Review Summary: Is there even primal matter to receive in this world?
Two concepts have been the defining problems of my life:
1. The inherent complexity of modern life.
2. The inherent repetition in modern life.
Some days, I am overwhelmed by the many choices and possible outcomes of endless decisions I have to make. What education should I choose? Which job will that lead to? What about choosing a partner, finding love, having kids, and living happily?
Should I even bother writing this review?
Other days, I am rendered numb by the repetitious nature of a large fraction of those choices. When should I set the alarm clock? What should I make for dinner? Should I watch this or that on Netflix?
Should I even bother writing this review?
One could argue, and I will, that we are not made for this. We have, without a doubt, changed our environment and our way of life way faster than evolution could ever change our brain to adapt to those changes.
Just now, in these last few years of my life, am I learning to adapt my unadapted brain to this world:
1. I try to embrace the complexity of our created world as a source of excitement and surprise.
2. I try to cherish the repetitions of my created everyday life as a source of familiarity and ease.
I try to look beyond the paradoxical complexity and repetition of modern day life. Most days, when I look, I find nothing. I will point a little, insignificant flashlight in seemingly every perceivable direction only to find the darkness fleeing at first and then returning once the beam is moved. Most days I will not illuminate a single thing: Nothing seems clearer. It only seems more and more evident that there is indeed nothing to find. There is nothing more than the complex choices of education, career, and love on one hand and the repetitive choices of everyday life on the other hand. Both, ultimately, are completely meaningless.
But, once in a while, and often through the medium of music, I will find something in the darkness. Something that feels like… More. Something that trumps and triumphs in the midst of my complexity-induced stresses and repetition-induced frustrations and the meaninglessness of both.
The Incubus of Karma is both complex and repetitive – that is the nature of funeral doom. It is not unique in regard to sound, songwriting, or execution. I would like to believe that it is special, just as I would like to believe that about myself. But it is a lie.
But, despite that, this album feels like… More. This album feels like something that trumps and triumphs in the midst of my complexity-induced stresses and repetition-induced frustrations and the meaninglessness of both.
The Incubus of Karma feels like something that, if just for a brief moment, helped me. Helped me to understand the blindness and the dejection of my experience of the human condition.
