goth post

I went for coffee/bubble tea with an old friend recently. We hadn’t seen each other in a long time so it was a great catch up. At some point in the convo I half-joked about being a miserable sod and my friend said they didn’t think I was miserable at all. I was kind of surprised by that, and have been thinking about it on and off since then, wondering if I really am miserable or if that’s just something I’ve told myself, if this is the character I’ve chosen to be. I started worrying that was the case, that I’m basically just a grey-haired goth in denial.

Then I had to do a course for work a few days ago, and I found myself struggling with basically everything that was being said by everyone who was there. The instructors, the people with tons more training and experience than me, bothered me because I feel like the stuff they care about in our field is pointless. I don’t understand why they give a shit at all, and I definitely don’t understand how they can be so personally invested that they want to come teach the rest of us about it. You obviously don’t want leaders and teachers in your field to be dejected and hopeless, just going through the motions, saying “this is pointless and I don’t know why we do it,” but at least I would relate to them and not feel like they are being short-sighted or have wack priorities or not thinking critically. I just kept feeling like they had all really drank the Kool-aid.

Most of my classmates care about what we were being taught so they’re guilty of that stuff too, but that wasn’t my big problem with them. My problem with them as was many of them were such utter dimwits that I felt ashamed and embarrassed to have to consider them my colleagues. I wish I could repeat some of the painfully asinine comments and conversations I had to endure that day but I’m sure you can imagine.

At some point in the midst of this class, feeling completely unable to relate to almost everyone there and thinking they were basically nuts, I realized: yes, I am definitely miserable. Not in the “hmph, I’m grumpy today” sense, but in the sense that I am definitely a nihilist and a misanthrope. I think I come by these things honestly, and I don’t think that means I have to appear grumpy all the time. I think you can be a nihilist and/or a misanthrope and be friendly, outgoing, social. We usually don’t equate those things but hey, you know me, I’ve always been about smashing inaccurate conceptions and generalizations.

So there you go: I still think I’m miserable, and that doesn’t mean some things don’t still bring a smile to my face.

the nihilist metalhead’s playlist

• Craft – Fuck the Universe
• Jupiterian – Protosapien
• Akercocke – Antichrist
• Akercocke – Words That Go Unspoken, Deeds That Go Undone
• Skaldic Curse – Devourer
• Skaldic Curse – World Suicide Machine

Those are the most well-executed and broadly hateful, nihilistic metal records I have come across so far. There are some other decent ones I thought about including but decent doesn’t cut it. I want music that would be a suitable soundtrack for the annihilation of all life, all matter, all dimensions, the universe, space and time, everything. I want it to feel that big and bleak and hopeless and awful and terrifying. If I’m like, “this is fairly grim,” that’s just not enough.

“self-replicating armageddon assembler”

I’m torn. I want to do yoga right now, but I’m really enjoying listening to Skaldic Curse’s Devourer album. It’s absolutely brimming with themes and qualities I love and relate to — misanthropy, nihilism, chaos, unsettling weirdness…I think I know my yoga routine well enough that I could do it while continuing to listen to Skaldic Curse instead of the yoga audio guide I usually use, or close enough anyway. Hmmm. I like doing it along with the guide to keep my breathing and shit all in check, but fuck it. Sometimes you just have to get zen while hating on the human race. A time and place for all things.

Ah fuck, the album is almost over. Dang it. Well, at least this situation puzzled itself out.

First post of 2021 though, off with a banger! Wow. Jk, this post stinks. I don’t care.

at age 40, who am i?

Yesterday I listened to a lot of Skaldic Curse. I was really digging its anti-humanism and overall ugliness.

Then this morning I took the dog for a hike up the mountain and ruminated on why Skaldic Curse was connecting with me, how I feel about humanity at this point in my life, how I feel about myself, and ultimately who I am. It was kind of neat.

A few years ago I read a quote by Lee Dorian (he’s been a prominent misanthrope/doom musician for decades) where he said this: “I’m 50 next year and you’re supposed to mellow out when you get older, but why? I don’t feel like mellowing out. The world’s getting worse, the atmosphere is getting heavier, people treat each other like shit and there’s so much negativity, how are you supposed to chill out when all that’s going on?…It’s got to be pure nihilism or nothing.” And that quote largely captures where I’m at too. I think that as I age, I’m slowly becoming a better person — I’ve gotten better at seeing things from other perspectives, I’ve failed at enough stuff to quell my arrogance somewhat and build a bit of humility, I’ve learned that I value kindness in people and strive to be kind in return, blah blah blah.

But it’s not all rosy, because as time goes on I have less and less faith in people. The more I learn about the world, the more it seems like the vast majority of people do what’s best for themselves and everyone else be damned. Even the people who are at the bottom of the food chain, getting fucked and shit on their whole lives — if they managed to get a leg up and climb the social ladder a bit, they would be too busy keeping their spot on the ladder to worry about the people below them that they are now shitting on. I think that maybe I shouldn’t be bothered by that, maybe that’s just the survival of the fittest or those who work hard being rewarded for it, but I don’t know. I feel like, with our incredible capabilities for awareness both of ourselves and of others, we should be doing better. I don’t feel like there is any excuse for us to be treating each other in these ways.

I think that basic idea applies all across humanity, in all countries, nationalities, races, social classes, religions, etc — there is no corner of mankind that is free of people either actively fucking over those below them or at least putting their head in the sand and ignoring their complicity in it, and I can’t be at peace with either of those. But I also can’t change it, so where does that leave me?

It leaves me being a fucking misanthrope, listening to Skaldic Curse and daydreaming about the eradication of the human race.

I also hate organized religion with a fucking passion now, whereas I never really cared about it when I was young.

So it’s funny — at age 40, on a personal level I think I’m chiller than ever before but in a big picture way, I’m more hateful and misanthropic than ever before. It’s kind of a funny combo.