Author: The Lensman

  • Ritual Machines: Beethoven, Akira, and the Architecture of Awe

    Listening to the opening trumpet fanfare of Beethoven’s Missa Solemnis is to step across a threshold. Its call is declarative, commanding attention, almost challenging the listener: you are about to witness something immense. Decades and continents away, Geinoh Yamashirogumi’s thunderous opening in the Symphonic Suite Akira evokes a similar sensation. A flash of elemental sound signals a crossing into ritual space, a sonic invitation to stand at the edge of human comprehension. Two works from completely different worlds, yet moving through what feels like the same structural and emotional architecture.

    It is here, at this threshold, that the parallel begins—not in style, genre, or historical influence, but in function. Both works confront the listener with forces that exceed human measure, only to bring us back, briefly, to what we can understand, inhabit, and act within.

    Threshold

    In both the Missa Solemnis and Akira, the opening signal declares that we are entering a ritual. Beethoven’s trumpet peal is ceremonial and formal, imbued with grandeur and expectation. In Akira, the peal of thunder does the same: it marks the city, the psychic forces, and the story itself as beyond ordinary life. These openings function as a gate, suspending the world we know and preparing us for the extraordinary. The listener is dwarfed, aware that what follows will exceed ordinary scale, even before any human action occurs.

    Human Scale

    Almost immediately after, both works pull us back into human terms. In Beethoven, the Kyrie is intimate: a pleading, measured human voice asking for mercy. The music is deliberate, breathing, almost hesitant. In Akira, the sequence accompanying Kaneda’s battle against the clowns is kinetic, muscular, fast, and precise. Both passages remind us of the human presence. This is not yet the realm of divine or cosmic transformation—it is the realm of bodies, reflexes, and consciousness.

    The contrast between threshold and human scale is vital. The music shrinks not to de-escalate, but to re-anchor the listener. It allows the human to act, to breathe, to plead or resist. Without this step, the overwhelming force introduced in the opening would be incomprehensible; the listener would be erased. Beethoven’s voice and Akira’s percussion give us agency and measure, even as the ritual looms.

    Embodiment

    Both works rely on the body—not just as performer, but as instrument and site of transformation. Beethoven’s choral writing stretches breath, lung capacity, and vocal endurance to their limits. Yamashirogumi’s techniques—shōmyō, folk polyphony, and kecak-like patterns—require bodies to behave as ritual engines, producing sound through collective breath and synchronized exertion.

    The listener’s body is implicated as well: heart rate, breath, and tension shift in response. These works do not merely depict transformation; they enact it physically, through bodies in motion and bodies in resonance.

    Awe and Terror

    Then comes the rupture. After re-establishing human scale, both works confront us with forces that exceed it. In Akira, the transformation sequence dissolves bodies, identities, and cities into psychic excess. Tetsuo grows beyond containment, tearing at the very fabric of his environment. Beethoven, in contrast, presents awe through the presence of the divine: harmonies stretch, counterpoint becomes dense and disorienting, and the listener is reminded that humans exist under laws they cannot control.

    In both cases, awe is not consoling. Terror is not punitive; it arises from proximity and exposure. The listener is no longer merely witnessing action—they are in the presence of something that cannot be reduced to human scale. Here, both works enact what theologians call tremendum et fascinans: the simultaneous pull and push of awe, attraction and fear.

    Collective Voice

    A striking parallel emerges in how both works use the human collective. Beethoven’s choir becomes a single organism, a massed voice that transcends individual identity. Yamashirogumi is literally a collective—hundreds of performers trained in dozens of vocal traditions, merging into a single ritual body.

    In both works, the collective voice becomes the medium through which the overwhelming is summoned. The many breathe as one, and the listener hears not individuals, but humanity acting in unison.

    Apotheosis

    Awe gives way to apotheosis, an irreversible crossing. In Akira, the transformation is complete: Tetsuo and Akira cease to exist in human terms. The Suite makes this moment palpable through sustained, luminous sonorities and choral masses that float, no longer tethered to human timing or action. In Beethoven, the Sanctus and Benedictus elevate the divine to full presence. The music no longer addresses us as humans asking for mercy—it embodies the divine, saturating the sonic space.

    In both cases, apotheosis is not triumph. It is reclassification: human scale is left behind. Time, identity, and measure are suspended, and the listener must witness without control.

    Aftermath and Cost

    But the crossing is not the end. Both works insist that apotheosis carries a cost. In Akira, the world is left scarred; the boys that were Tetsuo and Akira are gone, and the drumbeats that close the sequence mark their removal from human time. It is a benediction to what existed, a farewell to forms that can no longer be contained. In Beethoven, the Dona nobis pacem is undercut by tension: peace is requested, not guaranteed. The human world remains, but the experience of the divine has left its mark.

    The aftermath is what differentiates spectacle from ritual. Both works demonstrate that encountering forces beyond comprehension is not free; the listener, the world, and the human subjects themselves are permanently altered.

    The Listener’s Role

    Neither work treats the listener as a spectator. The threshold is crossed with them. The awe is experienced through them. The aftermath leaves them holding the weight of what cannot be resolved. These works do not simply present transformation—they initiate the listener into it.

    The ritual is not performed for the listener; it is performed through them.

    Unresolved Ending

    Neither work concludes neatly. Both refuse resolution. Akira leaves the viewer in a quieted, altered world, aware of what has departed but not offering answers. Beethoven refuses closure through harmonic tension and unresolved plea: peace is still uncertain. The refusal to resolve is not carelessness; it is ethical. To resolve would be to domesticate the absolute, to pretend mastery where there is none.

    Unresolution preserves the integrity of awe, maintaining both responsibility and reflection for the listener. In this way, the ritual is complete not when it ends, but when its consequences continue to resonate beyond its temporal frame.

    The Secular Sacred

    What unites these works is not theology, but function. They create a space of reverence without requiring belief. They enact transformation without invoking metaphysics. They summon awe without promising consolation. They belong to a category that has no formal name: the secular sacred—works that use ritual architecture to confront the overwhelming, without appealing to the supernatural.

    The Ethics of Awe

    In a culture obsessed with mastery, certainty, and closure, these works model a different stance: humility before the overwhelming, responsibility in the face of transformation, and acceptance of what cannot be resolved. They teach us how to inhabit a world marked by forces beyond our control without collapsing into despair or illusion.

    This is their ethical force: awe not as escape, but as clarity.

    Convergence Across Traditions

    It is tempting to look for influence, but there is none. Beethoven and Geinoh Yamashirogumi emerge from entirely separate traditions. One is Western sacred music; the other, a postwar Japanese ritual ensemble applied to cinema. Yet the convergence is striking. Both works move through a ritual cycle: threshold, human scale, embodiment, awe and terror, collective voice, apotheosis, aftermath, unresolved ending. This cycle is self-evident, arising from the human encounter with forces beyond comprehension.

    The Symphonic Suite Akira is not “film music” in the traditional sense; it is pure ritual, pure intent. Its cinematic application is incidental. That both it and Beethoven’s sacred music map almost exactly onto the same experiential architecture suggests that certain structural patterns emerge whenever humans attempt to process, perform, or witness the extraordinary. The medium, culture, and history differ—but the cycle remains.

    Closing Reflection

    What makes this comparison compelling is not similarity of style or period, but the shared ethical and emotional logic. Both works ask the listener to traverse human scale, confront the overwhelming, witness irreversible transformation, and reckon with the cost—all while leaving closure deliberately open.

    In other words, these works do more than move the listener: they teach us how to inhabit a world in which the absolute has passed through, without claiming mastery, explanation, or reassurance. The ritual is complete not when the music ends, but when its architecture has reshaped our perception, leaving awe, cost, and responsibility in its wake.

  • EPISODE III — The “It’s a Wrap” Anecdote and the Day the Temple Forgot Its Priests

    Star Wars had always been a constellation of factions — the lore‑keepers, the EU readers, the model‑builders, the toy collectors, the worldbuilders, the film‑only crowd, and the quiet adults who carried the story into their real lives. For decades, the myth was big enough to hold all of them.

    I was never a lore scholar, but I knew the world well enough to feel its contours. I didn’t memorise every ship registry or planetary taxonomy, but I understood the emotional architecture — the way titles like “Mandalore” carried the weight of myth as much as history, the way the story once spoke in a register that felt tended, almost curated, the way Tolkien stewarded Middle‑earth. Not in scale — nobody equals Tolkien, not even whole teams of people — but in spirit, in the sense that the world had a tone worth protecting. What drew me in wasn’t the trivia; it was the mythic language, the sense that the galaxy had a memory older than the films themselves. That was the register I lived in.

    What changed was the sense that the new custodians, perhaps without realising it, swept many of these groups aside. Not out of malice, but out of confidence — the belief that the myth could be rebuilt without the emotional register that once held it together. The baseline shifted. The MCU had become the cultural grammar: quips, velocity, spectacle, the assumption that tone is interchangeable and myth is optional. Star Wars began to speak in that new language, and I realised, slowly and then all at once, that it was no longer speaking to me.

    The moment that crystallised it was small, almost trivial — the “It’s a Wrap” anecdote, the casual dismissal of Admiral Ackbar. A character who mattered not because of screentime but because of continuity, memory, and the quiet dignity of the old myth was waved away with a shrug. It wasn’t the loss of the character. It was the signal: the stewards no longer recognised the emotional weight certain figures carried for certain kinds of fans. The temple hadn’t burned. It hadn’t fallen. It had simply forgotten its priests.

    This wasn’t betrayal. It wasn’t outrage. It was divergence.

    They were building a galaxy for a different audience, in a different register, with different assumptions about what mattered. And that’s fair. Every myth evolves. Every generation reshapes the stories it inherits. But for the first time, I felt the story moving on without me — not rejecting me, simply no longer needing the emotional grammar I had grown up with.

    The grief was quiet. Not anger, not bitterness — just the soft ache of realising that something you loved has become something else, and that the version you carried in your bones is no longer the version being tended.

    I didn’t leave in protest or disgust. I simply recognised that the myth and I had parted ways. The galaxy was still there, bright and loud and full of motion, but it no longer spoke the language that once shaped me.

    And that’s when I understood:
    the caretakers can keep the content.
    I will keep the myth.

    The divergence wasn’t a rupture.
    It was a release.

  • EPISODE II — The Moment the Myth Broke: The Last Jedi as Personal Betrayal

    The galaxy didn’t shatter in outrage.
    It cracked in disappointment — a quiet, precise fracture, the kind you only hear if you’ve carried something for a long time.

    I grew up wanting to be cool like Han.
    But I wanted to be like Luke.

    Han was swagger.
    Luke was aspiration.
    Han was the guy you quoted.
    Luke was the man you tried to become.

    Luke was the myth and the moral grammar.
    He was the promise that goodness wasn’t naïve — it was a discipline, a choice you made again and again, even when it hurt.
    He was the axis the story orbited.
    Even in The Force Awakens, the entire narrative moved with one assumption: find Luke, and he’ll make things right.

    And then The Last Jedi arrived.

    People insisted it “challenged the myth.”
    But it didn’t.
    It inverted the myth’s moral grammar.

    The man who threw away his weapon in front of the Emperor —
    the man who believed in the sliver of light inside a monster —
    the man who refused to kill his own father —

    — was suddenly a man who ignited a lightsaber over his sleeping nephew.
    A man who ran from the world because he lost hope.
    A man who abandoned his duty because he believed he had nothing left to give.

    This wasn’t subversion.
    It was contradiction.

    It felt like losing a mentor twice:
    once in the story,
    and once in the soul.

    This was the moment the emotional contract snapped —
    the moment the myth broke.

    Not bent.
    Not challenged.
    Broken.

    Because a myth can survive reinterpretation.
    A myth can survive imperfection.
    A myth can even survive contradiction.

    But it cannot survive the inversion of its own moral grammar.

    And I want to be fair here, because fairness matters.
    The Force Awakens didn’t leave an easy path.
    It set up mysteries without answers, conflicts without foundations,
    and a galaxy that somehow reset to zero without explaining the cost.

    It handed The Last Jedi an impossible task —
    continue the myth while also inventing the scaffolding the first film skipped.

    And then The Last Jedi, in turn, left The Rise of Skywalker
    an even more impossible task:
    rebuild a myth it had just deconstructed,
    restore a character it had already inverted,
    and conclude a trilogy whose emotional grammar no longer matched itself.

    None of these films were working with a full deck.
    Each one inherited fractures from the last.

    But the injury remains.
    The ache remains.
    The sense that something essential — something moral, something mythic — slipped out of alignment.

    I don’t pretend to know the One True Version of the story.
    I only know the moment the myth broke for me,
    and the shape of the absence it left behind.

    This is the heart.
    Everything else in the cycle orbits this injury.

  • EPISODE I — The Galaxy That Was Made With Love

    The galaxy was not just imagined.
    It was crafted with devotion.

    Even the flawed prequels carried sincerity.
    The Expanded Universe was tended by writers who believed in the world they were shaping —
    from the Thrawn Trilogy naming Coruscant and expanding the myth,
    to KOTOR offering the most thoughtful meditations on the Force and the Jedi,
    to the horror novels that bent the galaxy into survival terror while still speaking the old language of shadow, corruption, and resilience.

    The grammar was mythic:

    • Heroes earned their arcs.
    • Mentors passed the legacy.
    • Lineage mattered, even when it was messy.

    You could feel the affection, even when the execution faltered.
    You could feel the devotion, even when the stories stumbled.
    The old galaxy was built by people who believed in it.
    That belief made it luminous.

    And the fans built, too.

    CGI battles rendered on home machines that groaned under the weight of their ambition.
    Stories written with reverence,
    and others that bent the myth with humour —
    because affection and irreverence were never opposites in a living world.

    Some fan works became legends in their own right.
    Troops, with its deadpan documentary grit,
    proved the galaxy was strong enough to survive parody —
    because parody made with affection is just another form of devotion.

    The Star Wars Gangsta Rap remixed the myth into rhyme,
    irreverent but never careless,
    a joke built on knowledge,
    a parody built on love.

    Even the official parodies carried that same devotion.
    Robot Chicken didn’t mock the galaxy from the outside —
    it played inside it,
    jokes that only worked because the creators knew the myth so well
    they could tilt it without shattering it.

    And not forgetting the fan remasterings, the recuts, the restorations —
    all those quiet acts of care.
    People polishing frames they didn’t own,
    cleaning audio they didn’t record,
    re‑cutting stories they had no obligation to tend.
    Not to replace the originals,
    but to keep the galaxy bright.

    And before the official LEGO sets existed,
    fans — children — built the galaxy from whatever bricks they had.
    Star Destroyers balanced on kitchen tables,
    X‑wings shaped from mismatched colours,
    starfighters built from whatever pieces sort of fit from different sets.

    I did that too — not masterfully,
    only with a child’s skills and a child’s resources.
    A motorcyclist minifig standing in for Luke because he had a helmet.
    A policeman pressed into service as Vader because he wore black.
    The myth filled in every gap.
    Our imaginations did the rest.

    And now my child does the same.
    I’ve never bought him any Star Wars LEGO,
    but he still built X‑Wings and Star Destroyers from assorted pieces anyway —
    the galaxy refusing to stay unmade.

    The old galaxy was luminous because it was held by many hands.
    Authors, designers, programmers, illustrators —
    and the fans who kept the constellations bright between official stars.

    Belief made it luminous.
    Shared belief made it endure.

  • EPISODE VI — I’m Ready to Let Everything Go

    Look at me — a middle‑aged man performing a Jedi‑style letting‑go ritual.

    It sounds absurd. It feels necessary.

    I loved the galaxy.  

    I loved the myth.  

    I loved the devotion.

    I don’t need the brand.  

    I don’t need the pipeline.  

    I don’t need the caretakers.

    I’m keeping the memory of the myth.

    You can love something fiercely and still set it down.  

    You can honour its language without following its stewards.  

    You can walk away with gratitude instead of anger.

    The caretakers can keep the content.  

    I’ll keep the myth.  

    And that’s enough.

    Closing Cadence

    I loved it.  

    I let it go.  

    I keep the memory.

    The galaxy has moved on.  

    So have I.  

    What remains is myth — and myth is enough.

  • EPISODE V — The Caretakers Who Don’t Speak the Old Language

    The galaxy didn’t just change hands.  

    It changed tongues.

    The old caretakers spoke myth. They built with devotion, even when they stumbled. They believed the language mattered — lineage, patience, craft.

    The new caretakers speak pipeline. They build with synergy, spectacle, brand. They believe the language is optional — that myth can be flattened into content.

    It’s turning an oracle into a hype‑man.

    The Old Language

    Even the flawed prequels carried sincerity. The Expanded Universe novels, the comics, the games — all of them were written by people who believed in the galaxy they were tending.

    The grammar was mythic:

    • Heroes earned their arcs.
    • Mentors passed the legacy.
    • Lineage mattered, even when it was messy.

    You could feel the devotion, even when the execution faltered.

    And when they diverted from myth — into horror, satire, or experiment — it was a deliberate choice, not a loss of fluency.

    The New Language

    Now the grammar is corporate:

    • Characters are assets.
    • Arcs are content beats.
    • Myth is flattened into spectacle.
    • Devotion is replaced by synergy.

    The caretakers don’t speak the old tongue.  

    They don’t even try.

    The Consequence

    A myth can survive bad stories.  

    It cannot survive caretakers who no longer speak its language.

    That’s the wound beneath the wound: not just a disappointing film, but a universe tended by stewards who don’t believe in its grammar.

    The galaxy isn’t being rewritten.  

    It’s being mistranslated.

    Closing Cadence

    The old language was devotion, patience, lineage, craft.  

    The new language is synergy, spectacle, pipeline, brand.

    One tongue builds myth.  

    The other builds content.

    And content is not enough.

  • EPISODE IV — Lightning McQueen Is a Better Luke Skywalker Than “Jake” Skywalker

    Washed up. Ready to quit. Trains an apprentice who carries his legacy. Finds a new purpose.

    Yes, I’m saying it. Yes, I’m talking about Cars 3. Yes, the movie where the protagonist is a sentient Chevy with performance anxiety.

    I only watched Cars 3 because kids. I am a Star Wars fan… or was, anyway. Bought the art books, LEGO sets, comics, computer games… The universe works in mysterious ways, and is sometimes cruel. Sometimes it’s personal. So:

    Somehow, this movie delivers the ageing‑hero arc that the most famous myth given form in cinema history absolutely fumbled.

    Let’s break this down before Disney sends a fleet of lawyers riding speeder bikes (because FUCK ski speeders).

    Lightning McQueen: The Washed‑Up Legend Who Actually Shows Up

    Lightning starts Cars 3 in full midlife‑crisis mode. He’s getting smoked by a car that looks like a high‑end gaming mouse on wheels. His friends are retiring. His sponsors are eyeing younger models. He’s one bad race away from becoming a cautionary tale on ESPN8: The Ocho.

    And what does he do?

    • He reflects.
    • He trains.
    • He eats humble pie like dessert.
    • He mentors Cruz because he sees her potential, not because the plot needs a checkbox ticked.

    Lightning doesn’t run away to an island. Lightning doesn’t ghost the entire sport. Lightning doesn’t drink neon‑green milk straight from a space cow’s teat.

    Lightning does the work.

    Cruz Ramirez: The Apprentice Who Actually Has an Arc

    Cruz is everything a well‑written next‑gen hero should be (whether she is fully realised or not is beside the point):

    • Underdog
    • Insecure
    • Talented but untested
    • Held back by the world, not elevated by destiny
    • Forced to train, fail, and try again

    Her growth is earned. Her victory is earned. Her legacy is earned.

    She doesn’t get powers because the universe thinks she’s quirky. She gets good because she works.

    Imagine that.

    Strong new heroes aren’t the problem — poorly written arcs are.

    Meanwhile, in a familiar galaxy far, far away…

    Luke Skywalker becomes “Jake” Skywalker the moment he decides the best way to handle trauma is to become a Force‑powered Airbnb host who hates guests.

    He doesn’t mentor Rey. He doesn’t guide Rey. He doesn’t even like Rey.

    Their dynamic is basically:

    • Rey: “Teach me.”
    • Luke: “No.”
    • Rey: “What if I stare at you?”
    • Luke: “Still no.”
    • Movie: “Anyway, she’s a Jedi now.”

    Rey, for her part, is written like the universe’s favourite child:

    • Already powerful
    • Already special
    • Already mythic
    • Already good at everything except waiting her turn

    There’s no lineage. There’s no craft. There’s no emotional baton pass. Just Girl Power™ without the character growth.

    The Torch‑Passing Moment

    Lightning’s handoff to Cruz is clean, earned, and kind of moving. He steps aside because he chooses to — not because the plot shoves him off a cliff.

    Luke’s handoff to Rey is… what, exactly?

    A Force Skype session and a guilt‑trip cameo.

    Lightning becomes a mentor. Luke becomes a hologram.

    Cruz becomes a racer. Rey becomes a symbol.

    One pair feels like a lineage. The other feels like a reboot.

    Lightning completes the Return — and brings the elixir back with him. Luke never does.
    One story believes the hero’s final duty is to teach; the other believes it’s to disappear.

    The Irreverent Thesis, Now Fully Justified

    Cars 3 — the movie about sentient automobiles — delivers a more coherent, emotionally satisfying, mentor’s hero’s journey than the sequel trilogy that inherited the most famous myth given form in cinema history.

    Lightning grows. Cruz grows. The legacy grows.

    “Jake” sulks. Rey ascends. The legacy… what legacy.

  • The Soul Cages – A Personal Relationship

    There are albums you listen to casually, and then there are albums that arrive when your heart is torn open. The Soul Cages became that for me. I had heard Sting’s work before, but it wasn’t until after my father died that this album felt like it had been quietly waiting for me. Suddenly it wasn’t just art anymore — it was a reflection of everything I was wrestling with: grief, identity, the tension between inherited faith and personal belief, and the complicated weight of a father–son relationship.

    A Quiet Religion, A Quiet Distance

    Religion was never something my father enforced. It wasn’t preached or demanded. It was just there.
    We were Christians. Not spoken aloud, just expected.

    But as I grew older, that inherited faith stopped fitting as neatly. Not in an angry, rebellious way — simply a drifting, a quiet mismatch between what I was told we were and what I actually felt. It created a faint friction — a distance. Conversations we lacked the vocabulary for, left unspoken.

    It never came naturally to me. Eventually I realised it had never come at all — that what I called belief was simply me acting the part.

    My relationship with my father was much the same: loving, present, but with long, unspoken stretches. He was a part of my life in a way that felt foundational but also unreachable — like a landscape I could always see but never fully map.

    My father was a man of severe moral convictions, the kind that didn’t bend with circumstance. But he never imposed that code on anyone else — he held only himself to its full weight.
    He grew up under the Japanese occupation, and while my family’s hometown was too small for the soldiers to bother with, the self‑sufficiency and iron‑will he forged in those lean years stayed with him for life. His honour was everything to him. He loved old westerns and wuxia shows because their worlds made sense to him — right was right, wrong was wrong, and a man stood by his word. He seemed almost mythical, like an archetype from a bygone era. That clarity shaped him, but it also cost him. He had a great career, yet we weren’t left with much in the end, in part because of that same honour and a stubborn pride he wouldn’t — he couldn’t — set down.

    The Myth That Became Personal

    When I returned to The Soul Cages, I was struck by how much Sting’s myth‑making echoed what I couldn’t articulate. The imagery of harbours, deep water, storms, shipyards — a son diving into the dark to wrestle with grief and reclaim something of his father.
    And in listening to it now, I realise I’m doing the same — trying to reclaim something of my father for myself, something more human than the idealised figure I carried for years.

    And for me, one detail hit harder than I expected:

    Billy longed to bury his father at sea.
    I did. We committed my father’s ashes to the waters — as he had asked in his will — near his beloved hometown, far from the home he built for most of his life, and where I still live.

    There is something disorienting about committal to the sea. No niche to visit, no urn. Just the horizon, the water, the currents. Grief becomes unmoored, and so do you.
    That distant shoreline is not a casual return.

    When Sting sang of Billy wishing he could cast his father into the ocean, it wasn’t the image that pierced me — it was the recognition. That strange, weightless moment when you realise you’re releasing the last physical evidence of him into something in constant change.

    Faith, or the Space Where Faith Used To Live

    My struggle wasn’t with imposed doctrine — my father never pushed religious weight onto me. It was more a lingering question: what do you do with a faith that was inherited as identity, not conviction? What happens when it no longer feels like your story, but still feels tied to your father’s?

    The Soul Cages gave shape to that tension. It captured a spiritual exhaustion — not anger, not rejection, just a tired reaching that never resolves.

    In Sting’s narrative, the son is wrestling not just with grief, but with the spiritual structures surrounding his father’s life and death. That resonated deeply with me. I wasn’t fighting religion; I was untangling myself from a framework I didn’t fully inhabit.

    It was comforting, in a quiet way, to hear someone else wrestling with inherited belief, trying to reconcile love, loss, and identity without answers, only the slow work of acceptance.

    A Language for What I Couldn’t Say

    Grief after the funeral — after the sea takes the last physical trace — becomes a very internal thing. There’s no ritual to anchor the days. Just memory and silence. He specifically wanted a sea funeral because he hated any ceremony. With children, and the general chaos of life, I’ve forgotten the yearly Guinness a few times over the years. I think he would have been okay with that.

    The Soul Cages became a map for that silence. I didn’t find closure in it, but I did find a language — a way to hold my father in my thoughts without drowning in the unresolved parts of our relationship.

    The album reminded me that grief isn’t about resolving everything. It’s about learning to coexist with the things you couldn’t say, the questions you never asked, the parts of him that live in you whether you wanted them to or not.

    Still Diving

    Years later, I still return to The Soul Cages. Not out of sadness, but out of recognition. Out of respect for that time in my life when the sea took something from me, and music gave me something back.

    I listen the way you check in on an old scar — no longer painful, almost comforting in its familiarity.
    This album taught me that grief isn’t something you get over, but something you learn to live with.

    I don’t know if I’ve freed anything from its “soul cage.” I just know I’ve learnt how to carry him, like the tides carry him.

  • The Passing of Chris Cornell

    There’s this projection I had with Andy, Kurt, Jeff Buckley and other friends of mine that died of looking into the future at all these amazing things they’re going to do. I’ll never be able to predict what that is.

    Chris Cornell

    When Bowie died last year, I felt an incredible sense of loss. I did not grow up with his music, but his was arguably the most important oeuvre in my young adulthood as I went through the usual search for identity and my place in the world.

    In my formative years though, it was the 90s Seattle bands and their ilk that had my devotion: Pearl Jam, Mudhoney, Nirvana, Alice In Chains and, of course, Soundgarden. Many of my heroes from that era have already been taken from us, but none hurt like this one. Kurt Cobain, killed himself so early I could only have processed that through my teenage angst. Layne Staley, tragic and inevitable. Mike Starr, sadly forgotten. Chris Cornell, though, accompanied my long stumble into adulthood (some say I’m still stumbling) and I was looking forward to growing old with his music.

    When news first broke we were all thinking the years of abuse must have taken their toll. Then it turned out it was suicide and we could scarcely believe it. We thought that maybe he was one of the few who made it through to a better place. That perhaps his seeming comfort with being the full-throated, bare-chested metal god just might be able to overcome the darkness he seemed to have shared with his peers. His wife thinks the drug antianxiety drug Ativan caused him to kill himself. Did he have too much of it? Did his dark lyrics that helped me and countless others make it fail to heal his own soul and the drug nudged him over the edge into the abyss? Or maybe it wasn’t even the drug, maybe this was a long time coming.

    And now one of the greatest voices of his generation is gone. I would give a lot to be like a teenager in the 90s again, when every few months it seemed an album would come along and blow my plastic, impressionable mind. Even so, the trio of Superunknown, Badmotorfinger and Louder Than Love were thunderclaps in an overcast sky of amazing music.

    Thank you, Chris Cornell, and goodbye.