I've decided that I want Eulogium to embark on a totally different journey than I had planned on before tonight. Until now, I wanted to explore the different subgenres and dark corners of black metal for its own sake, to prove that I, a Christian, could play the music too. I now find that prospect not so much untenable as undesirable. What's the good in fitting into the cookie cutter? Has this all not been done before?
It's time for something new, but in a sense, also very old. Black metal to me - and I am not wrong in saying this of others - evokes a sense of a spirituality and/or mysticism, an awesome presence that captures the metaphysical imagination. Some have done with it what they willed, taking their own convoluted preconceptions of Christianity and modernity (and usually a facile conflation of the two) and directed the energy toward hate and evil. Before black metal, however, there was another kind of sacred music - that of the early church, the remnants of which still echo in the naves of ancient cathedrals and domes of eastern churches. In our place and time it is often forgotten, replaced by the plastic and superficial 'worship' music of contemporary society - but it is not dead. The traditions live on in seclusion, but burn ever so brightly in the compositions of Pärt, Tavener, Górecki, Hovhaness, Messaien, and others. It is this return to the ancients, this nostalgia for a time when religion mattered subjectively, when it was lived without pretense but with passionate, heartfelt devotion, that inspires these great composers; a return to a time when faith was not plasticized by commercialistic capitalism or globalism, nor corrupted by indolence, nor abused by political power. On the cherubical wings of music many fly to a time when to be a Christian was to be authentic, to immerse oneself in the powerful mysteries of Christianity, and to realize that only a man with a purpose can be a Christian (a quote taken from Kierkegaard). It is on such wings that I hope to fly as well.
So, what shall we have then? I kind of recasting of sacred music, in both its other-worldly primitive form and its gigantic modern revisitation, through a black metal framework. This will be what unblack metal means to me, using the passion and intense engagement of black metal to understand and dialogue with the sublime and the holy.
This may mean I must prolong the future of Eulogium. The original plan was that I would record one more regular album, a concept album based on Kierkegaard's "Fear And Trembling," and then a funeral mass, symbolically signaling Eulogium's end (death). I've already begun to write music for the regular album, almost none of which exhibits the least influence from the sacred music I've just begun to listen to. If I wanted to make music more in the vein of sacred music, I would need a whole other album to orient myself. So I would add one more album to the future, for sure. I may need to change the concept album, too, to one that more suits the mood evoked by sacred music. "Fear And Trembling" is certainly a masterful and deeply religious work, but one that commands more awe than solemnity. Perhaps "The Sickness Unto Death" would be better, but that remains to be seen. Conveniently, this move toward sacred music conforms with the goal of a funeral mass album, and only enriches the nebulous ideas of it I had already conceived.
Another night, another epiphany. But it is not yet the appointed time to explore Eulogium as a single manifestation in the mountainous vault of sacred music. Tonight, and for the next few weeks, school shall be my primary commitment. And as I return to my Metaphysics paper, I bid you all good night/morning.
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