye did the leads and Smith did rhythm, but there is no way of knowing for sure so I will just refer to the two guitars by their roles.</div>
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Before I get into the specifics of the each instrument's part, now is a good time to look at the bigger picture. Them's “Gloria” kicks off in sixth gear, with all the instruments more or less being there right from the start. But by the time we reach the start of the verse we can already see how different Smith's version is, opening with an introduction featuring nothing but a piano and those weird bass stretches. One of the best things about her version is the way her band manage the slow buildup in intensity that takes up a good chunk of the song.</div>
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So anyway, we got those two E chords at the start of the bars, and then it moves right into a more regular rhythm guitar playing a progression of two chords, each played dead on beat. There are two E chords followed by two D chords. This means that for the first or second time so far we get a change in the chord progression (I'm kinda on the fence about whether that B in the Them's bridge constitutes a change in the progression). However, remember that the D chord has an A as the fifth (i.e. it is composed of D, F#, and A). This alone would not justify the similarity, but when combined with the riff the lead guitar is playing, the total effect bears quite a bit in common with Them's E, E, D, A pattern.<br />
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This is an interesting choice on Smith's part. Because she is using a long rise in intensity as an important structural element of the song, where the speed, instrumental complexity, and consonance all rise in plateaus over the course of the verse. The introduction of the guitar is a big jump, so she is able to take the Them chord progression and modify it so that the final chord is only implied and still keep the sense that things are warming up. Then, later in the verse, she will use the keyboard to bring the A chord back and this will act as another step up.</div>
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Now, unfortunately, since nobody has bothered to either put up a tab of the leads or play an accurate cover on YouTube, you're going to have to rely on the author's, once again admittedly terrible, transcription skills. While I have no confidence in my ability to give an accurate rendering of any of those fills the lead guitarist plays on top of the riff, I'm pretty sure I got the main melody.</div>
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It's essentially broken into two parts, both of which follow an identical pattern but starting on a different note. Now this whole riff takes place over a single bar, but because I have chosen an overly simple method of represent music that hopefully allows people unfamiliar with music theory to follow along, I am going to break it up into two bars for the purposes of the visual. Since this riff uses the same notes in different octaves, I will use E-h/A-h/etc for the higher octave version and E-l/A-l/etc for the lower octave.</div>
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<span style="white-space: pre;">1 – and – 2 – and – 3 – and – 4 – and -
E-l </span> <span style="white-space: pre;">E-h</span> <span style="white-space: pre;">D </span> <span style="white-space: pre;"> E-l
1 – and – 2 – and – 3 – and – 4 – and -
A-l </span> <span style="white-space: pre;">A-h</span> <span style="white-space: pre;">G </span> <span style="white-space: pre;"> A-l</span></div>
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The important thing to note here is that Patti has now gotten rid of the A chord, which technically changes the progression from I-VII-IV to just I-VII. However, since the song began with an A chord just like the Them version, so long as the A's presence is suggested, it doesn't really feel like a change in the progression.<br />
<br />
So remember that the first bar is an E chords, while the riff has the presence of a D note in addition to the E notes. Since the D is a consonant note, the first bar is does not have a whole lot to discuss. However, in the second bar, the odd note (the G) does not fit very well with the E Mixolydian key (which has a G#), but does fit with the D major chord. The presence of the A notes, are also one of the elements that make the disappearance of the chord less striking.</div>
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Underneath all of this is the bass, which is working to glue everything to the key. It plays a very simple:</div>
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<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Bass:</div>
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<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>1 – and – 2 – and – 3 – and – 4 – and - </div>
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<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>B E A E A</div>
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<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Important lead guitar notes:</div>
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<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>1 – and – 2 – and – 3 – and – 4 – and - </div>
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<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>E D A G A</div>
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<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Rhythm guitar:</div>
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<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>1 – and – 2 – and – 3 – and – 4 – and - </div>
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<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>E E D D </div>
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<div>
riff that keeps the E, D, A structure of the Them song framed in the listener's mind even though the guitar is only playing two chords. You can see that on the A notes, the bass and lead guitar echo each other or play their notes one after another, which helps to imply the chord. The B note that it plays on the first note is the fifth of E major, meaning that it is fits within the key. On the 2 it plays an E note which helps cement the E major chord. Finally there is the fourth beat, where it plays an E note which, like the G, is consonant with D major. However, immediately after this it plays and A, which suggests the missing chord.</div>
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The bass proceeds more or less in this fashion throughout the multi-stage first verse, the only variation is that it will add extra notes into one of the four beats. In other words during one of the beats that is playing an A note, Kral might add in extra A to the offbeat. This is done to mark changes in the song structure without altering the shape of the riff, and to add little flourishes.<br />
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Throughout the song, and especially during the crucial first verse, the drum takes the lead role among the instruments in realizing the Patti's unique structural vision. More than any of the other instruments, its changes in speed and temp mark out the various stages. Because of this, it is one of the most interesting elements. At the onset of the verse, however, it is doing the bare minimum required of rock drumming, playing solely on each beat, except for the occasional extra stroke on the offbeat of the 4.</div>
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Lets get back to the words. During the main part of the verse, the lyrics switch from poetic musings to a narrative. While this is still far from what Morrison was singing, unlike the introduction, the lyrics are now at least somewhat related to the subject of the original “Gloria”. The first stage of the verse, however, acts as a bridge between the two.</div>
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<div>
“People say 'beware!'</div>
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But I don't care</div>
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The words are just</div>
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Rules and regulations to me, me”</div>
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Given that what has come before is a metaphysical speculation on the value of radical freedom, and what is to come is a fairly straightforward narrative, these lines can be seen as a mechanism for showing that the statements made in the introduction are the protagonist's. </div>
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<div>
I say protagonist rather than Patti because the lyrics of her “Gloria” blur the line between the story/POV song and the confessional. It's worth remembering that ten years before this song was written, as far as popular music was concerned, the singer-songwriter wasn't a thing. In 1955, when Johnny Cash sang “Folsom Prison Blues”, not only would nobody have thought to even consider that the lyrics might be from the singer's perspective, but few would have even gone so far as to think that the idea of singing about a killer stuck in jail might, even on a metaphorical level, contain some relevance to the singers life.</div>
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This changed a bit in the early-mid 60's with Dylan. He was not the first person to add the strongly personal elements typically found in poetry to song, but he was the first to make a significant impact on the popular cultural landscape doing so. After this point, all the way until today, any rock lyricist with a decent reputation, for better or worse, will have the words they write be seen as at least potentially being a metaphor for the personal. This does not mean even the most blundering of interpreters automatically regard every song as a autobiographical statement, even for the champions of this style of writing, but more often than not it will be seen that way by at least some people. An example of this distinction can be seen in the old master himself. “The Ballad of Hollis Brown” is a story song that was and still is recognized as a reflection on the suffering of subsistence farmers. However, “Outlaw Blues”, released just a year later, was on the surface no more about Dylan than “Hollis Brown” was, yet you would be hard pressed to find more than a paragraph written about the song that does not mention the difficulties and isolation Dylan felt during his transition from a solo acoustic folk act to a rock act with a full band.</div>
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So context is and was key for making the distinction. Now looking at the context for Gloria, we can see the Them original is a standard romance number (if lewd for its time and place), which, save when they are written by someone like Dylan, would not be regarded as a personal statement. However, Patti does not stick with the source material, and the introductory lyrics were taken from a poem she had written that was obviously at least somewhat personal in nature. Then we have the previously quoted stanza, which links the intro to the narrative portion of the verse. So what we have here is a deliberate blurring of the lines between the narrative song and the confessional. Smith employs techniques that lead the listener to conclude that it is either one or the other, but then at other points will push in the opposite direction, not allowing the song to slide easily into either the “story song with a protagonist” or the “personal statement” camp. This liminal position both allows Smith to go beyond her own personal experience, and at the same time evoke the heightened listener empathy and individualistic force of the confessional.</div>
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I'll take a brief moment here to draw a little attention to Patti's vocals. During the introduction, she delivers her lines, fittingly, in a style reminiscent of a poetry reading. The first line is sung, but then afterwards, until you get to the final “me”s, she more or less speaks her lines, though with a bit of sing-talking and some deliberate usage of extended drawls that bridge the two worlds a bit. During the verse, she delivers the the first two lines in a singing voice, and then she takes things back to a speak-singing style that is a little more pronounced than in the intro. The way this song slowly evolves itself over time is one of the most notable things about it, and even at this early stage we can see how it is slowly but steadily reshaping itself.</div>
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<div>
On the subject of the song's transitions, the next thing we get is another pair of “me”s, during which the song stops save the E major chords that occur at the same time as her vocals. These percussive jolts introduce the next stage of the verse. Now we see a pattern being formed. Smith will not use this specific interlude anymore (the repeated “me”s), but she does further divide the verse into a number of different phases that have variations in the music and instrumentation, each faster than the last, and they are all separated by little interludes similar to this one.</div>
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So like I said, this next phase of the verse is noticeably faster than the previous one. It also has both the rhythm and bass guitars adding more notes and chords to each bar, though the progression is kept intact. Whereas before, the little guitar fills that come in over the leads occurred every other bar with a very laid back character, they are now more erratic and have a greater intensity. Also, unlike earlier in the song, where the changes in speed happened during the interludes, this stage of the verse gets progressively faster throughout it's entire duration</div>
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<div>
“I walk in a room, you know I look so proud</div>
<div>
I'm movin' in this here atmosphere, well, anything's allowed</div>
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And I go to this here party and I just get bored</div>
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Until I look out the window, see a sweet young thing</div>
<div>
Humpin' on the parking meter, leanin' on the parking meter”</div>
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Now we see the lyrics transition over fully to a narrative. The fact that the previous lines all relate to the current protagonist can be seen by her depiction as “proud” and “bored”. While I know that I just went off on a whole thing about how this song deliberately blurs the lines between singer and protagonist, and it was perfectly common for earlier singers, more often women than men, to sing songs written from a male POV while keeping the assumption that their subject is a man, I feel that the “her” pronoun is justified. </div>
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<div>
Obviously, the title character of this song is a woman. Rather than either flat out making it clear that the protagonist is male or that the lyrics are a personal statement, Patti uses the middle path between the two that I talked about earlier to prod at the rigid homophobia of this song's time and place. This song was written about a decade and a half after Ferlinghetti got arrested for publishing Ginsberg lines about getting “fucked in the ass by saintly motorcyclists”, so there is an obvious practical benefit to keeping things vague, but I think there is more to it than just that. </div>
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<div>
Throughout the entirety of “Horses”, Patti takes a transgressive stance towards the gender norms of the early 70s. “Redondo Beach” is a narrative song that explicitly refers to two lesbians, while “Free Money” subverts the notion of men as the material provider for woman. Even the album's cover shows this tendency. I am the last person anybody should be turning to for fashion commentary, but I am pretty sure that she is rocking a man's suit in that image, and she is clearly taking a stereotypical “I'm a serious businessman and I both work and play hard” jacket draped over the shoulder pose. Thus, by choosing to cover a song that is just dripping with heterosexual machismo and then defiantly keeping the name, Smith maintains the sexual energy of the source material while attacking the idea that a love song has to be between a man and a woman that pins it up. She takes a exceedingly powerful but nevertheless also reasonably safe song (in the same way it is a safe move for a rapper in 2017 to sing about shooting people) and redirects its energy into a sociopolitical attack that doesn't damper down the original's sexual power but in fact enhances it.</div>
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In fact, the last two lines of this phase of the verse, where she refers to the titular woman “humpin on a parkin meter” take the sexualization to a poetically overexaggerated extreme. Obviously I don't think too many of us would be particularly aroused if we were at a party and happened to glance out the window to see a woman trying to fuck a parking meter, but you have to look at this line as a poetic image rather than a literal one. It is a piece of characterization, indicating that Gloria is bursting forth with sexual energy. The parking meter's phallic character shouldn't require any explanation, and the sudden addition of a masculine image further keeps this song from explicitly going one way or the other with regards to the lesbianism. For it's time, the wild mania of Van Morrison's “Gloria” chorus was regarded as about as a pinnacle for obvious sexuality, but, without ever specifically mentioning the sex act itself, Patti Smith pushes things into a comically overcharged realm, at once capitalizing on and poking a little bit of fun at the original song's libido.</div>
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<div>
“Oh, she looks so good, </div>
<div>
oh, she looks so fine</div>
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And I got this crazy feeling and then I'm gonna ah-ah make her mine”</div>
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<div>
The next transition bears a number of similarities to the previous two and a number of differences. There are still the two chord-punctuated single syllable utterances, but she has replaced “me” with “uh” and sings them at a much quicker interval, thus adding to the overall buildup of intensity. In addition there are now two lines that precede the monosyllabic utterance, which feature an increase in the song's tempo as they are played******. This buildup is much slower than the sudden leap after she makes the utterances, so you end up with this two-stage effect, sort of like someone shifting gears in a car until they hit sixth, at which point they lay down their foot on the gas pedal.</div>
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<div>
If you hadn't noticed yet, there has not been a single chorus despite having two parts that are both long enough to qualify as verses of their own. That chorus won't come for a while, but in the meantime, those “Oh she looks so...” lines function as a sort of mini-chorus. Patti's singing is much more melodic (vs spoken) is these lines, and they function as a sort of pleasant interlude. The big difference between this and most choruses is that almost all songs tend to alternate in intensity between the different parts, but here things just keep getting bigger and faster.</div>
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<div>
Alright so now where at the next stage of the verse. Here we get a change in the bass riff. This, like most of the changes in both versions of the song, is nothing monolithic. Patti Smith had an excellent understanding of how the original was able to accomplish so much with only minor variations, so when she sought to step things up, it was not through any ornate patterns or complex layers of studio accompaniment, but by taking the structural devices of the original and adding a number of new stages similar small changes. When I was younger, I had a difficult time understanding how Smith could be classed with bands like The Ramones, Sex Pistols, and Television as a founding father of the punk genre. Part of this was because I was more familiar with her later work, but part of it was because I couldn't see how any of her music fit with the primitive simplicity of the aforementioned bands. Of course applying labels and stylistic devices of the later punk scenes that emerged in England, California, Washington, and New York to the early CBGB's scene is a bit anachronistic, but I hope these endless pages of analysis have imparted to you how Patti was able to create a truly unique work by adding incredible poetic complexity and artfully modified structural changes to the primitive approach of early rock and roll. It might not have been particularly influential to those early British bands (Crass for one were not fond of her erudition) but it played a pivotal role in the proceeding generation of post-punk bands who sought to strike a similar balance.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div>
So anyway, back to that bass riff. Here is a side by side comparison of the original riff and the new one:</div>
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<div>
<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>1 – and – 2 – and – 3 – and – 4 – and - </div>
<div>
<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>B E A E A</div>
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<br /></div>
<div>
<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>1 – and – 2 – and – 3 – and – 4 – and - </div>
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<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>B E B A A E A<br />
<br /></div>
<div>
So there isn't that much of a difference, but the few changes that have been made are noteworthy. In the first bar, where the rhythm guitar has that E chord locked in place, the extra B on the offbeat makes the melody feel a little bit more intricate. In the second bar, where the rhythm is playing D chords, the extra A note helps drive things further toward the missing chord. Both effects add to the sense of increased propulsion that comes with each of these new stages.</div>
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<div>
The more significant change that occurs during this portion of the song is between the guitars and the piano. The guitars are heavily pulled back, so that there is now, besides the occasional fill, only one guitar playing an E note on the 2 and a D note on the 4. Meanwhile the piano is playing a series of chords that looks something like this:</div>
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<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>1 – and – 2 – and – 3 – and – 4 – and - </div>
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<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>E B E D D G# A</div>
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The two chords that overlap with the guitar are a bit hard to make out, but I tried this pattern on my piano and it seemed right. The big thing to note here is that we have now returned to having the A chord at the end of the progression being explicitly stated. This gives this stage of the song an increased sense of consonance and finality compared to the earlier stages.</div>
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Alright so back to the lyrics:</div>
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“Ooh I'll put my spell on her</div>
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Here she comes</div>
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Walkin' down the street</div>
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Here she comes</div>
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Comin' through my door</div>
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Here she comes</div>
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Crawlin' up my stair</div>
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Here she comes</div>
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Waltzin' through the hall</div>
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In a pretty red dress”</div>
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You'll notice that this is the point where Patti Smith introduces the call and response elements I mentioned earlier. Where Them use the technique only as a means of adding to the energy of the chorus, Smith uses it to provide a change of pace from the other verse stages. She will also go on to use call and response during the chorus, but because she has already pulled the concept from her toolkit, the effect is different then it is in the Them version. By establishing the use of the technique ahead of time she has plants it in the listeners mind. Thus when she returns to it in the chorus it comes off as a heightened modulation rather than a new concept like in the Them version.</div>
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Of the lines that function as “calls”, the first serve primarily to advance the narrative, indicating that we are now progressing from the boring party to the narrator's bedroom, and the the title character is mutually attracted to the speaker. The fourth and fifth calls provide more poetic images rather than literal narrative additions. The use of the verb crawling suggests that Gloria too is desperate for the act which is to come, while the verb waltzing suggests her elegance and beauty, and then the final line gives more details about one of the reasons she is so attractive.</div>
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The last two lines of this verse function as a sort of transition into a transition. The music does not change at all but we see the call and response end. Immediately after the final line of the verse we move to another “Oh she looks so good” transition. The biggest difference between this transition and the verse is that the piano has stopped playing the progression that I described previously and has switched to a more complicated riff that I won't even bother embarrassing myself trying to transcribe.</div>
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The next stage of the verse sees the song once again moving at a higher speed. While at the most basic structural level this song is indeed follows the verse chorus sometimes bridge technique of all pop songwriting*******, the first 2/3rds of the song employ a very particular kind of verse-chorus songwriting seen in such songs as “Sympathy for the Devil”, where, rather than having the shift from verse to chorus act as a means of changing the momentum, these structural components are used as a point in which speed buildups and greater instrumentation can be added, but nothing is ever pulled back. We'll see a little bit later how Smith returns to a structure more akin to the Them song after the chorus, but the fact that it was preceded by this massive buildup changes the total effect so much that it is now completely different different.</div>
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Anyway, besides the increase in speed, the biggest thing to note during the stage is that the guitar switches to these little punctuational notes while the piano changes to two new riffs. Since this stage of the song is beyond my powers of reproduction (trying to transcribe chords is significantly more challenging than melodies, especially on the piano when there are so many different possibilities for voicing), I will only point out how well the first of these riff coincides with the song's lyrics:</div>
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<div>
“And then I hear this knock on my door</div>
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Hear this knockin' on my door”</div>
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Notice how the portion of the riff that is played when the lyrics get to the word “knockin” bears quite a bit in common with the pattern someone might use to knock on a persons door.</div>
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<div>
After these two lines the piano switches to a more restrained pattern while the chord notes that the guitar is playing on the 2, 4, and the offbeat after the 3 are brought up in the mix. All this may seem like the song has taken a mellower turn, but that is only because I havn't gotten to the lyrics. Compare the syllable count on these lines:</div>
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<div>
“And I look up into the big tower clock<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>(11 syllables)</div>
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And say, 'oh my God here's midnight!'<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>(8 syllables)</div>
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And my baby is walkin' through the door<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>(10 syllables)</div>
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Leanin' on my couch she whispers to me <span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>(10 syllables)</div>
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and I take the big plunge”<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>(6 syllables, half-line)</div>
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<div>
with the earlier verse. The previous two lines are 9 and 7 syllables, while the previous verse alternated between 5 and 3 depending on whether it the line was call or response. The verse before that has a similar syllable count, slightly higher, but that is because those lines were spread over three to four bars each while these are spread over two. When one adds in the increased speed, these jam-packed lines give the effect of heightened intensity and a sense that the tension that has been building up is about to burst. Very few songs manage to push things even this far, but Patti still has one more interlude and verse stage, with their corresponding increases in intensity, before the chorus finally hits.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div>
This verse is hopefully has enough gender ambiguity to convince anyone who is still in doubt about whether Patti is deliberately being vague with the protagonists couch. On the one hand practically every line in the song contians either the word “I” or “mine”, which is just hammering home that these lyrics are intended to be somewhat personal. On the other hand the images of the “big tower clock” and taking “the big plunge” are some of the most obviously phallic in all rock music. Again the point here is to deliberately blur these lines to push against the idea that the man has to be the dominant sexual force while a woman has to be passive and receptive.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div>
So now we reach the final of the three</div>
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<br /></div>
<div>
“And oh, she was so good and oh, she was so fine</div>
<div>
And I'm gonna tell the world that I just ah-ah made her mine”</div>
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<div>
interludes, and like implied before, the increase in speed and tension here is starting to push things to the breaking point. On a musical level there is not much added but everything is played with so much wild heat that you would think something was. I had mentioned before that these interludes functioned as mini-choruses, but that is only partially true, because, unlike a true chorus, these passages do not give one the sense of relief or resolution, only a brief change and a sense that more is to come.</div>
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<div>
The verse is finally over, and now we get to the pre-chorus. If the introduction had (at first glance) nothing to do with the Them song, and the verse riffed on some of the thematic ideas but did not explicitly reproduce any of the lines, then the pre-chorus is the link between the verse's loose interpretations of the lyrics and their reproduction in the chorus. The first couple of lines:</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
“And I said darling, tell me your name, she told me her name</div>
<div>
She whispered to me, she told me her name</div>
<div>
And her name is, and her name is, and her name is, and her name is”</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
are not directly present in the Them song, but they are the sort of lines that one could imagine being in there (unlike anything prior to this). Again we have the repetition of “I” and “me” in the first two lines to reinforce the personal element of the song. This also allows things to pivot very easily to the third line, which has a frantic quality that is even more extreme than what we saw in the previous verse. It also allows a fluid transition into the part where she spells out the title character's name. As I'm sure you already guessed, this stage of the pre-chorus has an increase in tempo as well.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div>
In addition to the aforementioned increase, we also get one final push in speed during the part of the pre-chorus where she spells out the name. The guitar and bass also switch to this chugging pattern reminiscent of metal bands that would hit the scene in a few years time (save Priest and Motorhead) while the drum switches to a more intricate, syncopated pattern. All of this is the final stop before we get to the moment that the song has been building towards with incredible patience.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div>
The lovely little high pitched vocal flourish that occurs when she says “name” is as good an occasion as any to give a little nod to the expressive capacity of Patti Smith's voice. If a strong command of things like vocal range and melodic clarity are your metrics for what makes a great rock vocalist, then she is certainly not among the upper echelons, but as with much of the punk revolution, one of the big points is that these technical gifts quite often get in the way of being truly expressive. Though unlike the raw, primal guitar work seen in The Ramones and The Modern Lovers, this was never developed with quite the same degree of success as punk rock evolved. If you listen to “Horses”,any of the Velvet Underground albums, the Modern Lovers self-titled, Peter Laughner's demos or Pere Ubu's corpus you will be treated to a wide gamut of expressive accouterments. Things like the lovely little spike in pitch seen here, or brief soliloquy-esque asides to the listener, and a whole host of other interesting ideas for what can be done with the human voice outside just trying to ring high and low pitches from it. As punk moved on it, it progressed towards a more uniform hostility in vocal delivery, so the broad breadth of singing/speaking/speak-singing techniques scene in the proto-punk movement remains a unique treasure.</div>
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<div>
If the orgasmic release I described in the chorus of Them's “Gloria” is a one night stand, then the release that comes when Patti Smith's version hits can be compared to that of tantric sex. All the tension that has just been piled on for layer after layer of that verse is just let off the valves in a single burst. Here, while there are some differences in what the instruments are playing, the single word (plus letters) of the chorus' lyrics is identical to Morrison's version. Like the Them, song, the actual “Gloria” is sung by the backing band, while Smith takes care of spelling out the letters in a string of orgasmic squeals. I had mentioned during the my write-up of Them's version the potential connection between the Latin word gloria and the English name. While I am uncertain whether or not Van Morrison was aware of this connection (Allmusic's Bill Janovitz insists that he does********) there is absolutely no doubt in my mind that Patti understands it. This is one of the reasons why the seemingly disparate introductory passages actually fit quite well. Since the Latin “Gloria” is a staple phrase of Catholic church services and Morrison uses it in a hymn of sexual relief, the lines that show the irreligious detachment of the protagonist to traditional religious practices, and the application of those same desires to the sexual act.</div>
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<div>
Back to the music. The chorus, like the lyrics, take a classic rock and roll approach, with Daugherty really going nuts on the drums as the piano is cut from the mix. In a similar send-up to early rock, the guitar and bass all play three chords in a style that is reminiscent of twelve bar blues. The chorus provides the revelation as to why so much work was taken during the verse to make the A chord as nebulous as possible. By spending all that effort to conceal it, the reveal is that much stronger. It's worth remembering that “Gloria” is one of those songs where the chord progression does not change from verse to chorus, but listening to Patti Smith's version you do not get that impression.<br />
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<div>
Like I just mentioned, the bass and guitar parts are set up in homage to a particular style of twelve bar blues. Now, in a traditional twelve bar blues song, a I – IV – V progression, which I will represent with the C, F, and G (If we were to use the key of A it would be A, D, and E in that order. In E Mixolydian, it would be E major, A major, and B minor), there are four bars of the C chord, two bars of the F chord, two more C chords, then either two bars of a G chord or one bar of G and one of F, followed by two more bars of C. While this can be done with major chords, or even seventh chords, one of the most common ways of doing it is to have the guitar play a series of two note chords while the bass plays just the chord notes. If played in the key of A, said arrangement would look something like this (Remember that the roman numerals stay the same regardless of key, so it is still a I-IV-V progression):</div>
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<div>
<div>
Bar 01:</div>
<div>
<div>
1 – and – 2 – and – 3 – and – 4 – and - </div>
<div>
E E F# E E E F# E</div>
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A A A A A A A A</div>
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<div>
Bar 02:</div>
<div>
<div>
1 – and – 2 – and – 3 – and – 4 – and - </div>
<div>
E E F# E E E F# E</div>
<div>
A A A A A A A A</div>
</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Bar 03:</div>
<div>
<div>
1 – and – 2 – and – 3 – and – 4 – and - </div>
<div>
E E F# E E E F# E</div>
<div>
A A A A A A A A</div>
</div>
<div>
Bar 04:</div>
<div>
<div>
1 – and – 2 – and – 3 – and – 4 – and - </div>
<div>
E E F# E E E F# E</div>
<div>
A A A A A A A A</div>
</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Bar 05:</div>
<div>
1 – and – 2 – and – 3 – and – 4 – and - </div>
<div>
A A B E E E B E</div>
<div>
D D D D D D D D</div>
<div>
Bar 06:</div>
<div>
1 – and – 2 – and – 3 – and – 4 – and -</div>
<div>
A A B E E E B E</div>
<div>
D D D D D D D D</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Bar 07:</div>
<div>
1 – and – 2 – and – 3 – and – 4 – and - </div>
<div>
E E F# E E E F# E</div>
<div>
A A A A A A A A</div>
<div>
Bar 08:</div>
<div>
1 – and – 2 – and – 3 – and – 4 – and -</div>
<div>
E E F# E E E F# E</div>
<div>
A A A A A A A A</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Bar 09:</div>
<div>
1 – and – 2 – and – 3 – and – 4 – and - </div>
<div>
B B C# B B B C# B</div>
<div>
E E E E E E E E</div>
<div>
Bar 10:</div>
<div>
B B C# B B B C# B</div>
<div>
E E E E E E E E</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Bar 11:</div>
<div>
1 – and – 2 – and – 3 – and – 4 – and - </div>
<div>
E E F# E E E F# E</div>
<div>
A A A A A A A A</div>
<div>
Bar 12:</div>
<div>
1 – and – 2 – and – 3 – and – 4 – and -</div>
<div>
E E F# E E E F# E</div>
<div>
A A A A A A A A</div>
</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
The end result sounds something like <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8L2mqkk28sE">this</a>. The important thing to notice here is the pattern of playing the chord note with the fifth together is interrupted twice in each bar by the chord note and the sixth. While this is happening, the bass is typically just playing the root of the chord itself (so the A in bar 1). Now one of the reasons why this pattern is so impressed on our cultural memory is how well the notes go together with each of the chords, as well as the key. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
For most of this riff you have the root note and the fifth played together. In the A major chord the fifth is E, which is the root of E major and part of the key of D. In the D major chord the fifth is A, which is the root and tonic of A major (remember the root is the main note of a chord and the tonic is the main note of a key) and part of the key of E. In the E major chord the fifth is B, which is part of the key of both A and D major.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
The other component of this riff is the part where they play the root and the sixth together. In the A major chord the sixth is an F#, which is part of the key of E and the third in the D major chord. In the D major chord the sixth is B, which is part of A major's key and the fifth of the E major chord. In the E major chord, the sixth is C#, which is part of the key of D major and the third of the A major chord. So every single note that is played matches at least a little bit with the other chords, giving the whole riff a sense of unity.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Compare that above pattern with what the bass and guitar play in the “Gloria” chorus:</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Chorus Bass</div>
<div>
1 – and – 2 – and – 3 – and – 4 – and - <span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>1 – and – 2 – and – 3 – and – 4 – and - </div>
<div>
E E E E E<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>D D D D A A A A</div>
<div>
Chorus Guitar:</div>
<div>
1 – and – 2 – and – 3 – and – 4 – and - <span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>1 – and – 2 – and – 3 – and – 4 – and - </div>
<div>
B B C# B B C#<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span> B<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>A A A A E E E E</div>
<div>
E E E E E E<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span> E<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>D D D D A A A A</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Now, remember that while the E Mixolydian and A Major key's have different tonics, the component notes are identical, so the harmonic stuff I described above is still true. The other big thing to note is that she condenses a more extensive twelve bar pattern into a two bar repetition that fits the shape of the chord progression. The interlocking, mutually aligned notes are closesly related to both the key and at the other chords. This gives the chorus an incredible sense of stability after the deliberate wobbliness of the verse.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
As with Them's “Gloria”, once the chorus of Patti Smith's version is complete, we get a come-down that is deliberately designed to match the moments the follow the orgasm. The drums keep the same tempo, but begin to lightly tap the symbols instead of pounding on the kicks and toms. The bass plays a riff very similar to what it was playing in the chorus, but without the D and A notes on the offbeat. More significant than any other change is that of the guitar which is drastically cut back from the previous rollicking blues riff. At first it simply plays some light fills fairly low in the mix, but then once the verse picks up speed it switches back to punctuating chords on the beat. At first they only occur on the D and A, which indicates that from this point forward the band are not going to be as vague about the tonic chord. Once the actual verse itself starts it also adds in chords on the E beats. The only time we see the piano between now and the outro is during the first of the two interludes, when it adds a sound-effect-esque flourish similar to what I described with the door knocking.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
“I was at the stadium</div>
<div>
There were twenty thousand girls called their names out to me</div>
<div>
Marie and Ruth but to tell you the truth</div>
<div>
I didn't hear them I didn't see</div>
<div>
I let my eyes rise to the big tower clock</div>
<div>
And I heard those bells chimin' in my heart”</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Here we see Patti once again blurring the lines between confessional and narrative lyrics. On first glance, lyrics about performing in a concert suggest that it is the personal world of the vocalist that is being described. But if there was a point in Patti Smith's career when she could headline a 20,000 seat venue, it was not when she was writing her version of “Gloria”, which would have been the period when she was a mainstay at New York's CBGBs, which had a maximum capacity of 350. In fact, these lines actually seem to have more in common with the masculine hypersexual fucking-five-groupies-at-a-single-venue attitude that the Rolling Stones had by this point already set up as a rock institution for but Led Zeppelin and their Mud Sharks had yet to take into the realm of the truly ridiculous.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
The second part sees the image of the clock-tower being brought back, but this time, rather than focusing on the phallic visual appearance of the actual building, the focus is on the repetitive nature of the tower's bells, which ring out every hour regardless of the circumstance. Hence even when performing at a concert surrounded by other women, the protagonist still hears Gloria's call. This ability to take poetic images and employ different elements in varied metaphors as the work unfolds is one of those things that usually sits at the other end of the gulf between poetry and song lyrics, so this can be chalked up as one more reason Patti Smith stands at the apex of rock lyricists.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Musically, the rest of the second verse plays out very similarly to the first, only without as many stages. You get a repeat of the “oh she was so” lines followed by the “make her mine” part, which is in turn followed by the chorus. The biggest difference is that the blues-style riff enters the song while it is still in the verse phase, softening the impact of the chorus the second time around while giving the lead-up a stronger punch. As for the chorus itself, it is all but identical to the one I just discussed, so I will just skip ahead to the outro.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
The chorus abruptly slows down into a series of chords that are very similar to the blues riff, but this time instead of two note combinations they are full open chords, so it goes E major, C#major, E major, C# major, D major, D major, A major, A major in even intervals over two very slow bars. Meanwhile the bass simply echoes the chord notes and the drums come down exclusively in time with the guitar. Lyrically, we get a nice little stanza that ties some of the previous elements of the song together:</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
“And the tower bells chime, 'ding dong' they chime</div>
<div>
They're singing, 'Jesus died for somebody's sins but not mine.”</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Once again Patti adapts the image of the clock-tower to a new situation, this time letting its constant reminder be not (just) Gloria herself, but the very idea of radical personal freedom introduced in the earlier lyrics which allows the encounter to take place.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
There is every indication that things are winding to a halt, with the rhythm getting slower and slower and the opening lines being recapitulated, but all of a sudden Daughterty starts wailing in his kit and the chorus jumps right back in at full force. While Patti and co. had enough in them for one final burst, I am afraid that I have reached the limits of what I have to say about these two songs. If anyone ever manages to make their way through this novella length exegesis on two songs from over forty years ago, I hope you gained enough insight into not just the songs themselves but the full scope of what is involved in popular songwriting to justify the spent time.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
</div>
<div>
* The only exception to this is that they occasionally drop out the last open chord (on the final and of the 1 – and – 2 – and – 3 and – 4 – AND - )</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
** The "_" is a rest, so he is not holding the first note extra long, but letting the silence ring out.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
*** I know that since the bass note is B this is not technically an E chord, but to my knowledge, given that we can't even decide if two notes counts as a chord or not, there has never been any decent means of noting two note chords that have attained broad acceptance. Even if there was, since I am trying to write in such a way that someone without a background in music theory can still gain a greater appreciation of the song, it would be counterproductive to delve in obscurantism. This also goes for the slashchords in the second part of the bridge.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
**** The puzzle is this: during the first two repetitions, I am pretty sure he is doing a hammer on for the B note. However, given that the sensible position for a B note of that octave (given the position of his hands for part X) is the open 2nd string. Since you can't do hammer-ons of an open note, it means he is actually doing a pull-off, or he is playing the same octave B but on a different string. However I played around with both possibilities and I could not find anything that sounded right.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
*****Mark Rowland, “Young Buck!” Musician (April 1993): 42-53</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
******The speed up actually starts two line from the end of the last part, but it keeps getting faster during this stage and it is a real pain in the ass to try and divide this song into neat little pieces so sometimes I have to draw the lines a little off from where they actually are.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
*******I normally prefer to take the safe route and preface these kinds of assertions with an “almost” or “nearly” to take any exceptions into account, but I really feel that any song that is not built around that classic structure of verses and choruses, plus or minus bridges, intros, outros, pre-choruses, etc, falls into the realm of either classical music, non-Western music, jazz, or the avant-garde, and thus by the mere fact that it does not employ these structural devices cannot be called pop music.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
********Bill Janovitz, “Gloria” Allmusic.com. https://www.allmusic.com/song/gloria-mt0010867829</div>
Snowblindedhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06242023366792085291noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2630166144190637002.post-89204718367274581402017-10-31T06:02:00.002-07:002018-02-09T20:52:48.209-08:00Horror - Strange Things Reside in Blackriver Point<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
I'm guessing none of you wanna read a
bunch of bullshit about who I was and what led me to end up in the
situation I am about to describe, so I'll keep it to the stuff that
matters.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
My name's Ted. About a month ago me and
the boys went on a camping trip to a place called Blackriver Point up
in the Pacific Northwest. Don't bother trying to Google it, you wont
find anything, and I'm sure as shit not gonna tell anyone how I heard
about the place. All you "here's a video of my visiting this
crazy haunted site" types can look elsewhere, cuz this place is
the real deal and I won't have the blood of idiots on my hands.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
</div>
<a name='more'></a><br />
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
So anyway right off the bat a whole
buncha shit seems fucked up about this place from the moment we
arrive. There are no signs for it until you're five miles off of
paved roads, and when we get there, we find that not only is the lot
empty, but there's not even a building to buy your camping pass. Only
thing that even lets you know you're in the right place was this wooden
sign that looked like it belonged in some kind of old-timey colonial
town with the words “Welcome to Blackriver Point: Follow the red
trail to reach the campgrounds. Enjoy your stay.” with the last
sentence barely legible from a long rust colored smudge running
across it.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Now I'll admit that this was not the
most auspicious sign to greet you when you arrive at a campground.
I'm sure all you armchair survivalists are sitting there thinking “I
woulda been outta there the moment I saw that shit.” Thing was, me
and my friends arn't exactly new to these kinds of trips, and part of
the reason we went there in the first place was that we wanted
someplace as far out of the way as possible. The kind of place where
you don't find 75 year old Winnebago warriors dragging three
generations of children down the trail, and what could be more out of
the way than a place that's totally empty? Plus we weren't exactly
heartbroken about not having to pay for a pass.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
The biggest problem was that, while the
sign told us to take the red trail, neither of the two paths had any
markings on them. After some deliberation we decided to take the
trail that was wider and had a more prominent entrance. In any case,
its not like we didn't come prepared to spend the night out in the
wild. Worse case scenario we just set up in a clearing somewhere.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Well the plan made sense on paper, but
after an hour of going through terrain way too steep and rocky and
uneven to even get a stake in the ground, never mind fall asleep on,
we were starting to reconsider our wisdom. It was already getting
dark (like I said it took us a while to find the place) and nothing
sucks more than trying to set up camp when you can't see shit. We
were all in a foul mood and the discussion about what to do quickly
turned into an argument, with my friends Ed and Todd wanting to just
eat the hour trip back to the lot and try the other trail, while me,
Jesse, Mitch, and Al wanted to keep pushing forward til we found a
place that was flat and soft enough to get our tents up. In the end
we couldn't agree, so Ed and Todd went back on their own while we
continued moving forward. We agreed to keep in touch on our phones
and meet back up in the morning.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
It was another hour before we finally
found a place to set up. By then it was almost nine and we could
barely see anything. We had to tie our tent's stake holes to rocks
with paracord because the ground was too hard to be penetrated by the
stakes themselves, but it was at least a flat, level surface and for
that alone we were grateful.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
We tried calling Ed and Todd on their
phones but all we got was thus weird thumping noise that just kept
repeating over and over. We had planned on setting up a campfire and
having a few beers on the first night but we were so exhausted and
pissy that nobody felt like doing the work, so we retired to our
tents and called it a night.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
I woke up to Mitch shaking the side of
my tent and yelling something I couldn't quite make out. As I crawled
out into the daylight, it didn't take me long to see what upset him.
It seemed that we were not the first people to find the clearing
useful, but whoever it was that had been here before wasn't singing
campfire songs and roasting franks. The whole area we had placed our
tents in was within a massive red circle painted on the ground with
foreign writing all over it. If this were a movie the egghead of the
group would have chimed in right around then saying that he knew a
bit of Latin and then given a rough translation, but we didn't think
to invite the local bishop on our trip.
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
What we could make out were the
pictures painted in regular intervals around the circle, and if the
words bore anything in common with them they weren't a recipe for a
really good Goulash. There were drawings of bones laid out in
specific patterns, people with gaping chest wounds that had fire
coming out of them, and a whole bunch of weird looking creatures that
seemed to be rising out of the ground. Of course the first thing we
tried doing was looking the stuff up on Google, but we were too deep
in the forst to get any data. We also tried calling Ed and Todd
again, but found that instead of thumping there was just that weird
static-y silence without their phones even rining.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
All of sudden we heard Al freaking out
down past the clearing. As we clawed through the overgrowth we came
across a giant slab of marble that had somehow been lugged this far
into the woods. It had those same strange symbols all over it, but
also something else, a coating of a sticky, dark red substance that
anyone whose gutted a deer and forgot to clean their knife could tell
you was dried blood.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Well obviously this was the end of our
little excursion. We packed up our shit as quick as we could and then
started heading back towards the parking area, frantically trying
Todd and Ed's phones the whole time so we could tell thek to be there
waiting. There was no reason for anyone to be super nervous about
phones not working deep in the forest, but for some reason I think
all of us had a suspicion things were a whole lot worse than even we
realized at that point. It didn't take long before we were going
around a sharp bend in the trail and our suspicions were suddenly
confirmed.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
As we turned the corner, we damned near
walked into two heads dangling from trees with their spinal columns
still attached. It was them. Their faces bore these focused stares
that made you think they were still conscious enough to see you and
their mouths dangled agape as if they were trying to cry out the
horrors that had witnessed from beyond the grave.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Needless to say the whole group fell to
pieces at the sight of our friend's mutilated corpses. We were all
just screaming over one another gibbering like lunatics until Jesse
finally grabbed Al (who was in the worst condition out of all of us)
by the collar and screamed out:</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
“Look I know this is fucked up as
hell, but we can't be freaking out. It won't do them any good to die
out here with them. What we gotta do now is make it back to the car,
get out of here, and report this shit to the cops. Fortunately for
you I came prepared, though I doubt that those cowards are gonna have
the balls to try anything in broad daylight.”
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
As he said that, Jesse opened up his
pack and began to dig something out. Crazy S.O.B. had brought his
hunting rifle on the trip. All of us rode his ass about how dangerous
and illegal it was to go hunting in public campgrounds, but I've
never been happier to see someone ignore me then when he pulled out
the ridiculous Mosin he uses.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
The boost in confidence Jesse's gun
brought to our hopes of survival, however, lasted maybe an hour. The
trail that had appeared to be a single passage the previous night was
actually a network of forked paths all joined with each other to form
a single path if you were walking away from the parking lot, but
turned into a complex course of branching and re-branching routes if
you headed back. It was as if it had been designed to trap anything
that was foolish enough to wander in.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
It was around this time that I first
started getting this powerful sense that there was something I needed
to remember, but could not quite get to the front of my mind. I asked
everyone else if they had any idea what it might be, but they were
too caught up in how to navigate the trail to bother with me. I was
still trying to work through what it could be when Mitch told
everyone to shut up for a second.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
“You here that. It sounds like a
river in the distance.” he said.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Now this probably doesn't come as a
shock to any of you readers who remember the name of the campgrounds,
but it was to us. You see, the area where the site was located is
about 100 miles from the nearest river. We had sat there on Google
Maps before the trip trying to find even a small tributary that might
have given the place its name, but there was literally nothing nearby
that was even close. We ended up assuming that some early prospector
found a muddy stream, and in a desperate bid to get himself into the
history books, tried passing it off as the real deal.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Now the sound of rushing water we heard
was faint, but it was definitely a river. Needless to say this
confused the hell out of us. Jesse even wanted to leave the trail to
go see if he could get a view of it, but we convinced him that having
the only armed member of our group go wandering away from an already
confusing network of trails was just a recipe for disaster.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
We wandered all morning and well into
the afternoon, making no progress as far as we could tell, before
certain urges began to become unbearable. I think that all of us had
expected to hold it in until we got outta hear and then blow up the
first McDonalds we found as a group. That possibility now seemed
incredibly distant, so we had to do something about dropping the kids
off.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
We decided we would stop and take a
rest break, with each of us taking turns going behind this
particularly large Grand Fir, while Jesse stood with his gun at the
ready. I volunteered to go first, and I took care of my business
without any issues. By the time I had gotten back and passed the
torch to Al, Jesse and Mitch were already deep in conversation.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
“But that doesn't make any sense.”
Jesse said.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
“I never said it did, but neither do
altars in the middle of the woods, Ed and Todd getting murdered, or
spending over six hours heading in the direction of the lot and not
crossing either it or the road. At this point things making sense
just isn't something we can count on.” Mitch replied.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
“Dude there's no possible way we
could have been going downhill this entire time.” Jesse said.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
“Most of the time the ground has been
relatively flat, but there have been a number of steep downhill
stretches as well, but can you think of a single time we were going
uphill for more than a handful of yards?” Mitch asked.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
“No, I can't. So what do you suggest
we do?”</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
“Instead of trying to navigate in the
direction of the campground, when Al's finished up and we head back
out, we should focus on taking the path that brings us higher
whenever we encounter a fork.”</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
“What the fuck is taking him so
long?” Jesse asked, calling his name a few times and getting no
reply.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
We went down behind the fir and found
that he was gone. We walked around, calling his name for about half
an hour before deciding it was too dangerous to go any further into
the trackless wilderness, and so we returned to the trail. Now, Jesse
had been deep in conversation while Al was shitting, but I was
looking at him, and and I know he had not taken his eyes off the tree
the entire time they were talking.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
We were all really worried for Al, but
at the same time all of us were terrified of the same thing happening
to us. I don't feel proud about moving on, but at the time I felt
like I had done everything I could to find him, and like Jesse said
before, it wasn't gonna do him any good for us to wind up wherever he
was. At least if we made our way out of there, we could get a search
party and/or law enforcement to find/get justice for him.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
We tried putting Mitch's plan into
action, but it was easier said than done. Like earlier, I got this
weird sense that this trail had been designed to deliberately obscure
anyone who had the misfortune of walking on it. We would get to a
fork and one way would lead slightly uphill and the other down, but
as soon as we started following the uphill one it would curve into a
steep descent. We would then go back and give the other branch a
shot, only to find that it went downhill too. But the really strange
thing happened when we decided to try backtracking instead. As we
retraced our steps in reverse along the path we had just been on, we
found that it too was on a downward course. While all this was
happening the sensation that I had forgotten something important
never went away, and I spent much of the time Mitch and Jesse were
arguing contemplating just what it might be that felt so important.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
It was close to sunset when Mitch began
to yell that he saw what looked like a clearing in the distance. For
a brief moment we allowed to idea that we were finally done with our
ordeal to take root in our minds, sprinting like playful
schoolchildren towards the end of the treeline. What we found was not
the parking lot, though it did answer our questions about the sound
of rushing water which had been growing louder and louder as we
continued our journey.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
We found ourselves standing on the edge
of a shear cliff probably five hundred feet tall. At the bottom was a
wide river as dark as it's name suggested. The trail we had followed
turned into the cliff and formed into a switchback that appeared to
lead to it's base. In the distance the Larches, Yews, and Redwoods
that made up most of the forest seemed to slowly fade from a vibrant
green to various shades of gray.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
“It ain't the parking lot, but it's
sure as shit a way out of here.” Jesse yelled.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
“How do you know?” I asked.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
“Dude it's a fucking river. How many
rivers do you know that don't have any settlements somewhere along
the banks? We'll have to write off Mitch's car as a loss, but I know
how to make a raft that'll keep us afloat from just the shit around
here.”</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
“Yeah I'm long past the point of
worrying about that Grand Am.” Mitch said.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
I had this strange sense that something
wasn't right, but there didn't seem to be any other options, so I
went along.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
The trail did indeed lead down the side
of the cliffs, but now that we wanted to go downwards, it seemed like
it was deliberately trying to take as straight a course as possible.
We had walked for about half a mile and had only dropped thirty feet,
when Mitch put his hand to his head like he had just felt a raindrop.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
As a group we looked up and saw
something that will be burned into my memory until the day I die. It
was Al, and he was alive. He was dangling from the top of the cliffs
about half the distance between them and us from twenty or so hooks
that were pierced through various parts of his skin. He seemed to be
trying to scream something to us, but the severed stump where his
tongue had been just kicked droplets of blood into the air.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
All of us froze, not sure how to handle
this newest horror. Our uncertainty only increased when we saw the
creature responsible for our friend's tormented state appear over the
edge of the cliff. It stood upright, roughly seven or eight feet
tall, and it's body was covered in the darkest fur I had ever seen on
a living being. It had these sharp hooked claws on both it's hands an
feet that extended outward at least a foot, and three tails danced
around each other behind him. By far the most disturbing thing about
this creature though, was it's head. It's skull was shaped almost
like an alligator's, but with a longer, thinner snout, and covered
with the same black fur as it's body. On the top of it's head were
two horns that started out going forwards before making a hairpin
turn and shooting straight back at an angle almost perpendicular to
it's body. It's eyes were bulging white and empty save the black
vertical slit that each one possessed.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Jesse was the first to break the
stunned silence, firing at the creature and doing no visible damage
but causing it to step back from the ledge out of his line of sight.
He fired his second shot into Al's head, causing a shower of gooey
brain matter and small shards of skull to rain down on us.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
“Run! Now!” he shouted, and we
obeyed unquestioningly.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
We sprinted as fast as we could for a
quite a while, I wish I could be more specific but when you have that
much adrenaline in your system it messes up your perception of time.
I could tell you it felt like 10 miles but a smart man would probably
cut that into fifths for a more accurate estimate. Even when you got
your body in overdrive mode, you will eventually reach the limits of
what it can endure. I've heard of small mothers lifting up cars in
the heat of the moment to rescue their kids, but I've never heard of
one lifting a semi. By the time our bodies were ready to give out on
us we were less than two thirds of the way down the cliff, and there
was no end in sight.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
The sun was now totally gone, and it
was a miracle that we had been able to make it as far down that rocky
causeway as we did without any of us tripping, but we knew that even
if we were able to get a fifth wind going, the chances of us safely
navigating around the cliffs in total darkness was all but zero, we
were gonna have to camp out for the night.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
We found a small alcove in the side of
the cliff that was too steep to allow anything to come at us from
above, so we sat down with our backs to the wall and pooled our
supplies. Now some of you may be surprised to think that we would be
able to sleep after everything that happened, but if you don't think
such a thing is possible I would suggest going outside a few hours
before you normally go to bed and sprint until your legs literally
fail to support your body any more than try to see how long you can
stay up. I guarantee that even if your pants-shittingly terrified
your body will still go down faster than Spinks did when he fought
Tyson.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
The first obvious call was that we were
going to have to have at least one person awake on guard duty, and
that person would have the Mosin. Second, we were not going to sleep
in our tents. It was like what Quint talked about in Jaws after the
Indianapolis sank, if your up against something tougher than yourself
and your only advantage is superior numbers, you want to make sure
that as soon as one person starts shooting and hollering, the other
two are gonna be able to get his back as soon as possible, so having
to squeeze through a tent flap was a nuisance we could not afford to
deal with.
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Though we each had high powered
flashlights, there was some debate over whether we should keep them
set up pointing up and down the trail or not. On the one hand it
would give us a warning if the creature were coming, but on the other
it would announce our presence to it and any other awful thing that
might be lurking about. We weren't sure if we had lost it or whether
Jesse's shot had injured it enough that it didn't wanna mess with us,
so we decided to play it safe. Each of us would keep or lights at
arms reach and the moment we heard anything suspicious we would all
turn them on and try and get the thing illuminated for the gunner to
have a clear shot.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
We placed the tent poles along both
ends of the trail in the hope that the creature might accidentally
disturb them and give us a bit of warning, and we rigged the last of
our paracord into ankle-high trip-wires. I lay down right on the
rocks while Jesse took the first round of guard duty. The last thing
that came to my mind as I drifted off to sleep was the thought that
it was of the upmost importance to recall that weird thing that had
been at the tip of my tongue all day.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
I woke to the sound of gunshots and
Mitch's screams. Evidently he had already changed shifts with Jesse,
who was laying beside me, and he seemed to be firing frantically up
the causeway, but I couldn't see anything. After a minute or two of
total chaos he stopped.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
“What happened?” Jesse asked.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
“I heard a couple of those tent poles
we set up slip loose down the trail. I shined my light down there by
I couldn't see anything. I don't know where it went.” Mitch
replied.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
“Dude I told you those things were a
stopgap measure and that they might come loose on their own if there
was a strong wind. How many rounds did you fire?” Jesse asked.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
“Three or four.” Mitch replied.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
“Here.” Jesse said, reaching into
his bag and pulled out a cartridge, tossing it over. Mitch opened the
magazine housing and before we realized what was happening a black
figure was upon him and the empty screams of a man with punctured
lungs filled the air. Then, just as quickly as it happened, both
Mitch and the creature, along with Jesse's rifle, were gone.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
In the hours that followed we were both
sure that any second now the creature would be upon us. We sat there
side by side with our knives in our hands, just waiting for the thing
to come back. While we didn't say it out loud, I don't think either
of us thought there was any chance of being able to fight something
like that off with hunting knives, but if we were quick we might be
able to deprive it of the opportunity to play the same games with us
that it had with the rest of our friends.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
But the creature did not come back for
us that night, and when the sun first broke we got up and started
making our way down the cliffs. We had not gone far before we saw why
it had been too busy to bother with us. Mitch's corpse had been set
up right in the middle of the trail, the tentpoles that had been
around the campsite had been assembled into long stakes which had
somehow been plunged into the rocks and then used to impale Mitch's
body from a number of different angles. The barrel of the Mosin had
been snapped off and had been jammed into his back, emerging from his
eye socket like some kind of perverse telescope.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
I feel guilty for saying this, but by
that point we hadn't held out any hope for his survival, nor did the
creature's horrors have the same impact they had earlier that day. We
stepped around the body and continued making our way down the trail.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
When we arrived at the bottom of the
cliff we were finally able to get a good look at the river. The
shoreline looked like something that would be more at home in a
desert than in the Northeast United States, with the wind sending a
mist of sand flying about layers of bleached bones. The river itself
was so black that we couldn't see an inch beyond the water's edge. A
row boat sat in the sand just outside the reach of the rushing
waters.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
“God damn, luck is finally on our
side.” Jesse said, but I wasn't so sure. The voice saying that
something was wrong was now screaming at full volume, and I had the
distinct sensation that the reason was tied to the thing I could not
remember.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
I bent my will on trying to pull up the
memory that seemed so important as Jesse prepared the craft. Then, in
an instant, piles of insight began to stack on top of one another.
Memories came poring out out the floodgates: images of my
grandmother, a kind but perpetually nervous woman who I had always
regarded as ridiculously superstitious sitting me on her lap and
telling me tales of when this land was still fresh and unconquered,
forcing me to draw a series of patterns over and over again until the
shape was burnt into my mind. I suddenly realized where we were.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
“You can't get into that boat.” I
told Jesse.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
“What the fuck do you mean? After all
the shit that happened a way out appears before us and you want to
tell me not to use the first good thing we've found to our advantage?
Do you think we should just sit here and wait for that creature to
come back for us?” he said.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
“That boat is not a good thing. The
river before you is the Acheron, the ancient channel into the gates
of hell itself. You will not find things any easier if you continue
to follow it.” I said.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
“Dude you can do whatever the fuck
you want, but I'm getting out of here. I've lost too many friends in
the past two days to fuck my own survival up over one more.” Jesse
said.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
“I'm sorry you feel that way, but I
know how we get out of here now, and it's not through that river. Do
you really think that creature would let us slip away so easily? He
could've stopped us long ago if he wanted to.”</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
“Well good luck man, I wish you the
best.” he said as he pushed the boat into the inky waters and was
carried off by the river.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
I had left all my gear at the last
campsite, and even in my pack I wasn't sure if I had brought a pen,
but I did have the knife. I dug the tip of the blade into my arm and
began carving a spiral up and down each of my limbs, then, calling up
the shapes my grandmother had me memorize, I sliced them perfectly at
eight different points in my body, and then started making my way
back up the cliff.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
The creature was standing there waiting
for me not far from where we had made camp, but as I closed in I
began to detect a certain apprehension in it's mannerisms. It would
dart up the precipice and emerge a few hundred feet up the banks,
constantly staring at me but never getting close. When I finally
reached the heights I walked straight into the woods, ignoring the
twisting trails and walking in as straight a line as I could back
towards where we had initially come. Mitch had been right about that
much, and I still feel guilty for not having remembered sooner not to
trust those looping paths.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
The creature stayed in my wake for some
time as I cut through the untamed brush, but he never got close
enough to actively interfere, and after an hour or so he returned to
whatever horrible den spawned him. After another hour and I found my
way onto the road we had taken in.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
As soon as I hit civilization it was
like all the weight of what I had endured came down on my at once. I
passed out on the roadside and the next thing I knew I was in the
hospital. There was obviously extensive police questioning. I told
them everything that happened exactly as it happened and I'm sure you
will not be surprised to hear they did not find my story particularly
believable. They sent me to a psychiatric facility for eval and I
told those people the same thing I told the cops. They made an effort
to try and search for my friends but of course they could not even
locate the parking lot, never mind their bodies.
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
In the end I was diagnosed with Post
Traumatic Stress Disorder, in addition to Stockholm Syndrome and
stress induced hallucinations. The best explanation they could come
up with was that someone had lured us out into the middle of nowhere
with lies about a campsight and then proceeded to kill us one by one.
The scars on my arms and legs ended up being a huge help, as nobody
believed a human being would voluntarily inflict such injuries on
themselves. Mitch and Todd's wives, along with most of my friend's
families are still deeply suspicious of my story, and obviously none
of them are talking to me, but it doesn't really matter, none of them
are going to find Blackriver Point, and if they do, I certainly won't
have to worry about them bringing charges against me.</div>
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
Snowblindedhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06242023366792085291noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2630166144190637002.post-39619081279673639242017-10-29T15:29:00.001-07:002019-06-18T14:49:10.297-07:00Horror - The Last Days of Red and Lorraine Freemont<div lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Alright so I'm not totally
sure what I should be doing with this, but I've asked around a bit
and people keep pointing me to this community. It's probably no the
best place in the world for a data leak but it's not like I got
Julian Assange's number locked in my phone either.</div>
<div lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
I work for the Sheriff's
Department at Elder's Ridge, Montana, doing any small time
administrative tasks that they need from me. Most of the time this
makes me a glorified secretary but today things are a bit different.</div>
<div lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
You see, we encountered
something yesterday that is well beyond the capacities of a county
with a combined population of a little over a thousand people, so all
of a sudden I've gone from getting coffee to being responsible for
digitizing all the documents that appear to be relevant to the events
what happened in Fallen Pine.</div>
<div lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Normally I'd never dream
of being one of those people who endangers an investigation by
leaking crucial information online, but the thing that nobody over at
the station knows is that at my last job: doing basically the same
shit down at River's End, some of the boys encountered something
real similar to this. The department down there isn't much bigger
than ours, so of course the sheriff sent word down the line just like
we did earlier today, and when the big boys responded all they said was to catalog every piece of evidence for
submission and immediately halt our own investigation of the case.</div>
<div lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
At first we thought the
just didn't want a bunch of small town podunk cops getting in the way
of some kind of heavy FBI investigation or something, but all that ever
happened was a couple people who weren't even affiliated with any
force or agency came down and collected our reports,, scoped out
the crime scene and then disappeared without so much as a peep about
finding a culprit.</div>
<div lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
I knew Red and Lorraine.
Not well, but I'd seen them around town, and they were always nice people. There's no way they deserved what happened to them and
they damn sure don't deserve to have their case swept under the rug
by some pencil pushers. That's why I'm putting this up here. That and
the fact that people need to protect themselves from who or whatever it was that
did this.</div>
<div lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
</div>
<a name='more'></a><br />
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<div lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="__DdeLink__6748_320071884"></a>
The Journal of Red Freemont: October 24<sup>th</sup>, 2017</div>
<div lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
What a shitty fucking day.
Woke up shit. Shit in the middle. Shit for supper at night. I hadn't
even gotten dressed before Lor had started up about the oven still
being broke. It's like she thinks I have a bunch of money tucked away
somewhere, but I'm just so happy eating cold cereal and microwaved
dinners that I don't bother to get it fixed.</div>
<div lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
The real kick in the ass
came when I went out to feed the chickens. I don't know what the hell
it was, but something had killed three of em, and it hadn't exactly
been discrete about it. A wolf or coyote woulda run off with them,
but this thing seemed to prefer ripping out their organs and leaving
them spread all over the coop. Them birds were really all over the
place, but I swear once I had gathered up everything I could find of
em it seemed to me like whatever it was hadn't eaten a single piece. Like it just wanted to go into my coop in the dead of night to rip a
bunch of chickens to pieces and then be on its merry way. I thought
it must of been one of the dogs, but I checked and the kennel was
still shut.</div>
<div lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
This couldn't have happened at a worse time either, low on money and without a stove to cook em on. Lor to her credit was real sweet about everything, kindling up the fireplace and cooking what was salvageable over and open flame. At least I won't have to eat cereal for a few days. Weird thing is, I'm sure I remember setting the latch on the coop the night before</div>
<div lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
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<br /></div>
<div lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Entry: October 25<sup>th</sup>,
2017</div>
<div lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Well things have gone from
bat to worse. I woke up this morning to find that every single one of
my chickens had been done up like the first three. I shoulda known it
wasn't no animal by the way they killed em yesterday, but now I'm
damned sure it was a person responsible.
</div>
<div lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
I don't know who would do
something like this to us. I've lived my whole life in this town and
I've always tried my best to be kind and friendly to everyone. Sure
I've had my bad days, same as everyone else, but I ain't never done
nothing to no one that would deserve something like this, and I know
Lor hasn't either. I called up Sheriff Bill over at Elder Ridge, but
he's outta town with Nancy for the next few days. I guess they're so
short staffed they can't afford to come out unless it's an emergency.
Just my fucking luck. Well, I'll be sleeping with my shotgun tonight.</div>
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<div lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Entry: October 26<sup>th</sup>,
2017</div>
<div lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
God damn god damn god
damn. I woke up last night to the most soul-wrenching yelping I had
ever heard in my life. I grabbed my gun and went out to the kennels
only to find that whatever had been there had just left. Lola and
Rex, god it hurts me to even think about. They had been torn to
pieces. It wasn't a crazed mess of flesh and guts like it was with
the chickens though, this time they were meticulous. They ripped off
Lola's legs and set her just sittin upright like some kinda
unfinished taxidermy school project, with her intestines just
dangling out across the side of the floor.
</div>
<div lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
And then there was Rex.
When I got there poor Rex had been cut open too, and his legs were
broken off at the joints, but the worst part was that sick son of a
bitch kept him alive while it all happened. He was just starin at me
with these glassed over eyes that were just beggin to be put outta
there misery. Whoever it was hadn't gotten to Annabelle yet, but it
seems that just being there for what happened has left her all kinds
of skittish. She won't even go near the kennel now. Though I suppose
that don't matter. She'll be sleeping in the house from now on.</div>
<div lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
I called up Elder Ridge
again and this time they were a bit more sympathetic, but I guess
there was a nasty brawl down at the Rusty Nail last night, and all
the officers are bringing the people they booked down to the
courthouse. Only person there was that new kid that just came from
River's End. He seemed like he really wanted to help, but he don't
got a badge so there wasn't much he could do except take down a
report. He promised me the boys would be here first thing tomorrow
morning, so hopefully all this will be over soon, though if I'm bein
honest, I have my doubts. I didn't tell Lorraine this, but I swear as
I was running round to the kennel I caught a glimpse of something
taking off into the night. I only saw it for a moment but it wouldn't
of taken me half of that to realize I wasn't lookin at no human.</div>
<div lang="en-US" style="border-bottom: 1px solid #000000; border-left: none; border-right: none; border-top: none; margin-bottom: 0in; padding-bottom: 0.03in; padding-left: 0in; padding-right: 0in; padding-top: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Final Entry: Evening of
October 26<sup>th</sup>/27<sup>th</sup></div>
<div lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Lor. My god Lor. Whoever
you are that finds this, this is Red Freemont. I don't think I have
much time left on this earth so I'm using the last of my balance to
write this warning. I woke up a few minutes ago and found that the
bed was empty. All of a sudden I hear this knockin at the front door
and I hear Lorraine sayin she locked herself outta the house and
needed to be let in. I was all set to open the door and really give
her hell for goin out there alone after all the shit that's happened,
but when I got there Anabelle was snarlin with her ears pulled back,
so I decided to take a look through the peephole. I could see Lor's
face pressed close to the glass, but something wasn't right, so I ran
around to the side window to get a better look.</div>
<div lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Lord in heaven what that
thing did to her. When I saw Lor, the upper part of her face, the
part against the peephole, looked the same as ever, but the lower
half was just danglin there. Out of her back there were these thin
long strips that stretched past the shrubs to something I couldn't
see. She suddenly started begging and callin my name through that
half-severed jaw but I knew that wasn't my Lor anymore. Then the
creature stepped out from the shrubs that had blocked my view and I
got a good look at it. It was at least six five and standing upright,
it's head was the spitting image of a crow but much bigger. It had
these massive black wings with all those cords comin out all over the
place and its legs were straight, black bird legs with sharp talons
shaped into something almost like a foot.</div>
<div lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
It suddenly turned and saw
me at the window, and it did that thing birds do with their heads
when they hear a loud noise. All I could do was run upstairs and lock
the door, but it's already past the front deadbolt and I don't thing
this door or even my shotgun'll stop it. I can hear it movin around
downstairs. Oh god I can hear it.</div>
<div lang="en-US" style="border-bottom: 1px solid #000000; border-left: none; border-right: none; border-top: none; margin-bottom: 0in; padding-bottom: 0.03in; padding-left: 0in; padding-right: 0in; padding-top: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<br />
<div lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="__DdeLink__6752_320071884"></a>
When Sheriff Bill Toomey of the Elder Ridge Police stopped at the
Freemont residence on 10/27/17 in response to a call made the
previous day, he found Red and Lorraine Freemont dead. They had been
so badly mutilated as to render identification of their individual
components all but impossible. Among other things, all four eyeballs
had been removed from the sockets and lined up on the fireplace
mantle, the limbs had been severed and cauterized in multiple stages,
and evidence of extensive injuries precisely performed on the
internal organs, which county coroner John Waltkins claims were done
while the victims were still alive. An investigation into the nearby
community of Fallen Pine turned up no substantive leads regarding a
potential culprit.</div>
Snowblindedhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06242023366792085291noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2630166144190637002.post-51815687591147250402017-10-27T04:51:00.002-07:002019-06-18T14:49:13.174-07:00Horror - They're out There<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
God, I don't even know where to begin.
So much has happened in the past couple days that it feels
overwhelming to try and get it all down. I don't hold any more hope
for my own existence, but I just have this compulsion to let someone
know about what happened. I doubt that many of you will believe me,
but I suppose that the best chance I have of winning over those few
among you who are inclined to take this kind of thing seriously is to
start from the beginning.
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
I work at a little restaurant in
downtown Philly. Just off of Arch St if you know the area, though if
you do I suggest adding as much time to your commute as it takes to
avoid that it at all costs. I don't know if it would have helped if I
had taken a different route to work that day, but if you truly
believe anything I am about to tell you then you'll understand that
no precaution is too great.<br />
<br />
<a name='more'></a><br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
So anyway, I was riding my bike down
Spring Garden yesterday morning, not far from 7<sup>th</sup> st, and
I guess I wasn't paying attention, because I ended up plowing into a
woman and sending myself skidding across the sidewalk in the process.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
So I'm a bit dazed and trying to figure
out what just happened, when I notice the girl, who looks about
seventeen from her position face down on the pavement, isn't moving.
Now I'm still jacked up on all the adrenaline from the impact, and my
brain is going a mile a minute with thoughts about how I might have
killed her or something, so without even thinking I run over and see
whats up. Her skin seems really pale, but I didn't see any scratches
on it, and the floral skirt and tank top she had on looked totally
undamaged, so I go and flip her onto her back. I don't know what I
thought I was going to accomplish looking back on it, it was like
somewhere in the back of my mind I thought I could perform CPR even
though the only training I have is watching cheesy cop shows and
medical dramas.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
So I go and turn her over and right
away a voice in the back of my head is just screaming “get the fuck
outta there and don't look back.” but of course good old reasonable
conscious mind is hitting me with the whole “fleeing an accident
after causing a serious injury is consider a felony offense thing”,
so even though this freakishly pallid girl is staring at me with shit
eating grin on her face, I just sit there like a moron mumbling the
usual “Are you okay?” bullshit.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Well, the only response this woman can
give to my question is to just shoot up and grab hold of my face. All
of a sudden I feel this weird sensation like cold liquid metal is
oozing down my forehead. So naturally enough I spring up and just
start booking it down the road, leaving my bike where it lay and not
even caring how stupid I looked. Felony or not, some creepy shit like
that happens, I don't care who you are, your flying the fuck outta
there.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
So I fly all the way to work, and by
the time I get there I'm outta breath and sweating like it's prom
night again. I feed my boss some bullshit story or another about what
happened to my bike, clean myself off and just try to forget about
everything that happened. But, like everyone else whose had a scare
that doesn't end up leading to anything, I start over-analyze what
happened. Poor girl was probably just sickly and delirious from the
pain, and I just up and left her on the side of the road. By the end
of the day I hated myself with a passion for abandoning both the girl
and my bike, thinking about how much it was going to suck taking the
bus until I saved up another couple hundred bucks.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
So that whole trip home I'm pretty much
lost in my own head, but I keep getting this sensation like someone
is watching me. Just like before, good old Mr. Rational gets on the
mind intercom and starts saying that its just the fact that you
haven't ridden public transportation in a while and you're not used
to being in such close proximity to all these people. But Mr.
Rational can't quite get the voice that's saying something is wrong
to shut up.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
I end up making it home without any
serious problems, and after some quality time with Netflix and my
bass I manage to shove all that shit that happened outta my skull.
I'm still pretty pissed at myself for ditching the bike and coming
off like a selfish fuckstick in the process, but it's that second
stage kinda pissed where your sorta calm at the same time, so I fall
asleep without any problems.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
I would say that I woke up in the
middle of the night, but I don't know if waking up was the right word
for it. I was certainly conscious, and yet I could not open my eyes
and my body was locked in place. No matter how hard I struggled I
remained totally still. Suddenly I felt that same half-solid
half-liquid sensation going down my face. I could no nothing as it
crept through my pores and burrowed deep within my flesh. I felt a
hand slowly drifting from my head down to my legs, spreading the
strange sensation wherever it went. Then, a moment later, it was
done. I was aware that I could move again. That same screaming voice
from before was now telling me to simply hold still and lay there
silently until morning, but I had to prove to myself that it was all
just some nightmare brought on by the strange circumstances of the
previous day.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
I opened my eyes just in time to see
what looked like the girl that I had hit with my bicycle, wearing the
same floral skirt and white tank top as before, heading through my
bedroom doorway. As she was about to turn the corner and leave my
line of sight she came to a sudden halt and then began to slowly spin
around back in my direction. It was the same girl. I could tell
somehow. But she was different now. Her skin was even more ashen
then it had been before, yet somehow luminous. Like moonlight
reflected off dusty marble. Her eyes were the same shape as before
but were now sunken back within her skull. She jerked her head to the
side and smiled a grin full of misaligned teeth.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
“All done.” She said in a voice
that wouldn't have sounded out of place in a high school cafeteria.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="__DdeLink__6545_320071884"></a>
She slowly turned back around and began moving at an amble to
wherever she was headed. I lay in my bed in total terror for the rest
of the night, trying to convince myself that it was just a dream, but
it wasn't easy. You see, I told you a bit of a lie earlier when I
said I was feeling calm when I went to bed. I had been frightened,
but it was that vague, unplaceable fright that you try to tell
yourself isn't there. The kind of fright that leads a person to lock
their bedroom door at night even though they can't quite say why. Yet
my door was wide open.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Morning came with nothing further
happening in the night, and with the rising sun came the return of
Mr. Rational, who, unlike the rest of me, apparently had no trouble
getting out of bed and running away sometime during the night. I
could not deny that I had seen the girl, and that she had entered my
bedroom, but what did it mean?</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
The simplest solution was that she had
seen me on the bus and followed me home, which also helped to explain
the sensation of being watched. She could have done serious damage or
even killed me if she wanted to but she seemed content to simply
scare me. She had probably slipped me some kind of drug that caused
my body to freeze up, and then put on some creepy makeup and false
teeth to frighten me. Once she got her payback for what I did to her
she probably just went home. I still had a strange sensation within
my body, like something deep down was shrinking into nothingness, but
that was easily explained as a side effect of whatever she knocked me
out with.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
I thought about going to the hospital,
but what could I tell them? If I gave them the truth I would be
locked in a padded room for the next couple years. No, if she wanted
to kill me she woulda backed my head in with a hammer while I slept
and not risked giving me some poison that would allow me to see her
and potentially warn people. With a workable explanation in my head,
I decided that the best thing to do was to just go to work and let
what happened sink into the past.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
As I stepped out the door, I felt that
same since of being watched that I had noticed on the bus. This time,
however, the source was obvious. Across the street from the bust stop
there was a couple that wasn't even trying to hide their gawking by
at least putting their phones near their faces, they were just dead
on staring at me. My first thought was that I had gone out with a
stain on my shirt or something like that, but I spent the entire wait
going over every inch of my body and I couldn't find anything weird.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
I hopped on the bus and went to a
window seat that looked out on the weirdos. I then watched as the
couple, who I now realized were just as pale as the girl, moved their
heads in perfect unison with my position in the departing bus. Her
relatives? Was I being stalked? I tried to paint some kind of
coherent mosaic that could sensibly incorporate all the strange
occurrences that had happened: the woman, the strange sensations I
felt, the staring strangers, but nothing I could come up with took
all the variables into account.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Things just kept getting stranger as I
crawled through work that day. Neither the feeling of being watched
nor the vague sense of internal disturbance abated, and in fact both
seemed to get stronger as the day progressed. I began to notice
customers staring at me in that same “I don't give a fuck that you
know I'm staring at you” kinda way, and they all had the same pale
skin and deep set eyes. I began to notice that the same handful of
people were passing by again and again, including the couple from the
bus stop.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
This was when I started to get truly
scared, but what would you have done in my situation? I had no idea
what these people wanted, so I really couldn't take any action. I
mean what would the cops have done if I showed up rambling about
ghostly people following me around? Same thing they woulda done at
the hospital. At least at work I had a few coworkers around who might
have intervened on my behalf if a physical altercation broke out, and
that was better than being alone, so I rode out the rest of my shift
as the strange people kept pacing around the establishment.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
When work ended, I contemplated going
to a bar or somewhere public, but I realized that would only be
putting off the inevitable. It wasn't like getting a motel room would
help either, since these people obviously had some means of keeping
track of my movements. Plus, who would want to die in a motel room?
The last thing I needed was for my family to think that I had been
running a nice little side business getting serial killers from
craigslist to plow me in the ass. My home wasn't safe, but neither
was anywhere else. These people apparently knew how to pick locks,
but at the very least there was no way they would catch me sleeping
this time.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
As I boarded the bus home, my heart
almost gave out. Sitting among the packed crowd were two of the pale
people who had been lingering around my job. Like earlier, they were
flat out staring me down and doing nothing to hide it. I moved as far
away from them as I could get and took the only available seat at
that end of the bus, one of those shitty rows where you have to face
the person in front of you.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
As soon as I took my seat, the
businessman in a pressed suit who was across from me lowered his
newspaper and revealed a gaunt, grinning face full of teeth that
hooked in every direction yet somehow locked together perfectly. I
recognized him from earlier that day, when he, looking much less
creepy, took a table at the restaurant. The fear that pumped through
my veins was indescribable, and yet at the same time I felt like I
had just crossed the threshold of creepy shit that I could silently
endure, so despite my fear I just flat out asked him:</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
“Is this some kind of prank?”</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
“Prank. Prank.” He said, his voice
at once matching the intonation of your everyday stock jockey and yet
at the same time somehow contorted. “No. I do not believe that this
meets the definition of a prank. Unless you were to say that, up
until this point, the sense of safety and security you have felt in
the world around you was an elaborate illusion which has now been
suddenly revealed to you as the lie it always was, meets your
definition of prank, in which case, surprise.”</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
The man stretched his lips far further
than anything I had seen a human being do before as he said the final
word.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
“Who are you?” I stammered.
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
“Names, names, names. You humans and
your constant desire to name everything. Such things are unnecessary
among my own breed, but among your kind we have gone by many names.
The Sumerians called is Lilu, among the Akkadians we were known as
Rabisu, the Romans referred to us as Incubi, while in India we were
named Vetalas. Further east, the Japanese called us, among other
things, the Yuk-onna, while in Europe we have been given the moniker
Vampyr.” he said.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
“Are you saying that you are some
kind of supernatural being, and that you and your friends have
decided to come en masse to Philadelphia out of the blue? To what
end? To terrorize the population?” I asked.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
“No. We've always been here, or at
least we've been here long before humans had made the voyage across
the Bering, and we are not interested in pursuing the entire city.
Only you.”</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
“This doesn't make any sense. Does
nobody else care that a whole shitload of demon-things are wandering
around the city? If you've been here as long as you say you have, how
have I never seen you before?”</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
“Among the powers at our disposal is
the ability to conceal ourselves amongst your kind so as to feed on
individuals without drawing the full community's attention. When you
encountered our outrider yesterday, she initiated a process that has
moved you closer to us, so that while you see a human being with a
handful of our true traits, the rest of the bus sees only a stoic
businessman being accosted by one of the city's many lunatics.”</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
I looked around and noticed that,
despite the bus being as crowded as it was earlier, the seats next to
us were all empty.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
“If you have the power to distort
people's perceptions of you, and your goal is to hunt me down, then
why not just kill me here and now? Why didn't that woman just devour
me as I lay in bed last night? Is taking sick joy in tormenting your
victims part of the hunt?”</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
“Your misery is merely a bi-product
of certain necessities in our process. We are not the only ones with
great power at our disposal. There are other beings, ones who have
taken great pains to protect you from us. They communicate to your
people in various guises and you tend to more or less ignore them,
but they have done much for you and your kin. The gargoyles and Foo
dogs that guard the gates of cathedrals and temples are ancient seals
against us, while the skull channel meditations of Tibet are powerful
warding practices. The activities of the Manichaean elect were
largely focused on defeating us. These and many far older defenses
have done much to keep your kind safe from us. It is now only
possible for us to pursue one who has first made contact with us.
When you collided with our outrider yesterday, you initiated a link
between us that will soon break you away from all the ancient
protections and will soon allows us to make contact with you.” he
said.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
“But the thing you call an outrider
already touched me. Twice.”</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
The creature suddenly burst into a
sickening laugh.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
“We do not desire to eat of that
pumping network of puss and gore that you call a body.” He said,
leaning over and running his hand over my knee to prove his point.
“No, we hunger for something far greater. What your people have
called spirit, soul, essence, or animating principle. That strange
sensation you have felt within is all of the mystical seals that keep
it secure being devoured one by one. By sometime tonight the final
seal will break and we will be upon you.”</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
“What will happen then?” I asked.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
“Hmm. You humans have a gift for
garbling things up, but your term damnation comes fairly close. In
draining your being it will be transplanted to the realm we
originally came from, where you will serve the needs and desire of
beings similar to myself who were unable to find their way out.”</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
I got up and yanked the cord over and
over. I didn't know what I was going to do but I knew I had to do
something.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
“Do you think I would have told you
all that if there was any hope of your escape?” the creature asked.
“Try to run and we will find you. We can smell the spirit of one
who has been tainted in a manner similar to that with which a shark
smells blood. Try to kill yourself and the links between us will
ensure that your soul is shackled to your dead flesh until the
process is complete. There is nothing you can do.”</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
So I sit here typing out this warning.
I can see them all outside my window. Dozens of them. All just
waiting. Even if I could describe the way they appear to me I
wouldn't. I don't know what any of you can do with this information,
but I just felt I needed to use my last moments on Earth to give a
warning. They're out there, and they're looking for you.</div>
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
Snowblindedhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06242023366792085291noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2630166144190637002.post-9553250672828836802017-08-14T12:59:00.001-07:002019-06-18T14:19:31.403-07:00Horror - The Voice That Pulls Me Forward<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
It seemed like such a routine day when
I first heard the screaming. I woke up just like any other morning,
showered, brushed my teeth, got in my car, and stopped for coffee and
a bagel on the way to the lab. I walked over to my station at the far
end of the 50ft x 100ft room where all the audio people were set up.
I was the first one in that day, so the normally buzzing bank of
computers along the wall had that almost startling quiet morning
people so love. It is an amazing thing to think about: that if I had
shown up fifteen minutes later my life would still be normal. Oh
well, dwelling on past failures never accomplished anything. That's
not why I'm doing this.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
<a name='more'></a></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
I walked down to my station and booted
up my computer. That's when I remembered my problem from the day
before. You see, I work identifying and classifying audio samples.
The thing that makes my job unique, and why I was paid far more than
your average Mechanical Turk drone, is that I had to do my analysis
entirely through sonograph waveforms without any access to the audio
itself. The computers didn't even have speakers.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
When I answered the listing, which they
claimed was for a project analyzing anomalies in deep ocean
background noise, they told me the frequencies I would be assessing
would cover a spectrum that exceeded the capacity of the human ear.
That was why I would have to rely on the waveforms alone. They said
that any attempt to listen to the sound files would bias their
results. At the time this did not strike me as abnormal. I had spent
my adult life up to that point working as an audio engineer in a
small recording studio, and I had no idea how the “serious science”
game worked.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
The thing was, after two months on
site, I started to realize that all of the waveforms that got any
attention from the boys up top were pitched right in the range of
human hearing. They tended towards the high end, but they certainly
weren't the kind of thing only a dog could pick up, and all the
background research I did on my own time indicated that deep ocean
analysis was done on frequencies <i>below</i> the human hearing
threshold.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
I had left the office the day before
with a number of conundrums about the sample I had been looking at. I
won't bore you with the details, save the fact that I felt that if I
just listened to the sample I would be able to sort everything out. I
thought about this little dilemma, and I figured that while I would
technically be breaking the rules, since the sample was entirely in
the range of my hearing it would be one of those situations where
everyone's life would be easier if I just ported the source audio
onto my phone, found out what I needed to know, and then never
mentioned it to anyone. Obviously if they found out it would harm the
integrity of their data, but if I kept my mouth shut we would all
win. I transferred the file and put my headphones on.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
I've been struggling to put into words
exactly what it was that I heard that day. I can tell you with
complete confidence that I have regretted ever purchasing my set of audiophile quality {brand redacted} headphones, but any
other attempt at description falls flat. That being said I've never
been one to avoid attempting the impossible, so I'll try to give you
what I can.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
There was no reason for me to assume
that the entire mass of awful noises came from a single person, yet
from the moment I heard that sound until now there has not been a
single second where I doubted this. Despite the fact that it
fluctuated rapidly between high pitched wails and low pitched moans,
and even seemed to somehow cover more than one pitch at the same
time, I just intuitively knew that it was produced by a single
throat.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
I am also in possession of a
single-minded certainty that whatever that woman was experiencing, it
was far beyond the scope of any suffering recorded in our history
books. In our time we humans have devised some very inventive ways to
inflict misery on our fellows: the brazen bull,
drawing and quartering, scaphism, the list goes on. The thing is,
despite that little voice in all our heads that says we humans have
shined light into the dark corners of our hearts, illuminating the
place that compels us to do those awful things, we haven't changed a
bit. A trip to Liveleak is at it will take to rid you of that little
delusion.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
I've spent some time there since this
incident trying to dig up the worst shit I could find, and compared
to what I heard that morning, the screams of ISIS burning a person
alive or a man who just had his limbs torn off in a machine accident
sound like the laughter of a child at an amusement park.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
I'm sorry I have to keep telling you
what the scream isn't, but every time I try to describe even a small
portion of it: the rapid oscillation of her uvula as her voice rises
in agony until it cracks at the limits of its productive range, the
way her gasping sounds come so quick and steady that they almost seem
to work like backing percussion, or the way her low wails seem to
briefly trail off as if she had been provided just enough respite (no
more than a few seconds) to make sure she never got used to her
torment; I just feel like I haven't done even the slightest bit of
justice to the anguish I heard that morning.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
I am tempted to say that I made the two
greatest mistakes of my life within ten minutes of each other on that
cursed morning, but with what I know now, I cannot help but think
that as soon as I heard those miserable screams my fate became the
plaything of some great hand reaching from beyond the veils of
our understanding. Given everything I have discovered, perhaps it is
better to say I was fucked from the start, and it was only on that
morning that I first realized it.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Metaphysical speculation aside, as soon
as I heard that scream a compulsion arose within me to transfer as
many of the files as I could onto my phone: a desire that I immediately succumbed to.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
At the time, I told myself that I was
doing it for the sake of that poor woman. That perhaps the company
that hired me was a front for some high class torture porn production
firm, and that I might be able to put a stop to a major sex slavery
ring if I brought those recordings to the proper authorities. Even
then, despite my conviction that the process of sober scientific
inquiry could shed light into the darkness around us, I knew that
what I was hearing fell well beyond the jurisdiction of any
government agency. And besides, I wouldn't be so cruel as to pull a
Typhoid Mary and spread my own horrible fate to as many innocent
bystanders as possible.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
I went through the archive and
transferred some samples, making sure to draw from as wide a source pool as possible. While I did grab a couple standouts that had
perplexed me in the past, all in all I think it was a reasonably
representative sample.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
It became clear once my coworkers
started to pile in that I was in no shape to focus on my work. By
10:00 I had been asked by three different people if I was feeling
sick and by 11 I decided to just roll with that as an excuse to get
out of there. I wasn't able to make much progress on my work anyway,
as ever since I heard the scream I could see nothing but the nuances
of pain in my samples. I headed home oddly curious about the new
additions to my audio library.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
When I got to my apartment I threw
myself into the recordings. Like the initial file, they were all
composed of a single person's ululations, but the subject changed
from one sample to the next, and it seemed to include people of
nearly every age group: from teenagers to the elderly. While each
lament was unique, they all had in common the gasping sobs, shifts
from high to low, and the occasional brief pause in the torment.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Each one shook me more than the last,
but I was so transfixed I did not stop to question why I would feel
so compelled to listen to them again and again. It wasn't until I
got to a file named 2016-07-01_c that I gained barest of ideas about
what I had stumbled into.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Even back when I first looked at it in
the office, I noticed some odd quirks in comparison to the standard
waveforms. There seemed to be a focused static to it that piqued my
interest and planted the file in my memory. I wish I could say that
listening to it sated my curiosity.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
It started off similar enough to the
rest, a man who sounded like he was in his mid-forties weeping and
screaming from some unknown anguish. Then I began to notice a
different sound. It was close to heavy breathing, but deeper
and not steady like a human being's lungs, and it came into the
recording right where the sonograph anomalies appeared.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Suddenly the man's voice changed. At
first it was a mild stuttering that was almost drowned out by his
torment. However, it slowly and steadily increased in intensity, until he found
just enough strength to cry out:</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
“Please stop. I beg you. Anyth...”
A fresh howl from his own throat cut him off. The breathing sound in
the background began to take on a pattern like the panting of
an excited dog, but less steady and controlled. In contrast, the cacophony of sobs and wails returned to its semi-coherent
pattern of rises and falls. Then clear voice ripped through everything:.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
“Listen, curious one . Listen to my
music and dance.”</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
The first thing I did after I ripped
out my headphones was to check the date of the recording. I confirmed
that it was as old as I thought and then spent the next five hours
swirling through the impossible implications in my mind. I was consumed by two firm beliefs: a complete conviction that my
very existence depended on my ability to never listen to those files
again, and an even deeper compulsion to return to my nightmarish vigil. Perhaps, if right
then and there, I had found the strength to smash my phone, things would have turned out differently. But as I said before, there's no use dwelling on
past mistakes.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
If my desire to never listen to those
horrors did not provoke any drastic action, it did at least keep me
away from them for a little while. I locked my phone in my apartment
mailbox and went to work the next morning. People still asked me if I
was feeling alright but I was able to brush them off.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
You may be wondering why I returned to the place that was responsible for my misery and why I didn't
try to do something more productive, say informing the authorities or
getting myself committed. But what kind of person would make such a decision? A clear and rational one? One evening with those audio files was enough to destroy all those foolish ideas about a rational universe. It was simply habit and muscle memory that brought me into the office that day. But when you have nothing else to guide you, those two things can often have quite a bit of power.<br />
<br />
Looking back, the only thing that surprises me is that my boss never reamed me out
over the shitshow of a performance I gave that day. Perhaps he knew more than he let
on about our little project. Perhaps he sat in his office watching me
through the camera and taking copious notes. With hindsight, I see
these last two days as my final desperate attempt to restore normalcy
to my life by acting out the exterior motions as if nothing were
wrong. You readers with some grasp of psychology probably know how well that works out.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
At first, I held out some
hope that, through an act of will I might be able to overcome the
urges burning within. But soon I realized that my struggle would
be futile. That the urging of my heart would never be quenched by
playing make-believe. At around 1:00 I simply walked out the door.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
When I got home I spent a few hours
browsing the dark corners of the internet, thinking that I might be
able to escape my fate through some facsimile of the voices, but I had no luck finding anything that
came close. After a while I gave up and got my
phone. Somehow I knew exactly what recording to put on. Maybe I had
known from the beginning. It was a young girl, no more than twelve.
Even after listening to all the others I still found myself disturbed
by her song of trauma. The heavy breathing was
there too, and after playing me a forty minute symphonies of human torment he came onto the stage to address the audience, just like I knew he would:</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
“I'm waiting for you, curious one.”</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
What's fragments remain of that rational part
of my brain tell me that whatever suffering I know here and now will only grow stronger should I heed his call, but such tiny convictions cannot be trusted. The five story drop from my window makes a compelling argument that even now, but the visions dancing within me speak stronger. All that remains of what I was is some small fragment of that human desire to have the sum of one's existence add up to more than a simple wall of cacophony whose waveform can be studied by clear minded, hard hearted empiricists, and so I will let those urges flee into my keyboard, so that nothing will remain but a vessel of those voices, an unmolded lump of clay ready to be brought to life by the careful shaping of a master artist.</div>
Snowblindedhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06242023366792085291noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2630166144190637002.post-39112261568178256632017-08-05T12:43:00.000-07:002018-02-09T20:54:19.569-08:00Music Criticism - Arcade Fire - "Everything Now"<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
The first thing one notices on their
initial play-through of Arcade Fire's "Everything Now" is
the disco. This effect is very deliberate. While throughout the album
one finds traces and elements, sometimes even structural supports,
that would have been at home on any of Prelude's releases, the first
two tracks, "Everything Now" and "Signs of Life"
bathe in the square multicolored lights. Rather than allowing the "20
minute line for a men's room with open urinals*" vibe to exist
solely in the form of 70s string counterpoints to hook melodies of
the 21<sup>st</sup> century, the kind of thing a Pitchfork writer can
think himself clever for being able to point out, the band choose to
follow the noble path of El Kabong before them and smash you on the
head with the influence. Their has always been a certain similarity
with the way many modern acts relate to disco and the way the
medieval mind viewed the heritage of antiquity (why do you think
Hercules and Love Affair have such a deep affection for the
Greco-Roman aesthetic). Unlike many of the medieval thinkers (and
most modern acts), Arcade Fire are more than comfortable expanding on
the achievements of the past.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="__DdeLink__1984_2121975845"></a>
I will use this opportunity to commit the first of many breaches of
the "journalistic integrity" of pop criticism by pointing
out that, while I occasionally find myself tempted to add Björn
Ulvaeus to my five B's of fundamental Pop songwriting that everyone
interested in making music should study in detail**, by pointing out
the
once-tired-and-cliche-but-now-again-relevant-because-of-people-who-resist-anything-tired-and-cliche
fact that disco music is at it's core banal, stagnant, and steeped in
the tradition of mosaic painting on the inside of a toilet bowl.
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
The Arcade Fire are also aware of this,
and rather than choosing to "slyly" incorporate some of the
better accouterments of the genre into a more vital pursuit like so
many other acts, they have chosen to show up to 2017 in an open
chested Qiana shirt. The critical establishment, being in possession
of a Lear-ian tendency to judge things entirely by their surface
appearance, are thus all but compelled to assess this music in
regards to how it relates to the shifting tendencies of other groups,
and whether the right amount of them are doing so to at the moment as
their metric to decide what is worthwhile.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
I am hoping that whoever reads this is
also of the opinion that, if one is forced to judge beauty solely by
the standards of what the broader mass of songwriters and performers
at this moment consider beautiful, you end up creating a cult of the
moment that is inevitably incapable of making any kind of discernment
regarding true beauty. It is like a sculpture of Polyclitus being
used for a mannequin by some expensive boutique; an abiding force
that stands unchanging from one moment to the next even as the trends
that lesser people think define it are swapped in and out.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
With that out of the way lets get into
the actual music.
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
</div>
<a name='more'></a><br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
"Everything Now" alternates
between venerating and subverting Ulvaeus' subtle twists. In regards
to the most fundamental components of the song's structure, such as
the way the piano, guitar, flute, and strings are added and pulled
not at the introduction or verses and choruses, but in a lively
back-and-forth-but-also-up-and-up manner, this song would have been
perfectly at home on an ABBA single. On the other hand, at one
instance a chord shift will be accompanied by a picture perfect
synthesizer counterpoint that seems to scream out a total absorption
of the Old Master's technique, in the next a screeching dissonant
squeal timed to the exact measurements of Ulvaeus' classic "throw
a string ornament at a crucial point in the verse's repetition".
Arcade fire, like Ulvaeus, have mastered a very particular method of
songwriting, and an effective one at that. Arcade Fire, however, have
managed to expand the emotive scope of their foundations. One doesn't
have to commit ABBA's discography to memory to see that their are
some fairly hard limitations to this style of songwriting. Like the
work of Holland–Dozier–Holland before them, while it is
absolutely fantastic at treating the polar extremes of the human
experience (joy and despondency, or more specifically love and
heartbreak), it is very much lacking when it comes to dealing with
anything that falls in between or possesses the shades of subtlety
far more common to what we will actually encounter in our day to day
lives. Anyone who is familiar with Arcade Fire will know that this is
an unacceptable prospect, so, like the Jazz greats before them
(perhaps without even realizing it), they have implemented dissonance
as the means of broadening this palette.
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
For those unfamiliar with this
approach, I would suggest opening up a new tab and comparing
Coltrane's go at "My Favorite Things" to the version from
"The Sound of Music". By changing the chords from simple
major/minor triads*** with the occasional 7th for variety, to a
glorious mess of 7b5s, 9ths, and M7ths that can be found in
Coltrane's version. These added notes allow a greater degree of
improvisational freedom and the ability for more complex emotional
expression. Arcade Fire are not looking to break away from either the
Pop structure or market, but are looking to express something beyond
the manic-depression that often characterizes Top 40 music not part
of the Hip-Hop milieu.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
To that end, both lyrically and
musically, they seamlessly fit dissonance into the boilerplate motifs
of their predecessors. The chorus is just as catchy as something one
would hear in the waxing days of Studio 54, but in those hallowed
floors one would never hear a chorus that at once gave the impression
of joyful exuberance while at the same time mocking it. I am not
saying this is anything new. Far from it, not even the early Indy
Rock pioneers can take credit for this classic upaya****. The Beatles
were fond of playing this game; if one explores the context of
Casablanca's usage of "As Time Goes By" (i.e. using a song
that claims the fundamentals of love remain unchanging as a backdrop
for a story that takes place when the ravages of war have overturned
everything, including the rules of love) you can see it in play; a
more knowledgeable person could probably point to some examples in
the Provencial canzones. What is different here is the way they use
the structure of the music to emphasize their goal. To give a better
idea of how this is done I'll give a little highlight reel:</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
-A Punch in the face opener of heavy
orchestration and a bombastic melodic line on the piano.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
-A pull-back of the instrumentation
while the progression itself holds together. The vocals kick in and
the piano switches to a more rhythmic instrument (in the world of
disco guitars exist for rhythm).</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
-A slight straightening of the bass as
the second stanza of the verse comes to an end, but only to tease the
listener, as the song reverts to the standard "vocal verse"
pattern immediately after.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
-Dissonant draggy strings on the third
stanza, which continue as a burst of the vocal harmony enters the mix
(the "everything now")</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
-As the third stanza continues the
strings seem to go where they please, at first content to hop around
at will in dissonant pirouettes, but then settling into a glorious
harmonization with the main melody at "I pledge allegiance to
everything now".</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
-At the fourth stanza the strings
decide they don't like playing nice after all,and take a sudden
nosedive, before doing a neat little between-line counterpoint,
before flip-flopping back to dissonance.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
-The chorus hits, and as per the
Ulvaeus playbook, the vocal harmonies go full force at the end of
every line. We also get a new melodic instrument, a variety of
woodwind that I absolutely should be able to identify but can't, so
you'll have to settle for "the woodwind".</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
-The flute does not confine itself to
the chorus, but manages to get some alone time with the strings and
decides it likes it enough to stick around for a while.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
-The full-bodied "Intro Verse"
comes back, with a new friend in the form of the woodwind, who joins
smoothly with the piano.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
-The woodwind leaves but the piano
sticks around for the next round of the "Vocal Verse", and
the strings get even friskier in their forbidden explorations.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
-The second chorus adds some call and
response talk-speak, and for the first time we get some firm
dissonance in the sacred chorus.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
-Rather than switch to a third "Vocal
Verse", we are instead treated to a lovely
pseudo-audience-at-a-concert chanting while the strings seem to gain
a measure of acceptance regarding their manic-depressive temperament.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
-The "Intro Verse"
instrumentation is merged with the chorus for a final bang before:</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
-Everything is pulled back for the
finish.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Go find a fucking ABBA song. I'm not
going to even suggest one because as far as I know you can take any
of them and do a side by side comparison and you will see a rough
outline of the approach I described above minus the fun with the
strings and plus some nifty little tricks in the key change
department.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
I hope I have gotten across why this is
such a magnificent achievement in its mastery of both the traditional
songwriting and the subversive alteration, because it's time to move
on. And before anyone thinks they are clever by calling attention to
the fact that I just spent an inordinate amount of time treating a
song that makes fun of the ridiculous amount of knowledge available
to the present age and its lack of value, I will quote Sideshow Bob
in saying that "I am aware of the irony, so don't bother
pointing that out."</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
“Signs of Life” uses a similar
approach to “Everything Now” buy replaces Ulvaeus with the
brothers Gibb, swapping in some handclaps, a well-oiled, prominently
positioned bassline, those impossibly high Bee Gees responses that
everyone either loves or hates. In doing this they have successfully
covered the entire span of good disco songwriters, and are prepared
to move on to new terrain. While not prominent, there is a lovely
little saxophone motif that I cannot help but call your attention to.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
The lyrics follow a similar approach to
that seen in “Everything Now”, with a singsong chorus that belies
its subversive subject matter. Again, this is old hand, but it is
also well done. I have a soft spot in my heart for lyrics that view
the night out through the eyes of a French existentialist, so my
preference has to go to “Signs of Life” on the lyric front.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="__DdeLink__1986_2121975845"></a>
While a straight up start to finish disco release from Arcade Fire
would undoubtedly be hilarious, it would also be a Kaufmanesque
amount of work for a single joke, so on “Creature Comfort”, the
band move out of pure disco and into
influenced-by-disco-but-also-by-a-ton-of-other-things approach that
allows music writers to fill up page space simply describing the
constituent components, and is therefore given preferential
treatment. Like I said before, the disco-punch that opens the album
is a very deliberate choice.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
The synthesizers here owe as much to
the amalgamations of M83 as to the soil of the 1980s that both grew
out of. The lyrics strike an odd midpoint between the cynicism of the
first two songs and actual engagement with the struggles of life.
There is a reason Patton Oswalt chose this band as his stereotypical
example of jaded indie detachment, and while later songs show that
the band can transcend this when they take on the task
wholeheartedly, here the former outshines the latter.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
If people have really gotten tired of
this little game of who can step back the farthest from the world I
am extremely sympathetic, but if you look at any of the publications
that shit on Arcade Fire for this you'll find that those same authors
praising far less talented acts who are far less good at it than
Arcade Fire are, so as long this is how we're doing things, thrusting
your annoyance onto one of the few groups who do it well seems
ridiculous.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
“Peter Pan” is a more modern track
than the ones that came before it, it is also the first song to
express committed sentimentality. The high piano notes that play
tight little chords at the end of the lines tugs at the heartstrings,
and, combined with the sincerity of the vocals, elevates a collection
of “dorm whiteboard” lyrics. The weird stretchy synth that
separates the chorus and the verse probably has some purpose, but I
confess myself immune to any charms it may possess.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
“Chemistry” draws on the reggae
tradition as well as classicist Jackson 5 lyrics to create something
that is surprisingly pleasant. The chorus borrows some things from
the stadium rock of Glitter and Jett but I think reggae and the
Jacksons are a better focal point. This song, unlike the disco
openers, takes its lyrical forbears at face value. While this mode of
expression can be very limiting if one adheres to it (see my earlier
comments about HDH), if one lands on it as a honeybee lands on a
flower, just long enough to extract what is vital, the end result can
be very endearing. The fact that Arcade Fire pulled this off is one
of the bigger surprises of the album.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
The two “Infinite Content”s see the
band returning to jaded detachment at the modern zeitgeist. The first
part once again shows the influence of M83, and provides an uptick in
the tempo at the exact right time such an increase is called for.
I'll risk overburdening my point by once again pointing out the bands
sense of craftsmanship, but this time in regards to the albums
overall progression rather than the individual songs. The sense of
the big picture is fleshed out by the sudden jump to the slower paced
second part of the song. Both pieces function much in the way that
ginger functions at a sushi restaurant: the sudden rise and just as
sudden drop cleanses the palate and readies it for what is to come,
while at the same time leaving a taste that is characteristic of the
experience as a whole.
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
In “Electric Blue”, we see the
linear combination of three synthesizer lines: A) a punctuated series
of bass notes, B) a mid-range primary riff, C) a quick series of high
notes. We see stacked up vocals that linger just a little bit longer
on the high parts. We see the band pulling it all back for the
pre-chorus. We see the [term I wish existed that strikes a middle
ground between “Non-lexical vocables” and “gibberish words”].</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="__DdeLink__1988_2121975845"></a>
The combination of these seeds brought Yeasayer a bountiful harvest.
M83 were able to glean some of what remained, along with a host of
subpar imitators. As it stands now the field is barren. Every
permutation that the minds of our era are capable of producing has
been done, and some time is needed for it to lie fallow before new
seeds can reinvigorate this technique with fresh energy.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
While the techniques and sonic palette
of “Good God Damn” fit within the general scope of what people in
our current epoch our doing, what this song really calls to my mind
is the ability of The Rolling Stones, when a real fire was lit, to
perfectly employ effortless guitar riff with a lot of open space and
a vocal performance just detached enough to let the subtle aching
really seep through. I deliberately avoid delving into the person
issues that artists bring into the studio as well as whatever
predigested vermin the promotion machine wants to vomit into the
public's gaping mouth, both in my personal life and in my writing,
but the theme of suicide that was touched on casually in “Creature
Comforts” is here treated in depth. If I had to guess many of you
are already familiar with whatever backstory lies behind this, as the
press much prefers to write about stuff like that than about the
actual music. While I do not give a fuck about the narrative of what
occurred, it would be remiss on my part to not acknowledge that a
very particular suicide seems to have a large thematic role in the
album, and that the best treatment of said theme can be found in this
song.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
I consider myself to be something of a
connoisseur of one off vocal flourishes that reveal worlds of
suffering beneath them. I am fairly confident that, if pressed, I
could write an article longer than most reviews of this album on the
“Oh God” at the end of Peter Laughner's “Ain't it Fun”*****.
While not as stunning as that moment, the aspiration between “God”
and “Damn” at the 2:30 mark certainly has a place on my longlist.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
In fact, the total vocal performance of
this song is fucking great.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
As with the majority of the album,
there is nothing revolutionary about “Put Your Money on Me”, but
the ability of this band to write pop songs is, I almost feel
confident enough to declare unequivocally, better than any other
group making music right now. Here we see a return to some of the
vocal devices used in their previous albums mixed thoroughly with the
broader aesthetic sensibility of this release to produce a pleasant
upbeat little ditty whose faults can be said to be identical to the
fundamental faults in pop releases that do not touch on the
transcendent. If you have a high opinion of this form then there is
nothing in this song save the way it relates to your own personal
quirks to say against it. If you have a general contempt for pop than
this would not be the song I played you to try to change your mind.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
“We Don't Deserve Love” brings an
interesting question to my mind: Why is it that, while one of the
first things you learn in any community college creative writing
class is that you should never write a story about a writer, while
songs written by touring acts that deal with the road hit well ahead
of the bell curve?</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Of course Arcade Fire know how to close
out an album. I hope you'll forgive me for not going into too much
detail here, but there is enough going on in this song that if I were
to try to break it down I would almost certainly end up with another
“Everything Now” writeup, and I'm guessing those of you with the
patience to get this far don't want that any more than I want to
write it. So with that said I'll move on to my closing remarks.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Look, I know that those of you who have
read this far are probably a bit baffled as to the value of these
admittedly mean spirited attacks on the critical establishment that
have peppered this piece. There is a good reason for both my anger
and its inclusion in a write-up on the latest Arcade Fire album. I'm
hoping that you have not come away from this with the impression that
I am so concerned with protecting the bands good name that any
offense against them is tantamount to a personal attack on my very
being. Based on the Billboard performance of the album I'm guessing
that Arcade Fire don't give a shit about what the blogs have to say
about them. So why work myself into a froth, and why here?</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="__DdeLink__1992_2121975845"></a>
Why? Because this album shines a perfect light on the systemic,
unignorable, and unforgivable issues with the modern pop criticism
apparatus. To the extent that the great mass of critics have on
average placed value on certain attributes of music over others this
album nearly always meets those values. Of course pop critics will
never lay down any firm guidelines for what they consider good music
to be, that would give away the show. Instead they will hide their
prejudice behind relativism and their fickleness behind undelineated
objectivity.
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
The fact that so many publications shit
on this album is flat out ridiculous. Long ago, deep in the mythic
past, music publications would take the output of musical acts, acts
that varied in the quality of the content they were putting out, and
let readers get some kind of foothold on the value of a release by
way of a skilled****** assessment. Now, in the year of our lord 2017,
we have reached the point where a band can put out releases which
consistently hold to the line of superior craftsmanship, expansive
range, and an innate sensibility to how the sounds of the past can be
reconstituted to form a meaningful soundtrack to the present, and in
doing so can present the reader with a guide to how the opinions of
the various publications fit within their personal critical
standards.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Why get myself worked up? Because when
we listen to sounds that provoke the deep wellsprings of our passion,
there is a natural tendency for that passion to search for some
channel of eruption. In linguistics, there is a theory that is
gaining ground that music underlies language acquisition. That the
advent of complex speech was a modulation of the musical cries of
warning seen in many kinds of monkeys, and the connection between the
two has not subsided with the development of our fancy buildings and
braided cable networks. We naturally turn to our fellow humans to try
and communicate the sonic connections music sparks in our primal
depths.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
The thing is, we are also very
suggestible creatures, look no further than Milgram's work to see how
the suggestions of a perceived authority figure introduce real
cognitive change. So the fact that we have handed over a huge amount
of control over what music gets shared, promoted, and ultimately
allowed to be expressed to a wide audience to a group of people who
are incapable of producing any kind of clear guideline on what they
do and do not consider good music; people who half listen to an album
once or twice and then free associate whatever words from the "List
of 1000 or so Acceptable Adjectives for Music Criticism" happen
to strike their fancy; people who use their best divination of the
prevailing stylistic winds to try and position themselves among the
high seers of our age without the slightest regard for the actual
content of what they are supposed to be talking about; people who
often give me the impression of taking a sadistic joy in the wanton
abuse of their little sliver of power in the building and dismantling
of bands; is in the end something that anyone who sincerely believes
this stuff to be worthwhile has to cry out against.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
*It would be a bit presumptuous on my
part to assume that everyone who reads this has an intimate
familiarity with the etiquette of cocaine, especially since this
reference could just as easily be construed as relating to the
practices of some of the less civilized communities in our Southern
marches.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
**Beatles, Beach Boys, Burt Bacharach.
Björn Ulvaeus ruins the alliteration and actually forces the number
of B's down from five to four, so you can see my dilemma.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
*** i.e. a chord composed of the
root/tonic, or "main note" of the chord; the fifth, which
is the most consonant note when compared to the tonic; and either a
major or minor third note depending on whether it is a major or minor
chord.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
****Upaya, or skillful means, is a
Sanskrit term used by Mahayana Buddhists to refer to a technique that
subtle brings about Enlightment in a person without either the work
involved in more traditional practices or (in many cases) even the
subject's intention to become Enlightened. A classic example of this
can be found in the Zen Koans that feature a master using a sudden,
incomprehensible, and typically socially (if not legally) disapproved
action to bring awareness to an unsuspecting person.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="__DdeLink__1990_2121975845"></a>
*****Please don't let either Dead Boys' terrible cover, Guns'N'Roses'
terrible cover of Dead Boys' terrible cover, or the shitty recording
quality stop you from <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XjbYsujchxA">checking this song out</a>. Seriously, please
please go listen to this track. The video for this song has 360
fucking views on YouTube. Also, as a side note to Smog Veil, what the
fuck is going on with that remaster/box set I have spent the better
part of a decade waiting on.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
******As the legend of the Minotaur
transformed itself from a bull baiting ring in Crete to the tale we
are all familiar with in the passage of time, so also goes my
perception of the skill and ability of the critics of yesterday. For
those of you wondering why the start and end of this article are
littered with references to antiquity while the meat and potatoes is
almost entirely lacking, it was because I intended at the onset (when
I wrote the introduction and conclusion) to really go nuts with the
whole disco is to us what Greece and Rome were to the medievals, and
use it as a running theme throughout the article, but in the end I
found it too much of a burden to carry through the whole piece, and I
am not a good enough writer to simply kill this particular darling
off.</div>
Snowblindedhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06242023366792085291noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2630166144190637002.post-13057783879996615912017-08-05T06:41:00.000-07:002018-02-09T20:54:41.698-08:00Music Criticism - Vaccination<blockquote class="tr_bq" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
Do I suggest a remedy? I do. I
suggest several remedies. I suggest that we throw out all critics who
use vague and general terms. Not merely those who use vague terms
because they are too ignorant to have a meaning; but the critics who
use vague terms to <i>conceal</i>
their meaning, and all critics who use terms so vaguely that the
reader can think he agrees with them or assents to their statements
when he doesn't.</blockquote>
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
The first credential we should
demand of a critic is <i>his</i>
ideograph of the good; of what he considers valid writing, and indeed
of all his general terms. Then we know where he is. He cannot simply
stay in London writing of French pictures that his readers have not
seen. He must begin by stating that such and such <i>particular</i>
works seem to him 'good', 'best', 'indifferent', 'valid,
'non-valid'.</blockquote>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="__DdeLink__1977_2121975845"></a></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
-Ezra
Pound, "How to Read".</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<b>Scope</b></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
At the
moment, my music writing is limited to the kin of rock and roll, i.e.
the genres that derived and spread outward from the 1950's melting
pot of Folk, Blues, and Country music. This covers a gamut ranging
from Soul music to Technical Death Metal. This is not to say that the
children of Rock music represent the total domain of my interest. In
fact, my love of Jazz is nearly on par with the subjects of my
writing, and my interest in Hindustani Classical music is not
insignificant either.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="__DdeLink__1966_2121975845"></a>
However, I have spent my entire life
listening to the progeny of rock music, while my broader interests
are at most a decade old. Hence I do not feel that I have expertise
to write about them. This is slowly changing with Jazz, but I still
have a long way to go. Even if I live a full life I will likely never
have enough of a grasp of Hindustani Classical to write anything
worthwhile about Shankar or Chaurasia.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
This
does not mean that I will refrain from making asides to genres
outside this intimate familiarity if I feel that they will add to the
reader's understanding of my subject. It simply means that at this
juncture I do not feel comfortable treating them directly.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<b>Purpose</b></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Any
worthwhile piece of music should have a purpose behind it. It does
not have to, nor should it, be a purpose wholly explicable by
language (the end result of this is either mediocre propaganda or a
piss-poor concept album), but when a listener puts on a track or an
album, it should be readily apparent <i>why </i>this
musician(s) chose to walk into the studio and record.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<b>Technicality</b></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="__DdeLink__1975_2121975845"></a>
Good music can range from incredibly
elaborate to astonishingly primitive. A major virtue of primitive
music is that a layman can readily detect the significance of, or
whether their even is any, purpose behind it. The more technically
proficient a musician is, the easier it is for them to swindle the
ignorant with rapid fire scales, ornate chord progressions, and time
signatures that require a trip to Wikipedia to count out properly, so
that they think they are witnessing a manifestation of the divine
when in reality all that is entering their ears is the urge for
financial gain, idolization, and sexual intercourse brought to sound.
This isn't to say that any of those urges, if addressed
directly,cannot be the source of worthwhile music. Consider The
Beatles' "Taxman", The Stone Roses' "I Wanna Be
Adored", or Danzig's "I'm the One". It just has to be
expressed openly instead of concealed behind a facade. One cannot
mistake why Crass decided to record “Punk is Dead”, whereas even
the most articulate listener will have difficulty determining what
value there is in virtuoso guitar music beyond that which is valuable
in a circus performance. Contrastingly, the pop music one normally hears on
the radio readily announces its banal intentions (albeit occasionally
dressed up in impressive studio abstractions), while “In the Court
of the Crimson King” can be studied endlessly without one ever
reaching the depth of its expressive capacity.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<b>Emotion</b></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Of all
the art forms, music is the one that produces the most direct
connection to the depths of the human psyche. The writer of fiction
and poetry has to have some kind of conscious recognition (even a
rudimentary one) of what he is trying to evoke*. The artist has to
encounter a vision (either externally, within his mind, or in most
cases some combination) and then capture on the canvas the internal
effect of that image. While their have been instances of cinematic
masterpieces coming out of a group of who collectively had no clear
ideas about what the were aiming for, this can be attributed to the
bizarre mechanics of group behavior as well as dumb luck. Only in
music can someone produce something that directly speaks to the
deepest levels of the mind without having any understanding of what
they have just evoked. The low formal requirements of rock and roll
and its progeny make it especially susceptible to this.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
The
flipside is that, unlike other mediums, in which a creator can skate
by with something that has an exclusively intellectual value, it is a
<i>requirement</i> that music
make some kind of connection beyond what can be appreciated directly
by cognition. This can be emotional, sensational, archetypal,
psychic**, or pneumatic. This is the reason that music criticism is
so difficult, and why music critics are significantly less vital than
any other variety of critic***. This does not mean that music that is
more passionate is automatically superior to music that is less so.
Kraftwerk and Joy Division both created music that is deliberately
cold, and at the same time says something both direct and profound
about the human experience. By contrast the saccharine over-emoting
of early 70's California folk-rock and 90's r&b is so one
dimensional and overdrawn as to be alienating to all but the
unrefined and tempestuous (hence the popularity of both forms with
teenagers).</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<b>Lyrics</b></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Lyrics
can either be in the service of music, where the rule of their value
is how well they amplify the emotional content of the music, or they
can be the focal point of the composition, with the music serving to
enhance the effect of the words. This is not a binary distinction but
a sliding scale, with a band like Slayer sitting close to one end and
the music of Bob Dylan exemplifying the latter. Both ends of the
spectrum (and any intermediary point) are perfectly acceptable means
of expression.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<b>Righteousness</b></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
A
precious and elusive quantity, this righteousness. Needless to say
most punk rock is not exactly ODing on it****. In fact, most punk
rockers probably think it's the purview of hippies...</blockquote>
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
It's
kinda hard to put into mere mortal words, but I guess I should say
that being righteous means you're more or less on the side of the
angels, waging Armageddon for the ultimate victory of the forces of
Good over the Kingdom of Death (see how perilously we skirt hippiedom
here?), working to enlighten others as to their own possibilities
rather than merely sprawling in the muck yodeling about what a drag
everything is.</blockquote>
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
The
righteous minstrel may be rife with lamentations and criticisms of
the existing order, but even if he doesn't have a coherent program
for social change he is informed of hope. The MC5 were righteous
where the Stooges were not. The third and fourth Velvet Underground
albums were righteous, while the first and second weren't... Patti
Smith is righteous. The Stones have flirted with righteousness (e.g.
Salt of the Earth), but when they were good the Beatles were
all-righteous. The Sex Pistols are not righteous, but, perhaps more
than any other new wave band, the Clash are.</blockquote>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
-Lester
Bangs, “The Clash”</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="__DdeLink__1979_2121975845"></a>
This will likely be the heading that
alienates the largest portion of the audience I am interested in
appealing to. It is also in many ways the most subjective. I do not
have the energy nor likely you the patience to read through a
treatise on ethics, but even without venturing out that far, save the
nihilists among you, we all affirm <i>some</i>
kind of meaning (and by no means a religious or a philosophical one)
to existence. Since those who don't see any value in the game tend to
stop playing it, save those possessed of either cowardice or “Notes
from Underground”-esque levels of spite, this seems a rather
self-evident thing to say. Just as self-evident is the fact that
music can either assert or deny this meaning. What I mean is that
some music recognizes something vital in the existence of humanity
and some music denies this. Ultimately, I am of the belief that a
musician who affirms is superior to one who denies, all other things
being close to equal.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
This
does not mean that the music has to be upbeat or positive.
Sanctuary's “Future Tense” is so deep in the waters of bleakness
that it submerges the listener in the inky tide. Yet its darkness
only serves to point out the absence of the sun (and hence the sun's
existence). Its cry against modern hedonism and froth-at-the-mouth
culture only stings insofar as one harbors hope of something better.
As Morpheus says to Lucifer “What power would Hell have if those
here imprisoned were not able to dream of Heaven?"</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Of all
my criteria, this is both the most recent and the most personal in
its nature and my application of it. However, events in my life have
compelled me to place a higher value of the righteous than the
nihilistic. This is also where I remain the most flexible. The second
VU album is a masterpiece despite its utter contempt for literally
everything, so are a number of Black Metal albums. At the same time,
I believe that the Odinistic influence provided an affirming
direction that tends to raise Black Metal with a Viking temperament
higher than its morose peers.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<b>Culture</b></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Because
the gifts of musical ability are bestowed evenly across humanity, the
music on any given cultural or subcultural spectrum will have a
relatively uniform distribution of quality. The exception to this is
where outside forces shape the environment, most notably in how the
drive to appeal to as broad a consumer base as possible renders the
curve of commercial music a little flat and puffs up genres where
there is little chance of financial success by assuring only those
with a deep interest remain.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
While
every genre of music has its highs and lows, I, like ever other human
whose interest in music has progressed beyond the passive absorption,
lean more toward some forms and styles than others. Due to this, I
think it is only fair that I briefly repress my urge to avoid
pigeonholing myself so that those interested can get some sense of
what I value personally. Especially regarding music, the idea of
objectivity is utterly empty, so everything I write will reek of
delusion if I cannot come out and tell the reader directly which of
the numerous methodologies for the arrangement of sound has, in the
broadest of assessments, has tended to have the greatest impact.
Then, one who does not share my peculiarities is equipped to both
diminish the value of my praise regarding styles that I naturally
move towards and give extra attention to those points where my
baseline sensibility meets theirs. Plus, in those occasions where I
speak highly of a piece of music that does not naturally appeal to
me, one can properly understand the significance of this statement;
either the piece so excels beyond its peers that it demands special
attention from even an outsider, or it moves away from the general
trends of similar artists towards areas I find more appealing.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="__DdeLink__1981_2121975845"></a>
As a general rule I prefer the
experimental and avant-garde to the traditional. I have a polarizing
tendency to be attracted to both the most ornate and primitive. I
have great appreciation for the craftsmanship involved in good
songwriting, but I often grow bored when these skills are held by
people without a coherent vision. The genres I value highest are most
subgenres of metal, experimental rock, punk (with all the standard
prefixes: proto, post, hardcore, and their various combinations), and
Krautrock. I also have a significant interest in folk music, the
better pop of the 1960s, indie rock, and some prog.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
</div>
<a name='more'></a><br />
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
*This
applies to a much greater extent towards fiction than poetry, though
in both cases my point that there must be some kind of recognition by
the conscious mind in the form of the words themselves is by
definition essential. This is not to say a poet (or even a writer of
fiction) cannot produce a work that is predominantly influenced by
the images of the unconscious, but there is a fundamental distinction
between even the most abstract poetry and free association, and that
distinction is the presence of the conscious mind and the will. For a
more detailed treatment of this subject, see C.G. Jung's “On the
Relation of Analytical Psychology to Poetry”, at the moment
available online <a href="http://www.studiocleo.com/librarie/jung/essay.html">here</a>.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
**In
the Greek and Psychoanalytic sense, not in the sense of a seer or
medium.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
***Unless
you wish to include video game critics, which you shouldn't.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
****Note
that this piece was written in late 1977 about the early British punk
of bands like “Sex Pistols” and “Buzzcocks”, and his
assessment only includes those groups as well as the American punk
pioneers like “The Stooges” and “Rocket from the Tombs” and
not the 1980s hardcore punk bands that often seethe in righteousness.
While the assessment may seem odd to a modern reader, check the
release dates on your punk albums and you'll see his assessment is
reasonably accurate.</div>
Snowblindedhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06242023366792085291noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2630166144190637002.post-56725972347459085972017-05-25T18:32:00.000-07:002018-02-09T20:51:17.529-08:00Essay - God in the Shitty Monitor Speaker<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Dedicated to:</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Craig Finn:
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Il miglior dottore</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Stephan A. Hoeller:
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Ⲡ·ⲥⲁϩ ϩⲟⲗⲱⲥ
ⲧⲁ·ⲧⲁⲡⲣⲟ ·ⲛⲁ·ⲱⲁⲡ·ϥ` ⲁⲡ ⲉⲧⲣⲁ·ⲭⲟ·ⲟⲥ
ⲭⲉ ⲉⲕ·ⲉⲓⲛⲉ ⲛ·ⲛⲓⲙ`</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
The Fullness</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
“Let one who seeks not stop seeking
until one finds. When one finds, one will be troubled. When one is
troubled, one will marvel and reign over all.”</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
-The Gospel of Thomas</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
“I guess Shepard came outta St. Cloud
with a little ideology, some new way of thinking. A view to the
future. Jesus this might be a mess.”</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
-The Hold Steady, “I Hope This Whole
Thing didn't Frighten You”</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
I had a spiritual experience while
laying on my bunk at the Hartford Correctional Center. I am far from
unique in this. Spending high school and a good chunk of college as a
militant atheist, rocking a Venom shirt, and blasting Burzum out the
open windows as I drove past Sunday morning services may have put me
at the far end of the bell curve of likely candidates for a cosmic
epiphany, but jail's firm and unforgiving soil seems ideally suited
for the cultivation of contact with the divine.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
It happened on my third day in
custody, just as the dope withdrawals reached their apex. Prior to
that day I had counted myself among the millions of people turned off
by all that “higher power” business at the NA meetings. However,
the Buddha's message of liberation from the suffering that
characterizes existence had struck a gong that very much resonated
with my mindset during the previous five years spent shuffling my
living space from my car to my parents house to detox facilities back
to my car all while struggling with the day to day reality of heroin
addiction. Starting about six months prior to my incarceration I had
gotten into the habit of putting on lectures from a wide variety of
Buddhist sects after I came back from my Hartford runs and then
listening to expositions of the Dharma as I drifted off into
oblivion.
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
<a name='more'></a></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
At some point in this process, spurred
on by an interest in “Blood Meridian's” The Judge and his
connection to the Demiurge figure, I began to look into Gnosticism as
well. When I discovered that Dr. Stephan Hoeller of the Ecclesia
Gnostica had put audio of his sermons online, I decided to add them
into my nod out rotation. While I was in possession of a lukewarm
curiosity about both of these faiths, over a decade of nihilistic
detachment had erected a seemingly unassailable wall between academic
interest and personal connection. Nevertheless I found myself going
back to my lectures night after night. Buddhism's architectural
layout of Samadhi, Gnosticism's penetrating approach to the problem
of evil, and both faith's recognition of humanities true condition
and their meticulous efforts to alleviate it through introspective
effort had stuck a barb in my worldview that my detached material
empiricism could not dislodge.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
I lay there on bunk 59 of H.C.C.'s
dormitory four, flopping around, as a friend later put it, like bacon
in a frying pan, staring at the thousands of ants my mind told me
were scurrying about each of the flickering fluorescent lights, and
existing in a perpetual state of panic and terror comparable to that
of a gazelle the instant that the tremor in the corner of its eyes
transforms into the shape of a lion. In this state of fear and
absolute misery, my mind jumped from agony to agony: the reality of
cold turkey jailbed withdrawal, the mystery of what was going to
happen with my case, the viparinama dukkha that comes with an alien
environment, and a mixture of absolute awareness of every difficult
step in the journey ahead with ignorance of even the faintest
possible joy. I suddenly found myself acutely aware of the exact
depth in feet and inches to which I had fallen. While my relationship
with the worldview and platitudes of Narcotics Anonymous is strained
at best, in that moment I suddenly and instantaneously understood
that they were 100% correct in their doctrine of a clear and
demarcatable point where you realize that you are at your lowest. My
ass had just plowed straight into rock bottom.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
With that understanding firmly in
place, and my pride residing somewhere deep within my lower
intestinal track, it occurred to me that it could potentially be
beneficial to divert my attention from whether or not I could tie one
end of my pant leg to the triangular corner where the metal
belongings slab meets the bedframe, stuff my knees into my shirt, and
jerk myself off the top bunk with enough force to snap my neck, and
instead give heartfelt prayer for help a shot.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-style: normal;">I sat
there and I called out to God as the terms and framework of
Gnosticism describe him. While the precise wording changed every few
dozen repetitions, “From within the muck and mire I call out to the
fullness and I beg for aid.” is as good a representation of the
whole as any. I sat there repeating the phrases, more out of
desperation than any real expectation of result. All the same, after
some time spent reciting the varied mantras, I experienced what I can
best describe as a lifting of my consciousness from the shackles of
mundane reality. It was not a severing of the relationship between
mind and body. I was still fully aware of all the misery that the
physical network of nerves and receptors were flinging about.
However, it was a detached awareness, as when you walk too close to a
plant and notice the sensation of its limb brushing against your
flesh but are not particularly perturbed by it. Furthermore, many of
the physiological phenomena associated with the brain, such as
anxiety and hopelessness, immediately dissipated. It was as if a
strong wind cleared years of built up misery, leaving only those well
rooted elements of myself with the strength to stand their ground
against the blast.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-style: normal;"> Unlike
the handful of times I have been able to attain a state of detachment
from my withdrawal symptoms through meditation, I did not revert the
moment I stopped my prayer. While some of the sense of calm slowly
faded away as time moved forward, I was able to go through the rest
of the detox process without a sudden anxiety attack, aware of the
symptoms but at the same time unperturbed by them.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in; page-break-before: auto; text-indent: -0.02in;">
<span style="font-style: normal;"> In the days that followed, as the
effects of withdrawal began to alleviate, I drifted from but did not
forget my experience. I devoted a small portion of my day to
repeating the prayers but spent the majority of my mental energy on
adjusting to the experience of jail. Even when I did perform my daily
ritual, the words were spoken out of a desire to not lose the gift I
had been given (for some time afterwards I was terrified that my
actions had merely delayed the inevitable) and they lacked the fire
of their initial incantation. This is not to say that I entirely
disregarded what had happened to me. From that point forward I had a
will to resist heroin's siren call that had not been present at any
point in the last six years, but the day to day activity of my
conscious mind was focused on more mundane matters. I had no doubt
that what had happened to me was both significant and outside the
scope of my comprehension, but upon reflection doubts began to
emerge. The moment of awareness I experienced bore similarities to
phenomena described in a numerous spiritual traditions, from subitist
schools of Buddhism to the lyrics of Matisyahu's “King without a
Crown”.Was the experience simply the manifestation of a recurrent
but scientifically undocumented cognitive phenomenon? I had always
seen Buddhism in a similar light, with Gautama as an extraordinary
man who was able to devise a means of hacking into a neurological
structure that millions of years of evolutionary honing had whet into
a misery machine. Where the most agitated, hostile, and troubled
members of our species became the most likely to have their agony
programming reproduced in future generations. After all, if there was
a deity figure who neatly fit the descriptions of any of the worlds
major religions why would he go around granting such boons in equal
measure to those who did and didn't get the good news?</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: -0.02in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: -0.02in;">
<span style="font-style: normal;"> After
considerable contemplation of such matters, I found myself no better
equipped to answer them. Ultimately, I had made a request to
</span><i>something</i><span style="font-style: normal;"> outside
myself, and that request had been answered. That in and of itself was
meaningful. Even if I assumed the most cynical of doctrines, two
points remained that could not be rebuked:</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: -0.02in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: -0.02in;">
<span style="font-style: normal;"> 1)
That the very act of my request hinged upon a number of
presuppositions that a wholly scientific outlook on the universe
cannot produce justification for, and during the time period that I
maintained a worldview roughly in orbit of the exclusively
scientific, nothing bearing significant similarity to what I
experienced on my bunk occurred. Contrastingly, the brief window
where I rejected said principles produced a near instantaneous
reduction in my suffering. Therefore, it seemed likely that the act
of forcefully separating my plea from the effects that immediately
followed it would lead to a reversal of said effects.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: -0.02in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: -0.02in;">
<span style="font-style: normal;"> 2)
That while the doubt in my heart could not be entirely quelled, one
thing I did have control over was my loyalty. I had made a heartfelt
plea to something that then and now I cannot comprehend, and the
reply I received, regardless of the processes underlying it, was very
real. I had made the choice to call out to the beyond in my hour of
need, and whether I responded to the reply in embrace or dismissal
was a decision that was entirely mine to make.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: -0.02in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: -0.02in;">
<span style="font-style: normal;"> When
I was released, I did the best I could to move in a positive
direction. I got a new phone to cut myself off from both my old
contacts and the people I had gave my number to while locked up. I
also charged into the byzantine process of getting medicinal
treatment, i.e. the Vivitrol shot, whose minimum sobriety
requirements I met for the first time in my life.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: -0.02in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: -0.02in;">
<span style="font-style: normal;"> Another
item on the list of NA truisms that turn out to be accurate is the
whole “one day at a time” business. Prior to my incarceration,
the realization of how much misery is involved in the life of an
addict. But living out of my car, waking up each morning in the
parking lot of a Wal Mart, and having the question of how I was going
to cop embedded on my eyelids like the burning image of the One Ring
were never enough to get momentum moving in a sane direction. All it
produced was a feeling of hopeless guilt that lasted until the next
time my mind called up the thought of the high in all its
overwhelming glory, followed by the thought of having to live the
rest of my life without it. The next thing I know I'm back in the
south end of Hartford calling right down my list of numbers to find
out who would be able to serve me the fastest.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: -0.02in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: -0.02in;">
<span style="font-style: normal;"> After
what I experienced on that first day in H.C.C., however, I've felt
and thankfully continue to feel no desire to return to heroin. At the
same time, the idea of complete sobriety was just as agitating as it
had always been. The thought of total sobriety had taken over playing
the role that the memory of the dope high had given such a masterful
performance in previously. </span>
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: -0.02in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: -0.02in;">
<span style="font-style: normal;"> The
exact drug combination I fixated on varied. Sometimes it would be
just booze, other times it would be weed and alcohol with the
occasional crack night thrown into the mix. While incarcerated I
would often enter a particular thought chain where I would first
encounter some stimuli I associated with heroin, I would then swat
the thoughts about dope away with relative ease, but in the process
my mind would briefly dwell on the concrete reality of my plans when
I got out, which of course led to a minor bolt of terror (compared to
the old heroin thoughts at least) as I contemplated going every day
for the remainder of my existence without any of my big four highs.
Next I would do my best to shove those thoughts back into the pits
that spawned them and move on to something else. Perhaps I recognized
that heroin was the true priority, and that everything else could be
taken care of later. Perhaps the human mind only has enough strength
to deal with kicking one drug at a time. All I can say with certainty
is that when I was finally let out I found myself in possession of a
sizable drive to remove dope from my life and a jittery ennui about
everything else.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: -0.02in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: -0.02in;">
<span style="font-style: normal;"> It
should be of no surprise then, that my first week out of jail found
me going to bars and drinking while holding back from anything
harder. Then when I found out I could not drink after getting the
Vivitrol shot, I rewarded myself for blocking heroin from my life
that month by treating me to a special day out, just my crack pipe
and I. Then I found out that my probation wouldn't reinstate for
another three weeks, so I used my next weeks cheat day to smoke some
weed. I was able to spend the next two weeks sober in light of my
imminent probation visit, and I interpreted the ease in which I was
able to keep everything in check as evidence that I was out of the
woods. That while there were a couple slip ups I had everything under
control and I could keep things up without much difficulty. Little
did I know each of the urges I had indulged in that past month had
responded to my situation by forming together like Voltron under the
head of the one drug that didn't interfere with my medication and
left my system quick enough to dodge drug tests. They had merely gone
into hiding so as to await an ideal location to launch their attack.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: -0.02in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: -0.02in;">
<span style="font-style: normal;"> Its
shocking just how quickly a well ordered existence marching in the
direction of sobriety can get routed and end up fleeing panicked back
into the ravaged countryside. I had progressed from living out of my
car and stealing or hustling to maintain a robust daily regimen of
heroin and crack rock, then came the incarceration enforced sobriety,
followed by a handful of irregular relapses into lesser drugs “in
the service of the greater good of heroin abstinence”, and then
finally a decent stretch of total sobriety. I would not have believed
it if you told me that on this particular Monday morning, once I
given my urines to both probation and my doctor, a horror would
emerge from my depths as cruel and vicious as the ones that tormented
me in those bygone days of absolute depravity.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: -0.02in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: -0.02in;">
<span style="font-style: normal;"> By
the time I was walking out of the courthouse I found myself having to
suppress a significantly greater number of problematic thoughts than
usual. When I had given my urine to the doctor those thoughts had
reached such a cacophonous crescendo that the act of not calling one
of my connects seemed as absurd as not wiping your ass after a shit.
The whole ride home the voices raged. Since the state of Connecticut
considered me unfit to operate a motor vehicle, trips to both
probation and my doctor were provided by my very supportive family,
and while I was teetering on the verge of coating my crack pipe in a
brand new layer of fire and oil, I had not fallen back to the point
of being willing to do so publicly. This fact, the persuasive little
demon said, was clear evidence that things were not as they used to
be. Given that I had probation breathing down my neck and regular
tests from a doctor (a doctor I was seeing willingly after all), I
could only get high once in a while anyways. And don't you remember
how it was when you started? Just getting high on the weekends and
keeping your shit together for the rest of the week. Things were bad
for a while there but were you ever truly happier than those days?
And what is once a week anyway? Your problem was that you were doing
it every day and couldn't keep a normal life together, and now, look
at this, you have an opportunity to go back to the way things used to
be in the golden days. You remember how great that high felt. Picture
it in your mind right now. Wasn't that feeling worth so much more
than any bullshit idea of total sobriety? In any case, you know it's
gonna happen so the sooner you get it over with the less likely that
it will show up in your urine.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: -0.02in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: -0.02in;">
<span style="font-style: normal;"> On
and on he whispered in my ear until I arrived home in a mad frenzy. I
paced about the house frantic and alone trying to find the strength
to withstand the urges that were assaulting me. After ten minutes of
setting a track through the carpet with no relief in sight, despair
and acquiescence overtook strength, courage, and resolve; I called
the only connect I had who was willing to drive out to where I was in
the boonies and I asked him how long it would take to get here. He
told me that he was out of town and that I would have to wait until
tomorrow.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: -0.02in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: -0.02in;">
<span style="font-style: normal;"> One
of the few strategies that I had found success with during previous
scouting runs into the land of sobriety was the regimentation of my
daily activities. Having a clear and well defined list of things to
accomplish on a particular day helps to keep your mind occupied and
trying to see how many items on a checklist you can cross off gives a
sense of purpose. Because of this, one of the first things I did when
I got out was to write down as many constructive activities as I
could on a sheet of grid paper. These activities ranged from playing
musical instruments to working out to listening to my lectures. In
the twenty hour gap between when I got off the phone with my guy and
when I could realistically call my him again I threw myself into
these activities. I did the last of the work on rearranging the
furniture in my room (a move to try and break years of negative
psychological attachment). I decided that then was as good a time as
any to check out the album Craig Finn dropped when I was locked up. I
spent some time working through the Tripartite Tractate and a Pali
Canon anthology. While my mind wasn't as craving-wracked as it had
been when I was on the dope grind, it wasn't that much better either.
Rather than literally not being able to do anything but devotionally
fixate on my next high the moment all the dopamine had drained out, I
would focus on my current task for ten to thirty minute stretches at
which point my thoughts would return to the subject of how great
crack feels and how great it was going to feel tomorrow. I would then
spend nearly as much time mentally ensnared in this fashion as I had
spent on what I was trying to distract myself with. Every time I
tried to break the psychological shackles that chained me to samsara
they would loosen for the briefest moment only to grind me into the
cold dirt even harder than before. By the end of the day I found my
situation to be hopeless.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: -0.02in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: -0.02in;">
<span style="font-style: normal;"> </span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: -0.02in;">
<span style="font-style: normal;"> Back
when I was still in jail, as the withdrawal symptoms began to taper
off, a slow awareness of the full scope of my depravity began to take
hold. My own terrible choices, the many threads of human life cut
short by overdose that had assembled themselves into a tattered,
makeshift cloak around me, and the dead alienation that had marked my
reaction to both. Slowly this all began to dawn on me. While it came
with a reasonable and well deserved share of guilt, remorse, sorrow,
and self hatred, it didn't hit me with the profundity that I felt the
events merited. I continuously expected some grand catharsis where
the seas pulled back and a surge of emotions engulfed me. When said
moment never came I found myself ducking my head beneath the armpit
high stall door while taking a shit and trying with all my might to
force out something commensurate to what a normal human might
experience. This attempt ended in failure, and as I left the stall
and sent the internal filth that at least my sphincter was able to
purge spiraling into the network of pipes beneath the hard ground of
H.C.C., I was certain that all those years of forcefully repressing
even the slightest hint of humanity and affection had ruptured the
neurological tracks and sluices that allowed a normal human being the
ability to flush the failures and tragedies of their existence away,
leaving my brain doomed to wallow in the waste and misery that had
been building up steadily through the years.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: -0.02in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: -0.02in;">
<span style="font-style: normal;"> I
woke up the next morning with my mind in the same place it had been
the night before. During my two very brief stints attempting sobriety
I had discovered that commitment was the point of no return. Once you
had make the decision to go get high your mind transforms into
something that cannot be slowed or stopped. The only way to survive
the battle for sobriety was to continuously deny that terrain to the
enemy. Some dim part of me held out hope that a nights rest might
function as a reset button on my mindset, but when that failed I
resigned myself to what was to come. One concession I made was that I
would not resort to blowing my dealers phone up from the moment I was
awake until the moment he answered. I figured at bare minimum I would
wait until 10:00 before I called him. If, between the time I woke up
and then, I somehow got things under control that would be great. If,
when 10 am rolled around, I felt that I had the strength to push
things to 10:30 then that would be good too. Deep in my heart,
however, I had all but given up on both of these scenarios.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: -0.02in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: -0.02in;">
<span style="font-style: normal;"> The
minutes ticked by just as slowly as they used to. I found myself
fixating on not just the momentary glory of that smoky exhalation,
but also countless 2 am wake ups and bedridden clock-stare sessions.
I would draw my mind into every miserable ripple that one moment of
joy would produce. The knowledge that even as I smoked the rock I
would spend my time flipping between two minutes of pleasure and five
to twenty spent waiting impatiently for the next hit. The three hour
comedown half an hour after I finished. The cravings coming back more
and more often as I re-acclimated myself to a schedule of regular use.
The inevitable re-violation and return to jail as I started playing
looser and looser with those drug test dates. Yet none of these facts
dissuaded my will from its beloved.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: -0.02in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: -0.02in;">
<span style="font-style: normal;"> When
10:00 finally hit I had every intention of making that call. I had
spent the past four minutes staring at the clock like a stray dog
stares at a butchers table, so when the nines and fives rolled into
ones and zeroes I dropped my arm off the side of my bed and felt
around for my phone. When I realized that I left it on the charger in
the other room an odd halting-ish effect happened. Essentially, when
my mind was nudged out the “clock watching rut” it had lodged
itself in, the control of the habitual addiction thoughts was very
temporarily broken. For a moment I found myself in a position of
greater control with a very small sense of agency over my actions.
The effect was so fast that by the time I realized what was happening
it was already over, but while my thoughts returned to the pipe,
somewhere within a tiny fire of resistance had been sparked. The
cumulative effect of this was that I still felt resigned to the
series of actions I had spent hours rehearsing, but now suddenly the
voice that had been warning me against it had the gag tied around her
mouth loosened ever so slightly. Just enough to be noticeable above
the crack smoke cacophony.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: -0.02in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: -0.02in;">
<span style="font-style: normal;"> A
secondary effect of the mental stoppage was the awareness that I
needed to defecate. I am not totally sure if I realized I needed to
shit when I was staring at the clock and ignored it in favor of
higher priorities, or if this awareness came with the mental reset.
Regardless, the bound and gagged Voice of Ascendance saw an
opportunity for escape, and as I began moving towards the door an
internal struggle took place. The Voice of the Almighty Exhalation
urged a direct run towards the phone, while Ascendance sang a
beautiful hymn of freedom that just barely emerged from her smothered
throat. In the end, the Voice of the Void, seeing both actions as
utterly unavoidable biological processes, cast his lot with
Ascendance, with the understanding that this trip to the bathroom
would be a final pointless effort, and that once it was taken care of
I could tell myself I had done everything I could, and make my call
with a slightly clearer conscience. </span>
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: -0.02in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: -0.02in;">
<span style="font-style: normal;"> My
time in the bathroom was somehow worse than any of the preceding day.
It would not surprise me in the slightest if I found out that I had
not spent a single moment thinking about anything but the hard and
its relative proximity. I was no longer resigned to getting my phone;
I was now hellbent on stampeding straight from the toilet to the
table that raised it off of the ground like an ancient alter of the
most unspeakable sacrifice.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: -0.02in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: -0.02in;">
<span style="font-style: normal;"> I
wiped my ass, flushed, knifed my hands under the water and walked out
the door. For reasons still unknown to me I continued moving forward
instead of banking left towards the charger. Even as it was
happening, I can remember thinking “What is the purpose of this?”
Going back to my room just meant another five minutes of delaying the
inevitable. Still I walked straight to my door. As I twisted the knob
I can recall that same sense of total futility that had been growing
over the past twenty-four hours. I can recall thinking that another
pointless fuckaround did nothing but make the rock stay in my system
longer when I did purchase it. That the best imaginable scenario
would be gritting my teeth for another five or ten hours and raising
the odds just a little higher that it would show up in my urine. I
walked through the doorway, the winch began to move, and the curtains
lifted. In its immediate aftermath the best description I could come
up with for what I experienced was a weight being lifted from my
mind, but that expression has been thrown around far too often and in
too wide a variety of circumstances to effectively hone in on what
happened. While there was a palpable sense of lightening, I think a
better way to describe it would be to say that all of the currents,
undercurrents, tides, and undertows of conscious experience suddenly
halted, leaving me for a brief moment enthralled in the beauty of
absolute silence.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: -0.02in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: -0.02in;">
<span style="font-style: normal;"> I
stood there in unbridled vacancy for a moment, and then two thoughts
struck me. That at a deep level I really didn't want any hard and
that within those walls I would have the strength to resist. I cannot
say with certainty that the effects of my rearranging the furniture
did not produce a psychological “safe zone” distinct from the
years of drug association dripping from the walls of the hall and
bathroom, though it seems odd that said organization didn't do me any
good the previous night. I have no means to contradict the idea that
my brain simply has a finite amount of whatever biochemical cocktail
has been misappropriated from various neurological mechanisms to
harangue me with visions of sugar crumbs and carpet surfing, and that
my trip to the bathroom amounted to burning it all up. However, if
there is anyone who is familiar with the nuances of brain chemical
burnout it's me, and a sudden stoppage seems massively inconsistent
with everything else I am familiar with. All these thoughts and more
crossed my mind in the reflections that followed, but I had switched
teams back in H.C.C., and none of them prevented me from laying down
on my bed and in rare sincerity earnestly thanking whatever divine
force was responsible for the reprieve.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: -0.02in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: -0.02in;">
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="firstHeading"></a>
<span style="font-style: normal;"> I sat in prayer for a little while
until my thoughts began to drift away on their own accord. As is
often the case when my mind drifts off, I began to click about my
computer guided by habit alone, with no conscious awareness to speak
of. Rather than the usual Reddit refresh loop and the eventual
realization that I had just wasted twenty minutes of my life typing
three letters into my address bar, scanning my front page, and then
typing that very same URL upon discovering that the content had not
changed since my last check-in, I minimized the open Firefox window
and came back to myself with the realization that I was looking at
the cover art of the Craig Finn album I had listened to the night
before. Much in the way Blake's “The </span><span lang="en"><span style="font-style: normal;">Four
and Twenty Elders...” pulls the eye from all directions toward the
source of the great emanation, my sight was led to the song “God in
Chicago”.</span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: -0.02in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: -0.02in;">
<span lang="en"><span style="font-style: normal;"> I've
always found the fickle nature of music appreciation to be one of the
more intriguing mysteries of the human condition. You can hear a
song thousands of times and find each repetition as dull as the one
before. Then one day some set of invisible circumstances will trigger
something and in an instant it will transform into a manifestation of
high and ineffable beauty. It didn't take a thousand repetitions or
even ten for my mind to shape “God in Chicago” into a
masterpiece. Only two. The night before the opening chords were a
string of letters just persuasive enough to coerce me into turning my
head towards the monitor and noting the title, but on this day those
same chords could have asked me to carve their name into my chest
with a serrated knife and I would have done so unquestioningly.</span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: -0.02in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: -0.02in;">
<span lang="en"><span style="font-style: normal;"> Craig
Finn's voice cut through the single pointed uniformity of my shitty
built in monitor speaker like a carnival barker when he sees an easy
mark. As he spoke of a young woman finding herself in possession of
her recently deceased brothers stash, I was overwhelmed with images
of the dozens of friends whose window into the sights and sounds of
existence was slammed shut after a negligable and agonizingly
significant mathematical error in how much dope to load up into their
spike. He told me about a house rendered uninhabitabley oppressive by
a young man's fatal decision and I felt that same torment in the very
room I sat in as my mother made a final inventory of the stems and
empty bags I had gone to so much trouble to keep hidden. He described
the two protagonists singing along to a busted boom box as they drove
to Chicago and I could not escape the images of a beautiful young
woman whose voice would rise in pitch as whatever frantic scheme we
were working on that day took shape into an actionable plan. Who one
day sat in the passenger seat of a Chevrolet Impala aged beyond its
years by repeated blows from baseball bats and hurled bags of metal
bolts, and forced me to pull to the side of the housing development
we were cutting through so she could hold my hand and insist that my
jaded monotone voice join her lamenting cry in an earnest and
desperate prayer to a god of deceit, jealousy, and the perpetuation
of human misery. Who ended up dead in a parking lot in Rhode Island,
the news of which caused me to do nothing more than add one more
check to the list of people I knew who had metamorphosed into
corpses. Then Craig sang of finding God in the monuments of a few
million people who sought refuge from suffering in their proximity to
each other and I wept for the first time in nearly a decade. </span></span>
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: -0.02in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: -0.02in;">
<span style="font-style: normal;"> The
tears kept coming as the music finished, but after a while the images
that had been evoked were placed back into the storage unit that had
held them locked and welded shut for so long. My mind returned to the
visceral now and the endless chatter came with it, but this time it
latched onto a different subject. I realized that I had been provided
all the incentive I could get, save an even lengthier jail term, to
resist the tortured call of the abyss. I had not been given a pardon
or a transfer to a less dangerous theater, but I had been given the
favorable terrain to launch an attack against an enemy that vastly
outnumbered me.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: -0.02in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: -0.02in;">
<span style="font-style: normal;">Ave
Sophia, nos liberi te salutamus!</span></div>
Snowblindedhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06242023366792085291noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2630166144190637002.post-41193531555518116132015-03-31T16:49:00.001-07:002015-03-31T21:07:54.426-07:00Horror - There are Cruel and Fearsome Things That Prowl the Open OceanMankind believe themselves to have escaped the horrors that preyed on them in bygone ages. Perhaps we are right. Mostly. The torch of scientific progress kindled by Newton and his contemporaries spread like wildfire in the centuries that followed, and drove the beasts that dwelt in our shadows scampering back to the darkened pits that spawned them; turning the hunter into the hunted. Physics, the idea that our world operates through universal and comprehensible laws, castrated the secret magics that had once left kings and peasant children alike shivering in the terror of all-concealing night. Darwin and his concept of evolution banished the ancient monsters with such speed and determination that Heracles himself would have been envious.<br />
<br />
<a name='more'></a><br />
<br />
But there are still places in this world where the light of modernity hasn't reached. A number of San tribes (commonly known as Bushmen) in Namibia speak of the ¯koo-b¯u*, or Bone Eaters. A tall (7-8'), grey, lanky, bipedal creature with lean yet protruding muscles capable of tremendous speeds; large rock hard hands that taper into sharp nailless points with bulbous knuckles and joints; hollow, deep set sockets holding round white eyes that roll about in them like a billiard ball; and of course the mouth, stretching across the entirety of its face, holding spiked teeth as a hard and bright as marble that seem to glisten even at night, always cracked into a broad grin when it encounters a straggling child who has wandered too far from the rest of the tribe.<br />
<br />
The Nukak people of the Amazon basin speak of the Kanábéyáa, or Black Jaguar People. Little is definitively known about them, save the resemblance between their black fur, retractable claws, round pinprick eyes, and those of their namesake; their ability to shift between a bipedal and quadrapedal stance; and their propensity for hunting nearly anything, including humans foolish enough not to guard their campsites at night. Again and again, anthropologists hear tales of night sentries looking on in terror as bright eyes; first two, then dozens, circle and dance about the periphory of their encampment. Hellish yowls and hisses cut through the air, followed by panicked shouts and the chaos of men brought into the waking world by their greatest fear. And then, in a brief moment that seems an eternity to those caught within it, silence. The inevitable return into the veil of night. Of course, war stories are always told by the survivors, so there is a lack of testimony from those unfortunate groups who were either caught off guard, or else, for one reason or another, were deemed to be worth the fight. There are also tales of hunting parties finding one of their neighboring tribes eviscerated, stripped of flesh and meat, and left to rot in the coming sun.<br />
<br />
But these stories will have to wait for another time. I come to you not with a tale of some hidden crevasse deep in the heart of the wilderness, but of that endless sprawl that surrounds all of humanity's achievements. The last great uncharted territory. The ocean.<br />
<br />
I had just graduated, and, like many that come from families of considerable means, viewed the gap between getting my diploma and getting a job as an oppurtunity for exploration. Unlike many of my peers, I was not content to use this period merely as an opportunity to get wasted and sleep around in a different corner of the globe. Not that I'm trying to come off as superior or condescending, I have no right for that. I started off in Europe just like everyone else, moving from Paris to Rome to Zurich to Vienna to Berlin and then Prague, indulging in the careless excesses that tend to characterize these trips. But at the same time, I wanted more than that. I wanted to ride the back of an oxe drawn cart down a withered trail to places my fellow Americans never laid eyes on. I wanted to slum it in the homes of destitute village inhabitants despite the fact that I could easily afford a four star hotel. I wanted something new, something unseen, some amazing forgotten secret.<br />
<br />
The noteworthy part of my trip begins in Vanino, a fairly small seaport town on the Eastern coast of Russia. I had taken the Trans-Siberian Railroad as far as Khabarovsk, and from there I decided I would get to the coast by hitching rides with locals. It was the mid 90's, and the collapse of the Soviet Union was still reverberating through the economy, which meant that everyone from corrupt bureaucrats in imported cars to farmers with mule drawn carts were more than willing to lighten my pockets of those heavy Francs and Deutschmarks. From my atlases and road guides, Vanino seemed the perfect place to set off for the final waypoint in my journey, Japan. It was small, and far enough from the railway to be empty of other tourists. Despite this, it had a moderately large seaport, and its proximity to the impossibly large forests of Siberia meant that at least some of its outbound ships were likely en route to help satiate Japan's monstrous hunger for foreign timber.<br />
<br />
While this ended up being the case, it was a bit harder than I thought to secure transport. Looking back, I can't believe how stupid and brazen my approach was. Just walking onto the harbour of some backwater port town in a country whose language I could barely ask for the bathroom in, and somehow expecting that I would find a crew willing to drag my naive ass halfway down the Eastern coast of Asia. However, the Russian economy was in shambles, people really were desperate, and I was lucky enough to find someone who wasn't quite so desperate as to simply rob me for all of the promised money. Then again, the way things turned out, perhaps I would have been better off getting beaten within an inch of my life, separated from all of my assets, and left to die in a town unconcerned with the well being of some obnoxious foriegner.<br />
<br />
I met Kee Sye in a bar not too far from the harbor. I had spent many hours in that tavern, a fairly typical Russian bar with wood paneling, high tables, and way too many pictures hanging in way too close proximity to each other. I had refined my intelligence gathering technique until it began to take on a ritualistic quality. I went through the motions of this ritual as I always had. Buy him a drink first to warm him up to the idea of chatting with an American, find out if he speaks any English, if he works on a boat, and where he is heading. He was short, even for a Southeast Asian, and judging from his attire, had done quite a bit of travelling. He wore a thick red-brown coat that was scuffed, stained, and disheveled, yet clearly hardwearing, with no visible rips or patches despite the obvious abuse it had suffered, and an equally battered pair of American jeans. I found out that he was from Singapore, spoke English, and was a deckhand aboard the Сумерки бегун. He didn't seem to particularly enjoy the company of Russians, which accounted for the relative ease in which we struck up a conversation. Seven beers and countless tales later, accounts of our respected travels, growing louder and more dramatic with each empty glass, and I finally had the nerve to bring up my predicament. As it turns out, he was heading to Nagoya on a small timber ship with a crew of eleven other men. I told him I was looking for transit to Japan, I had plenty of money, and that I would make it worth his and his captain's while if they could find some room for me. He warned me that the conditions onboard were less than ideal, and I assured him it wouldn't be a problem. He told me to meet with him tomorrow at the same place.<br />
<br />
He didn't show up until almost 10:00 the next night. I was on the verge of giving up and going home when I finally saw a tiny figure in the doorway. We locked eyes and he walked over to my table. I ordered him a beer and listened to what he had to say. The captain accepted my offer. They were leaving in two days. One of the deckhands had some medical issues and wasn't capable of making the trip, so his bunk was going to be open anyways. I was to arrive at 6:00 a.m. on Monday ready to embark.<br />
<br />
The Сумерки бегун was a fairly standard, if almost absurdly old (though this is also fairly standard among Russian ships), timber carrier. About 250' long and 40' wide, it had large cranes on both the bow and stern of the ship, as well as a second, smaller crane at the very tip of the stern. The majority of the interior was used for timber stowage. Two large compartments, one for each crane, were on either side of the ship. Between them there was a small section with the bridge above deck, and the crew quarters below.<br />
<br />
Besides Kee Sye and myself, there were ten other crew members. There was Vladislav, the captain. A man with thinning hair whose hard stare and sharp voice put him somewhere between distinguished and despotic. Mikhail was the chief mate. An older man, in his mid 60's by the look of him, he seemed frail compared to the rest of the crew, though if you saw him surrounded by members of his own age group he would probably strike you as robust. Zakhar, the second mate, looked about 40 with a fairly average height and build. Depending on the time of day, there would either be a slight tremble in his hands or else a faint redness in his cheeks. Where I would often see Vladislav and Mikhail debating with each other, Zakhar took his captain's words with as infallible truths, and was often seen trailing behind him like a hungry dog.<br />
<br />
The crew quarters were divided into three rooms with two bunk beds in each. The man whose spot I had taken was bunking with Alexsei, Wei, and Rodion. Alexi was the chief engineer. He had neatly cut brown hair and a nose you could tell had taken more than a handful of punches. When sober, he had a short, direct manner of speaking, but once he had a few drinks in him, he would oscillate between hostile machismo and awkward sentimentality. Wei, the second engineer, was from China. He was slightly taller than Kee Sye, standing at maybe five foot six, and possessed a relentless energy. He would spring, rather than stand up from a chair, and walked around the deck as if he were always on an important errand. He seemed legitimately interested in me and my homeland. I may well have been the first American he ever laid eyes on. However, his command of Russian was only a few rungs above mine, which made communication problematic. Rodion was the tallest crew member, maybe six foot three, and, despite his position as a wiper, he had the large muscular build of the deckhands. He had an aura of detachment about him, especially with regards to me. Despite sharing a bunk, we spoke to each other maybe three times in those first few days, with me trying to either break the ice or address some practical concern in broken Russian, and him giving a one or two word reply and moving on. Whether it was because I was a wealthy outsider or because that was just his approach to new people I can't say. Though I would occasionally observe him in animated conversation with Georgy late in the evening.<br />
<br />
The rest of the crew comprised of Georgy, the boatswain, as well as Viktor, Ganzorig and Nergui, who were deckhands. I'll spare you the details of each, only noting that Georgy and Viktor were Russian, while Ganzorig and Nergui were Mongolian. Of the crew, only Kee Sye and Mikhail spoke English, so my communication with everyone else was pragmatic in nature.<br />
<br />
I came aboard at the appointed time, careful not to disturb the loading process as I heaved my pack into my room and prepared for the voyage to come. I sat on my bed, debated going up and offer my assistance, but eventually decided that I would probably be more of a nuisance than a help. I ended up just kicking up my feet and waiting for the final preparations to be completed. Within an hour or so, the wood was loaded, the gangplank was up, and we were out on the open ocean.<br />
<br />
The first few days were uneventful. I tried to stay out of the way as much as possible, reading in my quarters while the crew went about their business. In the evenings I would sit in the dining area and occasionally chat with Kee Sye and Mikhail.<br />
Kee would typically entertain me with stories of his adventures while I sat there taking it all in like an eager eight year old. Mikhail had many stories as well, but unlike the bravado that dripped from the Singaporean's words, Mikhail's voice possessed a sort of desperation. He had seen it all, and the weight of his lifetime on the high seas had left him hunched and weary. Still, I enjoyed talking with him, finding a certain folksy charm in his stark stories and peasant superstitions.<br />
<br />
On the morning of the fourth day, the fog hit. It was unbelievable. The kind of fog that Eliot wrote about in Prufrock, with a thick, overpowering presence that you could almost feel rubbing against your skin. There was some debate among the officers as to how to procede. Vladislav felt that, given how far out at sea we were, it was safe enough to rely soley on their instruments without having to fear running aground. Mikhail disagreed. He brought up of the unreliability of the equipment, the strain it would put on the crew, and the possibility of getting lost. But mostly he spoke of omens, of tales picked up in the decades he spent far from the sight of land. He spoke of ships pressing through such fogs and never returning, and of unspeakable horrors recounted by those few who did. Vladislav made a show of dismissing such claims, trying to keep a stoic expression as he quiped some offhand rejection in his native tongue. Even then, however, I could detect an ever-so-slight quiver in his voice, as if it were the protocols of masculinity and not his calculating judgement that urged him forward. He gave the order to sail on.<br />
<br />
Three hours later, we began to hear the screams. I was reading in my bunk when the horrible wails of what sounded like a young girl cut through the air with such intensity that my body shuddered in response. I ran up to the deck to see what had happened, and the confused voices and faces staring into the distance confirmed what I had feared. The voice had not come from the ship, but from below.<br />
<br />
Somehow, the fog had gotten even worse than before, I could barely see the silhouettes of people standing ten feet in front of me. The confused voices began to get angry, and after a few minutes they were on the verge of yelling. I waited for a lull in the conversation to ask Kee Sye what was happening. He informed me that the crew had become divided over what to do, with one faction, led by Mikhail, urging that we abandon everything and turn around. Another, led by Alexi, proposed stopping the ship and trying to mount a rescue operation. A third group, led by Vladislav, argued that we should press our way through the fog as quickly as possible, that we would be free of it sooner if we kept going than if we turned around, and that we were so far away from the girl that by that point that, even if the fog lifted immediately, we would still have no hope of finding her. While Kee Sye was explaining this to me, Zakhar came rushing down from the bridge. According to Kee, he had attempted to send a distress signal alerting the authorities to the stranded girl, but wasn't sure if he succeeded. The radio appeared to be functioning properly, but there was no response to his distress signal. Furthermore, most of the navigational equipment was malfunctioning, giving readings that were absolutley impossible. Immediately, the raised voices tranformed into a full blown screaming match, with each side taking the new revelation as proof of the righteousness of their plan. Eventually, Vladislav used his position to overrule the dissenters, and again gave the orders to push on. This time, however, there was open dissention in the air, and I didn't need to speak the language to hear it.<br />
<br />
Onward we drifted into the infernal shroud. Silence fell over the ship as the crew paced about nervously; gazing off into the murky gloom, seeking out some cause for the sense of doom that hung over us as palpably as the fog itself. It did not take long for the ocean to give its answer.<br />
<br />
Those screams. Those horrible screams. At once roaring with untold power and yet quivering with all too human pain. It was as if every minute permutation of human suffering joined together in a demonic cacophony. Men well versed in the pains of violence and hunger fell to their knees like innocent children; tears bursting from their eyes and fear erupting from their mouths. Up and down both port and starboard we ran. The cries seemed to have no definite origin, yet we somehow knew their source lay right below us. Suddenly there was a commotion at the other end of the ship. I ran over and saw Viktor and Mikhail in a ferocious argument. Inscrutable words drenched in fear and rage flew back and forth as the fight began to shift from one of words to one of blows. Viktor suddenly dashed towards the railing. Georgy and Nergui tried to restrain him but swift elbows sent them reeling backwards and in an instant he was gone. Mikhail shouted orders as I ran to where he had jumped. The waters below were empty save the ever present swell of waves.<br />
<br />
Lengths of rope were knotted into what my seaworthless eyes would call a modified a noose, or else tied to one of the two life preservers. Looking over the port railing, I saw a figure bob up to the surface, motionless excluding the ocean's sway. I shouted out, and Kee Sye echoed my words in Russian as the whole crew charged across the deck. Ropes were hurled into the water. First came the life preservers, but when there was no attempt to grab on, everyone began to toss what they had into the water. Whether it was luck, skill, or something sinister that caused Ganzorig to effortlessly catch his knot around the figure I cannot say, but he did, so we grasped the rope and began to pull.<br />
<br />
Looking back, there is one thing that strikes me about this rescue operation. Perhaps we were all too caught up in the madness of the moment to think about it, perhaps the fog was too thick for us to notice, but I find it shocking that nobody realized as we rushed about, trying to save our fallen comrade, that Vladislav and Zakhar were sitting in the bridge, ignorant of what was transpiring. It did not occur to anyone that as we scrambled to save that lone figure floating alongside us, our ship was speeding through the fog.<br />
<br />
It was not Viktor who we hauled onto the deck, but the body of a woman. We dragged her up, and as she crested the railing, a sense of trepidation grew within us. At first, we were not sure precisely what was wrong with her, though there was no doubt that something was amiss. Georgy pushed through the crowd, dropping to his knees to attempt first aid, but the moment he saw her up close he fell backwards and began to tremble. A wave of shock rolled through us as one by one we got close enough to see her. Her face, my god, her face. That nightmarish visage was burnt into my mind the moment I laid eyes on it. Barely a night goes by that does not see me shooting up from sleep, drenched in sweat, every awful detail recreated in my dreams exactly as it appeared before me on that light-veiled day.<br />
<br />
The facial expression of horror exists at the most extreme limits of human body language. Every muscle of the face is stretched to an extreme degree. The eyes are open, but unlike the expressions of interest or surprise, in which the surrounding musculature stretches out vertically, when we experience horror, our muscles stretch back from the eyes in every direction, as if the very face itself is trying to escape from what its eyes are seeing. The mouth too is stretched to the limits of its expressive capability, and unlike a smile, which stretches horizontally, or a "jaw drop", which stretches vertically, the muscles pull back in all directions, causing that instantly recognizable expression. The muscles in that woman's face acted as I describe above, but somehow, they had stretched beyond anything I would have thought possible. Well beyond the typical limits of the human facial expression. It was like she had experienced something so horrifying that her face was forced to contort in ways no face had ever done before, or perhaps like it was stretched in terror for so long that the muscles involved had developed a strength unknown to the rest of humanity.<br />
<br />
Once we had gotten over the shock of her face, we began to notice other strange things about her. When we brought her up, we had thought her to be elderly due to the wrinkles that covered her body. But then we began to notice some strange inconsistancies like the way the wrinkles of her face curved to avoid patches of acne. There were a shocking number of cuts, scrapes, and bruises along her body. While a certain amount of injury is to be expected in the survivor of a maritime accident, what struck me about these injuries was how evenly they were inflicted across her body. There was not a one inch patch of skin unmarred by some kind of laceration. Fresh cuts sat atop an intricate web of scar tissue and her skin formed into miniature X's wherever a fresh gash happened upon one that had'nt fully healed. Small holes offered windows to the world of organs and muscle within. Scrapes ran about her body in perfect curves like the intricate line patterns found in many Mosques. Fingernails and toenails ran the spectrum from nearly full to entirely absent, with blistered skin suggesting many had been recently ripped from the socket. Looking at her, it was impossible to escape the notion that these injuries were done by a calculating, sentient mind with the aim of inflicting as much suffering as possible.<br />
<br />
Actually, there was one place on her body that was slightly different than the rest. On the small of her back, there was a large, circular hole much larger than the others, about two inches in diameter. There was nothing separating hee spinal cord from the outside world, and there was an odd spiral pattern that seemed to have been carved into the bone itself.<br />
<br />
While we were deeply shaken by what we had seen, Mikhail in particular was profoundly disturbed. He had fallen to the ground, rolled onto his side, and his voice seemed completely devoid of expression. I knelt down next to him and put my hand on his shoulder. Despite something deep inside me knowing it was a lie, in as calm a voice as I could muster, I said:<br />
<br />
"Relax. We're safe as long as we're on the boat, and it can't be too much longer until this fog clears."<br />
<br />
There was a long pause as he stared at me the way a worn down first grade teacher might stare at a student who confidantly proclaimed that he had figured out a way to get rid of war and violence: all we have to do is take all the guns and knives away from all the bad people.<br />
<br />
"No." He finally said. "We are not safe. We will not flee her."<br />
<br />
"What do you mean?" I said incredulously. "Who the hell are you talking about?"<br />
<br />
"She is the hunter. The cruel one. She has picked us as her prey. We will not escape."<br />
<br />
"You mean whatever did this to that poor girl is after us? If she's as powerful as you seem to think she is, why hasn't she attacked us directly? Why bother with the fog and the mind games?"<br />
<br />
"It's her way. She has many powers, but she can't leave the water. She does not need to. We will come to her. In time all of us will come to her."<br />
<br />
"There has to be something we can do. If she can't leave the water than we should be safe as long as we stay on the ship. We can turn around. This fog can't be everywhere. It can't go on forever. If this fog really does stretch farther than we can sail, then the whole world would know about it by now. There would be rescue missions. Every news station on the planet would be reporting on the death fog and the hunt for all of the ships trapped within it."<br />
<br />
Mikhail laughed a hateful laugh that shook me almost as much as seeing the girl.<br />
<br />
"She has been around for ages." He said. "As long as man has sailed the sea. You think some pathetic beaurocrat or a TV news man will save us. We are trapped."<br />
<br />
"There has to be something we can do." I pleaded.<br />
<br />
"Yes. There is." He said. Lifting his hand he pointed a trembling finger behind me.<br />
<br />
I had been so engrossed in Mikhail's words that I had not noticed the commotion going on around me. I turned and saw people crowding together. I realized that all eyes were on Georgy. There was panic in his voice as he screamed out in his native tongue. The rest of the crew had assumed docile, placating tones and began slowly mving towards him. I made my way through the crowd just in time to see him drag the knife across his throat. All the fear and trembling fled his body as he crumpled to the floor.<br />
<br />
The shock coursed through us, and we all began to truly grasp the true hopelessness of our position, each of us coming terms with it in our own way. Alexi and Nergui by walking away for a moment of solitude. Rodion by weeping atop Georgy's lifeless body. Ganzorig by screaming into the uncaring and all consuming fog. The rest us stood motionless like a rat in the talons of an eagle, utterly aware of the futility of struggle. Time moved on. Alexi and Nergui returned. Ganzorig went quiet. Rodion's sobs became muffled whimpers. Once again, silence fell upon us. Once again, it was broken by the screaming.<br />
<br />
"She comes." Mikhail said.<br />
<br />
The screaming was much like it was earlier, a chorus of suffering pressed into a single voice. This time, however, it was not a girl's voice. It was Viktor. As he reached the side of the ship the bestial ululations slowly took on the shape of human language. The climbs and dives in pitch made translating everything he said impossible, but certain words: "death", "kill", "please", "end", and "mercy" made his message painfully clear. The crew fanned out to gather what they could to aid him, some people grabbing the rope that was still tied from earlier, others, like myself, sprinting to our quarters to collect some device or another. I grabbed my backpack and ran back onto the deck, fumbling through my collection of trinkets and essentials until I found the set of throwing knives I purchased in St. Petersburg. I ran to the railing and did my best to aim at my target, a body at once familiar yet at the same time so contorted in agony that it seemed entirely unknown. Most of my shots were wide off the mark, but even the few that weren't proved just as useless. Every time something came close enough to potentially end his misery, he would be dragged under the water, only to emerge moments later.<br />
<br />
My ammunition exhausted I watched as the rest of the crew fared similarly. Even Alexi, who had the foresight to tie his machete to one of the lengths of rope so he could retrieve it, eventually came to realize the futility of this game. When he realized his best chance was to try and sever the long tenticle hooked into Viktor's back, the creature moved him fifteen feet or so further from the ship, enough to ensure a fatal loss of accuracy but not enough to deaden the screams. With all hope of releasing our friend from his suffering evaporated, our crosshairs turned towards easier targets. Rodion began raving, and within moments Kee Sye told me we were going to storm the bridge and turn the ship around by force.<br />
<br />
As we crowded around the top of the stairs, we realized Vladislav and Zakhar had barricaded the door. Rodion, Ganzorig, and Nergui took turns ramming it with their shoulders, Wei ran off looking for an improvised battering ram, while Kee Sye and myself went to the deck to see if we climb up and talk to them through the forward window. Perched precariously on the small ledge running along the second floor window, we saw too wide eyed men who seemed on the brink of delirium. They were intently gazing at something out on the horizon, and when I had carefully twisted myself around I realized we were sailing directly towards a single point of light cutting through the fog in the distance.<br />
<br />
"Don't you see!" I yelled, with Kee Sye dutifully translating. "That is obviously a trap."<br />
<br />
A furious burst of Russian, followed by Kee Sye's English rendition.<br />
<br />
"We will be free. This nightmare will be over. There is lighthouse aheas, or a rescue ship no doubt."<br />
<br />
"She's toying with us. This is all part of her mind game. For the love of God, don't sail towards the light."<br />
<br />
"They will rescue us. They must have been sent when they heard our distress call."<br />
<br />
"For all we know our distress call never even went out. None of our equipment has worked since we've been stuck in this fucking fog."<br />
<br />
"They are coming to rescue us. You will see. You will thank me when this is over."<br />
<br />
This continued for some time. Eventually, we realized that there was nothing we could say to get through to them. We climbed down and walked over to where Mikhail had stayed, and layed down next to him, resigned to our fate.<br />
<br />
Viktor's screams began to die down, or else we were just too numb to notice them, as the light grew larger and larger. The continuous banging let us know that the efforts to break down the door had been just as pointless. I turned towards the sky, trying to see if I could get one last look at the late afternoon sun, but even this was foiled by the merciless fog. Somehow, I began to feel tired. My eyelide drifted closer and closed. I wondered how long it had been since I slept.<br />
<br />
I was awakened by a roaring symphony of destruction; metal being cut apart, various componants of the ship clanging into each other, the death wail of engines. I didn't realize I was in the air until I came crashing into the foreward railing. I looked up and saw hundreds of rocks towering over me. They were shaped like spikes, four feet in diameter at their widest, shooting out of the water at various angles, some of them stretching forty feet above me. I quickly realized that the ship was pinned in its mangled position by the vertical spikes, while the angular ones had gutted her insides. Blended into the clamor of the sinking ship were even more screams. It was not just Viktor this time. With panic radiating through my body I realized that not everyone was lucky enough to have been saved by the railing. I sat up, scanned my surroundings, and noticed that both Kee Sye and Mikhail were nearby, apparantly having hit the rail five to ten feet down from where my body had battered it.<br />
<br />
As I sat up, I heard a commotion further down the ship. I watched as Vladislav and Zakhar sprinted out from the stairwell, and realized they were taking off towards the free fall life boat. I jumped up, called out for Kee Sye and Mikhail to follow, then took off towards the stern with the two of them close behind. I watched as another two figures emerged from the stairwell in pursuit of the captain; it was Wei and one of the Mongolians. They were about 50 feet ahead of us, and by the time we rounded the corner they were allready struggling with the Vladislav and Zakhar, who were now inside the craft. Nergui was at the doorway, attempting to both hold the door for the rest of us and stop Zakhar from engaging the drop switch. Wei was right behind him, jittering and trying to figure out if there was anything he could do. Rodion's expression indicated he had just come to as he sprinted around the opposite side of the aft while struggling to draw comprehension out of the confusion. Wei yelled something and he came charging towards them just as Vladislav pulled Nergui into the life boat, slammed the door behind him, and pulled the release. It went flying, slamming into Rodion on its way into the water and dragging him into the ocean. By the time we got to the waters edge there was no sign they had ever been there.<br />
<br />
We didn't have any time to mourn their loss. Within moments of their departure, the ship let out a deep, creaking wail. We fanned out along the railings, trying to better assess the situation, but there wasn't enough time. The Сумерки бегу had cracked about 30 feet aft of the center, and the deck was rapidly tilting backwards. As I cursed myself for not saving one of my knives, the remaining crew began shouting in Russian. Suddenly, Kee Sye yelled that some of the timber bundles were drifting out of the exposed stowage, and that if we hurried we might be able to make the jump. I took of towards the split, and realizing I wouldn't have enough time to scope things out, used my remaining momentum to make a leap of faith into the abyss.<br />
<br />
My knees were the first to connect with the hard wood, acting as a pivot for momentum to transfer towards my face, which cracked the timber when the two inevitably met. I spent the next few moments in a daze, oblivious to the chaos that surrounded me as I assessed the damage. My nose was badly broken, and one of my front teeth was hanging on by a thread. I mourned the loss of my first aid kit until I went to lay down and felt my backpack propping me up. I dug out the kit, stuffed some gauze into my nose, and then laid back and rested my eyes for a moment.<br />
<br />
The remaining daylight was almost gone when I reopened them. With a slightly clearer mind, I began to seriously assess my situation. There was no sign of the ship, the rocks, or anything but endless water, though this was hardly surprising given the ever faithful fog. What did surprise me was that I thought I could hear voices in the distance, ones that were not wailing in agony but seemed to be talking. I yelled out, and heard both Kee Sye and Mikhail answer back. They were sharing a bundle raft, and seemed maybe fifty to a hundred yards away. Mikhail had broken his leg in the fall, and was seriously worried about it getting infected. Niether had any supplies, so they couldn't even amputate if it came down to that. I told them that I had a first aid kit, but I wasn't sure how I could get to them. Apparantly we were caught in a current and were heading in the same direction, but as far as they knew we were not getting any closer. All of a sudden I heard a voice yelling in Russian from the other direction. It seemed much closer than the others, and I quickly realized that it belonged to Alexi. After a few minutes talking to Kee Sye he began to slow down and enunciate clearly for my benefit.<br />
<br />
He said that he was below deck when the ship crashed, and he climbed onto his bundle before the Сумерки бегу ripped apart. Apparantly, due to a pressing need to get as far from the collapsing ship as possible, he discovered that if you grabbed hold of planks of wood, kept your chest on the raft, and kicked with your legs at the edge of the water, you could propel yourself forward without falling into her clutches. I was naturally hesitant, and made no secret of this fact, but I began to hear a rhythmic splashing sound in the distance. I dug through my pack, found my flashlight, and shined it at the source of the noise. I saw another makeshift lifeboat emerge from the darkness with a man spread halfway between it and the water.<br />
<br />
Mikhail had understood enough of what was happening that he began to plead for me to come as quickly as possible. Concern for my friend suppressed the last remnants of my fear, so I took off my pants and found a good spot on the raft with beams of timber that stuck out enough for me to grab hold. I gripped the wood, and as I went to stick my legs in an odd feeling I couldn't quite identify struck me. I grabbed my flashlight and turned it to the ocean. The light glided across the inky water before finally stopping at a massive pair of bulging white eyes almost directly under me. They were each two feet long and about a foot below the water. Entirely white save two pill sized black dots, they slanted inwards, and rose trembling out of their sockets with wild excitement. I moved the light towards the raft, and at the exact place my feet were about to enter was a perfectly round, gaping mouth; its lips, stretched to the waters edge, were peeled back, revealing layers of jagged, hooked teeth that wound their way down the gaping chasm.<br />
<br />
I reached into my pack, grabbed a nesting doll of Soviet leaders, and hurled it directly at the bulging eye. She let loose a high pitched, clicking cry and darted off, propelled by webs made out of hundreds of fan shaped fins connected to her upper body. As she passed I saw malformed breasts, swollen to the point that they were leaking out the blood that apparantly filled them, and hundreds of tenticles emanating from the base of her torso. Some ended with jagged hooks reminiscent of her teeth, others long straight spikes, some tapered into writhing, wormlike extensions. A few of them were buried into the backs of my former crewmates. I saw Zakhar flailing about with panic in his eyes as though he were perpetually drowning, his facial muscles allready beginning to stretch back beyond their normal limits. I lifted my head just in time to see Alexi's pure white eyes meet my own. Without breaking his gaze or reacting in the slightest, he reached his hand into his mouth and ripped out his tongue whole, before being dragged back into the water.<br />
<br />
The next few days were spent drifting in and out of delirium. The three bottles of water in my pack saved me from immediately succombing to dehydration, but did not save me from having to endure the endless screaming. Some came from her toys, and some came from Mikhail and Kee Sye. On the first day they pleaded with me to find some way of joining them, on the second they rained down curses on me for abandoning them, on the third they went silent. Early on I tried to reason with them, tell them there was nothing I could do, but when men stand at the brink of death reason begins to lose its power. After the third day I too was out of water. I laid there for what felt like ages, waiting for the merciful hand of death.<br />
<br />
When I first heard the helicopter I chalked it up as another auditory hallucination. I didn't fully accept its existence until I felt the warm hands of the rescue crew lifting me onto the stretcher. After I recovered some of my strength, I worked up the courage to ask them about Mikhail and Kee Sye. I didn't hold out much hope for their survival, but I figured the least I could do was ensure they had a proper burial. When I asked, the copilot gave me an odd look, and when I inquired further he told me: "You were the only one. We checked all of the other wood piles and they were totally empty. No clothing. No waste. No sign that anyone had ever been there at all."Snowblindedhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06242023366792085291noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2630166144190637002.post-89391893822300011802015-02-09T13:59:00.000-08:002015-03-31T16:45:55.983-07:00Literary Criticism - J.R.R. Tolkien and the concept of Applicability<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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<div class="WordSection1">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"></span>J.R.R
Tolkien’s “The Lord of the Rings” is one of the few works of any medium or
genre that sit at the top of both popular and critical opinion. While Tolkien’s
narrative, in and of itself, would put the work in the company of the greatest
works of fantasy, what, in my opinion, really sets it as above and beyond the
greatest masterpiece of the genre is the body of literary theory that acted as
a foundation for the work. While Tolkien is unquestionably the most imitated
fantasy writer in history, few if any, of the thousands of books published each
year seriously explore, never mind advance upon, the theoretical framework that
holds the novel together. Many modern readers (and I suspect many modern
fantasy writers) are not even aware that Tolkien wrote any literary theory.
Because of this, I decided to do my part to spread awareness of this most
overlooked part of Tolkien’s corpus by writing about one of my favorite of his
theoretical ideas: the notion of Applicability.</span></div>
<div class="WordSection1">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;"></span><br />
<a name='more'></a><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">In
his introduction to The Lord of the Rings, Tolkien presents the reader with the
idea of Applicability. The term explains how Tolkien felt his works related to
the concepts of symbolism, metaphor, and allegory. Specifically, Tolkien
explains that while he draws his information from his past as well as our
collective past (in the form of history), he in no way intends for any of these
connections to serve as part of a greater message. Rather, he acts as a
conduit, assembling the world of Middle-Earth from elements of his own world in
a manner that allows a reader the freedom interpret these “symbols” in their
own way, rather than as a part of a preconceived ideological message. </span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Tolkien explores this concept in his <i>Foreword to the Second Edition</i> of “The Lord
of The Rings”. He introduces the idea in his quest to distance himself from the
numerous allegorical interpretations his work had been subjected to, stating
“As for any inner meaning or 'message', it has in the intention of the author
none. It is neither allegorical nor topical.” This of course raises many
questions to an astute reader. For if his work is completely devoid of
allegory, how is it so richly populated with near direct treatments of a great
number of historical events and cultures. In fact, the likely reason there were
so many allegorical readings of Tolkien is because of how direct and visible
these historic and cultural treatments are. Anyone with a basic familiarity of
British warfare during the first half of the twentieth century will recognize
the connection between Sam and a bat boy. The similarities between the Shire
and the English countryside are too massive to even begin examining here. The
black winged horseman who fly from a dark and far away empire to wreak havoc on
the armies of the West has an undeniable similarity
to the bombers of World War II. As readers, we have been conditioned by
thousands of years of literature towards assuming allegorical intent when
encountering such obvious similarities, much to Tolkien's chagrin. Tolkien
hated these allegorical interpretations so much that he spends a majority of
the foreword trying to discourage readers from making them. To do this, he had
to provide an entirely new way of considering the aforementioned treatments. He says:</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 1.0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; mso-line-height-alt: 5.0pt; tab-stops: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">I
cordially dislike allegory in all its manifestations, and always have done so
since I grew old and wary enough to detect its presence. I much prefer history,
true or feigned, with its varied applicability to thought and experience of
readers. I think that many confuse 'applicability' with 'allegory'; but one
resides in the freedom of the reader, and the other in the purposed domination
of the author.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Tolkien makes two distinctions here. The first is
between allegorical works and works rooted in history, and the second is
between allegory and works with “varied applicability to the thoughts and
experience of readers”. For the purposes of this essay, second distinction is more important than the first, and contains the first mention of the word Applicability. This distinction is essentially one of authorial control. In an allegorical work, when an author connects his metaphorical </span><a href="http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/587448/tenor-and-vehicle" style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 16.9780006408691px; line-height: 32px;">vehicle</a><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: 17.4670009613037px; line-height: 32px;"> to a real world</span></span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 32px;"> </span><a href="http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/587448/tenor-and-vehicle" style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 32px;">tenor</a>,<span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: 16.9780006408691px; line-height: 33.9560012817383px;"> he is making an absolute, concrete connection between the two, and the reader has little to no ability to interpret it in his own way. In Orwell's "Animal Farm", the reader cannot fully appreciate the story without fully accepting the allegorical link between the farm animals and their actions and those of the Bolsheviks. </span></span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">In a
work of Applicability, however, the reader's imagination is given a greater preference. A</span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"> similar relationship exists between the real world and
the authors vehicle, but r</span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">ather than forcing a singular interpretation, the
work of Applicability simply connects the two elements, and allows the reader
the freedom to interpret the connections in accordance with his own
imagination.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; tab-stops: .5in;">
<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">There
are a number of reasons for Tolkien's preference for Applicability, and in
the foreword he touches on a few of them. Firstly, before he even mentions the word Applicability. He states, regarding how events in The Lord of the Rings would have played out if they were tethered to reality</span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">:</span></div>
</div>
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</span>
<br />
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">The
real war does not resemble the legendary war in its process or its conclusion.
If it had inspired or directed the development of the legend, then certainly
the Ring would have been seized and used against Sauron; he would not have been
annihilated but enslaved, and Barad-dur would not have been destroyed but
occupied. Saruman, failing to get possession of the Ring, would in the
confusion and treacheries of the time have found in Mordor the missing links in
his own researches into Ring-lore, and before long he would have made a Great
Ring of his own with which to challenged the self-styled Ruler of Middle Earth.
In that conflict both sides would have held hobbits in hatred and contempt:
they would not long have survived even as slaves.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 1.0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; mso-line-height-alt: 5.0pt; tab-stops: .5in;">
<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">This passage illuminates why Tolkien dislikes the control allegory exerts on the author's creative freedom. If Tolkien were to have written an
allegory, the shackles of the real world events he was working with would have
chained his narrative to a vision that was distinct from his creative
goals. Tolkien would be bound by either what has happened in real life,
what he wants to happen, or what he fears will happen in regard to the tenors
he used. Any divergence from this connection would </span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">undermine the
strength of his allegory and would either have to be discarded or accepted as a
liability. By choosing the approach of Applicability, Tolkien was able
to simply connect his vehicles to existing historical tenors without yielding
structural control to them, and instead of his work functioning as a commentary
on his tenors, his tenors behave subserviently towards his narrative goals,
evoking in the reader a sense of whatever impact the historical events had on them, and allowing Tolkien to advance the story in a manner of his own
choosing.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;"></span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Secondly, Applicability allows the inherently personal nature of history and culture to
be brought out. Historical events affect those who experienced them
differently, as can be seen in the way the same
historical events are remembered differently in different societies, cultures,
communities, and people. The Roman Empire means something entirely different to
someone from Tunisia, near ancient Carthage, whose native culture was conquered by the Romans, than it does to an Italian living near the ancient ruins of Rome. If
Tolkien had favored an allegorical approach, these differences would render it
impossible for these groups to understand his work, since they would be forced to look at the work through the cultural lens of an English with a radically different perspective on Roman history from their own.
Instead, the Applicability approach allows Tolkien to simply connect the
kingdom of Gondor with certain aspects of the Roman Empire, and he leaves it up to
the reader to determine what these connections say about the people of Gondor.
This diversity of interpretation is why “The Lord of the
Rings” can be championed by such a vast and varied array of people. Everyone
from radical leftist environmentalists to conservative war hawks to militant
anti-Christian Black Metal bands can thus apply their own understanding of the
world around them to Tolkien's vehicles without misinterpreting the story.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; tab-stops: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; tab-stops: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">While
these distinctions cast light on why Tolkien chose to write using the
principle of Applicability, it does not present the entire picture. For that,
one needs to examine another of Tolkien's critical works: 1939's "<a href="http://brainstorm-services.com/wcu-2004/fairystories-tolkien.pdf">On Fairy-Stories</a>". In that work, Tolkien outlines what he believes a Fairy
Story is, and why they are unique. According to Tolkien, the Fairy Story is as
old and essential to human existence as the adjective. He defines Fairy Stories
as stories which reside within the realm of Fairy. The realm of Fairy is a place that exists in
a way that directly contrasts the typical way we use an adjectives. When language as we know it was in its infancy, humans developed the adjective as a way of describing
the world around them, descriptions such as <b>tall</b> trees or <b>fast</b> steeds gave language a tool to better capture the essence of reality. In contrast, the world of
Fairy is structured around the use of adjectives to describe things that exist
outside of the physical world, such as <b>talking</b> trees and <b>flying</b> steeds. Thus, when humans developed the adjective, they unknowingly opened the gates into the realm of Fairy. This idea is integral to Tolkien's conception of fantasy, and it is undermined
by a straight allegory. Since the idea of an allegory is to connect the created vehicles of the author with a real world equivalent, the adjectives
it employs are always connected to
the traditional way the adjectives are used. While there are no Communist Pigs
in real life, Orwell's decision to use pigs as stand ins for the communist
revolutionaries was done out of a desire to connect the adjectives associated
with pigs, such as filthy, selfish, and stupid, with the real life communist
revolutionaries. This approach is antithetical to a fairy story such as “The
Lord of the Rings”. A true fairy story, according to Tolkien, attempts to evoke
a sense of wonder within the reader by deliberately using adjectives that are
as distinct as possible from what they describe. Consider the Elves. In “The
Lord of the Rings”, Elves evoke a sense of wonder in the reader due to the fact
that they are described in ways that are utterly separate from what can
describe humans. The following adjective/noun combinations describe Elves: immortal people, unaging people, untiring people, nature controlling people, nature bonded people, nature empathetic people, hyperintelligent people, superhuman warriors. If Tolkien
had written an allegorical work, these adjectives would have to be tied to some real world tenor, which, besides being impossible, is the exact
opposite of what Tolkien was trying to accomplish with his Elves. Rather, he wanted them to exist entirely outside of what we have in our own reality, he wanted them to exist within the realm of Fairy</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Now
that the <i>why</i> of the approach of Applicability has been established, we can
begin examining <i>how</i> Tolkien employs them in his work. The real life tenors that are
connected to Tolkien's vehicles can be classified in one of three ways:
historical, innate, and personal.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;"></span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Historical
tenors are, not surprisingly, tenors that are rooted in people or events that
have occurred in our human past. These tenors are the ones that are most often
brought up in allegorical readings of Tolkien. This is due to the fact that it is
very easy for a reader to assume that by giving the properties of a historical
event to a created character or culture, Tolkien is trying to make a statement
about said historical event. In fact, the opposite is true. Tolkien is using
the historic connection to add to the characterization of his creations.
An example of this can be seen in the armies of Mordor. The connection between
the armies of Mordor and Nazi Germany is perhaps the most common
allegorical interpretation applied to the story. Readers see the connection between
Mordor and Nazi Germany in the way Sauron's armies were subdued once in the
past only to rise again as a greater threat than ever before, in the megalomaniacal leader who inspires a fervant hatred within those who follow him in his quest for total world domination, and in the constant threat of
annihilation his armies brought to the armies of the West. Because of these
connections, readers then assume that Tolkien was using the forces of Mordor as
a commentary on Nazism. As stated previously, the opposite is in fact true.
Tolkien sought to create the most fearsome, evil, and dark antagonist he
possibly could, and in doing so, he turned to the events in his own life that
created those same reactions in him. Given the time of the writing, those
reactions obviously came from the Nazi's, and so he took from the Nazi regime
the things that evoked those emotions within him and applied them to Mordor. He
also applied a number of traits from other historical events that he felt best
conjured up those reactions. He used the fall of Constantinople and its effect
on the rest of Europe to add weight to the battle between Gondor and Mordor. He
also used the Mongol technique of launching the severed heads of their enemies
over the city walls for a similar reason. He looked at those historical events
and saw within them the same traits he wanted within his antagonists, and so he
applied those traits to them, all the while having no intention of making an
allegorical statement on any of his sources. These tenors evoke the most varied
reaction among readers, since the historical events that inspire them can be interpreted
in an endless number of ways, depending on the reader and his cultural
background.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">The
second variety of tenor is the innate tenor. Instead of drawing from events
that evoked certain reactions within him, Tolkien used things that inherantly
evoke certain reactions within all humans as a way of evoking those same
reactions from his creations. These tenors are not often confused with
allegorical tenors due to the fact that there is little reason for someone to
want to make some kind of statement about people's innate biological
reactions. An excellent example of an innate tenor can be seen in “The Two
Towers” with Shelob. Tolkien wanted the gate keeper of Mordor to evoke the same
sense of fear that their armies evoke, and so he turned to one of man's innate
fears, the spider. While some of us are more afraid of spiders than others,
there exists within all of us an innate fear of them on some level. This fear
is an evolutionary agent that made sure our hunter gatherer ancestors stayed
away from potentially poisonous insects. Tolkien took this innate human fear of
spiders and combined it with a subverted adjective, gigantic, to create Shelob,
a monster that simultaneously evokes our fear of spiders as well as our fear of
gigantic predators. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">The
third and final tenor Tolkien uses is the personal tenor. These are tenors that
are drawn from Tolkien's own life experiences, rather than from a shared
collective experience. People do not misconstrue personal tenors as allegorical
as often as they do with historical tenors. An excellent example of a personal
tenor can be found in the relationship between the four protagonist Hobbits.
This relationship mirrors the relationships Tolkien had with his best friends
in the army during World War I. Unlike the other tenors, it is unlikely that
Tolkien was explicitly trying to make the reader connect these tenors to their
historic origin. Rather, Tolkien sought to extract traits that he wanted his
own characters to possess from his sources and evoke them within the reader
without conscious recognition of their origin. This does not mean that these
tenors are less applicable than the others, just that Tolkien is cutting out
the middle man. Rather than having the readers filter their understanding of
the Hobbits relationship through their understanding of World War I, he
isolates his relationship with his friends and presents it without the
historical link. This allows the reader to connect their relationship to his
own personal life, in this case the relationship between the Hobbits is
filtered through the readers relationship with their own friends. The reader is
still compelled to use his own imagination in interpreting these tenors, just
without the shared background present in the other tenors.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Tolkien's
decision to use Applicability instead of allegory in his fantasy novels
introduced a major change in how people interpreted textual elements that seemed
to mirror real life events. Before Tolkien's time, if one encountered something
that resembled a historical event, it was almost certainly intended as a
commentary on that event. With the publishing of “The Lord of The Rings”,
Tolkien found a way to evoke real life events in a fantastic work that had not
been seen before in a work of fiction. His emphasis on the personal opened a
new set of doors to authors looking to connect fantastic ideas with prexisting
ideas within the readers mind. No longer would they be slaves to a restrictive
message and narrative structure when they wanted to evoke something specific.
One can look at the monalith of modern fantasy, A Song of Ice and Fire/Game of Thrones, and see just how effective historical Applicability can be. Tolkien also managed to give the world of fairy, a place where direct connections to
reality are anathemic, a way to engage with our collective understanding and open new worlds of expressive power. </span></div>
Snowblindedhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06242023366792085291noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2630166144190637002.post-53747148368140107972013-07-21T17:58:00.000-07:002015-03-31T16:44:18.485-07:00Music Criticism - Joy Division - TransmissionThe music of Joy Division, like the vast majority of their post-punk peers, weaves the disparate and seemingly irreconcilable threads of punk rock and Krautrock into a single sonic tapestry. If you examine the ancestry of influences in nearly any post-punk group, you will find the DNA of the German experiamental pioneers somewhere in their sound. The auditory chaos of Faust was enthusiastically studied and replicated by The Pop Group, This Heat, and all of the early industrial pioneers. Can took the controlled madness of The Velvet Underground's Sister Ray, an improvisation from hell that fused the rhythmic engine powering Rock'n'Roll with the untameable inventiveness of free jazz, and then extended The Velvet's explorations in a number of new directions. These innovations were in turn picked up by Public Image Ltd, The Fall, and many others. The machine worship of Kraftwerk, when fused with punk rock, spawned the proto-New Wave music of groups like The Talking Heads, and Killing Joke. Each of these groups, and many others, incorporated musical ideas created or refined by the Germans into the punk template. For the most part, however, they remained loyal to the intensity that characterized punk rock, using the abrasive Krautrock experiments as a compliment to the aggressive nature of their punk rock foundation.<br />
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Joy Division alone sought to push the primal energy of punk into new emotional territory. While they steered away from the avant-garde experiments that many post-punk groups found alluring, they instead found an entirely different way of incorporating Krautrock ideas into punk music; an approach that was the opposite of what their fellow post-punkers were doing. Instead of taking musical ideas from the Germans and applying them to the angry catharsis of punk, they infused the icy detachment that characterized many Krautrock groups with punk's emphasis on simplicity and emotional discharge. <br />
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At first glance, this seems like an oxymoron. How can groups that took great pains in being devoid of emotion be reconciled with a genre that put emotion at the forefront? While groups like Kraftwerk tried to strip the emotion out of rock music, they inadvertently created music that resonated with one particular state of mind: depression. Contrary to traditional wisdom, suffering from depression is not like living in a constant state of sadness or melancholy. People who suffer from depression live lives characterized more by vacancy than by sadness. It is a muted gray blanket that wraps itself around their lives and smothers the vitality most people take for granted, until existence becomes a dull blur of apathy. Thus, the icy calmness that can be heard in many Krautrock groups ironically ended up being more relatable to people like Ian Curtis then the youthful rage that oozed from every pore of The Sex Pistols.new emotional territory. While they steered away from the avant-garde experiments that many post-punk groups found alluring, they instead found an entirely different way of incorporating Krautrock ideas into punk music; an approach that was the opposite of what their fellow post-punkers were doing. Instead of taking musical ideas from the Germans and applying them to the angry catharsis of punk, they infused the icy detachment that characterized many Krautrock groups with punk's emphasis on simplicity and emotional discharge.<br />
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At first glance, this seems like an oxymoron. How can groups that took great pains in being devoid of emotion be reconciled with a genre that put emotion at the forefront? While groups like Kraftwerk tried to strip the emotion out of rock music, they inadvertently created music that resonated with one particular state of mind: depression. Contrary to traditional wisdom, suffering from depression is not like living in a constant state of sadness or melancholy. People who suffer from depression live lives characterized more by vacancy than by sadness. It is a muted gray blanket that wraps itself around their lives and smothers the vitality most people take for granted, until existence becomes a dull blur of apathy. Thus, the icy calmness that can be heard in many Krautrock groups ironically ended up being more relatable to people like Ian Curtis then the youthful rage that oozed from every pore of The Sex Pistols.new emotional territory. While they steered away from the avant-garde experiments that many post-punk groups found alluring, they instead found an entirely different way of incorporating Krautrock ideas into punk music; an approach that was the opposite of what their fellow post-punkers were doing. Instead of taking musical ideas from the Germans and applying them to the angry catharsis of punk, they infused the icy detachment that characterized many Krautrock groups with punk's emphasis on simplicity and emotional discharge.<br />
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This is not to say that the members of Joy Division found punk rock's off the chart levels of rage, angst, and bitterness to be disagreeable. I have a limited amount of knowledge about the personal lives of the band, but I think that they found a great deal of solace in punk's fiery discharge. This freedom and energy was a respite, however brief, from the maddening emptiness that robbed the world of Ian Curtis. If there wasn't a strong love for their influences guiding the band, then they would have had no trouble applying their somber, poetic, and utterly dark feelings to a James Tayler-esque pastiche of acoustic guitars and radio friendly melodies; following the path of countless other groups more interested in fast money and easy woman than in using music to express something deep within them that would have otherwise had no outlet. They would almost certainly have had more commercial success during their lifetime with such an approach. Instead, they embarked on a journey into unexplored territory. Guided by only their hearts, each other, and a love for the music that influenced them, they charted a course into the unknown. A journey that led them to some of the most powerful rock music ever created. Among their legendary catalog, one track stands out as an embodiment of the forces that drove them along their brief but extraordinary odyssey: "Transmission".<br />
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Starting from the beginning, the song opens with a very brief modulating synthesizer chord. The synth they use has a very dark quality to it, which sets the tone for the rest of the song. The slight modulations in pitch produce a sense of unease that would take a few moments to adjust to. However, before the listener can settle in, the bass guitar blasts them with the main riff while the volume of the synth quickly plummets. This gives the song a doubly jarring start. First the synthesizer's rapid microtonal1 modulation sets the listener in a state of unease. Then, after just two seconds, the bass riff thrusts in at full volume and the synth fades away. The combination of the bass entering and the synth leaving makes the bass seem like it is overpowering the synth and taking control of the track. This impression is no accident. As with the majority of Joy Division's music, and unlike just about any other rock band, Peter Hook's bass playing takes a dominant melodic role within the song, while the guitar functions as either a secondary melody that is picked up and dropped at crucial places or as a rhythmic aid closer to how a bass typically functions than the bass guitar itself.<br />
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The bass riff embodies the dichotomy between punk rock and Krautrock that I discussed earlier. On one hand, it is utterly simplistic. It is made up of only three notes: two long stretches of D and C notes respectively, each one punctuated by a single A note. While the riff undoubtedly possesses punk's trademark simplicity, it also calls bands like Kraftwerk to mind due to its steady, machine-like nature. The first D is a quarter note, and it is followed by thirteen more D's and an A in eighth notes. The pattern is then repeated with C's replacing the D's. The quarter note and fourteen eighth notes pattern gives the riff a super rhythmic quality. Since their are no notes that deviate from the rigidity of the beat, the riff comes off as almost inhuman, summoning images of the desolate factories and layers of smog that enshrouded Joy Division's native city of Manchester, rather than the hormonal energy that a typical punk riff evokes.<br />
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While the song is structured around a verse chorus progression, unlike most songs written in this form, Peter doesn't change the riff when the song progresses from verse to chorus or vice versa. This was done for a number of reasons. First, having the same riff for both the verse and chorus increases the bleak, oppressive feeling the band were trying to induce. Not altering the riff creates claustrophobic effect; a sensation of being trapped that mirrors the song's lyrical themes. Secondly, the members of Joy Division were one of the first groups to realize that having a steady, continuous, rhythmic melody gives the music a strong sense of propulsion. This technique would be wholeheartedly embraced by electronic musicians in the coming decades, but the members of the band, during their time in both Joy Division and New Order, were among the first to realize the potential of such an approach. This is not to say that there aren't problems writing songs in this manner. Without a clear transition from verse to chorus, you run the risk of having the entire song seem like a unchanging blur. To solve this, the band introduced a slight change in the riff that only occurs during key moments, such as the transition from verse to chorus. This change happens on the fourth and final bar of the riff. During the rest of the song, this bar contains the second half of the C repetitions as well as the closing A note. Instead, Peter plays an E - F - E - F - G - G pattern. While this is not a tremendous difference, it is just enough variety to let the listener know that the song has progressed to it's next stage, while retaining enough monotony to maintain the sense of claustrophobia and propulsion I mentioned above.<br />
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As the bass finishes the second repetition of the riff, the drums are introduced. The drumming, like the bass guitar, is steady and machine-like. There is a reason Stephen Morris is called “The Human Drum Machine”. The hyper-steady rhythms he produced add to the icy solitude of the song. The pattern Stephen plays is two bars long. The first bar follows a "One - Two - Three - and - Four" pattern while the second bar goes "One - Two - Three - and - Four - and". Like the bass guitar, the drum pattern remains the same throughout the song, with two exceptions. First, there is a one off pattern he plays as he enters the track. Second, Stephen occasionaly adds an extra beat between the fourth beat of the first bar and the first beat of the second bar, creating a "One - Two - Three - and - Four - and" pattern, though using different drums than the "One - Two - Three - and - Four - and" pattern of the second bar. As with the bass riff, Morris' rhythmic rigidity connects the band to the robotic sound of Kraftwerk. However, instead of inhuman sterility, the drumming calls to mind abandonment and isolation. The world of Transmission has an Absurd quality to it. It calls up images of a world that was never meant to be occupied by humans, but is occupied all the same. Their world is a stark, barren place where life is fraught with desolation and despair. This contrasts the sound of Kraftwerk, who seek to strip the humanity entirely from their music.<br />
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One of the most interesting elements of Joy Division's sound is their use of guitars. As I said earlier, the bass guitar often functions as the primary melodic instrument. This means that guitarist Bernard Sumner does not have a rigidly defined role within the groups overall sound. He therefore has quite a bit of room to experiment and perform a wide variety of different functions. For example, sometimes he will play a second melodic line that will intertwine with the bass riff a la Television. Sometimes he will play a long stretch of power chords in a steady rhythmic pattern to put even more emphasis on the desolation and propulsion. Sometimes he will simply play nothing at all for long stretches. The variety of roles Bernard fills with his guitar, combined with the unconventional approaches taken by Peter and Stephen, results in one of the most structurally innovative bands in rock music. Rather than every instrument changing what they are play as the song changes from one section to another, Transmission is built around a stacking effect. The bass and drums follow the same pattern except for during a few key points, and the guitar comes in and out, performing different roles over-top of the steady drum and bass and providing most of the song's variety.<br />
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The guitar is first introduced a few bars into the song. Initially Bernard plays an oscillating pattern that meshes very well with the bass. The simple back and forth also evokes factories, machinery, and all the other sterile instruments of the modern world. After Bernard plays this pattern a few times, it begins a more complex one. This increases the tension within the song. Then he simply stops. For the verses, in between Ian's singing Bernard will occasionally come back in with either the original oscillating riff or a second riff that has a similar back and forth design. When the chorus kicks in, he switches to rhythmic power chords that he plays at the top of every other bar, giving the song a bit of oomph to go along with Ian's call to the dance floor. This power chord accompaniment continues into the final verse, mirroring it's increase in intensity.<br />
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Next up comes the lyrics. A good place to begin is with the song's title. Transmission is defined as " The sending of a signal, picture, or other information2". While the word is traditionally used for technology, you can see from the above definition that the it can also be used to describe sensory information, such as sights or sounds. Both of these contexts are important to the song as a whole. The central theme of the song relates to the sensory component of the definition, but as I have said earlier, the industrial decay of Manchester was one of Joy Division's muses, so choosing a word that is traditionally used to describe technology was no accident.<br />
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Structurally, the lyrics follow a sonnet-like pattern, with the first two verses elaborating a concept and the third verse functioning as a turn, where the concept is then taken in a different direction. The placement of the choruses enhances the distinction between the first two verses from the third, since the first chorus happens after verse two, and the second after verse three.<br />
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The song begins with the line "Listen to the silence, let it ring on", and right away you can see the emphasis on the transmission of sensory information that gives the piece its title. Besides that, this line introduces the idea of sensory opposition, another major recurring theme. You cannot, by definition, listen to silence. Silence is the opposite of sound, so it is both unlistenable and incapable of ringing. Sensory deprivation, and the use of sense based language to oxymoronicly describe it is essential to the lyrics, and throughout the song there will be numerous references to it.<br />
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The first of these references occurs in the next line: "Eyes, dark grey lenses frightened of the sun." Once again, the listener is presented with an oxymoronic reference to the senses. Eyes exist to absorb and take in light, so for them to be frightened of the sun is directly opposed to their function. Furthermore, this line introduces a more human element to the song. Eyes cannot be afraid on their own accord, so by personifying them as averse to their natural function Ian is making a statement about the human that the eyes belong to.<br />
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The next line, "We would have a fine time living in the night," touches on the oppositional sensory opposites and the humanization of said opposites. The biggest changes between this line and the previous two are that living at night is not a strict oxymoron like listening to silence, and that there are many people who actually do live at night. Thus the statement is rooted in reality rather than poetic hyperbole, functioning as a concrete realization of the abstract opposites presented in the previous lines. Despite the fact that many people choose to be active at night, we are evolutionarily programmed to be awake during the day. When a person is nocturnal they are functioning in a manner that is opposed to their basic nature, a lifestyle that is relevant to the themes of the song. The night is a symbolic representation of the sensory deprivation described in lines one and two. A place where darkness and silence trump light and noise.<br />
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The fourth and fifth lines, "Left to blind destruction" and "Waiting for our sight" are a continuation of third. They provide details about what "living in the night" would entail. Since the night he is referring to is symbolic, it does not necessarily have the same properties as nighttime in the real world. Instead it is a manifestation of the sensory deprivation described in the first two lines. Despite the fact that the singer claims to find this manifestation preferable to his current existence, lines four and five describe how unpleasant the night is. It is a world of "blind destruction", where people spend their days yearning for vision. Not exactly paradise. The implication is that a world of utter chaos is preferable to the singers current existence, and that naive yearning trumps jaded attainment. The first verse establishes that the singer feels that he would be better off in a world devoid of the senses. Since this world is a place of ruination and hopeless longing, the question is what makes his current life so bad that he would to live there? The answer lies within the second verse.<br />
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The second verse begins with the line "And we would go on as though nothing was wrong.", a hypothetical describing life in a land devoid of the senses. This line reveals quite a bit about the singer's motivations and desires. When he uses the word "we" in the third line of the first verse, it is not immediately clear whether he is referring to a specific person or if he is using we in the general sense. With this line it is now clear that the "we" refers to the singer and his partner, and that things are not exactly going great with them. If they were living in a land without sight or sound, the singer would not have to see all of the problems of his relationship. It would allow him to pretend that everything is OK. Having sight has become a burden, since he is surrounded by visions of a decayed relationship. This idea is expanded in the second line, which discusses how not having sight would allow them to hide from all of the problems of their relationship.<br />
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Line three, "Staying in the same place, just staying out the time", is said as an example of what the non-sensory world would allow them to hide from. The word stay is crucial. While there is really only one literal meaning to the word, there are a number of connotations, depending on how it is employed. On a broad level, he is talking about staying together with his partner, which seems positive. However the way he uses the word shines light into the true nature of the relationship. "Staying in the same place", while neutral if taken literally, can also imply stagnation, or being in a rut.3 "Staying out the time" has even darker connotations. When used in its typical context: sports, it refers to not doing anything during the final moments of a game so as to maintain an advantage. However, Ian is not using the word to describe a game of touch football, but to describe his life. He is implying that to remain with this person is to in effect let the rest of his life slip away.<br />
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The fourth line, “Touching from a distance”, brings back the sensory opposition. Like listening to silence, it is impossible to touch from a distance. The biggest difference between the earlier sensory opposites and this one is that we now have more context regarding their meaning. Since the singer is still talking about the things that he would be able to hide from in the world of sensory deprivation, we can see that he is using the oxymoron to describe the how conflicted his relationship is. Even when caressing (or possibly penetrating) each other, actions that are traditionally associated with romance, they are miles apart emotionally.<br />
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Next comes the chorus, which consists entirely of the repeated line "Dance, dance, dance, dance, dance, to the radio". As I said earlier, as dark as Ian Curtis' world was, the fact that he chose to create the challenging, erudite music that he did means that on some level, rock music meant quite a bit to him. This is relevant to the chorus, and even more relevant to when it comes around the second time. The rest of the song discussed sensory deprivation, living in silence, without vision, in isolation and without contact. What is the opposite of all that? Dancing to music. Dancing is also a romantic activity. On one hand this chorus expresses a desire to break free and dance to music. To once again find romance with his partner. On the other hand, the flat, apathetic delivery suggests that this isn’t going to happen. There is irony in how he presents this call to the dance floor. He is parodying the excitability of other such calls by being deliberately bland and detached in his delivery. It also suggests that he has lost the will to do just what he is suggesting. That his relationship has long passed the point where they can joyously move about to catchy rhythms or do any other similar romantic activity.<br />
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As I said earlier, the lyrics form a sonnet-esque pattern where the third verse employs a turn. The first noticeable difference is in the Ian's tone. Previously he sang in a bland, detached sort of way. As if he had given up his will. Now, however, there is anger in his voice. He is venting all of his built up hostility. He doesn't live in a world of sensory deprivation, and he is stuck in a miserable relationship. The oppositional sensory language is brought back again with the line "No language, just sound, that's all we need know", but this time things are different. He is in essence saying that he would have to have no knowledge, no sight, no sound, in order to maintain this relationship. That things have fallen apart beyond his ability to repair. <br />
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Then the final chorus kicks in. It is the same four words as before, but everything has changed. The flat, bland delivery is gone. Now he is screaming. Pleading. Howling into the abyss for the one thing in his life that gave him an ounce of happiness. Desperately screaming for everything to be okay. For things to go back to the way they were before. To just be able to dance like they used to. Reaching out with one final burst of strength. Grasping at a solution. An answer. Something. And seeing only his dry and empty hands trembling futilely in the void.<br />
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1) I think that the opening synth's modulations are microtonal, feel free to correct me if I am wrong.<br />
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2) http://www.thefreedictionary.com/transmission<br />
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3) Imagine if you met up with a friend you hadn't seen in a while and you asked him where he was living. The responses "I'm still living on main street" and "I'm staying in the same place" are identical in the information they are providing, but the former has a positive connotation while the latter gives the impression that the person is in a rut, or unsatisfied.</div>
Snowblindedhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06242023366792085291noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2630166144190637002.post-30526825255466972072013-01-02T19:54:00.000-08:002013-12-16T23:37:18.604-08:00Poetry - Heroin (Summer 2012)Sonnet. Written June 2012<br />
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Heroin<br />
<a name='more'></a>I trudge into the car, strapped in for the endless ride to holy Port Richmond.<br />
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Every bump on the jagged pavement sending my ossified calves grinding into the strength abandoned springs once called a muscular system.<br />
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My back too tightens and aches from the strain of countless confused strung-out marches through the hostile territory.<br />
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Day after day, I slog through this no mans land, my addled mind quivering at the explosions of red and blue that scream past me, careening towards a different combatant stationed elsewhere in this weary battleground.<br />
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From my metal shielding, I see the twisted shapes of my kin in their entrenchment, and I see the battle scars around the arms of the veterans, and I turn my stereo up to drown out their icy prophecies.<br />
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The war torn ruins that rise from the rubble gaze upon me with a blank and pitiless stare, I feel their eyes, and the curses they cast upon me for turning these monuments of industry into headstones.<br />
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Through it all, the machine gun bursts of thought that come rapidly through my mind in waves of intensity and emptiness, yet stay locked on my mission. My sole ambition. <br />
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I push and push. Pushing until the agony folds upon itself and doubles as I approach my target, until the agony folds on itself and doubles as I wait at the rendezvous, until the agony folds on itself and doubles during the equally agonizing voyage home.<br />
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And yet when I return my burden lifts.<br />
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I gaze upon you and my focus shifts.<br />
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For as your smoky embrace warms my skin.<br />
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My muscles melt, a warmth grows from within.<br />
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And when, sweet heroin, I feel your smile.<br />
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I know the pain just makes your love worthwhile.Snowblindedhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06242023366792085291noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2630166144190637002.post-87383240313064475832013-01-02T19:52:00.000-08:002013-12-16T23:37:10.692-08:00Poetry - Walking The Dog On A Winter Morning (Winter 2011)Written November 2011<br />
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Walking the Dog on a Winter Morning<br />
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The stone gray quilt hoodie protects my soft flesh from daybreak's stinging wind.<br />
All but my frost numb hands, which shred raw in the constricting leash grooves.<br />
Snapping teeth refract the snow bright morning's sterile sun.<br />
A dissimulate cool jerk restrains the combat bred and ready fangs.<br />
The icy stream of bodies flow around my petrous veneer.Snowblindedhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06242023366792085291noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2630166144190637002.post-8061590664377523512013-01-02T19:49:00.002-08:002013-12-16T23:37:31.413-08:00Poetry - The Blank Page (Spring 2012)Written early spring 2012<br />
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The Blank Page<br />
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The blank page.<br />
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A legion of blue soldiers in rigid formation.<br />
Until a spark lights the signal fire.<br />
And battle begins.<br />
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Vast expanses sucked dry by intellectualist greed.<br />
Forests chopped to the roots to fuel the great poetic charge to nowhere in particular.<br />
Oh ink stained page,<br />
I hope your sacrifice was not in vain.Snowblindedhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06242023366792085291noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2630166144190637002.post-222150391348643072013-01-02T19:47:00.001-08:002013-01-02T19:56:14.834-08:00Poetry - In A Sailor's Suit And Cap (Early 2012)Written between January and February 2012<br />
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In A Sailor's Suit And Cap<br />
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The glass mirror engulfs your mind like a child standing upon the shores of a great sea<br />
The crystalline powder juts out like the jagged precipice of an iceberg<br />
The razor lies docked like a battleship<br />
Its anchor is cut, and it shoots across the mirror like a swordfish<br />
White particles scatter upon the glass like the froth of a crashing wave<br />
The blade rushes bloodlust towards the stragglers as they form into rigid schools<br />
Lines of powder and glass emerge across the landscape like channels cutting through a snowy archipelago<br />
A calm returns, as foreboding as a blood red morning sky<br />
Then chaos, as a great tube descends from the heavens, ravaging all in its path as a waterspout dismantles an unprovoked shipping vessel<br />
Far above, a mighty titan devours his sacrifice with gleeSnowblindedhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06242023366792085291noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2630166144190637002.post-28020625482547280742013-01-02T19:44:00.002-08:002015-02-12T16:10:41.888-08:00Fiction - DEFCON 17 (Spring 2012)Written Spring 2012 <br />
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<br />
“Well Mr. Johnson, our logs show your machine making a number of attempts at accessing IP addresses registered to DinoDonkeyDicks.com, FatBlackCocks.com, and GayFuckCity.xxx.”<br />
The man on the phone noticed the audible gasp that United States Commercial Debt Recovery's client recovery manager Richard Johnson exhaled when he heard the news. He patiently waited for a response.<br />
“Now listen Ted, I don't know what you're trying to tell me, but I can assure you that I had nothing to do with any visits to inappropriate websites.”<br />
Theodore Allen noted the slight upward inflection in Richard's voice, the breathy panting that escaped from his mouth between sentences, and the increased speed he was talking at.<br />
“Oh, I wasn't attempting to imply that a man of your position would use company resources to view prohibited content. Virus related hacks are a very common issue. These issue's happen all the time. I will just have to do a standard password reset for now and sometime later this week I will send somebody to your office to clean your machine up.”<br />
Theodore listened as Richard recited his current password and the one he would like to use from now on. He gave a formal goodbye, hung up the phone, and vanished into the telecom void. In his place sat N0R4D, an ambitions up and comer making waves in the hacking community. He sat at a small wooden desk that had belonged to his mother, a desk that could once be described as utilitarian in appearance, but was now so enveloped in decals for various political causes and parts manufacturers that looked more like a fringe left wing rally car. His jet black uniform varied only in the large Korn logo embroidered on the front of his shirt and the skids of grease running around the thighs of his pants. His face was utterly unremarkable save the triumphant grin that currently adorned it. The current standards in computer defense are the result of billions of dollars in research and development by the best minds in information security, and all that money spent ensuring the safety of confidential computer data managed to do was draw the eyes of the enemy to the one link that no think tank of M.I.T. Doctoral candidate can control, human vulnerability.<br />
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N0R4D stared at the fluorescent glare emanating from the centerpiece of the technological altar that stood before him. He registered and processed the array of boxes in front of him with trained precision, expertly amalgamating the various pieces of data before centering his cursor on a window that containing what an outsider might construe as some sort of alien language. He aligned his cursor with the flow of the text and began pummeling the keyboard in bursts that reminiscent of an AK-47's firing pattern<br />
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[4:45:17] <n0r4d> I did it<br />
[4:45:36] <bl4ckh4th4rry> You got the password?<br />
[4:45:38] <nocturnal> Holy Shit!<br />
[4:45:42] <parasitius> What?!?!?!?!?!?!<br />
[4:46:17] <subatomic> NICE :)<br />
[4:47:09] <n0r4d> Yeah, dude was the biggest piece of shit I've ever met. Started tearing into me the moment I said I worked for I.T. Changed his tone when I spouted the names of all those porn sites we tracked him visiting though. Any guilt I have about fucking this dude's life over is long gone.<br />
[4:47:32] <subatomic> You mean you needed something more than him being an executive for one of the most vicious debt collection firms in America.<br />
[4:47:43] <bl4ckh4th4rry> Yeah I didn't need to talk to this dude to know he's a total douce.<br />
[4:48:16] <parasitius> So whats the pass?<br />
[4:48:41] <n0r4d> CowBoys1992<br />
[4:48:58] <bl4ckh4th4rry> Wow what a tool<br />
[4:49:11] <parasitius> Cool. Who who's up for some recon duty?<br />
[4:51:37] <bl4ckh4th4rry> Alright listen up. Before we go any further with this, you guys gotta realive that what we are about to do is on a whole different level than what most of you are used to. These break ins WILL be investigated, so I don't care how many proxies you got going, nobody use a home computer for any of this. Go to a starbucks or something<br />
[4:51:59] <n0r4d> I was thinking about checking it out on a school comp tomorrow.<br />
[4:52:22] <bl4ckh4th4rry> Even that's risky. How many people at your school have the knowledge to pull something like this off?<br />
[4:52:31] <n0r4d> And how will they prove anything?<br />
[4:54:56] <bl4ckh4th4rry> Look, just be careful, I'd hate to see you arrested or something man.<br />
[4:53:01] <n0r4d> Yeah, I will.<br /><br />
N0R4D was jolted away from the screen by a high pitched wail that reverberated through his body and seemed to settle in that weird spot in the front of your skull where you feel a migrane.<br /><br />
“Michael, we're going to be late for your honors dinner, stop fooling around on the computer!”<br />
“I'm be down in a sec mom.”<br /><br />
[4:54:27] <n0r4d> Alright guys. I g2g. Nice talking.<br />
[4:54:31] <parasitius> Peace<br />
[4:54:36] <bl4ckh4th4rry> See you later buddy.<br />
[4:54:45] <subatomic> Bye. Nice work today.<br />
[4:54:49] <bl4ckh4th4rry> Yeah, GJ<br /><br /><br /><br />
Michael Anderson listened to his mother's splintering call three more times, along with two knocks on the hallway wall and one threat to turn the power off in his room before he was ready to leave. He walked down the stairs in the same clothing he had worn earlier and found his mother dressed in her purple business attire. She stared at his attire and frowned.<br /><br />
“This is an important dinner Michael. It wouldn't kill you to dress up a little bit.”<br />
“This is fine mom. We're going to Friendly's, not the Aquaturf.”<br />
“It doesn't matter, this is a big deal, the school superintendent is going to be there. You've worked really hard for this and it wouldn't hurt to have that show a little in your attire.”<br /><br />
Michael wanted to tell his mother that he hadn't. That all the time he told her he spent studying in his room was actually passed sitting in IRC chat rooms communicating with friends from Prague, Tennessee and Mexico City. That he never gave his schoolwork more than the 45 minutes of free time during his study hall and the occasional rollover work on the bus ride home, but he relented. He reminded himself that those two and a half hours were the only times during the day that he was free from her harpy wails, and he relented.<br /><br />
“I'll go upstairs and get changed.”<br />
“We don't have time anymore. We're already late as is.”<br />
Michael walked to the car with his mother. He waited outside for her to get into her seat and move her briefcase and tissues from the passenger seat. She started the car and changed the radio from the top forty station that provided the backdrop for her commute to their local classic rock station. Rhiannon by Fleetwood Mac came on the air, prompting a discussion concerning the relative merits of Rumours, his mothers favorite Fleetwood album, versus their self titled album, Michael's pick as the groups magnum opus. The fourteen minute drive to the restaurant flew by, with Michael enjoying the reprieve from the harassment that seemed to characterize most of his conversations with his mother, and she relished what was perhaps the only facet of their lives that they seemed to have in common.<br /><br />
Michael tried to turn his attention towards the mountain of french fries that remained on his plate as the superintendent bloviated on an on about success, the future, and the infinite potential of the young adults seated around him. The capitalistic excess of both the massive portions that filled the plates of all the attendee's at the schools honers awards dinner and this superintendents speech made him sick to his stomach. He looked around desperately for something that didn't make him want to vomit, finding no luck in his mothers watery eyes or the eagar stares of the classmates that surrounded him. He looked at Jacob and Rory, the two students he was sharing a table with. They stared at the superintendent with glowing eyes, buying into all the charlatan promises of happiness through wealth and honest hard work he was hurling at them. Jacob caught Michael's gaze and responded with a smile that seemed to emphasize how proud he was to be sitting there. <br /><br />
Michael wished Blackhat was sitting at that table so he could listen to him mock the sea of idiocy that he found himself drowning in. He wished subATOMIC were sitting with him, and he imagined how she would tear into that asshole at the podium for his corrupt and destructive bullshit ideology. Michael couldn't wait to get the fuck out of this town. Maybe at M.I.T. there would be people who actually gave thought to something besides how to ride the rails laid out by a corrupt world as efficiently as possible. Michael was jolted out of his train of thought hearing his name announced over the microphone. People were staring at him. He stood up to a sea of applause and walked to the front of the auditorium, where he was handed a pseudo gold statuette featuring a boy sitting at a desk earnestly working on some assignment. <br /><br />
“Now here is a young man with the whole world in front of him. Graduating with a 3.8 GPA and going to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to study Engineering this fall. Middletown High School is proud to award you it's highest honor in academic achievement."<br /><br />
Michael contorted his face into an expression of shock and awe as best as he could. He walked back through the crowd and sat back down, addressing the hands put out by the fathers sitting all around his table one at a time. He looked at the expressions on the faces that surrounded him, then he looked his award, taking in the earnest expression adorning the boys face, his dedication towards a future he must have felt would be special. Michael thought about what he would give to feel the way the boy felt.<br /><br />
The car ride home felt ten times as long as the ride over. Michael wanted to discuss the intricacies of The Who's slow decline through the 1970's, but felt that his mother would consider that banter inappropriate given the evening's events. Finally his mother's voice broke through the awkward silence.<br /><br />
“I know I've been hard on you through the years, but I want you to know that I've allways had your best interest in mind. I know it might not allways seem like it, but I'm so proud of you and what you've become. I know how hard it's been without your father, but I know he'd be proud of you if he was alive to see this. I love you honey.”<br />
“I love you too mom.”<br />
For the first time all evening, Michael felt something besides contempt for his surroundings.<br /><br /><br /><br />
The next day at school. Michael could not get his mind away from the contents of Richard Johnson's hard drive. He sat through his first five classes, absorbing the congenial remarks of congratulations without much regard, his objective locked firmly in the cross-hairs of his consciousness. 12:35 came slower than it ever had that day, and each class along the way seemed to grow exponentially the closer it came to that sacred hour. By the time his 11:25 math period rolled around the thoughts were unbearable. Even Jessica Moore's short skirt couldn't take his mind away from his goals. He watched the second hand mock him click after click, and he seriously considered the possibility that something was actually wrong with the clock today. He breezed his way through his asignments and sat idly through the last twenty minutes of class, his homework completed, his ambition as sharp and deadly as the blade of a sword.<br /><br />
The bell rang, and Michael was the first out the door despite the handicap being at the back of the classroom provided. He wormed his way to the side of the surging mass of students to snake his way down the hall as fast as possible, and practacly charged through the double doors of the William Howard Taft High School's library. He rushed over to the computer against the far wall and sat down. He entered the login credentials of Jay Wood, a classmate who had taken to insulting Michael whenever they passed in the halls ever since he had the audacity to correct one of his mistakes during Junior year English class. He pulled out a flash drive from his pocket and plugged it into the machine, then ran a sockpuppet program to bypass the school's network restrictions. He then ran a remote login program, as well as his chat client. At long last Michael was home.<br /><br />
<n0r4d> has entered the room<br />
[12:37:49] <n0r4d> What's good guys?<br />
[12:39:17] <subatomic> A lot. Me and BlackHat have been digging around his emails all day, we found some juicy shit.<br />
[12:40:58] <bl4ckh4th4rry> Yeah. Dude has a mistress that he uses company email to communicate with. Go into his inbox and check out page 12 for some real risque shit.<br />
[12:41:14] <n0r4d> Sweet. If you've got his email covered I'll check out his file system I guess.<br />
[12:41:58] <subatomic> Yeah, he's got a shitload of office files in the documents folder that I havn't had a chance to look at. Could be something interesting.<br /><br />
N0R4D went to work. Most of the files were run of the mill stuff. Records of debts picked up over the years for pennies on the dollars, employee call logs, including time spent per call and dollars made in collections. Pretty straightforward stuff. Then N0R4D noticed something strange, a file that had a name that didn't follow the standard naming conventions Richard seemed to use; it was as if somebody threw a bunch of words they knew related to spreadsheets onto the title of a word document. N0R4D clicked on the file, and was greeted by a list of instructions that appeared to be for the managers of the firm. As he read through them he realized that a number of things blatently clashed with a lot of debt collection laws. He thought back to when USDC representatives blew up his mothers phone in the wake of his father's costly funeral. He remembered the sobs his mother thought he couldn't hear when she laid in bed at night. His righteous indignation at peak levels, he switched over to the chat program.<br /><br />
[12:57:25] <n0r4d> Go into My Documents and click on “fiscal earnings deductions.docx”<br />
[12:58:02] <subatomic> Holy Shit! I think we might have found what we are looking for.<br />
[12:58:37] <n0r4d> We gotta get this shit online ASAP.<br />
[12:58:50] <bl4ckh4th4rry> Hold on a sec. If we put any of this shit up now, they'll figure out exactly where it came from, and the feds will be able to pin the suspicious traffic to the foreign requests the company's intranet has been receiving all day. If we give this a month or so they'll have long deleted any record of us on the company's network.<br />
[12:59:17] <n0r4d> If we wait a month they may realize that they were compromised and delete all the evidence. We gotta do this now!<br />
[01:01:31] <bl4ckh4th4rry> Look. If we put this online now we are as good as caught. I care about this just as much as you, but this isn't worth going to jail for.<br /><br />
N0R4D thought about that statement for a good five minutes, but somewhere in the back of his mind he knew what he was going to do. True, an arrest would bury his ambitions for higher education, but it wouldn't bury his future. Hackers who get arrested for stuff like this get a maximum of a decade in jail, and being under eighteen meant that he would probably get half of that. From there there were plenty of security firms willing to pay good money to anyone with a proven record of experience in security. Most hackers come out of prison with a six figure salary waiting for them. True prison wasn't MIT, but something deep inside told him that either one would leave him alienated and alone. But maybe, just maybe, once he finished his sentence, he might be able to find a world with people who are just as alienated as he is. <br /><br /><br /><br />
Two days later, N0R4D was taken out of school in handcuffs. The sea of bodies crowding the hallways split as the police officers escorted him into the cruiser. He smiled at the handful of photographers waiting at the front gates as he passed. Later that day the evening news ran a story about a promising young student at a local high school who was arrested for computer hacking. They interviewed teachers and administrates, all of them giving the same surprised reaction. Spouting the same bullshit people spout every time something like that happened. Crap about how he never seemed like the kind of boy who would do something like that, how he was so full of potential, how he had wasted his life away and how they didn't understand any of it. Of course they didn't understand. Their dulled eyes could do nothing but turn away in shock and fear at the blinding light of a corrupt planet. Of course N0R4D was torn apart when he saw the front page photograph of his sobbing mother from the desk of the officer in the cell block. He thought about how proud she had been of him, he felt the pain of disappointing her. The N0R4D felt something different, a warmth that ran from the pit of his stomach all the way up into his chest. He wondered about this alien sensation and the sense of contentment it seemed to bring him in his cramped cell.</bl4ckh4th4rry></n0r4d></bl4ckh4th4rry></n0r4d></subatomic></n0r4d></subatomic></n0r4d></bl4ckh4th4rry></subatomic></n0r4d></n0r4d></bl4ckh4th4rry></subatomic></bl4ckh4th4rry></parasitius></n0r4d></n0r4d></bl4ckh4th4rry></n0r4d></bl4ckh4th4rry></n0r4d></bl4ckh4th4rry></parasitius></bl4ckh4th4rry></n0r4d></parasitius></bl4ckh4th4rry></subatomic></n0r4d></subatomic></parasitius></nocturnal></bl4ckh4th4rry></n0r4d>Snowblindedhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06242023366792085291noreply@blogger.com0