Kill Your Darlings (and demolish a cathedral)

Part One  

The year 2020 was a year that seemed like something out of a sci-fi dime store novel to me in a variety of ways but the specific event I am going to highlight today is one so bizarre you will think you're reading something from the depths of my imagination. However, keep it in mind that truth is stranger than fiction. It was Anthony Bourdain who I heard advise to kill your darlings at one time and though I know he didn't coin the phrase, hearing that phrase coming from someone like him piqued my curiosity and it is advice I have taken to heart because if he said it, one of the most well-travelled, cosmopolitan men in the world at that time, I knew he meant it. Kill your darlings. So what does it mean? Well, it is the equivalent, in some ways, to the old adage "never meet your heroes" and I can attest to the deflated balloon effect it creates when you do become a little too well-acquainted with people you formerly idolized. Case in point? I used to practically worship the ground Anthony Kiedis of the Red Hot Chili Peppers walked on until I read his autobiography titled Scar Tissue. My level of awe diminished after I read it and I had to accept my idol was just a man. Not only is he just a man, but he is a fallible man and though I am happy to get a glimpse of his humanity, I never felt the same about him again after reading his book. Oh well. 

Music is an extremely important part of my life and has been since I can remember. My father was killed in a very tragic accident when I was approximately 19 or 20 months old and I carried a lot of grief inside of my young body from a very early age. I would start to cry out of nowhere and the only thing my mom could do to get me to calm down was to wind a music box and set it on my chest. The music eased the ache inside of me which I could not explain. I cried a lot, for hours, sometimes it seemed like days, when I was young. Music was the balm that healed my hurting heart and it ached so heavily for my father. So, as I got older, music was my lifeline. For my 6th birthday, my mother bought me my first walkman and I listened to gospel singer Jimmy Swaggart on cassette tapes on the school bus every morning–while the batteries lasted, of course. Naturally, my tastes evolved over the years and I eventually stumbled upon some of the greats such as Leonard Cohen, Rage Against the Machine, Tom Morello and the Nightwatchman, Jack White, Guns n' Roses, NIN, Madonna, The Pixies, Flogging Molly and so on and so on and so on. I never adhered to a specific genre, I sort of chose my music out of a sense of attraction. I just felt drawn to certain things and one way or another, these artists found their way into my catalogue of favourites and it was a very deep and powerful source of identity and comfort for me over the course of my life. The reason this information is integral to the overall telling of this story is because I need you to consider the fact that I immersed myself in music almost round the clock, since I was a child. I did this to cope with the pain of everyday life. Growing up in a household mired in grief is not a pleasant experience. I spent my formative years absorbing a lot of lonely days as they were passed by my mother, so worried about her I would become ill. My sisters never seemed happy and I couldn't make sense of what I was supposed to do about any of it. My escape was music. Music would allow me to escape the harshness of the environment around me and allow me to forget my troubles and dance the blues away. I used music to create a whole other world where I could safely go to escape the grief of my father's death and in so doing, managed to feel closer to him somehow. 

I didn't realize what the ramifications would be of this kind of coping style, but as an artist, I look back and see what was happening is I was learning to keep one eye to the sky and one to the ground, so as to speak. I could sense energies and hear thoughts and sense things on the winds and I learned to hone those skills during an extended period of time where I lived in a very isolated location in the woods. Nature and the wind became a companion to me more than human beings and so, between the world of music, the solitude of the forest, and the ability to paint, I took off inside my mind and perhaps even my soul, time and time again. If you believe in metaphysical things, then it won't be a stretch of the imagination to understand that I opened up the channels between myself and the spiritual realm and the information that travelled from the ether to my mind was unending. Maynard James Keenan of Tool talks about this in his documentary about his wine business, in fact, referring to himself as a portal. I also see myself as some sort of portal and I receive information and ideas sort of like a download. Serj Tankian of System of a Down also refers to experiences like this, so I know I am not the only one. 

Over time, I started to become a totally different person after living in the woods for so long and I always had my heart and mind and ears open, listening. Listening for what? Listening for whatever it is and was that my heart wanted me to hear. I felt more and more connected to the spiritual realm and even as I write this I can look back on all those years and see I am connected to the spiritual realm in a very tangible way. When a child has to consider death and what it means in tandem with the experience of what it means to be alive, an unhindered imagination can come up with some very interesting conclusions. That is a story for another day, but the reason I flesh out this circumstance so fully is because I want you to have a solid understanding of the fact that I had created an entire world within my mind filled with rooms that were designed via narratives within the songs I love. If you've ever read the story of Hannibal Lectar, you may recall the part of the story that reveals how he coped with the effects of the horrors he faced during the war. Soldiers cannibalized his baby sister and it destroyed his ability to deal with life, of course. In order to cope, Hannibal went inside his imagination and designed a mansion's worth of rooms where he could visit, safely, where no man could destroy. My situation was not quite as extreme as his, but it shares a similar premise. I created worlds using songs and the stories they tell, to build some form of shelter inside my mind where I could escape when everyday life got to be too much for me to bear. Music was the framework that upheld my identity as a person. It was my own private little world and I cherished it beyond measure. 

By the time 2020 rolled around, I had established a studio practice which, out of necessity, allowed me to spend copious amounts of time alone, painting. While painting, I would throw on my headphones and dance and sing and have a wonderful session. I had the best time and created a lot of work in that timeframe as well, which sold often and helped me to generate a decent little income to help support my family. In order to enjoy this little world I had created, privacy was the key. Privacy was the main ingredient that fuelled my confidence and allowed me to swim the depths of my imagination while I painted. I never painted without listening to music and as I write this, its still true today.  

I posted a lot of my work on line. Facebook and Instagram, specifically. I enjoyed seeing what other artists were doing and always kept tabs on my favourite bands as well. In 2018, or thereabouts, I stumbled upon a band called Zeal and Ardor and immediately, it grabbed my attention. After doing a fair amount of research, I realized quickly that I am not the only one who was gripped my their unconventional sound and I became an immediate fan, especially because I saw a variety of parallels in the band's overall style and themes and I dove in, head first. They became my new favourite band, which is what most people say about this band. If fans like it, they generally love it. What intrigued me the most was the themes regarding slavery and the concept of turning the narrative upside down in regards to slaves turning to  Satan instead of Jesus. This concept represented an opportunity to delve into some very serious queries regarding the benefits versus the pitfalls for Black American Slaves in their quest for freedom. The brains behind the concept belong to Manuel Gagneux of Basel, Switzerland, who also lived in the United States for a while. 

I don't know a lot about Switzerland but I do know that it seems like people who live there are sort of stuck in the past in terms of their ideals and expectations while being inured to the everyday struggles of people who do NOT live in Switzerland. Wealth and affluence are just a part of everyday life, from what I have observed, and artists are supported well there. Where I live, this is not always the case. Government grants are doled out sparingly and are known to be typically hard to obtain. As for me, I never got too far with my grant applications and whatever progress I made as an artist to date? I've made it on my own steam. I say these things to give a little foundation to the cultural clash I experienced in dealing with men from Switzerland, which is not something I ever thought I would be asked to do. But here is how it started. 

Part Two

In order to sell my paintings, I posted them quite often on my social media. This is how I made most of my sales. I often used songs to enhance the posts and I definitely sought out the music of Zeal and Ardor after I became hooked on their music. I think I tagged them a few times as well and one fine day, the band's guitarist Tiziano Volante liked one of my posts. It was a watercolour and ink painting of a cathedral that was in the process of being demolished. I documented the demolition through my artwork and it was a frenetic experience to say the least. I could feel the disturbance on the spiritual realms as they tore this beloved building to shreds, bit by bit. It seemed like such a violation, given the care and detail that went in to constructing a building like that. The time and care to carve the stones, the gothic elements, the old iron hinges and so on all represented work of men and women in years gone by who built this monolith in reverence to a higher power. Seeing it pulled apart like a great big whale beached on a shore somewhere was something that caused me to feel a lot of things. I was shocked at how irreverent the process was and it left a bitter taste in my mouth. This gorgeous cathedral was being taken down so modern apartments could go up in its place. The commentary is endless but that's not what this post is about. Suffice it to say I was overjoyed when I noticed that Volante liked my post on Instagram because I felt so excited about connecting with people across the globe, especially musicians I admired so well. I remember I mentioned it on my YouTube channel (now defunct) and I talked to my family about it, over the moon excited to make connections like this. I felt like I was on a roll. Then? All hell broke loose in my life. 

I started interacting with this band via their instagram stories with every ounce of innocence one might attribute to a lamb being lead to their slaughter. I trusted people. I believed in altruism. I worshipped musicians and revered fellow painters. I felt so alive and so connected on the one hand, but was also in quite a lot of distress as my personal life was unravelling at such a rapid rate, I couldn't begin to sort out what to do or how to fix it. My (ex) husband was acting weird. My kids stopped speaking to me. Then the pandemic hit Canada. Everything shut down. Aside from the joy I derived from my art practice, my whole life was falling apart. I couldn't keep myself focused and I ended up having to drop out of university, which added a whole other level of stress I don't have words to describe, and suddenly it felt like I was trapped in a vice and any minute now, someone somewhere was going to turn the knob and crush me completely. I felt such despair. Everything was falling apart but no one else seemed to notice it but me. I started to dive further inside my mind and then something quite bizarre happened to me. I started to notice codes and rhythms in the music I loved and I could discern sounds and story lines that seemed to convey a very personal message to me. I tried so hard to explain this to my family as the events around me unfolded but they rejected it all and basically treated me like I was just flaking out and they were totally fed up with me. I had no idea I was treading on such thin ice with them all, but apparently I was. My youngest kid chalked it up to me having some sort of manic episode in conjunction with the series of paintings I was doing about the cathedral, but for me, it was so much more than that. I could hear things. Feel things. Sense things. It seemed like imminent danger was closing in all around me. Many things happened in that timeframe and I would love to explain them all, but I don't want to create a meandering narrative overly full of information. This is a story of how I the advice of the late and beloved Anthony Bourdain seemed to reach through time and space to give me a sense of direction at this very difficult juncture in my life, so suffice it to say, my life erupted into total anarchy, and I received the shock of my life in the interim. The next part I am going to tell you about will be something you might find hard to believe but trust me when I say I know what I am talking about. I have a background in journalism and a nearly completed degree in English, which involves writing A LOT essays from peer reviewed research and I know how to get the information I need when I need it.  I've compiled months and months worth of information to form a base for these claims I am making. I wish more than anything I didn't have to write this, as a matter of fact, but I am reeling from a sense of utter injustice and if I do not tell this story in the way in which I perceive it to have happened, I will not be able to forgive myself. The time has come to get this off my chest or else I will be the one to suffer the most and I am not going to allow myself to suffer any longer. 

As I mentioned, I followed the band Zeal and Ardor and was compelled by its ideas and concepts, which Gagneux says is all just an act, by the way. In this "act" he sings songs to summon demons while leaving out bits and pieces of the entire chant just in case. He's good at writing snappy tunes and so it doesn't take long before he has the entire audience singing along to these chants, but apparently feels it is totally harmless because there are pieces of the entire chant missing. I know this because he admits it on an interview he once gave. If I can find it amongst the dozens he's given, I will link it to this blog post (stay tuned for that). He also incorporates the ideals behind "Negro spirituals" in his music but instead of giving the glory to God (and or Jesus) he uses the premise to give glory to Satan. He takes great pride in this, in fact, which is what I found alarming about his music from the get-go. I am no saint, but being raised in a Christian family, lead by the family Matriarch, my grandmother, who was known for her steadfast faith, I was troubled by the carelessness by which Gagneux disseminates this sort of stuff, to crowds that are either totally unsuspecting, or completely oblivious to the effects it has on them in a spiritual sense. I was personally abhorred by his concepts, but also willing to give it a chance because, as luck would have it, I lived for an extended period of time in a house that was very likely part of the Underground Railroad. I even painted it purple in homage to that fact long before I became aware of Gagneux's work, which includes an album cover of the same shade of purple. This coincidence represented one of many that I observed in his music and I was highly intrigued. Who was this guy? Where did he come from? And why do we have so much in common, including our appearance (some say)? Well, one fine day (or maybe not so fine, I guess) I realized Gagneux was equally as intrigued by me as I was by him. What happened to bring me to that conclusion? Well, over the course of many weeks, I noticed Gagneux being particularly responsive to the posts I made on Instagram, specifically. I found it somewhat amusing while also holding it all at arm's length because I was first of all a married woman and secondly, I lived in such a sheltered little world, I was no where near capable of believing I was capable of forming a tangible connection to anyone outside my little bubble, aside from a generalized and distant admiration. However, one piece of information represented a clue, and then another clue and another until I came to one very shocking and unbelievable conclusion; Gagneux had hacked my cellphone. I am sure you will not believe me but let me remind you I've been keeping a very detailed record of the entire exchange I can assure you I am right about this. I wish to God I was wrong, as a matter of fact, but I am not wrong. My cellphone had been acting up, the camera kept turning on and off and stuff like that. I had my cellphone with me all the time, too. In the bathroom, in the shower, in my bedroom, and in my art studio. I realized Gagnuex had hacked it due to the exchanges we made on Instagram and clue after clue pointed to one conclusion. The shock of it nearly gave me a heart attack and that is no exaggeration. I've never felt such fear or such dread in my entire life. Due to the nature of the workings of my inner imagination and the ways in which I structured my daily life, what this translated to mean is that Gagneux had infiltrated my secret place, he was a part of my inner world, had been privy to me in the privacy of my studio and other aforementioned locales. All of a sudden, the world I had so carefully built was now compromised and there was a stranger lurking about and I didn't know what to do, but my heart started to ache and then, over the course of a series of events, my heart totally shattered. I felt violated beyond comprehension. 

At first, I tried to accept this and nurture the more romantic overtones of the event itself. I could see that he knew I was struggling based on posts I had made on my social media as well as my YouTube channel and I guess this was his way of reaching out to help me, but it was probably the worst thing he could have possibly done to someone like me. He not only violated my privacy, he destroyed the world I had built inside my mind and suddenly I had nowhere to go to feel safe and I very much needed to feel safe. I felt like I was losing my mind and it was the most terrifying thing I have ever experienced, made all the worse because my core family abandon me in the process, assuming I was making it all up no matter what I said or did to prove otherwise. 

However, I wanted to find understanding and compassion within this scenario as I was smart enough to know that he was putting himself on the line by compromising my privacy in such a way. I feel he truly wanted to help me, in the beginning. But things took a dark turn and my heart could not sustain the sense of compassion I was willing it to subscribe to, when in reality, it felt like repeat of an event that happened to me when I was 18 years old and sexually assaulted by an oblivious, ego-centric ex-boyfriend. The sense of violation was the same and all I could think of was the visceral disappointment I felt that someone I admired so deeply would do something so wrong to someone like me. I felt so small and so insignificant in the grand scheme of things, the shock of knowing this man, a total stranger to me, suddenly knew all about me and my personal life, including what I sound like when I go to the bathroom (I caution you to be aware of potential privacy violations, if you take your cellphone into the bathroom, by the way). I could not handle this. I had put Gagneux on such a pedestal and had been compiling all kinds of information to share with him in the off-chance I ever got to meet him someday, to show him where he is wrong when he sings songs that suggest God abandons people or that it is perfectly harmless to invite the devil into your life and so on. I was passionately opposed to his lyrics and his themes, but in a creative kind of way, one artist to another. When he made the decision to break into my world, it became a crime scene, a break and enter. There was no room for me to approach him on an academic level, which is what my intentions had been. Instead, he made me feel like an object, a thing, a shell with nothing on the inside to offer, due to lack of respect and lack of ethics. I was left totally vulnerable and tried my best to carry the weight of this somehow. I acted just as ridiculous on my social media as I could. I distanced myself from my family and dove into listening to music through as many hours in the day as I could because throughout all of this, I had keyed into a certain rhythm and pattern, as I mentioned before, and all I could think to do was to investigate as many songs as I could to see where it existed and what it could all possibly mean. Despite numerous attempts to explain all of this to my family, nobody seemed to be able to understand what I was going through at all. 

I believe Gagneux reached a point where he became fed up with me. This juncture occurred when I had announced I was going to move out and separate from my (ex) husband early in the summer of 2020, but then I got cold feet and decided not to. I had been married for 20 years and after a series of extremely volatile years at the end of the marriage, my self-confidence was at an all time low and my (ex) husband made it a regular habit to remind me I could not make it without him. I fell for that and decided to stay. Not too long after I made that decision, things amped up between Gagneux and myself, who continued to remain "on the line" so as to speak, even though I remember distinctly telling him to please stop what he was doing. I didn't need him to keep the connection going, I was awake and fully aware of my circumstances and was prepared to take the necessary steps to position myself to leave the marriage because it was definitely killing me. I knew that. But I asked him to stop what he was doing. I wanted to save myself, I didn't want to be saved by anyone else. I had gotten myself into the mess I was in and I wanted to find my way out of it on my own terms so I could prove to myself, if nobody else, that I damn well could take care of myself. So far, I have taken care of myself just fine, by the way. 

Gagneux refused to leave. He hung on in the background for reasons that do not make any sense to me at all. When I realized he had no intentions of leaving, I asked him for one simple thing. Just meet me face to face. He didn't accept my terms but went on to write a whole series of songs about this situation, which is as complex as it is bizarre. It was when he published the self-titled album that the conflict between us hit a fever pitch, but before then, he and his guitarist did their level best to bring me down, especially after I rejected a video they published which features an abusive mother and her daughter, which I found to be incredibly offensive and I still do. I publicly denounced that video and after that? The true colours of the boys from Zeal and Ardor started to shine through. These guys can't handle rejection on any level and instead of allowing me the benefit of an equal exchange, artist to artist, they turned devious and did a whole bunch of really stupid things to me including scamming me to prove they aren't scammers. Lying to me to prove they aren't liars, and so on and so on. It became an entire charade and my friends and family observed from a distance only to conclude it must not be the real Gagneux, but a catfishing type scenario. I was never catfished at all, but what I realized is most of my friends and family believed me to be stupid enough to fall for a catfishing scenario while also implying I wasn't "cool" enough (or whatever) to garner the attention from someone of Gagneux's caliber. Well, if everyone else found it to be unbelievable that he hacked my phone, imagine how I felt knowing it was a reality? 

But back to the self-titled album. What really created a volatile reaction in me was the songs within this album. By the time it was published, I was bouncing back from a burn-out episode from pushing myself way too hard as a student, cramming my brain with reams of information. Two of the topics I had been studying through the course of one semester pertained to astronomy and the aftermath of World War II. I had to come to terms with the vastness of space while also digesting statistics regarding the death toll of the holocaust and all the things that had to be repaired after the war, including economics, territorial boundaries, and the social policies in Europe. On top of that, I was studying Latin American literature and though I cannot recall the name of the book at the moment, there was one novel I had to read and there was a scene in it where soldiers cruelly separated a newborn baby from its mother and forced her to listen to her child's screams while it starved to death in a cell adjacent to her room and her mother's milk poured from her breasts while she could do nothing but listen. All these factors piled one on top of the other and served to fill me with a disdain for the human race like I had never felt before while being totally enraptured with the mystery of our planet, the atmosphere, the expanding universe, and black holes. As you may be able to comprehend, it is no wonder I had a meltdown. My brain pretty much flatlined on me and I became physically exhausted because my brain was so over-worked. We had to relocate while this burn out/meltdown peaked and my family chalked it up to me being lazy when I didn't have the physical strength to help move furniture. After that, my (ex) husband went on a rampage to let the whole world know I was crazy and as a consequence, he abandoned me completely. When it came to the phone hacking situation, on one particular night when I was breaking down, sobbing, crying harder than I've ever cried in my entire life, begging him to comfort me. He would not. I clearly recall my (ex) husband telling me to stick with it to see where it is going to go and by it I mean this channel of communication that had opened up between Gagneux and myself. I was hoping he would take the phone away from me and protect me from whatever threat I felt I was in, but he didn't do that. He basically threw me to the proverbial wolves and I knew I was all alone in dealing with all that was happening to me and I still feel very much alone. 

Part 3

So why am I telling this story now? Why didn't I go to the police? I thought about going to the police over and over again, but there were many factors at play that made me decide against it. Just as I don't wish any harm to befall the guy who raped me when I was 18 due largely to the fact that he has a wife and family now and I would not want his children to suffer, nor his wife, for that matter, I didn't report it. I don't have the energy to deal with the fallout. I don't want my life to be ensnared in a litany of legal battles and I am someone who generally tries to see the good in others because sometimes guys are blind to themselves let alone how they make others feel and I take that into account when I consider what is just and what is not. At the core of my being, I just don't want to hurt anyone, even if they are hurting me. But what caused me to react so viscerally to the music Gagneux released in the interim of our shoddily put-together and so-called collaboration is the fact that he used material that stems from a composer who identified as a Nazi and through this gift of musical sensitivity I seem to have, I could hear something in this album that translated as a threat. I couldn't figure out what it was for the longest time but every time I tried to listen to this album, to give Gagneux the benefit of the doubt, all I could hear was something I classify as a Nazi death march. Whether this is accurate or not, in terms of the details of the songs themselves, I could not say for sure, but I can say that every time I listened to it, all I could see in my mind's eye was the marching of a Nazi soldiers. It filled me with rage to the point where I was seeing red, the kind of thing you only hear about... well, it's a real thing. When you become angry to the level in which I was, all you can see is red. I tried so hard to overcome this anger and frustration but it felt like such a betrayal. Gagneux was apparently under pressure to produce something on his end and he was tired of waiting for me to get my feet under me on my end, I guess, so he went ahead and wrote this album. Innocently, relatively speaking, all of this worked to wake a beast within me that became so angry I swear I could have gladly ripped his head off and puked right down his throat at times. In the realms of the spirit world, I viewed this music to be stirring things that should otherwise remain dead and in view of the current global affairs, where the goings on in the United States are being compared to the activities of the Nazi regime, who is to say I wasn't right to be disturbed by Gagneux's decision to so carelessly give voice to music created with the intentions of whatever is in the heart of a composer who identifies as a Nazi. This interview HERE (click the link) backs up my claims regarding incorporating Nazi material in this album, if you don't want to take my word for it. 

All of this only enhanced my frustration with this band. Between the Satanic chants, the notion that the devil is a benevolent being ready to take good care of you, and so on, made me feel deep and painful dissapointment. I see it all as a lost opportunity. I had high hopes that the connection we fostered, ill-gotten or not, could lead to something truly profound and groundbreaking but I assume it was largely in part due to the pressure Gagneux must have felt to produce something for his band in conjunction with the responsibility he has towards his colleagues, which pushed this ill-fated collaboration into the ditch, where it will likely remain forevermore. I can't respect blatant carelessness in the realms of spirituality, but I also realize 95 percent of the world's population doesn't function on that sort of level so they don't even see the spectrum of trouble that is created from music like this. It doesn't really matter because we all have choice and we will be beholden to them, for good or for bad, but what really upsets me is how this powerful mechanism for change that a band like Zeal and Ardor could be, only chugs away like a greased up chain on a bicycle. It moves, it goes around, but it is only going to ever get you so far. Sadly, the shake-up that their newest album is supposed to represent only muddies the waters for me because I know its origins, I know what it is all about, and I know Gagneux is falsely representing it, too. This varied rainbow of themes could be beautiful, I suppose, except that its not. It is not beautiful to me because the themes and their origins are all rather ugly in tone and intention and therefore, I take no pride in association, forced or otherwise. Basically, I think it sucks that the noise machine that is Zeal and Ardor only ever makes a lot of dark noise. Noise. Noise. Noise. But what is this noise actually saying? Even Gagneux downplays the entire project under what seems like a sort of humility that reveals a very unhappy man underneath, in my opinion, but who cares about how Gagneux feels, right? I mean, its entertaining, right? It is, but have you ever asked yourself why? No, you probably didn't. You're too busy being wrapped up in the confusion of it all. I am not someone who enjoys a lot of confusion, personally. 

Part 4

I am a fight or flight kind of woman and I will fight you, if I have to, but I would prefer not to. I would rather take flight, which I do quite often. I head back to the realms of sound, as I call it these days, to sort out where I need to go in my life. My path appears before me. I keep an intense record of where I have been in life, for years, because it helps me know myself. I see that I have a gift of seeing, or perhaps feeling my way into the future. I have taken great pains to come to terms with this gift andI have tried to sort out a way to put it to beneficial use. So far, the ways in which I enjoy this gift usually emerge when I am painting and painting is still a very private pursuit. I can't explain what happens to me when I enter into my own little world, but I start to hear things and see things that are so vivid to me, I assumed it would be easy to get others to see them too, but I was wrong about that. It was my mother who told me a prophet is never accepted in their own country, metaphorically speaking. In other words, gifts of a spiritual nature are a not knowable to those around you, unless it is also meant for them to see it. I sort of hoped Gagneux shared my vision but as time went on, I realized he did not. In a desperate attempt to convey the things I saw within the "realms of sound" I created a music project to communicate more effectively, or so I hoped. But, the great cultural divide that exists between the Swiss mentality and my own lead those on the other side of the ocean to come to some pretty lame conclusions. They assumed I was making fun of them because my music project came together so quickly. What they don't know about me is that I move fast, I always have. And when all other excuses failed, they assumed I used Artificial Intelligence to create my music project, which I absolutely did not. I asked them to illustrate what prompts I could use to create something similar to the songs as they exist within my music project (The Accihte Music Project which is available on Spotify if you're curious), but to no avail. They could not defend their stance, and rather became more and more defensive and absurdly assumptive. 

Since 2020 my social media output has been enormous. What people don't realize is that I use instagram as a means to file away the ideas that come to me as well as moments I feel compelled to capture and document. The primary reason for this is to keep track of where I've been and where I am going, as I stated before, and the best part is the fact that it is free and very user friendly. I don't use Instagram to gain a following, I use it to create a file system. After a whole lot of false claims that I was using my social media as a means to mock Gagneux, I got extremely frustrated and made a point to create conflict at times, I will admit that. But you should also know, this was after numerous attempts to ask him to just ignore my social media because sometimes what I post is totally irrelevant to anyone but me. We can all read into things, can't we? Of course we can. But when I point-blank denied his assumptions and he stalks and observes and concludes (erroneously) anyway, whose fault is it? It is not mine. 

The things that have happened to me since the initial rejection of the video featuring the abusive mother are off-the-charts ridiculous and perhaps Gagneux and Volante are NOT behind ALL of them, but they are definitely behind MOST of them and these strange occurrences come in the form of fraudulent checks being sent directly to my home address, a tabloid page designed to feature a lot of information about my family in a very mocking sort of way, which was extremely hurtful. One of the things they mocked was my divorce, likening it to the same sort of drama that surrounded Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie. It could be funny except it mocked absolutely everything in my life I cared about including my marriage, my children, my name, and even one of my favourite foods (pizza) and last but not least, personal photos to make me look like a slut, to be completely frank, which was laughable for obvious reasons. More than that, when Gagneux overhead me tell my mother that my favourite thing about him is his hair, he proceeded to shave his head bald. Sadly, I never noticed this particular gesture until I saw him display a Chelsea Wolfe album cover featuring a naked women with her legs spread open with questionable fluids pouring from her vagina. I mentioned to Gagneux that it is suggestive of an abortion and not exactly an appropriate choice in an attempt to shame me, for example. But he just went silent. I didn't see this video until 8 months after it was published, mind you, because I was very busy trying to heal from the GRIEF of my divorce and also, keep a roof over my head, but who has time for these trivialities when a rockstar wants attention? If you want to see this interview, it is available HERE . 

Part 5

I have never been to Switzerland but I have observed through personal interactions with these folks that they definitely don't think like a Canadian and whether you believe it or not, there is most certainly a difference. My world is one of lack in terms of an abundance of financial stability, but one of an abundance of freedom in almost all its forms. Our cultural clash has become evident in a variety of ways and straight out of the gate, Gagneux seemed to be finding fault with me over every single thing I did so, being a proper Canadian, I simply amped up my offensiveness to about 1000 parts per million and behaved just as obnoxiously as I knew how because I was getting angry. My attempts to connect with him were always overshadowed by a bunch of men acting like dickheads, to put it succinctly and I told Gagneux that, whatever his motives were, I did not have the luxury to subscribe to any form of romantic intentions. I was a married woman, let me remind you, when this all started. My marriage was crumbling before my eyes and I couldn't hold on to a thing. My entire life was passing through my fingers like sand and there is no describing the panic I felt to suddenly have this man who sings about Satan infiltrate my private life. I personally view Satan as bad. I don't have anything good to say about that topic and I realize Satanism has some positive philosophies within it, nevertheless, my Grandmother raised me to stay away from that stuff and that's just the way it is. I won't get into the details, but flirting with the idea of Satanism is possibly what provoked this mess I am in now, truth be told. That is also another story for another day. I will say this, however. Things took on a very sexual tone when Gagneux and I first connected but things turned very dark for me on that level right around the time I got my own apartment in 2021. He wanted things to get personal, if you know what I mean, and I felt coerced into that aspect of things but was not ready. I was at such a low point, I almost viewed my personal life as a sacrifice somehow. I lost everything, what difference did it make now if I showed this guy what he wanted to see. I hated giving myself away like that, but I did it anyway. I hated it because I was married in my mind and my heart and though my marriage all but imploded, the innocence of being a faithful wife was gone and it made me feel so sad and so dirty and so very very lost. How did all this happen? How? And then I remembered how and I would become completely incensed with rage. I felt I had been set up for failure again and again and again within a dynamic that was so unfair to me, it was unbelievable. I started to resent these people. 

In the early days, I was gifted a book after a Zoom meeting that was supposed to be some sort of ice-breaker, I guess. I don't to this moment know exactly what kind of effect I had on Gagneux, but apparently it was intense and he had several people willing to bridge the gap and help us to connect, meanwhile also protecting his identity because of course, someone with as much talent as he has is not subject to the regular laws of the land that you and I are and I have discovered the music industry is willing to look the other way at all kinds of bad behaviour for the sake of the great cash cow's good. As disappointing as that is, the circumstances I found myself in highlight that fact to a stunning degree. Well, this initial Zoom meeting ended in disaster because I got drunk, purposely acted like a fool and felt no small amount of embarrassment because my (ex) husband was in the nearby room and I knew that Gagneux was trying to put some sort of move on me, even though he knew I was married. Even though he knew I was still very much intimately involved with my (ex) husband. It's like wanting to be a good and faithful wife was just a big fat joke to those on the outside looking in. It was humiliating and I acted as ridiculous as I could, hoping to deflect their attention. I was not ready for any of that stuff at all and they didn't seem to care. They laughed and thought it was humorous when I got drunk and gave them the finger, and all kinds of stupid things in that initial meeting, but I was hoping they would deem me to be unfit for the task of all this attention and kindly guide Gagneux away from the idea. That never happened. Ironically, the only times I have ever been able to effectively repel Gagneux are the exact moments I attempted to befriend him. Without fail, every single positive attempt I made towards him, he or someone in his corner, misinterpreted my intentions and as a consequence, became highly insulted. But when I acted like a fool, they seemed to lap it up. This dynamic has warped my ability to interact with them effectively at all and over time, I got so fed up with the whole thing, the only expressions I could muster were ones of anger and aggression. I've never felt so insulted or pissed off at people I have never met face to face before, but these folks from Switzerland have proven to be the equivalent to dealing blocks of cement. Not a whole lot is getting in or out, they just throw their weight around and pretend they aren't hurting anyone in the process but the fact is, they are hurting me and have hurt me over and over again. 

When things were good between Gagneux and I, I very naively wrote a post on my Facebook page about how things were getting serious and it is one thing I deeply regret doing. He never told me what the rules are, but always seemed pissed off at me because I wasn't proactively claiming the legitimacy of the connection we were building, so I wrote a post about how wedding bells would soon be ringing. It was over the top and had a touch of sarcasm to it, but it was stupid decision which embarrassed us both, in the end. In my naivety, however, I tried to do and say the right things, but it was all way too heavy for me to carry and Gagneux proved to be so overly sensitive and narrow in his world view, our communications devolved to a barrage of angry and insulting texts until finally, he managed to cause me to conjur up some of the worst bunch of garbage a person could possibly send in a text and if I had a dollar for every time I used the C word, I would have quite a few dollars. 

It is easy to see this situation was bringing out the worst in me. I asked him to just stop. To just forget everything and let me get on with my life after a while but he then went on to write and publish yet another album with themes remarkably close to ones we discussed in private texts. He even went so far as to use my texts verbatim in the lyrics of his songs. I know there are likely some of you willing to chalk ALL of this up to co-incidence, to me being a "crazy fan" and so on, but if you think that? You're wrong. I am not a crazy fan. I am the victim in all of this, grasping at straws. 

The reason I am writing this today is because I very recently saw a photo of Gagneux and a group of people he toured with. Most of the people in the photo are women and many of them are smiling at him and he's smiling back as if to suggest all is well with the world. That's the part that hurts the most. All is not well with the world because what he and Volante did to me was wrong. Using my life as material for his music, without my permission? Wrong. Sending me harassing texts and placing demands on me and making false accusations against me behind closed doors? Wrong. It's wrong. Mocking my family, including my father's death (which they did) was wrong. Sending a tour bus to my church without warning was wrong (which they did) and calling me up and crying on the phone and falsifying their identity is wrong (which they did). I don't have the interview on hand at the moment, but they even admit they are breaking the law, by the way. If they were worth their salt, they would at least tell their fans HOW and WHY they are breaking the law. As it stands, they dismiss everything, including the validity of their own music and their own success, representing what I would call a false sense of humility. In my experience, there is nothing humble about this band. I know for a fact that Gagneux continuously lies to the media, thereby insulting the intelligence and integrity of those who interview him, not to mention his fans. 

I marvel at all of this and I guess if my way of navigating this situation is as palatable to these Swiss musicians as chewing on barbed wire? Well, that seems more like a you problem than a me problem. I never asked for any of this. I asked for Gagneux to meet me face to face or stop spying on me. He refused to do either of those things and I can see now why he continues to make music that may possibly be condemning souls to hell, believe it or not. He cares about his fans as much as he cares about me. He cares about his colleagues as much as he cares about me. He's putting the whole lot of us in harm's way through intentional acts of spiritual vulgarity and recklessness, but he doesn't care about that. He cares about one thing: seeing his band's name on a marquis, whatever it takes to get it there.

As for me, I am learning to use my gifts and I can clearly see into the spirit realm at times. I have predicted world events and documented said predictions thoroughly over the course of the last five years and  I have made one very specific conclusion and it is this: listening to Zeal and Ardor invites inherent risk on a spiritual level. The ongoing arrogance of the blasphemy this band is founded upon most assuredly has a price tag of its own that will ring out for all eternity. There are so many many things Gagneux could do and say with all that talent, but he chooses to perform what he calls an act–and act that encourages fans to denounce and blaspheme God while singing praise to Satan. It's great entertainment but why would anyone in their right mind take that risk where there are so many other things that a person could sing about that would make the world a better place? I just don't get it. I could be wrong, and that is great if I am. But, what if I am right? What if? I think Zeal and Ardor is careless of everything and everyone in its path and hides it well under a plastic expression of false benevolence. My personal experience with two of its members has only served to solidify my views. It's a dangerous cocktail but all I see are smiles. Smiling crew, smiling band, smiling Gagneux. It's all just a big joke, after all, and everything is there for the taking. Your soul, your time, your trust, your money, and your entire life, in my case. Nothing is off limits including bastardizing Billie Holiday's Strange Fruit, or the grief I was experiencing in 2020 onward. It's all there for the taking and Gagneux is the kleptomaniac of music if he is anything at all and he has made my life extremely difficult in the last five years because he saw something in me he could use to turn a buck. He claims its all for me. but I never asked him for anything other than to meet me or leave me alone. As stated, he refuses to do either of those things. 

I am glad to see everyone in the tour photos smiling. But I wonder what in the hell everyone is smiling about. I do not see anything to be proud of here. I see a whole bunch of people steeped in spiritual ignorance, unaware of the damage they are doing in realms they cannot see, but I can and it is not a pretty sight. 

Part 6 

If you are somehow assuming I am hoping to gain from writing this blog post, you are wrong. I've already lost more due to this forced connection than I will ever gain. My reputation with my family and community, my ability to trust, and my ability to navigate my daily life without fear of backlash from Gagneux and Volante has been a source of concern since all of this began and its sort of like the foundations of my life crumbled as soon as he walked through the door, but sadly, he didn't so much walk through the door as sneak in through the bathroom window. 

Furthermore, he's tried to dictate my reactions to all of this and when I didn't ask him how high as he demanded I jump, I got thrown under the proverbial bus time and time again. I've been insulted time and time again, verbally attacked and my social media accounts have all been hacked at least once. I don't know which one did it but they made an account on Facebook using my first, middle and last name, suggesting I was available for some form of sexual activity out of revenge and jealousy born from communication breakdowns. Neither of them are honest about who they are or what they want when the contact me and more often than not, contact me in aggression. I've had to shut down my professional Facebook page because of content that was posted on it, I've had to shut down instagram accounts and YouTube channels and more recently, I've shut down my music project, for the most part, to avoid their vengeful behaviour. They've even gone so far as to attack friends of mine who were doing a fundraiser for a local school out of jealousy. They've gotten away with all of these things and no matter how awful I try to be to them or what I say, they come back around and cannot seem to fathom that I am simply not interested in the charades they play nor how they have treated me like I am some form of subhuman because I don't align with their ideals in terms of my own behaviour. My own behaviour has, at times, been utterly ridiculous in retaliation to theirs, but they somehow cannot see that I am behaving how they are expecting me to act, not as I am in real life. They cannot seem to differentiate whatsoever and it has been a tedious process. Once, Gagneux accused me of being in a matrix and at the time I was, perfectly happy to survive in the world I had created for myself. Over time, however, I removed myself from said matrix and faced the real world. I have been more focused in caring for my basic needs than I've ever been given credit for and though I know the easiest solution to all of this would be to get rid of my cellphone, but how is that fair to me? I need mine as much as everyone else does. I rely on it as much as everyone else does. And now it seems Gagneux is the one stuck in a matrix of some kind but I don't think he will ever come up for air. That would take courage. 

It seems like these guys think they are the ultimate opportunity that will ever come my way, suggesting many times that I am only "hurting myself" when I reject their attention, which I have done many many times, to no avail. I don't know if there is any truth to that, but I feel like it should be up to me which opportunities I take on and which ones I reject. Perhaps I am wrong, but I never felt comfortable with the idea of being amongst a Satanic band from Switzerland, especially after being told I am "too bombastic" which is pretty rich, considering the source. But these minor offences aside, I still feel intense concern regarding the trajectory of this band's influence and the effects their music may have over the course of time, but I know most people think its harmless and I am sounding like an alarmist or something worse. So be it. If you want to listen to Zeal and Ardor, go ahead. But if you look a little deeper and ask some of the more challenging questions, I wonder what you will conclude? As for me, I have concluded they are willing to say and do just about anything to remain at the top of their game and I feel like I am a piece of gum stuck to their collective shoe. I feel used. I feel walked all over and completely mistreated as an artist, as an educated woman and as a human being, but as they have reminded me over and over again; nobody cares about me or my message. Well, so be it. But if that is the case, then why are my texts in their song lyrics even though I asked Gagneux to stop writing songs about me, if I am so bloody unimportant? And why am I still getting texts where I am being verbally assaulted and insulted on a regular basis? Oh, and why have I received calls on Instagram of grown men masturbating, unsolicited? And why am I getting threats that my personal photos will be published and why are the sounds I make when I am having sex incorporated in Gagneux's songs in his Geiz music project? You can listen to it HERE.

Personally, I never wanted things to get so ugly, but indeed things are getting uglier by the day. That was in fact my initial offence to Zeal and Ardor's self-titled album. It does nothing to highlight the beauty in the world but only focuses on dark themes and depressing concepts. These things are not what I hope to focus on as an artist, so I could not and did not make any claim to being involved because I didn't want to associate my name as an artist to stuff like that. I felt betrayed to say the least and used and exploited at a time in my life when I was at my absolute weakest and to this very moment I cannot believe I have had to carry the weight of all of this while also carrying the weight of divorce and the damage it has done to my family. I never wanted to air all this dirty laundry but what choice do I have? Should I sit here and be silent while these people steam-roll over my entire life or do I speak up and tell the truth as I see it? I think you know what the answer to that question is or you wouldn't be reading this. I absolutely abhor this situation to its core. It's one that could have been easily remedied by meeting face to face but Mr Rockstar is apparently too famous to do regular things like meet the woman whom he has spied on relentlessly for years now, despite begging him to stop. I didn't want to lash out at him on social media or embarrass him and his colleagues, but what choice did I have? What would you have done it this happened to you?

Most amusing and baffling of all, at times Gagneux takes on this self-righteous tone with me, especially if I leave a rude comment on his social media, which I have done usually only after and episode of begging him to leave me alone or if I see him parading around with fans as if he's king of the world. I wouldn't call it jealously per se. It's more like a sense of victimization because awhile he has oppressed my life to the point of near inertia, he's out there traveling the world, charming the masses, and pretending that he's nothing if not Mr Nice Guy. He hasn't been nice to me, not at all. So when I see some of this garbage posted on social media, it gets my hackles up and I leave bad comments. Somehow he deems that to be more of an offence than spying on me in the privacy of my own home and in this way, I can see it must come down to the cultural divide we experience. He does things that are wildly offensive to my Canadian sensibilities and vice versa. What a conundrum, but it never needed to be this way. I am a very private person by choice, if at all possible, but when I feel my rights have been violated, I speak up. And if Gagneux can go ahead and publish material I sent to him in private, without my permission? Well, as he so eloquently points out in his Birdmask Song Toucan, two can play at that game (which is another direct quote from a text I sent him). These videos of him in the bathroom in front of a mirror are, from what I understand, his way of admitting he did hack my cellphone and spent quite a lot of time listening to me in the shower, brushing my teeth, etc. The details in the background such as the shipping containers allude to the port city I lived in at the time as well, for example. But I asked him to stop writing songs about me for personal reasons having to do with an ongoing stalker issue I have had for years now. I did not want to bring unnecessary attention to him or myself, all I wanted to do was meet face to face. He refused, obviously, and decided his time and resources were better spent trying to embarrass me even further. What a guy! Incidentally, Gagneux has continuously tried to infer I am a whore. This is a false claim. I have never had sex for money in my entire life. There are some things I just won't do for money. Perhaps a lot of women would find Gagneux's attention charming and desirable. Perhaps. Or perhaps if they walked a mile in my shoes they would feel like I feel. Suffocated and disrespected. Confused and very much misunderstood. 

Initially, I wanted to approach a discussion with Gagneux about his music on an academic level. He took that opportunity away from me. The last time we argued, I raised my voice at him and he reminded me that I used to raise my voice at the ex-husband too. In this way, having him in my life, knowing he heard my husband and I arguing in what we thought was the privacy of our own home only oppresses me more. With him in my life, there is no such thing as a fresh start because he's there to remind me what I left behind and uses that information as a weapon when the occasion presents itself. I can't tell you how angry this makes me.  

The reason I decided today was the day that I wanted to tell my side of the story is because, as previously mentioned, I saw Gagneux and his tour group on social media, smiling at each other as though all was well with the world. As far as I am concerned, its all bullshit because while they're celebrating their so-called success on their tour, I am here, alone, fighting against a behemoth who stole from me and did not compensate me and continues to perceive himself as some sort of victim as well as someone I am supposed to blindly follow. Maybe there are a lot of folks who benefit from blindly following Gagneux, but as for me? I am not blind and the things I see and experienced are not pretty and one thing is for sure–I am NOT smiling. 

How is all of this going to end? That is a great question. I have no idea but Anthony Bourdain's advice keeps circling through my mind. I had Gagneux set pretty high on a pedestal and that pedestal came crashing down quite hard and the direction this is going to go is anyone's guess. But that's the way I view the events of the last several years, just in case anyone cares to know. 

"...And I want to know the same thing

We all want to know

How's it going to end?

And I want to know the same thing

We all want to know

How's it going to end?

And I just want to know the same thing

I want to know

How's it going to end?"

-Tom Waits