You know, I've never gotten any tattoos for three basic reasons. First, they tend to look like crap after ten or fifteen years. Second, I could never imagine an image so spellbinding I'd want to look at it for the rest of my life. And third, my experience in life has taught me you need to be very, very careful about the imagery you choose to identify with.
I bring this up because dad-rock titans Foo Fighters chose to identify with death and evil for their new feature film, Studio 666. Quite zealously, in fact. Sure, it's all just a goof - or at least I hope it is - but sometimes the powers you stir from their slumbers don't give much of a shit about your intentions.
So the Foos went and did a horror comedy about devil worship and demonic possession - always a bad idea during an apocalypse - and the spirit world responded in the way some of us are all too familiar with:
Internationally celebrated Foo Fighters drummer Taylor Hawkins died of a drug overdose, according to a report out of Colombia which cited official sources.
Hawkins, 50, was found dead in a hotel room at the Four Seasons Casa Medina in Bogota, on Friday.
“The Emergency Center received a report about a patient with pain in the chest in a hotel in the north of the city,” according to a release issued Saturday by the Bogota Secretary of Health, which noted that the organization sent an ambulance to the location. “
However, when the teams from the Secretary of Health arrive[d], they found another emergency responder from the company EMI. The health care professional who attended to the emergency said that he performed all re-animation maneuvers but he did not receive a response and the patient was declared dead.”
I don't know about the drug overdose yet - seems we've had a few reports of perfectly sober, youngish men dying shortly after reporting chest pains lately - but in the end it doesn't really matter. A talented, well-loved and well-liked man is gone, too young, and now the suffering's just begun for everyone else.
See, one of the reasons I do what I do is to try to break some of the trash-demon spells the Sorcerarchy are constantly spewing out at us. Another is a vain and probably hopeless quest to warn people that the spirit world is very, very real and is not your personal Disneyland. The supernatural is very real and very not to be trifled with, as I keep shouting helplessly into the void,
Not that he would ever give half a shit what I say, but had Dave Grohl come to me and asked if I thought he should make this Studio 666 movie, I would have told him not in a million-billion years. In fact, it might be a good idea to find a shaman or priest to cleanse his soul - like immediately - and then go spend a month or six washing the feet of the poor and/or sick.
It's kind of like if Jeff Buckley asked me what he should do about his relationship with the Sibyl, I'd tell him that there was only one thing to do: spend your entire life giving her back rubs and bringing her breakfast in bed, and never, ever break her heart. Like, don't even listen to songs or read novels or watch movies about broken hearts.
People used to understand these things back in olden times. Things like don't make your movie about succubi reaping men's souls in a place notorious for spectral activity (and worse).
Grohl - and Hawkins, for that matter - have not only attracted the attention of the spirit world because of their music and their celebrity, but for some of the very-highly charged situations they've found themselves in (and Grohl's UFO fixation certainly doesn't help matters much, either).
To start with, this isn't Grohl's first dance with darkness. I've heard tell he once was in the presence of one of the Devil's very favorite daughters, in the form of a butt-ugly, CIA honey-trap whore turned talent-free black widow. Another charismatic and gifted little blond elf suffered for his weakness then, as now.
I don't what any of that possibly has to do with Soaked in Bleach, it just popped into my head unbidden. Was that even Dave Grohl? My memory ain't what it used to be. Even so, if you haven't watched this film, you really should. But only if you're not despairing over this fallen world too much already.
Grohl, rock 'n' roll fanboy to the core, also joined up with Killing Joke for their very heavy 2003 comeback, which is kind of like a Helmet album produced by Alex Jones. The guy who actually produced it - Gang of 4 guitarist Andy Gill - is now dead as a hammer, as you'd might reasonably expect.
Jaz Coleman and Geordie Walker are kind of like the Merlin and Etrigan of industrial metal, though I can't always decide which is which. But they also inarguably summoned the avenging angel we call the Joker archetype into this world, back when the Batman comics version of such was a silly fop. They also have a tendency to leave dead fools in their wake, so Grohl was definitely playing with fire.
Longtime Foo and onetime Nirvana sideman Pat Smear is no stranger to rock 'n' roll danger either, having cut his teeth with pioneering hardcore outfit Germs. Their singer (Darby Crash) offed himself back in late 1980, but no one noticed on account of a rather better-known singer getting his ticket punched the very next day.
No big deal in and of itself, but Germs (or The Germs) originally formed in the Innovative Program School, an alternative school run by an unholy alliance of EST and Scientology programmers. So there's that black ribbon of arcane energy lurking in the distance once again. Anyone who's read He Will Live Up in the Sky - which bloody well better be every last one of you - know how I feel about "alternative schools" of that particular pedigree.
Since we're in a holding pattern as we await the next angelic revelation channeled through the post-Industrial Pythia, let's not forget the death of Screaming Tree and Grohl's fellow Queen of the Stone Age Mark Lanegan, who shed his own mortal shell that same faithful week that the heavenly clarions first sounded.
But perhaps therein lies the hope in all this darkness.
Taylor ("to cut") Hawkins (Horus, of corus) rose to prominence playing with a well-known (and well-proportioned) Bene Frasserit priestess, which may help to shed some light on this unfortunate event.
You see, death is just the end of one incarnation. Whether you believe in an afterlife - or reincarnation, like I do - you probably sense that we tend to take our baggage along with us when we leave this mortal coil. So maybe Hawkins was removed from what might evolve into a very staining kind of situation, with all the satanic incantations kicking around his circles and so on.
And again, just joshing around with devilry can bring elemental darkness into your life just as effectively as being all goth and cringe about it. In fact, an argument could be made that tomfoolery is even more likely to do so. So who can foresee what future the Foos face?
See, Alanis Morrissette isn't just any old Bene Frasserit priestess, she had the hallowed privilege of portraying a vision of the Oracle of the Apocalypse in Radio Free Albemuth, based on the posthumous Philip K Dick novel. Divers know that PKD prophesied the Pythia to an exacting extent that still stands my hair on end when I get to thinking about it. He just jumbled the deets a bit, on account of having fried his brain with decades-long meth abuse.
Radio Free Albemuth isn't a great film by any means, but it's still a must-see. Especially since we're playing it out - to a blood-curdingly exact extent - in real time right this very minute. All the more so literally every single day.
In that regard, Taylor Hawkins is like a doomed yet ultimately saved PKD character, an expected subtype during the ongoing unveiling.
And don't worry, I won't judge you if continue to ignore the calling. Many are called but few are chosen, and it's not up to me to say which is which. My mission is to spread the word far and wide to the best of my abilities. After that it's all out of my hands.
Take the scales from your eyes in the Den of Intrigue.
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