#i believe in coincidences and fate to an extent and signs from the universe and

[ohmerricat]

i would spiritualise anything

[davidmann95]

Your power is mine: thoughts on Kingdom Hearts’ newest, oddest character

Finished Final Fantasy XV over the weekend. Mixed feelings to say the least, but it does give me an excuse to talk about Kingdom Hearts again, specifically this weirdo:

And how it feels like most of the people discussing Yozora and trying to figure out what his deal is are missing half the point. Yes, there’s the apparent connections to Sora and Riku, and there’s his meta association with Noctis and the entire real-life corporate backstory there intertwining with the in-game narrative to an unknown extent. But when he’s discussed as some kind of fusion of Sora and Riku, or a literal reincarnation of Noctis, or that Verum Rex might end up a real game, or something similarly straightforward in terms of “he’s going to be a very important central character going forward”, the ideas or at least the tone of how they’re presented seem to miss an absolutely critical component of how he was introduced to us, in a way that shapes not only him but by extension the entire future of the franchise and its thematic concerns:

We aren’t just supposed to be surprised he’s important because he’s real where we thought he wasn’t. We’re supposed to be surprised because he’s introduced to us as a self-evident gag character.

Not that we’re not supposed to take him seriously where it counts: it’s clear he has an important role going forward and is a force to be reckoned with. But no matter what deep, foreboding connections to the Keyblade and Master of Masters may lie within his backstory that may determine the fate of more universes than one, he will never not have had the hilariously inauspicious beginning of being a toy played by Rex the Dinosaur. He doesn’t even have the dignity of being introduced as a game on one of the plot-heavy original worlds! He’s a throwaway gimmick to spice up one of the filler Disney segments, literally a child’s plaything.

Even before we learn the context he’s being presented in...well, look at him. He’s like Riku, who’s cooler than Sora, and Noctis, a Final Fantasy character and therefore cooler than all this Disney stuff, but also he has a LASER SWORD and a CROSSBOW - that are clearly functioning as cool future tech instead of dopey magical powers - and his eyes are MYSTERIOUS MISMATCHING UNNATURAL COLORS and he fights GIANT ROBOTS with a dude in a fedora in a city straight out of the REAL WORLD to save a helpless lady/prize: truly, let no mistake be made, he is VERY, VERY SERIOUS INDEED, AND ALSO, RAD. TO THE MAX. He’s every attempt at reframing contemporary Final Fantasy as slick and modern and cool dialed up and up and up until the tone breaks, without the barest hint of self-awareness even as it advertises its action figure tie-ins. I don’t think that his little Keyblade pattern on his jacket being near-impossible to spot unless you’re looking for it is just to preserve the surprise, but also because the sight of the big keys with the Mickey Mouse logo on them would be anathema to his entire vibe, so important as it may be it must be squirreled away where it can’t make him look dumb. Heck, when Dylan Spouse announced on Twitter he was playing this major character in a childhood favorite franchise of his, surely knowing more than we do about Yozora, his description of the part was “I have lived out my edgy JRPG character fantasies...I even got to say ‘Sorry, but I don’t lose.’” We’re supposed to receive him off the bat as Square Enix, and more specifically Tetsuya Nomura, poking fun at themselves, going ‘yes, we suppose this is all getting to be a bit much, isn’t it?’

And then he enters the story for real.

Obviously he’s much more than a joke now, but the idea of him as something off, something that doesn’t fit in these games, endures. His episode isn’t just in a modern cityscape but skinned in the graphics of the grittier, more detailed style of the Pirates of the Caribbean world meant to evoke photorealism rather than the look of the rest of the game. He interferes with the gameplay in ways no other enemy does, stealing your items and weapons (we’ll get back to that). When he casts you into a void to be attacked by the mechs, it’s not a pure empty white but a mass of abstract polygonal space, evocative of the visuals of early game development. What details we do get of his backstory frame him as a counterpart to Sora on a parallel journey all his own, but the associations with his other source material in Noctis are considerably more...cutting. Credit to @kitsoa, whose own extensive musings on Kingdom Hearts’ increasingly overt metafictional concerns brought to my attention the obvious parallel: that Yozora being changed ‘beyond recognition’ with his heart replaced by another’s is a reasonable, albeit scathing description of Noctis’s revised character in the shift from the Nomura-helmed Final Fantasy Versus XIII to the largely overhauled Final Fantasy XV (and by the same token, the Nameless Star’s identity being stolen comes across as a shot at Versus XIII’s Stella Nox Fleuret being entirely replaced by Lady Lunafreya. Who, by sheer coincidence, would have been corrupted in planned but cancelled DLC into a monster of darkness).

While the comparisons to his source material are not only intentional but textually overt - his introduction as a real boy is literally scored to the FFXV theme music - so is the distancing from that material, given that if Nomura simply wanted to use Noctis the very premise of Kingdom Hearts as a series could have allowed him to use Noctis, and even change him to fit his original vision however he wished given the design and backstory changes to the other Final Fantasy characters involved. Yozora has a distinct role in which he’s still meant to represent that tone and aesthetic, and all signs point to that being because as that representation, he hardly seems an endorsement. He’s a parody, offered up in a demeaning context and tangled up narratively in real-life creative bitterness before being placed as an antagonist, however well-meaning (though keep in mind every secret boss of his kind before - other than Julius, I suppose - went on to become an endgame boss later on), in the player’s path. He may not be a villain, but all signs seem to indicate he’s a figure to be regarded as a contrast to the heroes.

And it’s in that role as a contrast that I have my own theories about what his deal ultimately is, thematically if not plotwise.

For those who saw this in the Kingdom Hearts tag and aren’t superhero fans, that’s Superdoomsday, introduced in Grant Morrison’s run on Action Comics about 8 years ago. One among many takes on an ‘evil Superman’ from a parallel universe, the twist with his world is that rather than a survivor of Krypton, he is literally the materialized concept of Superman - imagined by his reality’s Clark Kent, Lois Lane, and Jimmy Olsen, who created a machine which could bring ideas to life - that when sold to a corporation was reimagined in service of wide public appeal into an all-powerful, uncompromisingly brutal monstrosity clad in armor somewhere between an iPhone, 90s Rob Liefeld battle gear, and Nazi regalia, who ultimately journeyed into the multiverse to stalk and kill other incarnations of Superman, seeing them as competition to his domination of the ‘market’. “The curse...of Superman...” murmurs the dying Kent of that world, “...he becomes anything you want...him...to be...our world...wanted that...”

Yozora is...probably not exactly a 1:1 to that. But as a counterpart to Sora, it absolutely seems as if the main factor by which he contrasts him is that he’s ostensibly the sleeker, edgier model, new-and-improved. He reworks Sora’s story arc and aesthetic into something theoretically cooler and more palatable, steals his power, ‘saves’ him by sealing him away to presumably fight in his stead and thereby take his place as the lead. He is the protagonist so many feel Kingdom Hearts has needed for years, the somber AMV-ready Secret Movie tone and aesthetic stepping into center stage at last rather than maintaining a sunshiney Disney-esque child hero lead to anchor the assorted conspiracies and horrors of much of the rest of the tale. The manner in which he is presented as to make metatextuality an in-universe concern (to call back to Grant Morrison again, his next work after Action Comics was Multiversity, where a major plot point was that the events of parallel universes were unwittingly documented in each others’ pop culture; in that case comic books, in here video games) for Kingdom Hearts to explore in the next main entry is I believe so as to ask what, in fact, Kingdom Hearts as a series should be; is it a Disney series with some incidental Final Fantasy stuff in it? A Final Fantasy spinoff with some Disney elements cluttering it up that should maybe be discarded as it grows up? Something all its own? Is it time for Kingdom Hearts to get Serious? Even if the Kingdom Hearts as imagined by a marketing executive vision of Verum Rex isn’t what’s next, what is, as things get darker and that vision is now part of the narrative whether for good or ill?

So yeah it looks like Kingdom Hearts IV is Kingdom Hearts vs. its own Gritty Realworld! Urban Fantasy AU fanfiction for the soul of the series, and I am extremely here for it.

[master-thief-gray-shadow]

If Love Be Rough with You

Summary: Chisato had closed her heart to love. She knew she could never receive it, so there was no point in leaving herself open.

Kaoru had somehow blown the doors to her heart open, and she couldn't close them no matter how hard she tried.

Notes: No, this is not the 8000+ word fic I posted about earlier. That’s...uh...that’s not getting posted here. This is just some Chisato catching feelings and getting upset about it.

Chisato didn’t really care for men. Not in the sense that she preferred women, although that was certainly true, but it was a little deeper than that. All the men she’d met had in some way disappointed her. Her own father was all but absent from her life, leaving her in the care of her controlling and temperamental mother. Because of this, the only adult men in her life had been agents, producers, directors. People who saw her not as a person, but as a tool or prop, and treated her accordingly. She hadn’t noticed it much when she was younger and had first started acting, but as she grew it gradually became more and more clear to her. Men had only hurt her, and she had no reason to assume that they would stop anytime soon.

There had been one exception though. A boy Chisato had known as a child. She still remembered the day they had met, when she had been at the playground and heard someone sobbing. Checking under the slide, she found him, curled into a fetal position and crying his eyes out. Naturally she had asked what was wrong, and after a little coaxing he explained to her that he was hiding from a group of older boys who regularly picked on him. In that moment she had offered him her hand, and told him that he wouldn’t have to worry about any bullies if she was with him. He seemed surprised by the gesture, and hesitated for a moment, before taking her hand.

They very quickly became friends. Apparently their parents knew each other, as his father was a rather prolific live theatre producer who had worked with Chisato’s mother before. This meant that they would see each other often, which only served to make their bond tighter. As Chisato got to know him more she found that he was an exceptionally tender-hearted person, prone to being moved to tears by nearly any story. And he had loved stories. He loved the ones about charming princes who would come and save fair maidens from the clutches of evil. He seemed to aspire to be one, and even called Chisato his princess from time to time. Which she would always respond by teasingly saying that she could never marry a prince who cried so much. Still, he was such a sweet, kind boy. Chisato may have even loved him, which was why it had hurt so much when they parted ways so she could start her acting career.

That was the first and last time she had loved someone. Entangled in the ruthlessness of the entertainment industry, she had quickly learned that love was not a luxury she would be given. She had fans, of course, but none of them loved her. None of them truly loved her, the real her, they merely loved an idealized, sanitized image of her that was safe to be placed in front of a camera. Even if she wanted to look for someone who possibly could look past her television persona, her personal life was so scrutinized by old men in suits and--ugh--by her mother that it wouldn’t even be worth it. So she did the only thing she could do and accepted it. If she was to live a life without love, so be it.

For years she kept this mindset. It had even extended to simple friendships, as she felt it would probably be best for her to keep her relationship with other entertainers strictly professional. She had intended to keep this up when she had been signed onto an idol band for some reason, but somehow her bandmates had wormed her way into her heart. She’d been wary at first, but eventually she came to accept it. Friends, she supposed, were something she could have. But nothing more.

Among her new friends was Yamato Maya, a shy and somewhat awkward girl who attended a neighboring school, Haneoka Girls’ High School. Despite being in the band and playing onstage Maya was more at home in a studio, fiddling with lighting and sound equipment, which was what she did for her school’s drama club. Maya would talk about the drama club sometimes. Most of it was unremarkable, but something that did catch Chisato’s attention was that Maya would sometimes mention a “Kaoru” who was a fellow club member. The name was familiar to Chisato. But there were many people in the world named Kaoru. And Haneoka was an all-girl’s school. It was a simple coincidence, nothing more.

When Haneoka’s school culture festival came around, the drama club had decided to do a production of Romeo & Juliet. Chisato knew this because Maya had told her. It wasn’t of any particular interest to her, but she listened anyway because that was part of being a good friend, right? Apparently casting had hit a snag, most of the roles had been decided, but the role of Juliet remained open, mainly because this Kaoru, who was playing Romeo, had been very particular about what she wanted in the lead opposite her. And then Maya, sheepishly, admitted to having volunteered her for the part. And Kaoru had apparently been very interested.

Chisato was a film actress mainly, but she was familiar with the nuances of the stage. Initially she had been reluctant to accept, with everyone telling her how amazing it would be to have a celebrity like her at the festival in such an annoyingly patronizing manner, but eventually she caved. She had been told that Kaoru had been eager to see her, and that it was like a lifelong dream to perform side by side with her. That seemed very odd for a simple fan. This Kaoru almost sounded like she was trying to reunite with someone. But that wasn’t possible. That boy was gone. Chisato would never see him again.

At least, that was what she believed until she stepped into Haneoka’s drama clubroom, and there, in the center of the room, a script in hand, was her childhood friend with whom she had parted so painfully. Seta Kaoru.

He--or, she, Chisato supposed--had grown tremendously since they’d last seen each other. She was tall, easily towering over the other club members, and her face had become sharp and handsome. She wore a confident smile as she looked over at Chisato, and as their eyes met she could see the same self-assuredness in her gaze.

This...this was the boy she had known? It was unmistakable, of course, but as Kaoru walked over to her, knelt down, took her hand and kissed it as though she were a princess and spouted off some nonsense about how fate had reunited them, Chisato could never imagine her old friend doing such a thing. This was ridiculous. Kaoru was being ridiculous.

And...and charming. Chisato had long wondered what her single crush on a boy had meant. At some point she had decided that it had merely been a fluke, an exception. But now that it turned out that Kaoru wasn’t a boy after all something awakened in her. Kaoru was a woman. A beautiful, charming, kind of dumb woman. As the culture festival approached and Chisato spent time rehearsing with Kaoru, she started noticing odd things in her body whenever they would go over certain parts. An odd increase in her heartbeat. A slight floatiness in her stomach. Going briefly lightheaded when they would practice their stage kiss. And not even ten minutes until curtain on the day of the performance, it hit her.

She was in love. With Kaoru.

Chisato managed to stave off her feelings of disgust long enough to put on a decent performance, although Kaoru’s ad-libbing certainly tested her. How could this have happened? She had sworn off love, made it so that no force in the universe could ever make her fall in love with anybody, and the universe had conspired to bring her together with someone she was in love with already. Why, why did Kaoru turn out this way? Why was she so beautiful, and why did Chisato’s chest twinge with jealousy as Kaoru would flirt with every girl who passed her by? What had happened to the kind and sensitive and honest Kaoru she had known? Chisato had tested a few times and found a crack or two in this princely persona that Kaoru had developed. She was sure that deep down, Kaoru was still the shy and quiet child she had been. But she was hiding that side of herself. Hiding it under the mask of a bold Shakespearean actor.

When she had first taken the role of Juliet she had struggled to understand the character, her foolish devotion to love. Now, now she knew. She knew what drove her to go against her family to be with her Romeo, even though it had led to tragedy. Would something similar happen to her if she acted on her feelings? Probably nothing as dramatic as suicide, but there were plenty of terrible possible outcomes. She could be blacklisted from the industry for being caught with another woman. And if that were to happen she shuddered to think how her mother would respond. And did Kaoru even return her feelings? Was this all just an act? Was she willing to risk her career, her reputation, over someone who might not even love her back? To an extent she envied Juliet for her courage.

But in her courage Juliet had been a fool. And Chisato was not a fool. Even as Kaoru extended a hand to her she would not take it. No love was worth the ravages it could bring. Love was not something she could ever have, even as it thrummed in her chest.

[ratsontheroad]

Translation of the Ghost cover feature in Finnish music magazine Soundi 06/2018

[T/N: SO I finally finished this translation that I had been meaning to work on ever since I first saw this magazine on the shelves back in June. It’s a really interesting, detailed article with some new insight to how Tobias views the past and future of Ghost, so I would highly recommend giving it a read!

Thanks to @mistashadesu​ for proofreading!]

Ghost – Against the odds

Matters of Faith

Heavy rock bands capable of making an international breakthrough have become a rarity nowadays. During the past few years, one band has succeeded in this feat better than others: Ghost. Its story is already filled with an astounding amount of interesting turns and strange coincidences, but if we ask frontman Tobias Forge, Ghost has only taken its first steps.

Prologue: Once upon a time…

…there was a little boy from Linköping, who took an interest to heavy rock music thanks to his older brother. Around the same time, the boy, named Tobias Jens Forge, grabbed the book Stone Alone which was about the life of The Rolling Stones bassist Bill Wyman. The reading experience was so fascinating that the boy started devouring the biographies of other musicians as well. One of his most influential early musical experiences was Metallica’s colossal The Black Album, but soon the darker, more mysterious and dangerous paths of death and black metal swept the boy with them.

In 1998 the boy had grown into a young man, who founded the death metal band Repugnant, whose only album Epitome of Darkness came out in 2006, after the band had already disbanded. On the verge of adulthood, the youth also played the guitar in other underground acts, such as Magna Carta Cartel as well as an early incarnation of Crashdïet.

The same year Epitome of Darkness came out, a song in Swedish, Satans Natt, was conceived “for a possible new project”. A musician friend of several years [of Forge’s] heard the “not particularly serious” demo version of the song and urged him to compose more songs in the same vein. That’s what happened.

Soon the project got the name Ghost, and in 2008 the title of Satans Natt was changed to Stand by Him, whose lyrics begin with the sentence “Devil’s power is the greatest one”. Bingo! Like almost always in the case of the best rock music, the deal with the good ol’ Devil had been sealed.

Ghost did not hurry, however, since the air was thick with a fragile “now or never” atmosphere that was not worth shattering with something unfinished. The D-Day dawned on Friday 12th of March 2010, when Ghost released a three-song debut demo on their plain MySpace Page.

First Act: Year Zero

It’s April 2018, and Tobias Forge has arrived at the Universal Music facilities in Södermalm, Stockholm. The slender musician has taken off his black leather jacket, whose front is adorned with Misfits, King Diamond and Venom pins among other things, and settled into a comfortable position on one side of the black sofa in the conference room. Forge, who has been extremely busy during the past decade, has had some free time with his wife and two children during the past couple of weeks.

It doesn’t require being an adept judge of human character to notice that Forge is positively exuding happiness and calm. Though why wouldn’t he be, seeing as his dreams for his musical career have come true. Even the wildest ones of them all.

–When I founded Repugnant, I was hoping for the band to become a big name in the field of death metal. I was dreaming of achieving something that for example Amon Amarth have reached. Anyway, it didn’t come into fruition for a multitude of reasons. For starters, our timing was completely wrong, since the popularity of death metal was at a low while nu metal was dominating the charts. No matter what I tried, Repugnant didn’t seem to provoke much of a response. It was inevitable that my enthusiasm started to wane.

Despite his adolescence having been permeated by extreme metal, Forge has always been far from a thick-skulled metalhead, who refuses to see past the end of his nose. The time had come to do something other than death metal.

–If you ask what my favorite album is, I might mention Season Of The Dead by Necrophagia, but I could also mention a thousand other albums. My earliest musical memories have to do with the releases of Rainbow, Iron Maiden, Kiss and Mötley Crüe – especially Shout At The Devil terrified me as a kid – and I still love these bands. Queen, Misfits, Pink Floyd and The Doors have always been huge favorites of mine. I really like many Swedish artists, such as Lars Winnerbäck. The world of AOR has killer names like Journey and Foreigner who have affected Ghost’s vocal harmonies tremendously. Yeah, I could continue this list endlessly.

When Forge started planning “yet another project”, that is to say Ghost, his idea was to combine Satanic and occult imagery (“I read Necronomicon at a young age and its impact was pretty huge”) with progressive and organic hard rock (Uriah Heep, November, Blue Öyster Cult), mystic and sinister heavy metal (Mercyful Fate, Pentagram), obscure metal (Voivod) and huge, shamelessly catchy hits (Africa by Toto).

The end result was a some kind of cross between Black Sabbath and Abba.

–After a few Ghost songs had been finished, I started looking for a singer for the band. I’m a guitarist and I wouldn’t have thought I would become the band’s singer. I inquired the interest of many of my famous colleagues, such as Messiah Marcolin of Candlemass, but no candidate expressed any. Not a single one. However, I still wanted to play the cards I had been dealt, so I had to be the singer.

“From rags to riches in one night” is a horrible cliché, but that is exactly what happened to Ghost, at least to some extent.

–I uploaded the demo songs on MySpace and turned off the computer for several hours. When I turned it back on again… Well, I could hardly believe my eyes. During a short time, the page had been flooded with praise from fans, record labels and colleagues alike. At that moment I realized that if I had been given one chance to succeed in the world of rock ‘n’ roll, its time – Ghost’s Year Zero – had now come.

Mysterious are the workings of higher powers, which is something Tobias Forge got painful proof of later on the very same day. Only a few hours after Ghost’s emergence Forge’s world collapsed: his 41-year-old older brother – his mentor and role model – had passed away.

–Two of the biggest changes in my life up to that point happened on the same day. I don’t believe in the supernatural, but the timing of these incidents made my skin crawl.

Second Act: I love Ghost

Ghost’s explosive popularity on MySpace really set things in motion, and it wasn’t long until they signed a record deal with the former Napalm Death and Cathedral singer Lee Dorrian’s Rise Above Records. Their first album Opus Eponymous was released towards the end of fall 2010.

–When Opus Eponymous was released, I was 29 years old and had been playing in different bands for maybe 15 years. I had been involved in making albums that music magazines didn’t pay any attention to – they didn’t even bother to review them. At some point I was seriously plagued by self-doubt, and daunting thoughts like “maybe I will never have a successful music career“ crept into my mind. After all this, the warm reception and positive reviews Opus Eponymous received felt fantastic, Forge says.

–I am a perfectionist, and Opus Eponymous is, of course, far from being a perfect album. If I listen to it today, I find myself constantly thinking that “I could have done that and that so much better.” But Opus Eponymous is a product of its time and it opened countless doors for Ghost. The material on the album was written with no plans for a future record deal on the horizon, and this is why the album is extremely stripped-down and genuine. In many ways Opus Eponymous is and always will be my most important release, because it gave me a chance.

When Opus Eponymous was released in mid-October, Ghost hadn’t played single gig. And performing is at least equally as important as recording to Forge, who has loved the performing arts ever since he was a little boy.

–We played our first gig in Germany at the Hammer of Doom festival five days after Opus Eponymous was released. The gig was such a bizarre experience… As I said, I have the identity of a guitarist, and only doing the singing felt weird at first. And I looked weird too, in the mask and robes of a satanic pope, Forge laughs.

–I felt that the hype around Ghost also caused the audience to just observe the gig instead of really enjoying it. The atmosphere was reserved and I couldn’t really tell if they liked us at all. Luckily we performed in London the very next night, and the atmosphere at Camden Underworld was fantastic. The venue was packed and everyone sang along with the lyrics like there was no tomorrow. It was one of those important moments when I understood that Ghost could really become something.

The character of a satanic pope that Forge, who had been impressed by the “skull mummies” in Indiana Jones films already as a kid, had created answered to the name Papa Emeritus I during the era of the debut gigs and album. For their next album Infestissumam (2013) Ghost “changed singers” and Papa Emeritus II, who of course was Forge’s next character, took the stage. A similar metamorphosis occurred with the album Meliora (2015).

–During an early stage of planning I decided that songs like these that flirt with mysticism and occultism cannot be performed dressed in a t-shirt and jeans in the corner of a pub. In other words, it was as clear as day from the start that Ghost’s show had to be very memorable visually. One of the ideas had to do with the stage, which I had wanted to look like a church of some kind. This in turn led to the thought that the night’s Master of Ceremony had to be some kind of a satanic clergyman or the leader of a cult. The system that the Catholic Church and the Vatican have had in place for centuries, where a new pope rises to power every now and then, offered the perfect model for Ghost’s upside-down world.

Ghost’s concept is so ingenious that it instantly arouses the question of why nobody came up with it earlier. Something that further adds to its ingenuity is that if Forge starts running out of ideas at some point, he can turn his attention to years past and reanimate Papa I or some other former frontman of Ghost. And the fans will rejoice.

–Nostalgia is an important part of rock culture – and it has become even more important as many of our heroes have passed away. Some older rock fans are extremely proud about having seen Led Zeppelin live in the 1970s. Or if we consider Metallica… Did you already discover them during Cliff Burton’s era, or did you only get excited about Load? For die-hard fans this is a question of life and death.

Speaking of Metallica – even though Ghost is superior among newer bands, it would not have reached its current status without James Hetfield. When Metallica played in the Ullevi Stadium in Gothenburg in summer 2011, Hetfield appeared in an interview in a live broadcast on Swedish television wearing a Ghost shirt. “Papa Het’s” comment “I love Ghost” reached millions of metal fans through the internet, which marked the end of Ghost’s days as an underground band.

–We performed at Roskilde that same night, and suddenly my phone was full of messages telling me that Hetfield had praised Ghost on television. It did feel incredible, Forge reminisces.

–It’s been baffling to notice how adaptable the human mind is. As you get to know your childhood heroes personally, they become less exceptional. I don’t mean to say that meeting James Hetfield isn’t great every single time, but nowadays things like these are a part of my life. Just like endless travelling. Before Ghost, I had barely travelled anywhere and now I have visited dozens of different countries.

When did you visit the USA for the first time?

–Oh, this is a fun story! I was determined that I would only go to the United States when I had a gig there, and that’s what ended up happening when we played at Maryland Deathfest in the spring of 2011. It was an unbeatable feeling!

Third Act: My name is Tobias Forge

And the Grammy goes to… Ghost!

Who would have thought that a Swedish metal band in the beginning of their career would win a Grammy, the most esteemed award in the world of pop music, with some help from Metallica or not. That’s what happened, however, when Forge and his then-nameless ghouls picked up the award for Best Metal Performance in Lost Angeles in winter 2016.

–[The Swedish producer] Max Martin probably has something like 50 Grammys, but otherwise there aren’t many of those within Sweden, Forge says.

–I was already dumbfounded by the fact that we were nominated, so winning felt completely unfathomable. So many famous bands have been nominated for a Grammy numerous times but never gotten the award, and we took it right off the bat.

–My mother was so excited about the news about the Grammy that she started telling everyone about “her son’s band Ghost”. Despite all the times I had emphasized that we were going to hold onto our anonymity as long as possible… Well, I did know that the rocketing growth of Ghost’s popularity meant that our road of being anonymous and faceless would end sooner or later.

The words “My name is Tobias Forge and I am the singer of Ghost” were broadcast on the frequency of a Swedish radio station late in the summer of 2017 [T/N:  Here the author misquotes the Sommar i P1 interview slightly – what Tobias actually said was more along the lines of “My name is Tobias Forge and I am the man behind the mask in Ghost.”]. It was the first time Forge had publicly admitted to being Ghost’s frontman.

–I am a control freak, but unfortunately controlling everything is not possible. Especially not when a rock band grows faster than anybody could have expected.

Forge having to reveal his identity has to do with disagreements that arose following Ghost’s success. Some of Ghost’s background musicians – the no-longer-so-nameless ghouls Simon Söderberg, Mauro Rubino, Henrik Palm and Martin Hjertstedt – sued their former boss in the spring of 2017. The reason? Nothing particularly surprising. The four of them thought that they had not been paid enough.

As an outsider, it is easy to understand the views of both the visionary dictator Forge and his former bandmates. It’s one thing to dream of a jackpot, but during Ghost’s early days no one could have predicted the diabolical heights that they would reach. As their popularity skyrocketed, and the original lineup consisting of an old group of friends had no written agreement, both sides could claim anything.

–A famous musician said to me that all successful bands have to settle their accounts in court sooner or later. He added that things like this are a sign of success and that many things have been done correctly. He was right.

The legal battle remains unfinished, but the former members of Ghost got one small win so far – at least if their purpose was to throw a wrench in the works. After all, isn’t it the case that the mystery surrounding Ghost has somewhat decreased, now that everyone knows the identity of the visionary behind it all? Or is it?

–Well, the situation is what it is and there’s no changing it. If Ghost’s brand is as strong as I hope and want it to be, the band will survive this with no significant repercussions. It’s true that a part of the mystery is gone forever, and if someone can no longer enjoy Ghost after seeing my face, so be it. But ultimately I’m not that worried, since I can still control the publicity fairly well. I have no intention of going to speak nonsense in some reality show.

Fourth Act: Don’t you forget that you will die

This summer marks the beginning of yet another era in Tobias Forge’s unholy books. The recently released fourth studio album Prequelle mischievously flits from one atmosphere to another, and has already become a cornerstone in Ghost’s constantly strengthening fortress.

As is the custom, the frontman of the band has “changed” yet again and Papa Emeritus III, who became a fan favorite with the album Meliora and the EP Popestar, is gone with the wind – at least for now – and the group is currently led by Cardinal Copia.

A cardinal is below the pope in Vatican’s ranks, but only a cardinal can be elected Pope, and Forge intends to make the most of the possibilities that the band’s “new and wild figurehead” offers. For example, it’s worth checking out the promotional video for Rats, a song inspired by former bandmates (“Them rats,” Forge croaks) – no Papa could ever have executed such dance moves.

The instrumental songs on the new album are in a league of their own. When I first listened to the advance copy of Prequelle, the stylishly flowing Miasma and Helvetesfönster took me by surprise. Ghost goes… Vangelis?

–I dig instrumental music and was planning a few instrumentals already for Meliora. My plans didn’t pan out back then, but this time I was determined to not leave those ideas unused. Naturally, I also wondered if I was completely nuts for releasing 12 minutes of instrumental music… After all, it is quite a lot in this golden age of short hit songs and music streaming. Well, if someone dislikes Miasma or Helvetesfönster, there is nothing I can do about it, Forge laughs.

–I intend to continue in a similar vein in the future. Ghost absolutely isn’t a band that keeps on releasing the same record over and over again. I could have played it safe and written ten songs like Square Hammer or He Is, but that would have been dreadfully boring. In other words: I love Ramones and AC/DC, but Ghost is a band more like Queen – always surprising and exciting. To me, Prequelle sounds just like that – sometimes the music makes you smile but sometimes cry.

A key song on Prequelle is also the delicate and beautiful Pro Memoria.

–The song is about death, such as the deaths of legends like Lemmy Kilmister and Ronnie James Dio. “Don’t you forget that you will die” is a reminder that you must enjoy life in the present and not take things for granted because tomorrow it may already be too late. For example, if Alice Cooper has a show in your city, you should go and see him, because there might not be a next time, Forge reminds me.

–Death has already been sung enough about in the circles of heavy music and usually the point of view is always the same, which is to say that death is praised and glorified. Ghost’s message is different, a slightly more positive one. I want to remind people of how great it is to be alive and how tomorrow things may already be better, even if you feel low today.

Prequelle is a crucially important album for Ghost, who have managed to gain a foothold in the difficult to break into US market – Prequelle might even be the “make it or break it” release that determines the rest of the band’s career. Forge knows it better than anyone, but he refuses to take any pressure about it.

–Nowadays Ghost has many fans all around the globe, and they will surely check Prequelle out. Will they fall even deeper in love with Ghost, or find the album lousy? I don’t know, I really don’t. But what I do know is that I wrote every note and every word on Prequelle from the bottom of my heart.

Epilogue: One more time…

Who would have thought that an unconventional underground band calling itself a “satanic doom metal band” at the start of their career would rise to world fame? No one, not even Tobias Forge himself, though he knew his own skills as a songwriter.

But this is where one of the greatest attributes of rock music lies. You can make all kinds of probability calculations, but the weight of strange coincidences and sheer luck in the equation cannot be measured.

Now Ghost is on the threshold of an ultimate breakthrough. The band is facing that imposing gate that leads to fame similar to Black Sabbath’s, Iron Maiden’s and Metallica’s.

Towards the end of this year, Ghost will be performing at Forum in Los Angeles and at Barclays Center in New York among other places, and both of these two American venues fit approximately 20,000 people. Strangely, even concert plans this huge feel like a logical next step for Ghost.

Tobias Forge, what will Ghost be doing in 2051 when you turn 70 and reach Lemmy’s age?

–(Pauses to think and starts laughing) By then Ghost will be the biggest theatrical rock band in the world, the Queen and the Rolling Stones of its time. Do I really think this will happen? Maybe!

[elsewhereuniversity]

Folklore and belief

You bring your beliefs, and your ancestor’s beliefs, with you.

Your parents raised you to believe in a god and a saviour and, to some extent, fate guided by what they hold faith in.

But you don’t believe in anything much these days

You loved fairytales and horror stories as a child, and, as a child, believed some things you knew were nonsense even as you made sure not to dangle your legs in reach of anything under the bed, even if you mentally went through a list of things that would keep werewolves and vampires at bay, even if you went looking for fairies in places that weren’t quite nature and weren’t quite human places.

But you, while not quite an adult, are not a child anymore, not by law, and not in mindset, and don’t believe in anything much these days

You don’t really do superstitions, so the rules don’t make sense to you, but the salt packets are free, so there’s no harm in taking a handful or so, and your roommate does the cream thing.

You think it’s a waste of good milk, but ey, you didn’t pay for it, so it’s not a problem.

You don’t believe in anything much these days, but the fact that the milk, and the cream, and whatever other dairy products are placed at the door are gone each morning, gives you a strange chill that takes a while to dismiss.

Eventually, you just don’t think about it, but…

The coincidences keep stacking, and you don’t believe in anything much these days, not that you know everything, not that the world is safe, not that everything is predictable, not that science has figured out every answer already.

People bring their beliefs, and their ancestor’s beliefs, with them.

You notice. Eventually, you notice.

When your roommate disappears, you take over her habit of leaving dairy at the door.

You’re not the only one who is aware that avoids the water. Others may mutter something about horses, when pressed, but you worry that one day you’ll hear a voice from beneath the waves that will say “here is the place, where is the man?” as a prelude for a disappearance or unlikely drowning. Maybe yours. Maybe some other unlucky soul who’ll get curious, or who’ll, say, lose control of their car and drive into a creek not four feet wide and one foot deep and disappear to nowhere, car and all.

You don’t know a whole lot, but you know that foxes that hang around people whose names end in -ko, -maru or -suke are a lot less dangerous, but also a lot less predictable than foxes that hang around people whose names contain things like Kim, Yeong, Sook or Hoon. (Cover a name that is yours with one that could have been is fairly common among those students aware enough that nobody wants to be stuck with a moniker like “Phoenix Dark”, but don’t feel like calling themselves “Creampuff” or “Dementia Raven Way” either.)

You might miss a whole lot, but it’s hard to miss when your roommate comes back with a missing leg and an empty sleeve and brags about getting all her friends back for the cheap, cheap price of an arm and a leg, and later, when it is quiet, is relieved that that was all it cost, because fair folk who make deals like that, are not the sort you want to leave your friends with. She cries on your shoulder, and she is careful not to thank you.

She graduates earlier than you do. She is clever, and persistent, and driven, where you only ever sauntered through life at the best of times, and mostly ignore the days that are stretched out and numb and gray where you can’t seem to get anything done.

Sometimes there are big black dogs that aren’t quite dogs, and while to some, those are a death omen, to you, they are mostly a warning sign. Do not go here. This is not your place. Danger if you go any further.

Just in case, you bring rye bread wherever you go, afterwards, because while most big black dogs that are no animal you know off are only warning signs to you, and to some, only death omens, you do remember a story where one of them was a little more; something that spared nor cared, something that walked through buildings and people and left nothing standing in its wake, but could be stopped by throwing brea at it. Rye bread.

You bring your beliefs, and your ancestor’s beliefs, with you.

You don’t notice much in the way of fairies in the traditional sense, especially not one from specific courts; there was not much about fair folk in the stories of your home. You were born and raised on what was once considered the edge of the world, and edges don’t leave a lot of place for royalty.

So you know there’s odds of students that hang around you becoming nightmares for several years, but think it unlikely; the university already has selkies to fill that folkloric niche - stolen skins rather than blocked keyholes for trapping a wife, humans intruding upon the strange, rather than the strange intruding upon humans.

You bring your beliefs, and your ancestor’s beliefs, with you.

And your ancestors were more likely to believe in strongmen (and women) who could lift several tons without effort, and crush cheating boyfriends in their embrace, and doctors who were secretly wizards, and witches who shapeshifted and milked cows to death (and occasionally targeted babies, because grieving parents and infant mortality demanded more explanation from the universe than “it just happens”).

There were few if any stories of smiths being in any way special, except for the one who tricked the devil and crushed him with a single strike of his hammer.

But there were some beliefs that weren’t about humans or animals, or the water, and you take care not to go out when it’s foggy at night, though you quite like fog; you don’t want to risk being dragged into a dance and being found dead in the morning. White women, after all, didn’t always play nice, and you had noticed the fog here being a lot stranger than what you were used to.

Sometimes you wished you had read a whole lot less about some subjects as a child, or that your memory was a bit worse, but it had its advantages.

Your new roommate after all, is a freshman, and a romantic, and quite likes fairies.

Or, well, liked. It is only after that she has vacuumed the room and started on the dishes that you think she looks a little too tense, and might be stress-cleaning.

Fair enough. This was a university after all.

Except that at midnight someone knocks at the door, and she startles and then freezes, and makes no attempt to open it.

You blink, rise from your books, and open the door, behind which is a gentleman with a gleaming face and a too wide grin.

He was quite handsome, if you didn’t mind anachronisms of a few centuries in fashion, and getting the face wrong in a way vaguely reminiscent of the more pleasantly stylized CGI, and, oh, the goat eyes, couldn’t forget the goat eyes.

His voice rose like a swarm of bees; manifold and with the imminent possibility of unpleasantness.

“I am here for the maiden you room with, as pertaining the deal I made her.” he told from behind the salt line.

Behind you, your roommate whimpered.

Well. “What deal?”

A flash of self-satisfaction rippled across his face.

“She fell. I helped her stand up. She thanked me.”

Ah. One of those.

“Surely you’ll allow that she finish the task of cleaning those plates before you’ll take her?”

His perceived victory made him smug. “I suppose I’ll allow that.”

You turned to your roommate, who looked right at you, absolutely terrified, her grip on the plates rigid, her motions of lifting the sponge jerky. As you looked, she made an attempt to continue to clean the plates.

You looked at her attempt, huffed, and walked over to her. You didn’t have to exert much power to keep her hands from moving once you grabbed her by the wrists.

“You’re supposed to say, “Then I won’t clean these plates in all eternity.”“ You tell her to her face. You lift the hand she has the half-dirty plate in it. "And then you do this.” You push her hand down with force.

The plate breaks in half on the edge of the countertop.

Her eyes widen.

She swallows.

“Then I won’t ever clean these plates.” she says hoarsely, and grabs the next dirty plate. It hits the ground hard enough to shatter, and the look in her eye is manic. “Ever!”

You slowly back away as she smashes plate after plate after plate.

This would mean eating from the cutting board and pan lids for a while.

You looked at the thing in the doorway, who, by now, looked a lot less gentlemanly and a lot more hideously angry.

“This is the part of the story where you leave, dude.” you tell him.

He turns to you. “Story? What story?” A whole lot of the anger is displaced with confusion.

“You haven’t noticed yet? You’re part of a story that just ended. You should leave.” He looked confused and a little bit afraid as he disappeared from view.

As you closed the door, you reminded yourself to make sure both you and your roommate wore iron tomorrow.

A deep, resigned sigh. It really had been too much to hope for something as simple and innocent as a nightmare.

x

[goldrolloverira]

Bridging the ‘fourth turning’ with gold

The Fourth Turning – the influential work by William Strauss and Neil Howe published in 1997 – uncannily predicted much of what has happened in America over the past twenty years. “The next Fourth Turning,” the authors predicted, “is due to begin shortly after the new millennium, midway through the Oh-Oh decade. Around the year 2005, a sudden spark will catalyze a Crisis mood. Remnants of the old social order will disintegrate. Political and economic trust will implode. Real hardship will beset the land, with severe distress that could involve questions of class, race, nation, and empire.”

Howe designates 2008 as the start date for the current fourth turning. Since turnings typically last 20-23 years, it will end sometime between 2028 and 2031. That puts us about midway through the cycle. At the moment, if the politicians, Wall Street and press accounts on the status of the economy are to be believed, the good times have arrived. For many Americans, though, that arrival has some pretty dark clouds hanging over it – the deep political divisions, the escalating trade wars, the emerging nation debt and currency crisis, the overvalued stock market, the threat of rising interest rates – and that is just a sampling of fourth-turning strata that worries global investors. The nation despite the rosy outlook is a bit unnerved by it all. For his part, Howe, who saw it coming, believes things could get much worse before before they get better.

“The fourth turning,” he said in a MacroVoices interview last August, “is the final season of history, if you will, the final generation. And that is the period of crisis. That is the period when we tear down institutions that we’ve built, everything that’s dysfunctional. And we sort of rebuild things from scratch again. And it usually follows a period where—it’s bound up in a period – where there’s complete disgust, complete distrust with what we have.”

There is a certain amount of inevitability interlaced throughout Howe’s analysis and a good many will have a hard time accepting it for that reason – especially those who believe that somehow this period in economic history is going to be different from others. Howe though sees strong similarities to the period just before and after World War II, the last fourth turning.

Once again his viewpoint, expressed almost a year ago, is uncanny: “And then the crisis,” he says, “when all of these problems begin to coalesce into one huge problem. It’s when the Great Depression met all of these—the rise of fascism both in Asia and in Europe, and everything came together, currency wars, everything became part of a huge problem. Which, by the resolution, you see—and this is what happens at every fourth turning. All the little problems come together into a giant problem. And then the giant problem gets completely resolved.”

If you have an interest in the kind of analysis you are now reading, you might appreciate our monthly newsletter. You can sign-up for it here. Always timely and written for gold and silver owners or for those thinking about owning it. Are you a prospective gold owner trying to make up your mind? Your interest is welcome at no cost or obligation.

Is that not where we find ourselves today – in the current fourth turning?

“. . .I would say these are strong parallels that we see between the decade we’ve been living through and the 1930s,” he says. “Because it isn’t just what happens to/in the economy. I mean, you consider so many ways in which this last decade has recapitulated the 1930s, starting off with a financial crisis, worries about deflation, worries about declining fertility rates, and currency wars, and beggar thy neighbor policies, and radical attempts by monetary and ultimately fiscal policy to remedy the situation.”

Howe has something of a philosophical partner in the great Russian novelist, Leo Tolstoy who examined the role of fate in human affairs in his masterpiece novel, War and Peace. I am among the group that believes we are carried on great waves of history whether we like or not – what Tolstoy referred to as an historic “fatalism” to which we are all subject:

*We are forced to fall back on fatalism as an explanation of irrational events (that is to say, events the reasonableness of which we do not understand). The more we try to explain such events in history reasonably, the more unreasonable and incomprehensible do they become to us. Each man lives for himself, using his freedom to attain his personal aims, and feels with his whole being that he can now do or abstain from doing this or that action; but as soon as he has done it, that action performed at a certain moment in time becomes irrevocable and belongs to history, in which it has not a free but a predestined significance.

There are two sides to the life of every man, his individual life, which is the more free the more abstract its interests, and his elemental hive life in which he inevitably obeys laws laid down for him. Man lives consciously for himself, but is an unconscious instrument in the attainment of the historic, universal, aims of humanity. A deed done is irrevocable, and its result coinciding in time with the actions of millions of other men assumes an historic significance. The higher a man stands on the social ladder, the more people he is connected with and the more power he has over others, the more evident is the predestination and inevitability of his every action. ‘The king’s heart is in the hands of the Lord.’ A king is history’s slave.” – Leo Tolstory, War and Peace

Like Howe, I too believe that the “giant problem” will somehow find resolution, but my concern is getting across the bridge between the “final season of history” and its ultimate resolution – whatever fate might dictate. That is why I own gold personally and why I think every thinking investor should own it as well. The name of the game is to protect wealth and not leave the results of your life work on the table as the fourth turning moves into its final phases.

A diversification of about 10%-30%, in my view, will get the job done as it did in the first phases of the crisis from 2008-2009.* How high you go within that range depends upon on how strongly you feel about the dangers that lie ahead.

–– Michael J. Kosares, USAGOLD

Neil Howe interview (Courtesy of MacroVoices/Audio version)

* During the early stages of the crisis that began in 2008, gold moved sharply to the downside. In January, 2008 the metal was trading in the $900 range. By October, as the first wave of the crisis washed over the financial markets, it had fallen to $730 – a decline of roughly 20%. Then as the full extent of the financial crisis became apparent and the Fed introduced money printing measures, it began to rise reaching $880 by the end of 2008. From 2009 to September 2011, gold rose to its all-time high of $1895 – a 215% gain in three years.

[insert-witty-comment]

Moving into Part 2, Moon takes over the writing. As usual, he immediately sticks in a disclaimer.“The purpose of the previous section was not only to inform but to put to rest once and for all some of the major doubt and nagging uncertainties that people have on the subject of UFOs and aliens. Any person with an open and logical mind should now have a heightened awareness and better grasp of these subjects. Those who still remain cynical at least have to admit that Preston has an orderly and exotic imagination that will not quit. Of course, Preston has not insisted that his adventures are definitive truth. He is open to the idea that some of his visitations or other paranormal experiences might be influenced by his subconscious or be the product of his inner imagination.”No, I don’t think this is the type of guy who can be reasoned with.Chapter 24 talks a little bit about the theories of Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung, and somehow uses the ideas of these guys to claim that UFOs exist.Chapters 25-28 describes Moon’s bizarre childhood. His family was the only one in the entire neighborhood that wasn’t Catholic. Instead of asking his parents the reason for this like a normal kid, he instead asked his psychic friend who told him that it was because his father was molested by a priest as an altar boy. Well okay then. He also learned from his mother that she believed in guardian angels.“Upon asking her why, she told me that I had been saved by a guardian angel when I was a small baby. It occurred on a hot day in Newhall, California when she had put me in a stroller and let it rest under the shade of a large tree. She sat on the porch not too far away. According to her story, a large branch of the tree began to give way. It was not a gradual break and was obviously going to crush me in just a matter of seconds. My mother was too far away to reach me in time and for a split second felt the horror of possibly losing her baby. There was no way I could survive the fall of that branch. As the branch began to fall, a very strong gust of wind appeared and blew my stroller out of harm’s way. The day had been very hot with no sign of wind before or after that occurrence. That it was strong enough to push the stroller was most remarkable to her. Despite growing up Catholic, she had abandoned her faith and was not really a religious woman at all, but this experience led her to believe in guardian angels. I would later learn that a Greek goddess named Alcyone was one of the seven Pleiades and that she controlled the fate of storms and winds.”So either it was a guardian angel or an ancient Greek goddess. Logic.“As I have no personal recollection of the incident in the stroller, I cannot say if the aboveoccurrence was celestial intervention by a higher power or just dumb luck. It would seem that some force in the universe wanted to me to stay around for a while.”If I had to venture a guess, I suppose God is a Stranger Things fan as well and needed Moon to live in order to inspire the Duffer brothers with his batshit lunacy. That’s the only reason I can think of that isn’t completely ludicrous, and really what reason could be more worthy of divine intervention?When Moon was twelve, he played in a baseball game. He had a horrible headache and every time he would swing or run the pain got worse. Upon getting home, he immediately vomited and went to bed. While asleep he felt an even more intense pain as it felt like a computer was rifling through his mind. After that he couldn’t keep down his food and was constantly vomiting. The doctor had no idea what to do, and by the tenth day Moon could barely walk from weakness. However, after his best friend’s father took him back to his old neighborhood, he got better. Three years after that he moved to another town where he became interested in the work of Robert S. de Ropp and his ideas of achieving enlightenment.“Two important truths I learned during this time period have served me incredibly well. First, all proper path work or initiation work begins from the heart. In other words, you should not engage in any activities that you don’t really believe in. For me, this eliminated just about any possible career.”Of course it did.“Another point taught by de Ropp is that each one needs to generate his own magnetic center in order to find like minds and compatible groups through which one can learn. Although I lived in a hippie laden community at this point, most of these people were too drug oriented to seriously consider real consciousness exploration”.Fair enough. Moon then wrote to de Ropp asking for advice, and was told to finish school and join “The League”, which was a mystical group tied to UFOs. Naturally, Moon took this advice to heart and joined Scientology. No, that is not a joke. I absolutely refuse to even repeat his shilling for those people, so I’m just going to post a link to Operation Clambake here instead.In Chapter 29, Moon moved to New York with his wife in 1983 and soon discovered a book slamming both Hubbard and Crowley. However, this somehow inspired him to start looking for “Excalibur”, a mystical lost text penned by Hubbard, and he eventually claimed to the conclusion that Hubbard was a powerful psychic and the reincarnation of King Arthur. This somehow connected it to pyramids, ancient gods and geometric magic.Chapter 30 starts off with Moon revealing that he owns… an isolation tank;“Not only had I found a tank on Long Island, but its owner was the manufacturer of the most modern and desirable flotation tank available. There was also an interesting and tragic tale he had to tell but first I will talk about floating. The tank was very user friendly and had a contour like a whale. There was plenty of room inside with two waterproof switches for lights and music. The water is hygienically filtered and loaded with Epsom salt so that your body is completely suspended in water and completely relaxed. It is impossible to physically relax all your muscles to the extent you can while floating. Subluxations even disappeared through total relaxation. As the tank is totally dark, your mind begins to process information until it finally relaxes and penetrates the deeper layers of consciousness. I not only found it to be extremely fun but it also opened up psychic channels of the mind. At the very least, it relaxes one’s body. I soon realized that if people floated every day, there would be a lot less strife in the world and a great deal more productivity. This is where the tragic tale comes into play.”Yeah, fun and no more strife in the world, sure…So apparently the government see’s these things as a threat and ended up using a controlled lightning bolt (seriously) to set the Babylon factory making these things on fire. Yes, these things were literally being churned out of a factory for anyone to buy. Not to worry, you too can still buy your own isolation tank from Peter Shepherd if you really want to (as of 1995). Just make sure you don’t use after getting abducted by aliens. Apparently these tanks are such a threat that the government uses specially outfitted black helicopters to monitor these things and waste my tax dollars. Also;“I have also found it rather remarkable that if you try to get someone to float, it is like pulling teeth. The most prevalent excuse is claustrophobia. The tanks Peter has are not claustrophobic at all and can be opened by the floater in a moment. Inner space is certainly more boundless than the wide open spaces of Earth. Consciousness is still very much a taboo in our current society.”Why do I have the feeling that Moon will end up calling Eleven a pussy when/if he ever gets around to watching Stranger Things.“Actually, there is one possibly valid excuse for not floating which is that it could open you up to psychotronic attack. I have experienced such, but there are also means of protecting yourself. Besides, if you never throw a punch, you will never win the fight.”….And then he’ll start calling her a spineless wimp for not punching out the Demogorgon.One month after using the tank, he saw a UFO on Halloween and was told by a psychic that the aliens wanted him to see them. One week later in early November, he met Nichols and Cameron. After that, he was astrally abducted by aliens in his sleep and was taken to a UFO. There, he met up with Nichols and was taken to a room where an “oriental woman” broadcast the information to understand Japanese into his mind. After that, he woke up in his bed. Nichols later denied involvement and Moon came to the conclusion that he was being tested, and if he allowed the aliens to continue messing with his mind, he could have become a great psychic but at the cost of his humanity or some crap. So he essentially told the aliens to piss off. A bit later he had another dream in which two angels changed his DNA and RNA around. This somehow inspired him to start writing about the Montauk Project.Chapters 31-32 describes his hunt for the Illuminati. It kicks off with a retread with the whole Babalon Working ritual, the Cameron/Wilson connections, Crowley, Parson (who is an Illuminati leader now, I guess), and of course lots and lots of sex magick. It also claims that women tend to have a greater potential for magick due to being the “providers of life” and he claims that it’s no coincidence that most UFOs look like an overlapping three-dimensional vagina.Chapter 33 explains something called “Project KOALA”, which exists in 8885 A. D. and was (will be?) established by the “Inner Light Network”, a group of people “who are working for divine order in government and other arenas, many of whom receive direct guidance from ultraterrestrials.” KOALA (not the most intimidating name in the world) was designed maintain human health and ecology, and to contain the Montauk Project by finding a way to manipulate time. This information was helpfully provided by Tahuti via a psychic.Chapters 34-37 describe the impact the Pleiadians had on our world. It explains the ancient Greek creation myth and the legend of the Pleiade Sisters. It also explains that Troy was a Pleiadian outpost, and that the infamous Trojan Horse somehow used time manipulation aided by divine intervention. The Pleiadian descendants went on to found Rome after Troy fell, and the Roman gods kicked the Greek gods’ asses. It then explains how Romulus and Remus founded Rome.“Perhaps more importantly, the most important aspect of this myth is the death of Remus. Romulus went on to rule for a long time even though he had done wrong and knew he was guilty. Their quarrel was all over property boundaries which is a patriarchal way of looking at things. Remus saw the futility of boundaries and was thus representing the feminine side. Romulus slaying his brother was an act of vanquishing the feminine. That he ruled for a long time has its own implications. The writings about Remus surviving were buried as was his personage and namesake. It finally emerged in America with the legends of Uncle Remus, a kindly old Negro who was completely nonthreatening. He and his namesake were only suitable for bedtime stories. Of course, this was a contemptuous positioning of the black race with the feminine energy. The ruling powers didn’t respect either one which gave rise to a satirical stereotype which subtly expressed their contempt.”You know, I didn’t really think that this guy could top Song of the South but it looks like he almost did. Almost.Chapter 38 explains how this connected to Montauk; basically it has something do with bulls and gods and names and I don’t fucking know, I just want to wrap this up.Chapter 39 can be summed up by saying that seven is the most important number in the universe, as it somehow connects all life together.Chapter 40, last one, states that the Pleiadians have all of Earth’s “blueprints” but not even they know who drew them up.Finally we arrive at the Epilogue.“All of the books I have written with Preston Nichols are criticized by some for being disjointed, and this one will be no exception. Although I make everyeffort possible to communicate clearly, there is a reason why the pieces of the puzzle are never in perfect focus. We are writing about phenomena thattranscends the third dimension. The phenomena is not part of this realm and the information does not come as easy as finding the maintenance manual for a motorcycle. Obviously, critics and everyone else (including myself) would like everything handed to them on a silver platter as far as transcending the third dimension.”Shit, did one of his psychic friends preemptively rat me out? Eh, who cares?“My interest in saying all this is not to silence critics but to bring home a very important point. Spiritual evolution is hard work. It is not arrived at merely by reading books. Although books can be a boost, one has to put ideas in to practice in order to change conditions. Each person’s path is a separate and individual journey. For those who are seeking their own path, clues have been included in this book as to how you might go about it. All you really have to do is consult your own intuition and follow the horizon of your own consciousness. If those words don’t ring a bell then it isn’t meant to be rung. In keeping with the above, I would like to end this work with the last words the Buddha was said to have spoken.“Decay is inherent in all component things. Work out your salvation with diligence.”And on that mildly depressing note we are done. So, what does all of this have to do with Stranger Things? Well… we learned that you can buy your own isolation tank for only a couple thousand dollars. Other than that, not much.Join me next week on Hawkins Book Club and we’ll take a look at The Black Sun: Montauk’s Nazi-Tibetan Connection.……God, it hurts already.Thanks for reading, and Stay Strange.The Montauk Project: Experiments in Time OverviewMontauk Revisited: Adventures in Synchronicity OverviewPyramids of Montauk: Explorations in Consciousness Overview via /r/StrangerThings