Monolithic Misunderstandings || Neurotic Nihilism II.2.2

 

Laying in the midst of rubble, encapsulated in the world’s largest Brutalist tomb built atop the old Chernobyl power plant is the infamous Elephant’s Foot. A mass of pure radioactivity. A human creation. Bob Ross would say of it, a, “happy accident,” as it was not an intentional invention. It’s never so cut and clear. 

The Elephant’s Foot is to the real world what the Monolith in 2001: A Space Odyssey is: a creation by an intelligent consciousness that has no actual explanation for its spot in the universe when others stumble upon it. Radioactive decay ensures the Foot won’t be around forever, but high is the likelihood of that process outlasting the human gene altogether. Making a hunk for any possible future intelligences to scour the Earth before it gets engulfed by the sun to find; A Mass without meaning. 

Ominous is the choir in Also Sprach Zarathustra incorporated to accompany the existentialist film. Kubrick uses the most vocal moments in the number, in a way that could be seen as akin to hidden radiation when the neurosis of lack of understanding on the cosmic and personal level— though that is more of a stretching connection albeit, and would rather only make sense in hindsight to the film’s release and the moon missions being the former then the latter in historical sequence. The magnitude of what the Elephant’s Foot is to our species is rather trivial and meaningless to any other; which isn’t to imply nonhuman organisms do not feel effected from and are not affected by radiation, an awareness of something different exists but exactly what is unsure, like with the apes (and later homo-genus apes) Monolith in 2001 at the ‘Dawn of Man’.

It is possible the Monolith to be like the Voyager vehicles we launched, devices for exploration of just how far a species could send at least one thing rather than going only to attempt to find other life. Differential in that however as Voyager includes its Golden Record of the Earth (at least according to our species perspective) whereas the Monolith is merely there, obfuscating without any direct imposition or anything. It just is as it can be perceived: there. Meaning is by perception, what exactly can be perceived from an accidental hunk of radiation or traveling pillar?

One has meaning because we made it— literally— the other not so. Flip it around and it’s meaningless in that the meaning is subjective to the perception. Into new life or regular death, it’s there all by making and misunderstanding that maybe we can’t at a certain point… 

A Track Trinity || Neurotic Nihilism III.2

Originally written during the Nimrod time period and titled Black Eyeliner, change of phrase and it became the third track on their next and sixth studio album Warning, Church On Sunday was rechristened. 

Catchy as it is, at least in my opinion the demo from the Nimrod era is better than the concluded track; but what it evolved into fit the theme and jive of Warning whereas Black Eyeliner would not— it went from a ballad type entity in the same vein as that of Wilhelm Fink or Brutal love, to the energy found on later songs on the album like Fashion Victim or Waiting. 

“Bloodshot deadbeat and lack of sleep/ Making your bleed tears down your face/ Leaving traces of mistakes…”

Some slight deviations, depending on time and place in the two songs. Respectively it’s the same hook. Where Black Eyeliner’s verse was reworked into Church On Sunday, Kill Your Friends by frontman Billie Joe Armstrong’s side project The Longshot took it and rewrote it for the chorus. 

Expressed in an its own new light each iteration is a form of longing. As established on the album, it is more of an optimistic delivery, even, “if you live with me I’ll die for you and this compromise,” however cynically, “‘trust’ is a dirty word that comes from such a liar,” yet even within that so long as there’s a hint of some mutual faith there’s as the closing song of the album Macy’s Day Parade says, a, “sized dream of hope.” Stripped to its demo, the imbued variation of this longing is that of Saudade, a more melancholically melodic nostalgia for something so seemingly in sight— grasp— but ultimately forever beyond the time of day. Kill Your Friends is what would seem to be a similar case within this as Grimes’ song ‘My Name Is Dark’ is:

“Heaven’s making rent

 There’s a vacancy for me and all my friends

 The end of days are on their way

 Who needs eulogies?

 When you’ve got your loved ones 

 And everyone’s depressed

 Party in the morgue tonight

 Everything’s gonna be alright

 And we’ll be singing…”

In other words as stated a few lines later in the lyrics of this (as of currently final) iteration: “Fuck the world, it’s judgement day.” Affirming this confirmation bias with a hint of permeating mortality salience throughout. Long story short, it forms a Trinity within the genus of the sonic endeavors of Billie Joe Armstrong, and encapsulates a different aspect of condition that makes sense to neurotic nihilism for all the aforementioned reasons here.

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This is actually a small bit from a larger, still being written breakdown of Warning, the We Are Chaos of Green Day.