Audioccult Vol. 62: Tumblr’s The Divine Comedy

Light a candle. Draw the required sigils. Now, raise your arms above your head and slowly, gently, exhale your soul. You won’t need it here. This is Audioccult, and it’s time to get low. Illustration: SHALTMIRA

[SCENE: THE DEPTHS OF THE INFERNO. THE STINKING AIR IS FILLED WITH WAILS, ECHOING THROUGHOUT THE ETERNAL PLAINS OF TORMENT. A WRITHING MASS OF DISTORTED CGI FACES FORM BOTH SKY AND GROUND IN A VERY TWISTED YET BAD-ASS WAY. STARWIPE TO WOOD OF THE SUICIDES]

This is Eternity. All times converge here, from the dawn of suffering to the final breath of the Word. No sunrise marks the days, for there are no days here, nor nights. Nobody to hear your cries. Nobody to retweet you. An impenetrable wall of blackened, gnarled trees is the only sign of life (if such a word can be applied to these tangled wretches) in this sector, the souls of those who committed suicide transformed in a delightfully cheeky way symbolizing, I don’t know, laurel leaves or whatever the fuck Dante was into. Near the outskirts of this corpse copse, the tree that was once called Ian Curtis shivers as a wave of newly remastered copies of Closer are released with several hours worth of material dredged from the void by industry necromancers. Each moment he suffers, unable to escape or find relief as yet another tween reblogs the cover of Unknown Pleasures photoshopped onto Brooke Candy’s face. In the rough animapathy that passes for language amongst the Damned, a near-identical tree formed from the ashes of Tupac Shakur whispers, “You get used to it.”

We think about the word “forever” in the lightest sense, for it is a concept that cannot truly be encompassed by the mind. Behind the living face of the world, the pandæmonic nethescape is awash with the souls of hateful creatures. The Divine Unity so often espoused is not one of peaceful bliss, but of joined obscenity. Each soul shares the torment of their brethren, an empathetic entity formed from each living being, forevermore in pain. Forevermore, the contracting monolithic anus that was Paula Deen (dressed in an equally monolithic white tuxedo) devours and expels the unrighteous in a torrent of butter and shit. Forevermore, Chris Brown instagrams vultures, their meat-slick beaks tearing the flesh from the wicked for all of time, with the words, “up in ya girls Pussy.” Bloggers who dreamed of Pitchfork internships type words of immense beauty, yet the #1 result on Hype Machine is always, “SEX NUDE BOOBS MILEY CYRUS TURNTUP 2TURNT 2CHAINZ HONEYMOON CHANEL VHS LSD TROPICAL BONER,” and every package in the mail is a copy of Bloc Party’s single “Ratchet”. There is a shattered field where men, women and children are forever forced to twerk and hear the word twerk, and it is impossible to tell them apart. “Ayo, this ya boy Soulja Boy,” booms the voice of The Overseer. “I got a new dance for ya’ll,” and the cries that follow make Heaven weep.

In the center of this reality, there exists a frozen place removed from the rest. Here, icy winds gnaw at the memory of skin ceaselessly, as if blown by vast pinions straining for release. In this desperate place, you are shown an endless stream of unreachable beauty: music, women, men, food that will never pass your lips and clothes that will never touch your skin. Each image evokes a wealth of sin—envy, lust, greed. Each thought is bent toward a single purpose: to have, to possess, to show—for you know that even a single item in that endless sea means salvation. Yet each plea, each promise and threat is met with the same response from the simple and faceless entity that inhabits this Center. “I don’t know,” is the eternal reply. “I found it on tumblr.”~

Published July 04, 2013. Words by Daniel Jones.