On the pathway of doomed souls
13 moments of death by The Gloomster (yet another project by the poet Arne Pahlke) is described by the author himself as the "soundtrack" to a "film" depicting the many different ways to die. Death by accident, recklessness or illness, by law (execution), by the hand of a murderer or by one's own hand. Being killed in a war is a serious possibility as well, but that would be an entirely different story and what mostly interests Arne here is, I believe, the view of death as a private, individual experience - a more or less unpredicted occurrence in the routine of an otherwise peaceful, or at least ordinary life (with the obvious exception of Long way to the electric chair) - though "ordinary" is actually a term too generalised to apply to the vicissitudes of each particular person's way of living.
Being conscious of their own mortality, and therefore of the tragic irony that defines their existence, humans are the only creatures on this planet who intentionally obliterate their own kind for reasons other than self-preservation; and what is more, who have the possibility to choose the kind of death they will inflict on themselves or others. Man has at his disposition, and is by nature able to devise, an almost infinite array of tools and methods to do away with life - and should one of them fail, there is always an alternative (a characteristic example is that of the poet Kostas Karyotakis whose work, coincidentally, I've been rediscovering of late - at the age of 38 he tried to commit suicide by drowning but being a good swimmer, he spent ten hours struggling in vain; afterwards he rewrote his suicide note, advising anyone who considered drowning themselves to not attempt it if they could swim. The following day he did kill himself on a desert beach, with a bullet through his own heart).
Art is the sublimated expression of human experience and as such, it can mourn, celebrate (in the event of a heroic self-sacrifice) or simply describe the loss of a life, while death itself is sometimes promoted to a form of art (as in most cases of ritual murder). In 13 moments of death this description is effectuated through an intense musical "narration" which at the same time manages to remain almost passionless on the composer's part - emotions are provoked by the ambience rather than imposed a priori on the listener, the focus resting mainly on the way each "victim" is dealing with his or her own imminent death.
The power of Arne's songmaking relies usually on his lyrics, but their absence from this album is precisely what makes it so intriguing - a poet expressing himself without words. The music alone is what captures, and literally acts out (with the help of sound effects) each moment of death, as it is being "lived from within" by the respective moribund: the chilling progression of footsteps towards the electric chair, the desperate fight for a breath underwater, an acrobat's gradually precipitating fall, the slaughtering of animals in an abattoir, the slow immersion in a terminal drug-induced trip, the frantic or waning rhythm of a heartbeat, the heaving, discordant agony of a serial killer's captive...
The 13th song, I die, is absolutely hair-raising even in its conciliating tranquility - or rather, exactly because of it. As the subject of death constitutes one of the greatest taboos in Western culture, the contemplation of one's own end becomes viscerally unsettling (and at this point, faithful to the Pagan origins of my Mediterranean upbringing, I will knock vigorously on my wooden desk - auf Holz klopfen - and wish with all my heart a long, healthy and creative life to Arne). The "officially" ominous number 13 is in an odd way exorcised by this eerie catharsis; it is here that the "camera" moves from the recorded "scene" to the 13th protagonist - the "director" himself - bringing him face to face with his personal "black mirror", the fadeout into the "final credits" of his own life.
A macabre but beguiling constellation of a deeply existential essence, punctuated with true flashes of genius.
NOTE: This album is no longer available on Jamendo, but may still be freely downloadable from The Jamendo Albums Collection @ Archive.org.
No comments:
Post a Comment