23. Music Videos
I was at home. The problem with prophecies is that they make you lazy. They make you procrastinate. You bask in the aura of the word that precedes peace and vision, and you think, “Heh, I feel good, I have direction…let’s chill,” and before you’re aware, this ‘rest’ yer having is getting way too long. And by now, it’s hard to get off your bum. Even impossible. Which reminds me again the fucked up man I was. Always running away, a coward. Problems with girlfriends and parents and upbringing and religion. Problems with myself, my insecurities, my fears, my lack of confidence. I don’t think I really got away from it. I never escaped, not even now.
Life was a rollercoaster going up and down. Worse, it loops round and round. I never found the freedom I so desired, I just tumbled in the mire, slopping from one quandary to another. A used up life with little glimmers of optimism that never materialized. Just temptations taunting me, but they never did deliver. Hope is a big letdown.
Perhaps eternity would give me a second chance. To a certain degree, it has. It has been swell, especially with all that mindless, violent and horny games I’d been playing.
But now comes the crunch, the profundity of which my soul craves. No wonder it has been creating Sha-Rronne behind my back, beckoning me, calling me to inspire to something greater, fuller, something that can stand the test of time, solid and concrete. Not merely games – here today gone tomorrow. (But of course nothing really goes away in Dreamstate.)
But you know what I mean. Don’t you? Something with more substance, less superficial. True Love. The opulence of the spirit rather than bimbos on the covers of magazines. Fake airheads further perfected by Photoshop, hyped up with nothing underneath.
That’s what my everlasting existence has been like. A grand ballroom of touch-ups, makeovers, Botox, liposuction, silicone and collagen. But peel beneath and it’s hollow.
This is not to say that eternity is shallow, but instead, I’d chosen the superfluous alone for entertainment. Naturally, there comes a time (after how long an infinity, god knows) when my being aches for some depth. A human example I can provide is exercise. Not having enough of it, and one day your body will respond. Yer not sure initially that something is wrong, you’ve ignored the warning signs for too long…but your system will let you know…eventually.
I’m lucky to be forewarned. By Jai-I and his father. And I ought to do something about it. But I don’t (as usual). Not yet at least, since I’m only ankle-deep in waters of infestation. Plenty of aeons to go before it becomes a negative vibe.
Instead, I put on the latest by Daft Punk and prepare for the invasion of funky beats to electronically permeate my soul. My home is clean and white like an operation theatre. Everything is disinfected and sterile. I prefer it this way. It’s cold and machine-like. Inhuman; makes me feel I can always return to a dream…a coma, a haven from the madness of endless creation. Marilyn Manson’s Mechanical Animals influenced the décor.
A 3-60-degrees screen environed the entire living room. Images beamed from satellites everywhere, whence the pics had life and will of their own, grafting isolated tragedies, random bouts of queerness and the occasional happiness reported on news, experiences of strangers separated by distant seas, into a consolidated movement, an impromptu movie teasing reality. Fate at my fingertips on remote, editing lives as I wish, adding and deleting memories of solitary individuals; it was somewhat a psychological thriller set on Judgement Day. Daft Punk rocks. I was quite a dancer on Earth (she inspired me), and I’d translated this gift to perpetuity.
I stood still. Breathing. Meditating like a Samurai before he picks up his Katana - the most elegant weapon, the deadliest close range strike. The video shows a bamboo forest, and I stand at the centre of a clearing inside. The camera pans to my feet. They grip the dusty ground. And my hands tighten round the sword. I seize the hilt and withdraw the blade from its dragon-emerald encrusted sheath. The cold, cold steel mirrors a warrior’s face – hair sleeked in ponytail, a thin beard, and eyes ready to frighten the devil.
Music plays as soundtrack. Synthetic guitars, looping rhythms and female vocals battling acoustic bass lines. Sound waves swipe and fight in a forest of lush audio frequencies. The song reaches an atmospheric silence, a prevailing suspense where the listener anticipates a sudden rush, a mighty gush. I hear my breaths; I see it. Steam blows out of my nostrils like a dragon, like pipes bursting in the underground tunnels of large cities, manholes blown off.
And here it comes! A crash; followed by break-beats and rocking riffs, taking the tune to a new high. One of maniacal intensity. I shout, and at that moment, enemies jump from trees.
I swing the Katana with accurate frenzy, cutting and slicing as if bones were paper; ligaments, jelly. Tendons tore, joints split. They died as trained soldiers. Silent. Accepting their fate. I am a superior warrior; they are aware of this. They were sent to meet death by their master. And they obeyed.
The tempo and the massacre were as one. With each accented beat came a flying limb, an off-time counter attack meant heads rolled. The camera picking up all these and transferring direct to the sharp impressions on flat-screen. Like anime – single-frame body-part hurtling through midair, only the backdrop changes in rapid motions. Blood splatter.
Song ends. Gore, entrails, disembowelment. A haunting hush, all my foes dead. I sheath the sword. A soft click, the lens cut to the locking of the revered blade in its casing. A close up shot. Then wide-angled panorama. Artistry from the director, the kind Asian ones are fond to manipulate. Creaking, cracking, and the bamboo forest comes crashing down with a theatrical bang amidst the butchery, while our hero remains cool in his slanting pose – head bowed, eyes slitting sharp. A vicious glow. An animalistic focus.
Track 2. Starts with Oriental sounding keys, only the black notes of a digital piano. A shadow darts in the dark. Time to face the boss. Distorted voice-samples mesh with a broken melody. The programmed drumbeat kicks in after four bars. They sound flat and muffled on purpose. A figure in demon-armour positions arrogantly. A blatant parade. Unnecessary. He’s gonna die without mercy, without honour, and without dignity. By my hand. By the sharpened end of my royal Katana.
Glory!
“Yer gonna die, you fool,” he mimes to the computer’s voice of the song. Like a video clip, it cuts to his mouth lip-synching the words. Fangs protrude from behind the tongue. Repetitive motion, same riff on replay, gathering force with each progression, it hits a climaxed fury.
“GO!” Screams another voice, a deathly growling utterance, a metal man’s tonal quality. A 32-note double-stroke roll and we spring to action; accelerate to kill, like a coil unwound on sudden impact, potential to kinetic energy. A reservoir unleashed. Our swords clashed. Blue sparks ignite the twilight sky, giving colour of life. Two enthused artists paint the clouds. The dance of our duel remixes into a multi-instrumental synchronization. Harmonies entwine over vast octaves; above the solid thumps of precise jungle percussions.
Colours slide in and out. Violent hues vibrantly vibrate with visceral vertigo and at a vociferous velocity, dislodging constellations in the firmament with the ferocity of Cyclops shaking an apple tree. The stars fall even as we battle, the entire synchronicity of the heavens morphing to our motions. He, my opponent, summoned a cluster of suns with the tractor-beam of his broad sword and flung them towards my direction, skimming off the surface of my skin with a slight acidic sting, a flesh wound pH imbalance.
Once it was bright night-sky, but now the descending sons of angels and their signs blaze to supernovas, explosions, crashing to the ground in the land of the gods. You could see the end, a slow journey to darkness cascading past our floating feet, starlight mixed with blood from my face, an eerie silence, a muffled boom like rock hitting water, and finally, an atomic kaboom!!!
A blinding light roared over the realm. It passed; a moment’s awe, then it was back to business. I was enraged by the cut he gave me. Replacing the shiny jewels on black velvet is now an ancient map of space, the true meaning of the universe, encrypted by the placement of stars orbiting within the sphere of creation. Now the mysteries have been revealed. I swung to the offensive, the speed of my Katana marking three tears on his armour, weakening its shield. His broadsword is no match for my lightweight precision killer. The celestial bodies had been strategically positioned to conceal portals to other dimensions. When stargazers watch the sky for signs, they are distracted by the endless oscillation to notice the hidden revelation underneath. All they attain is astrology, a guide to their three-dimension spatial future.
Dagon wobbles four steps back. A stab punctures his heart. The god’s blood dribbles from my blade, trees immediately grow and flowers bloom wherever crimson falls. He gazes around realizing he’d unwittingly unearthed his kingdom’s defence in a flash of rage. He stares at me; then his eyes fall upon his stricken subjects, all sunken and silent, awaiting a nameless doom told by the writings on the chart now adorning the cosmic wall. Dagon collapses, and a cloud swallows him, instantaneously turning black; lightning and thunder hurl out, striking the pillars of his temple. Panic encompasses the people, running helter-skelter. Too late. Spirits of all manner and sizes emerge from the holes in the dome of the sky, which used to be plugged by stars. Fluorescent blue spectral, raging red phantoms, yellow flamed apparitions ate both men and women, and also unfortunate babes and children. Consumed whole in one big gulp. The ghosts are translucent; you could see the gobbled beings in their belly. The victims suffered in ingestion hell, punished in various states of digestion, crying in the stomach and intestines. But behold, there are no rectums, no anal release, no bowel motion; defecation is absent. These beasts are bottomless pits. On and on the prey are anguished in each level of absorption, going on for a tiered eternity, tormented. The monsters take strength from the energy extracted from Dagon’s priesthood; and now, with worshippers, young and old and from all walks of life, imprisoned forever in the cages of damnation in the sea of their abdomens, the ghouls return home to their parallel realities and sleep a thousand ages, until another fool opens another floodgate, another Pandora’s box, which awakens in them fresh hunger pangs that plague their fiendish and famished souls, resulting, consequently, with the doom of one more archaic faith.
Daft Punk plays on. This entire conceptualized reality was encapsulated within the first two songs of the album. I sent my recorded incarnations to the French duo for review, as well as shared with all, this inspiration of musical art which arouses new worlds. I closed the window of the media player, and with that, the entire dimension concerning Dagon and ninja warriors and luminescent demons shuts off and stores as embedded helixes in the compressed files of the two tracks.
Then, I backed-up a copy in my hard drive.