The following article was published in N-SPHERE November 2011 issue.

:: In Slaughter Natives is the brainchild of Jouni Havukainen. Active since 1985 In Slaughter Natives paved the way for future generations of dark industrial acts together with such acts as Brighter Death Now, Maschinenzimmer 412 and Ordo Equilibrio on the legendary Cold Meat Industry label. Over the years In Slaughter Natives used many different approaches, from Industrial stompage to complicated dark ambient pieces but always attained that special touch which many artists could only strife for.

:: When did you decide to release music under the monicker of In Slaughter Natives?

At the end of 1987, Roger at CMI asked me if I could release something with them. I had some material laying around that I had made after quitting playing in some bands. Was not enough for a release, but an OK start; after a couple of months it started to be enough for a release, but no name for the project. How cool would it be to release under your own name? Not ‘specially much! Not back in those days. I did know I wanted “In” and “Slaughter” in the name, I have no idea where/when “Natives” appeared, but it ended up in the name after all. Not grammatically correct, but who cares…

:: Throughout the years you have used many different approaches, are you satisfied with the way In Slaughter Natives evolved?

Yes, I think I’m pretty satisfied. Maybe I miss a bit the harsher side or tendencies, but it’s never too late for bring in an harsher direction in the future.

:: Any regrets regarding past releases?

No regrets so far. Maybe just some few minor doubts, doubts that hopefully can be corrected with reworks. Some new versions already have and others will see the light in the future. Going to be interesting to see what sort of new attributes the newer technology could fertilise from some of the past releases.

:: Your last album Resurrection – The Return of a King got released in 2004. You deployed a much darker and almost soundtrack like sound compared to the guitar driven madness on Sacrosancts Bleed. What inspired you to take this direction?

I guess maybe just by chance, reflecting thoughts and feelings I had for the moment. Usually, I have no real plan about the outcome of an album; it usually speaks by itself in the process. The creation of Resurrection and also the other releases are mainly coincidences collected together, collected from ideas and improvisations slowly merged together, moments of collected visions made out of many small fragments of chaos, some fragments of self birth, some fragments of just emotions, one leading to the other, guiding and hinting me on the straw to the goal. As long as I think it feels OK, I have to trust my intuition, nothing else. To which direction it’s leading, is not important any more.

:: Resurrection – The Return of a King was your first album since the much acclaimed release of Purgate My Stain in 1996. Did you work on any other projects during the 8 years between these releases?

I made only some tracks for compilations. I was working on a new album that I lost due to a hardware crash. It was not totally ready material, but it had something special. I said fuck it, defeated ’cause of the technology, so after that I spend some years doing other stuff instead, ’till the need to create a new album grew up big enough and I, once again, found and had the right moments of insanity.

:: You seem to have a deep interest in the unexplainable and obscure aspects of life, how do these aspects appeal to you personally?

Many times the obscure, unexplainable, weird and insane aspects make it worthwhile to wake up and climb out of the bed.

:: I also sense a certain nihilistic and misanthropic sentiment when listening to your music, the aesthetics and terminology used throughout your albums reinforce these sentiments. How did religion affect you and your music?

Everyone should follow their belief and should have the right to express themselves openly in whichever way they want, need or feel, but of course, it might have a price. I am and ISN is non-political. I usually don’t care about the political situation in Sweden or in the world, but for sure it reflects me, especially these days more than earlier years. My view of politics: the container of money and/or religion walking hand in hand with humanity’s need for dominion and power. This stupidity will probably, given enough time, create a natural response to the way we evolve, with everything ending up in total war. It can also end up in another way: humans are the only animals that carry out their thoughts in pure act. Can it be that humanity’s damnation is the thought, the knowledge and the greed?

About religious aspects: the symbolism or possible ideology that might be reflected in ISN are more an intent to offend the Judeo-Christian standards/values and their split morality. We are surrounded by hypocrisy, it seems to have become a part of humanity, so why not give these standards a kick? I have no problem with spiting on all that religion is about. Never subordinate yourself through others’ religious or political ideologies or views.

:: You are the sole member of In Slaughter Natives, you do however deploy other musicians when playing live. Which musicians make up the current live line-up of In Slaughter Natives?

The current live line-up is: Kathleen Binder (Polarlicht/Transistor) & Nicolas Van Meirhaeghe (Empusae). Former or for the moment resting live members are Peter Andersson (Deutsch Nepal), Tomas Pettersson (O.R.E) & Peter Bjärgö (Sophia/Arcana).

:: Many artists inspire each other through their art. Which artists inspired you during the creation process of your own music?

Sorry, but there are no other inspiring artists during the creating process, only the state of mind for the moment or the material itself, that can inspire, depending of the progress it makes, what emotions it gives and what direction it takes, to something bad or something good.

:: You collaborated with Tomas Pettersson (Ordo Rosarius Equilibrio) on more then one occasion, how did you meet Tomas and can we expect more collaborations in the future?

I have known Tomas, one of my best friends, since the beginning of ’90s. We grew up in the same small wasteland city Linköping. There was no way we could have avoided each other. The same goes for many of the other original CMI bands, many of us are from or have a connection to Linköping.

:: Are there any other artists with whom you would like to collaborate?

Maybe with other projects, but not for real with ISN. ISN is a content of my ego and moments of collected visions, it’s a birth of my need to create something I myself want to listen to, without others to be involved in it.

:: Most of your works have been released under the wing of Roger Karmanik‘s legendary Cold Meat Industry, how do you look back at this fruitful cooperation?

The early years were something special, CMI was as a big family, but things can change by time, due to reasons out of control.

:: It’s no secret that Cold Meat Industry went through some rough times the last couple of years resulting in many artists, including In Slaughter Natives, to leave this fine label. Can you shed some light on what happened?

Hmmm… the past is the past, it’s better to look forward. I wish CMI all the best, but for me it became a matter of moving forward.

:: The music industry is changing rapidly, many record-labels and artists are forced to dissolve due to downloading and the economic crisis, should record-labels and artists rethink their strategy when it comes to marketing? And what are your own experiences in these troubled times?

Of course ISN feels about these changes and movements. But my belief is that if a product is unique enough, then there are always some prepared to pay the price. Nothing would stop me from creating music, released or not. But, of course, the income from music helps enormously with giving the time to create, instead of trying to survive with spending all time hunting an income by other means.

:: Recently you have worked on the score of a documentary called Psicofonías – Las Voces Desconocidas, can you give the readers some information about this project?

I got an offer with free hands, to create the score to this Spanish production. The subject interested me a lot, so it wasn’t difficult to say yes. I don’t have more information for the moment. Let’s hope it works well with broadcasting. It’s supposed to come out as a DVD release in the future.

:: Can we hear your music in other video productions?

In some parts of a short film, Estigmas, in the MTV produced Dirty Sanches and three ISN tracks in an upcoming US produced movie with the working title The Lot with a release date in 2012.

:: What can we expect from In Slaughter Natives in the future?

The new album is taking form, it’s progressing in the right direction, but it needs about two more months for finalizing details, some arrangement and voice recordings. Beside the 3CD Digibook Live/Mort aux Vaches release, the new album will get released at the same time with a secret content release.

Photo | In Slaughter Natives. By Tomas Pettersson (www.ordo-rosarius-equilibrio.net) Courtesy of the artist.

Questions | Jim Breedveld

Full article here.

The following article was published in N-SPHERE November 2011 issue.

Name: Timothy Andrew Wilson

Location: Dallas, Texas, U.S.A.

Occupation: Artist, Game Developer

Definition of personal sphere:

It’s a restless place, uncommitted to any particular medium and defined by a broad set of ideas that winnow, mugging and petting, jostling about, until one generative nub remains as a fulcrum upon which I teeter like a goon.

Increasingly, making art seems like a kind of head-sickness in the psychological sense, in that I am compelled to do it, obsessively, often to the detriment of other things more dearly held – and this not to be melodramatic, merely an observation of myself and others of a similar bent. Matters of etiology, you could say.  I should be thankful this odd compulsion  enjoys a cultural heritage of Function, however suspect.

Because I have rarely shows my work or attempt to reach a public, the art can afford to be the result of mad work and the process  can ride first and foremost, unconcerned with observer or audience, like Chango riding a dancer’s head. This can lead to shite of course, and often does. But if the generative impulse lends sufficient energy and direction, the process invariably arrives at a surprising, revelatory place.

It’s like being shot from a circus cannon. In whimsically festooned costume and silver safety-helmet, I’m never quite sure if this generative impulse will land in a seven-stage photo-print, a painting or doodle, a comic, a film, a computer game scenario or a massive skin-collage, whatever, as it goes…  But the idea will eventually demand a form – and from there it’s all about just lighting the fuse. Sometimes you land in the crowd and sometimes you shoot through the tent flaps, into the manure.

Artwork in 4 words:

Process bound, interrogating effusively.

What is inspirational for you: A few things: any form of mark-making on paper, scribbles, jots, scumbles, ink spills, desiccation, mold contamination, stains, and any form of paper ephemera featuring the unmitigated presence of an artist’s hand. Robots making out and canoodling, so passionately that sparks fly from their commingling jowls. And, in no particular order: Gnostic and Hermetic cosmogony, golden age comics and popular illustration, human coexistence with specially distinct hominids, Neanderthal culture, ancient religiosity associated with the precession of equinoxes, Nazi Survival Mythology with it’s attendant Ariosophical claptrap, Indian Miniature and European Narrative painting, German Romanticism, graphical evidence of Chance, Tielhard de Chardin, medieval woodcuts, Catholic book illumination and, lastly, context-reduced science photography – particularly of the electro-generated, utilitarian variety.

Currently favourite artists: Max Ernst, Sid Couchey, Warren Kremer,  Robert Fludd, Dan Estabrook, David Lynch, Duchamp and, more importantly, many “lesser known” artists, fellow travellers discovered on street corners, bar-stools and the internet and who are always a source of inspiration – Sylvestre Anasse, for example, or Farel Dalrymple. All told, I’m attracted to artists who display grace and who prove nimble in the face of change, who build on top of themselves in clumsy aggregates, or sometimes graceful like feeding coral.

Tools of trade: Canon T1i – lately with Pentax K-mount lenses, iron salts, inkjet and ‘pigment’ prints, digitally produced negatives/transparencies, wax medium, acrylic paint and gel dispersants, gouache, Prismacolor pencils, tapes and adhesives of all variety, oil-sticks, chalk pastels, soft graphite pencils, Modo, After Effects, Photoshop, tiny medical grade scissors  - the best for cutting! – and X-Acto knives.

Current obsessions:

Cyanotypes, obviously, I can’t get enough of this process. It’s rare to find a medium so malleable, so full of surprise, excitement and sullen hi-jinks.But it always maintains a cold distance that lets you eat your own ass, dot your own eye. And this is good. Unforgiving, but forgetful – beautiful, but a little sallow in the cheek.

Another recent obsession has been encaustic medium, the wax of bees mixed with ship-sealing sap; burying my work under this mix is compelling, it seems to struggle at trapping light. A noble endeavor!  The encaustic, occurring as it has been during a work’s final stages, takes on a funereal air similar to a sympathetic ritual, dimly understood. And though I’ve always been fascinated by occult experience, lately this has turned on so-called “threshold” areas found on the borders of the quotidian, at the edge of deep trance, meditation, hypnagogic states or near-death experience. The phenomena of this space – the dwellers therein, the manifestations –  are remarkably consistent across culture and time – a fruitful, if reticent, subject for investigation.

Personal temptation: Frankly, I’m tempted toward turning my back on contemporary Western Civilization and moving to a Shack In The Woods. Much as Rimbaud abruptly shed a life of poetry for the trading of slaves, I could spend the latter half of my life trading in beaver pelts, doe skin fanny-packs, and crudely painted river stones. Maybe I could find the time to pen a few convoluted pronunciamentos, arriving by rocket mail. I’d also love to slice off a year to make a feature film or a fat graphic novel – Either would be fine.

Artwork: Timothy Andrew Wilson. Bicameral Loserism, from Cosmonautical Autoportraiture. 2011. Toned cyanotype with gelatin on vellum. Courtesy of the artist.

Full article here.

The following article was published in N-SPHERE November 2011 issue.

Daisies (Sedmikrásky, directed by Věra Chytilová) works like a childish and, at the same time, an ambiguous riddle. Since the film is part of the New Wave of Czech Cinema, this shouldn’t come as a surprise (remember Valerie and her week of wonders?). However, unlike Valerie…, which played more like a fairytale, holding a frail, but existent nonetheless, resemblance of a familiar structure, Sedmikrásky completely undermines it. There is a hint of a plot, but if you were told about it during or after the film ended it would not be much help. Nor would it be to try and follow the dialogues in a standard fashion. So, yes, if you like a film that has a clear structure, a discernible plot, read no more, ’cause this movie is not the right turn. This is not to say that Sedmikrásky is without interest. Not at all. Nor it is to say that it lacks energy, quite on the contrary, it has plenty of it and if you have a crush on the Dadaist movement, this film is a delicious treat.

I don’t usually do this, because in most of the cases I find expressing my primary reactions to a particular film to be boring and pointless, but in this case I shall follow the movie’s vibe. The first time I saw the film, a couple of months ago, I did not give it too much thought. I was aware of its energy, of its odd humour and its playfulness, but, at some point, it became – for me, at least – painfully exhausting. However, as it happened with some other films I have seen these years, I involuntarily came back to it and started recommending it… the more I thought of it, the more I got drawn into it.

This film is like the weird kid on the block, at first you may find him interesting, but then the more he talks or acts, the more you grow exhausted, until you decide to lose his trail. After a while, though, you’ll start thinking about him again and the more you do, the more you find the things he said or done to make some sense. Weird kid or weird record you listened back when you were a kid, take your pick (mine was Bjork’s Debut).

Since I mentioned Sedmikrásky‘s dialogue, there in a strong reference to Eugen Ionesco’s plays to be found here. In both cases we have an absurd dialogue, but wherein Ionesco’s case this absurdity underlines the growing impossibility of communication in modern society, here it highlights something primal. It plays more like a series of hints, like a coded language of a child.

There is another interesting link to the subsequent Drowning By Numbers (Peter Greenaway) and it is not the idea of games, but of names. In both cases, the respective protagonists have the same name: the two Maries of Sedmikrásky and the three Cissy Colprits of Drowning By Numbers.

Speaking of links, the film’s opening reminded me of another Czech film-maker, Jan Švankmajer. In that first sequence, the film’s protagonists seem to be more like puppets (Jan Švankmajer was known for his blend between film and animation) and there is a specific sound to be heard throughout that particular scene. Of course, there is another footnote that can be attached to that, involving the path taken by someone who starts constrained by rules and ends by – sweet irony – forcibly defying them. This can also explain the evolution of the dialogue in this particular sequence. In the very beginning, the output suggest rigidity, formalism, being like a puppet. After a few seconds we see the image of a wall falling and then the dialogue gets more and more free-wheeling up until the point the two protagonists decide that if everything is going bad in the world, then they can be bad as well. After that line, everything changes.

The formality is also hinted by the sepia colour. It is used in the opening and also in a restaurant scene, which plays very well as a satire against the bourgeois mannerisms, the act of eating playing an important role there as the equivalent of seeing: seeing in an indoctrinated yet elegant manner and seeing in a more barbaric and honest one. I am pointing this out because it fits, it makes sense for one to have thought these things back then, makes sense for one to think these things now. In the present, however, the barbaric honesty is more of an accessory. Back then, it was something some people were fighting for.

Speaking of bourgeoisie, there is another link to Le charme discreet de la bourgeoisie (Luis Buñuel). In both cases, what is subtracted is the context. We have a hint here, but it is too vague and works more like a slogan.

All in all, those who want something playful and free-wheeling, especially those who have a more organic contact with their Anima and the Dadaist movement, may be very excited about Sedmikrásky, while the rest are warmly recommended to see it (to end this review in the film’s fashion – more or less…).

Further viewing:

Fando Y Lis (1967, Alejandro Jodorowsky)

Food (1992, Jan Švankmajer)

Even Dwarves Started Small (1970, Werner Herzog)

Le charme discreet de la burgeoisie (1972, Luis Buñuel)

Sweet Movie (1970, Dusan Makavejev)

Photo | Sedmikrásky. 1966

by Shade

Full article here.

The following article was published in N-SPHERE November 2011 issue.

:: Literature and Occultism in the Victorian Era ::

Editor’s Note. The following is a two-part feature, spanning over the October 2011 and November 2011 Clockwork Showcases.

The passionate portrait of a living nature organically linked between all of its elements and the anatomia essentialis defended by Paracelsus, seduced our wretched Mary Shelley’s child, in the same way of many other real scientists during the century. And we already shall know the mainstream idea which lies underneath: the restless quest of the ens spirituale within living matter, or more precisely, a sort of medicine science entirely based in van Helmont’s concept of archeus influus, the unifying principle latent in all organic form of life. In short, the triumph of Prometheus’ search in the pursuit of the divine fire; the principle which rule the creation of life in base of dead matter, using in that difficult chore the procedures of the alchemists, as Paracelsus did in regards to the perturbing figure of the homunculus. Briefly, doctor Frankenstein tried “to read in the book of Nature with the eyes of the spirit”, following his master’s maxim.

And naturally we have arrived in this flowing argumentation to the Alchemy. Obviously this is not the adequate place to undertake any rigorous approach to the historical background of this phenomenon, but it’s an unavoidable task to make a halt and explain slightly its relation with very well-known writers of the period like Goethe (Faust I and Faust II 1808-1832), M. R. James (Casting the runes, 1911), Gustav Meyrink (Der Golem, 1915), E. G. Bulwer-Lytton (Zanoni, 1842), or even H. P. Lovecraft (with the short tale The Alchemist, 1908). Certainly, in many ways the Goethe’s approach to the alchemy was merely a poetic attempt to introduce his passionate readings of Paracelsus, Basilius Valentinus, Georg von Welling and Anton Joseph Kirchweger in his writings; but probably we ought to focus our attention on his most renowned character Faust, in order to explain his philosophical obsessions and literary intentions. Undoubtedly, his unfortunate character yearns for a divine and hidden science; he got to meet all human knowledge and now is craving to go beyond. The scholastic measures seem short for our hero, but the magic and alchemical rituals fit perfectly for his very new purpose. Certainly the same hope and desire identified in regards to the ancient practitioners of magical mysticism or late antiquity’s alchemists, both representative of the spirit of those wises who yearn for a new “science of occult virtues”, useful to unveil the secrets of Nature, as Festugière noticed in his Révélation [v]. Unequivocally, the main difference stems from the mephistophelian nature of the pact between the evil forces and our unruly character, either Faust or Melmoth.

Regarding to the alchemical and magical topics dealt in this and other nineteenth and early twentieth opuses (the panacea and the elixir of eternal life, the homunculus and the golem, the rebis, and finally the lapis philosophorum), is notorious for a historian their ignorance and their marvelous poetic license. Anyway, we should take account of the theosophical, pietist and spiritual influences of such alchemical conceptions, in the new theoretical sense given by celebrated opuses like the Amphiteatrum sapientiae aeternae solius verae (1595) of Heinrich Khunrath (1560-1605), or in the Opus mago-cabbalisticum et theosophicum (1735), by Welling (1655-1727), cited above as a great inspiration for Goethe’s Faust. Overall, those new spiritual or theosophical alchemists gave more importance to the salvation in Christian terms, rather than any sort of greasy alchemical task, and this new “alchemy” suits perfectly with their literary purposes and religious anxiety, as well as for the intentions of French occultists like Gerard Encausse (Papus), Eliphas Lévi or Stanislas de Guaita, who widely comment the Amphiteatrum. It’s beyond doubt that this murky and metaphysical concept of the occult sciences was a strong literary inspiration for many writers and artists during the analyzed period, and such insane lucubrations became an excellent argument at the time to recreate many unforgettable horrified and oppressive atmospheres.

And continuing with the relationship between the nineteenth literature and modern science, inevitable we have flowed into those wide-spread incipient pseudo-scientific currents like the Mesmerism and the Spiritualism, which had a tremendous influence in the literary panorama of the period. Anyhow, once again we should not forget that the problem of death, the spiritual world, the apparitions, specters and ghosts, have leaded a great part of the spilt ink and not necessarily regarding the occultist literature, despite of the disdain of many renowned occultists towards the Spiritualism movement. In any case, the ghost topic was widely treated by many writers and occultists during that period, occasionally as a mere diversion but sometimes as a meditate way of express a firm belief in a transcendent reality.

For instance, we discover in the sarcastic genius of Guy de Maupassant, a great interest in the animal magnetism and in the hidden and invisible creatures who prowling out of sight (Le Horla, 1887), as well as physiological conceptions defended by pseudo-scientists like Johann Kaspar Lavater (1741-1801) and Franz Joseph Gall (1758-1828), the introducers of a suggestive way to describe the human nature through the face’s features, extensively used by writers like Charlotte Brontë (The Professor, 1857), or Balzac again in his Physiologie du marriage (1829). It’s also remarkable the influence of mysterious phenomena like the magnetism and the hypnotism again in the case of Balzac and his novel Ursule Miroüet (1841), or Maurice Maeterlinck and his Le Grand Secret (1927). And finally it was a physician, James Braid (1795-1860), who following the Mesmer’s teachings introduced the concept of hypnosis in the equation, giving to Poe the chance of write one of the most frightening horror tales ever: The facts in the case of M. Valdemar (1845).

Yet it was by the hand of the occultist writer Edward George Bulwer-Lytton (1803-1873), when in our opinion the nineteenth occultism got its zenith. And probably his novel Zanoni is the most comprehensive masterpiece conceived by the occultists during that period, and there’re many reasons to support this assert. Firstly because of the close relationship of his author with other renowned occultists, his membership in the Societas Rosicruciana in Anglia (SRIA), and the evident encyclopedic knowledge demonstrated in this and other occult tales like The Haunted and the Haunters (1857), A Strange Story (1862) or Vril, the Power of the Coming Race (1871). The author of those passionate tales reveals a thorough interest in the so called hermetic sciences, beside the influence of an animal magnetism assimilated to the ancient astromagical energeia. Particularly in Zanoni [u], we assist in the fourth book, signified called The Dweller of the Threshold, to an initiation path in the extraordinary secrets of the Rosicrucians, the oldest and most powerful hermetic order:

“that there were no mystic and solemn unions of men seeking the same end through the same means before the Arabians of Damus, in 1378, taught to a wandering German the secrets which founded the Institution of the Rosicrucians? I allow, however, that the Rosicrucians formed a sect descended from the greater and earlier school. They were wiser than the Alchemists,—their masters are wiser than they” (Book IV, chapter II).

Zanoni and Mejnour, both extraordinary characters adorned with the aureole of the occult sanctity, defenders of the eternal secrets of Nature; the first one entirely devoted to the beauty and brightness of the “sublunar world”, and the second to the melancholy of the heavens above. Undoubtedly, Zanoni is one of the best exponents of the occult conception within the esoteric currents of thought. And for our purposes, it’s important to remark -and relatively unknown- the fact that apparently Lévi traveled to England in order to perform a theurgic ritual through the mediation of Lord Lytton, a ritual in which Apollonius of Tyana -the ancient wise registered by the Greek historian Philostratus-, appeared and revealed some cabbalistic truths to our French occultist, or at least that’s what he affirmed in his Dogma et Rituel de la Haute Magie, and Butler reflected such amusing and novelistic episode in his famous Ritual Magic under the title: “Apollonius of Tyana in London”.

As a conclusion, we would like to call your attention on the fact that many of the protagonists of those literary works, either heroes or antiheroes, and counterpart or not of their gloomy creators, have showed a wild tendency to go beyond human possibilities, directly through the inner places of matter, spirit and au-delà worlds. In short, this inclination for the irrational and obscure side of human and divine essences that we effortlessly find in those occult writers, is the scion of a contradictory epoch full of splendorous décadence and rage. A bastard child inclined to kill his holy fathers and the deformed and malevolent image reflected in the mirror of Léon Spilliaert and Dr. Jekyll’s failed experiment. An insane introspective eager to dismantle the very hidden nature of things, and a disorganized attack against the orthodoxy. It was the Nietzsche and Schiele’s defense of the all-mighty matter against the frayed consciousness, and the piteous journey of the doomed across the forgotten rivers of the Hades.

Further reading:

[v] FESTUGIÈRE, A.-J., La révélation d’Hermès Trismégiste, París: Les Belles Lettres. Vol. I. L’astrologie et les sciences occultes, Paris : Les Belles Lettres, 1986, p. 41.

[u] Azogue Journal

Resources at www.revistaazogue.com

Photo | William Blake. 1794. Book of Urizen

by Iván Elvira

Full article here.

The following article was published in N-SPHERE November 2011 issue.

There’s a light outside my window; it tells me stories in the darkened breeze. Stories of leaves going far away, entwined with soft words of comfort. It has been a while since we looked at each other under the watchful eyes of our patrons, the sighs of the storm. It has been a while since we exchanged true smiles and sincere greetings and searched together some sort of answers, if there are any to be found.

I would often ask and be asked why the stars are so quiet, or why don’t I speak in their tongue anymore. Why do they just look at me cold, monstrous and transfixed, mocking the void I carry deep inside. The tears of the lonely shiver down my spine and clench my throat, plunging me into a tiresome state of mind.

I will leave the light to concern itself with them, because I know it will be there for a long time, patiently waiting with open arms, ready to embrace whomever seeks peace of mind and guidance. And I have learned as well to accept its judgment, although reluctantly, yet I fear others may not indulge in feeling the warmth of its waves.

And yet, no rhymes of victory are to be sung or heard, no end can be felt, no fracture of this tiny box can be seen, only solid walls of darkness still call for me to portray on them the meanders of my character’s layers, in blood, in still waters, in unspoken fire, or whatever element required by the shadows still holding me in their frozen grasp.

There’s a light outside my window; it reminds me I have been absent for too long.

text & artwork by Bahak B

Full article here.