| Jul. 9th, 2009 @ 04:06 pm long essay about music that nobody gives a shit about |
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I sometimes wonder about my state of mind when it come to the music I listen to. I'm pretty much a liberal guy, somewhere in between Barack Obama and Micheal Moore, not exactly a raving anarchist, but boy wouldn't I like to see those fat cats pay 5%-10% more in income taxes; which makes me a damned communist by current right wing standards. I support, mostly, affirmative action, tighter environmental standards, abortion rights, euthanasia, drug decriminalization, anti-nukes, pro-peace, blah blah blah. I'm pragmatic when it comes to getting things done politically, and try to vote for fellow pragmatics instead of idealogs. That's who I am politically: a predictable left-wing wimp.
But I apparently have a hidden nazi inside of me. Not that I've ingested one lately, but within me is a monster who favors warfare, endless battles, slaughter, sadism, satanism, gore, and evil demons running havoc over mankind, inflicting unspeakable blasphemies on your virgin daughters. This is the picture you get of me if you judge me only by my music collection.
One one level, I guess this is fair. Most people I know seem to express themselves and their political views through their music. All the hippies I know listen to hippy music, which expresses the hippy way of life and political outlook. Many Christians I have known listen to contemporary Christian music exclusively, which expresses their world view succinctly with no apparent dissonance with their expressed inner life.
But most of these people were fucking hypocrites who have expressed to me views and opinions much darker than what their public face would say. I've known hippies who were racist and holier than thou Christians who were alcoholic child molesters. The more righteous the public face, the darker the underbelly. I once had a guy, a professed Christian and pot smoker, who I was renting a room from, kick me out of his house after he snuck in my room and took a gander at my cassette collection. Actaully, I made the move first, after living there a week, since he such a fucking creep. But when I told him I was moving, he said "Yeah, well, I was going to kick you out anyway, since I don't let Satan worshipers live here." As I was moving my boxes, He would occasionally check up on me and, "Yup. Worship the devil!" This was a guy who wouldn't let his tenants go in his basement, presumably because he has a meth lab or a grow room down there.
This morning, I listened to the album Battlefields by a band called Hate Forest. Hate Forest is Ukrainian black metal band who exposes National Socialist and Nietzschean views in their interviews. Their music is not obvious propaganda for these views, as the lyrics are never printed and are unintelligible even in Ukrainian. The music is minimalistic, epic and esoteric. It purports to put you in the mindset of a Grand Defender of the Realm, filled with hatred for the invaders who rape and pillage. This is the soundtrack to that hatred, the emotion from which these rigid grooves flow. Imagine if Phillip Glass developed a fetish for Wagner, and took over your brother's shitty metal band and whipped them into shape and made them emigrate to The Ukraine. There are 4 blazing black metal tracks as well as four tracks of authentic Ukrainian folk, sung acapella, to contrasting the divergent moods, strung together only by the intensity of the performance. All in all, an amazing album.
I'm one of the nicest guys I know. I'm polite, if somewhat socially inept. I wouldn't run rampage through peasant shacks, crushing kitten heads with my jackboots, murdering subhumans and all those not up to my manly standards. I am not a nazi. Though their views are mistaken, I can relate on an emotional level. I've always wanted to run rampage. That anger is there. There is a apart of me that wants to control everything, that wants to see life as a grand struggle for survival and conquest, that wants to suck power like vampire in a cheesy horror movie. I think it's in most people, part of that grand dialectic between good evil, Id and Super Ego, ect. I think most people are conditioned to suppress those urges early in life, and express them through the occasional horror movie, swearing, sports, ect.
Good thing that guys like me have heavy metal and Grand Theft Auto to express our inner barbarian. It's a civilizing outlet for those who might otherwise find more passive aggressive outlets for their rage. |
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