That's wild! I've heard they iterate on their music over time though, with each performance being unique. So it makes sense their stuff would get longer over time lol
The Glowing Man album starts with the Cloud of Forgetting and follows with the Cloud of Unknowing. The concept of contemplation is that you must ascend above the Cloud of Forgetting meaning you have to leave everything behind and forget about it. In meditation it’s common for your mind to be racing with all kinds of thoughts until you let them go and can focus with a clear mind. Then you can focus on the Cloud of Unknowing above which you can’t really totally pierce because you can’t possibly fully grasp God as a human. However, you may occasionally get a glimpse and intense spiritual experience. My sense is the first heavy chaotic musical crescendo is getting through that Cloud of Forgetting and leaving it behind. Then comes the focus on Cloud of Unknowing and the mantra “I am” which in some philosophies represents letting go of your ego and recognizing your true self as divine nature and you get the fleeting but intense ecstatic crescendos. Now for the ending. It’s no atypical for Swans to mix religion and carnal darkness or creepiness and lyrics that can be interpreted in multiple ways. The only think I could make of the zombie portion is what you said possibly representing Jesus after death but hard to say. But when it gets to washing your skin your son, I kind of think of a ritualistic washing of the body of Jesus either before burial or more likely a statue of Jesus say in a monastery where they wash it with water and recognizing the God in flesh which is another form of contemplation outside of pure meditation through devotion. Just my take. Note to self, easy on the drones.
You're pretty much obliged to listen to the song "the glowing man". The song pretty much changed the way I listen to music. The song is an absolute opus
Amazing piece of art. I love long slow burns, but this took it to another level. I don’t really know what to say except overall, that was magnificent. Update- immediately left and listened to SWANS- To Be Kind…amazing stuff 👌🏽
Most of the time, SWANS is the artistic expression of a man you -temperament-wise- wouldn't expect to be artistically inclined - but how is (very much) and who produced this huge output of experimental albums, with almost every album being unique in a sense. Whereas "The Seer" might be interpreted as the most mean folk album ever recorded, this one is the Michael Gira version of a spiritual experience. It is very weird, not made to be fully enjoyable, with almost no song structure (owing to the No-Wave-scene), but still with its brilliant moments and somehow fascinating. It's krautrock-inspired, but on a totally different level, spiritually. More violent. Like being drunk on a demanding booze. Has it's bright and enjoyable moments, but also its downsides, outbursts of brutality and confusion. But as with alcohol, you can get used too it and somewhen, you find the right dose for your taste and enjoyment. But maybe more importantly in the context of this video, whereas the style/genre changes almost with every album, the lyrical content is surprisingly constant. SWANS lead singer Michael Gira has certain words and topics he intermingles and drags throughout the whole SWANS discography. Skin is one of the words/topics found in basically everything from SWANS. The lyrics are, I'd guess, absurd, because it is mostly just a game of interpolating certain selected words with each other. Sometimes the skin is the mind, sometimes the mind is the skin, somethings one finds oneself in a tunnel of rain, sometimes in a curtain of rain and so on. I wouldn't "waste time" interpreting any of this. It's more akin to some sentences accidentally carrying metaphorical meaning, like conceiving of the mind as a "knife in a lake" (taken from the song "Finally Peace" from the "The Glowing Man" album (a sharp, but contextually useless and non-retrievable tool)^^
I was just watching your Helpless Child video the other day and you already are back at it with another Swans video! This album is their latest “incarnation”(as band leader/main brain Michael Gira says). Respectably, I would dub this as their most incremental and patient album. Relying on incremental atmosphere rather than mending grooves like the preceding albums “The Seer” and “To Be Kind” do. When I think of introducing someone to Swans, I usually recommend their more immediate and forward tracks so that when exploring the rest of the forest the listener can most aptly grasp the scale of their performances. And that’s another thing that I’m not sure if anyone mentioned yet, they do almost all of these tracks in single takes with minimal overdubbing(they play all of these live at 3 hour shows exhausting themselves to the nth degree, which is where most of my love and respect for them comes from). I think a great place to go from this track, Cloud of Unknowing, would be to next check out other tracks on the album like Frankie M or even the monolith that is The Glowing Man -where you get a bit of the best everything Swans is capable of(structure, scale, exploration, chanting, fullness, intensity, and catharsis). If you read this all you’re a champ and hope you’re having a great day Bryan.
I haven’t dove into Swans because of their huge discography. Loved this song. I’m here for the slow burns. Really amazing to hear there slow methodic build. I couldn’t imagine playing this live. Just listened to a Sun 0((( live album and it blew me away. Even as an only minor fan, swans is on my list of people to see live. I imagine it’s an EXPERIENCE. I’ll be checking out your recommendations next. Thanks bud ✌🏽
@@ckokomo808 The crazy thing that I don’t hear too much on the internet from other swans fans is that their live material is actually their best work. Listening to their whole discography musters for a progressive and rather iterative process of recontextualizing ideas from older material. For example they have a live exclusive 40 minute track called “The Knot” and in it you can hear certain phrases that come from a track called “No Words/No Thoughts” a track which the band first conceived at the start of their 2010’s era upon reformation. And yeah I totally get you with the huge catalogue. They’ve been around since the late 70’s and there’s a lot of history. Personally to me, their best work is the SWANS ARE DEAD live album, especially the first disk. Maybe my favorite performances of noise. I’d say honestly listen to whatever you want from them, and if something clicks go and try to listen to as much as you can. I listened in chronological order after being introduced to To Be Kind, but it’s your journey so shape it how you want.
I haven't listened to this Swans album as much as the ones that came just before it just because I was exploring their discography before this came out, so I've only heard it once or twice. This is the type of Swans I'm more into though; the noisy, psychedelic, meditative tracks that feel like they're really trying to take you on a journey of the mind's inner cosmos. It's the kind of music where I try my best to turn off my conscious engagement as much as possible and just get into that meditative head space where you just let yourself be taken away by the hypnotic flow of sound and space, where past and future fade away and you're just always very present in the moment. The albums before this did tend to feature more groove and immediacy, trying to get at that same meditative journey through more typical means; but this is more psychedelic and atmospheric, and also requires more patience. It's good stuff, but Swans in general is very mood-specific music, not the kind of stuff I can listen to often or casually. I will offer one argument for how the transcendental and "creepy" elements tie together. Fundamentally I think meditation is about forging a greater connection between our consciousness and unconsciousness, so that we become more aware of the contents of the latter within the former to the point that the barrier between them erodes. As Wallace Stevens suggested, there's an idea that "God" and the unconsciousness are one-and-the-same; yet our unconsciousness is also filled with all the instinctual creepy shit that we must suppress to get along with others in society, so it's not as if it's all God and rainbows and unicorn farts. It's also the place for our more animalistic--violent, sexual, etc.--instincts, so I think it works to tie these things together. It vaguely reminds me of the early operas of Richard Strauss that had a similar combination of the transcendentally ecstatic with creepy, sexual, violent elements (Salome, especially). In Strauss those elements were more in conflict in a "devil and angel on the shoulder" kind of way, but in Swans they just seem to co-exist without as much conflict.
Tbh I feel like the explanation is just that the guy who wrote these lyrics Michael Gira is apparently obsessed with this kind of bizarre, creepy imagery - and he is quite spiritual, but I wouldn't say religious...
I think the creepy angle is sort of conveying this idea that actually witnessing and being immersed in the power of God can be a disorienting and terrifying experience.
There might a meaning to the song but I don't really need to understand it. I just enjoy the unique music. I think it's quite amazing how they paint this vivid canvas of soundscapes and induce emotions. When I get immersed into it, it feels very powerful and intense
Awesome! This is one of my favorite modern Swans tracks. Also, this trilogy of The Seer -> To Be Kind -> The Glowing Man has some of the best mixing ever, so you were wise to go with higher quality audio. Edit: I do agree with you about the creepiness, and I think it’s very intentional. Swans often marries the carnal and the transcendental. Children of God, for instance, is a very religiously focused album that is infused with intense darkness even to the point of evil. I don’t, however, think that it is necessarily subversive or cynical. Gira has a very complex relationship with spirituality, and I think it all fits together in some way for him. The more you listen to Swans, the more these themes begin to make sense.
23:28 and a couple of seconds after you can hear Michael Gira breathing into the microphone...the first time I heard it it nearly gave me a heart attack :D
I always see Swans as the equivalent of reading a Stephen King book. There's not only horror in it, but together with all the darkness (which tends to come in style and has every time something you just have to like about it) come some elements of hope and love as well.
In my opinion the ending of the song represents the return from the meditative trance wherein one comes face-to-face with the divine and the divulging of the lessons learned from the experience. I don't think it's meant to communicate that the divine isn't real or that the experience was a hoax; rather I think it's supposed to signify that the things one learns from an encounter with the divine don't fit with society's expectations of what god is like, instead coming off as disturbing and heretical. Thus the unusual language and creepy delivery.I think "Monster Eater" refers to God as one who destroys the personal "monsters" we struggle with, in the same manner as a dream catcher catching our nightmares. "Jesus Feeler" I think refers to the speaker, as after coming back from their communion with the divine they are coming back from "feeling" Jesus in a spiritual sense. The mentions of a "Zombie" I think refer to the Christian notion that men who are not saved by God are basically dead men walking who lack the spiritual life of God dwelling within them. This goes nicely with "Zombie Healer" being a reference to God also, as someone who saves these "zombies" by giving them spiritual life. "Zombie Sucker" is a weird one, but I think it could be in reference to the idea of God sucking some sort of infection out of a Zombie, purifying them, again an unusual but still reverent descriptor of the divine.
I don’t think it’s tongue in cheek, Gira has always been fascinated by religion and in a very respectful way. I can’t remember the exact quote but regarding the album Children of God he talked about his obsession with televangelists and how he felt that religious performance and worship were more legitimate and authentic than the state of the counterculture and modern art/music. Since then , the themes of yearning for meaning in life or to submit to a righteous authority have come up more and more in his music. He seems to me to be pretty open to it as a whole but describes himself as an agnostic who can’t be sure that he even exists
You nailed it @40:44. Throughout their entire discography, I get a very cynical, mocking and hateful vibe about religion and God. Either atheist, as you said, or just blame towards God if he exists, for such horrors in the world and\or just the fact that being God would be pure Hell ie: all knowing, all powerful, existing forever would actually be a meaningless Hell.
Not really true, though. The name of this song is literally the name of a Christian book by the same name, written in the 14th century by a Christian mystic. Michael GIra of Swans has endorsed Christian mysticism and respects it as well as practices some parts of it such as contemplative prayer, a form of meditation. He also speaks highly of John of the Cross, who is another more modern Christian mystic.
Also their album Children of God isn't anti-Christian. Michael GIra said it's a pro-Christianity album, although admittedly he was influenced to make a pro-Christian album to rebel against the anti-Christian sentiments all the other bands were indulging in at the time.
Read the lyrics to their song called, A Hanging and then listen to the way he delivers those lyrics and tell me what you think. “I don’t know what interest I have in religion except the spiritual outcome of it,” says Gira, who admitted in an interview he had recently attended church. “That was something that I probably shouldn’t have talked about in public. I’m not a follower of religion, I would never be a dogmatic person about religion, but I think that certain aspects of it have great value.” He has been reading a lot on Buddhism lately and comparing ancient theories of the cosmos and modern astrophysics.“Someone, say 7,000 years ago - what would they have thought when they looked up? Now when we look at the sky, it’s through this filter of scientific knowledge about what it is and our place in the universe and everything, but imagine looking at the sky and just saying: ‘What the fuck?’ Just having this sense of complete mystery. Being part of this swirling cosmos … That’s interesting to me.”
Is that something you grew into or is it from a God? Michael: I’m not a believer in a puppeteer God looking at our daily activities. I think that’s anthropomorphizing God. I’m just talking about my own circumstances. For example when I restarted Swans it felt like I had been denying myself of my own potential. I wanted to see what I could make of it.
@@kwolitek4785 both these are contrary to your statement that GIra is atheist/anti-God/anti-Christianity. At least one could say he's a theist with inclinations towards Christian Mysticism and Buddhism.
Cloud of Unknowing is a classic within apophatic theology en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apophatic_theology Pseudo Dionysius the Areopagite is an essential character in this tradition of theology: According to Corrigan and Harrington, "Dionysius' central concern is how a triune God, ... who is utterly unknowable, unrestricted being, beyond individual substances, beyond even goodness, can become manifest to, in, and through the whole of creation in order to bring back all things to the hidden darkness of their source."
The glowing man (the song) has changed my perception of music
that song absolutely rearranges my neurons every time
@@bryanchu5379 'rearranges my neurons' lmao I'll definitely be using that one
Some perspective: in their last performance at NYC back in 2017, they did "Cloud of Unknowing" ... and it lasted for fifty-four minutes.
That's wild! I've heard they iterate on their music over time though, with each performance being unique. So it makes sense their stuff would get longer over time lol
The Glowing Man album starts with the Cloud of Forgetting and follows with the Cloud of Unknowing. The concept of contemplation is that you must ascend above the Cloud of Forgetting meaning you have to leave everything behind and forget about it. In meditation it’s common for your mind to be racing with all kinds of thoughts until you let them go and can focus with a clear mind. Then you can focus on the Cloud of Unknowing above which you can’t really totally pierce because you can’t possibly fully grasp God as a human. However, you may occasionally get a glimpse and intense spiritual experience. My sense is the first heavy chaotic musical crescendo is getting through that Cloud of Forgetting and leaving it behind. Then comes the focus on Cloud of Unknowing and the mantra “I am” which in some philosophies represents letting go of your ego and recognizing your true self as divine nature and you get the fleeting but intense ecstatic crescendos. Now for the ending. It’s no atypical for Swans to mix religion and carnal darkness or creepiness and lyrics that can be interpreted in multiple ways. The only think I could make of the zombie portion is what you said possibly representing Jesus after death but hard to say. But when it gets to washing your skin your son, I kind of think of a ritualistic washing of the body of Jesus either before burial or more likely a statue of Jesus say in a monastery where they wash it with water and recognizing the God in flesh which is another form of contemplation outside of pure meditation through devotion. Just my take. Note to self, easy on the drones.
This is a fantastic read of this track, as well as some info about it's sister track. Thanks for this!
You're pretty much obliged to listen to the song "the glowing man". The song pretty much changed the way I listen to music. The song is an absolute opus
Amazing piece of art. I love long slow burns, but this took it to another level. I don’t really know what to say except overall, that was magnificent.
Update- immediately left and listened to SWANS- To Be Kind…amazing stuff 👌🏽
That's what I love to hear; these videos getting people into music/albums and enjoying them.
Most of the time, SWANS is the artistic expression of a man you -temperament-wise- wouldn't expect to be artistically inclined - but how is (very much) and who produced this huge output of experimental albums, with almost every album being unique in a sense. Whereas "The Seer" might be interpreted as the most mean folk album ever recorded, this one is the Michael Gira version of a spiritual experience. It is very weird, not made to be fully enjoyable, with almost no song structure (owing to the No-Wave-scene), but still with its brilliant moments and somehow fascinating. It's krautrock-inspired, but on a totally different level, spiritually. More violent. Like being drunk on a demanding booze. Has it's bright and enjoyable moments, but also its downsides, outbursts of brutality and confusion. But as with alcohol, you can get used too it and somewhen, you find the right dose for your taste and enjoyment.
But maybe more importantly in the context of this video, whereas the style/genre changes almost with every album, the lyrical content is surprisingly constant. SWANS lead singer Michael Gira has certain words and topics he intermingles and drags throughout the whole SWANS discography. Skin is one of the words/topics found in basically everything from SWANS. The lyrics are, I'd guess, absurd, because it is mostly just a game of interpolating certain selected words with each other. Sometimes the skin is the mind, sometimes the mind is the skin, somethings one finds oneself in a tunnel of rain, sometimes in a curtain of rain and so on. I wouldn't "waste time" interpreting any of this. It's more akin to some sentences accidentally carrying metaphorical meaning, like conceiving of the mind as a "knife in a lake" (taken from the song "Finally Peace" from the "The Glowing Man" album (a sharp, but contextually useless and non-retrievable tool)^^
Awesome read of this song, and their style in general. I'll try to keep some of this in mind when I look at another Swans track.
I was just watching your Helpless Child video the other day and you already are back at it with another Swans video! This album is their latest “incarnation”(as band leader/main brain Michael Gira says). Respectably, I would dub this as their most incremental and patient album. Relying on incremental atmosphere rather than mending grooves like the preceding albums “The Seer” and “To Be Kind” do. When I think of introducing someone to Swans, I usually recommend their more immediate and forward tracks so that when exploring the rest of the forest the listener can most aptly grasp the scale of their performances. And that’s another thing that I’m not sure if anyone mentioned yet, they do almost all of these tracks in single takes with minimal overdubbing(they play all of these live at 3 hour shows exhausting themselves to the nth degree, which is where most of my love and respect for them comes from). I think a great place to go from this track, Cloud of Unknowing, would be to next check out other tracks on the album like Frankie M or even the monolith that is The Glowing Man -where you get a bit of the best everything Swans is capable of(structure, scale, exploration, chanting, fullness, intensity, and catharsis). If you read this all you’re a champ and hope you’re having a great day Bryan.
I haven’t dove into Swans because of their huge discography. Loved this song. I’m here for the slow burns. Really amazing to hear there slow methodic build. I couldn’t imagine playing this live. Just listened to a Sun 0((( live album and it blew me away. Even as an only minor fan, swans is on my list of people to see live. I imagine it’s an EXPERIENCE.
I’ll be checking out your recommendations next. Thanks bud ✌🏽
@@ckokomo808 The crazy thing that I don’t hear too much on the internet from other swans fans is that their live material is actually their best work. Listening to their whole discography musters for a progressive and rather iterative process of recontextualizing ideas from older material. For example they have a live exclusive 40 minute track called “The Knot” and in it you can hear certain phrases that come from a track called “No Words/No Thoughts” a track which the band first conceived at the start of their 2010’s era upon reformation. And yeah I totally get you with the huge catalogue. They’ve been around since the late 70’s and there’s a lot of history. Personally to me, their best work is the SWANS ARE DEAD live album, especially the first disk. Maybe my favorite performances of noise. I’d say honestly listen to whatever you want from them, and if something clicks go and try to listen to as much as you can. I listened in chronological order after being introduced to To Be Kind, but it’s your journey so shape it how you want.
Thanks for the comment (and yes, I read all of it 😀). I'll keep those songs in mind for the next time I dig into Swans.
I haven't listened to this Swans album as much as the ones that came just before it just because I was exploring their discography before this came out, so I've only heard it once or twice. This is the type of Swans I'm more into though; the noisy, psychedelic, meditative tracks that feel like they're really trying to take you on a journey of the mind's inner cosmos. It's the kind of music where I try my best to turn off my conscious engagement as much as possible and just get into that meditative head space where you just let yourself be taken away by the hypnotic flow of sound and space, where past and future fade away and you're just always very present in the moment. The albums before this did tend to feature more groove and immediacy, trying to get at that same meditative journey through more typical means; but this is more psychedelic and atmospheric, and also requires more patience. It's good stuff, but Swans in general is very mood-specific music, not the kind of stuff I can listen to often or casually.
I will offer one argument for how the transcendental and "creepy" elements tie together. Fundamentally I think meditation is about forging a greater connection between our consciousness and unconsciousness, so that we become more aware of the contents of the latter within the former to the point that the barrier between them erodes. As Wallace Stevens suggested, there's an idea that "God" and the unconsciousness are one-and-the-same; yet our unconsciousness is also filled with all the instinctual creepy shit that we must suppress to get along with others in society, so it's not as if it's all God and rainbows and unicorn farts. It's also the place for our more animalistic--violent, sexual, etc.--instincts, so I think it works to tie these things together. It vaguely reminds me of the early operas of Richard Strauss that had a similar combination of the transcendentally ecstatic with creepy, sexual, violent elements (Salome, especially). In Strauss those elements were more in conflict in a "devil and angel on the shoulder" kind of way, but in Swans they just seem to co-exist without as much conflict.
Very interesting angle to look at unconsciousness and it so perfectly works to explain what's going on in this track.
I feel like this is pretty much on the number as far as Gira's own patterns of thought writing this stuff goes.
Tbh I feel like the explanation is just that the guy who wrote these lyrics Michael Gira is apparently obsessed with this kind of bizarre, creepy imagery - and he is quite spiritual, but I wouldn't say religious...
I think the creepy angle is sort of conveying this idea that actually witnessing and being immersed in the power of God can be a disorienting and terrifying experience.
There might a meaning to the song but I don't really need to understand it. I just enjoy the unique music. I think it's quite amazing how they paint this vivid canvas of soundscapes and induce emotions. When I get immersed into it, it feels very powerful and intense
Awesome! This is one of my favorite modern Swans tracks. Also, this trilogy of The Seer -> To Be Kind -> The Glowing Man has some of the best mixing ever, so you were wise to go with higher quality audio.
Edit: I do agree with you about the creepiness, and I think it’s very intentional. Swans often marries the carnal and the transcendental. Children of God, for instance, is a very religiously focused album that is infused with intense darkness even to the point of evil. I don’t, however, think that it is necessarily subversive or cynical. Gira has a very complex relationship with spirituality, and I think it all fits together in some way for him. The more you listen to Swans, the more these themes begin to make sense.
23:28 and a couple of seconds after you can hear Michael Gira breathing into the microphone...the first time I heard it it nearly gave me a heart attack :D
I always see Swans as the equivalent of reading a Stephen King book. There's not only horror in it, but together with all the darkness (which tends to come in style and has every time something you just have to like about it) come some elements of hope and love as well.
The sound you are wondering about, perhaps a dulcimer?
Great video! Would love to see more swans!
It makes me so happy that you're finally into Swans and I hope you're able to tackle "To Be Kind" someday soon.
Please do the tile track "the glowing man" !
Recommendation: Slung by Feotus.
Great jazzy, big band angst...
SWANS is the greatest band that will ever exist.
In my opinion the ending of the song represents the return from the meditative trance wherein one comes face-to-face with the divine and the divulging of the lessons learned from the experience. I don't think it's meant to communicate that the divine isn't real or that the experience was a hoax; rather I think it's supposed to signify that the things one learns from an encounter with the divine don't fit with society's expectations of what god is like, instead coming off as disturbing and heretical. Thus the unusual language and creepy delivery.I think "Monster Eater" refers to God as one who destroys the personal "monsters" we struggle with, in the same manner as a dream catcher catching our nightmares. "Jesus Feeler" I think refers to the speaker, as after coming back from their communion with the divine they are coming back from "feeling" Jesus in a spiritual sense. The mentions of a "Zombie" I think refer to the Christian notion that men who are not saved by God are basically dead men walking who lack the spiritual life of God dwelling within them. This goes nicely with "Zombie Healer" being a reference to God also, as someone who saves these "zombies" by giving them spiritual life. "Zombie Sucker" is a weird one, but I think it could be in reference to the idea of God sucking some sort of infection out of a Zombie, purifying them, again an unusual but still reverent descriptor of the divine.
Cloud of Unknowing is one of my favorite books, I think it deserves more renown than Aurelius' Meditations.
Awesome
I don’t think it’s tongue in cheek, Gira has always been fascinated by religion and in a very respectful way. I can’t remember the exact quote but regarding the album Children of God he talked about his obsession with televangelists and how he felt that religious performance and worship were more legitimate and authentic than the state of the counterculture and modern art/music. Since then , the themes of yearning for meaning in life or to submit to a righteous authority have come up more and more in his music. He seems to me to be pretty open to it as a whole but describes himself as an agnostic who can’t be sure that he even exists
please do a reaction to black country new roads brand new album
You nailed it @40:44. Throughout their entire discography, I get a very cynical, mocking and hateful vibe about religion and God. Either atheist, as you said, or just blame towards God if he exists, for such horrors in the world and\or just the fact that being God would be pure Hell ie: all knowing, all powerful, existing forever would actually be a meaningless Hell.
Not really true, though. The name of this song is literally the name of a Christian book by the same name, written in the 14th century by a Christian mystic. Michael GIra of Swans has endorsed Christian mysticism and respects it as well as practices some parts of it such as contemplative prayer, a form of meditation. He also speaks highly of John of the Cross, who is another more modern Christian mystic.
Also their album Children of God isn't anti-Christian. Michael GIra said it's a pro-Christianity album, although admittedly he was influenced to make a pro-Christian album to rebel against the anti-Christian sentiments all the other bands were indulging in at the time.
Read the lyrics to their song called, A Hanging and then listen to the way he delivers those lyrics and tell me what you think.
“I don’t know what interest I have in religion except the spiritual outcome of it,” says Gira, who admitted in an interview he had recently attended church. “That was something that I probably shouldn’t have talked about in public. I’m not a follower of religion, I would never be a dogmatic person about religion, but I think that certain aspects of it have great value.”
He has been reading a lot on Buddhism lately and comparing ancient theories of the cosmos and modern astrophysics.“Someone, say 7,000 years ago - what would they have thought when they looked up? Now when we look at the sky, it’s through this filter of scientific knowledge about what it is and our place in the universe and everything, but imagine looking at the sky and just saying: ‘What the fuck?’ Just having this sense of complete mystery. Being part of this swirling cosmos … That’s interesting to me.”
Is that something you grew into or is it from a God?
Michael: I’m not a believer in a puppeteer God looking at our daily activities. I think that’s anthropomorphizing God. I’m just talking about my own circumstances. For example when I restarted Swans it felt like I had been denying myself of my own potential. I wanted to see what I could make of it.
@@kwolitek4785 both these are contrary to your statement that GIra is atheist/anti-God/anti-Christianity.
At least one could say he's a theist with inclinations towards Christian Mysticism and Buddhism.
Cloud of Unknowing is a classic within apophatic theology en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apophatic_theology Pseudo Dionysius the Areopagite is an essential character in this tradition of theology: According to Corrigan and Harrington, "Dionysius' central concern is how a triune God, ... who is utterly unknowable, unrestricted being, beyond individual substances, beyond even goodness, can become manifest to, in, and through the whole of creation in order to bring back all things to the hidden darkness of their source."
have you read it? It's a great book. I also highly recommend Dark Night of the Soul by John of the Cross.