#absolutely wild how there ain’t a single soul on earth who actually knows how much pain i’m in. and there never will be

[enchantednightingales]

Looking For: The Happy Prince

That moment you have all been waiting for is here! At last! Rebecca Jean-Carroll’s official and Colin-enamoured review of Rupert Everett’s “The Happy Prince”. The long overdue and brave biopic of the formidable talent that is the one and only Mr Oscar Wilde. 

It’s been some time since I saw the film and I left it until now to review in case my opinion should change upon further consideration. Turns out it didn’t. Back in the day, I said;

“Accomplished film-making & a fearless interpretation of a fearless genius but somehow unsatisfying. The final pieces of Oscar's tragic plight rapidly sewn together, in the haze of drunken excess, asks for your sorrow too often in words & not in deeds”

Yeah, I kinda nailed my opinion of it right there but just for the lols... let me expand upon that.

The first twenty minutes or so of “The Happy Prince” feels like you’ve crashed some cringe worthy party that stopped being fun several hours ago. We’ve all been there right? It is not a particularly settling introduction to a film, in my humble opinion and the only credit I can give it is that it is bold and brave. Question is though, does it pay off? I would say no and here’s why...

We all know Rupert Everett loves his subject matter and was keen to depict the post-Prison years. So he decides to land us right in the gutter with our fallen star without a particularly strong introduction TO Oscar. It was lazy, lazy writing. Here I can surmise the main problem of the film for me and that it relied far too heavily upon what we, the audience, already know. So as we’re thrust into this dismal display of self-destruction our empathy is driven not through the film and not even through the performance, it is the contrast with the man we know he once was. The Happy Prince makes too few attempts to truly present us with a man on a journey and was, for my money, too heavily focused upon representing a relatively brief moment of decline. You could be forgiven for thinking that I would LOVE a film that starts at a low point and ends at an even lower one... but you're wrong. There’s something to be said for balance.

The unfortunate side effect of lingering in this painful plight towards death is that it is never going to be the WANTED memory of an icon. Rupert wanted to depict the genius and the idiot, which is great, because we all knew that’s kind of EXACTLY what Oscar was. However I would argue that I saw so little of the genius in Oscar, just the fool, just the broken and the defeated. The final result is as bleak as and with too many ineffective but obvious moments of light relief. I can well understand the desire to depict that hardship and the cruelty Oscar was subject to at the hands of his society. Where other films did not dare, this one did but for all its considerable efforts, the end result was deeply unsatisfying. I expected to be drowning in tears by the end of this film but I couldn’t. The only moment that was particularly emotional was the Clapham Junction Station scene. That was painful and that was hard to watch. For the rest of it, so much was lost in a tendency to put too fine a point on the grim reality. It was brave and it was dark but it lacked ambition, falling short of the mark and strangely static. It started low and just got lower. That’s a tough ask of an audience.

... And if you thought “boy, she really doesn’t like this movie does she?” You ain’t seen nothing yet. Let’s shower Colin Morgan with some praise for a minute though. Much like in the film, he’s taken a while to show up.

So Colin Morgan plays Bosie. For obvious reasons it was an excellent bit of casting and LOVE that hair. If we go back to that notion that “The Happy Prince” was rather reliant on what WE already know about Oscar, they made us wait a good 40 minutes or so for the man we know who is going to shake everything up, or fuck everything up as it were. A deeply shameful amount of time to wait for anything... especially when it is Colin. Then when Bosie did show up he was barely in it and he sure as hell didn’t have nearly enough to say. Bosie’s presence in the piece is almost entirely unexplained and I couldn’t help but think what about the poor fools who don’t actually know who he is? As I expected Colin did the absolute best with what he had and he was more than a match for Rupert Everett’s (ok I’ll admit it, powerhouse) performance. Colin was delightfully bitchy and truly beautiful... that scene after they meet in the station... Oh My God... be still my beating heart... the beauty was killing me. I couldn’t concentrate. I was all like “Yo, Colin, you wanna take it down a notch because it’s getting inappropriate in here”... Oops. Fangirling again. Sorry. 

Colin was amazing, that’s all I’m saying.

***SPOILERS HERE***

This is where my theory comes in and I warn you... it’s dark. I’ve already accused “The Happy Prince” of being lazy, static in terms of a story and too pre-occupied with every bit of grim reality it could stuff into the picture. Now I accuse it of being more condemning of Oscar Wilde than is necessary. 

Let us go back to the opening sequence that ends in a very unsettling scene where Oscar has paid a teenager for sex whilst his little brother waits on the other side of the door. If that didn’t freak you out, as it turns out later on, he’s been adopted as some sort of father figure to them. They are his children in place of his ACTUAL children who had the distinct pleasure of watching their Mother live in constant pain and misery until the day she died. Nice. 

Then there’s the Bosie scene which is both bleak and absurd. Following their first meeting and talk of running away together we focus on Bosie who lingers in the corner of some horribly dull-lit hotel room. The illicit nature of their affair (which of course it was) couldn’t be any more pungent if it tried. My problem with it is how it was staged. Maybe I’m reading too much into it but I got the distinct impression Bosie was not at all inclined towards it. I’m not gonna lie. I wasn’t seeing a great deal of consent, pleasure and certainly not love in that moment. Obviously I can anticipate that would have been intended but for the first time ever I’m feeling sorry for Bosie. Maybe it’s the infatuation talking but Bosie looks like a victim here. He makes a good point later on when he says he’s “sick and tired of being blamed for the actions of a glutinous snob”. That is what Oscar is in this film and he didn’t need a whole lot of help from Bosie on that. 

As for the absurd cut from Colin with no shirt on and the train coming out of the tunnel... I’m sure someone thought that was funny. Meanwhile to most others it was like the film had raised its hand to the fact it wasn’t even trying to be sophisticated now. Some archaic movie trick that kind of sums up the film. It wanted to be brave, it wanted to be different but ultimately it shied away from the real work required. 

“The Happy Prince” under-uses its great cast (and I’m not just talking about Colin Morgan). It was the Oscar show but without an Oscar anyone should have wanted to see. Think of the poor fools who don’t know much about Oscar as they go in to see that film. I wouldn’t blame a single one of them if they thought... nah, I’m not going to read his stuff. He’s stupid.

It’s all very well Rupert getting all defensive to say his film was based entirely on little known facts about Oscar but what on earth did we gain from it? Did the film faithfully depict the man for ALL that he was? No. It found him at his worst and buried him with it. Maybe Rupert wanted to take Oscar down a peg or two, maybe he can still be a gay icon without being the best of people, that all makes a lot of sense but again... why? Why tell us what we already know in such a way that so distinctly separates him from the fearless and charming genius that he was? Oscar is a legend because he can be both foolish and a genius in the same breath. Rupert’s Oscar, could only be one or the other at the same time. 

Overall: It lacked context and was therefore lazy. The pre-occupation with the fool in Oscar was somewhat on the nose and actually un-sympathetic when combined with his snobbery, vanity and selfishness. As previously mentioned “The Happy Prince” simply asks for your sympathy and steals Oscar’s own words to do it. Giving us a last minute glimpse of a man with a heart, with empathy and soul. It’s too little, too obvious and too late now though. 

In short, “The Happy Prince” wasn’t smart enough to start what it finished and did more to tarnish a gay-icon than it did to liberate him. 

PS. Colin was amazing though

[thebrowngirlstakeontheworld]

Nobody’s Mama

Quick Author’s Note: The purpose of this post is not to stomp on anyone’s baby dreams. Have babies. Have lots of babies. Matter of fact, MAJOR shoutout to all of my friends who are already parents! You are all so amazing, and I love watching your little ones turn into little versions of you. Keep doing your best and being your best. I see you. I also know there are women who really desire to be moms, and I think that’s amazing. The purpose of this post is to show that there is another group of us. People ask me all of the time why I don’t want kids, and it’s such a complicated answer. But know that I’ve thought about it, long and hard. Motherhood is a special calling and not everyone has it. Read on only if you’re interested in knowing a little bit of my journey. 

Now. It’s my turn to briefly answer the most frequently asked question brought to me weekly: “Do you want marriage and/or kids?”

STORY TIME:

eX: Can I talk to you about something?

Me: Sure

eX: Let’s have a baby together. You’d be an amazing mother. I’d be a great dad. We can have a child together and coparent like all the trendy people.

Me: Absolutely not.

THE END

I don’t have it all figured out. Yes, I’m 30, and I’m just chillin. Vibin. Coastin. And that’s ok with me (after having several panic attacks and temper tantrums the past couple of years). By nature, I’m a planner. However, God doesn’t let me plan my life which is soooo unfair. I have absolutely no control. I mean... if you do have control over your life, more power to you.

Like every “grown” daughter who hates when her Dad meddles in her life, I, too, hate when God changes the plan… but I secretly like it because it’s always better than my plan. It’s like a little game we play, me and God. I tell Him everything I have planned, and He counters it. Today’s area of discussion: Marriage and kids. I used to be annoyed by the fact that I couldn’t just marry Idris Elba or be an assistant to Oprah or be a mom by 25. But there is a rhyme and reason for everything I suppose. 

Today, I’m grateful for all of the things I didn’t receive as a part of my plan. All of the things God has protected me from. At 30, I’m nobody’s wife or mother which is such a blessing. I used to long for motherhood, but then I became a teacher. And I realized raising children is hard and being in partnership with another adult (their parents) is even harder. So many ideas and opinions on how to raise children. Oh and these personalities. Some kids have these wild personalities that they can’t even control. I would get kicked, bit, punched, and more by CHILDREN and I used to always think… “What if this were my child?” And people who aren’t in classrooms love to comment that it wouldn’t be my child, but they can’t guarantee that. Every year that I taught, I saw an increasing number of violent children who exhibited behaviors that they couldn’t control. With each case, my baby factory closed it’s doors a little. 

Through it all, teaching taught me so much about who I am and what kind of parent and wife I’d be. I’d be one of those parents who pours out her entire life into her child and husband. I’d be attentive, supportive, chef, maid and all of that good stuff. And not out of obligation, but because I’d want to. It’s in my nature. Nobody told me to skip lunches as a teacher or get to school 30 minutes early or leave school an hour after it was over or call parents with updates on their kiddos or teach while allergy season almost took me out, but I did it because I understood what was at stake. Their futures were in my hands. I’d give anything to make sure my kids were successful because that’s how I was with my students. If you remember, I was unhealthy as a teacher. I’d gain weight off and on due to all of my emotional eating and looked visibly tired all the time. I lived and breathed my students and their families. Nobody was pouring into me or breathing life into me besides me. So then I realized THIS is why I’m not a mom yet because God’s like...  you’d be miserable and would run yourself into the ground. Parenting is freaking hard. People always say it’s better when it’s your own kid, but I just don’t believe it. Imma still be pouring my soul into it and not do anything for myself.  

People often try to “get” me to change my mind because of how “motherly” I am. I get it. I am nurturing, caring and kind, but aren’t we all? So just let me walk in my current truth, I do NOT desire a child and/or childbirth at this time and that’s ok. Yes, part of that is fear. But a major part of that is when I see my future, I don’t see any little people. It’s not like I have this giant empire that I need to pass down or anything. I have just enough for my little life to be as wonderful as I want it to be. And I just can’t afford kids. I don’t know where y’all be finding this money from, but I ain’t got it. Plus, my mom still asks me to text her when I get home safely after a night out with friends. Ain’t nobody got time to be that worried about an adult!

So the children conversation has been officially shelved until God shows me otherwise. I think I’ve done my part as it pertains to the whole child-rearing thing. I got the chance to impart wisdom and “mother” over 100 children. I’m an auntie to my godbrother’s son, and I’m a spiritual godmother to my friend’s sweet baby girl. So I may not have gotten to be a physical mother, but I’m ok with being a teacher-auntie-godmom figure because I get to work through the ratio in which I was pouring out. Instead of pouring out 100%, I pour out about 28% which... I know... would probably classify me as selfish. Not the negative kind. But the kind of selfish that makes each day worth living. I wake up praying and reading. Because I have time. I get to cook 2 meals for myself almost daily. Because I have time. I work out. Because I have time. I get to work around my own schedule and follow my dreams. I get to be unapologetically me because I have time. Reclaiming my time has been my mantra in my late 20s and early 30s, and I’m doing just that.

There’s also the giant elephant in the room of my own childhood that I would have to unpack before even having children. My family life was amazing growing up. BUT my social/school life was THE worst. I was chubby, a loner, and a loser for most of elementary school and middle school. I left high school with three friends. Alienation and bullying is something I dealt with and is still happening in schools. I wouldn’t even know how to address it with my own kids. My sister has always been my best friend. She didn’t have a choice. I had no one else. She used to tell me that it was surprising to her that I didn’t have low self-esteem. And the reality is that I really went through those school years thinking I was great and that everyone else was just confused and missing out. Many of my classmates were rude and cruel. My mom used to tell me they were jealous of me which is why they were so mean. As much as I’d love to believe that raising my kids to be vegetarians and pumping them with organic food, would make them less chunky and more cool, I know that there’s a solid chance that they could still be mistreated. I don’t desire for my children to live on an island of one in school, where they love themselves but nobody else likes them. I don’t want them to be social outcasts. And if they end up with my dashing good looks (in which society doesn’t deem as beautiful… darker skin, natural hair), that’s a whole other battle. Will my daughter have to deal with people not thinking she was good enough? Will she be single for most of her life because of beauty standards? I literally have zero positive date stories to tell her from my time here on planet earth. ZERO. Well actually, maybe one from the Cayman Islands, but that’s it. Having a daughter would horrify me because I know all the effort my family had to put in to prove to me just how wrong culture is. I’m exhausted just thinking about it.

On the partnership thing, I’d like to get married one day, but I’m not rushing it. I like my schedule and routine, so I don’t mind holding on to it for as long as possible. It would be nice though if I could have a late 2020 wedding. I never thought at 30 I’d be this single… like… not even in a serious relationship, single. But honestly, I haven’t met anyone worth interrupting my life for. So until God Himself sends a man in my direction, I’m gonna keep double dipping my spoon in the peanut butter jar because I can. 

I didn’t come to the marriage and kids conclusion by osmosis because like I said...I’m a planner and both were in my plan. But since my perfectly imperfect man wasn’t gonna just appear, I had to think about what I could control…which was my attitude towards not being married. There are many many MANY pros to my current lifestyle (which I tell y’all about often), so I had to rejoice in that! When life gives you lemons, you mix it with tequila and add some sugar on the rim and have a party! Because lemons aren’t even a bad fruit. I love lemons! 

I had to stop thinking about all of the things that didn’t come to pass and change my posture to gratitude. I started thinking about all of the things that have happened without me really working hard. The things that were just in the plan. I thought about all of the amazing opportunities that happened because my young, wild, and free lifestyle was open enough for them to happen. So instead of dwelling on what could’ve been, I get to wait patiently on what will be! I get to be spontaneous and live life with my amazing life planner, GOD. 

I shall talk more about career and general adulthood realizations later. This was already way longer than I wanted. The moral of the story is... life plans change. And I may end up married with 5 kids. Which I’d be open to. It just wouldn’t be my first choice or fifth choice. And I’m having an actual anxiety attack thinking about it. But who knows. So just leave me alone and watch what happens. *cues up God’s Plan by Drake

Love you for reading! 

Let your light shine today.

Shanda B.

[haveyouseenbladerunner]

Interesting Ride

Monday, March 15 - Usually when you start a story, you’re supposed to introduce yourself. I have no idea how to go about it since I am the simplest human being on god’s green earth. All I can say is I’m an old, grizzled fisherman. Living by the ocean, in a tiny wooden house. It ain’t much but it’s all I need. I don’t possess much either. No technology of any kind, not even a radio. I enjoy my life the way my grand daddy and his grand daddy before him did. I might be all by myself in this world but I know what came before me. I’m proud of my family. Back when I was a young guy I and anybody came up to talk to me, I would always talk about my family. What they were like, what my mother told me, what my father was like as a kid, where did my grandparents live, and so on. I haven’t even touched a radio in a while. I ain’t got no wife, no kids, no friends. No friends of my own species at least. Fishes are my friends. They keep me alive. If those damn things disappeared one day I’d be in a whole lot of trouble. Isolation is good for .ya, if you know how to enjoy your own company that is. I have forgotten when was the last time I had connection with the outside world. I don’t even know who the president is. I live like a god damn Amish person. That’s because the modern world is toxic to me. I’m not too fond of the way they think, what they do, what they respect and don’t respect. I don’t like em. Things were different back in my day, people had respect. When I was little, my momma used to say - “ Son, go get you a friend. I ain’t going to be here all your life, and in this terrifying world you will go crazy if you don’t have somebody to talk to”. – Well, if by going crazy she meant enjoying my life the way most people thrive to, I might as well have. All I got in this world are the sea, those god damn fishes, a few old, worn out books to entertain myself, and a little black notebook on my bedside which I am writing in right now.

Monday, March 16 – I’m usually not up this late, I’m a very deep sleeper, but not tonight. I have been feeling uneasy throughout the whole day and I had to get it off my chest somehow so here I am, writing, as I usually do. It started off with a crazy dream I had last night. I woke up in the middle of the night to some wild thunderstorm. It makes sense, I thought. we are in winter after all, it’s no easy piece of cake living by the ocean at a time like this. But the problem was, the wind seemed so much stronger and so much more intense that I’ve ever experienced. Noises of thunder didn’t help either.

For some reason I chose to go out, I don’t know what I was thinking. I got dressed up and walked out of the house.

Words can not describe the intensity I felt at that moment,

The wind was almost strong enough to toss me around.

But none of it comes close to what I felt when I looked forward. That picture will stay with me for the rest of my life. An image, of the little white line of the wave of the ocean. Rising and rising, rising and rising. The massive wave coming closer and closer to me, not stopping. The sound getting louder and louder. I couldn’t help but stand there, fascinated at the surreal beauty as well as shocked at the sudden intensity of the situation. The wave ran over me, and I swear I could see my life flashing before my eyes. The feeling… I thought it would last forever. But the weird thing was… I wasn’t moving. What’s going on? I thought. A storm this strong should toss me around like toothpick!

But the storm passed me, I looked back and... froze…stared with shock at what I was seeing… I wasn’t even wet, but I was staring at a blank space, which used to be my house... countless pieces of wood just laying on the ground… but when I tried to run to it’s direction, I couldn’t move. I found myself… frozen, not being able to move my arms, or legs. As I’m starting to discover this, I seem to be going higher up in the air… I look down and… see a tree instead of my legs, rising up in the air higher and higher. When it stopped, I finally woke up.

I suppose I felt a little bit better when I rose up from bed went outside and stared at the ocean for a little bit, but continued to feel uneasy throughout the whole day, seeing the weather was not that great in real life either. Thunder and wind has been a big part of my day. The day has been dark, cold. Living where I do, I’m familiar with those situations, but today has been the worst yet.

Tuesday, March 17 - I was sitting by the beach outside my house a few days ago, in an old busted up wooden chair I have. People drink coffee when they wake up, that is my way of staring the day.

I was sitting in my chair, listening to the birds. Man do I love their singing, it keeps me in a good mood.

I was starring at the blue ocean, and a man walked by. I must have been staring at that guy forever, it’s been years since I saw a human being appear where I live. It’s by an abandoned graveyard. I assumed most people would be too scared to take a walk over this side of the beach.

He was dressed in blue pants and a white button shirt. No shoes though. Must be a free spirited guy I thought, taking such a long walk with no shoes on. There ain’t no city, no populated place in the world this place is close to.

He walked over to me and asked, “How’s the water, grandpa?”

“Smooth as butter”, I said.

“What brings you out here boy?”, I asked before he could say anything else.

“I don’t really know. Woke up in good spirits, went outside to see where the chilly morning wind would take me, this is where I came”.

“You seem to me like the kind of guy I’ve been wanting to talk to all my life. Why don’t you come in and help yourself to some fish I have left from yesterday?”, I responded in excitement, with a big smile on my face.

He just looked at me, laughed, looked straight into my eyes, as if he was starring right into my soul and said “You’re a good man, grandpa. Too good for this world”. As he said this, he looked away at the ocean and continued to walk further down to the beach.

Wednesday, March 18th – Woke up to another bad dream. Maybe bad is not the word to describe it… I don’t know what is the word to describe it.

I was sitting at my table, drinking after a few good hours of work, when I noticed there was something weird about the color of the sky outside. I stood up and walked slowly to the door. Being aware of my previous weird dream… even in my dream I was cautious, ready to see the weirdest thing ever. Walking towards the door something strange caught my eye. There was a scratch on my door.

My house is entirely made of wood. Anybody can scratch anything on the walls they wish. I never did it, at least I don’t remember. And there was nobody else except me to do it.

I got closer and I saw it was a word, it read “Hybris”.

I’ve read a couple of books in my life and I knew that Hybris was the name of the goddess of pride in Greek Mythology, I wonder what that means.

I went out there to see what was going on this time.

Just a little while ago I thought I saw a sight that would never be beaten by anything, here I was staring… an ocean, which was not blue… but red. Not the red it looks like during a beautiful sunset, really red. Noticeably red. Even in my dream I was aware of the weird situations I’ve been through lately. A man suddenly appearing at a place where I’ve never seen a human being before, the weird dream, the weather. So I was actually hoping that it would end here... but I looked up at the sky, and that’s when I noticed that the sun was shining brighter than I’ve ever seen in my life. I tried to look closely to find out… it was not the sun as I’m used to seeing, it was not round and beautiful. It was a lion’s head. An actual lion’s had. I tried to look even closer and saw that the head had a face, a beautiful, shiny face. One thing I can remember very vividly is that his left eye had a huge scratch on it. I had a feeling in my gut I’ve never felt in my life… I didn’t know what to do… how to react.

I turned around in panic when I felt a tap on my shoulder… it was none other than my mom.

I was trying my best to get words out of my mouth with every single emotion I felt in my chest all mixed up.

“M…mother?”

“Son, go get you a friend. You’ll go crazy if you don’t have somebody to talk to,,

Even though it was a dream… that’s exactly when I knew that no matter what crazy bullshit happens next, this is the one moment in my life I will remember more vividly than anything else. That’s when I woke up.

I’m slowly starting to feel very uneasy. Everything that’s been going on lately at the same time cannot be an accident.

But at the same time I’m thinking to myself that I’m a woke man. How can my own mind fool me. When I made a decision to isolate myself from everybody else, I became the one in control of it. I have no idea what’s going to happen next, but I’m afraid I’m afraid I won’t like it.

Thursday, March 19th – I am sitting at a desk, in a tiny wooden house, and writing my experience with an entity I came across a little while ago.

Yesterday I was wondering what else can happen, now I’m wondering how come I still have the strength, the will, the consciousness to write.

I was sitting by the beach, watching the ocean, when I noticed something very surreal.

A man tapped me on the shoulder from behind.

As I turned around, I saw a man that looked very familiar, I was completely certain I had seen him somewhere before.

As I sat up from my chair to take a better look at the gentleman, he said with a smile on his face – “Missed me?,,

“Hang on… you’re…, you’re the guy I met a few days ago here at the beach… what are you doing here,,

“I’m here to have a conversation with you about a few things,,

-I couldn’t say absolutely anything back, being as confused as I was at that moment.

“How have you been handling the dreams?,,

“What? What dreams? How do you know about my dreams? Who the hell are you?!

“I’ll leave that up to you to figure out,,

“What do you want from me?,,

“Don’t be so tense, I’m the least of your worries. I’m here to explain your dreams,,

-I just stood there, shocked.

“So how’s it working out for you?

“What the hell am I supposed to answer to that?,,

“Don’t… your face says enough” – and trust me… it did.

-How’s it working out for you? Being away from everybody and everything else. Having absolutely no respect for modern society… or any kind of society for that matter? Being so proud in yourself that nobody else on this planet gets to enjoy the luxury that is your presence.” – He said with an eyeroll.

“Are you calling me a bad person?”

“I’m not a man you can feel free to have a moral argument with. And this is where I get to talk. Because I know you very well. With all your pride, with all your sense of self, I still know you better than you know yourself. So well in fact, that I could go ahead and tell you a few things about yourself that you don’t know. The first thing I want you to know is that you’re a sinner. You’ve been in isolation for so long my dear, that you have developed toxic thoughts, and with nobody around to talk to, you’ve entertained those thoughts , and become an abomination of a person. You are a hypocrite, you claim to not want to be around people because of their negative traits, but you portray the same traits they do, in a much more enhanced manner, you hate them. You claim to be apart from them because it makes your life better, when in fact you are trying your utter best to get back at them. And why?

Well, that brings us to your second negative trait. You are prideful, and arrogant.

As long as you’ve been alive you’ve put yourself above everybody else, claimed you were superior to absolutely everybody you ever met, that it’s an actual blessing to be in your presence and that nobody can ever match your intellectual and moral capacity. That my friend, will not go unpunished. The reason I’m here in the first place is to help you face yourself as you truly are. No more will you escape and avoid your sins. Which brings us directly to your dreams, this is the fun part.

Let’s start with the most recent one. The little writing on your is the name of the Goddess of pride, Hybris, as you figured out yourself. Smart boy. For obvious reasons of course.

The head of the lion with a scratch in his eye, which replaced the sun, is the well known sign of the deadly sin of pride, for which you will be atoning very soon. The red ocean, represents the blood, and the violence that will take place in your life in a little while. Now, on to the second one. I saved the best for the last. The midnight, the thunderstorm, the dark, Lovecraftian mysticism of it, Isn’t it poetic?,,

-I don’t think I have any words in my mind at this point.

“The storm, represents the punishment for the sin you’ve lived with all your life, pride. You must have heard the saying, the bigger they are, the harder they fall. And my god, as much as you would like to present yourself to be simple, and humble an down to earth, you are indeed a big, proud man.

That saying is more true than you could ever imagine.

“The house of the exalted ones god will tear down,, - Proverbs 16:18. Just like the storm tore down your house.

And here comes my favorite part of your little adventure. That feeling of being frozen, unable to move, stuck in one place with a tree instead of your legs, is the same punishment that men with violence as their deadly sin have to endure in hell, as presented in Dante’s divine comedy.

Because now that I have introduced you to your real self, you are going to commit a violent deed. You are going to take the rest of the day to think about your disgraceful life, and tomorrow morning, on Friday, on the sixth day on which god brought to earth Adam and Eve, you are going to kill yourself.,,

“Who… who are you,, - I must have starred at him forever before words finally came out of my mouth.

But I seriously wish I had not said that … because, if once in my life I ever thought I had seen the surreal, the impossible, this is when the impossible happened. The mysterious entity… shapeshifted… into my mother…

“Son, go get you a friend, you’ll go crazy if you don’t have anybody to talk to,,

-The entity shifted back into his regular self, smiled at me and walked away. I was too stunned, too horrified, too petrified and too lost to say absolutely anything.

Friday, March 20th – Haven’t had any sleep last night, thinking about my encounter with the entity.

My mother used to say: “Son, go get you a friend, you’ll go crazy if you don’t have anybody to talk to,, - I might as well have.

I don’t know who I am anymore, I don’t even know who was the guy that filled up this little black book.

But I do know what’s about to happen.... this has been a very interesting ride.

[joneswilliam72]

Review: On Sulphur English extreme metal act Inter Arma deliver their most uncompromising statement yet

You know what? Inter Arma are tired of being inadequately (and reductively) pigeon-holed under the “doom” or “sludge” labels. On the other hand, they likely don’t give a shit either about the lengths you’ve gone to in coming up with a multi-hyphenated descriptor that ticks off every metal sub-genre the band cherry picks its stylistic touchstones from; blackened-and-sludgy-southern-hard-psych-stoner-death-doom-post-metal hardly rolls off the tongue anyway.

Pitched as a deliberate subversion of expectations, Sulphur English strips the band’s sound of much of the colour and light that they had increasingly let in over their past few releases, to send listeners careening, disorientated, into a dark and stormy night of the soul, with little promise of a brighter dawn. Make no mistake, frontman Mike Paparo certainly sings of his own soul across a few of these tracks, but that album title, and its none-too-subtle nod to the toxic discourse of contemporary politics, should clue you in to the fact that it’s America’s soul that’s at stake here.

In their mastery of long-form composition, their deliberate wielding of shifting dynamics, expert control of tension and release, and, yes, exuberant indulgence in genre agnosticism, Inter Arma have always been a band that merited the use of adjectives like “transportative” and “transcendent.” Sky Burial, Paradise Gallows and especially the single track epic, The Cavern (which I like to think of as the Bloodborne iteration of Inter Arma) feel like journeys, Homeric in scale, and despite the vein of misanthropy that has run through virtually all of Paparo’s lyrics, there was always a sense of escapism inherent to the experience of listening to an Inter Arma record.

Like the best post-rock, the band’s music connects emotionally by sublimating its slow builds into moments of jaw-dropping catharsis. But they’re also just a group of incredible musicians, whose self-evident glee at the sheer possibilities of unfettered creativity translates into a life-affirming, even joyful, experience for their audience. Which is why, putting on an Inter Arma album feels like an escape from realities both humdrum and painful.

All of that is to say that Sulphur English, by contrast, is not interested in providing escapism. It’s here to confront you with personal agonies and political abominations, and get you to wake the fuck up and confront our collective reality. Where Paradise Gallows opened with a prologue of pretty acoustic guitars and solo-ing worthy of David Gilmour, all in an effort to sonically conjure up the cosmic grandeur of that beautiful album art, Sulphur English opens like a goddamn horror film, all piercing whines and echoing piano. Named for erstwhile Lord Mantis and Indian drummer, Bill Bumgardner, who took his own life in 2016 (the LP is dedicated to his memory as well as to the founding member of Bell Witch, Adrian Guerra), the album opener is a howl of pain and anger, expressed in its back half via a solid minute of lurching riffage and crashing symbols, rising to a cacophony of bass drum blasts and all-consuming static. It’s a deliberately unwelcoming introduction.

The intensity doesn’t let up over the next few tracks. ‘A Waxen Sea’ and ‘Citadel’ are about as thrillingly blunt as Inter Arma get. There’s no slow build here. Just wrecking ball riffs and T.J. Childers behind the kit doing his damnedest to convince us that he is in possession of more than the standard allotment of limbs. ‘A Waxen Sea’’s appropriately sea-sick rhythm evokes being aboard a ship buffeted by tumultuous seas. As the song spirals to its conclusion, it feels like you’re circling the vortex of an unfathomably vast sinkhole. Paparo’s low death growl throughout is positively terrifying and animalistic, and yet the key lyric of a song that seems in thrall to the majesty of the oceans is about the placid tolling of iron bells. Calm and peaceful, this ain’t.

Lead single ‘Citadel’ is like a showreel for what Inter Arma are capable of. Stop-start riffing, blast beasts, vertigo-inducing, descending guitar leads, and Paparo’s vocals vacillating between the guttural bellows of death and the demonic screech of black metal, layered with effects. The lyrics posit the song as a call-to-arms, an appeal to one’s strength of will, to rise above depression and personal anguish. It’s a striking examination of mental health, wrought in Shakespearean terms: “Held captive by untold wounds of corporeal and psychic root/ Aloft in a storm of unseen anguish where joy and sorrow entwine.” The eyes-closed, horns-raised shredding of the song’s guitar solos could be interpreted as a sonic metaphor for the triumph of Paparo’s determination to overcome, but they sit so incongruously against the blunt force aesthetic of the rest of the track, that they almost seem to mock that possibility.

‘Howling Lands’, the final piece of the opening triptych, places full emphasis on Inter Arma’s rhythm section. Tribal drums dominate the mix before roiling riffs and Paparo’s blade-sharp shriek join to create an overwhelming wall of sound. If you hadn’t done so already, this is without a doubt the track where you’ll rise from your seat to applaud the job done by Mikey Allred, who engineered, mixed and mastered the record. The sheer sense of scale created here is immense, and it’s all in service to conjuring an image that matches Paparo’s words. In his most operatic baritone, he intones that the masses are digging their way to the centre of hell, as their masters (the 1%, presumably) pound their drums incessantly. And that’s exactly what ‘Howling Lands’ feels like.

When Childers finally relents, and the gently plucked acoustic guitar of ‘Stillness’ fades in, it feels like being soothed to sleep by the side of a campfire in a moonlit desert of the far-flung wild west. There’s an undeniable Swans vibe in the song’s gothic Americana, and more than a touch of Michael Gira in Paparo’s vocal delivery. If Cormac McCarthy wrote folk-inflected post-metal, this is undoubtedly what it would sound like.

Long-term Inter Arma fans will have noticed by now that they’re onto the fifth track of the album and not one song so far has come close to breaking the 10-minute barrier. The band have been holding back on the slow build approach because they’ve been too busy trying to cave in your skull; until ‘Stillness’ that is. A spiritual successor to ‘The Long Road Home’ off Sky Burial, and sounding uncannily like the beautiful folk lullaby of Paradise Gallows closer, ‘Where the Earth Meets the Sky’, ‘Stillness’ takes its time getting to its payoff. But when that monolithically sludgy riff hits, it brings with it some serious emotional heft. It’s as if the song blossoms, if something so resolutely indelicate could be said to blossom. Paparo’s voice resonates as if it’s bouncing off the towering sandstone buttes of Monument Valley.

There’s something deeply goofy about someone roaring the word “stillness” at the top of their lungs, but there is a certain sense of calm to the maelstrom that Inter Arma create. It’s brutal, unfathomably huge and loud, but somehow comforting. Released in an understated fashion as an Adult Swim Single, ‘Stillness’ is actually something of a thesis statement for Inter Arma’s raison d’être: Paparo’s lyrics, with their references to hymns and primeval songs, are suggestive of music’s power to both rouse and still the mind. This is something the guys in Inter Arma, despite their apparently irreverent approach to release strategy, take very seriously.

The band revisit the relative quiet of the album’s centerpiece on ‘Blood on the Lupines’, another gothic reverie, which passes by like a bad dream. Paparo’s droning baritone is virtually incomprehensible over an instrumental backdrop that can only be described as Lynchian jazz-doom. But pay attention to the lyric sheet, and what you have is an evocatively told narrative about an America that has lost its way. It’s deliberately obtuse, overtly symbolic and beholden only to the internal logic of dreams, but as the band gradually builds the tension, Paparo’s narrative reaches a head that is as unsettling as any of the more extreme instrumental moments on the album.

Speaking of extreme, ‘Blood on the Lupines’ is flanked on either side by two of Inter Arma’s wildest ever compositions. ‘The Atavist’s Meridian’ may not be entirely without precedent in their catalogue (‘’sblood’ and ‘Violent Constellations’ come immediately to mind), but the malevolent churn that the band whips into life during the song’s breathtaking opening minutes sets a new standard for chaotic heaviness. Childers’ performance is simply phenomenal, and Paparo is at his most deranged, whilst the contributions by Dalton, Kerkes and Russell feel less like parts written for and performed by bass and guitar, than an unholy noise summoned from the depths of the earth. There’s a period of respite during the song’s middle section but it is defined by a pervasive sense of uneasiness; the threat of being thrust back into the raging inferno of that striking album art hanging overhead. Spoiler alert: you get thrust back in. And then some.

Given its subject matter, it makes sense that the closing title track is the most aggressive song on an album that already wasn’t shy about how mad it was about a lot of things. Quite plainly an indictment of Trump and especially the GOP’s backbone-deficient willingness to follow the “charlatan [with the] forked tongue” down any outlandish, self-serving avenue he sees fit, in their quest for “power absolute,” ‘Sulphur English’ sees the band plow through passages of blistering death-metal, before slowing down to a funeral trudge to drive home the moral imperative like exasperated and weary blows to the head: “sever the corrupt tongue of the imperious fool,” Paparo growls. You can’t help but feel that anti-Trump demonstrations would be a lot more effective if protestors sounded like the Inter Arma frontman.

As the title track fades out on a cacophony of blast beats, piercing feedback and distended slabs of guitar, you realise that you now find yourself, silent and alone in the dark. Dawn has not broken. You’ve been on a journey through that black and blustery night of America’s soul, but you still have to make your own way out to the light. Inter Arma aren’t going to hold your hand and tell you that everything’s going to be ok. That’s why Sulphur English is lacking in the unguardedly beautiful moments that had graced Paradise Gallows. It’s an album that’s decidedly a product of and reaction to the times. Despite the grandeur, theatricality and sheer exuberant technicality of everything this band does in their music, the fact that they’re engaging with the uncomfortable realities of the present adds a new string to their bow and arguably makes them more vital a band than ever. Ever since Sky Burial’s release in 2013, the metal community has been hailing Inter Arma as one of the form’s leading lights. Sulphur English may not quite attain the same stratospheric heights as that record did, but, sitting shoulder-to-shoulder alongside the rest of their catalogue, it easily earns Inter Arma the right to be heralded as the metal act of the decade.

from The 405 http://bit.ly/2Zc3vqN

[joneswilliam72]

Review: On Sulphur English extreme metal act Inter Arma deliver their most uncompromising statement yet

You know what? Inter Arma are tired of being inadequately (and reductively) pigeon-holed under the “doom” or “sludge” labels. On the other hand, they likely don’t give a shit either about the lengths you’ve gone to in coming up with a multi-hyphenated descriptor that ticks off every metal sub-genre the band cherry picks its stylistic touchstones from; blackened-and-sludgy-southern-hard-psych-stoner-death-doom-post-metal hardly rolls off the tongue anyway.

Pitched as a deliberate subversion of expectations, Sulphur English strips the band’s sound of much of the colour and light that they had increasingly let in over their past few releases, to send listeners careening, disorientated, into a dark and stormy night of the soul, with little promise of a brighter dawn. Make no mistake, frontman Mike Paparo certainly sings of his own soul across a few of these tracks, but that album title, and its none-too-subtle nod to the toxic discourse of contemporary politics, should clue you in to the fact that it’s America’s soul that’s at stake here.

In their mastery of long-form composition, their deliberate wielding of shifting dynamics, expert control of tension and release, and, yes, exuberant indulgence in genre agnosticism, Inter Arma have always been a band that merited the use of adjectives like “transportative” and “transcendent.” Sky Burial, Paradise Gallows and especially the single track epic, The Cavern (which I like to think of as the Bloodborne iteration of Inter Arma) feel like journeys, Homeric in scale, and despite the vein of misanthropy that has run through virtually all of Paparo’s lyrics, there was always a sense of escapism inherent to the experience of listening to an Inter Arma record.

Like the best post-rock, the band’s music connects emotionally by sublimating its slow builds into moments of jaw-dropping catharsis. But they’re also just a group of incredible musicians, whose self-evident glee at the sheer possibilities of unfettered creativity translates into a life-affirming, even joyful, experience for their audience. Which is why, putting on an Inter Arma album feels like an escape from realities both humdrum and painful.

All of that is to say that Sulphur English, by contrast, is not interested in providing escapism. It’s here to confront you with personal agonies and political abominations, and get you to wake the fuck up and confront our collective reality. Where Paradise Gallows opened with a prologue of pretty acoustic guitars and solo-ing worthy of David Gilmour, all in an effort to sonically conjure up the cosmic grandeur of that beautiful album art, Sulphur English opens like a goddamn horror film, all piercing whines and echoing piano. Named for erstwhile Lord Mantis and Indian drummer, Bill Bumgardner, who took his own life in 2016 (the LP is dedicated to his memory as well as to the founding member of Bell Witch, Adrian Guerra), the album opener is a howl of pain and anger, expressed in its back half via a solid minute of lurching riffage and crashing symbols, rising to a cacophony of bass drum blasts and all-consuming static. It’s a deliberately unwelcoming introduction.

The intensity doesn’t let up over the next few tracks. ‘A Waxen Sea’ and ‘Citadel’ are about as thrillingly blunt as Inter Arma get. There’s no slow build here. Just wrecking ball riffs and T.J. Childers behind the kit doing his damnedest to convince us that he is in possession of more than the standard allotment of limbs. ‘A Waxen Sea’’s appropriately sea-sick rhythm evokes being aboard a ship buffeted by tumultuous seas. As the song spirals to its conclusion, it feels like you’re circling the vortex of an unfathomably vast sinkhole. Paparo’s low death growl throughout is positively terrifying and animalistic, and yet the key lyric of a song that seems in thrall to the majesty of the oceans is about the placid tolling of iron bells. Calm and peaceful, this ain’t.

Lead single ‘Citadel’ is like a showreel for what Inter Arma are capable of. Stop-start riffing, blast beasts, vertigo-inducing, descending guitar leads, and Paparo’s vocals vacillating between the guttural bellows of death and the demonic screech of black metal, layered with effects. The lyrics posit the song as a call-to-arms, an appeal to one’s strength of will, to rise above depression and personal anguish. It’s a striking examination of mental health, wrought in Shakespearean terms: “Held captive by untold wounds of corporeal and psychic root/ Aloft in a storm of unseen anguish where joy and sorrow entwine.” The eyes-closed, horns-raised shredding of the song’s guitar solos could be interpreted as a sonic metaphor for the triumph of Paparo’s determination to overcome, but they sit so incongruously against the blunt force aesthetic of the rest of the track, that they almost seem to mock that possibility.

‘Howling Lands’, the final piece of the opening triptych, places full emphasis on Inter Arma’s rhythm section. Tribal drums dominate the mix before roiling riffs and Paparo’s blade-sharp shriek join to create an overwhelming wall of sound. If you hadn’t done so already, this is without a doubt the track where you’ll rise from your seat to applaud the job done by Mikey Allred, who engineered, mixed and mastered the record. The sheer sense of scale created here is immense, and it’s all in service to conjuring an image that matches Paparo’s words. In his most operatic baritone, he intones that the masses are digging their way to the centre of hell, as their masters (the 1%, presumably) pound their drums incessantly. And that’s exactly what ‘Howling Lands’ feels like.

When Childers finally relents, and the gently plucked acoustic guitar of ‘Stillness’ fades in, it feels like being soothed to sleep by the side of a campfire in a moonlit desert of the far-flung wild west. There’s an undeniable Swans vibe in the song’s gothic Americana, and more than a touch of Michael Gira in Paparo’s vocal delivery. If Cormac McCarthy wrote folk-inflected post-metal, this is undoubtedly what it would sound like.

Long-term Inter Arma fans will have noticed by now that they’re onto the fifth track of the album and not one song so far has come close to breaking the 10-minute barrier. The band have been holding back on the slow build approach because they’ve been too busy trying to cave in your skull; until ‘Stillness’ that is. A spiritual successor to ‘The Long Road Home’ off Sky Burial, and sounding uncannily like the beautiful folk lullaby of Paradise Gallows closer, ‘Where the Earth Meets the Sky’, ‘Stillness’ takes its time getting to its payoff. But when that monolithically sludgy riff hits, it brings with it some serious emotional heft. It’s as if the song blossoms, if something so resolutely indelicate could be said to blossom. Paparo’s voice resonates as if it’s bouncing off the towering sandstone buttes of Monument Valley.

There’s something deeply goofy about someone roaring the word “stillness” at the top of their lungs, but there is a certain sense of calm to the maelstrom that Inter Arma create. It’s brutal, unfathomably huge and loud, but somehow comforting. Released in an understated fashion as an Adult Swim Single, ‘Stillness’ is actually something of a thesis statement for Inter Arma’s raison d’être: Paparo’s lyrics, with their references to hymns and primeval songs, are suggestive of music’s power to both rouse and still the mind. This is something the guys in Inter Arma, despite their apparently irreverent approach to release strategy, take very seriously.

The band revisit the relative quiet of the album’s centerpiece on ‘Blood on the Lupines’, another gothic reverie, which passes by like a bad dream. Paparo’s droning baritone is virtually incomprehensible over an instrumental backdrop that can only be described as Lynchian jazz-doom. But pay attention to the lyric sheet, and what you have is an evocatively told narrative about an America that has lost its way. It’s deliberately obtuse, overtly symbolic and beholden only to the internal logic of dreams, but as the band gradually builds the tension, Paparo’s narrative reaches a head that is as unsettling as any of the more extreme instrumental moments on the album.

Speaking of extreme, ‘Blood on the Lupines’ is flanked on either side by two of Inter Arma’s wildest ever compositions. ‘The Atavist’s Meridian’ may not be entirely without precedent in their catalogue (‘’sblood’ and ‘Violent Constellations’ come immediately to mind), but the malevolent churn that the band whips into life during the song’s breathtaking opening minutes sets a new standard for chaotic heaviness. Childers’ performance is simply phenomenal, and Paparo is at his most deranged, whilst the contributions by Dalton, Kerkes and Russell feel less like parts written for and performed by bass and guitar, than an unholy noise summoned from the depths of the earth. There’s a period of respite during the song’s middle section but it is defined by a pervasive sense of uneasiness; the threat of being thrust back into the raging inferno of that striking album art hanging overhead. Spoiler alert: you get thrust back in. And then some.

Given its subject matter, it makes sense that the closing title track is the most aggressive song on an album that already wasn’t shy about how mad it was about a lot of things. Quite plainly an indictment of Trump and especially the GOP’s backbone-deficient willingness to follow the “charlatan [with the] forked tongue” down any outlandish, self-serving avenue he sees fit, in their quest for “power absolute,” ‘Sulphur English’ sees the band plow through passages of blistering death-metal, before slowing down to a funeral trudge to drive home the moral imperative like exasperated and weary blows to the head: “sever the corrupt tongue of the imperious fool,” Paparo growls. You can’t help but feel that anti-Trump demonstrations would be a lot more effective if protestors sounded like the Inter Arma frontman.

As the title track fades out on a cacophony of blast beats, piercing feedback and distended slabs of guitar, you realise that you now find yourself, silent and alone in the dark. Dawn has not broken. You’ve been on a journey through that black and blustery night of America’s soul, but you still have to make your own way out to the light. Inter Arma aren’t going to hold your hand and tell you that everything’s going to be ok. That’s why Sulphur English is lacking in the unguardedly beautiful moments that had graced Paradise Gallows. It’s an album that’s decidedly a product of and reaction to the times. Despite the grandeur, theatricality and sheer exuberant technicality of everything this band does in their music, the fact that they’re engaging with the uncomfortable realities of the present adds a new string to their bow and arguably makes them more vital a band than ever. Ever since Sky Burial’s release in 2013, the metal community has been hailing Inter Arma as one of the form’s leading lights. Sulphur English may not quite attain the same stratospheric heights as that record did, but, sitting shoulder-to-shoulder alongside the rest of their catalogue, it easily earns Inter Arma the right to be heralded as the metal act of the decade.

from The 405 http://bit.ly/2Zc3vqN