Charlotte Eriksson's Blog, page 1383
May 21, 2013
Sometimes you make an argument that’s so solid and logical that you’re absolutely certain you got...
Sometimes you make an argument that’s so solid and logical that you’re absolutely certain you got your point across, then someone replies to it with something so mindblowingly stupid that you have no idea how they managed to graduate from middle school.
"But still, had it not been for this desolation, laying her whole nature bare, and bidding it put..."
- Virginia Woolf, “Reminiscences, Chapter Two”, Moments of Being (Harcourt, Inc., 1985) 44.
"She looked steadily in the glass when no one was by and saw a face that excited her strangely; her..."
- Virginia Woolf, from Moments of Being
"Very little is needed to make a happy life."
- Marcus Aurelius Antoninus
May 20, 2013
Stories Behind The Album #2 - Hit The Ground
“In the...
Stories Behind The Album #2 - Hit The Ground
“In the hovering between sleep and wakefulness, lucid but dreaming, Her mind got away from her, and all kinds of empty shit she had meant to put entirely behind her forever swam up and lived in her head again.” — Charles Frazier
Underneath our conscious awareness lies another consciousness called the subconscious. What this is or how to define it depends on what school of psychology or philosopher you’re talking about, but to put my own experiences into words; it’s another level of awareness. Altered states of mind when you can reach thoughts, understandings and memories that your conscious self has tried to forget, ignore or shut out. It can be truths and understandings about yourself that you simply don’t want to accept. It can be past experiences that you decided to forget and desperately tried to hide somewhere deep inside. It can be facts about a certain situation you’re in right now, about how you really should be handling it and what you really think is the best decision.
There are several different ways to reach your subconscious mind, and several different experiences you can have in these alternative states. One example is when you reach that ’higher level of awareness’ through meditation. When you feel the wholeness of your own being and you feel connected and completely aware of the here and now. Another form of subconsciousness is lucid dreaming. Even though you might not have the same sense of clarity and ’awareness’, you can reach other sides of your personality that your normal sense of logic would shut out.
There’s also a theory that when you subconsciously know that something is wrong, it will give you signs through a ’bad feeling’ about the situation. Even though your conscious mind says that this is what you want, there’s this nagging feeling that something is really wrong. That’s your subconscious mind trying to give you a sign.
There are other ways to reach alternative states of mind too, through drugs, alcohol or natural ways of releasing your self from logic. A lot of artists or creative people would say that when they’re lost in the creative process (when I’m writing a song for example) they’re in a higher state of mind. You’re in a different dimension and the world doesn’t exist out there.
I’m not going to tell you what Hit The Ground is about as a specific thing or experience. Just have these theories in mind when you listen to it, and form your own understanding of it. All I can say is that the more you learn how to connect with your subconscious mind, the more you get to know yourself. And in some cases, you learn that who you really are and what you really want under the logic you have created for your conscious self, is completely different. The more I learned to listen to my subconscious mind, the more I realised that I can never erase memories or experiences, I can only hide them and throw them out of my consciousness. But they’re still there, inside me, and they will always find their way out. The more I learned to listen to my subconscious mind, the more I understood that constant feeling of worrying and regret I’d been living with for so long. It was hidden memories trying to make their ways out. And when you enter that alternative state of mind, when you let your subconscious mind do the talking, you’re powerless. The scene you see in Hit The Ground is what my subconscious mind showed me one night.
*******
“The lights drop like a crystal glass. You close your eyes at the smash of darkness. The bass lights. Beams dash and flash. A pound of light glances, a thousand arms fire to every star. A vocal of angel strums and plucks the crisp still evening air, hovering as a gas of delirious ecstasy. Veins flip and flap as invisible tails and whips of adrenaline, they rush and fly like escaping dreams. The arena draws dream as breath, kicking perfection with raw precision. The bass possesses your feet. Arms thump. Skin tightens. The bass stops. The vocal stands alone…still; suspending… distilling… everything. Fuck. Does any emotion defeat this euphoric dream? The neon lasers cascade and fire as heads rise to the Gods and Goddesses of ecstasy.
The waves ripple unseen, they are heard and transform to feeling. Like ghostly fingers they charge touch with immeasurable ‘gloria’. You close your eyes to contain such greatness. To be alive is a furious explosion of feeling. Eyes beam as cats through the pitch stillness. Anticipation draws blue. A whirlwind of blood builds and blows. For one pure hour…dreams rain, angels rise and fly with the mystical power of rush, a blanket of ecstasy floats a floor coated in dream. Nothing matters when emotion is so true. One hand of fantasy, the other with reality, with one clap a cloud of euphoria is unleashed.
Like the big bang of creation I draw to expand this chemical event.”
- The Cloud Of Ecstasy by Adam Paris
"You’d be surprised at what you’d do to stay alive."
- Brent Weeks
"I am with you for the extreme madness in me.
Easy things are not made for me, I demand..."
Easy things are not made for me, I demand wildness!
Happiness isn’t good enough for me, I demand euphoria!”
- Emma Brynstein
