If you just briefly observe the most commonplace depictions of magick in the popular media, you will see a lot of familiar articles: pentagrams, altar cloths (a-la Wiccacraeft(sic)) and candles, daggers ("athame" for some) and incense, black robes and dark rooms... even Anton LaVey advises the usage of certain materials (black candles, for instance) for rituals.  Inside of a movie, these materials are at hand to quickly establish the nature of the scene as one wherein something mysterious and metaphysical will occur.  Further, since early Christian periods, magick itself is considered 'evil' by default with many contemporary examples (e.g. Hellblazer, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, etc.) depicting magick as a potentially addictive grab for higher power which most individuals cannot accomplish.  Thus, most of such scenes tend to have things prevalent in what is considered morbid and/or evil.

What is accurate is perhaps the context of these types of scenes, the oft-ignored jab at human psychology.  Such scenes were meant to be evil, thus they depict something undesirable and dark - something a minority revels in.  They are meant to communicate the context to the audience and thus, try to oppress the audience with a half-assed Jungian image-placing.

My experiences with the metaphysical have shown me that often, psychological reactions to moods/places/etc. have more effect on magickal practices than the rituals, words, dances and other such non-functional effects do.  Consider the rather simplistic, layman's explanation: mood/input effects emotional response mechanisms, which are tied to certain glands responsible for secreting certain hormones (e.g. serotonin for happiness).  These hormones are also connected to how 'charged' your body is and with what it is charged.  The fact that your body is a vessel for energy and is your main interface with the world, you arrive at the conclusion that psychological changes affect how much energy you can muster and what kind.

Thus, we see a lot of mood-inducing things, as mentioned above, utilized.  But, they are secondary at best, as your emotional state is what affects your magickal practices.  Consider fear: fear is a strange and all-encompassing emotion, able to open up your mind to all sorts of normally impossible possibilities, for instance the 'monsters in my bed/closet' argument of children.  In my experience with fear, I found that it tends to draw normally aethyreal entites toward the one who fears (not necessarily them).  While exactly to what they are drawn is impossible to understand, it is quite a common occurrance.  One might argue that it is imagination/psychosomatic reactions that make us imagine these things: but consider the alternative, that it is because we have this propensity to imagine that we draw entities not necessarily of this realm towards us.

Now.  Barring some unforseen reality breach of some sort, there is no way for our olfactory organs to actually register the presence of an entity whose existence does not (or, should not) generate any physical reaction.  However, our minds' eye can and often DOES read their presence, regardless of whether our bodies should or should not.  In certain 'hauntings', the fact that the entity chose to remain/stalk the place is seen ridiculous, because most of the time, electronic equipment/bodily input does not believe and what the mind can see can be chalked up to imagination.  The alternative, almost never considered is far different however.

Thus, I would like to state my claim that your mood/psychological conditioning is directly proportionate to the amount of willpower you can muster, and your wilpower is everything in the practice of magick.  It matters little how you induce the state of charge/discharge (to be written) necessary to actually practice magick, but it matters that you place your willpower firmly behind what you are trying to do - which requires for you to let yourself go, get in the mood, lose yourself in the moment, get into the atmosphere, etc.  If you have doubts or cannot see the point, or are bored with the practice itself, your willpower will lessen, which is always dangerous when practicing magick.  Doubt begets fear, and fear begets those entities that either feed off of it or are drawn to it - and you do NOT want to appear disadvantaged or vulnerable, even if you are.  I have thus far been lucky enough to avoid mishaps by way of having a guardian (more on that later), but I don't think everyone is as lucky.

I know, I know, my non-existent readers are saying, 'WTF?' How did we pass from the subject of time and interpersonal relationships to the occult? The answer is simple: this being my journal, I saw fit to babble on about a subject I know a little something about.  It isn't magick itself, per se, that I have experience in.  It's rather an ethereal connection and spontaneous divination.  On the other hand, it's been quite some time since I last dabbled in such things.  I'm thinking about starting again, this time more seriously, hence, I wanted to write about it.  This IS a journal, after all.

First off, there are a couple of mistakes everybody makes.  These being commonplace, I think we ought to list them here.

Mistake: You need robes, a dagger (athame in some circles), black candles and (insert list of ingredients) to practice magick.
Truth: You need nothing but your will and your custom ingredients for it.  Most of that stuff is to get you in a certain mood, thus, you need to do whatever gets you in the mood as opposed to fixed, rigid props.

Mistake: There are a list of incantations and invocations that you require, some even in dead languages, that are mixed with the correct sequence of actions to achieve the desired effect.
Truth: The spell itself is independent from the rituals you practice and there are no fixed ones.  What worked for Anton LaVey may not necessarily work for you.  You need to find your own rituals and practices, see what you want to do.  What matters is it expresses your desire and relates that to the aethyreal forces you want to invoke.

Mistake: You need a pentagram/alchemic runes/paganist sigils/etc. surrounding the spell.  Triangles and circles and rectangles arranged in predetermined patterns achieve results.
Truth: What matters is NOT the symbol itself but rather your firm BELIEF in its functionality.  I can achieve more with my fishbones necklace than others do with a pentagram, given that I believe the fishbones symbol to be effective.  Granted, I don't normally use that; my preferred symbol is an eight-pointed star (Symbol of Chaos) due to its connotations, the point being that there is no limit to what you can use.

Mistake: The practice of magick is an affront to the Lord! It's trespassing into His kingdom!
Truth: As it stands, many monodominant religious cults used or conveyed the use of magick against what they perceived as less developed/civilized and blasphemous peoples; both as a way of subduing them (in terms of actual usage) and giving a 'superiority of their faith' to the observer (hence their rigorous documentation).  Truth being that the only possible/passable god is a chaotic entity that is connected to the vast network of Existence, which makes the usage of magick (or, call it 'miracles' as most early Christians did) directly connected to "god's domain" or whatever.  It isn't trespassing, it's interfacing.

Mistake: 'Warlock' means male witch.
Truth: Warlock is from an Old Scottish word, waerloga, which means 'oath-breaker' or 'traitor'.  If you're really hung up on gender-specific terms, use 'sorcerer' and 'sorceress' because witch, in reality, is a gender-neutral term, well.  At least there is no male connotations to the word, even in the old Latin version.

Mistake: I'll just fool around, take some drugs and do some rituals I got off of the internet and then, move on when I'm bored.
Truth: You don't walk away from it.  Once you indulge, once you try to open the door in between this realm and the 'other side', there is no going back.  My mother, herself connected and not a bad diviner either, described it as a 'door standing ajar, which, once forced open, cannot be closed'.  Guess what, she was right.

Mistake: Everybody has deja-vus; it's a momentary lapse in between the short term and long term memory, come oon!
Truth: Yes, everybody, especially in their teenage years have deja-vus.  But that lapse in between the long term and short term memories is what allows you to see the possibilities of given moments.  Try changing your deja-vus any way you can.  After a while, you'll notice that you will be seeing the possibilities of the moment as opposed to being a timid part of it.

Mistake: I'll do a few tarot readings for my friends and be done with it.
Truth: Divination can be done in many different ways, tarot being one that I have experience in; divination, if you're connected, is a reliable tool, tarot being a user-specific (i.e. magickal and effective) way of doing it.  The connection between the diviner and the deck can grow remarkably strong and can be used quite accurately.

Mistake: Hail Satan!
Truth: While I don't deny the presence of 'divine' or 'spiritual' or 'aethyreal' beings, to think they are the monodominant-specific beings is foolish.  You will be attracting the attention of certain entities when dabbling with it and certainly will come to name them in time (e.g. Anna Varney's Saturn) or know their names (unlikely, since knowing the true name of a being gives you power over them) but they won't necessarily be 'daemons' or 'angels'.  What I can guarantee, however, is that most of them will be predatory, so you should always be wary.

Fatal Mistake: There is nothing to fear in all this hocus-pocus.
Fact: If you're dabbling in these areas and if you're really getting into it, keep in mind that the forces you'll be fucking with do NOT play by your rules - rather, you play by their rules and while they know your world, you don't know theirs.  So keep in mind that you are attracting the attention of beings beyond your comprehension the more you dabble.  Fear, to this respect, is dangerous, because it presents vulnerability and draws them in.  Having a few, custom-made wards and/or protective gear doesn't hurt at all.

So, there you have it, first in a series of what I hope will be a nice little expose on magick.  And no, I don't spell it magic.  Sue me.

There is a strange sense of foreboding in the air, one I can only describe as being the eve of something I am not aware of yet.  Foreboding has a strange atmosphere: you see the rain clouds rolling in, the skies darken and feel the moisture rise; you can smell the fresh and damp soil, feel that rich aroma fill your nostrils and...

...then comes the storm.

I guess my problem is, and has always been, the deification of individuals.  I lift people up to the altar of gods, and treat them like my own personal deities.  But when deicide inevitably rumbles in, I find myself unwilling to make the cut.

I think it's about damn time I rose myself to that altar and did away with all my self-made gods; tear their icons down and desecrate their holy temples, demolish everything they stood for and from the ashes form an empire for myself.  This glorious deicide will give me my peace of mind, I reckon - for I never saw anything good come out of my previous gods.  They've all been bitter disappointments, all of them - unable to shoulder the burden and responsibility that comes with being a god, especially those towards their worshipper, who, in all honesty, enables them to be gods in the first place.

Thus I decree that henceforth I shall not bow before any craven god that presumes to be holier than I, for there is no such thing as holier-than-I! Holier-than-thou I may be, but that is simply because I am aware of my presence as the anchor point of existence!

Now, before you section me off, let me explain that (I don't want to be mistaken for a schitzophrenic).  See, Existence (as a whole, which is why it has a capital E) isn't a single plane stretching out without a start and finish, nor is it completely independent of experience.  It would appear that it is, but consider the impossibility of actually confirming (let alone actualizing) Existence without it ever being experienced.  Even if Existence does exist in that precise condition, it is, by all means, irrelevant.  The Principle of Irrelevance suggests that anything that claims existence outside of individual perception/experience is irrelevant and thus the question of that which is irrelevant is by itself irrelevant as well, quickly ushering us to the conclusion that since they are both irrelevant, there is no need to question them.  Thus, our certainty rests in the certainty that an Observer (human or any other conscious interpreter) is necessary.

As such, here's the way Existence exists: a single Observer becomes the anchor point of Existence; however, such a beacon or anchor, by itself, does not have the capacity to handle that.  Thus, a network evolves to make up for that lack: each Observer becomes the anchor point of Existence, affirming and reaffirming it and keeping it from slipping away.  Grounded firmly in the Observer's innate ability for observation, Existence holds.  The problem with this Networked Existence notion is the death of Observers.  The obvious question is 'Why doesn't everything end when the Observer dies?' the answer to which is simple: the loss of a single anchor point means little in a network with uncountable amount of centres - thus, Existence is held firmly in place.

Which is more than I can say for my (now and hopefully forever humanized) deities.

...Sheltered from the cold, I remain forever open; wrists gaping, mouth agape; ready to taste Life's Grapes - full of possibility and welcoming to all that shall come near me.  This feels divine - I no longer feel the cold.  I am exposed, yes, naked to it all and yet, strangely, I can't feel the cold.

I never had much faith in anything, not God, not an all-knowing sky deity watching over me and guarding me or whatever.  All I had faith in was myself and the thought that one day, I'd be okay.  Perplexing as it is for me, today, I feel alright.  I want to savor this feeling while it lasts, so I'll just launch into my regular drivel.

Aggrotech, is there anything more divine lately? Four-to-the-floor beat, constant synthesizer assault, the vocoder-processed heavy growls, often pessimistic perspective... gotta love it.  It's not everyone's cup of tea, that's for sure, and I barely entered the deep, muddy waters of the genre to be sure myself.  My list thus far is Assemblage 23, Tactical Sekt, Die Sektor, Combichrist, :wumpscut:, Imperative Reaction, Psyclon Nine aand that's just about it.

For all the bullshit that happened to me, I got out of the wreck with one good thing added to my life: industrial music.  It's beauty, though confusingly synthetic and oft-thought banal, is pretty much all-encompassing for me.  To be able to simplistically purvey emotion is a rare and nigh-impossible feat, one that most of these 'scenesters' accomplish.

To my mind, this all feeds off of the electrogoth movement, principally in Germany; back when Siouxie and the Banshees was hot, when things like Dead Can Dance, Mors Syphilitca were norm.  Then came the 90's with the strange, quirky new genre, darkwave.  Diary of Dreams and Crüxshadows being prominent examples, the new goth scene fed off of the gothic rock/metal sensibilities but inherited the post-cold war pessimism and retained a bit of the introverted, aesthetic sensibilities of the old gothic scene.  From the electrogoths and electronica scenesters was born the new industrial scene.  It still does feed off of the aversion to militarism and seems to promote a more personal, (in)humane approach that is decidedly anti-political (not apolitical, you see) and rebellious.  But the rebellion isn't a crust punk-ish anti-capitalist stances welded into compact discs, it's more of a rebellion against the self and the various vagaries of human interaction.  All-in-all, there is a definitive melancholy to it, perhaps a hold-over from it's gothic influences, that draws me to it.

(Catch me later on the analysis of martial industrial music)

Well, for the past full year, I had actually been working on my own 'lore', sort of an in-series-bible to help me write my newest project; a gothic-styled space opera/science fantasy fictional universe.  Out of an absence of a cool name, I had decided to call it Redeemer for now.  I went on, shaping what was the Reborn Human Empire (Imperia Reincarnae to the humans) before deciding it was too much like Warhammer 40,000 and stopped altogether.  I shifted focus, actually wrote for the latest Black Library contest, got into other stuff, which, due to a severe lack of focus, I was unable to finish when an idea suddenly hit me as I started working (again) on the pantheon of Redeemer.

I decided to seperate the lore into two sections, initially, as Redeemer, which would take place in a dark and dreary steampunk-ish atmosphere in what is akin to the Middle Ages or the Early Modern Period.  With the actual divinities and people worshipped in the previously planned world of the future making up the bulk of the tale I wish to tell.  Of course, this puts the genre back into fantasy, the genre I started writing with.  Admittedly, the need to shape a lore still takes priority, but the thing is, it's easier now that I have a lot on my hands to begin with.

The world thus becomes...  the world of Redeemer is one of unending struggle between the inhabitants of a globe named Terra Rosa, later reduced just to Rosa.  War, skirmish, assassination are the most common, day-to-day occurrances in Terra Rosa, with several kingdoms are striving for dominance over territory and resources, with the ultimate goal of conquering the globe or at least gaining hold over the other factions.  Within this atmosphere, our stories take place.  Technology is trial-and-error and magick becomes nothing but an anomalous science; with all sides utilizing each to different ends.  I don't have a clear storyline but will ultimately preserve many of the aspects of my previous work at this lore (which is about a hundred and fifty pages of information) and probably build up to the Great War, which marks the Dark Ages of the next lore.

The second part, which I will hopefully pass to, becomes the aptly named FUTUREDEEMER.  20,000 years into the future of Terra Rosa, the Human Empire has become a vast, nigh intergalactic empire, at the center of which is the God-Emperor, the Immortal Icon, Innocentius, the Great Father, who lies crucified atop the Edenthrone (a throne constructed of the truly divine artefacts and home/grave to Innocentius' mother, Eden); sacrificed to save the Empire from falling to damnation.  The Empire is torn into two; with apocalyptic daemon-worshippers on one hand and those loyal only to the God-Emperor and archangels at a constant warfare.  Beset on all sides also by aliens; the enigmatic and exotic Chi, the elegant and mysterious Elven, the technological and war-mongering Dwarvs, the anomalous Necroses and vicious Pandorics, the Empire tries to withstand.  In the world of Futuredeemer, the only constant of the universe has become war.

Obviously I hark to the tabletop war games such as Warmachine, Warmaster and inevitably Warhammer 40,000 with this, but that was what gave me the idea in the first place.

Crawling at a snail's pace, the latest concept-text-album I am working on seems to be coming along one way or the other.  My decision to play with song titles as much as possible is starting to reach ridiculous extremes.  It would appear that while attempting to portray an emotion or to cram as much meaning into a singular song title as possible, I started butchering words and overdosing on puns.

The concept this time is thematic moreso than it is narrative - contrary to what the other versions of attempting Poverty of Velocity (the project under which I write the songs) revolve around.  While certainly, the others carried a thematic undertone while carrying (read 'vaguely hinting at') a story, the way this particular concept is presented resembles the .of. songs (Point of Point, yet another moniker implying a certain style).  .of. used to revolve around concepts that were grounded in themes - mostly insanity, delusion, loss of control, war against the self, etc.

This time, it spilled into my most recent work in the 'unsung songs' caliber (FYI - unsung songs being song lyrics written to no music at all; think of it as poetry in more-or-less standard song format).  I named it Guiltrance after a recent, unsettling dream.  The dream was as thus; I was apologizing constantly to an old friend, who kept saying it wasn't my fault.  I didn't know what I had done, had no idea for what I was sorry, but I was certain there was an overwhelming need to apologize - there certainly was a ridiculous amount of guilt involved in whatever my subconscious felt that I had done.  It matters little now, especially since the act itself (The Beginning of Guilt) is far less significant than the outcome: self-inflicted sense of regret embedded into a singular act: weeping for it.  Such abstraction of the source and intensive focus onto the outcome fascinated me, which was why I wrote the first song in what I would later decide to stretch into a full concept.

So, about a month later and five songs in, there is still (as somewhat unplanned) no indication of what causes the guilt and the regret although it is implied that a stupid, all too human need and acting on it might have been the reason; guilt itself as a feeling or a theme was explored thoroughly, and somehow, I am progressing towards an explicit need (or readiness) for punishment.  

I don't know where it will take me, but I daresay it's going to be good.

Tracklist thus far for the concept Guiltrance:

1. Sea of Apologies
2. Hypo-c-RITE(ofpassage)
3. (Un)Full/Fill(ed?)
4. Life? Less!
5. When(-detta!)?

NOTE: The song the WITness is undecided - if the concept evolves in a direction that will bare what causes the guilt of the main character, it might be added into the fray.

Is uncertainty a good alternative to certainty in some situations?

Yes.

I recently discovered this little quirk of life.  That uncertainty, or general misunderstanding/lack of understanding of the self in some situations leading up to it, is a viable option.  As opposed to what, some may ask, and I say; as opposed to being certain.  Of certain things, certain things that have a certain significance.  Love, for instance.

Is love truly enough, I find myself wondering, in the face of overwhelming odds and difficult circumstances, especially if the said circumstance is intrinsic to the situation at hand? By itself, love is nothing more than a chemical imbalance, a hormonal disturbance, a neural bypass of logic and reason.

What of the inability to remain? What of the closeness, the intimacy that comes with love - what if that's gone, replaced with nothing further than stolen hours spent looking at a screen, trying to touch what once was?

I wonder sometimes if in trying to be certain of everything, I push myself to look at it from the outside, rather than live it; ride that waterfall of sensation all the way down into the abyss and scratch the surface, learn after; learn to sink and rediscover what it means to swim.  Maybe it is because of that need to discern why there is this duality within me.

Because I don't want any regrets in this.

I don't want hot-headed decisions or to jump the gun.  I don't want to blow things out of proportion.  I want both possibilities to carry the same weight.

I want to finally do something that does not hold questionable motives or leaves me wondering "what if".

I don't want regrets in this.

There is too much I regret already, too much that I carry with me that I wish I did do, or didn't.  There is one thing I don't regret, of that I am certain - I don't regret beginning, at all.  Often times I wonder whether letting warfare become the norm was the right thing to do but, as they say, "it was...(the right thing to do) at the time."

One thing I don't regret is you.  But if or when it ends, I don't want to regret that either; neither the continuation nor the end.

I don't want regrets.

I just want to feel something, anything.

But I am uncertain if I am capable anymore.

She said destroy.

Let us live the cliche for a bit, shall we? I think, whoever will be reading this journal deserves to find that the constant gardener has left a little information about himself here.  After all, it is the purpose of keeping a journal - to have a little constant ear listening into the deepest, darkest secrets of us.  Only, in a communications and multimedia medium like the internet, such revelations are quite dangerous.  It doesn't take more than a few 'click's to get to a piece of information most irrelevant to your origin point.

So, what correlation is there between me and Leonard Nimoy's most famous role, Spock from the series Star Trek?

Simple.  I strive to be less emotional and more logical in my actions than I am now.

I guess, in some way, logic has always dictated my perspective and my approach to many a situation.  But it was not until recently, just a few years ago in fact, that I turned to cold, hard, often simplistic and progressive, logic as my main way.  Thus, I don't really provide the ideal 'listener' or 'shoulder to cry on', for I cannot simply idly consider what has been said.  I need to know (as per my obsession/fascination) the details of the situation at hand to be of any use.  Details such as who, why, what, when.  Context before content, quality of detail rather than quantity.

But if it wasn't for a particular two years that I spent in the throes of irrationality, or rather a lack of logic and reason, I wouldn't be writing these lines.  Yes, there has been a time in my life where I lost sight of all reason and logic and became little more than a creature pursuing the most mundane and common needs of the body - I daresay I was mostly a hedonist during this time.  Without regards to consequence, I threw myself in and made it up along the way.

As the most mundane consequences of employing consistently that sort of actions showed, it wasn't a very sound way to exist.  After all, the academic consequences alone were devastating and cost me one and a half years of my life that I will never, ever retreive from the clutches of time.  It wasn't after I had been hurt badly enough to want to break free of this cycle of irrationality that I turned inwards and towards myself.

I realized that while emotions certainly do have their perks, following them blindly isn't necessarily a good way to be.  Thus, I began analyzing myself; my responses in the past, my emotional/regular responses to stimuli at present.  I began to analyze my dreams, my thoughts, my actions and reactions and learned quite a bit about myself.  How? Example:

I am very confrontational and often very opinionated.  This stems from a desire to feel superior to others.  The reason for this desire is both the intense amount of isolation and mockery I was subjected to during most of my life, where the only feeling that kept me from doing something extremely volatile was one of being special or somehow superior to my aggressors, and the feeling of speciality instilled in me by my parents and most other authority figures of my childhood.  However, the aforementioned mental, verbal and physical assault has taken its toll in one way: it has grounded into me an almost subconscious belief of being inferior to other people; inferior in the sense of lacking something that others possess.  Thus, I seek to supplement that feeling of inferiority with one of superiority, so as to overcome it; by trying to be as explicit as possible about possessing something most others do not.

However, seeing that it isn't very functional, since it has no basis.  Without basis, it is useless to feel superior as it amounts to little more than counter-productive egomania.  Thus, I decided to find the specific parts of me that made me feel inferior.  My lack of speciality in a given cultural subject made me focus onto music, science fiction and fantasy literature (though it carries little to no value as opposed to the classics or exposition), philosophy (in the sense of philosophizing to be productive), writing and random infornography.  My physical appearance and sense of fashion also were in need of a fix, so I stuck with a steady training regimen after months of hard dieting and modified my sense of dress to include previously excluded, generally accessible and subconsciously approachable clothing.  Instead of furthering my exlusion by actually trying to be excluded by feigning intense difference, I chose to moderate it and be a part of the flock while asserting individuality in moderation as most people would.

I do not expect a miracle.  I only hope to one day feel content with myself.

After all, this world only makes sense when you force it to.  And I solemnly swear that I will stop at nothing to force it.

V.G.: The problem is software.
X: Not by itself.  The problem is the inability of software to exist as anything other than an extension of hardware, perhaps an expression of its purpose.  By itself, software is rather transient; it borders on non-existence.  It's paradoxical nature of being both non-existent and existent is what makes it difficult to ground in context.  It is almost as if hardware has only one function: to serve as the anchor point of software, thereby affirming it and stabilizing its existence.  But a problem more difficult than that persists.
VG: Which is?
X: The problem is that each piece of hardware, organic, synthetic or hybrid, lacks longevity, even with proper maintenance.  They tend to lessen in capacity over time.
VG: I see where you're going with this.  It's like the Hayflick limit, isn't it? The amount of times a software can be allowed to function as it was meant to...
X: Perhaps, but unlike the Hayflick limit, it isn't possible to circumvent the problem.  There is a limit to how much hardware can be accumulated as back-up copies before by itself it becomes incompatible with software.
VG: But what about software's capability to exist on its own, as encoding or as pieces of code stuck into the hardware, even if the hardware itself is left to rust?
X: Define 'left to rust'.
VG: You know...  non-functional.
X: Then it doesn't matter if the software exists at all, since the hardware is non-functional and therefore ineffective.  You are still missing the point.
VG: The point? I didn't think...
X: Because you didn't presume I had one.  The point is, that the human mind is only limited to the neural clusters it spawns out of.  All neural clusters connect to one another and form a network of code: bits and pieces of information and synaptic response to stimuli and therefore, is the hardware to the software that is your 'consciousness', or 'soul'.
VG: So?
X: So, it wouldn't be too far a leap of logic if you consider the implication of this profound limitation that is in the nature of software itself, it's dependency on hardware.
VG: Wait...
X: Yes.  It isn't possible for human consciousness to exist without a functioning brain.
VG: Then...  the information we gather...
X: Your long-term memory is nothing more than a mere emulator standing in for the stimuli long after all stimulus is gone.  It emulates the spontaneous and often context-specific responses connected to your amygdala and creates the illusion of repetition.  Hormonal and chemical imbalances signalled by that same cluster become your 'emotions' and you tend to record them as you remember it.  As do all.
VG: What are you implying?
X: Simply that an objective reality does not exist and that, even if it does, it cannot be accessed.  Which, I'm sure you'd agree, makes your existence as software quite doubtful and limited.
VG: But-
X: I am not finished.  The cogito argument holds, however.
VG: But that's a paradox.
X: Is it? There is an alternate explanation to how reality holds itself together: that each person, each mind, constitutes an anchor point - both hardware and software.  These anchor points connect to one another, if loosely, through many different things, really; ranging from simple digital interaction to exchange of genetic material.  This vast network stands in for an objective reality and emulates it, just as a long-term memory would emulate the specific experiences, only more in context.
VG: Then...
X: Yes.  The collective memories and experiences of human beings is what holds your existence, or that of the Foundation's, in place.

to be continued...

I walk in and the darkness swallows me whole.

Here in this dimly-lit Eden, I search for myself.  I look around and all I see are souls, lost and found, if only for a short duress, waiting for their deliverance.  The tormenters arise, rise to the stage, take the applause and give the damned a taste of freedom - just a taste, a small piece of a million possibilities; all grin and no play.  They hold the mirrors to our faces and the mirrors shatter, each piece taking a possibility, a regret with it down onto the ground; carrying with it the blood of our fondest futures and untold truths, unlived memories and untaken chances.

Place your bet, play this eternal Russian roulette.

And how easy it would be to lose my soul in this whirlpool of corruption, this cesspool of dreams and reality; where the all-too blatant truth lies by being so bare, so free...  yes, I see, I see you there - only, I don't see you as the brilliant little reflection you ought to be.  No, I see the lie, mingled with the truth, tantalizing and enticing, creating and destroying all the same.  The truth lies, the lie is the truth and what is the difference, I wonder, what really is the difference when it doesn't matter which...  we all want to believe.  Just to believe.

I come in, looking to see myself in the eyes of others.  Looking to see if I am here, if this is the moment.  The darkness swallows me whole and I spiral downwards.  My ears worship this tune to which you dance, wondering if the song was created solely for this moment.  I believe, yes, I do believe...  faith is in me and...

In a wailing crescendo, my world comes crashing down.

I see myself there, upon that stage, besieged by mirrors and drowning in the assault of stares, of longing gazes and affectionate pity; all the ridiculous, small and insignificant little things that I am certain would mean nothing once I am there.  I see myself upon that stage, gun in my hand.  I feel the gun at my temple, gentle, cold, it makes me shiver.  I look at you, trying to see myself in your eyes.

I pull the trigger.

Down I fall, down I go - where else can I go, I wonder, when the water is too high and I am too weary to swim? What can I do besides watch you watching me fall, my blood spilled onto this tiled floor of dreams and realities, my life fading away, my eyes unseeing.  I stumble- no.  I don't stumble, I have no steps left in this dance.  I fall, taking all my regrets with me, clutching them at my chest, cradling them in my arms...   oh, my regrets, oh, please, oh please oh please...

...I fall, and the darkness swallows me whole.

Tripping the switch within, the subliminal cord struck, it hums on and on inside of the night and how appropriate, how fitting for it to be this way; this little facade of mine, wearing thin, through the thick, makes me tock and slowly, if ever, makes me lose sight of what is true and what is real.  It asks me, and why not?

Have I not given it enough, daring enough to be caring, caring for this little inconsequential, insubordinate little blob of existence dares stand against me!? Then I shall take it away and cross throuch oceans of nonsense to find Reason,well and alive, and why shouldn't it be, free to stand in the world as a tree of its own, never owing its leaves to anyone.

Do I even know enough to judge him?

This is a trial entry.  I need to figure this livejournal thing out, so I think I'll look around a bit, see what's what before starting my endless rambling and ranting.

A DECLARATION OF INTENTIONS, OR, WHAT WILL MOST LIKELY BE POSTED HERE:

Album critiques, general opinions about things such as music, any result of an infornography session, philosophical ramblings, rather disjointed musings, my fairly uneventful and uninteresting life, often self-pitying little trips of mine that I just cannot seem to work out.

For instance...  something I thought a little something about today and wanted to share with whoever would listen follows:

Diary of Dreams, Adrian Hates' baby, has a little fixation with two things: insanity and poison.  The first comes into play with connected songs; the song Luna(-tic) from the 1998 album Pyschoma? and the songs Psycho-Logic and krank:Haft ("sick:Ened") from the 2004 album Nigredo follow this design.  Further, their newest release, (if) contributes to this little act by putting out the song Wahn! Sinn? ("Mad!Ness?").

As for the poison.  An English word for a present is "gift", which, apparently, means "poison" in German (the homeland of Diary of Dreams).  While one side I have to comment on later (the song (Ver)Gift(et), to be precise), this comes into play pretty earl on, also on the Psychoma? album.  While certainly a song, aptly titled Methusalem describes a drug-induced skittishness, whether or not the "poison" implied is recreational drugs gone wrong is debatable.  Psychoma? also contains another song including the expression, which would be the final song End (giftet?).  While this is subtle and possibly just another one of their wacky song-naming, the Nigredo album features a strange curiosity.  The album contains a song titled Giftraum, meaning Posionroom.  The song itself contains the line Dies ist dein giftraum, meaning, "This is your poisonroom".  However, this is repeated in a later song, Reign of Chaos, with the chorus line, "This is the poison room".  The curiosity is that, it switches from being 'our' poison room to just 'the' poison room.  Since the entirety of Nigredo plays like an out-of-body experience gone on for too long, or possibly the disjointed musings of a clinically insane (and incarcerated person), I find the poison to be either the sanitarium or (in)sanity.

This theme of poison/present is revisited in the 2007 release Nekrolog 43, with the opening song, The Plague; referring to a "prison cell, (you cannot keep me here)" and entailing a mental battle.  The final link in the chain becomes the album (if) itself.  Separated into two acts, the album titles its second act as g(if)t.  Interesting choice...  considering that it can mean both a present, and poison (or perhaps the poison that is sanity given to us all as a "gift").  Further, it is not upon the second act but the first one that there is a song titled Poison Breed, a song that questions the sanity of the world outside, as opposed to inside.  And given that the second act, g(ift), carries a theme of abandonment, I think we can conclude that sanity has finally ended.  For, Poison Breed also carries somewhat of a reluctant confession and acceptance.