Wandering Artist

nihilateral:

A Reflection on The Downward Spiral and “Eraser”
                For the first time in about a year, I’ve sat down and listened through Nine Inch Nails’ The Downward Spiral. The past couple years had been particularly difficult for me—I was growing up in a broken household and struggling with major depressive disorder that had been slowly building up and surfacing since age 11 or 12. Scattered throughout those past couple years had been visits to the same “behavioral health hospital” a total of three times. It was towards the end of my senior year in high school when I was sent there for the 3rd and final time.
                I recall the bitter memories of a bad relationship, and the memory of the only thing I really, truly regret: the suicide notes I had written to my friends. Whatever relationship I had to many of my friends were broken or extremely strained by the time I got back because of them. This, along with some other instances, made it hard for me to believe that honesty is a key factor in friendships and relationships alike. At that time I believed I had run out of any possible options for happiness. And that it was time to stop fucking around. So I was whisked away to the “behavioral health hospital” and eventually to a long term in-patient facility.

                “Reptile” had been my favorite song at the time. I don’t remember particularly relating to the lyrics. The song is clearly about an ex-lover, sung about from the perspective of the spurned and resentful other half of the ended relationship. I never felt this way about my relationship after it had ended; it was an entirely different feeling of hopelessness, guilt, and self-loathing that I have never identified to a song (surprisingly). What drew me to “Reptile” was the crushing melody, which drew images into my mind of an unstoppable, slowly advancing army of war machines.
                In therapy, towards the end of my in-patient treatment, I was given a special session where I was allowed to listen to and analyze the song with my therapist. It was special because this treatment center had a strict policy on music content; we weren’t allowed to listen to anything overtly negative, anything too hard (like metal), or anything with profanity. The staff manager said that our music had to be “something that your grandma could listen to.” This song certainly violated all of the terms. But during this session I had reasoned that this song had struck a cord with me because it was more about the unstoppable, crushing procession of mental illness. I remember thinking that the lyrics related more to me when the subject of the song was viewed as my persistent compulsions to self-harm. Self-harming was a self-deprecating and abusive relationship with myself; it was painful and awful, certainly “my disease” and “my infection”, but it was also something that was mine, and that I felt I deserved. I suppose that’s what made it such a difficult habit to break away from.

                I don’t like “Reptile” as much anymore. I’m sure it’s because I no longer self-harm and get the compulsion to do so much less these days. Upon revisiting the album, I was completely floored by “Eraser”. The Downward Spiral is story about the slow and torturous submission to mental illness or addiction, and I think the album tells this story flawlessly. But if I had to pick a song to represent the mood, style, message and story of the whole album, it would not be “Hurt” or even the song on the album with the same name, “The Downward Spiral”— it would be “Eraser”.
                The song starts out with unsettling, barely recognizable sound of an eraser, the same loop repeating over and over again as the buzzing of flies becomes superimposed over it. The heavy slamming of drums comes in as the fly sounds become distorted, the eventual melody of the song appearing at the same time an ambient noise rises from the back. Distorted plucking of a guitar emerges, along with some barely audible mumbling, as the whole song begins to snowball in volume and breadth, eventually silenced by the strumming of an electric guitar and the vocals. The full impact of the song is dropped within the last minute of the song, where it becomes its loudest and most chaotic over the screaming and pleading vocals of “kill me”, quickly degenerating into an almost unbearably loud synthesis of noises as the vocals fade, getting lost in the crushing impact of the distorted guitar.

                This song brought back every memory of the stages of my depression; the quiet beginnings as the view of my world slowly went to shit, rising intensity and eventual realization of the crushing and unstoppable force mental illness proved to be, an inward reflection, and then complete collapse as my depression consumed every part of my being: destroying my identity by becoming an inalienable part of it, destroying my friendships by pushing people away though empty cries for help, destroying any motivation I had to accomplish anything, and destroying any capacity I might have had to be in a healthy relationship—ending with the desperate pleading within myself to commit suicide.

                This all sounds extremely negative, and given this one may be curious as to why I look back at this music so fondly as to call it “my favorite album of all time”. The reason is that I can look back it now with a sense of distance, being fascinated in the fact that I remember feeling exactly the way the music sounds. It is not often that music can so perfectly capture an emotion as to essentially freeze it in time. It makes me wonder about how far I have really come, if I have really distanced myself so much from the feeling or if I am at risk of being consumed by it again. It makes me think about my future, and where I might end up.
                A new semester of college starts today, actually. I’m just taking some general ed. classes since it’s the summer semester, but I’m reminded of how little drive I still have. The only things I’ve put before myself to achieve are arbitrary, superficial goals, there just because I’m expected to have some sort of ambition and go to college to get there. I find it a bit unsettling how I’m pressured to try so hard for a goal I don’t have, ultimately for a place in society I’m not sure I really want.

                I’m reminded that there’s still nothing I really want. The difference between my pre-treatment and post-treatment selves are just that I’m more mature now—more capable of understanding my thoughts and actions, and a greater capacity to manage my own emotions. I’m reminded by this song that I am, as I always was, beaten down, incomplete, hungerless, and broken. After another review of the album, I recognize how far I have come. It also exposes how much farther I have left to go, and that I have no idea where that is or how to get there. Additionally, as I write this, I’m reminded about how worthless I think my own opinion is and that it’s stupid to make an entry that nobody wanted to read. I’ve decided that I don’t really care, and I just want to do it for myself, because I want to write something. But Sometimes I like to humor the idea that my viewpoint is interesting, and something that the reader gains something from reading.

Personally, I always like reading your thoughts on life and the universe as you perceive it. Don’t ever think your opinion is worthless. Seriously. You just have to express it where people will care - tumblr probably isn’t the best place for that because people see a huge wall of text and say “WOOAAAAH” and scroll on because most things on tumblr allow you to have a shorter attention span. Facebook is probably a little too personal, as you know who that person is in real life, so I don’t know. Perhaps email? Or making a journal on dA, which normally requires a longer attention span? It’s not stupid to make an entry that you thing no one will read or care about, venting and organizing your thoughts is, I’ve found, very theraupetic. I find it really intriguing and heartening to know and read how far you’ve come - how far you’ve realized you’ve come. As I am with every story like yours I’ve heard, I’m just shocked by how low you can sink, but I do realize that it is real and can happen. But that shock just makes how far you’ve come an even greater distance. I haven’t personally suffered from a mental illness (that I know of, I think), so I can’t tell you I understand how you feel completely, but this brings me just a step closer. I understand a bit more than most people - living with Rachael will do that - but it makes me glad that you have been able to improve and grow and start putting the past behind you, when it would have been so much easier to sulk and spiral. Once again, I’m really astounded by how much you connect with music - that you can grow with it, that it can define your life. You mentioned how you grew with a band sometime on deviantART, though I can’t remember when, what, or who. I would like to think that the distancing you feel from the music is permanent, but hey, the world is crazy for a reason. I really do think you are strong enough to make this permanent - and even if you’re not I’ll be right there behind you pushing you forward.

Another thought just occured to me - setting goals and achieving them is something I struggle with, too. Big projects are hard(I’m thinking mainly of art projects here) - I’ll start it and be so into it, but the moment I put it down I lose interest. (My Loftwing is a special case, I don’t know how I’ve been able to perservere, but I just have.) So then why do I always get school assignments done on time? How am I more motivated to do things that I don’t like doing rather than fun stuff, like art? After a lot of thought and self exploration(going on with my therapist for the past while, it’s a reoccurring topic), I’ve found that it’s because someone else is depending on me. I don’t care about the grade, or my future. I care about letting someone else down, about disappointing someone else. That’s what I can’t bear. Maybe if you had someone like that - namely an authority figure - you would be more motivated to set better goals in college. But then again, going into something you don’t enjoy isn’t something you should do, either. Try some self exploration: what do you love doing? What do you really, truly love, something that you can do for the rest of your life? For me, it’s art - I definietly want to go into some sort of art degree when I finally reach college. I don’t know what it would be for you, but I think that if you’re going to try and force something that you don’t like, then you’ll get even more discouraged and may give up on the whole thing completely.

You bastard, Keaton. Don’t you know I should be studying for finals right now?

But instead you have to pop up in my head and scream “LOVE ME DAMMIT”

OH MY DEAR GODDESS YOU GUYS

I FINALLY FINISHED THE HEAD

Well, it still needs a bit of fine tuning…(I ran out of hot glue, and if I have the time/energy/nerves I want to put a bit of shading on the beak before Colossalcon). My camera totally botched this thing though, I wish I could just shove it through the computer and show you guys in real life, because it looks so much better than this. And I don’t have the energy to take better photos right now because I stayed up real late…er…early working on this darn thing.

And I apologize for holding it instead of putting on the harness, once again, I didn’t have the energy.