The Last Night of Graves..

+----------------------------------------+
Cold sunrise approaches
Armada of concrete from black to grey
Signal towers phalanx in distance
Office lights awaken eyes from sleep
Groan of air conditioners a locust plague
Smog mechanics exhale of death
+----------------------------------------+

It's 05:41AM and one of the managers of Switching should be walking through the door in around 20 mins. He has a habit of turning all the lights back on which is annoying, so it's probably a good idea to turn them all back on now.

The initial thought of doing night shift scares the crap out of most people, but if you have a job you enjoy like I do, it's not a bad thing at all.

It's actually quite therapeutic: you get time to yourself, you can work at your own pace, and you don't have to worry about any idiots at work you don't get along with (there is one where I work). The iPod gets thrashed and so does the DVD drive on my workstation (tonight's fare was Iron Maiden's Live After Death video, preceeded last night by Downfall, a stellar film imo).

The downside to nigthshift is the sleeping pattern. I spend some time of graves stressing about being able to sleep properly, and this ends up screwing up my sleep because I'm spending my sleep worrying about whether I will actually sleep!

Other than that, the hours are perky. Extra pay and solitude. Nothing bad about that :)

Black Metal: A "Positive" Ethnic Tool?

I don't lead the cultural lifestyle of my ethnicity.

Born in the UK and living in Australia since 1983, I've been largely if not totally accustomed to the Western way of life. In some ways or extents, I'd rejected my ethnic side, probably as a result of racism and violence while growing up in a somewhat "multiculturally younger Australia" back in the 80's. I did what I could to avoid others of my kind.

My beliefs changed over the years, back and forth, due to experiences in life, people, partners of various cultures and so on. Each experience sheds light and sometimes, creates shadows. Of course, the conclusion of the experience sheds light ultimately (this can vary of course on the individual though).

As a young boy, with my hair not yet cut in England, Sikhism was the only way I knew, yet I craved short, cut blonde hair, blue eyes and the paler skin of the people who seemingly had none of the problems I did. Then as a younger man in my early 20's with my hair finally cut, I considered Islam to be a calling, only then to reject the idea before going into it.

Later in my 20s and up to the current day, following rejection of organised religion as a whole, I felt the pull of paganism and nature, and combined with my return to metal in the last 5-6 years, a realisation has come to me.

My love of Black Metal to me feels a part of my true (musical) calling. I feel an affinity to it in ways I can't describe. But it is not the hate side, nor Nationalistic side of it as such that I speak of (and mind you, I do like the music of some of the more aggressive and NS styles of BM).

I have come to the conclusion that Black Metal is the modern version of ethnic expression, in a metal sense. One only needs to look at bands like Enslaved, Darkestrah, Drudkh as well as others, to see that they use their own cultures as their influences, educating the musical world about what they consider beautiful about their bloodlines.

I have started to consider Black Metal as a form of ethnic music, but not one which centres only on one kind of ethnicity, rather, many. It centres on the celebration of the myths, gods and people, poems, old tales and sagas, the beauty of the people, the richness of their cultures and the world they live in.

It is this aspect which is turning me back towards my own roots. For the first time in my life, I purchased a book on Sikhism. I felt that it was about time I learned more about myself, and rather than reject, I should balance. I am finally opening myself to something I have almost hated for almost 31 years.

It is Black Metal which has led me down this road. I never could have conceived ten years ago that such a thing would lead me back towards my own blood calling. Now I have the chance to finally balance my ethnicity with who I am on the outside.

Black Metal has served as a positive ethnic tool for me and during my period of my Saturn Return, it's helping me to get closer to that balance we all seek.

Empathy of Misunderstandings

After procrastinating over having a blog for years, and failing to update my own website hubster.telefragged.com (as it's supposed to be strictly gaming-related, and I haven't mapped for over a year... waiting for QuakeIV to become stable before I decide to do anything real for it), I've decided that now is probably the time I should get off my bum and get myself a blog.

My so-called residence these days is the UM Forum, and it's various subforums. The place was initially where I wanted to talk about a now dusted obsession with Swedish deathmetallers Opeth (I've since become nicely at home with Black Metal).

UM seems to have a plethora of people who appear to be really young, and it gets frustrating trying to talk about music in an intelligent fashion without being labelled an elistist.

I had a run-in with a particular member a few days ago, who I ended up blasting in typical Scorpio fashion. Since then though, and after feeling that I'd made my point about what I considered something pretty stupid at the time, I've decided to be humble and give this person a shot, as I've noticed they seem to cop a lot of crap in that forum as a whole.

It's not nice being misunderstood (one of my lifelong Archilles' Heels), and so whether or not the person appreciates it or even cares, I'll go out of my way to nice from here on in.