Feb 13
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Yamataka Eye
1997
Yamataka Eye
1997
(via https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fUSGujidgns)
There was a time, back when I was a high school kid running a site called everyoneisdoomed.com and lashing out (flailing, really) at everything and everyone around me, when I thought I had shit all figured out. I was fairly certain that I would always have the same (self-)righteous outlook and have my sights set on those very same targets. Me and a friend got kicked out and permanently banned from the first Wal-Mart in Ptbo (the same one that eventually destroyed all of the local shops surrounding it) for wearing a tuxedo with a bright orange ski mask and offering shoppers "free" stock straight from the shelves for Buy Nothing Day. They said it was theft. We said it was hilarious. We were gone before the cops arrived. Shit was so simple then.
Somewhere between then and my mid-twenties, shit got all fucked up. The story got more complicated. I mean, I never got more sympathy for the Waltons, but I never quite figured out how to stop them either. The havoc they wreaked in this town was vicious and merciless. I couldn't stop it. None of us seemed to be able to. Shit got further complicated because somewhere in those intervening years, I kept hating the man but also starting hating myself. I've spent the years since then trying to figure out why, combing myself for faults and burning every last bridge within my own heart to figure it out. Still nothing. No answers.
When I was 20 I discovered the Boredoms, through an everyoneisdoomed.com affiliate, a group of crazy texans who ran a site called "Kill the Children", which hosted everything from Kenneth Anger films to Waco conspiracy documentaries. I was super low at the time. Finishing advertising school to make a point, with no direction and no hope, The Boredoms came along, and kinda bailed me out. They were kinda like me (or rather, I was kinda like them): punk ass brats who had a serious crisis and instead of all of their false idols, just decided to worship the sun instead.
Though I started with Pop Tatari, what really bowled me over was the Super AE record. For someone who had been a disciple of thrash and punk (and swedish pop) up to that point, it was in some ways a logical next step, and in some ways a bucket of ice water in the face. It's kind of pointless to describe the record as a whole, but the 2nd track, "Super Are", was always the centrepiece for me. After the 7.5mins of bombastic chord slams and tape manipulation that make up the first "song", the simply titled "Super You", I found myself awash in that beautiful organ pad that seems to just go on forever. And then a brief interlude of voices... "in the star, in the moon, in the earth... IN THE SUUUUUNNNNNNNNNNNN"
... and then POW. into 6mins of Mahavishnu Orchestra worship seen through the prism of a group of Japanese kids who used to give a fuck and now could give a fuck less. It was loud, it was intense, it was brutally beautiful, it was warm, it was perfect. In so many of my darkest days and weeks and months, listening to that album, and this song, was a balm. It never made me feel less angry, or hate myself less... but it always reminded me that one day, the sun will go supernova and destroy any trace of this drama. And in the darkest times, that was the greatest story ever sold.
Oddly enough, 15+ years later (is this web address that fucking old? jesus.), I'm still pretty angry at all of the same old shit. I never grew out of it. Funny how that is.
Just a couple of months ago, the 2nd Wal-Mart to grace this town opened up in a different location, swallowing up what once was a Zellers and proving two things I had known all along: 1) Capitalism eats itself by shitting in its own mouth, and 2) we buy the leftovers. Our local MP Dean Del Mastro, himself a fucking conservative stooge embroiled in various controversies, cut the ribbon in the days before the opening. I didn't find out until after the fact. Too bad, I could've rented a tux and crashed the party. Next time, I guess.
