This is my fault for being the departmental computer guy: when the machines break, I wave my dead chicken and write voodoo words on their keyboards until they work again.
Charles Stross, The Atrocity Archives
Tag Archives: words
As flies to wanton boys are we to the gods; they kill us for their sport. Thunder again; words that proclaimed themselves true—truer somehow than truth itself.
Aldous Huxley, Brave New World
His words seemed as vacuous as empty space yet densely self-serving.
Rajnar Vajra, Her Scales Shine Like Music
Luna’s Dogma
Luna’s Dogma
(Exomène/Wotton)
Lyrics were written and spoken by the French image slayer Dorianne Wotton.
Tension. Tension is the leitmotif of Luna’s Dogma.
Firstly, the way the track is built reflects tension with harsh words interspersed with naive music. Then the sound itself tries to render tension by the use of static as background noise. This reduces the violence of words by giving them a ghostly and ethereal feeling while giving a disturbing aspect to the music. That aspect contrasts with its simplicity, as if it came from the background of a nightmare. Finally, the tension is also created by the juxtaposition of several spoken elements spatialized so that the listener is trying to follow all of them at the same time which dissolves the meaning of each of them into une bouillie de mots, or word porridge. This tension is also that of an ascetic mystic, an anchorite, which seeks to achieve a celestial spirituality while feeling trapped in his earthly body.
The text, written and spoken by Dorianne Wotton, is an illustration of the “æsthetic of desolation”, as defined later by Dorianne Wotton and Exomène, that underlies both their respective individual and collaborative works since 2004.
The sampled spoken word of Dorianne Wotton from this track translated to English:
I am a heretic.
What enjoyment heresy can give us.
I am the ascetic of another mysticism, the priestess of another dogma.
What happiness, what sublimation, what transcendental moments my dogma gives me.
Behind the apparent barbarity of the acts that my almighty cult makes me do, there are short, too short moments that bring me closer to an impenetrable and indefinable ideal. The ascent to another spirituality far from pain, greed, emptiness. Agony for the common man, an orgasm for my emotional being.
[…]
I dream of another reality and perfection before I leave.
I want to live before I die.
Exalting my soul, I desert my body and especially the passing of time that ravages everything.
Like an anchorite, I hate my body and try to take refuge where no one can reach me.
Torn between inner violence and contemplation that brings me peace and serenity I chose to denigrate my body to feel the purity of my soul,
As required by my own religion.
The entire August 2003 essay by Dorianne Wotton is available in full on Exomène’s anthology profile page.
French artist Exomène is a soundsmith and digital apothecary.
A soundsmith because he works sounds like a potter his clay, or a blacksmith his metal: hammering, stretching, twisting sounds until they fit all together into a coherent piece of music.
As a digital apothecary, his approach is quite the same: playing with an abstract material as if it was physical in a more experimental way. The sound in itself is no longer triturated but what generates it is subjected to several techniques: data-bending, generativity, algorithm, glitch…
These two approaches stem from the same mysticism that holds abstract and physical materials are the same thing in different realms.
Follow Exomène via
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and
Anthology Profile
Hermetic Library Anthology Project – Magick Music and Ritual 6
Pax Hominibus Bonae Voluntatis by Aleister Crowley in International, Dec 1917.
“These words, ‘Peace to men of good will,’ have been mistranslated, ‘Good will towards men.’ Christ said that he did not come to bring peace, but a sword; that he would divide mother from son and father from daughter, careless of the effect of such remarks upon the feelings of Dr. Sigmund Freud.” [via]
Concerning Death by Aleister Crowley in International, Dec 1917.
“Beloved Daughter and Sister,
DO WHAT THOU WILT SHALL BE THE WHOLE OF THE LAW.
Let it be thy will, and the will of all them that tend upon the sick, to comfort and to fortify them with these words following.” [via]
Commentary (ΜΒ) on ΚΕΦΑΛΗ ΜΒ Dust-Devils in Liber CCCXXXIII, The Book of Lies by Aleister Crowley.
“The mind is called ‘wind’, because of its nature; as has been frequently explained, the ideas and words are identical.
In this free-flowing, centreless material arises an eddy; a spiral close-coiled upon itself.
The theory of the formation of the Ego is that of the Hindus, whose Ahamkara is itself a function of the mind, whose ego it creates. This Ego is entirely divine.” [via]
Egyptian Magic in Egyptian Magic by Florence Farr.
“Let thy ways be made wide for me to traverse the earth and the expanse of Heaven. Shine Thou upon me, O penetrating power, as I draw near to the Divine words my ears shall hear in the Abodes of the West. Let no pollution of that which brought me forth be upon me. Deliver me, protect me from him who closeth His Eyes at twilight and bringeth to an end in darkness. (The annihilator.)” [via]
The Nameless Quest in The Gate of the Sanctuary from The Temple of the Holy Ghost (Collected Works, Vol I) by Aleister Crowley.
“‘Resolve all question by a moonward tread.
Follow the moon!’ Even so the king had said.
My thought had thanked him for the generous breath
Wherewith he warned us: for delay were death.
And now, too late! no moon is overhead—
Some other meaning in the words he saith?
Or, am I tricked in such a little snare?” [via]