Until the Light Takes Me

 

I watched the black metal documentary Until the Light Takes Us last night, and I was captivated, absolutely stuck the the screen from the first second. Fenriz is an interesting enough guy; he's certainly seen a lot and been through a lot, both inside the black metal "scene" and out, but I was (not surprisingly) more interested in Burzum's Varg Vikernes. The first thing that struck me about him was the passion and intensity that he spoke with. I found him to be very intelligent, articulate and even friendly. This shouldn't really be a shock, I guess; no one has ever really contended that he's stupid.  It has been contended that he's maniacal, though, but I found that to be very far from the truth. Indeed, it's a limited window into his life and thought that we get to see, but I didn't even see a glimmer of the psychopathic tendencies that he supposedly harbors. You can often see that in someone's eyes, especially when they're as insane as many have portrayed Varg to be.

Vikernes has often been portrayed as a racist nazi-sympathizer or even a neo-nazi, and granted, this perception is something he is mostly responsible for. But it's also wholly inaccurate, at least in my final analysis. He may harbor some supremacist views, and if that is the case, that is deplorable. But I can't really find any direct evidence of that.  Two things are for sure: 1) he holds a positive view of his and his ancestors' (PAGAN) blood, religion, race, and culture, and 2) he holds an entirely negative view of Christianity and the Judeo-Christian culture. 

Indeed, everything else seems to spring from the latter. He talks, in the film, of the church burning which he was imprisoned for, and in my very honest opinion, totally justifies said action. Varg essentially says (I'm obviously paraphrasing, here): 'Christian civilization destroyed the ancient Pagan culture that was located right here on this land. It also destroyed ancient cultures in Africa, Asia, North America... To destroy its churches is my way of striking back, and I won't apologize for it.' What's striking here is the fact that Varg expresses empathy for the African, Asian, and Native American ways of life that were also taken by Christianity.

Black metal kiddies praise what Varg did because its so obviously kvlt. But fuck that. He didn't do it to gain kvlt points; he did it, as I said, to strike back a blow against the culture that destroyed an entire way of life for the glorification of its bastard god and prophet. I've personally never held any love or respect for Christianity, and my research over the years has led me to precisely the same condemnation as Varg. If you want to believe in and worship that god, fine. Whatever works for you. But the civilization created in your god's name has destroyed many peoples, many ways of life, and for that there is no justification. No salvation. No forgiveness.

Whatever your opinion of the church burning, or of Varg Vikernes himself, there is no denying that what he did was highly profound. I can only hope that when my life is over, I can look back on it and see something as poignant as that.

Victory

It occurred to me today that it's probably time for humanity to stand up and declare it's victory over nature. It's hit me before, on an intellectual level, that there is no reversing what we've done. But today, on a more emotional, intuitive level, I realized just what that means.

What was once the pillar of humanity's elegance has fallen. Instead of community working in concert with nature, we have Home Depot. Instead of rains falling to feed the Earth, we have dying oceans and crumbling ecosystems. Instead of newborns suckling their mothers, we have BPA-free plastic bottles.

Well, there's no BPA, so this plastic is ok! It won't kill your child directly, but it will destroy the planet! No problem!!!

It's universally accepted by astronomers that the planet is supposed to be in the midst of a cooling cycle, on the way toward another ice age, perhaps. But somehow, the planet is getting hotter. If that is not enough to convince us that we're royally screwed the pooch, then I don't know what will.

I was overcome by a profound sadness; not depression, but sublime, intense sadness for what we've managed to destroy in roughly 200,000 years. It's tough to believe, and tougher to accept, but I think that people are starting to become familiar with the idea of collapse, and just what it means. We've no choice.

What I have to focus on is getting past this compulsion to punch everyone I see in the face. That's probably not healthy.

Degradation

Sometimes it just baffles me how badly wrong we can be. People get so hung up on stupid separators like nationality, race, religion, blah blah blah. So some Muslims want to build a Community Center near "Ground Zero."

People say they oppose this because it's an insult to the fallen.

I think people have just forgotten what the word COMMUNITY means... or perhaps they never knew. I myself forget that we are born into a world where there is no community. The ways of nature have been removed from our collective consciousness. I had an interesting talk with Tricia a couple of weeks ago about how different humanity looks now, in terms of evolution, when compared to itself before the advent of surplus agriculture. She said that the differences would be negligible, but I don't think I can agree with that. Because something is clearly fucked up; the world is burning down, and we set the fire and continue to fan the flames. We've changed; we seem to be born with an innate acceptance of civilization, and an uncanny ability to tune out the destruction and devastation that it wreaks upon the natural world. We think that "humanity" and "nature" are opposed.

Maybe for good reason, I suppose. Maybe humans really aren't a part of nature anymore. Maybe we've let ourselves go.

Fuck ground zero. It's better where it is. I'm sorry those people died, and when I say "those people," I mean the people that were in the buildings as well as those that flew the planes. Ward Churchill was right in a sense, that chickens were coming home to roost. But they weren't America's chickens. They were civilization's chickens.

And it was likely only the beginning.

34

So I turned 34 today and looking back at my life so far, I feel like I haven't done shit. I don't need to "have" anything to show for my 34 years; that misses the point, because I've got my two beautiful kids, along with a third on the way, and I'm pretty damn proud of them. But what the fuck am I doing? What the fuck have I done? I've lived roughly half of my life, if I make it to the average American male expectancy, and I haven't done much.

Not sure what I'm looking for here, but I can't look back without acknowledging some tremendous mistakes, as well as a few moments of sublime clarity.

I live a fairly good life I guess, but considering it's half over, it doesn't feel like enough. And the worst part is that I don't know what to do differently.

Weather the storm, ride it out. Blah blah fucking blah. Slow transcending agony.

Silence and Majesty Between the Trees

Sitting outside tonight as the evening light dissipates and the night descends upon us... learning quite a lot.

Ostara has passed and the Spring has arrived, but it is still that time of transition, when the leaves and flowers have yet to bloom. The birds have yet to arrive, and the Earth has yet to truly awaken from its self-imposed slumber.

The branches of the trees have nothing on them besides more branches, maybe a few shoots. Looking at this as the light goes into hiding for the night, it is plain to see why so many metal bands' logos are adorned with dead trees. Sure, its representative of coldness, of death and isolation and sorrow and misanthropy and all that is grim. I get that. But there's more to it, and I think I'm just finally seeing this tonight...

There is a certain poetry in the spaces between - a majesty of letters, words, sounds and movements. It's somewhat disturbing that I've never seen this in earnest until now, but that's not really important. And it's difficult, in seeing this, to think that what I've seen has not had some impact on metal logos, and even on metal itself. That poetry has played a part, and a bigger part than a lot of people would care to admit too...

Some morons who are too concerned with being trve and kvlt will cast this aside and claim that there is no poetry in trve metal... metal is anti-poetry. But that misses something that could not be more clear... to me at least.

I'm tempted to say that I'm over-intellectualizing this, but this isn't coming from an intellectual place. This is pure perception, witnessing of spirit...

Silence, stillness, even peace...

Nechochwen plays and I am in a very good place.

Goodbye Dave Park

Gaining all the attention in the local news this week has been the WRONGFUL death of Dave Park, someone that everyone at this gym knew and loved, because he was a kind, generous and gentle soul.

Apparently, he and his wife Deanna were in Buffalo for a friend's Baby Shower... Dave had a few drinks and accidentally wandered into the wrong house. The homeowner didn't care for that, so after warning Dave that he had a weapon, he SHOT him.

BANG. ONE FUCKING SHOT AND DAVE'S LIFE IS OVER.

It comes out yesterday, by this motherfucker's own admission, that the door was NOT LOCKED. His lawyer has the fucking balls to claim that this fact changes nothing regarding the homeowner's right to defend himself and his family (from someone, I might add, that poses no fucking threat).

Okay, maybe it changes nothing in the eyes of the law, but you know what? Fuck you, man. Fuck you so fucking hard, you piece of shit. You want to protect your family? Good, I understand. Lock the fucking door. Problem solved. Instead, the thought process could only be, "Well, I haven't locked the door, but if someone comes in that doesn't belong here, I'll just shoot him."

Fuck you, idiot. Go to fucking hell. I don't care what the law fucking says, because the fact that your door was open at 1 in the morning changes everything. You lock your door and Dave is still alive, Deanna isn't trying to pick her life up and move on without her husband of one fucking year, and none of us here are walking around trying to make sense of something that is so senseless.

Goodbye David Park. You are forever in our thoughts and hearts.

Wild

People have been going for days about the fact that Tilikum the killer whale (not a whale, for the record - orcas are dolphins) went off and killed this woman at Sea World. 'What would cause this animal to do this?' they say.

Really? Are you fucking kidding me?

It's a fucking wild animal. Sure, it's trained and all that shit, but it's still WILD. Think about it like this - human beings are the MOST domesticated animals on the planet, and we still flip out and get crazy all the time. Civilization can not take all The Wild out of any animal, humans included.

Those beautiful dolphins have no place in giant tanks in Sea World, jumping through hoops or whatever for our fucking entertainment. And we have NO right getting all indignant and surprised that this happens. It should happen more often - it gives me some small bit of hope that humanity will learn a lesson, and that maybe we can return to the path we once walked.

People that think that Tilikum should be "put down" ought to seriously consider why that's the case, because there is not one good argument for that proposal.