“The artist disguises in order to reveal; the man of society disguises in order to conceal.“
Yukio Mishima, ‘Forbidden Colors‘
The well is being poisoned. As the days creach on, we are further suffocated by the restrictive, yet endless nature of proprietary software. Our collective conscious within social media at the whims of insecure, delusional billionaires. State interests superimposing on Hollywood and “bipartisan” media. The same media conglomerates destroy art while profiting off its commodification. Archives scour and churn, only to be outmaneuvered by the increasing vulnerability of the digital footprint, outpaced by the fleeting nature of hosting, server access, and web domains, subverted by the mass exodus of wikis and forums to Discord and group chats. Our information, our thoughts, our creations are all as equally at risk from each other as they are vital to each other.
This is APOGRAPHA. This is my blog. This is my codex. My writing focuses on music, but will give way to politics and fiction eventually. I create videos in my spare time, and my public projects will be on YouTube, in the links section. I use writing to explore an unconventional approach to music discussion (see: rants and nerdy deep-dives), with a focus on preserving music history, promoting accessibility, and advocating for a more critical approach to our consumption from the music community as a whole. I also write poetry, and dark fantasy, but I doubt those works will make it here. On the multimedia side, APOGRAPHA will be a collection of video essays pertaining to media analysis, and their intersection with politics and socioeconomic themes. Maybe I might do a few silly ones too 🙂
Our eyes are as demanded as they are subverted. Our words are as monitored as they are monetized. Our actions are as condemning as they are actualizing. Our false self casts an inescapable shadow on the real self, as it sits idle, carving new scars over old. The boundless contradictions are glaring, bursting at the seams with inherent truths. The neutralizing nature of post-modern thought only makes us easier to chew in the great maw of the capitalist death machine.
Here are two of countless universal truths: struggle and creation. I learned too young what it means to struggle. Only now, I am learning how to create, and to create earnestly and honestly. However small, this is my permanent, irrefutable mark on the world.
Thank you for reading.
