Now that's my cup of tea: Meshuggah on an all-nighter.

All right. So you thought you were getting comfortable in this little fever pitched cartel of voluminous rhetoric and PW banter. Guess again!

Here we go on a freeform journey through my mind relating to how things can be turned inside out and upside down. In fact turned off to be turned on.

I said it on my web site's "Project Rescue" page: "Which box and what's for lunch?"

I love other cultures. Especially when they take something on like death metal. It causes you to reexamine what you've been enjoying passively for a while. Maybe not death metal in your particular case, but you know what I mean.

So...Death metal, another culture, environmental forces acting on daily psyche and a unique world view on doom. Remember death metal's beauty is it's active embracing of death and the afterlife and what causes it. Too many people deny death and what it's impact has on their decision making process and ultimately their world view.

First let's examine Sepultura briefly before we get back to this incredible Swedish force that is Meshuggah. This Sepultura discussion will give a good "control group" to my theory.

Sepultura is a Brazilian death metal band. Many of their influences for creative inspiration come from Portugal, the rain forest, sprawl and indigenous folk. Their doom world view is very concerned with eco-bio-governmental-revolution and mutation. But their Portuguese background gives them a little European bent while the coolest part of their musical offering is tribal: influenced by the indigenous tribes that surround them. This is what I'm talking about. THEY SEE THE SPACE BETWEEN THE STARS NOT THE STARS FOR THEIR ZODIAC, c'mon now how's that for "which box?"

So when I listen to them while I work I tend to get aggressive and organic I take on their dual-binary-dynamic world view (think of the yin-yang symbol, that's the visual). This gives my work a looseness and "left-field" approach that is quite appealing. Their Euro-electronic instrumentation and delivery help me lock into the digital domain of my work space. Beautiful. So they allow me to be in the moment, get dirty and come up with a living work. Plus it's incredible when they use Portuguese language or have the local tribes play their instruments in their way. Now that's the real hook: they hand their instruments over to tribesmen that are still very close to how they've been for thousands of years and say "use this". An example of seeing things differently, which is key to creative, is just how they "use this". They play the strings up and down dragging the pick along the ribbed texture of the strings to get this awesome emmination that you would normally not expect. Of course they just tear the skins off the drums with their tribal rhythmically musical drumming. Mmm, mm that's some good stuff.

The result: to my benefit and yours is that I am reminded to use my tools differently. What I'll do is stop, pull out my sketch pad, scribble my images, crumble the paper, scan it in and then "degenerate" it to pixelated nothingness. Then take my Wacom tablet, draw on the computer with it using a stylus to get my natural brush strokes imitated and I've got something cool. If you look at my image gallery the Shaman is a result of doing work while listening to Sepultura.

Sepultura Doom World View: dual-binary-dynamic government/corporate bio-defamation organic-industrial disease mutation influence. Offset by indigenous ignorance, naivety and blissful shamanistic afterlife visions.

That's the "control" in this essay. So on to my point.

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