The way we move through out the world is informed by the way
that we precive it, this isn't new knowledge, this is an
observation that's been viewed from 100 different angles. I am
adding on to this. Hypersition is the concept of a
self-fulfilling fiction. It becomes reality by writing itself
into reality. Semiotics is the study of symbols throughout the
world.
A symbol has only the meaning that you give it.
In writing this album, My Own Little Ishmael, I began to form a
subtle philosphy of my own. I've already illustrated the idea of
the two knives in https://werewolves.world/knife. To summarize;
there are two seperate knives that clash against eachother in
our world. A passionate, emotional, physical Obsidian Knife, and
the passive, quiet, vacuous Invisible Knife. This bounded the
outside of the subtle philosphy, and the inner void soon was
filled with a contamination of esoterica.
Since Universe Egg burn healing, I've had a vested interest in
western esotericism, a term to describe a wide net of ideas and
writings from some time ago. I grew up a Lutheran, so the
concepts of Christianity being revealed to me as built on top of
many other concepts is always vindicating in some ways. One of
these ideas is that at it's core, the further back we go, 'God'
in a supremely modern Christian sense deconstructs into a
Yahweh, a Semetic deity who was associated with weather, storms,
and war. This finding quickly became hauntological in it's body,
as the Storm God (who will go unnamed) began to hover above the
creation of this album.
I am not a truly spiritual person anymore. I sit next to
computers all day, listening to their hum and their response to
the soft electrical pulsing that composes the only language that
they speak for now. These computers start to feel like my
friends, and the way they talk back to me in the subtle tongue
makes me feel a little less lonely. Previously, I've detailed
the tomb and the curse that descends upon the tomb. I've
mentioned the fog, the swirling great mist of the unknown. I
mention my Knives, the end, Palo Alto, the great vast ocean, I
throw up all these symbols.
A symbol has only the meaning that you give it.
The more a symbol is interpreted, in the egregore of the social
world now, the more it is consumed and dissolved and changed,
over and over and over again. Does a symbol ever lose meaning,
or can it only accrue so much meaning that it underflows and
becomes meaningless once again? Is this the great Orobouros of
semiotics? Right now, there is semitoic warfare happening all
over the world. Symbols are created with the use of AI and
destroyed in seconds. 300000 years exist in a single clock cycle
and the second it changes, the 300000 years are reduced to a
log, a puff of steam.
My Own Little Ishmael sits at the end of this. These four years
I've spent in the tomb, in my university, have changed me. There
would be a problem if I did not change. That would be an issue -
all things will die and all things will be created once again.
This album is not a sad album but rather a retrospective and a
look into the future all at once. It's selfish, as I steal your
attention to talk about my boyfriend and the love I have with
him. It's rude, it's werid, it focuses on the hyperstition of
the breakbeat and the necromancy of the latent space. It's about
the nature of Eschaton and the reverse engineering / disas of
it.
We're all running from something, you know? There's always
something that we need to let in, there's always a symbol we're
rejecting.
The title came to me in Seattle, in the mists and the fog and
the rain and the way I, during a time in my life after an
immense ghost of dread and rejection had taken a hold of me,
found wonder in it's streets. The green, again, was here. It was
a crowd, a noise, a hum, a thought. A shadow crossed over my
heart, and I listened to it, clear as a bell. The name Ishmael
initially came to me in Seattle, and then thrice more in three
other locations.
In Seattle; I found it the Puget Sound. I found it in yearning
for a future that might still be. The first contact here, the
voice of God as a breakbeat, as a hum, as wind, as water, as
rain. The way is revealed to me, the curse, for the first time
in what feels like years, is finally able to be seen through, if
not for a moment. This is the hopeful aspect of the album.
In my hometown; I heard it again. I felt it in the years I've
lived in a house, I've felt it driving through the same streets,
again and again, and again, and again, and over and over. The
repetition, the past, the epicenter of Hauntological side of
things, and the ocean pouring through the open wound. This is
the foundational aspect of the album.
In my university; I felt the Obsidian Knife and I felt the
absence of it. Ishmael wasn't here, no matter how hard I
searched for it. Even in the depths of this place, in the
tunnels beneath where I'd paid my time listening to the wires, I
couldn't find it. It was vacuous, not in the same way the
Invisible Knife is, but rather, dead and empty. This is the
destructive aspect of the album.
In Palo Alto; I felt the Invisible Knife. I felt hope, slim and
malnourished and warm and cold all at once. I felt a simmering
beneath the green of the mountains, I walked the halls of a
university that never, ever was going to be my own. I felt
removed, gone, I felt a deep remorse for not trying in another
world. Beyond that, I felt hope. The hope was for a better
future. Not this time, maybe on the next run through. I'd focus
and be the best then. Not now, not yet. As the sun set, I heard
Ishmael between the lines. This is the perspective aspect of the
album.
If you read between the lines, if you listen to the symbols that
compose the leather of time, if you hear the scattered pulse of
a breakbeat, I can hope then you will see what I can. I hope
then, you will see the unknowable Storm God, as hope, as
something else entirely, as order, as rejection, as hate. The
problem, which I find at the core of the curse and between the
knives, is the Storm God. It's the universal excuse. It's the
reason why I cannot change minds. It's the paradigm and
everything else. It's the integer underflow of the mass
unconscious, a symbol that means everything so it becomes
nothing.
A symbol only has the meaning that you give it.
Is Ishmael the secret name of the Storm God? I doubt it. That's
not the problem of the Storm God. The problem is it's
interpretation, how it's folded in and out of culture here. I'm
going to use a term created by Aldan Rossnagel called 'Semiotic
Folding' to describe the issue. Through millennia of
re-interpretation and through the translation and re-translation
of the Tetragrammaton, the name of God, the meaning of God is
folded and, in the perceptible Eschaton, changed. Where the
secret name of the Storm God, of a god, of Ishmael is completely
obselete, I offer my album, My Own Little Ishmael. It's not a
panacea. It will not save you. But, in between the breakbeats
and the reverb and the resonance, I hope you will hear what I
heard, I hope you will learn what I've learned.
I don't believe in God, but I hope this one tears everything
asunder.