When the Satanist Saw Jordan Peterson…

…was (and still is) going to be the title of this piece when I conceived of it shortly after having bought my ticket to see him on the 15th. It would have been especially nice to write it after having met him with the VIP ticket, but I lacked the funds at the time of purchase to ensure my comfort in getting it. Alas.

Of all the tours on which I could finally see him, it would have to be the one in which he’s debuting material for a book called We Who Wrestle with God, wouldn’t it? While I am grateful to be beyond the question of God, I tend to agree with Dr. Peterson that a run-of-the-mill atheist (as if there were such a thing) does approach the question of God in inappropriate ways. It may be true in the simplest sense that these folk hold no belief in the metaphysical idea of God and accept that such is a cosmic unlikelihood–and I would agree with them–but the consequences of a lack of belief in God can be stark, just as Nietzsche saw more than a century ago.

The idea of God, once dethroned, is often merely just supplanted by worship of the State. That, argue many, is what Nietzsche foresaw: the rise of communism. Impressed as I was with Nietzsche in my high school years and enthralled as I was by him during my time in university, my commentary on such is only: I see where those who argue the case get their argument. Any assessment I might make regarding Nietzsche would have to do with the other option he offers: the much more difficult task of creating one’s own values.

One can talk, write, or argue all day about what “new values” would look like, but I do believe Nietzsche was on to something when he accused argumentation of being the tool of weak men. It is in the doing we will find the answer, and the doing here is purely creative in nature.

At this time, I am uncertain whether I have supplanted God with my own ego, supplanted God with new values, or both. Of course, the latter (new values) cannot truly and fully happen until I have a legacy with which to display those values, for what is God without creation? All the same, the tangling of those two options into the third provides interesting food for thought: can one posit new values without being God? My suspicion is that Nietzsche would answer in the affirmative and suggest that one’s ego would be subjugated to one’s will. The ego, however, according to my view, is inclusive of the will. Perhaps Nietzsche saw the ego as encompassing other drives that would hamper the will, and, if so, I can understand the trepidation. All the same, I tend to see ego and will as twins. I can see the danger and there are ways for me to avoid falling prey to it, though discussing them here would be pointless.

Dr. Peterson approaches Christianity in a way that intrigues me. His approach is at once philosophical, psychological, theological, and etymological. If one is serious about the investigation into the idea of God, that is, so far as I can tell, the only way to approach it and have any taste of success. Most atheists tackle the matter as just a matter of fact, which I (and he, when it boils right down to it) grant it is, but there are deeper, radical (meaning to-the-root) ideas attached to God that must go somewhere if, where God once was, there is now a vacuum. Once again, this is just oversimplifying and bastardizing Nietzsche.

I think it is Dr. Peterson’s “cause,” so-to-speak, to revive Christianity because he wants to remove the vacuum caused by God’s absence. Reviving Christianity per se would see him go a very different direction, I think, as I think he believes Nietzsche was at least mostly right. I think it must be the case that he believes the world at least was not and may not be for a good, long while ready for God to be out of the picture. Hence, it is his project to “save” the reigning system of values before the West sinks headlong into degeneracy the likes of which may make the faults of communism and its aftereffects (post-Marxism) look like mild inconveniences. Similarly, I think it is my “cause” to reveal new avenues by which one might pursue “new values” because I see many of the same dangers that he sees. To this end, I think the foundation is the same for both my path and Dr. Peterson’s. I think our ends are similar, but not identical, and our means are pretty much polar opposites.

Despite our differing theologies (whereas I place myself as my own final authority, I don’t actually know what Dr. Peterson’s God is), I believed there was value in my seeing him lecture on this specific topic. Rather, I believe there is value in my seeing him lecture on this topic, but, much to my chagrin, will not be attending. Here is where I admit I have yet to read any of his work, but if I’m going to treat myself the way I would treat someone who I was charged to help, I would cancel my ticket; my car has been too upset with me recently for me to rely on it for a two-hour drive to Inglewood and another two-hour drive back, and my financial situation is such that I have to accept I would be better off with the money I spent on the ticket than I would missing out on $400 of income due to taking off two days of work and very probably spending more for merchandise.

I wanted this post to be the comical ways in which a Satanist and Dr. Peterson would disagree about certain topics and perspectives and the surprising ways in which he and I would agree about some things. I wanted to return from the lecture and write with an invigorated and enthusiastic spirit about the ideas he presented to me, even as our paths diverged in the sharpest of ways. Will this be like Slayer, wherein attending their show only to walk out (with my ride) just before they took the stage led to my seeing them twice in an effort to redeem myself as a metalhead? Time will tell.

With care,

~ Grigori

“What would you do if a lion got in your house?”

At first glance, and for the dozen thereafter, the thought of a lion entering my home is paralyzing. I have been witness while at the San Diego Zoo to an active male lion who made it clear that flash photography agitated him, and I can’t imagine a heated round of fisticuffs between us without the safety of a chain link fence going well for me. Were I to encounter a female, my case would be lost before it began; she’s out to hunt, and I do indeed have some meat on me

Keeping the above in mind, I’ll speak only about my dealings with the male lion. What I’d do if he got into my home depends entirely on where I am. If I’m outside my home at the time, I’m staying out of my home until someone—probably from the Zoo—shows up to take care of it, and going the extra mile once the incident has passed to fortify my home against such threats. What works against a lion surely works at least somewhat against other more manly beasts. If I’m inside my home, it depends on my location. If I’m in the bedroom, getting out through the window isn’t an option for various reasons and my best chance is to arm myself with a guitar or a sword or both. If I’m in the bathroom, I suppose my best bet is a combination of the plunger and the bathmat—one to guard, one to confuse.  If I’m anywhere else, my best option is to grab a chair and act as the old lion tamers did. Granted, I know next to nothing about that, but I can back out (and take my sweet cat Sophie with me) the door and let the lion have the run of the place for a while. In all cases, I’m relying to some significant degree on my fight-or-flight response activating in me some of the carny instincts my church’s founder cultivated in his time as a lion tamer. I know how the movies tell me how to hold the chair and little else.

Or, as would happen in the best-case scenario, I find him tranquilized and give him loving pets until the Zoo shows up to take him away where he can be cared for in a proper manner.

With care,

~ Grigori

“Why?”

Because it’s as true as anything can be.
Because it conjures a smile from my lips.
Because I will it to be so.
Because its beauty brings me to my knees.
Because its sweetness makes dance the butterflies in my stomach.
Because how else am I going to get up in the morning?
Because I love her.
Because I love him.
Because that’s where all the scientific knowledge available to me points.
Because I want to keep my mind unclouded.
Because I have deserved this for a long time.
Because there’s only one way to have any fun around here.
Because it would have made my father proud.
Because I am afraid.
Because I am not afraid.
Because how else will I remember how it feels to be alive?
Because I want to find myself. (“You’re right there, man. Get over it!”)
Because I can’t stop thinking.
Because it couldn’t have happened any other way.
Because trees speak to me when they know no one else is listening.
Because I will for as long as I live be indebted to music.
Because I have ridden on the back of a behemoth and seen the world in ways you have yet to imagine.
Because I can.
Because Walt Disney helped to make my childhood rich.
Because I love money.
Because I am told I would like the man who has hair the color of a ripe orange rind.
Because I like it when Sondheim plays with strange melodies.
Because it’s sexy.
Because it’s a semiautomatic pistol whose trigger I have yet to squeeze.
Because Aristotle is better than Plato.
Because almost anyone is better than Kant.
Because her poetry warms my heart and makes it sing before breaking it.
Because Sublime is terrible.
Because I have such fond memories of staying there.
Because the air smells cleaner over here.
Because the world was on pause for two years.
Because it increases my will to live.
Because I hate him.
Because I am hungry.
Because I am thirsty.
Because I am horny.
Because I have every reason to think I should be good at this.
Because I need to feel.
Because it’s too hot.
Because these three steaks are all I have left.
Because I want to be rich and famous.
Because I want to be a better person.
Because I want to be a better writer.
Because I want to be a better musician.
Because I want to be a better lover.
Because I like to defy the odds.
Because there aren’t many things that would please me more.
Because I haven’t seen it yet.
Because there’s more to life than any one thing.
Because I like the phrase “sweaty-toothed madman.”
Because I’ve been cultivating my greed.
Because I’ve never read her work and yet still defend her.
Because I hate people.
Because I crave intimacy.
Because it took much too long for me to discover suspenders.
Because I once dreamed about it.
Because I can’t escape the feeling that I’m wasting time.
Because it took me more than 30 years to get here.
Because freedom is what I value most.
Because there is still so much I haven’t done.
Because I’ve got straight edge.
Because I still have something to prove.
Because it’s not easy being a god.
Because the sun has come up and this day belongs to me.
Because tomorrow also belongs to me.
Because I deny the Holy Ghost.
Because I know better.
Because I should go to the beach more often.
Because the music I write is worth hearing.
Because the stories I write are worth reading.
Because my father was in MENSA.
Because I love the sound of crunching guitars just as much as I love the soaring sound of a bow on strings.
Because I have to be up early.
Because I want to deserve my own love.
Because I am confident that I was born at the right time.
Because I no longer believe very much in certainty.
Because I have only this life to live.
Because there is so much left to say.
Because I am not yet living up to my potential.
Because to do so would mean achieving my loftiest goals.
Because my success in the world means more to me.
Because I like to maintain my control.
Because I am proud of what I’ve written and what I’ve composed.
Because I am never bored.
Because I am entitled to nothing.
Because I am the only one who must believe in myself.
Because milk will be my beverage of choice until I can drink it no more.
Because I worry too much.
Because I am too hard on myself.
Because I may make the last important contribution to ethics for hundreds of years.
Because I love to play.
Because I want one day to step foot on Antarctica.
Because Leviathan continues to hold me in awe.
Because I’ve got 99 reasons and a complaint is nowhere to be seen.

With care,

~ Grigori

“Do you have a no farting in the kitchen rule?”

There is but one unspoken rule I always do my best to maintain, and that is: there shall be only one person in the kitchen at any given time. While there are times when dishes are being washed that something can be thrown away without any real hassle, the kitchen is simply too small. The whole area is too small, the entrance is too small, and having even two people in it trying to move around is likely to trigger claustrophobia in those who suffer from it.

As for farting: it happens, but we don’t speak of it.

With care,

~ Grigori

“Regulations don’t exist, what’s the dream home?”

Having given it a great deal of thought, I’ve concluded that I don’t know what my dream home looks like. I can, however, describe aspects of it, which I will do now.

One key element is that it will be near the beach. On the beach would be a lovely idea, but impractical and probably dangerous. The only real possibility there is to have a house near the beach and a smaller cottage-like thing set up on the beach as a second home, kind of like Hawaii is for America. That would have simple arrangements and décor. Lots of white, for one, reflecting the easy-going vibes of Pajaro Dunes, which I used to visit as a child and loved.

To the main house, though: at least two floors. I have been in but a small handful of homes featuring two floors and I have envied them always. There would have to be many rooms, each one dedicated to something specific. A music room would be there with all my records and some sensible posters, like the autographed ones from Evanescence and Jinjer. It could look like a record store, and maybe it’s a long room where the record store transforms into a recording studio featuring all my instruments. That, of course, would be of the utmost necessity. Now that I think of it, the library holding all my books could transform into a study. The movies would probably have to be kept separate from the theater, though. Never mind the feasibility. I don’t care for the aesthetic. Then again, maybe the idea will grow on me by the time any of this comes to fruition.

There will of course have to be both a luxurious master bedroom, a spare room or two, and a third room that will act as a dungeon for all the sadomasochistic play I’ll enjoy, complete with whips, chains, gags, rope, and all manner of toys. Perhaps it should be connected via wall to the master bedroom, too, just for ease of access. Oh, and there will most certainly need to be a room housing guns and swords and other such weaponry. That will need a lock. So will the dungeon.

As for the living room, the kitchen, the bathrooms, I want space. I want to luxuriate and bask in all the space I have. I want half a dozen people to fit in my kitchen without it feeling crowded. I want to host parties with 100 people who don’t feel like a can of sardines. I want all the room I’ve never yet seen to my name.

Right now, that’s what I want. All is subject to change at a moment’s notice, but it would be wise to expect only an expansion of the idea rather than any substantive alterations.

With care,

~ Grigori

“If you did then how would you know you didn’t?”

One reason I decided to study philosophy at an academic level—the reason I suspect Wittgenstein would appreciate most—is that I found I couldn’t stop thinking. There were moments that the Buddhist/Dharmic (and I can’t say a word like that without my raised-in-the-‘90s brain interjecting “yoga flame!”) ideal of clearing my mind was achievable and desirable, such as in moments of crippling self-doubt, but, as much as I wanted those moments to stop, I wanted more that I should continue, that I should not let the venomous thoughts and feelings swallow me whole, that I should think my way through them. Thinking was and remains a useful pastime that I cannot help doing. It only made sense that I should apply whatever talents I had for it to the recorded thoughts of the great minds from the ancient, medieval, or contemporary world. It was through my schooling that I was introduced to the analytic and continental schools of philosophy inquiry. So as not to overwhelm you with digressions, I shall make understanding the difference between the two a sub-topic for another day, but it will suffice and oversimplify to say that the former is more purely scientific and the latter artistic. I have been trained more thoroughly in the former, but my preference by far is the latter.

The portion of my mind trained in the analytic tradition sees this question simply as a kind of absurd paradox. While I am not skilled enough to formulate the question in formal logic, I know the basic structure would be something like, “If x, then how would you know not-x?” The easiest way to answer this is to disregard the human experience of sentences, by which I mean all one need do is to chop off the antecedent in the conditional, as the truth value thereof will be the same even if all that is addressed is the consequent. It is then a simple epistemological question that will be answered differently by rationalists, empiricists, and Kantian lambs who will soon serve as my dinner.

That isn’t very fun, though, is it?

No, indeed, and it’s only half-right.

It is an epistemological question cloaked in an absurd paradox, to be sure, but it is only by taking into consideration the antecedent, the head we chopped off, that the question can be answered thoroughly. Curiously, a thorough answer is quite short:

“If you did then how would you know you didn’t?”

Whatever way you would otherwise know you didn’t.

Now, I’m about as hardcore a skeptic as they come, especially where epistemology is concerned. The senses are not wholly reliable, reason is not wholly reliable, and the two acting in concert can be a death trap. I’m a stickler about certainty, and certainty is a concept relying to whatever degree on objectivity, which I do not believe exists. This is all to say I am in no way the best person to ask. That said, there are certainly rationalists and empiricists and Kantian lambs who will read these words and they will answer according to their methodology, regardless of any epistemology that I might propose. The easiest part is that there is no verb attached to the question, so anything can be supplied.

For example:

“If you made, how would you know you made not?”

Let us expand:

“If you did make, how would you know you did not make?”

Simply:

You probably would not, provided there was no alarm set up to alert you that you had not made.

Back to the original, this time as dialogue:

“If you did then how would you know you didn’t?”

“I would know I didn’t if there were a wire tripped to let me know I didn’t once I hadn’t done, but I did. Relax.”

With care,

~ Grigori

“What do you find most uninspiring?”

Mediocrity, more than anything else, conjures in me a dull, numbing apathy that pounds at me like a brainless headache until I move on and realize the uncaring despair I was feeling while experiencing it. You might reasonably be asking what a brainless headache feels like, as it is typically the brain that feels affected by the headache, and your intuition is exactly right: it feels like nothing at all. A brainless headache is that non-existent ache one wishes to feel, and yet cannot because it is complacent and satisfied where it shouldn’t be.

To encounter mediocrity in art is to bear witness to a kind of death, for mediocre art—aside from being a kind of oxymoron—is little more than an effort by the dead to preserve what isn’t there. It is devoid of nutritious substance, empty, and boring. The point of art, no matter the medium, is to instill life through creative endeavor. That need not require a message or a meaning, but art nevertheless demands some life from the artist so that it can become more than colors swirled together, gestures or notes moving through the air, black lines on a page.

Much the same can be said of the workplace, can it not? The exceptional stand out, the terrible need attention, and no one pays any attention to the mediocre. Never mind what I may or may not find uninspiring. Mediocrity is uninspiring per se.

Besides all this, mediocrity allows the hipsters to feel they have a purpose in life. That is a crime which stands alone, by itself, but I digress.

With care,

~ Grigori

COVID and The Sopranos

Nightmares are a curious fixture of my nightlife. The only good dreams I can remember have happened in the last two years, and I can count them all on one hand. While I grant that probably says something I am not ready to hear about my relative emotional health, that issue is not my focus right now. Besides, this is about a series of good dreams that I had.

Where to start?

The Sopranos was an excellent HBO show that started airing near the turn of the millennium. I wasn’t yet a teenager when the series started, so I saw none of it while it was on the air. I once went through the first season when I was finally old enough to watch it but went no further. If you asked me why, I would probably tell you it had just been rented, but truthfully it is not something I could tell you with any certainty. Whatever the case, here I am now, at long last having gone through the first season again and now continuing into the second season, watching this brilliant show about complex relationships between a mob boss, his families, and healing.

Tony Soprano, the patriarch of the title family, is a violent and dangerous man who has remarkable self-control. That is not to say he exhibits no impulsive behavior, but rather that it is a rarity when the viewer sees him doing something stupid that really could have been avoided. Those same instances are often what lands him back in therapy. When he does get violent, it is a visceral act; while not often gruesome, it is often deeply personal. I as a viewer understand that I am probably supposed to be left with a sense of revulsion, but in truth his violence almost always leaves me feeling satisfied. Soprano’s relatability is one of the most endearing aspects of the show; I can understand and even empathize to a point with him, and so acts that would be difficult for me to stomach become simply… satisfying.

COVID tried to kill me.

There was no segue at all, I know, but there is no connection between COVID and The Sopranos save what went on in my head, and why would I bother talking again about my nightmares? Well, my COVID dreams were not nightmares.

I feel comfortable calling myself a film buff. Drama tends to be my generic specialty, but horror is probably a close second. You might reasonably suspect that horror is responsible for most or even all my nightmares, but the truth is that what goes on in my head at night almost never has anything to do with something I was watching earlier that day. In fact, I have gone to bed afraid that I would have nightmares about whatever it is I watched, and those fears almost always go unrealized. I say “almost” only because I cannot say with any certainty that these films have never affected my nightlife, but I can say that I have no such memory. Both Tony Soprano’s violence and the violence enacted on behalf of his interests are often graphic, but most important for the way I witness violence and the way it interacts with my unconscious while I sleep is that I “get it.” Though I may not always agree with the extent to which the violence is taken, I am very rarely reaching out of myself in some futile attempt to stop it. When I am, it’s not Tony Soprano’s men who are the perpetrators. I bring this up because it is not, as one might expect given my unusually high sensitivity, violence per se that affects me. What affects me, as I alluded to at the beginning of this piece, is what scars my emotions and chips away at my sense of well-being—that which attacks on a visceral level my values in a way that I am powerless to stop.

You will pardon, I am sure, that digression.

After two shots of the Pfizer vaccine and one booster shot, COVID finally stormed its way into me and did its best to destroy me. The real and lasting damage it did was financial—I lost out on nearly $1,000 of work because of that wretched virus—but its physical presence was unpleasant to say the least. For the most part it was effectively a supercold, with congestion becoming a problem such that my sinuses would no longer let me distinguish between two stuffed nostrils, but instead signaled to me that I had no nose at all and what nose had once been there had in fact been replaced by a crater of cartilage that now knew only mucus.

The aches were the worst of it. In the nights I suffered through the symptoms, I woke early in the morning to my arms—first my arms, then my legs a few days later—feeling as if they were sacks of skin in which the muscles I had were melting at a pace that mimicked molasses. The pain was too dull for me to cry out at any point, but the ache grew quickly from dull to agonizing. I can remember feeling my arms, too, in the middle of the night, thinking I couldn’t feel any of the muscle I had built up over the last few months. I was effectively hallucinating, as one is wont to do in both a sick and groggy state in the middle of the night, that my arm had been reduced to skin and bone. Even as I did my best to flex and reassure myself, convincing myself was out of the question. My emotions were enslaved to the virus. My rational mind was just awake enough to know I didn’t need to be freaking out, so at least I had my dormant intellect rescuing me from certain despair.

Now, at last, to the point of my writing all this.

Every night I suffered from this overcongestion, from these aches, was accompanied by a dream featuring the Sopranos. These were good dreams, too, which at this point probably shocks you just as much as it did me. For the life of me, I can remember only two of them now in any detail. The second featured two men who, if they were not Paulie and Silvio, obviously represented them, transporting a bale of “hay” which was very obviously composed of chopped up and shredded corpses to a location that was most convenient for me. You’re probably asking, “Convenient to do what?!” and that is an excellent question for which I have no answer. All I remember was that the general atmosphere was very jovial. The first dream I had was even funnier, though: Tony Soprano instructing my white blood cells like they were his personal henchmen to clear up my nostrils. “Either that side, or that side, or both.” If you can read that in his voice with his pointed, commanding tone, you can hear it exactly the way it sounded in my head. As funny as it would be to say I saw Tony Soprano himself directing large, anthropomorphized cells, the truth is that I saw only him with his determined face and pointed finger as he gave out the orders. That makes it no less funny, as the memory makes me laugh to this day.

I had bad symptoms for four nights and had dreams of the Sopranos every time. Once the symptoms abated enough for me to wake up and go about my life as normal, they stopped. It may have been the one good thing that came from having COVID. I want never to forget the week that the Sopranos were my friends.

With care,

~ Grigori

Let’s Talk About Billie

Shows put on by pop stars who are effectively global phenomena will be different in a variety of ways from those put on by metal or hard rock bands—even those who are themselves arguably global phenomena, like Metallica or Evanescence. Such was the assumption I made, driving up to Los Angeles to see Billie Eilish at The Forum on the last night of her Happier Than Ever tour. It was the first pop show I had ever attended, so the assumption was colored almost solely by what I’d witnessed in recorded live performances of pop acts like Michael Jackson or Britney Spears; though I had a ticket for the general admission section, there would be no mosh pit, no crowd-surfing, no sweaty, angry energy, only an ecstatic spectacle produced by a star who had risen quickly in my esteem to become one of my favorite artists of all time. My assumption was both right and wrong for all the best reasons, and that is what made it one of the best shows I have ever attended.

Slayer, Metallica, Behemoth, Mastodon, Opeth, Cannibal Corpse, Jinjer, Evanescence, TOOL, and many others are among the bands I’ve seen in the last five years alone. My record collection features Christina Aguilera, Arcade Fire, Bob Dylan, Billie Holiday, U2, Led Zeppelin, Portishead, Tchaikovsky, Strauss, and artists from nearly every genre of music I’ve found, but I am in essence a metalhead: one whose time listening to music is spent mostly—through a majority no matter how slight—on metal. The live performances I’ve attended have been metal almost exclusively, with a few rock shows, a handful of jazz shows, even a symphonic concert or three if I’m accounting for everything. The best metal shows are transformative experiences for audience members like me.

Guitars amplified to near-deafening volumes, their voices distorted into a crushing, snarling crunch, combine with an often-blistering tempo and a vocalist who’s singing out in triumph or roaring in such a way to demonstrate how inhuman he is to overwhelm me with emotion and satisfaction. I feel the might of their presence, these musicians on stage who have authored the notes dancing in the air that are filling me, lifting me, charging me with awe and creating in me a feeling of being so much larger than I am. If I have any troubles, I am overcoming them in this moment, feeling the spirit of the music’s power instilled in me. The music is angry and aggressive and so, so loud, and every emotion is drowned out except triumphant joy. That is what I mean when I say a good metal show is an act of jubilant transformation.

Here I state the obvious: Billie Eilish is not metal. Her music is classified generally as pop, and by me, personally, as alt-pop. As I drove up to Los Angeles to see my first pop show, what was I expecting? Backup dancers, choreography, and high production value are regular features at pop shows that I’ve seen, but a typical Billie Eilish show features a video backdrop, Billie herself, and two musicians in the background, one of whom being her brother. Billie was already an outstanding pop artist in my mind because the music she wrote stirred surprise and delight in me as I heard it, but, despite numerous interviews I had seen featuring her sass, free spirit, and general down-to-Earth attitude, I was expecting a great show, a great artist, and a great time. Oh, how little I knew!

For as long as I have been attending shows, the opening act is invariably hit-or-miss. Seldom is it the case that the music performed is so offensive that waiting for it to end becomes tedious, but equally rare is the occasion when it is so outstanding that I am moved to search out the artist to see what else they have to offer. Now, Billie was already one of my favorite artists as I drove up to see her, so expecting to see an opening artist whose music I enjoyed in any comparable way would have been the stuff of pure fantasy. It is my good fortune that Dora Jar, the opener that night, was very real. The music she performed had a great dreamlike quality to it, which is a difficult thing to achieve without ultimately becoming little more than an author of ambient sounds. What I heard sounded nothing at all like Billie, and I mean that in the best way possible. Perhaps the most desirable quality of an opening act is not to sound like a diluted version of the headliner. Rarely do I think to myself that I could have heard half a dozen more songs from the opener, but Dora Jar delivered. She was a bubbly performer, her charisma was immediate, her stage presence magnetic and warm. In short, she was the perfect opener for Billie Eilish.

I like to arrive at concerts extremely early, and sometimes that means as early as several hours before the doors to the venue open. Because I’m a metalhead and that’s a subgenre often attracting fewer audience members than pop does, it also means I’m usually first in line and will have no problem at all getting right up front against the barricade. Well, that would prove nearly impossible with this show, but my habit did secure me a position just a few feet away from the barricade surrounding the platform stretching out to the middle of the floor. It is one of my great joys to be up front and face-to-face with the magnificent musicians who have improved my life through their work. I say all this now because I want to impress upon all who read this just how close I was to Dora Jar when she performed the splits or when she strutted out to see all of us on the floor. It was a magical moment, seeing someone I had just then decided was special just six or seven feet away from me. As she exited the stage, however, it was starting to sink in just how close I was going to be to Billie herself, and that thought alone was overwhelming.

Seeing Billie Eilish launched onto the stage from somewhere underneath was surreal. Rumbling music introduced her, then she shot into the air and landed as the crowd erupted and my jaw dropped. Her smile was simultaneously bright and confident and shy, and she walked slowly, carefully, a few steps before “bury a friend” began. She sang and danced and talked, and we all were transfixed and grateful for the next twenty-odd songs. She has as of this writing released just two studio albums, an EP, and a handful of singles. With her longest songs being only around five minutes, I suspect most of us in that crowd were under the impression that we were going to hear nearly her entire catalog. One song in particular, “my future,” was released as a standalone single before it was placed on her most recent album. It has become one of my favorite songs of all time, and it is also one of the few she didn’t play. What amazes me is that I cannot say with any confidence at all that her playing it would have enhanced my experience. The show was just that good.

As I implied above in my description of what happens to me at a good metal show, the live experience of music that I love, music that has the power to change my personal direction, music so good that I would prefer listening to it for the hundredth time rather than continuing my own artistic endeavors, is profound for me in ways I could probably take a whole book to describe. That I so loved the music she played that night was one reason her performance affected me the way it did, yes, but watching her perform did something for me no other show has ever done: it rooted me in that moment. Every other show I have attended got me to enjoy the moment, got me arguably to transcend the moment, but lifted me up and transported me to an experience and an understanding of life and music that allows joy to reveal itself. Billie’s performance, by contrast, invited me to be radically present and revealed to me that same joy was accessible not only through an elevated experience where life and music found and complemented each other, but right there, where I stood and watched and wept, enraptured by the notes fluttering through the air, charmed by her movements and between-song words, self-conscious and somehow unconcerned, willing to be vulnerable and feeling encouraged by this superstar who is herself uncomfortable admitting she is one and yet struts around like one because that is the way we make her feel. “Extraordinary” is the only appropriate word to describe it.

The best music is that which brings out the best in its listener. Given that the purpose of music is to stir up the listener in some way, the best music is, I think, inspiring at the same time it is overwhelming. Too easily those words could be construed to mean that the best music is anthemic or should be directing the listener toward some brand of activism, but what I mean instead is that the best music brings to the front of the listener’s mind intense emotion, and engaging with that, wrestling with it makes the listener better for having done it. The best music makes its listener more fully human. Bearing witness to Billie Eilish live revealed to me an understanding of what it means to be human and experience live music I had not yet imagined. That is why she is now cemented as one of my favorite artists of all time, and that is why that night, that performance, was outstanding.

With care,

~ Grigori

“Is water wet?”

Please indulge me in a bit of fantasy.

There is a bench in front of you. On it is a sign: “WET PAINT.” Having been alive for a reasonable amount of time, you understand that you are not witnessing a bench screaming the words “wet” and “paint” at you for no reason, but quite obviously a warning for anybody passing by who would otherwise wish to sit there that, were that body to take a load off on that bench, the fine linens and operatic pants with which that body is undoubtedly clothed would be ruined by the paint that has not yet dried. Why is this important? Well, it’s not, but it does hint that there’s a distinction worth making between being wet and being dry.

If water is wet, water can be dry. What is dry water? It is an oxymoron. Ergo, water—liquid, really—is the agent by which a substance is made wet.

There is one caveat: dry ice is real. Use that information as you will.

With care,

~ Grigori