Was going to write about something other than this, but Rich Johnston reminding us that this wiz Alan Moore’s 70th birthday got me to thinking alternately. I have gotten much from Moore’s writing, his prose in particular, but most of his music is just not my thing. All of it tells a story, but whether the presentation of his collaborators amounts to spoken-word punk or theatrical frivolity, while I do appreciate the spirit of it I cannot abide repeat plays.
Moore’s dabbling in music across the years show him to be a wise lyricist as to be expected, and hypnotic vocalist, but much of the music itself never really caught me. I’d imagine he’d be a fan of Adrian Belew, whose King Crimson band created these dark, epic soundscapes some decades back, while his solo work could be more charismatic, though falling victim to what I call the cabana and keyboards era of 1980s popular culture. King Crimson crafted these massive, 10 or 20 minute songs without real vocalization or perhaps among the first to downplay vox as merely another instrument in the mix, inspiring bands like Tool quite heavily. When those of a certain age hear the descriptive “experimental” they often think of a Frank Zappa, doing things such as incorporating objects which are not instruments for musical purposes, with the end result being something more offbeat than not, more often than not. Or, creating lengthier sonic vistas on par with film scores only free of cinematic attachment. King Crimson did neither, as their stuff was clearly still a kind of rock, just a kind of rock-infused storytelling distinctly their own. But Belew’s solo stuff generally, no matter the subject matter had a light-hearted presentation, his bendable guitar necks agreeable with the improbability of trying to scribe a dark song with steel drums in the background; a throwback to the old Steve Martin gag about writing a sad song with a banjo. Many of the strongest song-writers active in the 20th century’s final quarter complied with the cabana and keyboards ethos, from Tom Waits to George Harrison, and so very much of Moore’s rigmarole of an audio cartoon catalogue feels cut from the same select continuum of chords. Decline in English Murder is a compelling exception, the tune I welcome, and with the music of his collaborator more finely befitting the images portrayed. I fully accept how such thoughts and feelings are my own, deserving no impact upon others who happen to possess thoughts and feelings of their own in turn, for imposing one’s will upon others is never not an imposition. Like I wrote in the last post here, nobody can truly claim anything for their own but ramification.
In his massive tome Jerusalem, which my rereading is prompting the interesting commentary down at the old blood-bank, Moore considers how existence as we understand it is predetermined, with space and time mere perspectives rather than points of reference themselves. And in that way, it leaves us with nobody to blame for anything and nobody to admire for anything, including Alan Moore himself, as all things said or done have always been just when and where they occurred regardless of free will. Readers of my site will recognize those ideas, although through my coming at them from very different life experiences. He does see a strong correlation between magic and art however, the two supposedly at odds with religion which I’d argue is misguided, because I see art and religion as the same approach to life, not engaging or conveying the consciousness as tasked by magic, but of voicing a priority for whichever breed of thought or feeling at cost to alternatives, which is bluntly the basis of modern art and modern religion alike. I know persons who will argue this only applies to commercial arts, but honestly the non-commercial art is the art never to be experienced, which everyone takes for granted, casting all known art as commercial in intent, for the profit or the esteem of the creator or both. Art promises a salvation, for artist and audience, whether an inward reprieve from the insanity of living or inspiring an outbound glory of Earthly or heavenly reward, whereas magic is what one does to spite its omission. Magic; the workaround to salvation.
Consider the blues as solitary music, the more people performing it the more it becomes something other. And the bigger the audience, the more people can deflect from the heart and soul of differing experiences wot went into the message. A deflection which struck me as the only real case of human shields, the clusters listening to the blues needing a crowd to be lost in lest they actually hear a story that might ground their own illusions of heart and soul. It’s why the devil prefers the crossroads, seeing that humanity deserves to choose for itself as opposed to going with whatever ebb and flow. Likewise, any group professing itself embattled with a universal issue will always neglect the individual points of reference causing said issue, preferring the symbology of balladry to the true thing by misidentifying other perspectives as their own. Ignoring or neglecting perspectives not complimentary to our own, for the sake of pride and comfort, is as self-serving as any artist or religious leader, but doing so regardless of expenses rendered upon the livelihoods and well-being of others is perhaps the ultimate of human dilemmas. Scientists still cannot be on the same page about what causes or even constitutes the phenomenon of ball-lightning. Instead of being enamored with such natural mysteries of existence seemingly everybody would rather occupy space and time giving unwarranted blame over who deserves life the least, unwarranted admiration to the biggest ego to swagger their way, all whilst searching desperately for artificial inspirations of arrogant enrichment and ignorant entertainment, to fill the voids manifested by resisting control over their own lives.
Across the country of past months, how many cities quietly burned off mounds of homeless piled high, corpses dead from dehydration or stroke by the year’s prolonged heatwaves? Whether by powerlessness or by reasoning, the less inclined you are towards subjecting anyone to a fate worse than your own through buying into whichever superiority, the less others will take you for a human being. All resource and opportunity I deny for myself is left remaining for others, because somehow I have always understood that object permanence is simply another forced perspective. I told someone recently that there may be a couple of chapters left in my story, but honestly, I am just waiting til my death. There’s nothing to look forward to and I an fine with that, as the world was never mine to be divided or conquered. By the contrasting of elsewhen and elsewhere, Trump is a shit-stained adult diaper and the GOP take it for a inkblot test and see only the face of god.
A grim reality is how interchangeable peace is with death. Although war is commonly misinterpreted as being the opposite of peace, for so long as the only peace we may truly know comes in the form of death, nonetheless is war fundamentally not any form of life. Rather, war is the absence of wisdom. The USA is looking to prove how it seriously does not know the difference between antisemitism and anti-Zionism, to the extent of learning how laughable Uncle Sam has truly become before the rest of the planet. Every single preventable death the world round is the effect of some ego somewhere rationalizing its own action or its own inaction. Maybe, as a last-ditch alternative effort to resuscitate the economy, Presidency issues executive orders for all time capsules nationwide to be dug up immediately, so that contents might re-enter circulation.
In the oughts, right-wingers were nauseatingly fond of saying “terrorists hate our freedoms” yet in the times since, they themselves have devolved down the toilet of a void their egos thrive vaingloriously to fill, offering nothing to the public or their constituents but demands for whichever subsets of the greater whole to suffer lesser rights, lesser resources and lesser opportunities. No policy to unite behind, no ambitions beyond immediate gratification at the expense of anyone and everyone else. Elon Musk is a fine example to that effect, oblivious to how free speech means legal protections, not social acceptance. Mandating which responses are permissible is itself censoring of speech, yet personality cult leaders whether religious or artistic are defined by insisting to the contrary. Musk has no right to claim ownership of the rights of others, of their resources or opportunities, or their thoughts or their feelings. Nobody anywhere actually holds such reins. No matter how much they thoroughly despise others having any freedom.
As every politico is rightwing themselves whether they allow themselves to see it or not, all they can muster is considering what appeases them and nothing else. In a culture whose patriotism pronounces itself with the eagerness to see one’s fellows suffer and die needlessly, anyone who might ever justify whichever subset of the population experiencing lesser rights or resources or opportunities than oneself is categorically rightwing. Whenever and wherever leftism is concerned with putting the needs of others before personal wish-fulfillment, then everyone wishing for anonymity for their crimes and sins yet praise for their good deeds is rightwing. We actually do survive without the fantasies of others, without the love of others, so it’s ridiculous how these matters receive the greatest emphasis in life.
Despite obsessively misidentifying other perspectives as their own, like how most Pro-Choice advocates are in fact not victims of circumstances beyond their control but cowardly hide behind those victims so as to maintain a personal convenience for evading accountability, nobody in the USA wants a Democracy where persons they hate share the same rights as themselves. Doublespeak voices opposed to others having the same choices view living embryos the exact same way that Nazis view minorities and homosexuals, that they are not human beings and if you disallow me from denying them their self-determination then somehow my rights are being infringed. The most self-indulging are so terrified by the prospects of equal rights yet will never acknowledge that for themselves, how foregoing democratic processes altogether would mean giving up their say in virtually every component of their daily lives. Oh, but their guys would be the ones calling the shots, so they wouldn’t suffer much at all, rather they’d have an endless slumber party! Except that, no 2 egoists can side for long, just as no 2 militias can work in unison without each wanting to be the centerpiece for attentions and affections. There is no unity, no coming together of aligned forces, only a battle for supreme ego to go unabridged. And standing in the way, is a rightwing Democrat party whose members are no less shy about having their own wills be done, devaluing the thoughts and feelings and experiences not complimentary toward their own. As but one of endless examples, anybody taken aback by the terminology of decolonization confesses in the doing that existing colonization is kosher. Granted, though most every federal office is still recovering from the strip-mining of the Trump administration, the opposition party has remained too self-possessed to do anything to prevent the continuous downward spiral. As I’ve written before, no matter who you think the good guys are in politics or industry, if they have failed repeatedly and so dramatically to stop every horrible thing committed upon us by the bad guys, then the good guys are either incompetent or complicit or both. But relent from supporting either power-mongering tribe’s fantasies and somehow you are the subhuman troublemaker. Synonymous for how actually refusing to bear witness to false idols garners the scorn of every Judaeo-Christian org’s membership of followers. The one thing every psyche can agree on is that evidently nothing is more evil than failure to indulge one’s fantasies. Going all the way back to Lucifer.
Although, I bet more persons than not agree to varying degrees that everything to do with life only worsens as time goes by, and indeed time going by is the problem itself, because I’d also wager that the root cause for what ails all of us is the excessive time travel by parties unknown, distorting the continuum to engage its fetishes back and to the left of the womb especially but all other points to follow. When they could just wait for their own natural deaths, and see and do all the things they ever said or did all over again, knowing the true experience of salvation’s perpetual incompleteness rather than remaking the world into a fantasy for denying it. Alan Moore agrees evidently with Nietzsche’s conclusions to his own element of Eternal Recurrence, wherein if we must be accustomed to living this life forever, then we should make good decisions to enable a bettering of ourselves as opposed to benefiting ourselves. And that won’t ever come from pushing or selling whichever dogma, but from allowing everyone everywhere to find the value of their own life. Art and religion depend upon the subservience of others for dreams to come true, but magic, magic is about making things happen with the understanding that dreams are defined by never coming true. As we cannot help but to relive our lives orbiting the reality of creation and destruction being subjective to the ego, and thus synonymous in both cause and effect, there’s simply no time or space for them to. The only results are what we provide, the only kindness or graciousness we can expect rests in what we carry, and the only help is in what we bring to the table by our own hand, choosing for ourselves to present it to those who need it, or to those who simply want it.
I would insist that creating art is always inconsequential, sharing it even more so, with those looking to be enriched by it misconstruing masturbation for survival. Going by the end product of Moore’s works in diverse media, I suspect his music offers the most evidence of him committing it for the fuck of it.