Supernatural Strategies for Making a Rock 'n' Roll Group

by Ian F. Svenonius

So, like medieval flagellants, we should suffer for our art? It’s easy enough to say, “We shall suffer in the interim for the sake of our future glory.” Suffering is perhaps second only to righteous indignation as the most enjoyable pastime for mankind—if one adopts the burden willingly and for a cause, no matter how abstract, pitiful, or lost that cause is. Ask any junkie, mom, monk, fakir, kamikaze pilot, or “lone-nut” gunman. They revel in their wretchedness, misery, and isolation. But group-making isn’t the same as simple martyrdom. Nihilism—described by Nietzsche as “despair of meaninglessness” where “everything is permitted”—though an intrinsic element of group-making, is never its primary ingredient. The group must—at least at its inception—be Apollonian. It must build the foundations for the ruins that future species will gawk at in bewilderment.