Black Trite Bloody Skulls

MODE Old Fart ON

Chekhov says that nothing is more awful and depressing than banality.

There ARE more awful things, though… but I agree than the pink and black sides of mundane banal trite clichéd boredom are depressing.

Tritely Tritely Lalala, what are these?

These are the two sides of the SAME boring simple small bowls :

1. PINK : forever love in the sun, sunset kisses, flowers orgy, summer syrup music and schmaltzy wishy-washes…
2. BLACK : forever suffering, fog, zombies, cemeteries, skulls tattoos, autumn bloody roses, gothic music, dark winter moods…

I know a gothic girl (“No I’m not, she says”) who wears black only and collect dozens of pairs of Dr. Martens – and all I see is the simple symmetry : pinky cotton candy and collecting walls of pumps.

Kidults cattle are awful. The herds are 30 or 40 years old, they happily collect Pop Figures, swimming in mainstream boring geeky shit and other TimBurtonneries marketed by the truck. Gothic & Emo people are worse : banal gothical bad music (with choir and interesting hair), piercings and boring “death inspired” tattoos…

With this real horror in front of you have to hide your sarcasms : they all feel “different”…

“We’re different, let’s gather to… resemble”

Peas in a pot.

This week I found this blood stained Walking Dead welcome mat. Oh my.

So some people are amused/fascinated by death? And why not? What I reproach to this somber shit is :

1. its childishitty – impossible to talk about adult things, about masters of the past, about branches of art or music, about the complexities of life, or history… impossible to have a conversation out of gossips and other “all politic world is rotten”…
2. its stupid innocence – here is one crying before one “Don’t open, Dead inside” welcome mat, as his daughter has just been killed in a car accident, or as a wife just died of brain cancer…

Awwwe suddenly it’s not funny anymore?

By the wayyy, it’s Halloween todayyy! Yeyyy!

Will you obey, crowd? Party on with dark make-up? Watch a horror movie? Yes. Good idea. Follow…

MODE Old Fart OFF

sorry…

(bip)

Thanks for reading!

 

Goth Subculture Predictability

Teeth & Tidal Waves : Dangerous Dreams

Jünger wrote somewhere that some dreams are so intense that they seem to warn you : “Pay attention, please”.

Two dreams are dangerous : when you loose your teeth, and tsunamis. Death and danger.

But when you dream about someone’s death, everybody seems to agree it’s not about death but about CHANGE (you will change, you have to change, you need to change, whatever).

If you dream this person died, some people say your relationship with this person has to change, but I disagree. I think that our brain works about us only, therefore that our dreams use the traits this other person personifie to show a need of change for yourself.

Well, we could go on like that for pages. I’d like to add this :

• All characters in our dreams are part of ourselves. Dreams are tools our brain use to fix things for us. Dreams are very very very selfish.
• As Jünger said, intense dreams are flags, they’re great because they can make us stop and think.

Thanks for reading!

 

 

JS Bach’s Cantata is confusing about Joy & Ordeal

This article is about the meaning of a sentence in Bach’s Cantata, and the different ways it is translated (from German to French or English), and what it can bring us about how the ways we deal with life.

I woke up a little disoriented by an obsessive, dense nightmare telling me in details that my life was really losing its cohesion. A mess like “having books but not knowing why any more”, “fearing the loss of purpose”, “falling sick but this time it won’t end well”, or “I’ll have to work a lot, without being sure it’s useful, to understand the fragments, the scales of my life” : terrible!

I sat on my bed, in need of a big coffee, happy to realize it was only a nightmare, watching a grey quiet queasy luminous sky, thinking about this little irony of life we all know :

When you work, it’s sunny, when you’re off, it rains.

We all have this feeling of the irony of life, with all the shades. Murphy’s Laws (“Anything that can go wrong will go wrong”) are often hilarious to read. If France we sometime call it “LEM”, La Loi de l’Emmerdement Maximum, or “The Law of the Maximum Merdation”, which will make sense to everyone, oui?

But eventually it begins to hit harder. It deals with failure, love break-ups, losing job, or even death. I’ll tell you this true story.

Before WWII, a young upper class lady fell in love in France with a simple employee. Her family prevented her to marry the young man and arranged a more “proper” marriage. She had to accept it, I suppose. But decades later, in the 80s, her husband died, and then the unwealthy guy’s wife too. They were old, but happy : they fell back in love, lived this love, got married… and he died very soon.

I remembered this story because every member of her family kept telling her “Stop crying, you had a great life!”. So she stopped crying. And a week later was in hospital in emergency : her legs had tripled volume. Diagnostic : “Water Retention”.

For the next part of this article I have to say that I’m don’t believe in any “God”. Nevertheless, faith inspired humans some great Art, right?

 

Johann Sebastian Bach wrote a Cantata “for the Feast of Visitation of Mary” (BWV 147) which is well known for the end : “Jesus bleibet meine Freude“.

This last part is very well known by the title “Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring”  – I just added the YouTube link under this paragraph – but it’s been translated to “sound better” : “Jesus bleibet meine Freude” is more like : “Jesus shall remain my gladness“.

(I found also : Jesus remains my joy, Jesus stays my source of gladness, Jesus shall remain my joy).

Here’s the paragraph :

Jesus remains my joy,
the comfort and life’s blood of my heart,
Jesus defends me against all sorrows,
he is my life’s strength,

Why?

Bach, the year he composed the music, suffered the loss of two of his children. Johann August Abraham died the day after he was born, and a bit later Regina Johanne, who was 4 years old, died too.

I suppose that in the XVIIIth Century even more than now, you really can write things like “Jesus remains my joy”. The use of “remains” tells something about “I have to stay strong, I decide to be”.

The French translation is wrong too. We say here : “Jésus, que ma joie demeure”, which means something a bit different : “Jesus, may my joy remains”.

• The English and German are a statement : “Jesus remains my joy”
• The French is a prayer, a supplication : “Jesus, may my joy remains”

 

You’ll notice that it is not either “Jesus, give me joy”, or even “help me”, but more “Allow my joy to keep existing”… 

 

This difference between a statement and a plea in the form of “Please allow” is fascinating enough to keep some of us thinking for a day. It’s different, but also so similar. Both tell us about the will to stay strong…

I’d summerize this all with this question :

What do we do against ordeal?

 

This is the longest article I ever wrote! Thanks for reading my Frenchy English!

Jean-Pascal

PS : You can maybe, also, read this : Amor Fati (and Sequere Deum).

 

 

Attack of the giggles at a funeral : End of Solemn

C’est son chapeau!

Yeaaah we’ve all been there, right? You’re in church, at a funeral. You noticed a really ridiculous hat on some old aunt’s head, then you eye-contact with your sister who saw that you saw. You’re done : you get the giggles (is this the correct way to say it?), you can not stop laughing. Go outside and burst, you silly both!

Beware, because it could happen to you in an important meeting!

Attack of the giggles has a purpose : it’s an urgent need to end solemnity.

It’s a dial, and the giggleneedle touches a red slice of it, you’re done. Dring!

It’s a tool :

You are maybe also a ridicule feathered hat owner, you know? Who could be giggling out about what you do, and why? Where are you arrogant, intensely solemn or ridiculous? Examine your so strong recent decisions… Mmhhh?

Thanks for reading!