MAC

I like Tolkien. This has been established. Tolkien drew a monogram at one point in his career, and since his death his son and estate have used it to brand his output. It has become a kind of trademark or “stamp” upon his canonical as well as his posthumous work. I don't believe the symbol appeared on any of his first editions. Nevertheless, the simplicity and quasi-mystic occult look of the monogram can't be overstated; it is an amazing symbol.



Following in his Gandalfy footsteps, I've made a monogram from my three names. While I was inspired to do so after seeing his monogram, mine bears little resemblance to Tolkien's, instead it looks more like a band logo. The monogram shows M, as two triangular peaks, with an A between them. The little crescent moon over the top is the C of my last name. It does bear some resemblance to Leviathan's logo, and Storm's Nordavind album cover; a moon over mountaintops. The fact that this monogram is bilaterally symmetrical allows me to make this strange “knot”, which looks like the Norse walknut, a gordian knot, or the Japanese triforce / fishscale mon I sometimes use. It also looks like the fancy “sacred geometry” design that is getting popular after a few centuries of Kabbalistic obscurity. But mainly, it's just my name three times with an extra triangle.

RUNES

This is the third drawing I've made for this manuscript series/project. The drawing is basically an explanation of the runes I've created, and what runes are, in a general historical sense.

Runes are angular letters used by the peoples of ancient Europe. They were carved into metal, stone or wood, and hence do not make use of curved lines. The most famous set of runes is the Futhark, used by the Norse. Tolkien's Cirth runes draw heavily from these runes. I have not drawn heavily from either set, being influenced by the Japanese Katakana alphabet, I have gone for simplicity, not linguistic correctness, and so my alphabet is quite small. Katakana employs a small mark called a diacritic (they call it a hakuten, I believe), this mark shifts their “g” into their “k”, from a voiceless to a voiced consonant. Taking this idea, I've managed to reduce my alphabet to eighteen runes, some of which stand for more than one letter. Letters like C and Q do not have their own runes. Ha!

The illuminated parts of the drawing reference old manuscript details, specifically of books and monks and saints and scholars copying books or studying. The mistletoe in the background is a druidic fertility symbol, and the oak that it is usually parasite to has significance in paganism. There are no visible band references in this drawing, which is pretty incredible. I cut a lot of details about gods of language and quasi masonic word magic from this drawing, and I think it is better for it, especially as this piece was meant to help people understand what I am doing. I am willing to help people.

NOOTHGRUSH II

This is the second of my manuscript drawings, and the second to focus Narrowly on the Californian sludge trio (now a quartet?!) Noothgrush. For more information about Noothgrushes, please refer to Dr. Seuss' "There's a Wocket in my Pocket".

I'm starting to understand more what manuscripts are all about, but this piece is still more heavily illuminated than any "true" Medieval manuscript would have been. The drawing focuses on Noothgrush's disdain for the human race, and the tendency of our species to upset the natural order and completely render anything we touch unlivable. Or dead. Noothgrush, as well as other bands around the mid nineties who played shows in the same scene, Grief, Man is the Bastard, Seized, expressed a misanthropic mindset, which sometime bordered onto actively promoting human extinction. This is an interesting concept when one realizes that the population of Europe did in fact almost face extinction during the time when these handmade books flourished, due to the spread of the bubonic plague. Noothgrush, however misanthropic you find them, do make salient points about the callousness of our species in regards to ecology, and especially our sense of entitlement and superiority, neither of which is founded on anything concrete. The text in this manuscript is from a 1997 interview, but it is informed by the same worldview which they held (and still do hold) while writing songs such as Stagnance and Useless.

I find the manuscript format quite appropriate when looking at these seemingly flippant, though very wise and well meaning words. Manuscripts were used to record knowledge, not just of canonical bible verses (and indeed the format of a handwritten bible is responsible for much of the look and format, and likely the errors too, in the modern bible) but also the teachings of various saints and lesser religious leaders. They were kept in monasteries and rewritten into other languages, after being borrowed, in whole or in piece, by other monks or scholars. I think that their is a great deal to be gained from looking at song lyrics, and interviews with bands from the grind/sludge/powerviolence, especially the cluster of great bands from the state of California.