Death Metal Wisdom
"If there was a day I could live, if there was a single breath I could take, I'd trade all the others away." - Lamb of God, 'Laid to Rest'
"It's life: the dark that binds you." - In Flames, 'Bullet Ride'
These two quotes represent perfectly a certain strain in contemporary culture and thought. The realisation that something looms large just outside the margins of normal living experience has become a fixation for people. A certain craving for an increased... intensity? submersion? intimacy?... in life, in all things, surges in people, under the surface. Perceptively, these musicians, neither group known for brilliant lyrics, have captured the spirit of society's privation.
The problem amounts to one of disjunction. Are we not living in a culture where the very goal of everything around us is isolation? Isolation from death; isolation from loss, suffering, and grief; isolation from the ill, the criminal; isolation from variant ideologies; isolation from genuine human interaction; these are all hallmarks of the current age. We are totally separate from most facts of life. Life itself has taken on the automatic life of a total simulacrum. Consequently, the lust to break from a system where everything refers to something else, and none refer to genuine experience, is rampant. We are a culture which through starvation has acquired a passion for the Real.
Slavoj Zizek, in his phenomenal little book Welcome to the Desert of the Real (10 points to anyone who can catch the reference), describes this as a need for "the direct experience of the Real as opposed to everyday social reality -- the Real in its extreme violence as the price to be paid for peeling off the deceptive layers of reality." A little definition of terms will help immensely.
According to Jacques Lacan, Zizek's hero, there is a threefold division of existence as perceivable by the human psyche.
The first is the Imaginary: the fully created ideas that people have in their heads which are rarely particularly rooted. These are often shinier, nicer examples of things that exist, and the collision of them with a somewhat fuller picture of the world usually results in anxiety and maybe even rage. I see them largely as expectations, unrealistic and disappointing as all expectations are.
The second is the Symbolic. This is the infinite world of ideas and nearly-real simulacra that affect and occupy our daily lives. When you buy a new pair of shoes, everything occurring is Symbolic: the value of the money you give away, the standards by which you judge the shoes to be worth buying, the relationship between you and the clerk, and most importantly the rush of consumerist pleasure that overtakes you. Symbolic. Made up. Huge repercussions, but not really genuine. Humans, being creatures who make meaning as a matter of course, must necessarily live in a world that is more or less Symbolic.
The third is the Real. The Real is the kingdom of matter and trueness that lies out there. It cannot be expressed in words -- which are Symbolic -- and it cannot be defined. It is the thing that the Symbolic exists to delineate and comprehend. It defies such foolishness. You have experienced the Real when you have been punched in the face, when a storm has destroyed your house, or when tanks have run you over because you were protesting; the Real simply is and happens.
When the Real happens, it necessarily clashes with the Symbolic, and results in trauma. This dissipates slowly as the human meaning-making process creates a narrative, reducing the traumatic event to a Symbolic story. The Symbolic often has to be readjusted to compensate for the incursion of the Real; finally an equilibrium is reached again.
SO, having understood what the Real is (and isn't), we can understand further the depth of the wisdom in the above lyrics. In Flames is capturing the essence of the Symbolic: life, being the sum of Symbolic disjunction, is indeed dark and binding. "If there was a single breath I could take" is underscoring the passion to exist in a state where one has abandoned the Symbolic and lives only in the Real. It is the same desire that motivates someone to jump off a bridge or cut their own arm: the passion for the Real, to remind ourselves that we exist.
A breath taken in absence of the Symbolic order, in the pure unfettered Real, would be worth any price. But, presently, all we can do is live our lives with as little of the Symbolic insulation as possible; the Real only happens in destructive flashes, leaving trauma and partial understanding behind.
Metal!
"It's life: the dark that binds you." - In Flames, 'Bullet Ride'
These two quotes represent perfectly a certain strain in contemporary culture and thought. The realisation that something looms large just outside the margins of normal living experience has become a fixation for people. A certain craving for an increased... intensity? submersion? intimacy?... in life, in all things, surges in people, under the surface. Perceptively, these musicians, neither group known for brilliant lyrics, have captured the spirit of society's privation.
The problem amounts to one of disjunction. Are we not living in a culture where the very goal of everything around us is isolation? Isolation from death; isolation from loss, suffering, and grief; isolation from the ill, the criminal; isolation from variant ideologies; isolation from genuine human interaction; these are all hallmarks of the current age. We are totally separate from most facts of life. Life itself has taken on the automatic life of a total simulacrum. Consequently, the lust to break from a system where everything refers to something else, and none refer to genuine experience, is rampant. We are a culture which through starvation has acquired a passion for the Real.
Slavoj Zizek, in his phenomenal little book Welcome to the Desert of the Real (10 points to anyone who can catch the reference), describes this as a need for "the direct experience of the Real as opposed to everyday social reality -- the Real in its extreme violence as the price to be paid for peeling off the deceptive layers of reality." A little definition of terms will help immensely.
According to Jacques Lacan, Zizek's hero, there is a threefold division of existence as perceivable by the human psyche.
The first is the Imaginary: the fully created ideas that people have in their heads which are rarely particularly rooted. These are often shinier, nicer examples of things that exist, and the collision of them with a somewhat fuller picture of the world usually results in anxiety and maybe even rage. I see them largely as expectations, unrealistic and disappointing as all expectations are.
The second is the Symbolic. This is the infinite world of ideas and nearly-real simulacra that affect and occupy our daily lives. When you buy a new pair of shoes, everything occurring is Symbolic: the value of the money you give away, the standards by which you judge the shoes to be worth buying, the relationship between you and the clerk, and most importantly the rush of consumerist pleasure that overtakes you. Symbolic. Made up. Huge repercussions, but not really genuine. Humans, being creatures who make meaning as a matter of course, must necessarily live in a world that is more or less Symbolic.
The third is the Real. The Real is the kingdom of matter and trueness that lies out there. It cannot be expressed in words -- which are Symbolic -- and it cannot be defined. It is the thing that the Symbolic exists to delineate and comprehend. It defies such foolishness. You have experienced the Real when you have been punched in the face, when a storm has destroyed your house, or when tanks have run you over because you were protesting; the Real simply is and happens.
When the Real happens, it necessarily clashes with the Symbolic, and results in trauma. This dissipates slowly as the human meaning-making process creates a narrative, reducing the traumatic event to a Symbolic story. The Symbolic often has to be readjusted to compensate for the incursion of the Real; finally an equilibrium is reached again.
SO, having understood what the Real is (and isn't), we can understand further the depth of the wisdom in the above lyrics. In Flames is capturing the essence of the Symbolic: life, being the sum of Symbolic disjunction, is indeed dark and binding. "If there was a single breath I could take" is underscoring the passion to exist in a state where one has abandoned the Symbolic and lives only in the Real. It is the same desire that motivates someone to jump off a bridge or cut their own arm: the passion for the Real, to remind ourselves that we exist.
A breath taken in absence of the Symbolic order, in the pure unfettered Real, would be worth any price. But, presently, all we can do is live our lives with as little of the Symbolic insulation as possible; the Real only happens in destructive flashes, leaving trauma and partial understanding behind.
Metal!