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waterrunstogether · 4 years

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Rites of Passage in the Fifth World

I’ve been thinking lately about the absence of real rites of passage in modern “western culture”. A rite of passage is a sort of ritualized event (that may or may not be endorsed/organized by a community) in which a person is believed to exit from one stage of life and enter the next, usually from childhood to adulthood. Other than the humiliation of high school proms/frat hazing, or getting your driver’s license, or turning 21 and getting shitfaced, my culture in the United States has little to offer in the way of true rites of passage.

The result is a population of confused, somewhat disillusioned children driving around and going to work or university and pretending to be adults while hopelessly stuck in the liminal space between youth and adulthood.

~ 20 year old me pretending to know what’s going on ~

I have thought about quinceañeras and baptisms, religious rites of passage commonly practiced still, but considering the traumatic experience that my parents’ organized religion was for me, I don’t believe now that my baptism was a helpful event facilitating my transition into maturity. I think it was a blindingly painful event whose toxicity I needed to overcome in what I now believe was the true rite of passage.

I first dropped acid when I was traveling in Bulgaria. My partner was in her hometown across the country and I was visiting Plovdiv with a friend. We had just finished traveling the world, or at least Eurasia, meeting new faces and trying new things and taking wild risks in Thailand and Turkey and India and Malaysia, to name a few. I had also just escaped the cult I was born and raised in which had hammered into me from birth that my sexual and romantic orientation was an abomination, as a woman I was to obey men, God loved me and wanted me to fear him (that is to say, love = fear), the leaders of the church were to be obeyed and respected all the time (even if they were obviously wrong) and so on and so forth. It was an insane transition between being trapped in these religious handcuffs and learning that I could break free all along. In fact, I carried so much self hatred and internalized homophobia with me into my supposed new life that I didn’t know what to do with myself. Despite being outwardly happier than I had ever been before with a wonderful partner and community who truly loved and supported me for who I was, inwardly I was constantly on the verge of a mental breakdown due to all of the conflicting thoughts and beliefs I was carrying and creating within myself.

The experience of that first trip was an interesting one. Every step of the way my body seemed to pull me towards the letting go of all of the toxicity that was so thick and had built up like plaque in the arteries of my energetic being--yet, I remained me throughout the trip, at the end feeling somewhat empowered but not yet finished with the transformation.

A few months later I took psilocybin, AKA magic mushrooms, with my little brother on a rainy Summer day in D.C. The whole come up of the trip was talking to trees and observing the movements of leaves, running my fingers over the moss growing on the exposed, knotty roots of tree in front of our house. But at the end of the trip, something changed. Once again my body requested, begged me, to let go of the still-prevalent toxicity inside of me. My health was in rough shape, mentally and physically, and my body knew the culprit. But once more I felt I couldn’t let go just yet, it would be too much for me, I wasn’t ready. So I spent the entire come down and then some, maybe four hours, weeping uncontrollably on the basement floor.

The second time I dropped acid was yesterday, with my partner, here in Berlin. It changed everything.

During the come up I was taken aback by how strong the effect it had on me was. My partner, bless her heart, had taken a larger dose than me, yet felt no effect the entire time. Her tolerance has always been naturally higher than mine for every kind of intoxicating substance, and LSD was no exception.

As time went on I came to realize that her high tolerance was incredibly fortunate for me and my trip. The initial come up was amusing, as flashes of white light began to fill up my eyes, closed and open; but very quickly I began to get paranoid, strange little thoughts about being set up and targeted running through my mind as my sense of self slowly began to dissipate, just nonsense that the ego conjures up to protect itself. But my partner’s calming reassurances that she loved me and that I was safe effectively calmed me down.

Once I began to enjoy the ride up, holding a half of a pomegranate and appreciating its beauty, touching a slice of orange and loving how soft it felt in my hands, admiring the fractals of color creating all kinds of geometric shapes on the walls and snow outside the window, I became comfortable with my loss of identity. At some point I realized that I didn’t even know my name, and I didn’t care, because it was irrelevant. All that was relevant was experience.

Imagine experiencing and interacting with the world around you without the barrier of the thing that we are so used to that it’s difficult to think of it as a barrier at all: your concept of self. Ideas about names and races and gender and desire and anger and malice and hatred just made absolutely no sense whatsoever. In this state, all that made sense was goodness and beauty and love. All that I understood was harmony and mutually beneficial behavior. My preconceived notions about who I was and what that meant were being shattered and shredded before my very eyes, exposed for what they were: nonsense.

Once I plateaued and began to slowly come down after about four or five hours I was able to contemplate what these things meant, what they would mean for me going forward. I went into the bathroom around hour 7 and decided that it was time to look into the mirror.

Many people will tell you not to look into the mirror during an acid trip, that it’ll give you the dreaded “bad trip” and you’ll have a shit time. I completely disagree. If you are like me and need to come to terms with yourself through the wonderful, horrific, beautiful, terrifying experience that is an “ego death”, I’m afraid that you’ll have no choice but to look into the mirror at some point.

So, I stared myself down in the mirror and admitted what I couldn’t admit for so long, due to being taught that I was essentially evil since the day I was born. I’d called myself a sinner, wicked, worthless, ugly, an abomination and just about every other mean word in the evangelical dictionary. But as I stood there looking at my body in the mirror, egoless and impartial, I said, “You have done and thought some cruel things to yourself for some time now. But you know what? You are a kind person. You are a wonderful person. You treat people with respect and love, you treat everyone you’ve ever met with so much empathy, so much caring. You love the truth, you love to be generous, you love to be a good friend. You must begin to treat yourself the same way. I know you’ve had so much hatred in your heart contaminating your energy for so long, but that is enough. That is enough. No more. I am a kind person. I am a kind person. I love you. Remember that night so long ago? Beneath the stars, where they submerged you in the baptismal water and tried to destroy you, saying these sacred waters would wash all your sins away, along with your fragile, meaningless identity? Well, they simply added more to your ego, a darker side. You built up so much negativity for so long. Well, look at you now. Your identity, all of the ideas and concepts that you’ve built up around who you really are to protect you from the hurt of Life, it’s all gone. Now you’re going to baptize yourself again. You’ll be truly reborn, this time dedicated not to destroying yourself for the sake of a religion, but dedicated to renewing and becoming and becoming and becoming.” As I looking into the mirror my silhouette became filled in with the velvet black of the night sky, full of bright stars.

I turned on the water and was baptized once again, by my own hands.

When I returned to the room I felt happier than I had ever felt in my life, light as air, free. I told several people about how much I love them and described my love for them in detail, not as this thing that’s an extension of my own ego, but my love for them was a little bit of energy that I had the honor of holding in me, in this body, and sharing between us for a time, for the wonderful events that we call our lives. I could actually see love. I understood that I was not all of the concepts I’ve built around myself, but an expression of energy in this space and time, connected to every other expression of energy in all of history, from the beginning and until the end. My matter, my body, was simply a vehicle for the energy, and would be recycled into new vehicles after I die. My energy would be transferred into new vehicles as well. That’s what we perceive as death: just a simple transfer of energy and recycling of matter. My ego would not live on, thankfully. My consciousness as conflated with ego would cease to exist with me. But the underlying animating force behind all things in the universe, the true source of consciousness, would never be destroyed or created, simply recycled again and again and again and again. Becoming and becoming and becoming and becoming.

The hilarious and bizarre world of reality is hilarious and bizarre. It’s so beautiful and mystical and wonderful and honestly, nothing I write here could ever explain how I experienced being alive in that sixteen hour trip. Words don’t convey it, words can’t convey it. Reality is visceral, experiential, impartial and impossible to quantify in something as crude as human language.

All I know is that, today, I am a fundamentally changed person. I’d feared ego death for so long, feared that it would be too much, too painful. And it was so, so painful--but it was so worth it. I am happy and proud to exist, grateful for everything I have accomplished and can accomplish in this miraculous, tiny little vessel during this ephemeral event that is my life. I can’t wait to wake up tomorrow if tomorrow exists, and unleash all of my love on everyone who’ll have it. Love is the energy that unites us with our own bodies and the entire world around us. How lucky and strange it is to be anything at all.

May you have a peaceful day. The universe smiles upon you.

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the-bard-writes · 4 years

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The Young Owl, Episode 2, Part 11

When the pair returned to the village, the sun was beginning to set. It was getting to be dinner time, when everybody would be returning home and winding down for the evening. Despite this, the streets were largely empty as the two made their way to the village center.

“Seems odd, such little footfall,” Sparrow observed. “Is it a holiday?”

“Not to my knowledge,” the Owl said, barely paying attention. “Do you think that innkeep will give us a room for the night? I’ll need time and space to brew the extract for both patients.”

“Nyle is good to board us,” Sparrow said. “I’d like to pay him for it, though. I did claim Lodger’s dues with that soup earlier…”

“Right.”

“Don’t want to abuse the privileges of the office and all,” Sparrow jested.

“Right,” Owl repeated.

“You all right, birdie?” Sparrow asked. “You’re not speaking much.”

“Tired,” Owl lied.

“Probably wasn’t too glad that I was right about it being a bad bird and all,” Sparrow guessed.

“Something like that.”

“And… I suppose I did put you through some stress back there,” Sparrow shrugged. “What with that shouting match.”

“You were in the right,” Owl said dryly. “I just didn’t realize it at the time.”

“All the same,” Sparrow said. “Shouldn’t have done it like that. No good for two guilders to fight like that. We haven’t got the same lots in life, that’s true, but we’ve got to stick together all the same.”

The Owl said nothing.

“I understand if you’re mad at me for it all,” Sparrow went on. “But I hope you know it’s not that I wanted to leave you to go to Saras alone. I just have a duty. Like you do. And we both need to make good on that duty.”

“So we do…” the Owl sighed.

“And we’ll make good on them together, yeah?” Sparrow nudged the Owl with a smile. “Birds of a feather, that’s us. Lodge and Sodality, side by side, like guilds ought to do.”

“Right,” the Owl nodded. “Right.”

That was when they heard the yelling. A distant rumbling cacophony of chants and jeers.

“What’s that?” Sparrow asked.

“Trouble,” Owl grumbled. “Hurry.”

Turning the corner into the village center, the Owl and Sparrow came across the scene of a mob of villagers armed with torches and improvised weapons. They had gathered around near Feli’s house, with several pointing and jabbing at Falk’s house nearby. Feli’s father and mother stood on their porch, armed with saws and hammers, while Falk’s own family stood outside their own house. One of Falk’s kin, his father by the looks of it, was armed with a sword. Kesh, too, stood between the crowd and Falk’s home, his fear clear as sunlight in the gathering dusk.

“Plague and piss,” Sparrow swore, “what in the Church’s name is this?!”

“Folk medicine,” the Owl exclaimed. “Where is a Raven when you need one…”

“Oy!” Sparrow shouted, walking with purpose towards the mob. “Oy! Back off! Back off, I said!”

“Fuck off, bird-fucker!” A villager shouted. “This is our business, none of yours!”

“Help!” The carpenter cried. “They’re mad!”

“Your daughter’s got plague, man!” Someone yelled. “She’s been festering for days, and your family’s barely left her side! We’ve got to purge you for our own good!”

“That isn’t how miasma works!” Owl shouted, her patience lost. “Miasma is unaffected by open fire, and it’s not a miasmatic affliction to begin with!”

“Hush up that bird bitch,” somebody said.

Sparrow drew her bow and nocked an arrow.

“Try it and taste Lodge steel,” Sparrow threatened. “She’s under Lodge protection, and by the Lodge, I’m telling you lot to douse those torches and sod off!”

“Is the Lodge in bed with plague birds now?” Someone called out. “Are the wilds to be covered in plague and infection!?”

“Sparrow,” Owl whispered, “This crowd is near to bursting. Put your bow down, or there’s going to be blood.”

“Lodgers don’t back down, birdie,” Sparrow told her. “Keep a hand on that sword of yours. You’re trained with it, right? There’s maybe two dozen of them with nothing but pitchforks and sickles, we’ll scare them off with a lick of blood or two, no harm done.”

“Until word spreads of it, and blame to match,” Owl mumbled, eyes keen and on the watch for any villagers making a move.

“Hey!” A shout cut through. Nyle had emerged from his inn, carrying a large bludgeon usually meant for drunken troublemakers. Behind him was a band of other villagers, equally armed with butchering knives and wood axes.

“Nyle-sum,” Sparrow smirked, her bow still nocked.

“We’ll have no madness tonight,” Nyle declared. “You lot want to burn up our own? That’s madness, and we’ll not stand for it!”

“It’s the only way, Nyle!” Someone yelled.

“Bugger off with that!” Nyle spat. “We’ve got a perfectly good bird with our very own Lodger there. There’s a fine way to handle plague without bloody arson. If you lot so much as put an ember down on those houses, or lay so much as a pinky on those people, me and mine here will see to it you get a thrashing your kin will remember for the next three births!”

The two crowds faced each other, yelling and shouting and trying, within their own roaring din, to convince the other of their cause. Some were reasoning, others were jeering, and nobody was hearing. The Owl watched the undulations of the crowds, observed the dance back and forth between the two groups. Once the blobs of angry villagers touched, there was going to be blood.

Nyle struck first. Somebody charged up into his face, a knife in their hand, and he cracked them hard with his club. A scream went up, and some of the initial mob dispersed immediately in horror at the sight of actual violence.

“Come and get yours, if you want it!” Nyle roared, to the cheering approval of his militia.

A few members of the mob cried out a challenge, but none of them charged. Nyle led his militia in a few steps forward, and the mob mostly stepped back, until some of its members were in striking range of the carpenter’s saws and hammers. People began to peel off from the mob, going into the gathering night away from the violence.

A few made a charge for the Owl and Sparrow, but at the sight of the arrows and sword, thought better of the attempt. Some threw things like bottles and rocks, but accomplished little more than bruises and a scuff on the Owl’s mask.

With a few more cracks and screams, the militia made its point more clear. The mob broke apart, leaving behind a few writhing members on the ground in agony. The Owl counted up five injured villagers, likely with a combination of contusions and fractures. A few mob members, losing their spirit but full of injured pride and indignation, tried to assault the Owl again, but only at a distance, and mostly with verbal harassment.

The Owl knew at any moment they might gather again to vent their anger out on her. She hoped she’d have enough coin to afford a room soon. Sleeping outside did not sit well with her.

“Well,” Sparrow sighed, putting her bow away finally. “That could’ve gone much worse.”

“It still could,” the Owl warned.

“Are you two alright?” Nyle asked, approaching.

“Sticks and stones, Nyle-sum, that’s all,” Sparrow assured. “You handled that crowd like a master at arms.”

“When I got word of what they were planning to do,” Nyle shook his head, “least I could do was get some of my mates together and try to keep the peace.”

“That will be a struggle in the coming days,” the Owl pointed out. “This isn’t over.”

“No,” Nyle agreed. “Nobody will be sleeping easy the rest of the season. Church preserve us, this is going to be told for generations to come… I think a feud has started tonight.”

“Most likely, yes,” the Owl said. “A line in your village has been drawn… I am sorry it came to this point.”

“Bah,” Nyle shrugged. “Not your fault, birdie. I know you’ve been hard at work with our Ranger to sort this mess out as well as you can.”

“Can you save her, bird?” The carpenter asked abruptly, approaching with his saw half-brandished. “Do you have a cure yet?”

“I do,” the Owl nodded. “I will brew enough dosage for Falk and Feli both over the course of the night. You will need to dose them in the morning and at night, when rising and retiring. In a week’s time, they should be significantly better; continue the dosage until it runs out, in two week’s time total, to ensure they are fully recovered.”

“Thank the Church,” the carpenter sighed. “You’ll have your gold, bird.”

“There’s more,” Sparrow said. “We know how they were afflicted.”

“What do you mean?” The carpenter asked.

“We found a cave, under Kol Mum Hill,” Sparrow explained. “There’s a hidden entrance to a little hideaway—there was somebody doing foul things down there. We think they found Falk and Feli and infected them with some forest nasties.”

“What?” Nyle asked. “Why would somebody do such a thing?”

“I…” the Owl started, choosing her words carefully. “I believe it was a heretic of the Sodality. A traitor. I will be reporting this to my order when I arrive in Saras.”

“A traitor?” The carpenter said. “It was one of yours that did this? A bird?”

“A bad bird,” Sparrow corrected. “Owl here helped me chase the bastard off, and we’ll be hunting him down together. We just wanted the locals to know about the cave—might be some more birds or Leaguers will come to ask about it, poke about and learn some things about this bad bird.”

“Well that’s it, then,” Nyle said. “Problem found and solved.”

The carpenter did not seem so at ease.

“Your people go bad like this and bring us plague,” The carpenter said, “and then I’m meant to pay you for fixing what your own have done?”

“It was a heretic, sir,” the Owl said calmly. “Our order doesn’t exactly promote heresy against its own doctrine.”

“But profits off it all the same,” the carpenter spat. “Plague on you, bird, I’m not giving up my gold to your damned racket—you’ll treat Feli for free, in reparation for what your little heretic has done.”

“That is against my vows, sir,” the Owl said firmly.

“Plaguemongers,” the carpenter spat. “I wish that crowd had taken you. I’d have helped.”

“She’s saving your daughters life,” Sparrow shouted. “And you’d see her staked?”

“Dayl,” Nyle said calmly, “come on, man, give the bird her gold, she’s earned it.”

The carpenter spat at Nyle’s boots. “She’ll bring her tincture for Falk and Feli both tomorrow morning, or I’ll bring together the whole damned village to burn her. You keep her in your inn, Nyle, or we’ll burn it down, too.”

“Calm down, Dayl!” Nyle demanded. “Don’t make me crack your head until you’re thinking straight again!”

“We’ll do it,” Sparrow said quietly. The other three looked to her.

“What?” Owl said.

“Trust me,” Sparrow whispered. “Like I trust you.”

Stones in glass houses, the Owl heard echoing in her mind.

“We’ll bring your medicine at dawn,” Sparrow affirmed. “I’ll see to it myself, on my Lodge. And if Nyle will keep us, we’ll stay at the inn all night, and I’ll not let the bird take even a step outside.”

The carpenter nodded. “There’s a good Ranger, then… fine. On the morrow. And then this bird gets out of town.”

Sparrow nodded, and the carpenter left. Nyle turned to the two of them.

“Well,” Nyle said. “I’ll keep you the night… I reckon you’ve both been through enough that I owe you a meal and a bed, for pity’s sake.”

“Thanks, Nyle,” Sparrow said. “For everything.”

“Somebody in this town needs a head on their shoulder,” Nyle laughed bitterly. “And a heart in their chest. Honestly, bird, I’d pay for your troubles myself, but… I just can’t afford to throw gold around at other people’s troubles. Or at all, really…”

“Put it out of your head,” Owl said. “You’ve done enough. Thank you.”

Nyle nodded sadly, and led them into the inn. When they were situated into a private room, Owl began to set up her equipment to prepare the extract.

“How much gold would you be charging for all this?” Sparrow asked, stretching the day’s toils away.

“Curious as to how much you’re stealing from me?” Owl said bitterly. “There’s a reason our vows include compensation, Sparrow. These are goods that I can’t find forage at any time, and need to purchase, and my equipment…”

“Ease up and answer the question, birdie,” Sparrow said.

The Owl sighed impatiently as she worked. “Resources expended, equipment used, labor involved… nothing less than fifteen pieces.”

“Fifteen?” Sparrow repeated.

“Five for the roots,” the Owl listed, “five for my equipment upkeep funds, and five for labor.”

“Is that for each patient?” Sparrow asked.

“No, it’s total,” the Owl answered. “Why do you care so much?”

“Just curious,” Sparrow said. “Seven gold pieces for their lives… not much at all. That’s a week’s wages for some people. For a skilled tradesman that’s a day or two of work.”

“Not the steep bandit’s rates you thought I’d charge,” the Owl commented.

“I never thought you charged much,” Sparrow said. “I just… thought it was all about the charge for you. But it’s not. Otherwise you would’ve just done nothing about that bad bird. No coin in it for you… but you did do something.”

The Owl said nothing.

“And now you’re getting stiffed for good work,” Sparrow went on.

“Because of you,” the Owl reminded, finishing with the equipment and leaving the extract to collect over night.

“I’ll make it up to you,” Sparrow promised. “Are you done with that? Get some rest, then. We’ll up in the morning and head north for Saras.”

“If my order learns I went without compensation…”

“Leave it to me, little owl,” Sparrow smiled. “Trust your Sparrow, yeah? I’ll see it all set right.”

The Owl said nothing. Instead she simply went to her bed, laid down, and began to rest. She lay perfectly still, arms at her side, almost uncomfortably stiff, even as her mind roiled. It was some time before she fell asleep—and once she did, she did not notice the sound of somebody leaving the room.

#writeblr #writers on tumblr #plaguecore #plague doctors #dark fantasy #the young owl

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metamodel · 5 years

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A Machine For Hammering the Soul, With Robotic Padres

It's a juicy weekend read for you, in defence of piety (!)…

📖📖📖

After taking an extended break from social design work “to get some perspective” (ahem), I find that Everything Now Looks Very Strange Indeed™. This is another one of my updates on restarting a creative practice, with added cultural and design commentary.

(If someone’s forwarded this thing to you in the hope you’ll find it interesting, you can subscribe here to secure my everlasting love.)

Today I want to write of vibrations of the soul, the experience of the divine and the habit of prayer. With robots. Yes.

I remain a staunch unbeliever, and yet I find that these apparently religious terms become more useful when I’m wrestling with certain practices: of creativity, of recovery, of becoming a better participant in my communities (local or cosmic). Each of these requires me to paradoxically affirm my own sense of agency by simultaneously curbing it.

For example, working on our addictions is never simply a matter of exerting our individual willpower (which is called “white-knuckling it” in recovery culture, and clearly unsustainable); we instead need to make the choice to surrender to the collective agency of community.

And the other week, my dear friend Janelle and I attended a writer’s meetup that involved everyone sitting down and just doing some fucking writing. As we sat in a zero-ambience pub bistro, beavering away, she passed me a note:

“THIS FEELS FORCED AND NOT RAD.”

Agreed, the venue was very much not rad, and we weren't a very inspiring sight, but to be fair to the rest of us, Janelle’s own writing is driven by uncommonly strong affective tides that would wreck a less glorious being. I’d argue that for most people, sustainable creativity needs in some way to be “forced”, and this isn’t a bad thing. My own creative endeavours need to be sustained by the scheduled habit of accessing an animating spirit that might reveal itself to the solidarity of a congregation. (It does need a better venue, though. Blech.)

Such appeals to the beyond have given me a new, practical appreciation of the rigours of piety. But lest I be accused by Slavoj Žižek of some lacklustre, postmodern, liberal-secular appropriation of spirituality, I need to leaven this stuff with a good dose of machines and robots to keep it interesting to me. 😉

Eternal return: burials, and when the earth rejects us

First, some follow-up.

Did you know that in this wonderful medium of email newslettering, you can simply reply to any of these missives from me, and that your reply will appear directly in my everyday, personal email inbox? It’s real email. No really, I love this, so replies are encouraged. Meanwhile, I’m really heartened by the generous messages I’ve received from you thus far. Also, I don’t know some of you, and this mixture of the known and unknown is tantalising.

Answering my call in the last issue for objects that deserve “burial rites/rights" with us, Andrew (who I know can light a fire with his bare hands) replies that “I would bring with me a wooden spoon for my cooking, a headlamp for reading late at night and camping, and a vr headset because I know I won’t be affording one in this lifetime”. That would just be a simulated, still life VR headset then, right?

And Deborah, who wants “to be buried with seeds inside me, so I could be compost” (and who also first pointed me in the direction of socially responsible design, many years ago 😘), also notes that the word “Pandæmonium”, which I used in my last missive to describe the experience of the classroom in the context of exploring All the Things, “was coined to describe the Place Of All The Demons” — the capital of Hell in Milton’s Paradise Lost. So oddly… appropriate.

Deborah also pointed me to “When the rocks turn their backs on us”, Ken Wark’s review of Elizabeth Povinelli’s Geontologies: A Requiem to Late Liberalism:

[T]he Anthropocene is far from being some hubristic discourse about the powers and destinies of Man. It is rather a malignant, viral human presence in geological time. I think here one could read the Anthropocene through the figure of immunity rather than community. It is not the figure of Man becoming sovereign over the community of the biosphere within geological time. It is rather the biosphere immunising itself against forms of (non)life that it can’t endure.

While I think there’s every reason to despair, this feels a little too enthusiastically misanthropic. (Perhaps Wark is trying to make up for his embarrassing social democratic excesses of the ‘90s.) Not all community is naturalistic, hippy-dippy togetherness and accommodation, and the pain of recognising and negotiating it, against the predations of capital, might offer a bleak kind of hope. I shall ponder. I’ve naturally procured Povinelli’s book and will report back in a future issue.

⚒️🎵 The Hammer Song

[caption align="alignnone" width="980"]

Kandinsky’s "Winter Landscape", 1911[/caption]

The Masters of Modern Art from the Hermitage show could so easily have drifted into Adult Contemporary Viewing territory, but it brought me this amazing quote from Kandinsky:

Colour is the keyboard, the eyes are the hammers, and the soul is the piano with many strings. The artist is the hand that plays, touching one key or another, to cause vibrations in the soul.

The eyes are the hammers. Whoa. Despite its manifest spiritualism, this image builds a model of aesthetics that’s all about resonant, relational assemblages of awesome in which each actor plays a material part. My eyes and yours live together inside a big piano. Fucking yes. This is society and ecology, defined — via aesthetics. The exhibition leaves Sydney this weekend if you want to catch it.

🔪🥀 Nick Cave is a joyful robot monk. Wait, what?

[caption align="alignnone" width="980"]

Nick Cave in conversation. Photo filched from Daniel Boud.[/caption]

I was grateful to be at Conversations with Nick Cave the other week, not just to hear Cave’s voice and solo piano really rise to the occasion and fill a venue with their resonance, but to see the open Q&A format of the show return repeatedly to Cave’s creative process.

Fans who might’ve been clamouring for transcendent tales of sudden inspiration, or 19th Century Gothic influences (“I don’t have any”), were brought back to earth by the familiar refrain of the committed creative professional: Cave shows up to work, which requires lots of meticulous preparation and backbreaking iteration, and he makes it happen. “It’s a job,” he said, with finality. (I love the incongruity of this stuff coming from people like Nick Cave, or Bobbie Gillespie, who apparently keeps office hours for Primal Scream.)

But I’ve become a little sceptical of the total demystification of creativity that’s now common in our algorithmically inclined age of, uh, content-marketing savvy. With our era’s overly instrumentalist promotion of a well-adjusted creative-entrepreneurial mindset, it might be all too easy these days to reduce everything to using elbow grease to, you know, hit targets.

So I love that Cave is still in awe of sacred aesthetic magic when his rigour allows it to happen. He talked of putting in the work so that the divine can arrive. All his meticulous “going through the motions” (again, not a bad thing) produces something more than the sum of those motions. For him, it’s a way to experience God. And despite his Prince of Darkness reputation, Cave was at pains to describe how joyful that process can be. “There’s nothing dark about it.”

🤖🙏 Oh yeah, the bit about robots

When I was listening to Radiolab the other day (despite my long-running ambivalence about the show), I found that this recent episode’s focus on robots of antiquity resonated unexpectedly with my reading of Nick Cave’s creative process.

Hear me out.

In 1562 the crown prince of Spain, Don Carlos, falls down a flight of stairs and sustains a head injury that is by all accounts going to be fatal. According to Radiolab, his father King Philip II “kneels at his son’s deathbed and makes a pact with God: ‘If you help me, if you heal my son — if you do this miracle for me — I'll do a miracle for you.’”

Don Carlos miraculously survives, apparently thanks to the intervention of the spirit of Diego de Alcalá, a celebrated monk who died a century before. And so now Philip II needs to somehow perform his miracle:

[He] enlists a really renowned clockmaker named Juanelo Turriano — a huge ox of a man, described as always being filthy and blustery and not a lot of fun to be around — but a great, great clockmaker. So the king says, “Look, I want you to make a mechanical version of Diego de Alcalá, a mechanical version of this 100-year-dead holy priest. Yes, a mechanical monk — a robotic padre.”

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The robotic padre[/caption]

Artist and historian Elizabeth King describes the result:

Driven by a key-wound spring, the monk walks in a square, striking his chest with his right arm, raising and lowering a small wooden cross and rosary in his left hand, turning and nodding his head, rolling his eyes, and mouthing silent obsequies. From time to time, he brings the cross to his lips and kisses it. After over 400 years, he remains in good working order.

A miracle of technology! (You can watch a very low quality video of the robot in action here.) “He walks a delicate line between church, theatre, magic, science,” King writes, pondering the significance of the mechanical monk. “Here is a machine that prays.”

What does it mean? According to King and Radiolab, in the context of Counter-Reformation Spain, the robot monk strikes to the heart of debates about how one gets close to God:

You have the Protestants, with Luther, who are saying, “it’s not about works … it's about whether you feel it.” And then you have the Catholic argument which is to say you do these rituals because these are the rituals, and this is the way you get close to God.

The robot monk teaches us how to do ritual. Controversial! Given the ridiculous degree of crufty observance and corruption in the Church at the time of the Reformation (and, um, other times), I obviously understand why the Protestant appeal to pure feels was compelling. But my own ingrained Catholic social justice calculus of “good works” aside (“don’t fucking tell me your account with God hinges on how you feel inside instead of your concrete actions in the world, you schismatic apostates!”), I can’t help but think that this debate, and the robot monk himself, is a metaphor for the observance of creative process.

As stated above, I’m suspicious of the reduction of creativity to a bunch of instrumental observances in the mechanised pursuit of… metrics. Hack-work content marketing success, paid in SEO indulgences to the Church of Google. But to respond to this by abandoning the rigours of creative process for the inspiration of pure feeling would be a mistake. Unless you're a tidal wave like my friend Janelle, feelings are fickle. Protestant churches tend to trade the horrific institutionalised power of the Catholic Church (about which we need no reminders) for another kind of tyranny: exploitative emotional economies in which the faithful tend to be at the mercy of charisma. And to trade in pure charisma is to produce strongmen. As our current times remind us, charismatic populism offers release for the anxious but also destroys the processes that ultimately help us flourish as communities. Creative populism that relies on emotional catharsis tends to destroy the basis for a consistent creative practice. Just as the Reformation ended up eliding the point of what “good works” might potentially be about (i.e. acting rigorously to enable the arrival of goodness), we also need to remember what creative rituals are for (i.e. exactly the same thing as good works).

Thus it is with Nick Cave, who for me is the amazing robot monk. He mightn’t be your cup of tea, or you might even find his work occasionally objectionable, but I think most of us can agree that his creative practice really hums. (Don’t let his obsession with Southern Baptists or his own Anglican heritage distract. In terms of process, he is an exemplary Catholic robot.) He prepares, meticulously. He shows up to work. He performs the motions regularly, not worrying about inspiration, and through these observances somehow accesses what he feels to be a divine and joyous experience of creativity.

I’m convinced that if Nick Cave relied on pure feeling, or murderous inspiration, or spontaneous gothic possession, or any of the other assumptions people make about his artistic persona, so many great moments of his oeuvre wouldn’t exist. Nick Cave walks the square and kisses the cross and talks to God. For he is a joyous robot monk.

🎼 Coda

For those of you who remain unconvinced by my yoking together of monks and murder ballads: the final line of Umberto Eco’s The Name of the Rose, an historical murder mystery set in a monastery, is “Stat rosa pristina nomine, nomina nuda tenemus”, or “The rose of old remains only in its name; we have only naked names”.

Meanwhile, I was never really a fan of the chorus of “Where the Wild Roses Grow,” Cave’s duet with Kylie Minogue:

They call me The Wild Rose

But my name was Elisa Day

Why they call me it, I do not know

For my name was Elisa Day

Oooh. The name of the rose. Anyway, to me, Minogue’s delivery always reeked of passive fatalism. But the other day, I realised that it wasn’t fatalistic all — it was full of spooky reproach. Elisa Day remains known to us by her Wild Rose name of legend, but her ghost insists on remembering her own name. She’s crossing t’s and dotting i’s from beyond the grave.

Following Kylie, we would do well to pay proper respect to the names of those who are in the beyond. The way we relate to them constitutes its own assemblage, its own machine of observances. In this I’m reminded of Arthur C. Clarke’s 1953 short story, “The Nine Billion Names of God”, in which Tibetan monks manage to automate the process of transcribing all the permutations that God’s name can take, using a supercomputer (naturally). Observing the names is the universe’s purpose, you see. And when the final name is encoded… Whoa.

How's that for a crazy constellation? (I know I'm just reaching. But it's fun!)

A sustainable portion of all my love,

Ben

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blankasolun · 4 years

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source: Metal Hammer 7th May 2020

How Dave Mustaine Took on Cancer and Won

By James Blaine (Metal Hammer) 21 hours ago

Megadeth mainman Dave Mustaine opens up exclusively about staring down cancer and what the future holds

The whole world is coming apart at the seams.

At least that’s the way it seems in Nashville, Tennessee this week. A T6 tornado tore the hell out of town just as the coronavirus hit the Volunteer State. Even President Trump is in Music City today, surveying the damage from Marine Helicopter One, hovering above us as we step into a dark, downtown studio to meet with local resident, Dave Mustaine.

The Apocalypse’s first and second horsemen take a back seat, at least for the moment. Right now, we’re more concerned about Dave’s dog. Oblivious to its diminutive size, the long-haired Chihuahua descends upon us like some high-pitched Hound of Hell, menacingly baring his teeth and threatening to devour our very soul if we step any closer to his master.

“Easy, Romeo. Easy,” Dave says, reaching to save us from the snarling beast. We coil back, cautiously offering the back of our hand. Dave laughs gruffly. “Oh, no,” he says. “That doesn’t work with him.”

As the Megadeth frontman corrals his pup, it gives us a chance to check out the legend after his recent health crisis. Mass of fiery mane – intact. Black jacket, jeans, black t-shirt, white sneakers. Honestly? Well, he looks like Dave Mustaine, like the hellraiser still not sold on cheap or easy peace. He moves a bit slow, but not creakily – more like a man who’s fought the Devil bare-fisted and lived to tell the tale.

With the hound at bay, he turns to greet us. It’s difficult to know what’s appropriate in this season of paranoia and mutant pandemic, especially for a man who’s just had his immune system nuked. Do we fist bump? Nod and touch elbows? “Nah, I ain’t worried, man,” Dave assures us, shaking hands with a vice grip. “I’m healthy now.”

The backstory: March 2019. After being bounced from doctor to doctor, Dave gets an official diagnosis that sounds like some dystopian speed metal verse. Squamous cell carcinoma on the base of your tongue.

Hold up. Cancer? Mustaine? No way.

If anyone seemed indestructible, it was Dave Mustaine. Bad ass, bad attitude, snarling, spitting, raging, red-headed, black belt-carrying soldier in God’s Army, Godfather Of Thrash. That cancer could sink its claws into someone like Dave sent shockwaves through the metal community. Now, one year after the diagnosis, Metal Hammer comes to Music City to hear his testimony first-hand. Because Dave Mustaine kicked cancer’s ass.

“Yeah, I’m pretty stoked about that,” he says, grinning as he grabs a bottle of water and motions for us to have a seat in a private, black- walled dressing room. The obvious first question: So, how do you feel? “I’m a little run down, but a lot of that’s from the medication and all the stuff that goes along with treatment. They hit the cancer really hard, nine doses of chemo and 51 radiation treatments, which just beats the hell out of you. My mouth is still messed up but overall, I feel really good.”

Dave settles in on the couch to tell us how he got the news that he was cancer-free. “I was here in Nashville, at my doctor’s office. He had to reach down the back of my throat, which was really unpleasant, but it was important for him to feel and make sure. And he said my progress was amazing, that both sides felt the same. I’ve got a metal plate in my neck that I figured might cause problems, but the doc told me, “Dave, you are in perfect health, 100%. You’re free to go.”

Dave pauses to slide a piece of Big Red gum into his mouth, twisting the foil between his fingers, reflecting before he continues. “It sounds bizarre, but I kind of knew. I took good care of myself. I’d done everything my doctors told me to do. I had tons of support from family and friends. And I had lots of prayer. I don’t want to sound arrogant, but I expected it. I had faith that I was going to be healed.”

At this point, Dave rewinds to early 2019, explaining how he received the grim verdict. While out shredding with Joe Satriani and Zakk Wylde on the Experience Hendrix tour, severe mouth pain struck. “I’d gone in to get some dental work,” he says. “And after, it felt like the dentist had broken a piece of scraper off in my gums. I went back and he sent me to an oral surgeon who checked me out and said, ‘You need to see an ear, nose and throat doctor. I don’t want to say anything bad, but it looks like the Big C.’ Well, fuck, dude! Why’d you say that, then?”

Dave shakes his head, still pissed, taking a long pull of water. “Anyway, I figured I’d take care of myself once the Hendrix tour was over. While out on the road, a friend of mine knew an ENT at the local emergency room. He came over, took a look, and said it wasn’t anything to worry about. But I knew something was wrong with me. It was just too far down for anybody to see.

“We had a day off and I was home in Nashville, so I saw a local specialist who suggested a scope. I don’t do good with scopes, so they had to knock me out to get the tube in. But yeah, they confirmed that it was cancer in the side of my throat that had spread to two lymph nodes.

“Initially, they wanted to send me to MD Anderson in Houston for 11 weeks and I said no. fucking. way. I’m not gonna be away from my family for that long. So, they set me up at Vanderbilt, with Dr. Cmelak, who’s actually one of the best radiation oncologists in the country. I had a good team.”

Fortunately for Mustaine, Music City is also the healthcare capital of the United States. The band cancelled tour dates and put the brakes on a new record so Dave could begin a brutal treatment regime, resting at his farm in the rolling hills of nearby Franklin between blasts of radiation and IV chemo drips. The worst, he says, is over.

“I’ll have to do another MRI soon and check in with the doctor regularly, three years, five years. But the cool thing is, my voice came back even better than before. I think the treatment shrunk whatever was on my vocal cord that was making it hard to sing. I’d seen pictures of my voice box and there was some kind of bubble on the flap that was giving me trouble. Cyst, tumour, nodule, whatever the fuck it was. But that’s gone now, and they say long as I don’t do anything stupid, I should be good for the rest of my career. I know once you get cancer you’re never really out of the woods, but if the process doesn’t scare you into changing your lifestyle, then shame on you.”

Dave is no stranger to injuries and pain. He suffered career-threatening nerve damage to his left arm during a 2002 stint in a Texas rehab, and a decade later, underwent emergency surgery for spinal stenosis – whiplash, if you will – resulting in titanium implants in his neck. Flashing his trademark maniacal smile, Dave insists he felt no fear in the face of death.

“I already died once,” he says, referencing his 1993 overdose on Valium. “I don’t remember anything, though. No light or tunnel or any of that shit. I respect death but I’m not living my life in fear. There was a little when I first found out that I had cancer, but it wasn’t so much about dying, as not being able to use my gift anymore, to play guitar or sing. That really shook me. To be inconvenienced is one thing. It’s something else to lose your gift.”

Dave leans in. His steely glare, coupled with the white beard and wild hair, gives him the appearance of some Old Testament prophet of doom. “When they told me that my arm was 80% and I would never play guitar again, I thought, ‘You have no idea who you’re talking to. I will absolutely play again, and it’ll be a matter of days, not weeks.’ There’s a couple things I still can’t do, but I feel like I can play almost as good as I used to. Going through that thing with my arm was helpful. It gave me the courage to face any kind of medical problem I might have down the road. I’m going to do everything they say and if there’s blood, I can handle it. I’ve seen my own blood before.”

We ask about the darkest days, if his reputation causes people to expect an unrealistic level of strength. Dave fidgets with his shoelace. Ruffles the pup sweetly. Reaches for another piece of gum before the reply.

“I think people do expect me to be invincible. It is a lot of pressure,” he admits. “But when you come out on the other side victorious, they cheer even louder. I like being a man of the people. That might sound corny, but it’s true. The hardest part was having to let others take care of me. I’ve always been so independent that even if I do need help, I’m not going to let anyone know. But overall, chemo wasn’t as ugly for me as it is for a lot of people. I had a couple of days where I got really sick and threw up, but that was it. I tried to be upbeat. When I would go in for treatment, I’d talk with the other patients, try to be encouraging.”

The thrash titan was forced to miss the band’s inaugural MegaCruise in October, with his daughter, Electra, stepping in to represent the family. Upon completion of treatment, Dave was able to return for the Killing Road tour with Five Finger Death Punch in January. While on stage at the SSE Arena in Wembley, he announced that the cancer was in complete remission.

“Actually, I think I mentioned it from the first show of the tour,” says Dave. “If not Helsinki, then Stockholm for sure. I wanted the fans to know that I’m OK and how great the crew has been. And for sure, I want to tell the truth and let everyone know how much I prayed through this whole ordeal. Not just like, ‘Oh, yeah, thanks, God.’ But that I really, seriously prayed.”

Christian for nearly two decades, Dave has always been vocal about his beliefs. While discussing the role faith played in his recovery, he pauses, raking fingers through his beard, measuring his words.

“After growing up as a Jehovah’s Witness, there was a time that I hated the concept of anything that I had to answer to. The church disfellowshipped my sister, Debbie, and I was the only one who would sit and listen to her cry. It flipped me out and all I wanted to do was get back at the people who hurt my sister,” Dave explains. “But now, I try to keep my prayers pretty gentle. I don’t pray for anyone to get hurt or get what’s coming to them, only for God’s will and that he would help me do what I need to do. To me, prayer is just an open, honest, easy conversation like you’re talking to your dad. Essentially, that’s what God is supposed to be, our Father, right? So that makes it easy for me to engage in prayer.”

Asked to elaborate, Dave adds, “In the Bible, the Pharisees liked to pray in public so everybody could see them. They thought the louder they prayed, the more pious they would seem, like it’s an indication of their righteousness. For me, righteousness is something that’s exhibited through consistent behaviour that’s Godly in nature. You sum up the gospels with the Golden Rule. Helping others, no matter what. There’s this old song by the Circle Jerks called Wonderful.”

He sings the chorus of the 80s punk classic. Romeo perks up, cocking an ear in his master’s direction. “It’s a great song that talks about how it’s really not so hard to do something nice for someone else. Help a stranger. Smile. If you see a homeless person, give them something to eat. I was homeless once. It was the worst, man. Scrounging for food, living in [bassist] David Ellefson’s van…”

Dave apologises for losing his train of thought, blaming the lingering effects of “chemo brain”. After a break, he switches gears, discussing the positive changes that have come from his battle with the disease. “My wife and I are getting along tremendously, and things are really good with my son and daughter right now, too. I’ve got a better relationship with my band. The other day, Kiko [Loureiro, guitarist] says to me, ‘I really like this new Dave!’ What he was talking about, is when you’re dealing with pain, you drink, you smoke, you bitch, because you don’t know what’s going on. But soon as I found out what was wrong with me, I attacked it. Once I did, I could feel myself getting happier too.

Support also came from outside Dave’s immediate circle. His old band brother, James Hetfield, reached out, as did Kiss’s Paul Stanley and Ozzy, who was at war with his own medical demons in 2019.

“Everybody’s treatment is different, but Bruce Dickinson had been through throat cancer about five years ago, so he was able to give me a lot of insight into what to expect. His biggest advice was to listen to the doctors and don’t rush to get back onstage. They told him to hold off, but he went back out to perform and nothing came out. Well, OK. I get it. Bruce waited a month before his first show, so I held off a little longer. My last treatment was in September and I made plenty of time to rest, exercise and eat right before we went back out on tour. We did 22 dates overseas, and I feel great now, except for the fatigue. But I think a lot of that might be due to um, extracurricular activities. Staying up late. Not sleeping. Maybe a little, you know…”

Thumb and forefinger to his lips, Dave inhales sharply, making the universal symbol for partaking of the herb. Could he be referring to the alleged medicinal benefits of CBD oil? “Don’t screw around with the oil, man,” he growls in the same gravel baritone as his crushing thrash classics. Our eyes go wide as the voice from sixth grade Headbangers Ball comes to life.

Dave cackles at our reaction, pushing back a wayward strand of hair. “If you’re gonna do it, get the good stuff. I think the world is just now finding out the beauty of cannabis and everything it can do for you. I hear people talk how it’s good for cancer patients. C’mon, it’s good for any fucking patient! The radiation zapped my salivary glands so I couldn’t make spit, which made it really hard to swallow and get food down. They gave me this crazy mouthwash to use that had Benadryl and lidocaine in it, but I still couldn’t eat. So cannabis helped with that, except I got a terrible craving for kiddie cereal. I went to the store and got, like, 20 boxes.”

The thought of the Tornado Of Souls singer devouring countless bowls of cereal is a pretty cool picture and we can’t help but inquire about his favourite fix. “Trix with marshmallows. Froot Loops with marshmallows. Frosted Flakes. The kind with little marshmallows. You get the idea. My cancer team told me to try and watch the sugar intake, but they said, ‘Dave, if you can eat – then eat.’ The doctor threatened to put a feeding tube in my gut if I lost too much weight. Well, they scared the shit out of me with that one, but it worked.”

With Dave healthy and back onstage, the follow-up to 2016’s Grammy Award-winning Dystopia is on every Megafan’s brain. Late last year, Dave teased songs that were “heavy as hell” with titles such as Rattlehead, Part Two and The Dogs Of Chernobyl.

“I don’t know if any of those titles are still holding up,” he says, revealing that the band has been tracking at Nashville’s Sound Kitchen with co-producer Chris Rakestraw at the controls again. “Whenever I make a record, the names of the songs change so many times. I think we’ve got 14 songs for this album and another folder with six. The songs are constantly evolving and as they do, we change the title to be more reflective of what makes the song distinct.”

So, will we see a new Megadeth album before 2020 ends? “I hope so, yeah,” says Dave. “We’ll start back in a couple of days and keep plowing until it’s done. Metal Tour Of The Year starts this summer, but that should be fun and easy [Editor’s note – we spoke to Dave before COVID-19 outbreak]. We’ve got a week’s vacation coming up soon and I’m going to go rest up and get ready to come back and make a brilliant record.”

Nashville traffic is anarchy these days and Romeo looks like he needs to hike his leg. As the sun sets over the Cumberland River, Dave stands and slides an arm around our shoulder, recruiting Metal Hammer to thank the fans for all their thoughts and prayers. It strikes us, how we expect legends to be carved from granite. On one hand, we understand that our heroes are human. But on the other, we never want to see them frail, or sick, or down. And that must be a hell of a burden sometimes. But perhaps, it’s also what keeps them moving. If our heroes can keep pushing, then that gives us the courage to keep pushing too, through all the shitstorms of life, disasters both natural and manufactured, even the ones we bring upon ourselves. Decades later, they still inspire perseverance, hope, and the determination to never let the bastards grind you down. Maybe even a little 21st century metal up your ass.

Still, we have to ask one last thing. Dave’s been on the road almost 40 years. Dues paid; the mark has been made. Was he ever tempted to call it a day, sit back on the farm and enjoy a slow, simple life?

“Yeah, I guess I could do that,” he admits, shrugging like it’s no big deal. “But I love what I do, and I like helping the band and crew make money. Playing music makes people happy. A lot of times while we’re out there, they share stuff with us, some good, some bad, but we get to bring our own little brand of panacea to people and somehow, that makes them feel beautiful. Even if it’s for just one night.”

Published in Metal Hammer #334

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Dave Mustaine Talks About His Fight With Cancer source: Metal Hammer 7th May 2020 How Dave Mustaine Took on Cancer and Won By James Blaine…

#bruce dickinson #chris rakestraw #dave mustaine #david ellefson #dystopia #james hetfield #joe satriani #kiko loureiro #kiss #megadeth #ozzy osbourne #paul stanley #sound kitchen #tornado of souls #zakk wylde

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