Formalities
Both albums are produced around one occulted axis. Saint John Green was produced while Charles Manson was being sheltered by the LAPD (with probable influence from the CIA) in Topanga Canyon. Death Grips as a whole, especially Year of the Snitch, have always paid heavy debt to Manson in their citations and influence. This would not be so significant had the albums not lined up so ideally in their structure and concerns, forming two halves of the same whole only visible when considered regards to Death Grips’ larger project. Is this an intentional similarity? Most likely not. But the unintentionality strengthens the reading, pointing towards a connection beyond the physical or intellectual realm.
Beware
MC Ride gives his introductory remarks, in tune with his later comments on life as an MMORPG, in the opening song of Exmilitary, Beware. Echoing the same dichotomy of himself in the wilderness in opposition to the city where everyone is “laggy as shit”, he describes himself seeking outside ascendance. Going back to the ebb and flow, the source, the root of all mysteries, etc. These trips to where few have been is the nature of his wilderness dwelling and points to a deeper truth. After the unification by the conquering of Lower Egypt, Lower and Upper Egypt came to be a spectrum of truth. Lower Egypt became the commercial hub, the cities of the fertile delta where the Nile met the Mediterranean and Egypt met its neighbors. Upriver however, in barren desert far inland where few were allowed to travel (or even given reason to suspect there be a reason to travel that far), lay the true secrets, the secret necropolises and temples where the priestly rulers contacted the gods. This notion - that there could be some secret hidden in the barren upriver desert - is vital in its schema. Imagined at the core, there is some singular goal, a portal of some sort to the other world - Manson’s hole to a lush paradise, a grail of a sort. Like the grail as well, the object itself is secondary to the true action, the simple being in the wilderness allows one to find and enter the grail, the hole, the portal and see the source, the ebb and flow, upon high winds.
Make Me Shine As a Testament - Death Grips is Online & Seventh Generation Mutation
Returning to flex on those making it laggy in the city, the audience is addressed in the opening song as the hero speaks to the unenlightened. MC Ride spits out Death Grips over the dispersed horde of fans, “online” in the thousands of memes, “in your city”, a miasma descended over the arena. The speaker of Seventh Generation Mutation comes more directly, saying what MC Ride only says obliquely, “such misconceptions” in reference to the beliefs of the audience, “mutations of a once beautiful race”, in reference to their present condition.
The Path I Find and Claim as Mine - Flies & Canyon Woman
Taking one down to the green canyon, the woman becomes the plot or organization of the disordered collection of redpills in Flies, the guiding siren leading one by the hand to conclusions through the raw material listed in brutish shouts. The Flies have dispersed the corpse of this information and now it must be collected into a narrative, a truth, to lead one by her hand to the goal, the green canyon, the dark skills. The nature of culture is recognized as vitally important for practice here, with the stories and information mentioned forming the ways in which a true path can form, turning the first step of study into the second step of understanding.
Storms that Force the False to Die - Black Paint & Devil and The Sea
At the first the narrative and now the cleansing, purification before entering. Light turns to ashes, the devil stands over the sea rising upon a meadow as the speaker of drops the curtains, soaks in shadows. Black Paint shuts out the world of impurities, reducing all to shadow to retreat internally, to think finally. This purification is an act of self-perfection, turning inwards and away, the hermit becoming free of all detritus, hence “satanic urges”, Satanism referenced being the ultimate selfishness of the greater master morality required to have gotten this far.
Worship is the Way I Ride - Linda’s in Custody & Do You Believe
Trusting leads to control and thus to greater actions - purging herds of stunted cells, nursing the worm until it swells, both spoken of by “we”. The preacher’s final three lines are vital, in summary the red sea parting, the holy grail, and Jonah in the whale - all deeply symbolic passages beyond the others mentioned. Earlier, the nature of language as it relates to mystic matters was dealt with and now the practical considerations of this are brought up. Track two dealt with the nature of language as it relates to how to properly consume and utilize language, while this deals with the nature of language as it can be used. The preacher of Do You Believe screams out to his flock their instructions, casting out the instructions to them to worship, reinforced and repeating patterns of sacrifice to him “you know the drill”. In such cults, as the in the case of the preacher, there is a markedly hierarchical relationship between the leader and the followers, characterized by there being a single way flowing upwards to the leader. “Herds” flock around the speaker, “stunted cells” unable to break out of their slave morality, their lust for a leader leads to only be the weak bowed before the higher practitioner.
Trips to Where Few Have Been - The Horn Section & Help Me Close the Door
At this point, the first transitory section of the albums. Previously, the album was spread open in four songs declaring themselves, largely disconnectedly, the state of things and several axiomatic concerns. This song marks the turning point to the second part of the album, the linearly ordered movement the protagonist takes into some final removal from the world. The decrepit form of the individual rotting in age shows why this must take place. In order to complete projects, that which is diseased and hypertrophied (rotten) must be moved past, ascended from, left behind, in order for real progress to be made in a new wilderness of an underworld.
Feel My Vessel Go Up in Flames - Hahaha & Messages from the Dead
The first step of the descent in burning away, the pulling down. The flames of hell burn one away, dragging one down, as the passions do, dragging one down to seven levels of hell, a wet fuck hole. The first step is an initiatory passion in order to make one fully of the new place in which they enter. By being burned in the fires of passion, they are now charred, reduced to all except that which hell can abide. Thus, they become of hell and not of the Earth, capable now of entering the new discourse of the new realm.
Wastelands With Naught to Call My Own - Shitshow & Goddess of Death
The fires clear to the vast emptiness of a world unexplored, now the wilderness stretches on forever. The passions of lust give way to the unusable chaos of a shitshow, all seems strange to “me”. We’ve been here before, careful not to step on previous friends, the bones of those never to return. After the initial descent, the next step is the lonely journeying, the days in the desert to turn internally and hopefully find something previously unknown, hopefully find a path on which to travel to some higher end.
Rites Begin When the Sun Descends - Streaky & Saint John Green
At this point, a structurally vital song is played. Streaky was the first song released of Year of the Snitch via Youtube video months before the album’s release and Saint John Green bears the same title as the album and artist. The individual concerns in regards to structurally identical premises are explicated thusly, with those songs showing the different and copresent perspectives on the same text, at the level of explicating the perspective itself. From the grime of prostitution and dope dealing metaphors, secondary meanings of the various turns of phrase bury the path the speaker walks in the wastelands outside the city. She’s a walkabout, dream time announced, the mystic ascension occurs in the wilderness, in the place of “streaky on the outside”. As in the walkabout, movement itself (but the path I walk alone) is the way of power, paraglide, surfin’, stun drive, sail, joyride, ghost ride, low ride, fly, all named in quick sequence in the second verse. Saint John Green meanwhile comes to save us and protect us from this dragon - notice the album art. Saint John Green himself is at once the shotgun rider and the savior, fulfilling guardian, savior role so common in archangels and lambs of god in christian theology. Saint John Green forms the path by his protection, by his guidance, the one taken through the grime of Streaky.
Wisdom of the Old and True - Dilemma & Spirit of Now
As shown by the using of the lesser in the techniques of song four, following a figure as Saint John Green is dangerous, without proper consciousness to distance from attachment and proper peerage with the figure in question, being the same plateau of being with them as opposed to following them as a religious leader. The wise practitioner will win their dilemma, the false conversations faced in the strange meetings. Walking through the woods, companionship is found in characters at least on equal level, a spirit, a woman who wouldn’t speak except to declare their mutual hunger (channel bias is used to indicate the speaker is, left and right are equalized for the final lines of the dialogue), the relationship once of the teacher (the common mistake of any low level practitioner, to mistake the first extrahuman presence as their new guardian angel) is now made into that of conversational riddles and puzzles with which to walk as the wilderness. This walking is pathed out via contemplating the solving of this winding relational mazes, being stalked and returning back with violence that seems to come all too naturally.
The Hunger Burns Within My Gut - Little Richard & Love Of Hate
The ode to the solitary warlord, the nature of humanity realized in the practitioner facing their lonesome death in embracing fashion, rising above the delusions of those who pretend to be otherwise. The next doorway is recognized, one beyond the scope of the album, the next ascendance beyond which the scope of the album cannot touch. Little Richard prepares to blow, the last to die does so without life’s light, having long burned all such impurities away.
Past the Point of No Return - The Fear & One Room Cemetery
A ritual is performed, leading to the portal, the one room cemetary, a grave, a doorway, leading beyond. What happens after, what happens outside, the world is stepped outside of as we’re playing with it. Death is recognized as more than mere annihilation. The perspective of the Fear is split, first and third person being of the same, as the speaker steps outside even the boundaries of the self. Such is the nature of this final ascendance, the true step beyond, after which there can be no comprehension by those below. This is the final exit from the prison of the world, from the hell, into the beyond, into divinity.
Beggar on a Bitch’s Leash - Outro/Disappointed & Shivers of Pleasure
The artist is gone, long since ascended, and all that remains is the album. The album speaks directly to the audience, thanking them in a comedic credits sequence and mocking them in an aggressive spit. Silent in one, marked by the instrumental Outro in the other, this is the final section of the album, made up by only one song. The album is now a feedback loop of itself, hollow as its protagonist has left us. The critic hears himself on the track, screaming “why me?” between the mocking shouts against him. The music hall ditty plays out his exit, pure and empty forms of music all that remains.
On Practice
In the final song of Saint John Green, one of those listed is Howard Hughes. In this, there are too many connections not to believe strange things to be at play. The description of the ruined husk of a human in Close to Door matches the physical state of Howard Hughes at this time, who would have been connected closely to the creation of this album by his instrumental part of the WASP aristocracy that was so deeply behind the counter-culture. Who is speaking against Hughes, but Manson, a new breed of actor in the same family tree? Manson returned action against the world of Hughes in his infamous killings, via the line of flight that was MKULTRA, drugs given from the father to inspire his own killing via their unpredictable effects. What was Manson searching for in his hole in the desert? The structure in which one was born is instrumental for it, providing the LSD and ignoring parole violations, yet it must at the same time be transcended. One must flee Topanga Canyon for Death Valley to seek the hole in the desert, as the daughter betrays her father by losing her virginity. Such is the reason behind Evola’s command halfway through The Hermetic Tradition to rip up your books, as after a time the structures learned are of no use. After a time, solidity must become liquid as one becomes a free agent, in order to achieve the same transcendence those before one achieved of their own right.
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