“Was not their mistake once more bred of the life of slavery that they had been living?—a life which was always looking upon everything, except mankind, animate and inanimate—‘nature,’ as people used to call it—as one thing, and mankind as another, it was natural to people thinking in this way, that they should try to make ‘nature’ their slave, since they thought ‘nature’ was something outside them” — William Morris


Friday, September 2, 2011

Helvete Essay


I'm writing this for Zachary Price, who has started a journal on black metal and philosophy. It's called “The Smoking Pool of Death” and it's about Wolves in the Throne Room. Teaser quotation:

We are the smoking pool of death, yet when I reach out to touch it, I only touch this butterfly resting on a flower in the Norwegian meadow.

If we want to go any deeper in our social and philosophical journey, we must descend into the smoking pool of death. Wolves in the Throne room provide a kind of musical antihistamine that enables humans not to have an allergic reaction to working at the depth necessary for reforging our broken coexistence with all beings.