Cross-Post: The Post-Rock Way–Healing | Panacea

29 Dec 2022 Leave a comment

by zeuslyone in Music Tags: , , , , , , ,

This post was originally on my other blog about exploring spirituality and philosophy through post-rock music. I share many of the posts from that blog when I write them, as they fit in well here too. This one is about Nietzsche’s philosophy as an inspiration for an energetic/emotional stance towards life, for instance. At the beginning of the year, I wrote a post on the best albums of 2021 in post-rock, and I’ll be writing another for 2022 in the next couple days, so I recommend checking that out if you find the music in this post interesting.

The emotional associations we have with music can be profound. We can tie pieces of music to places, people, times, feelings, or likely other aspects of human experience that aren’t coming to mind right now. Music has been depicted as speaking to our emotional depths since ancient Greece (Plato’s Republic comes to mind, and Nietzsche rehabilitates the Platonic concern around this emotional impact in his Birth of Tragedy with the conclusion at the end of a Socrates coming to his senses in his final days and making music). In other words, it’s long been seen as something that speaks to the soul, so to speak. I’m struggling to write this, in fact, because phrasing anything about it as a concept or a cultural history feels too weak, as it feels like a simple and undeniable truth that music speaks to and influences us emotionally.

For myself, the strongest versions of this emotional association to music are when I’ve associated it with a person and then have had that relationship end. It’s been nearly impossible to return to emotionally charged songs after breakups in different times of my life. I actually wrote about an instance of this years ago in another post. Facing emotional associations with only the resonance of something beautiful that has been lost is hard to sit with mindfully in any way. It’s hard to sit with at all.

For me, reclaiming the positive experience associated with music like this is a crucial part of the healing process. In a way, that’s a far more accurate description of the healing process done mindfully than “time heals all wounds” (which I’ve critiqued before as an incredibly poor metaphor); just moving on by diving into some sort of river of Lethe or, even worse, revising history – isn’t really healing. It leaves wounds unaddressed and open for more festering or vulnerability that could lead to defensiveness and other ego shittiness if challenged at all about what really happened. True healing is about finding meaning in loss, facing it authentically, and reintegrating the shards of a broken heart with new meaning and accepted vulnerability. It’s about authenticity, meaning-making, acceptance, and reintegration. This means that for something like previously loved music, it’s about finding your way back to it, and if it still feels beautiful and inspiring in some way once you can get past negative reactions, reclaiming it as part of your life – authentically facing the difficulty of this being part of your story, finding new meaning in it, accepting everything that happened and your struggle to get past it, and reintegrating it back into your life with that new meaning. The healing of an authentic, engaged, mindful, spiritually driven life is one of kintsugi.

With this in mind, I’ve recently been returning to a band I have more or less ignored existed for some time, even though at this time 2 years ago, I listened to their second album roughly non-stop, becoming one of my most listened to albums of 2020 despite discovering it only in the last few weeks of the year. That band is Silent Whale Becomes A° Dream, and the impetus for this return to encounter is that they remastered their first album, Canopy, recently. The album I was hooked to previously was their second album, Requiem, but this lower bar for reclamation feels more doable.

I was surprised to find in returning to this masterwork that any concerns about pain were completely washed over by just how unbelievably beautiful this album is. This band is one of the most amazing and most overlooked post-rock bands out there. They take the orchestral sound that Mono is either loved for or passed over for and take it even a step farther. It is magnificent, multi-layered, and epic. Furthermore, it is incredibly poignant. The second album has a description (I’m not going to quote it because its long) about looking out from an oceanside cliff on the ocean and feeling the pull of existential angst – that Sartrean idea that I’m free to jump off – and combining it with the sublime desire to merge with the beauty of such a moment. It’s the pull of that existential feeling as well as the loss of the ego in identifying with this beyond oneself, the power of the sea. That may sound dramatic, but this level of sentiment is within their music. It can shake you deeply.

Their first album is just as moving, and the final song caps it all off in full intensity, and fittingly enough, it’s titled “Panacea” – the miracle cure. In this song, we can feel the miracle cure of healing by facing our fears, our angst towards death, and the painful limitations of our ego’s stories which try to protect or cover over while perhaps avoiding the truth of things. This can all be overcome in a music-induced moment of kensho where body and mind fall away, and in returning, “you” are changed. Ironically enough, it is the perfect song for the spiritual endeavor of reclaiming and the reintegration that is healing. It is truly a symbol of that panacea that is an authentic spiritual journey if we’re open to the aspect that is the Untergang, as I spoke about in a recent post. I highly recommend you open yourself to the experience and listen to this song. I’m glad to have returned to it and reclaimed it for my own journey.

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Cross-Post: The Post-Rock Way–Love | When Vocals and Lyrics are Used in Post-Rock

15 Dec 2022 Leave a comment

by zeuslyone in Music Tags: , , , , , , ,

This post was originally on my other blog about exploring spirituality and philosophy through post-rock music. I share many of the posts from that blog when I write them, as they fit in well here too. This one is about Nietzsche’s philosophy as an inspiration for an energetic/emotional stance towards life, for instance. At the beginning of the year, I wrote a post on the best albums of 2021 in post-rock, so I recommend checking that out if you find the music in this post interesting.

During the last couple nights, I’ve posted some philosophical discussion recordings (which I call “philosophy riffing”). In my last, I spoke about many things, but one topic was struggles with reconsidering my concepts and experiences of love, including the extra layer of emotional/existential difficulty of wondering if it was all in my head for reasons which I’ll keep to myself.

During the time of dealing with these kinds of thoughts and feelings, I’ve returned to the two songs here a few times. It’s interesting that they both resonate with these issues but also stand as great examples of how vocals can be used in post-rock to great effect. I’ll include the lyrics at the end of this post but will also post links in the discussion so you don’t have to scroll up and down.

As a general overview, lets contrast some aspects to begin to preemptively load the discussion upfront. The first of these songs is more of a standard rock vocal style, where the inimitable A. A. Williams agreed to a collaboration with Mono. As such, it’s a fusion of their styles – the fullest, emotive chamber music flavor of Mono backing and strengthening the soulful voice and lyrics of Williams. The second was a request from Russian Circles to collaborate with the also inimitable Chelsea Wolfe after touring together. This song hangs as a coda to the album, taking up the refrain from the first and previous songs and transforming it into something both confused and poignant; yet unlike Mono/Williams, the vocals are also dreamy and confused. You’ll feel the emotion of it as another instrument of the mix, but you’ll almost certainly have to look up the lyrics to make out the precise words. So, in one, we see a harmonizing strengthening of the vocals and words to their most shining, lifted up by the instruments behind. In the other, it feels almost more like a post-rock song utilizing a sample, to where the vocals are infused into the instruments, making the haunting, emotive quality not reliant at all on understanding each word: getting the feel of the grief, loss, and doubt without being able to hear the concepts at play.

Now, let’s look at each of these two songs on their own. First, “Exit in Darkness” by Mono and A. A. Williams is precisely that. There’s a deep set of emotions that speak of loneliness, finding a matching presence in someone else, and the struggle of loss and moving on. Honestly, from the lyrics, I’m never completely sure with this song who has left who in the separation (although it seems likely to be the singer), and there’s also the sense that there’s not a clear break in the separation – that the singer keeps the other either merely in mind or is still contacting the other person, as she says: “I can’t let you be alone” over and over. For me, this song has resonated deeply with a being apart because of the issues of the two in the connection while also speaking to how difficult this is because of how strong the connection is. I point out my own reactions because I was a bit surprised in hearing another friend’s reaction to the song. She described it as a song to her about shadow work: going through healing and processing of unwanted and difficult emotions that have been repressed from the relationship or negative patterns that need to be addressed to grow and heal. I can see this take, as the loneliness and tension of some sort of disorganized attachment style of wanting someone but pushing them away but wanting them, over and over, feels like a red flag of something to be reworked, processed, and addressed. There is some sort of growth that needs to happen within singer and/or the other party in order for this connection to grow back together or for them both to exit from this darkness.

I need you to know
You make me whole
And I can’t let you be alone

Mono/Williams – “Exit in Darkness”

Whatever the meaning, it’s hard to deny how touching this song is. It ranks highly as one of the most emotional rock songs I’ve ever heard.

Russian Circles’ Memorial is a beautiful song of grief, doubt, and the edges of madness. It caps off the album, repeating the riff of the first song, with just the slightest shift, that had also been reintegrated in a much more massive, heavy way in the immediately previous song. This refrain – the theme of the album as a whole – is now fleshed out from it’s ghostly emotional exploration with the voice of the living, a grieving vocalist considering loss and doubting her relationship to that which she has lost. Her words feel like an existential grief as well – she grieves some part of herself that has died in this connection, and furthermore, she thinks not only on her own death in this transition but ghosts of the past that make her question what she did, who she was with, and who she is now.:

What sang in me sings no more.
Where stood a wild heart stirred no more.
There stood wild heart.
And I have been slain.
Head full of ghosts tonight.
Have I gone insane?

Russian Circles/Wolfe – “Memorial”

There’s been few times that a song about sadness has really fully captured all the layers of doubt, pain, and rumination I’ve felt. This one captures much of what I have felt in a few lines, and it does it in a voice that feels weirdly stable and logical, yet dreamy. It intensifies the feeling that these reactions are a haunting certainty that stands before us in life’s moments such as this that cannot be escaped. There is no “Exit in Darkness”, only an “Exit through Darkness”, one which challenges your very conceptions of who you are and what it might be to be with other people in the future. In some ways, this is reminiscent of the stage of a spiritual path that is depicted by the Moon card from tarot.

I can go through the lyrics and ideas, as I’ve done, but I can’t emphasize enough how much these songs are examples of post-rock’s style. The vocals are treated as instruments of their own in the mix in both of these songs and handled differently to work with this, and although I started with a brief description of this, I’m going to link the songs now and suggest you listen to them to hear the full effect I’ve described. The lyrics will also be block quoted below the song links.

How long have I been underneath?
The weight of all I’m carrying
For all my life, I’ve been the one

Who abandoned everyone

But I need you to know
You make me whole
And I can’t let you be alone

How long have you been hiding there
In all the shade and all the empty air
I could have sworn in you I saw myself
And all the questions that I ever asked
But I need you to know
You make me whole
And I can’t let you be alone

But I need you to know
You make me whole
And I can’t let you be alone

I need you to know
You make me whole
And I can’t let you be alone

I need you to know
You make me whole
And I can’t let you be alone

I need you to know
You make me whole
And I can’t let you be alone

I need you to know
I need you to know
I need you to know

But I need you to know
You make me whole
And I can’t let you be alone

Mono/Williams – “Exit in Darkness”

I cannot say what years have come and gone
I only know the silence – it breathed on and in
What sang in me sings no more
Where stood a wild heart stirred no more
There stood wild heart
And I have been slain
Head full of ghosts tonight
Have I gone insane?
Was it wrong to go down
To want you to stay?
Head full of ghosts tonight
Have I gone insane?

Russian Circles/Wolfe – “Memorial”

Cross-Post: The Post-Rock Way–Growth | Spotlight: Russian Circles

02 Oct 2022 Leave a comment

by zeuslyone in Music Tags: , , ,

This post was originally on my other blog about exploring spirituality and philosophy through post-rock music. I share many of the posts from that blog when I write them, as they fit in well here too. This one is about Nietzsche’s philosophy as an inspiration for an energetic/emotional stance towards life, for instance. At the beginning of the year, I wrote a post on the best albums of 2021 in post-rock, so I recommend checking that out if you find the music in this post interesting.

The cool air of fall blew off the sea onto my face as I walked through my darkened neighborhood last night with Russian Circles’ live album, Live at Dunk! Fest, driving my steps. I was pondering what exactly to say for this post. Last week offered a great opportunity that I had awaited for years, seeing this power trio live for the first time. They’ve been my most listened to band for the last few years, since I got into them. I have listened to almost only their music since this concert was announced. Even though my expectations were somewhere up in the stratosphere near where the upper atmosphere borders space, these guys didn’t disappoint. It would not be an understatement for me to say that this concert and all the experiences around it made my year.

Between that and the fact that my last post about Russian Circles brought confused feedback from friends, finding it too difficult and dense, I thought it would be good to describe their dynamism again in a different way. If one band warrants that focus, they do.

When I was walking and pondering last night, the songs on the album while looking down on the dark, moonlit water of the sea, moments from the concert arose in my mind. The particular song to pull at me first was Afrika. As I said last time, “Guidance” is the album I find to be the band’s best, but Afrika is the point where the movement of the first 3 songs starts to chill a bit. However, in the concert, the rolling drums of this song grabbed me and made me feel like I was flying in a way that felt like a therapeutic moment for a lot of recent life. I remember thinking that I never realized just how much I needed this song.

How do you express a feeling like this without riffing on big ideas that would probably take too much background reading or explanation? Furthermore, how do you do it with a band that’s as sparse and cryptic, completely left up to interpretation, as Russian Circles? I’m going to do this by trying to delineate the atmosphere that resonates in this band’s songs and then try to analyze that down to it’s movement and energy as two focal points.

The overarching atmosphere that is in Russian Circles’ albums is a feeling of intense, crushing circumstances yet adapting and growing beyond them, shining above them. The already mentioned song, Afrika, is a great example of this. I spoke of this at length in my last post. For me, Russian Circles’ albums feel like a destruction that leads to new flourishing, creation, and hope. If I were to use another anchor point rather than Nietzsche, I would use the associations of the Tower card and the Star card as ideas here – the destruction of an existing order opens the way for the hope of the new, a light in the darkness.

To expand or express this differently, I’d like to re-center on two focal points within that atmosphere. First, the movement of their music is a moving onward. Second, and in resonance with the first, the energy feels to be that of growth. To me, again in relation to ideas from tarot, this feels like the powerful abundant dynamism of “Empress energy”, basically an abundance of life force as flourishing in most every sense. Ironically, when thinking of this further, I realized that the name of one of Russian Circles’ albums is “Empros” which means forward or onward in Greek(and sounds a lot like Empress). So, to reiterate the previous concepts here and in the earlier post: their songs are a moving beyond that which presses down on us with a feeling of growing out of it or above it.

Funnily enough, when I saw them live, I waited for an autograph afterward, and I chatted with others waiting outside. One of the other fans was thrilled that they had played Youngblood from “Station” because the entire album had helped her through a dark chapter of her life. I couldn’t agree more. Songs like Micah, Ethel, Vorel, and others have had the exact same resonance for me precisely because of the dynamics I described above.

In trying to choose a single song to exemplify this, I thought of Mlàdek, especially because it is from that album, “Empros”. Also, it was the final song of their set when I saw them. This song speaks of that forward movement and that growing outward, in spite of the many challenges we face. Beyond that something about this song in particular makes me fully feel the image and quote from The Dhammapada I wanted to use to sum up everything I’ve said here about growing and shining within and beyond adverse circumstances:

As a sweet-smelling lotus
Pleasing to the heart
May grow in a heap of rubbish
Discarded along the highway,
So a disciple of the Fully Awakened One
Shines with wisdom
Amid the rubbish heap
Of blind, common people

The Dhammapada, Chapter 4: Flowers, lines 58-59; trans. – Fronsdal.

Studio version of Mlàdek:

Live album of RC at Dunk! Fest 2016. Mlàdek starts at roughly 53:00:

Cross-Post: The Post-Rock Way–Transformation | Überwindung und Übergang

15 Sep 2022 Leave a comment

by zeuslyone in Existentialism, Music Tags: , ,

This post was originally on my other blog about exploring spirituality and philosophy through post-rock music. I share many of the posts from that blog when I write them, as they fit in well here too. This one is about Nietzsche’s philosophy as an inspiration for an energetic/emotional stance towards life, for instance. At the beginning of the year, I wrote a post on the best albums of 2021 in post-rock, so I recommend checking that out if you find the music in this post interesting.

Ich lehre euch den Übermenschen. Der Mensch ist Etwas, das überwunden werden soll. Was habt ihr gethan, ihn zu überwinden?

English: I teach you about the Overhuman. The human is something that should be overcome (Note: “überwunden” – post’s title, “Überwindung”, is the related noun). What have you done to overcome it?

Nietzsche, “Also sprach Zarathustra”, Erster Teil, Abschnitt 3 von Projekt Gutenberg, English my translation

Was gross ist am Menschen, das ist, dass er eine Brücke und kein Zweck ist: was geliebt werden kann am Menschen, das ist, dass er ein Übergang und ein Untergang ist.

Ich liebe Die, welche nicht zu leben wissen, es sei denn als Untergehende, denn es sind die Hinübergehenden.

English: What is great in the human is that it is a bridge and no goal. What can be loved in the human is that it is a going-over (Note: “Übergang” as in title) and a going-under.

I love those who only know to live as one who goes under, as they are those who go over.

Nietzsche, “Also sprach Zarathustra”, Erster Teil, Abschnitt 4 von Projekt Gutenberg, English my translation

As a precursor, I have to open this with a clarification of stance and intention. Russian Circles vies for the place of my favorite band. I’ve listened to them more than any other band for the last few years, and I’m thrilled that they will be touring through here next week. I’ve been waiting to see them live for years. I’ve written about them one time previously here, but I haven’t even touched on the depth of meaning and empowerment they inspire in me. This post will be a rough attempt at that, riffing on some ideas from Nietzsche and the Stoics that came to mind last night.

I was going down stairs last night with a weighted vest on, having pushed myself to climb up them multiple times with that extra weight. My legs ached. Such is the pain of pushing oneself to the limit through bearing extra heaviness. Perhaps Nietzsche’s own Spirit of Heaviness from Zarathustra echoed in the recesses of my nonconscious mind, as I flashed on the “Untergang” of going down the stairs in the darkness, the going-under. My mind jumped between Nietzsche’s own strong usage of the term (as above) and its connection to the overcoming and overgoing/going-over of the Overhuman (Übermensch) as well as a philosophical friend pointing out years ago that Plato’s Republic begins with Socrates going down out of the city to the manor for the festival and party where the dialogue takes place. That connection always feels both random and not accidental every time I think of it, somehow.

As I thought of these things, Russian Circles’ Memorial played in my ear buds. Even with their magnificent recent release, and despite the fact that I would say Guidance is their best album, Memorial is the album that I listen to the most with them. It’s haunting – literally and figuratively: literally because it’s an album that stays in your mind after listening; figuratively because it is about grieving and that ambience dominates throughout the album, so it is about the specters of the past.

I’ve wanted to write about this band and find a particular song to focus on for some time. In the past year, I’ve been obsessed with “Micah” from Enter, “Vorel” from Guidance, and “Harper Lewis” from Station among so many excellent songs. I could pick multiple songs from any of their albums to speak about, so it’s really difficult to pick one to summarize a message and a feeling that I sense carries across their albums, despite their very different tones and technical explorations in each.

Recently, I was on another walk, the first with that physical version of the Spirit of Heaviness, the weighted vest, and I was also listening to Memorial. When I hit “Ethel”, I felt so incredibly empowered in the way that I can only describe as a Nietzschean overcoming and overgoing, what I always associate with light feet. I wrote about this long ago in a grad school class where I wrote aphorismically about therapy and existentialism:

12) Healing thyself.  As Nietzsche said: “Everything good is instinctive – and consequently light, necessary, free.  Effort is an objection, gods and heroes belong to different types (in my language: light feet are the first attribute of divinity)”.  Light feet as divinity – a revelation!  Feeling the weight of heaviness keeps us from running, dancing, flying…  We encounter the suffering of others all the time, but we are more than just vessels for suffering.  Staying healthy requires a lightness of foot, mind, and soul, rather than the heaviness of disease; it requires a quick, easy readiness to laugh!  Remember that to heal oneself is a dance with the abundant radiance that is in oneself, in the Other – “You”, and in the world.  Light feet…  

Writing mine. Quote from Nietzsche: Nietzsche, F. (2002).  Beyond Good and Evil. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Thinking of all these moments last night, the Nietzschean contrast of going-under and going-over, undergoing and overgoing, came to me as the dynamic pull to describe in Russian Circles’ music. All of their work feels like a facing difficulty and moving forward through it, a being destroyed and reborn, a Stoic resolve (a supposed Nietzschean influence, although I find him to be at the very least an early modern/existentialist reimagining of the attitude; Deleuze was right in emphasizing the dynamism of Nietzsche’s energetics affirmation and transformation: that’s precisely what’s at play with the transformation of destruction, going-under, into a positive creation and affirmation of the entire process, going-over). I remember doing a lot of research into Russian Circles’ message some time ago, and I swear that one of the band members said something very similar of Guidance, but returning to the search today, I can’t find it. I did, however, find this echo in a review of Guidance that summarizes this dynamic march of strength and resolve well: ” Guidance is another steady step in their journey, a record that bears the artwork of that photo packet that came into the band’s possession, trying to paint a portrait of strength and dignity even in the face of hell” (Meat Mead Metal Album Review, July 2016). That review is fantastic because it gives an explanation of the evocative album cover of Guidance. It’s an image of a man being marched to his execution: hence the portrait of strength and dignity even in the face of hell. Furthermore, nothing is more existentialist (think of Camus’ The Stranger or Nietzsche’s concept of the Eternal Return). The thing is, that strength and dignity is what I get in every Russian Circles album albeit with different overtones and undertones, different supporting themes and feelings around it. That stance is there throughout: an overcoming and overgoing, eine Überwindung und Übergang.

Again, “Ethel” is a fantastic example of this. It’s a song full of major key energy in the midst of an album exploring the various layers of grief. It’s only a couple songs before the final song, a song where Russian Circles has a guest vocalist who sings of going crazy and grieving the heartbreak of the past, questioning the validity and intensity of that experience, while undergoing it. “Ethel” in contrast feels like someone dancing and climbing mountains, no matter the weight, overgoing in precisely the way I aspired to in running up stairs while wearing a weighted vest.

I hope to write more about Russian Circles after seeing them next week and about that track with vocals, but at this point, I think I’ve summarized the theme and feeling well enough to leave you with “Ethel” as a song to experience and hope you will check out the rest of that album and their discography in general.

Cross-Post: The Post-Rock Way — A New Cycle | Spotlight: Coastlands

29 Jun 2022 Leave a comment

by zeuslyone in Music Tags: , , , , , , ,

This post was originally on my other blog about exploring spirituality and philosophy through post-rock music. I felt it must be shared, as the song I highlight and the experience I had in the described concert really resonate with the last post I just wrote. I recently wrote a post on the best albums of 2021 in post-rock, so I recommend checking that out if you find the music in this post interesting.

This last weekend, I had the pleasure of a short road trip to attend the Post-Rock and Friends Fest in Portland, OR. I had a chance to see a few bands live whom I’d been wanting to see for years. I’m going to write two posts about this regarding the two bands that really grabbed my heart.

One of my favorite post-rock albums of 2020 was Death by Coastlands. Here’s what I wrote on my 2020 best albums review:

Prepare to face the destruction of death in this album. Coastlands goes full post-metal and crushes you without falling into the standard doomy dynamics that post-metal can get stuck in. It’s epic, empowered, and gorgeous. This came out near my birthday, and it ended up being a perfect birthday present.

Retrospective | Best Post-Rock Albums of 2020

Returning to this album a couple years later for an intensive listen brought so many new layers of interpretation and experience. The last year has been a long slog through a cycle of death for me (in the sense of facing the end of the old). My sense of who I was has died. My sense of purpose has died. My ability to stand up again, walk forward, and move on has been challenged, time and again. In that time, tarot cards have been a meaningful self-care tool for solace, insight, and a sense of meaning when things have felt meaningless.

One of the key cards in the high arcana is the Death card. If you are unfamiliar with the tarot, you’ll possibly pause with some trepidation at that, but Death is more than a card that says someone around you will die. It’s a card about the end of an old cycle and a transition into a new one. Life is a vibrant unfolding of change, and a key component of the new coming forward in change is the old ending and disappearing. That’s what death is. As I put it in one of my favorite poems in the early days of my other blog:

Birth, birth, birth

           &

Death, death, death

—  In every moment

    With each heartbeat & breath

A Human Becoming

Coastlands’ album overflows with this energy of change, empowerment, flow, and growth through the death of the old. Every song has heavy, crushing power, but there are major key aspects as well where the lotus blossom grows in the detritus at the side of the road (image from the early passages of the Dhammapada – a chapter with overtones of living well in the face of the transitoriness of life, interestingly enough). The dirge has just as much of a joyous affirmation. It’s a recognition that one’s going over is a going under (Nietzschean riff – early Zarathustra).

I know that this post is dropping a lot of references, so let’s return to the band and the album concretely – seeing Coastlands live emphasized all of this I’m saying. I overflowed with energy and intensity, and I was even more impressed after the concert when speaking with the bassist and realizing that the band’s sound has changed and developed in the last couple albums as the lineup has changed, and new experimentation and growth is already shining through in the little that’s been revealed about their upcoming album. They are harnessing the strength of a new cycle – transitioning with change, the blockages that the last couple years have thrown at all of us in so many ways, and other various challenges of individual and group lives. They take these and shine. That’s the opportunity of the Death card.

Two versions of the Death card – Crowley’s from the Thoth Deck, which shows the cutting off of the old, and a more current reimagining of the Thoth deck, the Wayward Dark, by an artist in Portland (hence the choice here)

I want to showcase the final song of Death as a share here. The song “Marrow” starts with a sorrowful chorus of voices and doomy guitar riffs with discordant static from the amps. It grows into a heavy crescendo of guitar and drums. The old has been cut off, and we’re to the marrow deep in the bones of the broken. Then the song shifts to a more pensive, flowing guitar on top of the heaviness it pulls us along beyond that first stage into something more, something that survives. That’s the true power in that marrow*. It’s the potential to stand up again and make something new.

*One last spiritual geek aside on Marrow – I can’t help but be reminded of the story of Bodhidharma’s successor, Huike, who cut off his arm to gain Bodhidharma’s tutelage. Later on, Bodhidharma passed on his “marrow” in recognizing the transmission of his teaching to Huike.

Cross-Post: The Post-Rock Way – Hymn | Spotlight: Sigur Rós

15 May 2022 Leave a comment

by zeuslyone in Music Tags: , , , , ,

This post was originally on my other blog about exploring spirituality and philosophy through post-rock music. I felt it must be shared, as the song I highlight and the experience I had in the described concert really resonate with the last post I just wrote. I recently wrote a post on the best albums of 2021 in post-rock, so I recommend checking that out if you find the music in this post interesting.

Last night, I saw another post-rock legend, Sigur Rós, and like in the experience of my previous post on Mono, I was left feeling touched in a way that’s difficult to describe – nearly moved to tears on multiple occasions. This surprised me, as even though they’re revered by many in the genre, I’ve never been deeply into Sigur Rós. I wanted to share a bit more about this experience.

First, I want to repeat a quote that came from Taka, the songwriter for Mono, regarding the spiritual experience that music can present:

“Music is about experiences,” Goto says. “Witnessing extremely loud sounds live is one type of experience. It’s almost like seeing a spark of thunder in a quiet night sky, then hearing the echoes of loud thunder. It’s beautiful, yet crushing – an unusual experience.”

“At the same time, subliminal music is extremely spiritual. Every sound and melody start to soak into every cell in your body, takes them subconsciously and moves them. Music can speak to everyone more eloquently than words. It’s close to philosophy. It’s a gift from God.”

Taka, from this story

Watching Sigur Rós evoked precisely this sentiment in me a few times throughout the performance, even though I wasn’t that familiar with their oeuvre. The super-fans around me were much more amped, clearly experiencing every note deeply and profoundly, much like I did in seeing Mono recently, but even at a more basic connection, the supreme artistry and intensity of this band moved me in similar ways with certain songs.

Personally, as a post-rock super-fan who has grown much more deeply into darker emotional soundscapes with very technical instrumentation over the last few years (for instance, Russian Circles is my most listened to band of the last two years), I found Sigur Rós’ instrumental aspect a bit more lackluster. It truly hinges around Jonsi’s amazing vocals to really create the emotional soundscapes that awe the listener.

Furthermore, this still fits post-rock in the way my first post on this blog outlined, as they have played with language to move beyond any easily understood concepts, even pressing a gibberish, created language into many songs to push beyond the barriers of language into an emotive space that the listeners are meant to resonate with and fill in the meaning themselves. This article really digs into that well.

For me, the songs that moved me were the songs in a major key, where the instrumentation resonated fullest with the falsettos of Jonsi’s voice. These songs gave me goosebumps and teary eyes, feeling like there was some deep cleansing of heart at play. They felt much like Taka’s description above, but the incomprehensible vocals that expressed emotion more than actual words pull the heart along like some sort of transcendent hymn to human experience. As Taka said, those moments are a gift from God.

There is probably no greater example of this for me from the set than Sæglópur from Takk… Takk means “thanks” in Icelandic, and Sæglópur means “lost seafarer”. The song is a mix of Icelandic and the band-created Hopelandic. It is one of their more well-known songs. I have been aware of it for years.

In listening to this song, you’ll likely feel a lot of emotions in the delicate, lonely beauty of the beginning and the crashing intensity when the rock experimentation in sound comes to the fore in mid-song. It pulls at the seeking heart, yearning for solace, facing challenge and pain, and continuing to press onward.

It’s a hymn to the human heart, and that feeling is what shone through for me with Sigur Rós time and again. The songs that felt like existential hymns, every last one of them evoked a sigh from the audience when they were over. That’s a spiritual experience that goes beyond words.

Cross-Post: The Post-Rock Way – Transformation | Spotlight: Mono

01 May 2022 Leave a comment

by zeuslyone in Music Tags: , , , , , ,

This post was originally on my other blog about exploring spirituality and philosophy through post-rock music. I recently wrote a post on the best albums of 2021 in post-rock, so I recommend checking that out if you find the music in this post interesting.

Earlier this week, I went to see my favorite band live for the 4th time: Mono. Up to the concert, I’d had some mixed feelings due to personal history, but I came out of the concert feeling deeply cleansed. Here’s what I wrote on Instagram:

Words cannot capture how much this concert from my favorite band, @monoofjapan , meant to me tonight. I nearly cried several times through what truly felt like a pilgrimage of the soul. The artistry is so powerful it breaks your heart wide open. At the end, an encounter with a friend led to us staying for autographs, and I got a copy of the first Mono album I fell for as a piece to sign and frame. So thrilled for every moment of this night. #postrocklive #concert #musicasspiritualexperience

To be clear, as this might just feel like fanboyish excitement: Mono’s newest album is called “Pilgrimage of the Soul“, and it’s inspired in part by William Blake’s poem, “Auguries of Innocence“. Lines from the earliest section of the poem are regularly quoted as inspirational and highlight Blake’s spiritual aspirations/virtues. In fact, not only are several song titles based on these lines, an audio clip of a reading of the poem played at one point, closing out a song in the set.

To see a World in a Grain of Sand
And a Heaven in a Wild Flower
Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand
And Eternity in an hour

Auguries of Innocence, opening lines

The set was interspersed with tracks between this album and the previous, “Nowhere, Now Here“. The feelings of nature and pushing to greater heights of a spiritual pilgrimage had the counterpoints of the more minor key of the previous album, and the balance was stunning. Beyond this, there were a couple classics: Halcyon and Ashes in the Snow (arguably Mono’s best song).

In thinking of my experience, the album, and Mono’s greater discography, I realized that this idea of transformation in the strongest, most beautiful sense, although one facing the challenges of suffering and sadness, is something I’ve always taken from Mono’s work, and I’m convinced it’s a dynamic thread throughout. Their first album is titled “Under the Pipal Tree”, a direct reference to the Buddha’s enlightenment under the Bodhi Tree (the Pipal Tree). The Buddha’s spiritual journey is one of recognizing the problem of suffering in the life of all sentient beings and seeking peace in response to it.

Subsequent releases riff on problems like this, thinking on fantastic takes of the connection with others, the remembrance of family, dealing with disappointment, and a sojourn through Hell.

A much younger me discovered “Hymn to the Immortal Wind” (the album I refer to in my Instagram post), and the experimentation of rock crossed with classical orchestra with a delay-laden tremolo lead guitar, immediately got through this focus on nature, humanity, connection, and heart/soul. It was a turning point in my life, from which I’ve never been the same, and furthermore, after which, I’ve struggled to share these feelings with others. My trepidation at the concert was grief: a feeling of sharing that having been lost.

However, with the opening riff of the first song, “Riptide“, and the subsequent shift to crushing power and speed, I felt all my clinging of attachment unmoored, and this feeling of having my narrative torn apart by beauty, by majesty, and my sheer, powerful abundance of all that is, came through multiple times, leaving me nearly in tears.

There are few post-rock bands as masterful as Mono, and Taka’s songwriting and presence on stage are nothing short of genius, and this kind of spiritual experience is intentional in their music, especially live. As Taka said when touring for “Requiem for Hell”:

“Music is about experiences,” Goto says. “Witnessing extremely loud sounds live is one type of experience. It’s almost like seeing a spark of thunder in a quiet night sky, then hearing the echoes of loud thunder. It’s beautiful, yet crushing – an unusual experience.”

“At the same time, subliminal music is extremely spiritual. Every sound and melody start to soak into every cell in your body, takes them subconsciously and moves them. Music can speak to everyone more eloquently than words. It’s close to philosophy. It’s a gift from God.”

Taka, from this story

This quote summarizes both my feelings about post-rock’s intensity of expression and the intensity of Mono’s live shows. I highly recommend exploring the spiritual experience of transformation that their music offers.

Cross-Post: The Post-Rock Way – Presence | Each Moment is the Universe

10 Mar 2022 Leave a comment

by zeuslyone in Buddhism, Existentialism, Music, Presence Tags: , , , ,

This post was originally on my other blog about exploring spirituality and philosophy through post-rock music. I recently wrote a post on the best albums of 2021 in post-rock, so I recommend checking that out if you find the music in this post interesting. A recent release of an old favorite band inspired this post.

A few weeks back, an old post-rock favorite released a revamp of a previous album. The second song grabbed me in particular, leaving me almost in tears due to several layers of personal meaning in the album.

First, this album was one of the first post-rock points of connection between myself and the woman whom my heart was still broken over. Second, the album was being released on the 2nd anniversary of the day we met. Third, the song feels like an exploration of the faith in facing each day with perseverance, even in the difficulty of a human life.

I had meant to write this post earlier. Now, it feels out of tune with my emotional landscape, but I still feel the poignancy of that idea/sentiment should be shared: the presence of getting up and doing one’s best to be present, kind, and open-hearted to whatever arises day to day, no matter the difficulty involved. In my other blog, I’ve spoken many times about the Zen saying of “before enlightenment, chopping wood, carrying water; after enlightenment, chopping wood, carrying water.” So much of the pursuit of release from suffering, no matter the pursuit (including many practitioners takes of Buddhism) falls into an idea of deliverance from suffering, such as nirvana/enlightenment being a fully different realm or life, but that’s not the case. I touched on this in my most recent post on my other blog – the Buddha lives in the burning house, i.e. nirvana is right in the middle of the burning suffering of samsara. There’s no other life or existence out there. Opening to the moment vulnerably and being present to the full unfolding of it is key to showing up with an appropriate response that is the wu wei skillful action of a buddha. I struggle to express this, but ultimately, this comes forth in the realization of selflessness and the interdependence of all things: each moment is the universe.

Another much more beautifully poetic and philosophical way for us to express this is some evocative statements from Dogen’s Genjokoan (my title here is somewhat inspired by Katagiri Roshi’s book on Zen and Dogen of the same title). Warning – these truly are confusing to the extent of almost being infuriating to standard logic: truly a koan. I posted some of this on facebook years ago, and several friends got full on annoyed because they didn’t understand. However, in philosophy, and especially in Zen koans, we need to open ourselves to the conundrum and let it break our standard conceptual barriers.

Since the Buddha Way by nature goes beyond [the dichotomy of] abundance and deficiency, there is arising and perishing, delusion and realization, living beings and buddhas.

Therefore flowers fall even though we love them; weeds grow even though we dislike them. Conveying oneself toward all things to carry out practice-enlightenment is delusion. All things coming and carrying out pratice-enlightenment through the self is realization. Those who greatly realize delusions are buddhas. Those who are greatly deluded in realization are living beings. Furthermore, there are those who attain realization beyond realization and those who are deluded within delusion.

…

To study the Buddha Way is to study the self. To study the self is to forget the self. To forget the self is to be verified by all things. To be verified by all things is to let the body and mind of the self and the body and mind of others drop off. There is a trace of realization that cannot be grasped. We endlessly express this ungraspable trace of realization.

…

When a person attains realization, it is like the moon’s reflection in water. The moon never becomes wet; the water is never disturbed. Although the moon is a vast and great light, it is reflected in a drop of water. The whole moon and even the whole sky are reflected in a drop of dew on a blade of grass. Realization does not destroy the person, as the moon does not make a hole in the water. The person does not obstruct realization, as a drop of dew does not obstruct the moon in the sky.

…

When we make this very place our own, our practice becomes the actualization of reality (genjokoan). When we make this path our own, our activity naturally becomes actualization of reality (genjokoan). This path, this place, is neither big nor small, neither self nor others. It has not existed before this moment nor has it come into existence now. Therefore [the reality of all things] is thus. In the same way, when a person engages in practice-enlightenment in the Buddha Way, as the person realizes one dharma, the person permeates that dharma; as the person encounters one practice, the person [fully] practices that practice.

Translation of Dogen’s Genjokoan as presented in Realizing Genjokoan: The Key to Dogen’s Shobogenzo – Shohaku Okumura (pp. 1-4)

This may all seem obscure, but it’s worth summing up with pointing out how Dogen focused on the practicalities of life. Practice was outlined in such examples as how a cook should prepare food to stay fully present to the process. The day in and day out is precisely this: the actualization of reality that is chopping wood; the actualization of reality that is carrying water. In other words, it’s a mindful openness to the interdependence of each moment, and furthermore, that engagement is not one where delusion is forever left behind, it happens within our deluded life. Buddhas are those who greatly realize delusions – sitting awake right in the middle of them. The Buddha lives in the burning house.

When I listen to this song, “When I Rise & When I Lay Down”, I feel this engaged, living practice. Another way we could think of it – that realized delusion – is the creative affirmation of Sisyphus that closes out The Myth of Sisyphus. Even in struggling to push a damned boulder to the top of a hill in the afterlife over and over, we have to imagine Sisyphus happy in some of the most poetic, heartlifting, Nietzschean words you’ll ever read:

One always finds one’s burden again. But Sisyphus teaches the higher fidelity that negates the gods and raises rocks. He too concludes that all is well. This universe henceforth without a master seems to him neither sterile nor futile. Each atom of that stone, each mineral flake of that night-filled mountain, in itself forms a world. The struggle itself toward the heights is enough to fill a man’s heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy.

The Myth of Sisyphus, Albert Camus. Trans: Justin O’Brien (p. 123)

Oddly enough, Old Solar is a Christian band with religious themes resonant throughout – the album is called “Quiet Prayers” and has other songs with titles such as “Help Us to Be Faithful”. As such, taking a deeply spiritual tone as a call to holding to a faithfully engaged life throughout the burdens of the day to day is perfectly on point with this song, just with a very different perspective of what that kind of practice entails: not one of the grace of God, but one of the practice of actualizing this moment in its totality, even in the midst of suffering.

This song may have made me cry for personal reasons, but these considerations I’ve outlined are so much deeper and more profound, and I hope you’ll find them in listening to it too.

Cross-Post: The Post-Rock Way – Majesty | A Hymn to Impermanence and Emptiness

22 Feb 2022 Leave a comment

by zeuslyone in Buddhism, Music Tags: , , , , , , , ,

This post was originally on my other blog about exploring spirituality and philosophy through post-rock music. I recently wrote a post on the best albums of 2021 in post-rock, so I recommend to check that out if you find the music in this post interesting. A recent night drive with a sudden return to a favorite song from years back inspired me to write this post.

Summer 2014
I live in Seattle, making my way through the drudgery of a job in customer service after years in academia. In time to myself, I work on reading and running – taking care of body and mind. Many a run is empowered by 65daysofstatic’s album “Wild Light”. The first song in particular feels like some electric thrum into the core of my being: “Heat Death Infinity Splitter”. It feels like a defiant stand against the difficulties of life with strength and aplomb. As the opening sampling says: “No one knows what is happening. No one knows what is happening. There is a lot of danger out there. OK?” The overwhelming electronic reverb after these lines tears apart fear, hesitation, and any sense of separation from this very moment, and pushes me forward into it with an open heart.

February 2022
I’m driving home from a friend’s and my cigarette lighter charger adapter for my phone is broken. I can’t use my phone to play music. I recall having seen a few old cds under the driver seat. I reach behind me as I start the drive, and the 3rd CD I grab is 65daysofstatic’s soundtrack to No Man’s Sky. When I open it, though, I find “Wild Light” instead. I excitedly pop it in, having not listened to it in some time. I am immediately entranced and destroyed by the static.

My heart has been awash in heartbreak for months. My spiritual journey has been one of trying to refind my way on a solitary path, while questioning and reevaluating, possibly even annihilating my concepts of love, partnership, and romance. In my worst days, meaninglessness, depression, and suicidal thoughts abound.

Listening to it now, versus my younger experience, this feels like a hymn to impermanence and by extension, emptiness. Perhaps this pops in my mind because earlier in the day, I had been reading a book by the Dalai Lama on Buddhism and the path to nirvana. In the first chapter, he goes over the four seals of Buddhism, the first of which is impermanence; the second is suffering; the third is anatta – no-self; the fourth is the potential peace beyond suffering. The thing is: if I were to summarize all of these, I’d say that the entirety of the four seals are the conundrum of living within emptiness but not seeing it. Impermanence is due to things being empty of inherent substance. Suffering is due to clinging to things as not-empty. Anatta follows as a corollary of impermanence as emptiness – there is no permanent soul/essence/substance behind phenomena. Peace is achieved through rectifying clinging by seeing things as empty. A longer description: there is no permanent essence behind any phenomenon – all is empty, i.e. a fluctuating process of appearing and disappearing without some ongoing entity/soul/form behind it, and yet, we suffer by clinging to things as more solid than this empty fluctuation, and therefore, peace can be achieved by the cessation of such clinging through the wisdom and accordant action in relation to seeing things as they really “are” (even such verbs as “is”/”are” can get us into philosophical trouble of unnoticed reification).

This song points to the whole flowing decay of the entire universe. It’s all a heat death infinity splitter – i.e. even atoms will eventually come apart into a splitting of the unfolding infinity we’re currently a part of.

With that in mind, the thrum of noise feels like a musical display of the wondrous unfolding and the seeming danger of everything falling apart, but much like the younger me felt emboldened by this song’s “lot of danger”, the realization of this impermanence invites us to let go of fear – there’s no self/soul/”I”/being that continues in this flux; it’s all merely flux.

For myself, I listen to it now and feel something I’ve been pondering for some time: even concepts, feelings, and attachments are impermanent. My desires for love, for the person who broke me, and for some sort of meaning attached to all the struggle start to decay in the static flux of the emergent abiding sway’s decay into the emergence of the next (riff on Heidegger). To return to Tibetan Buddhism: “Regard all dharmas as dreams.”

All is impermanent – even my “self” and any experiences it may have. Those are just as empty as anything else. All conditioned things are impermanent – even the very atoms that make up “me” and every single thought and feeling that arises as experience upon these component parts.

Cross-Post: The Post-Rock Way – Love | Destiny | The Red Thread

29 Jan 2022 Leave a comment

by zeuslyone in Buddhism, Love, Music, Philosophy Tags: , , , , ,

This post was originally on my other blog about exploring spirituality and philosophy through post-rock music. I recently wrote a post on the best albums of 2021 in post-rock, so I recommend to check that out if you find the music in this post interesting. I had to write this post about one of my favorite post-rock songs with vocals. I hope you enjoy it as well.

One of the most moving post-rock discoveries for me last year was Akai Ito by we.own.the.sky..

This is one of the rare post-rock songs that has lyrics, and coming at the end of the album, the words make it even more powerful. Furthermore, the lyrics are short, simple, and moving, yet also somewhat cryptic:

The stars. They fall.
Like threads unfurl.
They guide me home.
Where I belong.

Lyrics – “Akai Ito” by we.own.the.sky

This is only repeated a few times, the final time being with a full chorus instead of a single voice.

Hearing this song immediately made me look up what “Akai Ito” means. It’s a reference to the Japanese version of the Chinese myth of the “red thread” a concept of love and destiny in which lovers are connected by a red thread of fate.

I don’t really believe in soulmates or some sort of destiny like that, but I can understand the pull of profound love and how powerful it can be. It truly is a sense of home and belonging, a seeming deep fit of shared connection that seems so meaningful and powerful that it feels like maybe greater forces are at play.

I’m not sure what to think of my own experience of this at this point in my life. I feel that I’ve lost that sense of belonging and home but feel the connection still, no matter what events have come forward. It’s hard, confusing, and sad. I’ve actually meant to write some Buddhist sutra inspired poetry on my other blog about this sense of heartbreak in such feelings of loss and coping with them. I’ll link here when/if I do.

That said, one thing I’m certain of is that the way to approach these surprising great feelings in life is to let them arise and wash over you, not clinging to the joy, but just sitting with it while you’re fortunate enough to experience it, and also not trying to cling to it when despairing that its impermanence makes it fade, wither, and disappear. All things are impermanent. The only way to maintain them is by effort by both parties and circumstances supporting that continued thriving. I’m reminded of a post I wrote about change and cultivating something ongoing regarding Taoism on my other blog, but more precisely to sitting with the joy and the sorrow without clinging, I always think of Dogen:

Therefore, flowers fall even though we love them; weeds grow even though we dislike them.

Dogen Genjokoan – as translated by Shohaku Okumura in Realizing Genjokoan: The Key to Dogen’s Shobogenzo

Furthermore, I’m reminded of some thoughts about love I’ve shared on my other blog, particularly here and in a podcast-esque recording about some experiences of love I’ve had. The key quote was from Stanley Cavell’s The Claim of Reason in which he’s talking about learning words as a child and that there are some concepts that are so huge that they do not express all they could take from us. In some regards, myth and song bridge that gap a bit – pulling us to grander feelings regarding these concepts, and when I hear this song, that’s what I feel – a more grandiose sense of love and connection, without ever mentioning either word.

But although I didn’t tell her, and she didn’t learn, either what the word “kitty” means or what a kitty is, if she keeps leaping and I keep looking and smiling, she will learn both. I have wanted to say: Kittens–what we call “kittens”–do not exist in her world yet, she has not acquired the forms of life which contain them. They do not exist in something like the way cities and mayors will not exist in her world until long after pumpkins and kittens do; or like the way God or love or responsibility or beauty do not exist in our world; we have not mastered, or we have forgotten, or we have distorted, or learned through fragmented models, the forms of life which could make utterances like “God exists” or “God is dead” or “I love you” or “I cannot do otherwise” or “Beauty is but the beginning of terror” bear all the weight they could carry, express all they could take from us. We do not know the meaning of the words. We look away and leap around.

Stanley Cavell – The Claim of Reason pp. 172-173

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