And Such Is the Paradox of Living

I'm winding up my first year in law school; only three more weeks of class before finals. It has been a stressful but productive year. I've struggled to find time for everything, but that's par for the course, supposedly. I've barely done anything with my music — nothing new has been written, but I've managed to do a bit of mixing and mastering. My language study has fallen behind; I was keeping up with Mandarin and French in the fall (didn't find time for Spanish). Now I'm back to Hindi/Urdu, because I'll be returning to India this summer. I will be working in a legal internship in Hyderabad (although Telugu is the official state language, Urdu is most common in the capital of Andhra Pradesh), for the Council for Social Development, advocating for women, children, and disadvantaged social groups.

I don't get to do much reading outside of class material, but I'm currently working on Marcel Proust's In Search of Lost Time. I'm still on Swann's Way, but it is by far the most amazing novel I've ever read. The last french novel I read was Stendhal's The Charterhouse of Parma — fast-paced and a bit thrilling, whereas reading Proust is exactly like the first paragraph of Swann's Way:

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"