Kåre

A black metal musician lives in northern Wisconsin. Third and final story in a writing class taken in 2017.

Kåre 

 

The sum total was $76.97. Kåre, or as he was known in the Black Metal community, Nihil, found himself thinking, “The sum total is nothing,” as he pays with debit. He’s running low on money as well, you could say he’s approaching nothing. This does not bother him, “Living on the edge of life and death, one foot in either side at any time,” is his living motto. A life of contrast that should be serious, but isn’t when he realizes, “Ha, I have black clothes on, white skin, then there’s a black soul. People like us are the Oreos of the metal world.” 

Placing the groceries in the cart on his bike, Kåre reminisced about his interview yesterday. It was a decent one, too, there were only one or two bland questions, the ones that are always asked, “Are you working on an album currently?” and “What are your influences?” They couldn’t be avoided, but when the interviewer asked him his opinion on Marduk’s recent conflict with Anti-Fa, he recalled saying, “Politics has no room in Black Metal. There’s plenty of space in the -core genres, hell, even Death Metal, but not in Black Metal.” He remembers the interviewing room being in some cramped space, dingy lighting and cigarette smoke coughing out of the walls, in the back-room of some no-name bar. His stool seat only looked more tired with him on it, and now it was shedding more rust than usual because of Kåre scraping the legs with the backs of his shoes.  

The interviewer, Lina, responded, “Surely you acknowledge NSBM bands, right? Don’t you think ideology can find a foothold in any genre of music? 

“Yeah, but the spirit behind it is ultimately the same. You can be a feminist or a nazi and still enjoy this music, but either way you decide how much this music affects you. Us early musicians that would have been the same age as the people who burned down churches in Norway are much older now. Our ideology then is different now.” 

“So, you don’t denounce bands like Marduk and others?” 

“No, why should I. Even if they were an NSBM band, which I don’t believe they are, why should I get involved in denouncing them? Most of us are rugged individualists, not giving a damn about people’s feelings towards us. If you have the spirit of this kind of music, it doesn’t matter what race, gender, or sexual identity you are. When you’re on stage or recording, you become a ghost, a conduit for this spirit. It’s demonic no doubt, but it’s a way of getting over this f*****g existence.” 

Kåre was agitated. He couldn’t vent his frustration just by riding a bike though. It would be released later, in the dark solitude of his house. Yes, it would be his voice that would carry him over from yesterday’s interview, he need only go another mile. 

But where was the rush here? Lake Superior was not far off, and he could espy Basswood Island and Madeline Island a few miles off from his location, near Bayfield, Wisconsin. Memories of just having moved here from Norway come back to him, and he remembered kayaking to Madeline Island soon after his move. There were rock walls, but segmented and uneven, nothing like the steep cliffs on the coast of his homeland. Certain portions of the island had water arching into the wall, creating the effect of low hanging caves with stout pillars supporting the cave at the front. And just above his head was the ceiling, but with only a few feet of rock separating him from the growth of a tree. He remembered navigating in these low hanging caves while another kayaker told him about Devil’s Island, the northernmost Apostle Island, and in the winter the water would freeze enough to walk on the ice under these caves. He said he would visit them the following winter. 

Now was Fall, far enough in so that he could still pick blueberries at the nearby fruit farm if he wished. Or he could stand in the water of Big Bay, and underneath him would be large slabs of sandstone sloughed off from walls over a span of uncountable ages.  

It was all so foreign and familiar to him at first, as if he hadn’t really left Norway. “How could one think of politics here?” he thought, approaching his one-room cabin. He felt like his ancestors in the late nineteenth century, when they first came to Bayfield. That familiarity, and here he was. Living apolitical, a “landless laborer” fishing and making music to survive. A bookshelf of history having historical books was next to one wall, while wooden bedposts covered by animal bones guarded his bed, covered by a quilt his Grandma gave him. A small wooden table and wicker chair were next to the small kitchen, gas-powered stove and a few cabinets there. The outhouse and shower area are outside of course, behind the house. A lone electrical line struggled to find this place in the woods, away from the lake. 

“This is the way it must be,” he wrote in his journal after putting the groceries away. “The part of me that keeps me going back to civilization is strictly going for reasons of music and money. How long can I jump this divide, between tame and wild?” 

He didn’t know, though he wished he could solve it by writing alone. Would new lyrics for his song-in-progress heal his spirit? 

 

There is a song that does not dwell  

And covers the entire earth, 

A nature not forlorn not embraced. 

 

No, it was always the same. Every word, every note struck could only cut him further through. No demon or god could harm him, rarely a person too could even meet him, and hardly ever as a friend. But he had no enemies. It was compulsion to live out here and be separated from music. Although he had his guitar and bass in this cabin, he never called them his instruments; they were tools for him, and he treated them as ends in themselves. They did not comfort him; instead they stood waiting for his command, an executive order to reinstate uproarious noise, which he reaffirmed to anyone who happened to hear him play; he did not make music.  

Returning to his journal, “What can I express out in the woods? And what joy is there in expression if it eventually turns sour? Nature swallows up my noise and returns it with its own.” 

He closed his journal, and with a breath it carried off a maple leaf reaching to his roof. Ladybugs flocked at a corner of his screened window outside, breaking the strain of a spider’s web. A wounded oak, suffering from a slime flux, secreted its sap toward his house, and the ferment attracted dozens. Do the bugs’ weight drag the tree down to his roof? It is the slightest pressure in his ears, which he doesn’t feel. The spit of Froghoppers stained a gathering of Goldenrod nearby, no heavy rain had washed it off. 

He felt a sudden desire to sleep. It was certainly the work and exercise making him feel like so, wasn’t it? But before he could lie down he received a knocking sound on the door, then under the window, then around the house. Who would have followed him out here, though? 

Twilight gave its pre-nightly show, though this was livelier than he could ever recall here. Now, there was no knocking sound. Probably the space of it all. Kåre circled around the house until he stepped on it. A bat, though a foot had pressed out its eyes. Could this have been the source of the noise? To think, a bat that was trying to get in, and not out! 

A boy peeked his head around a tree. Kåre’s back was turned, and the boy could only see his black clothing and long blond hair. The boy made a whistle out of his hands, and blowing between his thumbs produces a noise like hollow wind passing through tree branches. Or like a tiny train whistle he sounds his approach, and as he squeezed his hands together the pitch grew higher, while Kåre swiveled his head around slowly. The boy had his head in the same place the whole time, until he was finally spotted. 

“That’s an interesting whistle. Could I see it?” Kåre asked the boy-behind-the-tree. His arms were like snakes then as his hands peered around the tree first while the twin bodies slowly followed in suit. The boy was angling his body so his shoulders and head would appear draping over a part of the surface of the tree. It was odd, Kåre thought, because this kid’s body was arching heavily to one side now, though he could only see his arms, shoulders, head, and a part of his upper back. 

The boy brought his hands together and put his head back. His right eye was almost directly above his left now, his pupils close to his eyebrows, and staring at Kåre he hand-whistled. Kåre squatted and knelt his head so his hair could graze the swords of grass. The boy’s tune danced through Kåre’s hair and so his hair played with the grass below it. What a care-free interplay.  

The boy slid off the tree when asked what his name was. “Oliver,” He said softly. “Who did you learn to play that from?” Kåre asked. “From the internet.” His answer was surprising, since Kåre, being that he was in his mid-thirties, sometimes forgot the possibilities of learning technology offered.  

“Well, do you want to look at a dead bat I found under my foot?”  

Oliver didn’t move, considering, but then couldn’t resist. To be safe, he picked up a poking stick. Kåre backed up. Oliver bent his back and flipped the bat over a few times before feeling the leathery wings between his thumb and index finger. He straightened up when he was done.  

“I hear you singing and playing in town. You try to sound scary but I’m not scared.” 

“Why aren’t you scared?” 

“Because I have my hand-whistle.” 

“What if you lost your whistle?” 

“I’d find a new one.” 

“New hands, then?” 

“New hands (clap) then.” 

“So what if I take your hands?” 

“Then I would try to take yours.” 

“And if you couldn’t? 

A pause. “Then I’d be sad. Why do you live out here?” 

“Why did you come out here?” 

“I want to know why you make those noises so I can make them too.” 

“Do you mean the noise from my throat or from the guitars?” 

“The throat!” 

“If you can cough and yell at the same time, that would be a good first step.” 

Oliver made a noise that’s something like a burp and scream. “Ow.” He rubbed his upper throat. 

“The key is tightening your throat down here. See my Adam’s Apple. Try tightening your throat there. Then shout.” 

Oliver made a sound that wasn’t different from before. “I can’t do this. I think I’m going home.” He turned around and ran back to his bike in the woods, but gave a quick wave to Kåre without looking. 

He waved back. 

Inside his cabin again, he looked at the lyrics he was writing. Adding to the three lines he had written before that encounter, 

 

If you could see all, you’d go blind 

If you could hear all, you’d hear silence 

If you could feel all, you’d feel nothing. 

 

Reminiscing further on the interview yesterday, with a goblet of warm barley wine on the table, he remembered her asking, before the political distractions, about his approach to Black Metal. He thought it was an odd question because he couldn’t answer it. Instead, he forced some comments on how this scene had diversified over the years, and how he was influenced by nature like many. There are a lot of romantics and Nietzscheans in Black Metal. My upcoming album follows a different route, something new, or at least obscure even in this genre. “Ha! Something new!” and he looked deeply into his drink. 

The wind slowly grated through the window’s screen, passing as a visitor throughout the cabin. It rested under his bed, filled the floorboards and swayed the dangling lightbulb, flickering, above the table. A woodpecker’s taps sound invisible holes on the few objects inside, possible perforations are revealed. Autumn was shedding its Summer’s skin, leaving cold bones, so Kåre left to get some wood from out back for the night’s growing chill. He came back and offered himself up to sleep, though he received no rest. 

Here is the fist-sized hole in his chest and third eye. Around him are hungry stars pulling and stretching his body, whose edges are eventually torn, with teeth. The stars’ tongues fill the space torn in his body, like lightning flickering and staying in the atmosphere. They must consummate the empty heart and head space, and like beams of light they suffuse his center until 

He awoke, his head facing the morning sun. His hair semi-circled around him, until he stood and brought it to a straight downward flood. He cooked his oats in water from the well outside, he cut his bread and crowned it with crushed blueberries, he took hot water and a brick of soap to the tub outside, but before all this he chopped up logs for firewood. One thought stood out saliently to him, “This is all necessary.” 

“You live by yourself?” the interviewer asked as a follow-up to his previous comment. “As I must,” he responded, “It helps for the mental state required to make the music I make. I have a close friend to take me and my equipment to the studio once or twice a week, but other than that I remain mostly isolated from people.” 

“Was there anything else you wanted to ask me?” Kåre asked, hinting towards an end to the interview. 

“I’m sure there is. It’s just that I’ve never interviewed anybody like yourself before, and I can tell you’re getting annoyed by some of these questions. I should’ve guessed I was interviewing a Wrest, considering the location.” 

He only grinned, head-down. She looked Greek, like a cruel daughter of virgin Athena with black hair and an eagle’s face. There was something wholly detestable about her, which gave him comfort. Passion even? He laughed at that thought of passion. 

“Conflicted, huh? Shadows making you greedy? I have enough material already to make a decent edited interview, unless if you wanted to continue?” 

“You’ve already asked all the questions about my musical process. Anything else would be out of place for the interviews you’re hired to make.” 

“Is that a yay or nay?” 

He considered. “Nay.” 

“Well, thanks for the interview.” 

Such a masculine way to end that interview. Or perhaps, such a German way to end that interview. She reminded him of his first and only love, the cold. 

***** 

It was not yet winter, though the beach’s clouds brought a winter’s darkness and a wind that smelled rainy. Kåre could smell it as he dug through yellow sand, naked, with a dulled shovel. The shovel had struck the many mocking faces of rock shifting below ground, near his house. Denied action to upturn earth, it took pride in whatever it could turn up. Sand, was much more uniform, his shovel soon found out; it could hold kilograms on its open tongue without much effort. So, Kåre responded easily to the sand, energized by its uniform weight throughout, until he flipped the sand behind either foot’s face. The hole had to be deep enough, approximately 1.85 meters, if he wanted to stand in it. Maybe that would take too long to dig though.  

“What if she were here? Could she help?” He had never taken time to physically represent his vision, though someone always accompanied him in it. Was it Lina, the interviewer who had flown back to her perch by that time? What did it matter?  

When the hole was dug he gathered important symbols from his environment, some pine needles (pine trees stood ready to invade the beach), quartz and driftwood, and threw them carelessly into the hole. He kicked whatever ingredients failed to reach the bottom, “Ignorant.”  

In the hole, he looked up. A circling mountain of soft sand surrounded the hole’s edge. “Shovel,” and he climbed out of the tiny pit, burying his ingredients under sand that desired rest. In his hands and in the pit, he scraped and pulled the sand towards him only until an arm, neck and head were free. “My vision ends. I can’t go under without another.” 

So, he looked around. He had dug a hole on an inlet of sand, a crooked finger off the main beach. The pines grew up the edge of the forest, he could see a small wall of dirt to the right of the inlet, beginning as sand, becoming a three-dimensional surface where roots found hold, black and brown worms frozen in place, desperately keeping the last realm of dirt from collapsing onto an ocean of sand below. 

And a boy, Oliver, was inspecting the small cliff face of roots, his face disgusted from reaching a pale arm behind a mass of tree roots. Kåre could see this, and he also saw broken sacs of insect eggs in Oliver’s hands a moment following, before they were thrust into the sand. Oliver’s face was relieved, as if he had just thrust burning hands into ice. He saw Kåre. He bounded over, like a dog at first, then more human the closer he got. 

“Why are you in the sand?” He asked. 

“I’m looking for something.” Kåre responded. 

“Do you think you’ll find it soon, dark clouds are coming this way.” 

“That’s just what I’m waiting for. Before they come though, I need some help.” 

“Oh, and you’re asking me? Why should I help a buried person?” 

“Maybe you shouldn’t. I could tell you a story from my homeland if you help though.” 

“That’s not your homeland, there? He points at Kåre and the ground nearby with a stick in hand. 

“No, kid. I’ll tell you a funny story about Thor. You know Thor and his hammer, and the Vikings, yes?” 

“Ah, yeah!” And he ran up to a tree swinging his stick like a sword, breaking it. He came back saying, “But I can find out any story I want to by myself. I don’t think you’re a funny person.” 

“This story you couldn’t read in English. It’s in the ancient language of the Vikings, but I could bring it into your words, if you help.” 

Oliver planted pinecones around Kåre’s head. Dry sand flowed into the buried layers of the cones. “Ok.” 

Kåre got his open arm under the sand and told Oliver to fetch the nearby bucket, fill it with wet sand, and build a circular wall around his open head and open neck. “Before you complete the wall, place those three bars in the wall, make it look like a prison window from above you.” 

“Good, you can leave now, if you wish to.” Kåre said upon its completion. 

“But the rain is coming soon, don’t you smell it?” 

“That’s what I’m waiting for kid. I’ll be watered by the rain. Maybe I’ll become a troll. Maybe I’m one already. You can’t see me from over there.” 

Oliver walked over and looked down on Kåre, whose face was hidden in three cut shadows. “Hey, weren’t you going to tell me a story? 

So, Kåre told him of the story how Thor dressed as a wedding maiden to retrieve Mjolnir from the giant, thinking Thor was his desired Freya. Oliver laughed at the image of Thor eating a whole ox and drinking barrels of mead while in a wedding outfit. 

“A god always gets what he wants, Oliver.” 

“Will you get what you want, Kåre?” 

“I don’t know. The lightning and thunder may tell me, the rain as it fills my thin chamber may tell me, or nothing will tell me. All I can do is act out the faintest image of my dreams, which are so close to nothing.” 

Oliver was gone. The rain was soaking the sand Kåre was in. His head prison was full enough, he kept his face towards the dripping sky, his black hair was disembodied around him. The wet sand was making a mold of him below. “But, I am not nothing.” He whispered across the water in his prison, and struggled upward. 

***** 

It was winter. Kåre stood beneath Devil’s Island, in one of its many caves, standing atop ice, underneath a lake that was almost unceasingly cold. He brought the side of his head down to the ice, listening for a heart pulse. He thought he could hear slight cracks minutely breaking the monstrous body of ice. No, it was too strong on the surface. Whatever was below the surface would not see a clear sun for months. If only it could be longer.  

Stalactites of ice formed a hanging pipe organ and stalwart stalagmites cut through wind. Kåre felt the wolf prowling in him, it ran out him dragging a tongue across the cave’s walls and didn’t stop until lines of black painted the cave in chaos. He screeched to the roof and retched a flurry of gurgles onto the floor, but no ice melted for him because he was no demon. With every growl, scream, screech, howl, gurgle and yell he got closer though. Closer still to a lack of vision, closer still to isolation, closer still to a singular entity. Every new sound he could produce was a transformation, jarring and ragged. He became an unknown animal in every noise. He thought they could disharmoniously jolt the dual entity of heart and mind first, then finally dislodge it in one great fall towards nowhere, falling from humanity. He could collapse into non-humanity, so he felt and thought.  

Not only did he want to fall from a tree and rot, he wanted to become that rotting process, a universal devourer. So, he sang as if to sneak up on death itself, to take its role. 

An eagle lighted off a tree hanging dangerously on the cave wall outside. Its force cast a branch towards the cave entrance, and startled a silent Kåre. Whispering the words of a fellow artist, he said, “I will exercise my right to be hateful,” which he added onto, “Until I get what I want.” He soon fell asleep on the ice, and found comfort from the surface. There was nothing below.