Villainy - Villainy II: Dim

I don't know anything about Villainy. That cover art screams foreign extreme metal, though. Opening it up, i see the very first lyrics are "when the structure is done...." 

Total coincidence that this is the penultimate album before the out-of-nowhere random record that magically ties the whole thing together in my mind. Your milage may vary, but i'm highly attuned to the shape and feel of an unfolding process. It's an illusion our brains create to navigate the constant bombardment of stimuli. It's one of many doorways into the wild west of Gestalt Psychology (see how The Mopes just travelled right along with us?). It's the opposite of Structuralism in some ways, arguing that we percieve larger patterns and cycles all at once, rather than assembling meaning from individual components. It's where the idiom "the whole is greater than its parts" comes from. I, of course, have been doing both at the same time, constantly flipping back and forth, double and triple rechecking my thoughts, pulling out the weeds and letting the new growth evolve. I think the oscillation itself is meaning, the thing that propels us forward, or overwhelms us until we jump off the bus at cruising speed, whether or not it kills us. Unexpected surprises, nonsensical gibberish, traveling through the mirror with or without a map. But, for me, there isn't a map yet that's been accurate enough to be useful. I have all the tools i need to go wherever i want, but there's always someone or something trying to take that freedom away. That's the real villainy. 

First track called Res Cogitans, Decartes' binary opposition to res extensa, the mind and the material world respectively. See, told you this was deep stuff, even if it happened by total accident. I bought things that cost less than $20 with gift cards, and ended up right back at the deep schism of Structuralism like i always do. I, Bottle, am a discorporate mind after all, totally separate and detached from the real person who is Paul. 

And now we're magically back where i said we would be; i never renege. Paul made $50, Bottle made $0.12. Is that fair? Is Paul the villain, Bottle the victim? No idea, we have two tasks to accomplish. 1) we have to define the whole situation, and 2) we have to deconstruct it. We should probably reassemble it afterward, but i can't guarantee we actually will. 

What are the parts? Well, first Paul loaned Bottle money and Bottle used it to accomplish something. Second, Bottle gave money back to Paul. That second part is currently a cat inside Schroedinger's paradox box, we don't know if it's alive or dead until we look inside, but once we do we have to remember that the act of observing it creates the reality we observe. Looking at the exact moment Bottle succeeds at giving Paul $250 dollars tells us a different story than what happens before and after that moment. 

$50 vs $0.12 certainly looks vastly unequal, if that's the stopping point. The story could unfold two different ways from there: Bottle could keep investing in the book, but he'd have to borrow money again, and the whole thing would start over. We could calculate how much it would take to get Bottle to the point where he had enough money to invest in the book himself, but we can easily see that Paul's profit would expand exponentially compared to Bottle's. Bottle will always make a minuscule fraction of the profit that Paul makes, even when the lending deal is completely fair and agreeable to both parties. There's no actual person being a villain, but there is a coherent evil taking place. Granted, we don't have to interpret that result as evil, but i think most every mind WOULD. It's hard to accept that kind of unfair reality, so we attach it to the closest agent available. If Paul steadfastly defended the system because it works (for him), Bottle would call bullshit and show how it will always keep him down in the basement without any structural mobility at all. Success is still comparative failure in this situation. 

But, that's actually not reality at all. We know it's all the same person and this is a thought experiment. I know the real Paul pretty well, and he would look at the 50/.12 disparity and hand me, Bottle, back half of it. Not because he's desperate for me to like him, and not because he was trying to teach me some pedantic lesson, and not because he sloppily thinks the desperation of paying back the loan somehow helped me succeed, but because he didn't need the money in the first place, he doesn't need the profit from investing it, he wouldn't care if i had failed, and it just seems fair to split the actual profit equally. Bottle couldn't do it without Paul's money, so they should both get the reward. If either party were desperate for the money, all sorts of terrible things might have happened. 

All those corporations, businesses, executives, investors, traders, gamblers, liars are absolutely desperate for the money. The only success they understand is finding an unequal system to exploit, and claiming the self-deluded ego boost of being good at exploiting it. There is no Paul up there interested in other people's success, only various sizes and colors of Bottles, no idea what secret poisons are hiding inside, or what anybody will do after they take a couple swigs. Truth be told, there aren't many Bottles like me up there either, just a bunch of incomplete minds looking for any dopamine escape hatch they can squeeze through. Most people love being way too happy and way too miserable and don't care if it kills them, or anyone else. 

This album is lovely, by the way. It's proggy deathy/black-ish type stuff like BTBAM or Opeth, but not quite as spastic or bewildering or harsh. Some people might call it middle of the road, but i think it's great. I'll definitely be listening to it more than a couple more times, and trying to find some info on them. 

So, did we get somewhere? Did we accomplish anything? I dunno, i'm not invested in winning, i just enjoy actively living the process. I'm ready for that surprise album whether i did a good job or not. There's nobody up there ready to solve the student loan crisis, so i'll just keep opening the Bottle to see how it's fermenting inside. It won't be a 5th Dimension album (if you can remember that far back), but it will be a surprise. Until then, thanks for sticking with me through this longer than anticipated trek through the wilderness. Cheers.

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