Like many people today I’m concerned with the state of the world. Politics are failing. Hate and division are the hallmarks of our current social climate while the world’s climate burns itself up like a blazing match.
I grew up on terrifying prophesies of the end of days. Whether it was Christians or Nostradamus, I was taught that I’d see the end of the world in my lifetime I can’t say now they were wrong.
It has been a theme in my life, a horror I’ve carried in the back of my mind, like the children of the atomic age fearing the bomb. My fear was compounded by questionable interpretations of dodgy religious texts and mediaeval riddles.
Still it is in my imagination and I’ve struggled to come to terms with the idea of it, if not the reality.
It was this struggle that led me to write WHAT IMMORTAL HAND. If I could find a good side to destruction, a meaning behind apocalypse, a nobility in evil, then perhaps I might sleep better at night.
To find an answer, I had to leave my cultural landmarks behind. I had to travel to India, I had to face the devil and dance with Her.
Man created Gods to understand the universe. They are symbols. Their existence beyond our own minds is suspect to say the least. The are projections. Good and evil are constructs and a vision of the universe based on that finds an amoral universe. Better to see cycles of birth, life, and death. Better to surrender to the organic rhythms as terrible and frightening as they are than to fight against nature.
Terrible things are happening. Things that could have been delayed if not wholly avoided. There’s a meanness in my country that is horrible. There’s ignorance and fear that can do nothing but harm. I’d stop if if I could. I—with countless others I try to extinguish the flames but there is no guarantee.
I don’t believe in the apocalypse any more, but I do understand that things can get so fucked up that there may be no return. If that is the case, I pray the next cycle creates better beings than us who will last longer, seek farther, grow wiser than we who hurried our own meteoric destruction with selfishness and greed. Perhaps our sacrifice will sate Kali long enough for them to succeed.
