Chelsea Wolfe: Apokalypsis, Pale on Pale
CLVRSKLL Has Got Some Things He Wants To Maybe Say About Black Metal.
Lately, I'm depressed.
This is not something you, reader, need to worry or wonder about. I don't feel lost within my depression, and I'm not writing a short column about Chelsea Wolfe's really excellent album Apokalypsis because I am, in some way, trying to get someone, somewhere to hand me a map from within my depression to a place away from my depression. Because, map-wise, I'm actually pretty okay.
I have spent the majority of my life settled in the landscape of my depression. I live here a lot of the time. I know it. Depression is a country. My country.
And, of course, learning that you live in depression most of the time, and that your brain is swimming in a soup of chemicals that cause you to live in depression most of the time means eventually you become okay with living in depression.
And, weirdly, it becomes less common for you to spend time in depression.
That's how it is with me, anyway.
But sometimes, I find myself deep in country, and even the familiarity with the landscape that tends to make living in depression easier loses its power. And there I am, depressed and not given any relief from the depression in my familiarity with it.
Sometimes it's just music that helps. The summer after I graduated from high school, I got very depressed and spent a month wearing an absurd purple straw hat, pretending to garden. We had a little raised bed in the backyard, and it was full of weeds. We'd never used it for anything. I'd never gardened, but for some reason decided I would start. So I pulled all the weeds. And I looked for little stones in the dirt and took them out of the dirt.
At one point, I somehow grabbed a fly that was buzzing around me out of the air. I reached up and grabbed it, and somehow pulled its wings free from its thorax. And pulled away some of its carapace. It twitched and sputtered a little and died. It distressed me. I went inside and sat down and stared straight ahead for an hour.
I didn't have a job. I did this for days. I sifted through dirt and picked up stones. And I threw the little stones into a pile near the raised bed. And I never planted anything or watered anything or did any real gardening.
What I did was listen to tapes. My brother had recorded all his REM records for me on 90-minute cassette tapes. One album per side. I would have one in the cassette player and another in my pocket. I'd listen through all four sides. Then I'd go inside and grab two more. (They had seven records at the time, but the tapes only had six of them. The spare sides were mixes: The Feelies, Camper Van Beethoven, Sonic Youth. All the things a University of Michigan art student was listening to in 1989 – 90.)
Eventually, I felt better. REM made me feel better.
Eric Dolphy once spent a couple of weeks making me feel better. Metallica's …And Justice For All made me feel better for a couple of days. Recently, Boduf Songs made me feel better.
And Apokalypsis is making me feel better.
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I think I've discovered what it is that is making me feel better.
That is "Pale on Pale," the second to last song on Wolfe's album. The best song on the album. The one I've listened to a dozen times a day for the last four days.
I think I'm always quietly humming along to songs. Even when I don't make a sound, I think I always breathe like I'm humming or singing along to a song. I think I'm always putting the pressure on my diaphragm that I'd be putting there if I was singing along out loud to a song.
When I'm depressed, there is a pressure in my chest. There's a heaviness. People, I think, know about the heaviness. I don’t think I'm revealing anything new when I mention it.
When I'm silently singing along to a song, though, and I am using my diaphragm, I am pushing back against the pressure in my chest. There is a fight.
During the third go round of the lyric to "Pale on Pale," when Wolfe sings louder and the note goes up, the fight feels like it turns in favor of the diaphragm. I feel like I'm winning. So I listen to the song over and over because I want to get to that moment. And I get to the moment, and I feel like I'm winning and I feel better. And then I listen to the song again, anticipating the feeling.
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So, sure. It's a brooding record. But it includes a lift. And the lift is working.
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Here's a video of Neon Hunk. Back when I had a dial-up connection, Neon Hunk used to argue with a friend of mine on the internet. I can't remember what they argued about. I like the band, though:
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If you have something you would like Matthew Simmons to listen to, you can drop him a line. Experimental one-man (or woman) black metal bands are near and dear to his heart. Paranoid, possibly crazy weirdos are dear to his heart. He says Thanks.
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Matthew Simmons is the author of the novella A Jello Horse (Publishing Genius Press 2009). Simmons has also written a chapbook called The Moon Tonight Feels My Revenge (2012), and a story collection called Happy Rock will be published by Dark Coast Press in 2013. He currently lives and writes in Seattle, WA; find out more about him here: The Man Who Couldn't Blog.