And things were going so well...
posted on 05 Feb 2005 under category News
http://www.livejournal.com/users/snxke/444416.html (DEAD LINK)
I don’t know what’s going to happen, except that, as stated here, Misogyny II and Letters From Hell will be completed. Crimson Frost is (still) in the final mixing stages. More details as they come….
And as for Aerik’s speculation, I still haven’t dealt with the news as it is, much less thought about ‘what next?’… so I guess you’ll find out when I do…
(The Wayback Machine wasn’t much help the first time I searched, but in doing these histories I found that he only deleted the one entry, not the whole history of his blog. The entry I found from him on the next day, Feb. 6, doesn’t quite explain it, but refers to it. I’ll paste it in below another split in a second. Now that I’ve found this, I do remember him talking now and again about giving it all up - creation was hard on him, because he really puts everything into everything he writes and does. Kinda like Jim Morrison, you have to keep pushing the boundaries, even if it’s dangerous, because that’s where the truth, and true art, really lie, and if you’re not going for something true then what’s the fucking point?
No wonder Aerik and I got on so well together while we were together. Anyway, what follows the next split is Aerik’s post, preserved here in case it disappears.)
–
(from Aerik Von, 2/6/2005):
People ask me about my constant threat of quitting music. I think people need to understand that music for me is a rather heavy process. I create, I coerce and I force ideas into shape. I take my music very seriously as my songs are very much a representation of me. I don’t often see myself as an entertainer, I’d rather be seen as someone who paints a picture with sound. It’s not easy pursuing music, it’s not even pleasent a lot of the time. Most fans draw strength for the music, I draw from my strength to create it.
Other than a few joke numbers my music has been pretty serious. One may point at “The Scorpion King” and giggle at it’s rather odd lyrics…but on a whole that’s not what I do. Songs like “Raining Hell”, “Displeasures of the Flesh”, “Against the Sun” and “Built to Burn” are all pretty direct messages pertaining to things I am seeing/dealing with. It’s not even pretentious as many, it’s simply what fascinates me. I can’t write about dragons, and the devil only comes out when I’m feeling to channel that which is darker than black.
Man cannot write music without having energy or passion for it. When I get weakened, or something happens of this magnitude I feel a crippling lack of passion that makes music seem artificial when released from my hands/fingers/voice and into action. It feels dead, and it’s a horrible feeling. To perform a song while feeling this way feels like holding on to the corpse of someone you love and attempting to pretend they live.
Sometimes you need to look at that reality…and if it’s difficult for you to understand. Try creating things. Try creating things that MATTER to you. It’s easy to write “a song”, it’s hard to write/perform something that requires you to give a piece of yourself. Something much deeper. Then you’ll know what I’ve tried to do, and why sometimes I want to leave it behind. When you feel no fire to live, you certainly feel less to create.
Art is not an abstract to the artist…that IS the point. The artist creates, and he knows what he creates. If an artists claims he is creating when all he is doing is dumping all over the place…this artist needs to get his shit together and realize a VISION. I do this a lot…it’s often more important to me to create this vision than to eat.
Hopefully you’ll stop judging me for these emotional outbursts as I actually believe in my art and I put myself into it enough that I need something to refuel me. When the fuel isn’t there…I feel I can’t go on and it’s horribly draining to say you will.
For the record…I never said I would quit metal…making metal and loving metal are too different things. The end of creation is relatively different than saying “I hate the genre” or that “metal is dead”.
I don’t know if I CAN really stopm, even if I wanted to. I’ve made metal/been involved with music for longer than most people have known what they wanted to do with their lives. This is something people need to see…and understand that since I was 14 this music was the soundtrack I worked with (and now create) to back up a lifestyle and philosophy of living. When those don’t seem possible…the soundtrack seems and empty reminder.
Think about it…