This is from a presentation I gave at the Legion of Steel Metalfest & Conference 2015
[IMAGE of Mark Rothko’s black painting]
LAUDATIONS/LEGACY
I want to thank all my colleagues and metal community. I feel like I am with my tribe and am proud to be included as a presenter. Thank you, Sara and everyone else for organizing this event. Thank you to Gillman for its ongoing commitment to the scene. I think the last concert I went to here was for The Dicks, back in the day, it’s great you are still here!
Also, it’s compelling to me that I fell in love with black metal through Marduk during “the Legion” years, so the name Legion of Steel really resonates.
My Paper: Open a Vein: Suicidal Black Metal and Enlightenment
I’m going to give you an overview of the content of my paper, and then relay some of the things that I’ve been thinking about lately as a result of having written it.
I want to start with Albert Camus’s quote from The Myth of Sisyphus, “There is but one truly serious philosophical problem and that is suicide.”
A few years ago, my exploratory essay, Open a Vein: Suicidal Black Metal and Enlightenment was published in the inaugural issue of Helvete: A Journal of Black Metal Theory. I referenced three bands that have been associated with that particular genre: Shining, I Shalt Become, and Make a Change…Kill Yourself. I consider my piece a conceptual map that links SBM to three topics of discussion in the field of suicidology (although I am not a suicidologist): suicide for self-knowledge, wisdom, and purpose.
Self-Knowledge
Accounts of enlightenment are infused with transcendental and ecstatic language. For example, Evelyn Underhill in her book Mysticism introduces terms such as Absolute Reality, The Transcendental World, and Undifferentiated Life. Aldous Huxley, in The Doors of Perception, writes of the Clear Light of the Void, the Inner Light, and Unmitigated Reality. Other expressions use “light” metaphors such as “to see the light,” “to gaze on ten suns shining, “to be surrounded in white light,” “to be guided by the light,” or to encounter whitening, flashing, ebbing light. So, although Shining’s vocalist Niklas Kvarforth denies any specific religious topic in the band’s music, I was struck by his claims that he started to explore destroying himself physically and psychologically at a very young age in order “to break all the borders and to fuck myself up to get to a higher level.” This relates to many hierarchically organized spiritual traditions where a person strives to attain enlightenment in stages, often through a series of particular practices or exercises which may involve self-inflicted physical pain, self-denial, and self-torture. The drive to kill oneself is really a demand for an encounter with absolute reality…a demand for a profound overthrow of daily life.
Self-sacrifice: Mahayana Buddhism, Christianity, and Islam
So, I go on to present three examples from Mahayana Buddhism, Christianity, and Islam. These are three religions that I am personally familiar with. The examples chosen included Thích Quảng Đức [IMAGE] who, in 1963, burned himself in protest of the injustices of the Diem regime in Vietnam. For years, I had carried his image with me, and felt passionate to honor him in my writing. For Christianity, there is Jesus Christ himself, and I focused on traditional accounts of the lives of the saints such as Saint Simeon Stylites who was a pillar-hermit who stood on one leg for a year atop a sixty foot pillar that was exposed to the elements, while the other leg mushroomed into sores and worms. He sets an example for chronic suicide as a path to enlightenment.
Suicide Bombers
My research lead me to the world of suicide bombers: [IMAGE] the suicidal martyrs (called shaheeds in Arabic) from Hamas enlist as sacrificial soldiers in order to take their place in the roster of the great Martyrs who will meet together in Paradise and who offer themselves as role models for others. Shafiqa, a failed suicide bomber explains that there is a feeling of renewal and clarity by overcoming the natural fear of death. She explains, “It took me a long time to decide…It was wonderful to say goodbye to life. I felt like I was up in the clouds from the moment I knew I was going to be a shaheeda.”
Franco De Masi, in his book The Enigma of The Suicide Bomber: A Psychoanalytic Essay, quotes Yasmina Khadra’s book The Attack:
“There’s no worse cataclysm than humiliation. It’s an evil beyond measure... It takes away your taste for life. And until you die, you have only one idea in your head: How can I come to a worthy end after having lived miserable, and blind, and naked.”
I believe these themes are reflected in SBM. This sentiment is echoed in Shining’s lyrics “Through Corridors of Oppression”:
Slowly,
Passing the oppressed,
Innocent,
sons,
and daughters lost,
trembling
in the bottomless depths of darkness,
successfully,
failing
in their search.
To search the light,
To search salvation.
Recent Concerns and Questions
Since writing my paper, I have become even more involved in understanding the motivations of suicide bombers. I want to learn more about their lives and their deaths. In particular, I am concerned by the use of children for suicide bombing missions; we have examples of this with the child suicide bombers being used by the militant Islamist extremist group, Boku Haram, based in Nigeria and Chad, who have declared allegiance to the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (aka ISIL or ISIS). [IMAGE] You may remember last year’s media coverage of Boku Haram’s abduction of 63 school-age girls. In addition to other recruits, there are reports that the 60 who were not able to escape have been enlisted as suicide bombers. Since February of this year, there have been monthly attacks using children, one as recent as last Sunday, October 11, where two girls between the ages of 13 and 17 carried out suicide bombings in the northern Cameroon village of Kangeleri.
The videod beheadings of ISIS, and the charred bloody meat piles of child suicide bombers remind me of a comment that I incorporated in my paper. It was said by Acerbus from the Black Metal Band, Ondskapt, which I transcribed from Mark Lundberg’s 2008 documentary Black Metal Satanica:
“I can tell you this, that if this whore of a world lasts even ten more years you’ll find something even heavier than Ondskapt. I can tell you that something more advanced, something more devilish, more extreme…I don’t know if it will be raping babies or if it would be burning priests on local television…I don’t know if it would be some kind of genocide which is filmed for the camera.” It’s seven years into the 10 he predicted.
FINAL COMMENT
I mention this because I am amongst my community, and I believe it is a community who sees the shit and the horror and can articulate our anger and outrage. We see it and feel it and don’t run from it. I teach college students, and one of my students, after learning that I wrote about SBM, said, “You delve in the dark, you go there. Is it ok if I write and make art about that?” [We talked about this yesterday: asking permission.] I don’t advocate suicide, but I do think the tropes and themes of SBM are a vital meditation on all manifestations of “the suicide question.” Writing this paper lead me to some profoundly disturbing topics, and I am a more aware person because of it.
I want to close with an [image] from the censored cover of Thy Art Is Murder’s album “Holy War.”
Thank you very much for your time.
Continuing research notes: [Children proffered up by friends and families as sacrificial trophies.]
Louis Althusser: Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses: the subject is hailed
Avital Ronell’s The Telephone Book: take the call
[IMAGE of Mark Rothko’s black painting]
LAUDATIONS/LEGACY
I want to thank all my colleagues and metal community. I feel like I am with my tribe and am proud to be included as a presenter. Thank you, Sara and everyone else for organizing this event. Thank you to Gillman for its ongoing commitment to the scene. I think the last concert I went to here was for The Dicks, back in the day, it’s great you are still here!
Also, it’s compelling to me that I fell in love with black metal through Marduk during “the Legion” years, so the name Legion of Steel really resonates.
My Paper: Open a Vein: Suicidal Black Metal and Enlightenment
I’m going to give you an overview of the content of my paper, and then relay some of the things that I’ve been thinking about lately as a result of having written it.
I want to start with Albert Camus’s quote from The Myth of Sisyphus, “There is but one truly serious philosophical problem and that is suicide.”
A few years ago, my exploratory essay, Open a Vein: Suicidal Black Metal and Enlightenment was published in the inaugural issue of Helvete: A Journal of Black Metal Theory. I referenced three bands that have been associated with that particular genre: Shining, I Shalt Become, and Make a Change…Kill Yourself. I consider my piece a conceptual map that links SBM to three topics of discussion in the field of suicidology (although I am not a suicidologist): suicide for self-knowledge, wisdom, and purpose.
Self-Knowledge
Accounts of enlightenment are infused with transcendental and ecstatic language. For example, Evelyn Underhill in her book Mysticism introduces terms such as Absolute Reality, The Transcendental World, and Undifferentiated Life. Aldous Huxley, in The Doors of Perception, writes of the Clear Light of the Void, the Inner Light, and Unmitigated Reality. Other expressions use “light” metaphors such as “to see the light,” “to gaze on ten suns shining, “to be surrounded in white light,” “to be guided by the light,” or to encounter whitening, flashing, ebbing light. So, although Shining’s vocalist Niklas Kvarforth denies any specific religious topic in the band’s music, I was struck by his claims that he started to explore destroying himself physically and psychologically at a very young age in order “to break all the borders and to fuck myself up to get to a higher level.” This relates to many hierarchically organized spiritual traditions where a person strives to attain enlightenment in stages, often through a series of particular practices or exercises which may involve self-inflicted physical pain, self-denial, and self-torture. The drive to kill oneself is really a demand for an encounter with absolute reality…a demand for a profound overthrow of daily life.
Self-sacrifice: Mahayana Buddhism, Christianity, and Islam
So, I go on to present three examples from Mahayana Buddhism, Christianity, and Islam. These are three religions that I am personally familiar with. The examples chosen included Thích Quảng Đức [IMAGE] who, in 1963, burned himself in protest of the injustices of the Diem regime in Vietnam. For years, I had carried his image with me, and felt passionate to honor him in my writing. For Christianity, there is Jesus Christ himself, and I focused on traditional accounts of the lives of the saints such as Saint Simeon Stylites who was a pillar-hermit who stood on one leg for a year atop a sixty foot pillar that was exposed to the elements, while the other leg mushroomed into sores and worms. He sets an example for chronic suicide as a path to enlightenment.
Suicide Bombers
My research lead me to the world of suicide bombers: [IMAGE] the suicidal martyrs (called shaheeds in Arabic) from Hamas enlist as sacrificial soldiers in order to take their place in the roster of the great Martyrs who will meet together in Paradise and who offer themselves as role models for others. Shafiqa, a failed suicide bomber explains that there is a feeling of renewal and clarity by overcoming the natural fear of death. She explains, “It took me a long time to decide…It was wonderful to say goodbye to life. I felt like I was up in the clouds from the moment I knew I was going to be a shaheeda.”
Franco De Masi, in his book The Enigma of The Suicide Bomber: A Psychoanalytic Essay, quotes Yasmina Khadra’s book The Attack:
“There’s no worse cataclysm than humiliation. It’s an evil beyond measure... It takes away your taste for life. And until you die, you have only one idea in your head: How can I come to a worthy end after having lived miserable, and blind, and naked.”
I believe these themes are reflected in SBM. This sentiment is echoed in Shining’s lyrics “Through Corridors of Oppression”:
Slowly,
Passing the oppressed,
Innocent,
sons,
and daughters lost,
trembling
in the bottomless depths of darkness,
successfully,
failing
in their search.
To search the light,
To search salvation.
Recent Concerns and Questions
Since writing my paper, I have become even more involved in understanding the motivations of suicide bombers. I want to learn more about their lives and their deaths. In particular, I am concerned by the use of children for suicide bombing missions; we have examples of this with the child suicide bombers being used by the militant Islamist extremist group, Boku Haram, based in Nigeria and Chad, who have declared allegiance to the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (aka ISIL or ISIS). [IMAGE] You may remember last year’s media coverage of Boku Haram’s abduction of 63 school-age girls. In addition to other recruits, there are reports that the 60 who were not able to escape have been enlisted as suicide bombers. Since February of this year, there have been monthly attacks using children, one as recent as last Sunday, October 11, where two girls between the ages of 13 and 17 carried out suicide bombings in the northern Cameroon village of Kangeleri.
The videod beheadings of ISIS, and the charred bloody meat piles of child suicide bombers remind me of a comment that I incorporated in my paper. It was said by Acerbus from the Black Metal Band, Ondskapt, which I transcribed from Mark Lundberg’s 2008 documentary Black Metal Satanica:
“I can tell you this, that if this whore of a world lasts even ten more years you’ll find something even heavier than Ondskapt. I can tell you that something more advanced, something more devilish, more extreme…I don’t know if it will be raping babies or if it would be burning priests on local television…I don’t know if it would be some kind of genocide which is filmed for the camera.” It’s seven years into the 10 he predicted.
FINAL COMMENT
I mention this because I am amongst my community, and I believe it is a community who sees the shit and the horror and can articulate our anger and outrage. We see it and feel it and don’t run from it. I teach college students, and one of my students, after learning that I wrote about SBM, said, “You delve in the dark, you go there. Is it ok if I write and make art about that?” [We talked about this yesterday: asking permission.] I don’t advocate suicide, but I do think the tropes and themes of SBM are a vital meditation on all manifestations of “the suicide question.” Writing this paper lead me to some profoundly disturbing topics, and I am a more aware person because of it.
I want to close with an [image] from the censored cover of Thy Art Is Murder’s album “Holy War.”
Thank you very much for your time.
Continuing research notes: [Children proffered up by friends and families as sacrificial trophies.]
Louis Althusser: Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses: the subject is hailed
Avital Ronell’s The Telephone Book: take the call
