daily insights into mp3s, films, pop culture, autofiction, guns, ammunition, antipsychotic medication recommendations etc. from allston and beyond for the whole world. one love
In the annals of musical history, April of 2022 stands as a chapter of profound resonance as GRILL TONES, in their original configuration, graced the stage for one last unforgettable performance on stage at Ralph's Rock Diner. This momentous occasion unfolded against the backdrop of the departure of esteemed founding members Liam Shepherd, Adrian Anderson, and their compatriots. Through the lens of an enterprising young film student, we are afforded a candid and factual glimpse into the intricacies of that fateful evening.
There’s a place I go sometimes, a blinding white nothingness on the edges of my mind where my eyes roll back and I so briefly grasp what it feels like to not exist. For so long I have wished deeply to be without a body, not just divorced from my physical form, but to feel as though it never existed. I no longer feel the visceral disgust I once felt when I look in the mirror; the happiest I have ever been was the first time I truly saw a girl staring back at me. I would have given up everything to be this way, and I would give up everything again if only I could be nothing at all. I think that’s what Heaven is like, that’s what it means to be God, to be nothing. If the physical body exists only to verify one’s own existence, what would we be without it but free? “The body is not a thing, it is a situation: it is our grasp on the world and the outline for our projects.”
Either way, nothingness is omnipresent, God is everywhere and in all of us and He does not exist. The despair of that realization is how true optimism is born. When you acknowledge your own free will, you kill God. And there is so much hope in that hatred. If I can mold my body to my will, why does my mind not follow? Gender acedia, moments spent in knowing silence with friends, resigned anhedonia, the angst building up inside me like tectonic plates colliding.
Everyday I carve “I am my own God” deeper into my forearm and let the blood drip slowly from my fingertips before the drop of the knife shatters me awake and the blood rushes back into my veins in a VHS rewind blur. And it’s over. With each passing day I feel less like Roquentin and yet the Nausea still persists. I have this dream where I’m in a winter forest at night: tall, skeletal trees stretching towards a pitch black sky dotted with otherworldly light. Powder snow crunches underfoot as I wander aimlessly into the void. And the blood is back, oozing down my arms, droplets falling to the snow below with each step. But the ground isn’t stained red and I leave no footsteps in my wake. In fact, my legs seem to disappear from beneath me as I observe them, my body assimilating into the nothingness that surrounds me until I am floating through space and my mind sounds like radio static. It comes in plagues of consciousness, with decisions like sharp pains. I talk myself off the ledge, but my mind holds on to images from the past.
Won’t you please open the window it is so. hot. in. here?
“Do not submit to any limitation. Submission is the resignation into eternal victimization. Acknowledgement is unconsciousness. Recognition of power is recognition of its existence. Protest is the equivalent of prayer. Do absolutely not, do absolutely. Condone absurdity and absurdly reject. All purpose is negligible. Endless historical recursion has eliminated our ability to see beyond what has already been attempted. Your giant head in an infinite mirror, forever obstructing the view of what’s directly behind it all. All power is paternalistic. Advocacy is managerial and therefore hierarchical. Membership and allegiance are voluntary. Lay down in the tall grass and cover yourself with bugs. The snakes will eat the bugs and you will eat the snakes. A symbiosis? No, a dinner with friends.”
