The Sign Of The Four [#1]

Part One: In Which The Author Sinks Deeper Into Madness

1: Haunting. Hallucinatory. Chilling. My body convulses. Muscles clench. Sense memory returns. A boy and girl in strife. (Strife is defined as “a bitter disagreement over fundamental issues.”) There’s a disconnect. Abstract divide. Signs in the Zone. Connection. Clarity. Freedom in Oblivion.

2. Nothing materializes out of the darkness. Sound from nothing. Chaos. Take it or leave it. Take it. Leave it. Take it. No. Yes. Yes. No. How do you feel? Do you feel good? Bad? Not sure? Tell me, please. We’d all like to know. Everyone needs to know these things. Confide in us. Please. Yes. Thank you.

 Sit back and let the waves wash over you, relaxing, eyes closed, lights off, images forming on the dark lids of your eyes, reclined, supine, “chilling”. Sound envelops, music decomposes, in/out in/out, breathing. The walls are breathing. You are breathing. You are in here. Alive and well. Listening to music. On a blog. On your computer. Awareness is a virtue. You are in here. Listen. Be. Relax.

3. Whistling. Youth in revolt. Changes. See-saw. Childhood. Silence? Continuity. Miracles. I believe.

You are in the dark. Baffled. Confused. In pain. What? Surreality. Hyperreality. What is this? Where am I? What is the meaning of this?

Horses. Neigh. Hm. What? Miracles. Indeed.

Anger in the woodwork. Means of production. Capital v Commodity. Whistling. What?

Reversal of Fortune. Desire. Madness. Chaos. We are all of us brothers. Earthmen. Spacemen. Rock the mic. Channel the rage. Confusion = time = causality = enthusiasm. You are what you eat.

(there is no exit)

4. “Don’t half ass this one. It’s the last one. Last of ‘The Four.’ Don’t get complacent. This one might just be the most important. This is the one that holds the key to understanding the other three. Certain connections will always be made. One needs to consider the juxtapositions. Feel the totality of this. These are all from the ‘Experimental’ tag on bandcamp, sorted by ‘newness.’ This is the forefront of the experimental. These are those who hold the key to the state of society as we know it. These are the brave souls who dare to truly subvert the reality of the situation, to expose the spectacle for what it is, breaking down boundaries, and roaming, from the abstract to the otherness of the world.”

A kid is lying on his bed, trying to think of things to say. He’s gotta admit that he pulled most of this out of his ass at first. But after a while of staring and listening, the collection of images starts to make sense. Something emerges out of the white noise. The static. Something true. Something human. All too human, after all.

“The point is this:  We begin  with (1)  the standard pop song, the love ballad, the story of the boy and the girl and all the troubles they face. And yet, the image is inverted; the boy and girl are lost, neither in love nor not. They are in limbo, threatening to float away. (2) Then, the boy and girl ‘sail off on some separate trips’, and the rabbit hole gets deeper. Here, the adventure truly begins. But then, (3) there’s nothingness, and when you finally get to the end, all the way back to childhood, discovering where it all began, exposing the root of all the troubles, and realizing that sometimes, cliches can be transcended, you discover that (4) it’s all just dripping water and white noise and fuzz and the tape runs out and that’s it and here you are and you exist and that is that is that.” @Solidusonmusic