I'm watching all these MMA training videos on youtube, with this coach who's giving commentary, and he talks a lot about etiquette and ego. Like, when you're sparring you're supposed to hit your opponent lightly because you're both just practicing your technique and so on, you're not supposed to hit them hard. But I guess a frequent-ish problem is things escalating, this coach keeps talking saying things like "see this guy's really great, he doesn't let his ego get in the way, the other guy got a sneaky hit off there and this guy was friendly about it", and he keeps talking in knowing terms about mild escalations. Like he'll say "her opponent did X, so her next hit was a little harder, just showing him not to do that" and so on, where X is something (evidently) annoying.
So it's like, an important aspect of etiquette is not hitting too hard during sparring, but also it's expected that there will be these little minor breaks somewhat frequently. And I kind of wonder... is this kind of behavior a personality trait that's being selected for among MMA enthusiasts, or is it inherent to the activity. Like, usually I'm an absolutely non-competitive person, I just don't care about winning at things. And I don't have this like, strong urge to punish slights against me, right, like in life if someone annoys me my default response is to ignore them, I don't have an impulse to "return fire". So would I do better, if it were me? Or is there something inherent to being hit a bunch, even lightly, that brings out the aggression in you? I suspect there might be. I suspect even I might, you know, bop a guy a little hard if he got me with a particularly sneaky move, it might just be part of human nature.
I don't really know but it's interesting to contemplate.
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An Odyssey Through Music, Muses, Madness and Magic
(Buckle up Tumblr, this is a long poem)
1.
The isle guardians of vinyl
Unwittingly nervous to the necromancy
I have planned
An inner storm so terrible
But I was
Struck by his
Occult missive
So laden down was I
By all the lyrics, the words
With characters told through dark supergods
As Aleister Crowley is to
Led Zeppelin is to David Bowie
And now me
Lost among them
Buried within them
The pages of ancient texts
And the liner notes of the albums
Held far too close to the heart
Though I tried, perhaps
I merely formed mystery at my own doom
The records of the sorcerers
Performing an infernal scratching on my psyche
Breaking down what was there and carving out what could be
But whether it should be
Is still uncertain to me.
2.
I found the darkness in riffs
The wall of sound I was into
Inhabited by self-admitted aliens
Aleister’s hellfire brought to light
My heavy work held up
The symbolizing of some god
Archaic and forgotten
Through a ring
Art cracks
All the people that stare loveless
Into your eyes
But I would be different
I would be realized
Something broken
Mended
Yet still wrong
But I would
Make myself into something else
With your words
The fascination told fables
A way out, a way through
I would find my way to you
Through the cracks.
3.
Once artwork
I became their voice
Lurking in the shadows of time
On the periphery
Of reason
Madness could be a thrilling companion
And with the records transcendent
And the races lost
The shout rang out
Are You Experienced?
I am and am not
Like an abysmal and sunken ship
Lost in the depths of the ocean
Alone and devoid of meaning
Abandoned everything to
Grooves, characters, truths
And once there inhabiting these my psyche
Broke open spilling out visions, words
Like arcane knowledge
Dancing carelessly over the line
Between the sacred and profane
Whispering it’s so nice to see you here again
And my mind became a bookshelf filled with ancient wisdom
A record player
Playing albums that told lies like they were the truth
I uncovered the
Necronomicon
Had lives in Atlantis
Sat with the sound and vision
Of a populated landscape
Woven through history
Like a single thread
Linking everything
I became a fixture
Fantastic
Within the hidden music of a paperback
I would not be forgotten there.
4.
Of those who sought
And those who chose
A wriggle of religious fanaticism in claim
And its origins an apparent expression of salvation
I say
You are nothing and have nothing for me
With your hierarchy and worry over the threat
Of music and sexuality
And your constant waging of war against me
When mine and yours is a history of burning
I have nothing to give you
You’ve already taken too much from me
I want what was mine back
With your wicked face as old as
These chords I worship
And your evil work to further ministers
As meaningful to me as a rotten turnip
Yet of my conjuring powers
You disbelieve
When honey, you should fear me
And not the other way around
I hope that when you are most afraid
You say my name.
5.
Mobs make parents worried
They claim the rock audience chaos
Is just hormonal fury
A response to what is true
Inside of both me and you
There is more than this
A kind of magic
If you look for it
Religious
In the way we turn musicians
Into gods and goddesses
Idol worship
But is that all it is?
In the truest sense
An ancient rite
Long buried and forgotten
Rising up inside us all
Those who dare to dance
And by prohibiting and demonizing
The ones who shake their fists
Lose their sense
Always the sound of agitation
But I saw these pagan spirits first
Before I heard your protesting words
Theirs speak louder to me
Than your hatred ever could.
6.
To the electric teenager
Finding your way
Rebellion is autonomy
It is tradition
To push boundaries
Yet each new generation of adults
Somehow forgets these
Eternal truths
It's not your fault
They're afraid of your youth
Don't listen
Hold on
Your fire will make the world a better place
For you.
7.
Could this ancient thread
Of reality and magic infused with dangerous potential
Normally inhabited by far greater
Magicians than I could ever be
Break me?
I am traversing this rough terrain
Of shared perception
With aliens
These common visions a violence
What could I even be?
Nothing more than a mystery
To those around me
Lost in this metaverse I have accessed
Through song, collage, words
Chaotic, such occult meanings
They and often I
End in something
Beyond reason
Scratching out messages of methods
The angels referenced spoken vast by terrifying qualities
These opposing sorcerers
Like a guitar screeching endless feedback
Which demons?
Sex? Drugs? Words?
Palpable as suggesting a penultimate hidden secret
Impenetrable beyond nothingness and
Nonetheless
I must find it
Even if I have to destroy myself trying
Nothing is more important
Than this truth.
8.
Years go by and I come about left handed
Shaped by a tarot card about the arts and earlier
The room
Space
Death
I know spirituality
I see it in my brother’s eyes
Only the inner outer world collides
But of the Beatles or beetles
They didn’t understand
How
To make the world bend at your command
Of this phenomenon devotees are
Reckless
Breathtaking in their beauty
And chaos
It takes a certain kind of madness
Or perhaps maybe genius
To choose this path
To withstand the pressure
Of reality kneeling
At your feet
Bending to your will
I will break it before it breaks me
Oh brother, don’t you worry
I always find my way out of the darkness
And besides, hell has never bothered me
I am the master of my own design
The maker of my own making
Nothing else can touch me.
9.
Imagination turns listeners into participants
Gives power to the powerless
Those converted shaped by few ideas
Dreams
Had rock’s Hare Krishna LSD
Asking questions
Whose inner world could I be?
And as it moves, a cultural generation
Becomes magical
More magical than entire rock bands
Than holy men and women
Fashioned by the young
The carbon copy progressives
Lying like
Houses
Already vast
Led by the words of the Bhagavad Gita
You should have listened to me
When I had the cards already free
I tried to warn you what was coming
But no one ever hears me
Invisible as I am
Until so repulsive, so strange
You can’t look away from me
You really should have listened
You can't say I didn't try to warn you.
10.
This is bigger than I am
Stretched too thin like skin
Over bone was and into
The board, into the planchette
Could enchantment make me forget?
The board is vibrating
Shaking like hands
The grazing of sleeves
Culture, vinyl
Seemed out from under our covers
Like what was hidden
There, even tucked away those records
Though of nothing gatefold came
No reason to be afraid
Other than the fingers that have become potent
The light that has now dimmed
And what could I have been
To all who pulled that woven magic
Out of my childhood?
Could it be the way was manifest
Curled up snugly against your breast?
As warm candlelight over the Ouija
Plastic memories came
From which I had imagined the feelings like air between
Bewitched but hovered from
Somewhere above our heads
I wished that I was dead
Or that something would end.
11.
Experiences divorced from reality
Covers rock personas
Cut out images appear worse
But Dionysus would love this
His child
Who has people staged
Like personal shamanic relics
Thinking writing something mystical
That I would seek this
That I sought this
Is surely a form of madness
But all the logical illogical reasoning shows
A kind of rare dedication to the cause
These rites are magical
Why speak of demons
And why speak of devils?
I have conjured and created
Something new out of the ancient
Like nails
Scratching deep grooves into a record album
I have altered something
Broken it
As their gods create chaos simulating insanity
As if they even have to in me
I am the false image of a human performed
By a front magician
Playing at being god
In these moments of desperation
Carrying the weight of lives
As though my power were absolute
My belief almost religious
Fanatical
My concerns become concerts
When I am on my own
Wondering why happiness has abandoned me
And where all the merrymakers have gone
Why I am more Anubis than Pan
Why myth seems written in lyrics
As musicians play me like a fiddle
Play me for a fool
I am possessed
Into thinking I am appearing as many legends
Something older than time itself
A life bringer
A life destroyer
With the power to stop or start it all
I needed to believe I had the power
To save all of you
To destroy all of you
To protect myself
If I needed to
And I don’t know if I can save myself
From the things I want to do
As the darkness envelops me
And my mind becomes unglued
So go ahead and do what you always do
And blame it on the music
When we all know the truth
It’s always been you.
12.
Rumination is realization
I wandered alone
Within the elements and to God
Unintelligible
Words became strange as
Rogue faeries genuine
Approach looking wing
Impenetrable as I have become
What I’d produced went away from me
Flew out of my control
Reborn in catastrophe
When where into situations I went
From film to film I sense in time a song
Things start about a room and again
Became revolt
But maybe that’s just what happens when you’re
Involving the occult
Bring out the old rock n roll safeguard
Make it out of symbols and sigils
A complete thought catalogue so arcane
It would leave you spellbound for days
My mind prison
And that in myself some Christ was born
A thought so seductive to be sure
I would take control of these pursuits
But unlike you
Hatred would never do
I would never fight against passion
Your fear I came to hear
Against spaceships, rituals, the mystical,
Sex, magic
Your terror
So absolutely
Psychological
I felt protection close at hand
And I was real myself, as I really am
In and out of my depth
Battling against you and your demands
I came out cleaner
Stronger
And what became of you?
Shhh, no telling
I won’t spoil the ending
No good to warn the enemy
Of what is coming
But
You really should have been listening
You should have been watching
What was happening.
13.
He said, you should have started with
Kether
Been sure of the path you were following
After all
Magic, like blood, stains
But these moments were wonders
They could drive out the fear of fortune, destiny
Hanging over my head
I was taking control
Creating my own instead
As thin as the thread that links us all
Tenuous, fragile
Like a mind on the verge of breaking
Under the weight of a cruel reality
The walls would speak to me
Whispering
When will you come to me
From here or there
And find me in a room
High above the clouds
Where we could build our love?
It’s not enough
It’s a drug
And I need it
As lovers we were
And I, such as the mountains
Looming, shy
Unable to look you in the eye
But here is the stuff of legend
Sound soars like a movement
Lost to the ages
I never thought myself better than this moment
Lost as I once was
Now flashing light and colour
Connected to everything
Raising you like the devils they spoke of
Dancing my way to Malkuth
A fearless necromancer
Disregarding all the rules.
14.
I am the sun
I am the ocean
I am the mountains and the streams
I am the demon who would be with you
In all your wildest dreams
Where men circle around you
Desperate to keep you
You land like sand flowing through my hand
I did not try to hold onto you
So you let me keep the thread
Through this glass I was searching
Broken as the cracks
But now I am returning
Now I am mending
And once you were evasive
Elusive
Like a high I was chasing
Or the first drink, the tenth, or the last
But now I find you woven into everything
Believing we were thrown together like darts
Bending like space and time
I was searching for this
Searching for you
In desolate stations
We would be protected
Dredging the world to a ditch
Just to find you
Just to become more than this
You are a wonder
Among wondrous things
And I am bird
Who has found his wings
Overlooking humanity
From up on high
I have found me in you
This time
And of all the things they can take from me
That will never be one of them
For I am the sun
I am the ocean
I am the mountains and the streams
I am the demon who would be with you
In all your wildest dreams
But above all else
What is more
I have found peace
Dancing in the flames of this madness
They tried to call a disease
I am me
I am me
I am me.
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