FRENZY was largely written from the end of April to the very start of June of 2024, though some lyrics date back to the fall of 2023; the final draft took until this last September, when, after months of procrastination and two suicidal depressive spirals, I got sick of bedrotting, opened Ableton, and spontaneously finished the two remaining tracks in a few hours. Shortly thereafter, I took a small dose of <redacted>, gave it a listen, decided it was done, and wrote the following over a week while I started to work on the visual component of the project.
This is less of a post mortem/explanation/reflection than it is another page in me trying to make sense of the contradictory impulses and patterns and personae at play in and before/beyond the album, a process which has not yielded satisfactory results so far and which undoubtedly never will. I'd be disappointed if it [sic] did.
It's very hard to think about this project with any real clarity right now. I have struggled with various forms of OCD my entire life which most consistently manifests in fears of Wrongthink: socially, sexually, spiritually, politically, artistically. Being a transsexual does not help with this (and is maybe where it comes from? (I have on my arm now a ward (👁️:-: ) against GOD (👁️), who I started writing about over a decade ago and am only recently understanding is also (one of/part of?) the little voice(s) in my ear telling me that I'm Evil))! Neither does being an American, and therefore being enmeshed in a culture that is Wrong and Evil on every level, while also being neurotic about that fact to the point of dysfunction. Finding the balance seems impossible - how am I to understand the omnicidal reality I exist in and have to participate in without internalizing the wickedness I was born into as my own? Honesty about where I am, what I am, what the world is, etc. seems like a necessary antidote to the infinite chauvinistic adolescent delusion endemic to my entire nation; and yet, time and time again, I find myself rubbing up against the fact that Uncompromising Honesty leaves me nihilistic and disconnected from The Good, not better equipped to pursue it. My brushes with Christianity got me into organizing and exploring socialist orgs, and the eventual crash left me suicidal and huddled in my room for months on end; the experiences catalogued here carried me into new love and life and art and staring down cops at my local university encampment, and since their fall, I've been adrift and unable to escape the dread of death - mine, others', the Earth's, the universes. Faith (here, spiritual - but in general as well - ) does not come easy to me. Lack of certitude excites me immensely, but is transient before the seeming certitudes of base materialism, capitalism, entropy, the negative patterns of my life so far, a cold dead universe and an early, miserable, meaningless grave. To be "honest" with myself invariably brings me back here - total emptiness; not the void-as-ground of being, but void-as-scientismic, rationalist atheistic death of God death of everything cold machinistic vacuum. That's to be an adult; that's to be mature: that's to be Correct, and through that, reslient; that's the orientation to the world and reality required to never be let down by anyone or anything.
Bullshit?
Maybe?
I don't know.
I don't know! What else is there to say? I know nothing. Was this real? In the moment, yes. I had my doubts, but all faith carries doubt with it. Now: now, I feel the demand of Honesty, with the necessary caveat that I am very, very depressed, and very, very unwell. Now I look back at the happiest and most meaningful I've ever been, and part of me scoffs. The last blush of 20s chuunibyou - a final shot at believing there was something transcendent in me. Is that Honesty? Is it Honesty if it always brings me to the worst possible conclusion on any subject? Is it Honesty to adopt the fatalistic paradigms of an ideological superstructure that has enabled the horrors of modernity past, present, and future - ? images of sneering talking heads across the spectrum insisting we Just Need To Be Honest about markets, trans people, people of color, IQ, disability, poverty, immigration - I was being Honest with myself for years as I insisted I wasn't trans, as much as I wanted to be, because I just didn't have It in me; I was being Honest when I insisted I wasn't like _really_ really mentally ill, I was just lazy/pathetic/a monster/etc. Honesty is hardly reliable, especially for an OCD little faggot like myself. I have Let's Just Be Honest'd myself into the inescapable truth that all my friends hate me and I am a waste of space and should really kill myself already on at LEAST a weekly basis for most of my adult life. Honesty and its dear friend Rationality are tools like anything else; both swords and plowshares. I have dug myself free with them less often than I've built my own prison.
Let's just be honest:
Whatever happened here, I made it happen.
Not spontaneously. Not of my own accord. Not even remotely fully birthed from my own mind. My influences are obvious and readily acknowledged. Nothing came to me from the ether. I was not struck by a sudden bolt of divine inspiration. I courted it. I designed it. I played with it. I discovered it. I can claim no reference or descent from any more reputable authority. I had no burning bush. Nothing was handed down to me. All I had was a feeling, a curiosity, and a few spare thoughts in my head that I felt like - and then, told myself, asserted - weren't mine.
I wanted it to be real.
My Honesty (👁️) tells me that that in and of itself is enough to disqualify the entire endeavor - that any actual brush with divinity or magic or whatever must occur outside of the priming of desire if it has any chance of being legitimate - it must be transcendental, self-evident, maybe even something I Don't Want; if I search deep inside myself and find the answers that perfectly validate my present existence and satisfy all my desires and challenge nothing, well - that's just a little too convenient, isn't it? (The fact that All Of This did not validate my present existence, did not satisfy all my desires, and actually challenged me greatly is irrelevant, of course.) Ergo - it was just chuuni shit (pejorative). Immature. Desperate to be special. Desperate to not be human. Desperate to escape.
I don't know.
But the girl(s) on that recording believed in it. She was riddled with doubt, but still believed it enough to put voice to it.
It feels like a betrayal of the worst order to say that she was Just making it up.
(Cycle: Withdrawal from non-normative expression (patterns of behavior, interest, thought) in service of some duty or obligation to Society (the revolution, the community, the social, the family), and simultaneously, withdrawal from Society due to the simple Potential for non-normative expression making me radioactive (regardless of whether or not that potential has been actualized), eg: can't become a tranny/Weird pervert/witch because people require normativity from me; can't engage with people because what if they found out I am/want to be a tranny/Weird pervert/witch? No progress made on any front - self-nullifying prophecy; decades of stasis. At least this will break something.)
Requirements: