Israfel Sivad's Blog, page 6
November 15, 2017
My Dark Garden
Sunbeams at break of day
might shine through the words I say,
but all that’s bright
can never light
these songs I sing for you.
Hide on my shadowed throne,
tending nightmares alone.
All my dark garden’s grown
is everything that you have ever feared.
And so when I sing my rhymes to you
do not pluck their bulbs so beautiful.
Do not smell scents shrouded in blues.
Do not taste their flavors of evil.
Everything I’ve ever said, I said it all for you,
to steal all that you have loved and feed the l...
November 5, 2017
The Hermaphrodite (from “The Tree Outside My Window”)
The Hermaphrodite
(from The Tree Outside My Window)
Teach me to love.
I will teach you to hate.
Together, we can make a change.
With your love and my hate,
we can make this world a better place.
I’ve always wanted to write a children’s story.
Do you think you could teach me to speak?
Maybe then, you will love me
for what I’ve given you. Hate me
for what I’ve done to you.
Okay, I’m ready to do it now.
I picked my pen up off the desk.
My notepad is open to this page.
Take a deep breath, I’m go...
October 27, 2017
Review of Against Method by Paul Feyeraband
Against Method by Paul Karl Feyerabend
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
An interesting analysis of epistemological theories regarding the philosophy of science with implications for other aspects of life as well (i.e., politics, aesthetics, etc.). The opening chapters spun me around a bit as I tried to get my bearings on the precise issues Feyerabend was addressing. However, once I discovered my footing, I found his analysis of how European-influenced societies approach theories of knowledge to be bot...
Review of Living In the End Times by Slavoj Zizek
Living in the End Times by Slavoj Žižek
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
An interesting perspective on problems facing the political left in today’s culture. Zizek’s philosophy rests somewhere between cultural critique and pure theory. He uses Lacanian psychoanalysis and Hegelian philosophy to decipher a number of late-capitalist issues such as the clash between civilizations, religious fundamentalism and the rise of a new radical right. In what I see as a nod to Deleuze and Guattari, the book is stru...
Review of Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
An ambitious, well-written work. My first thought of this book after finishing it was its overwhelming positivity. It’s rare that a book dealing with such complex issues as race, power and human nature can leave one feeling positive at the end. Although this is a mammoth achievement, reached in quite an unorthodox way, at the same moment, this is the book’s downfall. The philosophy guiding this book feels saccharine. Therefore, even though...
September 16, 2017
August 24, 2017
The Secret World (from “Indigo Glow”)
The Secret World
(from Indigo Glow)
California is where we’ve always dreamed
of gold and movie screens, erotic cannibalism and magazines.
Remember: we were born in the city of angels
and fell to float down artistic canals
to the ocean where our father rests,
where childhood tumbled and inhaled salted, seaweed breaths.
Neptune’s depths sounded ecstasy-drenched nights.
We sat in the corners, conscious to avoid the mermaids,
unbound as the sirens sang… fairies fluttered everywhere.
The great go...
July 27, 2017
A Precarious State: Violence and Retribution in Stallone’s Cobra
In the opening sequence of Sylvester Stallone’s 1986 film Cobra, images flash back and forth between a lone biker riding out before a rising sun and the eerie clanking of grisly, subterranean axes. Soon, the watcher bears witness to that lone biker, with a shotgun in hand, taking over a supermarket, an everyday aspect of American life. Supermarkets provide the United States with sustenance, and in this nightmarish landscape, they’re in danger.
Stallone’s character, Marion Cobretti (aka Cobra)...
June 7, 2017
Contemplating Death Metal: Cannibal Corpse as Memento Mori
One day, as I was walking down the street listening to death metal grinding through my earbuds, I began contemplating the appeal of immersing oneself in such dark subject matters. I’ve loved metal since I was a 10-year-old kid whose parents got divorced. My question at the moment was: Why did I turn to darkness for comfort amid my pain?
You might think when one is suffering emotionally, that person would prefer to forget her suffering and choose an artistically light response to the world ins...
May 10, 2017
Kneel Down Ye Sinners: Enlightenment in Mötley Crüe’s Girls, Girls, Girls
With the opening lines to Wild Side – “Kneel down ye sinners, to / Streetwise religion…” – L.A. glam metal band Mötley Crüe kicks off their 1987 album, Girls, Girls, Girls. But what exactly is this “streetwise religion” to which lead singer Vince Neil is referring, and how precisely are these “sinners” that bassist and lyricist Nikki Sixx mentions supposed to find “salvation” amid his band’s excessive branch of some rock n roll “religion” he’s discovered on Hollywood’s Sunset Strip in the lat...
