Going Up

Peter Christopherson died in his sleep last night. I've been listening to a lot of Coil lately anyway, but his death has me reflecting much more than usual on the impact that the music of Christopherson and Balance has had on my life.

Coil was a band that touched me personally and inspired me both musically and spiritually. I had been creating sound collage before I had heard them, at a point before the internet became taken for granted or was even understood by the general public at all. I developed my own musical tastes by hopping through electronic BBSs, Telenet, and Gopher, eventually stumbling upon the likes of Skinny Puppy, Coil, Throbbing Gristle, Psychic TV, Bauhaus, The Sisters of Mercy, KMFDM, Ministry, Einsturzende Neubauten, and so on and so forth. Through the electric veins, siphoning at 1200 baud, I also explored the worlds of Aleister Crowley, the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, and the Rosicrucian Manifestos. Coil straddled these two interests and spearheaded my obsessions with music and magick. How to Destroy Angels was my introductory textbook, a compendium of fundamentals to which I return again and again with reverence and fervor. This album  carried me through the darkest nights of my soul. The tracks may sound terrifying to some, but in them I find the hope of seekers.

I did not know Peter Christopherson or Jhonn Balance, but I wept at their deaths. Their music will continue to inspire many who make love with the moon.

From Coil's "Fire of the Mind" -

"Does death come alone or with eager reinforcements?
Death is centrifugal / Solar and logical
Decadent and symmetrical / Angels are mathematical
Angels are bestial / Man is the animal"

Cuz It's Hot... Cuz It's Hot... Cuz It's Hot Baby, Cuz It's Hot

As you might know if you're reading this, I will be trying to keep a public record of my travels through India at the request of friends and family. In the morning I will leave, and I should arrive in Delhi early evening on Wednesday. I'm not bringing my computer, or a phone, or much of anything really. I've learned from past travels that those things rarely come in handy, and I go pretty light these days. This will be my first excursion into a non-Western country.

My primary purpose will be preliminary research regarding an ethnographic research proposal I wrote as an undergrad. The proposal was an attempt to combine my academic interests in anthropology of religion, symbolic anthropology, urban anthropology, neoliberal "globalization," and the history and philosophies of India with my personal interests in the occult and Ganesha. The idea is to collect ethnographic data via the method of long-term participant observation on Tantric sects devoted to Ganesha/Ganapati, especially ones who have grown in or relocated to urban environments. My efforts in the next six weeks will be devoted to answering the following questions: