My heart is heavy,
Am I a bad person?
Am I poison?
My very nature that of a No.4 reactor going wrong,
A walking simulacrum of a mass poisoning,
I hear that I’m an irksome childish contaminant,
Detrimental to any social environment,
I send peoples geiger counters into spasms,
I nick my arms,
Naught but toxic waste oozes free,
Radiation of selfishness and cold indifference,
Sickly liquid noxious to the touch and anathema to goodwill,
Fallout from excess harshness and fatuous sulks,
I fixate upon the poisonous comments of the past,
Upon reflection there is no mistake,
This atomic waste permeates my conduct overmuch,
I cannot deny it,
I require a decontamination,
To cleanse myself of this pollution,
To restore the prudent self I thought I remembered,
I need to be better.
I am not foreordained to be remembered,
Not like the greats,
Shakespeare,
Austen and Tolkien,
Dickenson and Dickens,
Keats and Angelou,
My exertions are that of a novice in comparison,
My work akin to finger painting,
My aspirations that of a foolish mummer,
I’m not to be remembered,
Not to be celebrated,
I am a ghost among artists,
Not yet exorcised,
Scratching nonsense in to chalk,
Wailing from outside the halls of fame,
I won’t be allowed in,
As souls of creative import congregate within,
Myself an ungifted wraith will claw limply at the door,
I’ll pass with not a mention,
And when I am finally ash,
Everything I’ve done will follow,
Off into the solar winds,
And out of memory.
I hope you’re all having a wonderful today my friends and I hope you’re all keeping safe as well. Its been an interesting week here at thr asylum. I’ve had to isolate due to somebody else testing positive for the grand old plague. Quite an inconvenience, but at leaat I’m always in the warm. I do like the warm. Haha!
So, its time for another edition of the Harlequins writing music today. However, as I mentioned last week, I wanted to focus on a single musical artist instead of multiple. To shine the eerie spotlight on an artist whom I particularly like to listen to. Especially if I find the artist inspiring or otherwise unique. For this instance, I have decided to share Ghostemane with you all.
Now, Ghostemane is a curious American mix of a rapper and an industrial metal artist. I was introduced to his music by a close friend early in 2019 and my interest in his work has only increased. It’s strange because I am not typically too big on hip-hop or rap, though I find his music quite different. Indeed its rappy, but it has previous intense gothic and industrial overtones with subjects like serial killers, demons, mysticism and astrology. Many of his songs are quite explicit and even violent, as you’ll soon witness. Another aspect of his music I enjoy is his vocal range. He can go from singing, to screaming, back to screaming before rapping at lightspeed. I actually believed it2 was several people originally, but all the “voices” are his. On a side note, I always like the gothic aesthetic that he toys with anyways.
But enough chatter, want to hear some of it? I know I do! Without further ado, join me as we delve into the darkly musical mind of Ghostemane!
Ghostemane – Nihil
Ghostemane – Hydrochloride
Ghostemane – Hades
Ghostemane – Lazaretto
Ghostemane – Venom
Ghostemane – Gatteka
And there we have it for some Ghostemane music to whet your appetite (or scare you off!)
So, as you can tell, his music is definitely not for everybody. There are a great many expletives and disturbing imagery. But art is not always sunshine and rainbows. Hell, my own work should give that away! So I’d suggest giving him a chance, even if you don’t like one song you may enjoy another as they are quite varied. As usual, I’ll include a link to his website here.
So, that’s it for another week. I hope you’ve enjoyed this look into a side of music not many seem to understand. It’ll be a normal writing music poat next week, honest! So, the asylum has its own social media prescence too. I have a Facebook page, an account over on Instagram and also a page on Twitter. As always, if you enjoy what I do here at the asylum, please consider supporting me over at the Ko-fi page! Cheers guys!
Life ain’t no movie kid,
That’s what an old man once told me,
That silver screen don’t care about you,
You’re just existing like the rest of us maggots,
His grizzled lips chastised,
No red carpets are waiting for you,
Not a single accolade,
You’re no action hero,
Take off those silly shades,
And save the petty bravado,
There are no days to save or dragons to slay,
Damsels don’t need no champion,
This ain’t anything like the movies boy,
You’ll pass away with not even a credit,
The loathing in the old mans eyes grew heated,
We ain’t no all-star cast,
We’re just nobodies and hacks,
There’s no adept director guiding us,
No expertly crafted romance and plot,
Just a slow treadmill of life,
Steadily trudging towards a void with no acclaim,
His words trailed off,
Head in hands,
The old man wept.
We sit scathed within this crater,
Still white-hot from that blast,
Amidst smashed plates and torn photos,
You and I my love,
We’ve taken shrapnel damage,
Devastated by this severe detonation,
We jointly set off this dire explosive,
A grenade of a lovers feud,
A shockwave of verbal munitions,
Heat of conflict scalding both our worn hearts,
Sent afly with shards of glass and porcelain,
Leaving us frayed and tearful in blood,
Broken we crawl amongst the rubble,
Embracing as the air cools,
We don’t want this bond to bleed out,
So let’s pick up the debris,
The pieces of us,
And reconstitute our partnership.
From my silken casket,
I am dragged to cognizance,
By painful aural hooks,
The night pierced by an unseen cacophony,
An orchestral banshee wail on the lawn,
Illuminated by a crescent in emerald hues,
Moonlight through a lens of wisps,
From my dusty window I spy a dread throng,
An assembly of ghouls,
Skeletons of the closet,
Bony fingers clasped on to instruments of every kind,
Shrieking stagnant air into flutes from lungs long rotten,
Guided by a softly groaning conductor,
Hollow cavities reading from songsheets comprised of past mistakes,
Their mournful tune sings dead memories into my mind,
And I can’t help but well up,
Their revenant of a chrous is anathema to my balance,
Brass and woodwind accuse in shrill tones,
Violins pinching at my arms with raucous timbre,
A melody that shan’t allow me to rest guiltless again,
And the flutes parade ever on.
At the centre of that distant empire,
Stands a citadel of a republic,
Clad in the angelic light of lady liberty,
The alleged disenfranchised of the nation,
They storm once ivory steps,
Led astray by conspiracy and bigotry,
Delusion turned into a destructive force,
Each step taken is a blow to democracy,
Each a bruise upon uncle sam,
These fools climb against their own nation,
Holding aloft standards bearing the name of a tyrant,
Red white and blue stained with filth,
A statue somewhere weeps,
Holding a flame growing dim,
A grim reminder of more barbaric times,
Across the world,
All eyes rest on the capitol,
An icon of justice defiled by hate,
And upon those steps once alabaster.
The real me is down there,
Buried alive in earth that beats like a chest,
Buried by a society of obtuse robots,
Machines following a tediously grey playbook,
I’ve been digging for eons,
Come rain or heatwave,
Until my nails are caked in mud,
Cracked and dripping red,
Scratching steadily through bedrock,
I can hear myself,
Cramped and vexed,
Ringing a brass bell within a coffin,
Calling sorely his own name,
Clamoring for release,
I keep digging towards the sunken dirge,
To reunite him with this shell of myself,
To excavate a clown I once knew,
To be fully and rightfully me once more.
I find myself bound,
Not by a jacket of canvas,
Nor by lock and key,
But by an assertion of vocal force,
A societal mandate of rules,
An invisible straitjacket of murky glass,
Weightless yet overbearing,
This garment bares a droll image,
The image of a good little citizen,
Projected upon my form without consent,
An alleged single form of living,
A sycophantic idealisation of conformity,
Enforced with strange looks and cupped hands,
Supposedly the only right way,
My elbows swell and circulation ceases,
Thrash as I do,
Trying in angst to be myself,
Itching and struggling,
We all wear this hellish restraint,
In this asylum of a sick world,
So tell me in truth,
Mankind is a race of cultural morticians,
Us and our forefathers grimly built atop the past,
Foundations made over burial grounds,
Urban ziggurats covering hovels of eld,
Peopled malls standing on the shoulders of ancients,
Their lives reduced to building material,
Desecration by another method,
Old societies forgotten for the sake of progress,
But chronology conquers all,
Even our neon lives will degrade,
An empires tempo becomes decadence,
Which heralds a demise soon after,
Our nests and families too shall become as necropoli,
Ruins for the mute ghosts of our ways,
And when our bodies and homes are dust,
Who will build atop our lives?
