the fisherman of halicarnassus

linkin park is releasing a documentary.

from what we've heard, chester will only be mentioned briefly, mostly in passing and through a few photos. that's because the documentary's main focus is the band's new era: how they started over, how emily joined the group, and how they've moved forward since then.

for years, we've been told over and over that nobody is trying to replace chester. but with this documentary, the band's lack of sincerity is becoming harder to ignore, at least from my perspective. sure, nobody is trying to replace chester, but every time they talk about the future while mentioning him less and less, they seem determined to remind us that that chapter is over and that the band was never just about chester.

what's even more frustrating is that, according to reports, this documentary concept was originally planned while chester was still alive.

this shouldn't have been handled this way. chester's loss was a shared trauma for millions of fans, and watching him be gradually pushed into the background feels disrespectful to the people who supported this band through every era.

the truth is, most of us don't really care about emily. if they had started with the band's early journey, then covered chester's death and the difficult road to recovery afterward, they would have earned even more respect from longtime fans.

instead, they once again chose to minimize chester's presence.

because they no longer want to be defined by chester.

because, in their view, this was never chester's band.

shame on you.

star wars

this is a dark enlightenment that suddenly dawned on me one sunday afternoon while i was lying on the couch in a gothic languor. (dark enlightenment and all, i’ve gone full dervish here, but hold on, the amount of right i’ve got on my side is high enough to fray my nerves.) i came face to face with the fact that the bearded rascal named george lucas, who for years sold us this thing as a laser-pistol space western, had actually packed straight-up zoroastrianism and gnostic philosophy into spaceships and unleashed it on us. the thing is, my friends, it’s playing out somewhere miles away from that “oh, dudes are clashing swords, there are robots going beep boop” surface-level stuff.

let’s go straight to the tibetans, the hindus; these folks have a chant, a mantra, that goes “om mani padme hum.” the “padme” in there, the lotus flower. the myth of a pure light shooting up spotless and snow-white out of dark, muddy waters. the vibration of enlightenment, compassion, goodness. well, doesn’t our queen padme amidala vibrate at exactly this frequency? the woman is a monument to morality from head to toe, a sparkling lotus flower blooming amid the rotten, slimy bureaucracy of the republic. (even looking at the woman makes you want to light incense, sit cross-legged, and moan “o lord,” that’s the kind of spirituality we’re talking about.)

at this point our zoroastrian brothers’ ahura mazda and ahriman dilemma, or the gnostics’ bleak but exceedingly correct dualism, comes into the picture, the universe doesn’t run one-sided, my dear friend. the moment you put this pure light, this padme, on one pan of the scale, a pitch-black weight like tar is obligated to descend onto the other pan purely so balance is maintained. well, anakin skywalker is the tar itself. the dark side isn’t simple irritability or a teenage mood; it’s a necessary, esoteric, and tragic reflex that the cosmic scale gives in response to padme’s brightness. in accordance with the maxim that if the light shines too brightly, its shadow becomes equally dark and ferocious, anakin fills the system’s evil quota gladly, drawing his sword with a vwoosh. the guy is literally a walking ahriman, a breathing demiurge.

and now we come to the finale of the film, pardon me, of this magnificent hindu-gnostic rite… after anakin spends years on end bringing the universe to its knees while having asthma attacks in his sith lord costume, do you think what happens the second he hurls that stunted, sneaky emperor headlong into the reactor shaft is purely a fatherly instinct? not a chance. the move we’re talking about is the ancient light that padme represents, namely om mani padme hum, coming from way beyond and grabbing the darkness by the throat. the moment anakin acts, he isn’t just saving his son; he’s collapsing cosmic dualism and declaring light’s final, crushing victory over darkness. the fire zoroaster lit thousands of years ago starts burning away busily on a space station with return of the jedi.

star wars is, well and truly, an esoteric epic of existence. the moment i fully grasped this i threw off the fleece blanket on me and ran to the window, wanting to shout at the top of my lungs to the ordinary people passing by on the street, “heed me, o heedless ones, these folks are saying padme, they’re saying dualism!” but i didn’t do it. i sat down, heated some water in the kettle, and poured myself a tea. because enlightenment, you see, is a solitary affair that curls inward rather than outward.

that phone really did have a "character." it feels strange looking back now, but the nokia 6600 wasn't just a device, when you held it in your hand it was as if it had a little technological personality. now phones are fast, powerful, everything's ready to go. but back then even loading something onto it was an event. you'd transfer an mp3, open a video (if it opened), change the theme... everything felt like a little accomplishment. even while writing an sms there was room to think; when you hit the wrong key, even "deleting" carried a weight to it. the strangest thing about the nokia 6600 was this: the thing you carried in your pocket wasn't just a communication tool, it was a bit of a "toy + tool + status object" mix too. it was enough for someone who picked it up to say "ooh, this is a good phone," no explanation needed. now phones are flawless but a little soulless. those old phones were flawed but they were memorable. maybe what we call "character" was exactly this.