Re-enchanting a Disenchanted World

With this day of howling winds forcing me indoors, I revisited an essay I was working on for a metal zine, which I never finished. The editor never followed up, so I just let it be. However, I think I captured something real in what I talked in this essay that I want to share with y’all. Do you feel like music has an emancipatory potential? I sure do, but I was trained by a sociologist whose claim to fame is charting the role protest songs on public radio played in galvanizing the largest labor strike in southern history. I suppose that makes me biased, but I am certainly not just talking about the social consciousness that comes from music. No, I think metal, and music more generally, allows us to feel and imagine things that seem impossible today: living an enchanted everyday life doing work that is meaningful.

The diffuse light trickles in through the frosted glass and window length shades. I am sitting in a plain, sparse cubicle covered in neutral fabric in a featureless corner of downtown in equally featureless business casual clothing. I am staring into the dimly space, listening to Blood Incantation’s “Hidden History of the Human Race” for the fourth time in the day. “What is the meaning of this work?” I think to myself. “If our work is to be ignored or cast off as invalid despite the most stringent of standards, then what is the utility in the effort?” My mind continues to spiral through the serpentine hallways of the meditation.

“Human life is merely a mosaic of endless parallel worlds, and synchronistic events perceived by (hu)mans as aimless chaos,” a voice from my headphones cuts in. The lyrics Blood Incantation’s “Awakening from the Dream of Existence to the Multidimensional Nature of Our Reality (Mirror of the Soul)” cut through my own inner dialogue and derail me off the track of questioning that I have traveled countless times in that cube. I pause and take a breath. For a moment, I am not lost in the byzantine wasteland of 21st century American work. The latch on the escape hatch was sprung, and I become just another lifeform swirling in the mystery of the cosmos. For a moment, I am enchanted by the endless possibilities of this wild corporeal existence, a brief reprieve from the crushing determinism that defines our current existence. For a moment, there is a glowing vibrancy to the tenor of the moment.

My own experience, like the one described above, has revealed the magical power of metal is twofold: conjurer and alchemy. Metal is more than a musical form. It is a conjurer, allowing the artists and listeners to visit places and do things that transcend the realm of the ordinary. It is also a form of alchemy, allowing folx a place to integrate the darkness we face in the world and transform ourselves in the process so as to not become swallowed by it. These powers have the possibility to change lives. Metal has the power to change lives. It changed mine, helping me to embrace the magic that flows as an invisible field through our world and find a way to move through the personal and collective deaths I was witnessing and experiencing.

Metal conjured up the mystical mist that allowed me the power to escape the crushing commodification, dehumanization, and death I experienced in 21st century America. I started to immerse myself in metal when I transformed my weaving practice from a mindfulness practice to a subversive form of death magic that could help me grieve and mourn the personal, familial, and collective deaths I was facing. It was the sort of Fuck it moment that had built for many years. I had lost my mom to an entirely preventable form of cancer (she had no health insurance). I had hated my jobs. I resented that I had let the dominant capitalist, christian, patriarchal culture of America bully me into being small. Listening to Brian Eno or Windham Hill samplers wasn’t going to conjure the mythic vistas that I needed to transform. No, I need songs that spoke of the demon gates, signs and sigils written on the floor, and labyrinthian secrets now revealed. I needed metal.

Metal music gave me the strength to embrace my own magic while weaving. Aside from the obvious space opened by black metal juxtaposing itself against dominant christian ideas, many metal albums play out as rituals in their own right, the lyrics an incantation and the harmonics acting as the swirling of sonic energy carrying the questions or offerings to otherworldly deities. Whether weaving alongside Heilung’s obviously incantatory “Futha” or immersing myself in the veiled death magic that unfolds in Pallbearer’s “Sorrow and Extinction,” metal’s conjuring potential became quite obvious. I walked through gateways while experiencing those albums over and over again that allowed me to step beyond the dominant rationalist lens our society thrusts on us. The lens that has the audacity to question: is magic real? The lens that would have you believe you are finite and powerless. With metal music as a guide, it was obvious that my weaving was magic. I slipped the snare and stepped into my own power.

This is the the conjuring we all need in the disenchanted, death-drenched times we live in today. The cold, desolate winds of imperialistic wars; racism, misogony, homophobia, classism, and xenophobia; the climate collapse; austerity economics; fascism; and the international pandemic have blown stronger than ever. Yes, death has knocked open our doors and revealed its grisly visage. We live amidst its shrouded presence now. We are like so many Poe’s engulfed in death’s shadow, muttering into the darkness that we will return to normal — Nevermore, Nevermore, Nevermore. Our deathphobic society gives us no tools to gracefully move through these times, save the brief reprieve of purchasing a new plastic trinket made in some far off place. Yes, in these times, it is imperative that we all embrace the conjuring power of metal as an antidote to a world that tells us we are powerless consumers. Fuck that, we are portal walkers, time-travelers. Metal tells us we have the magic within us to become active participants in our own world—to be shaped by and shape the world we inherited from our ancestors. In short, metal implores us to find our own magic and wave our freak flags.

Here here, let us soak in that emancipatory conjuring for a moment. Let the organ pipes play a dirge and raise the raspy, growling voice of the dark one who will lead us through the mist into the truth of death. Let them take us by hand and lead us to an ancient alchemical laboratory. We are greeted by wafts of strong mugwort smoke and the dim light of a a triad of lit black candles illuminating the room. We can see the burners have been on for some time from the accumulation of soot and stains on the floor. A chorus echoes from forth from the darkness, “Commence the rites of burial, for the season of mourning is upon us.” No doubt, it is the sage words of Evoken that soak the air with meaning. Yes, metal is the alchemical flame that can help us transform our grief, our mourning and allow us to reborn from our dance with death in these dark times. In short, it allows us the courage to begin to remake our lives (and the world) in alignment with our own wildest imaginations.

My quest to photograph everyday life in a land-locked city where the plains meet the rocky mountains follows a similar alchemical formula. Like metal, I am using my wordsmithing and photographic eye to alter our orientation toward your everyday life away from sleep walking our way through patterns of living and noticing that are scripted by multinational corporations, organized religion, and the state towards getting drunk on those enchanting moments we encounter while out in the world. This may sound overly theoretical, but it’s not. I am talking about those moments when “The Real” slaps you across the face. These moments will not be televised nor will they be sponsored by Tyson Food, INC. No, these are the moments where you see a tree in bloom for the first time in the early stages of spring. They are the moment’s when you see the sun hitting a downtown skyline from a specific angle that will only be in that alignment at that date and that time. It’s the moment when you see a car, or any technology for that matter, in regular use when you would expect the planned obsolescence of our society to have cast that tool to the dump long ago. You see, its my extremely earnest and romantic notion that by embracing the awe-inspiring nature of the happenstances we encounter in everyday life we are able to witness a deeper reality seems to be poking out from under the veneer of our commodified American reality.

Given this, why can’t we conjure up our own set of rules, our own quests if you will, and make our lives into a a mythic fight to retain the very soul of humanity. Again, I am being dramatic for a reason. I do believe that we have to create our own culture and argue for the importance of these small, mundane moments. We have to fight for our right to be the game master of our realities or risk having all the rules of our lives dictated to us. We have to fight for our right to re-enchant a disenchanted world. Anyways, here are the choice cuts from this weeks travels.

One final recommendation. I just started listening to Eloy, a German Progressive Rock band who is held in esteem by Blood Incantation, and I need you to go listen to their album Floating on youtube now. This album is incredible. I am ordering an old vinyl copy of it now on discogs.

I designed a new bumper sticker for my bike side project Omen Bike Questing, featuring forest black metal logo artwork by Thee Bicycle Wizard. Do you want a copy? LET ME KNOW, HOSS!

Anywho, thanks for being here. If you enjoyed what you read, saw, or listened to, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Paid subscribers get access to each week’s essay and are the reason I am able to keep all my shenanigans going. I am really just trying to not share my writing, fiber art, or photos on instagram anymore.

Until next time, dear reader,

James