Over this last year or so I have been engaged in an extremely long battle with my so-called "dark side". The intention, in the beginning, was that by dredging it up from my subconscious/unconscious I would be able to deal with it, purge myself of it, and move on. But now I can only wonder, is is possible to purge one's dark side completely from one's self? Or should one just accept their flaws and leave it at that? This is a question I've been struggling with for some time now.
I basically did a thread somewhat like this some time ago about my own personal "Chapel Perilous" and the qliphoth. Inspired by "THe Filth" comic and various books on the Qaballah I had read at the time I decided that it would be in my best interests to explore this dark side of myself (much like how "The Invisibles" had brought out the best in me). I looked back over my life and realized that in many ways I've always had a fascination with these creepy, slimy, weird things... I mean, when I was a kid I loved bugs and stuff (nothing too weird there) but I also liked to construct graveyards from building blocks and sometimes I'd chew toast into the shape of a gun and pretend to shoot people. In grade school I had an interest in things like vampires, werewolves, the devil and what not: In middle school, my obsession was psychotic illness. In high school it was the Nazis and terrorists and sexual deviancy. And in college it was serial killers, and now, postcollege, pornography and the qliphoth. So, all throughout my life, despite all my good points, there's also been this negative side co-existing inside myself.
My experience with the reverse of the tree of life consisted, basically, of dealing with some of these negative strains of thought. I realized, with some shame, that there was a very hateful, misogynistic undertone to my thinking that magical work helped bring to the center of my attention. This shame resulted because most of my friends are female (either on-line or in real life), there are many women I admire, etc. In high school and college I was a real hardcore feminist but now I can see I only assumed that pose because I was secretly ashamed of these misogynistic thoughts (most of which resulted from being bullied by a particularily vicious group of girls in middle school, no doubt). So I decided that the best way to deal with it was to wallow in it. I watched demeaning pornography, read the misogynistic rants of people like Sotos and De Sade, wrote the most violent pornography I could come up with (turns out I'm quite good at writing things like that).
I thought that by doing this I'd purge it from my system so I could no longer worry about it. But recently I was reading "American Psycho" and found myself being really sexually excited by the violent scenes in that book. So much for being purged. It's a little disquieting to me... Why do I get turned on by stories full of blood and guts and rape and shit like that? Shouldn't I be able to move past that, or rise above it? And the thing is, when I see actual crime photos of people who have been butchered by serial killers, it usually grosses me out (when I see the sterile, unsexual reality of it all, I mean, when its stripped of words and just becomes image). And most pornography, when I actually see it, usually grosses me out rather then turns me on. It seems like I find the idea of it sexy, but when I see it as it actuall is, it loses it's appeal.
The point is I can't help but worry at times that beneath my timid, hypochondriac surface personality there lurks a monster or something (of course I realize that there's a big difference between thinking or writing about these things as opposed to the people who actually do it in real life). I'm not a violent person at all, in facn my whole life I've only gotten into one fight, with my brother, many many years ago, when I was barely a teenager... He slapped me after
I beat him at a game so I flipped out and began kicking him and punching him with as much rage as I could muster... That was the only time in my life I've ever felt such rage and hate. But at the same time as I was doing it I felt sickened with my self and when I saw him crying this awful wave of disgust washed over my body.... Since then I've never gotten into a fight with anyone. In fact I still agonize over that moment, even though it happened about 11 years ago or so. Just one of many past memories I agonize over.
Anyway, there's more I have to say about this topic but this is all I'll post for now. However, I'm still wondering what the best way to deal with this is. On one hand I could try to channel all this darkness into my artwork, like someone like Dennis Cooper does (then again, I'm not just interested in writing about stuff like that as my interests are very varied...). Or I could just accept that I have flaws and try to not let them obsess me so (good luck). Or I could try to cleanse myself of such thoughts like that guy who wrote "Qabalistic Concepts" suggested. Sometimes I really do wonder if these thoughts are like some kind of psychic sewage, building up in my system... I can't help but notice that ever since I began these explorations my health has gotten very bad and I frequently suffer from either constipation or the extreme opposite of it (yeah yeah, too much information, I know). Maybe I'm just nuts. I think it's good to explore your "dark side" so it can't control you, but what happens when you can't seem to get out of it? |
Ramsey Dukes is someone else I've been looking for but none of the bookstores in my area stock his stuff. I find it interesting that I happened to get into all this "transgressive art" (ie. Whitehouse, Sotos, Dennis Cooper, etc.) about the same time I started to question these things. But every type of art I encounter I always try to extract something from.