Psychology - The Middle Path of Experiential Psychology

If 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.

Psychology - A Sampling and Summary of the Neurological and Psychological Research on Meditation

This 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.

Poetry - Anti-Heroin Chic Poems

Anti Heroin Chic: Pat Jenkinson

Music Criticism - DoomMetal.com Review Links

Mountaris - Desolate (2018-03-30)
Spirit Adrift - Curse of Conception (2018-03-30)
Godes Yrre : Inside The Whale (2018-02-27)
Motherslug : The Electric Dunes Of Titan (2018-02-20)

Poetry - For Lisa

What did you see in those houses?

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

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?

I'm sorry

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

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

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.

Music Criticism - Top 17 Albums of 2017

17. Fin - Arrows of a Dying Age
16. Priests - Nothing Feels Natural
15. Pallbearer - Heartless
14. Jason Moran - BANGS
13. Craig Finn - We All Want the Same Things
12. Satan's Hallow - Satan's Hallow
11. Kamasi Washington - Harmony of Difference
10. Death Fortress - Triumph of the Undying
09. Joshua Abrams and Natural Information Society - Simultonality
08. Cameron Graves - Planetary Prince
07. Tchornobog – Tchornobog
06. Fleet Foxes - Crack-Up
05. Elder - Reflections of a Floating World
04. Black Cilice - Banished from Time
03. Archspire - Relentless Mutation
02. Cleric - Retrocausal
01. Myrkur - Mareridt

(Write-up below)

Music 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.