Morning Comrades!
We are fast approaching the 2nd anniversary of this part of the Black Lodges universe and with a slew of new subscribers over the last month or so I wanted to put a few words down about this place, why we do what we do as well as our purposes and intentions. It is part of the work to continuously assess and reflect what we do in order to offer the greatest amount of service in our collective struggle for a better tomorrow.
As always, let’s kick off this week with some new tunes!
This week is a little shorter than the previous two songs, clocking in at 2.5hrs of new and old tunes that floated my boat the week prior. For all you new people here, these playlists are by no means curated but are only a collection of songs that I liked during my week as they came up during my days and nights. The only limit I sort of set myself with these is that I mostly avoid adding metal to these as that is my safe spot for music and I keep that to myself. This week does lean a little heavier into classic dance music for reasons unbeknown to anyone, with some new and classic tracks that put a smile on my face. Other than that, it jams a little harder than usual but I am certain you’ll enjoy another week of slappin’ tunes.
Reflections, Intents and Purposes
Two years ago when this newsletter started the world was a different than it is today. I cannot even begin to put into words how the Covic-19 pandemic has changed our perception of reality and our practices of solidarity. However, after the first 5 months of lockdown here in Hamburg, Germany, this project started. Truthfully, the initial reason was rather simple: After ten years of building a community around Black Lodges, the illustrations, merch, politics and music over on IG, I was getting increasingly frustrated with how badly the app was working, or rather not, for me. Despite an outrageous number of followers, the content was shown to less than a 1% and the effort put into feeding content into the app was no longer worth it. I figured a direct approach to those of you that wanted to stay in touch with the work happening was smartest. Economically, it is sheer insanity to tie any project to a third party distribution service, especially one whose political and social mission is in direct opposition to what Black Lodges stands for. You all know the story.
In addition to wanting to move away from IG, I also needed and wanted a different outlet for my non-academic writing, as I enjoy writing a great deal. Two years ago I was deep into my PhD research and was starting to write the thesis in earnest. Writing a PhD ( in philosophy ) can be utterly wild, in the sense that your cognitive cosmos is extremely focused on the one topic you have chose to write about - and truthfully my thesis is insanely microscopic in scope - yet the world keeps turning and the jaws of capitalism continues to crush us all. I am not an academic by profession but rather a person that prefers direct action to aid in the material betterment of the world around me, always have been and health / resources provided, that will be where I will remain most active. This newsletter has been and hopefully will continue to be ( with your support ) an avenue outside of the politically incorrect and charged reality of IG and the rest of social media. With all the thoughts and revelations whilst writing this thesis, I feel my ability to communicate the complex nature of our oppression and what to do about it to have improved, as well as the content here.
Initially, this place was a carbon copy in terms of content to my output on IG. That no longer is the case and I am quite happy about that. Sure, addressing our oppression does not evoke the same level of “popularity” as drawing silly memes for social media but that is exactly the point. Any social media company will only allow content that it deems sellable to you and your time, so that they can sell more ads. That’s it. Aynthing of worth in threat terms is censored. Considering the state of the world and the total lack of effect any sort of radicalization, organizing and so on resulting from social media - not even mentioning the genuine danger to the people that attempt to do so thanks to the legions of cops and CIA personnel working there - it appeared and appears to be effective to do so here, and do so better.
This still leaves the question as to why we do this. What is the point of this part of Black Lodges and what’s the goal here. I have always been pissed off about the injustice in our world and that is the motivation. As a young one, throwing bricks at cops because of the constant threat of being evicted from squats, growing into the anti-racist and anti-fascist movement of the mid 90s to becoming more and more involved in the early days of the anti-capitalist movements of the early 2000s. I never grew less pissed and now at 44, I am anything but mellow-ish. As I have grown older, as I have learned from the countless mistakes and failures in organizing and fighting the tools and structures of the injustice caused by capitalism and their select few aristocrats the clearer the picture has become, grown from the material reality of my community to learning about the big, global picture. I know that this learning curve is never going to end but the effects caused by the system we have no say in and yet sacrifice the majority of our existence to are insanely inhumane and unjust. In addition to the catastrophic reality of climate collapse in our lifetime, the time to sit down and “be not political” is entirely over. Unbeknown to most of us, myself included, we have been at war with the 1% and their exploitation for all of our lives and have been losing. Considering the death of our ecosystem and thus, everything we hold dear, the time is now. Granted, this was true over and over again in History, yet the material realities now are entirely unique.
In order to fight an all encompassing reality, a system finessed in oppression of its people, a system that has perfected the art of manipulation and exploitation one has to understand said system. Dismantling the smoke screen of corporate / government propaganda aka - the “news”, media, entertainment has always been part of this work here and will continue to do so. There is little point, other than short-lived euphoria, in beating down cops, the enforcers of this systemic oppression, if you do not know who gives the cops orders, where they live, how they work and how to dispose of them as well as then having a plan to dismantle the systemic oppression inherent in our current reality. A tall order I know, but truthfully not really. When I said that we live unique times it is because we have well over 300 years of systemic analysis of these power structures at our disposal, free and readily available in addition to the fact that we, these generations of fucked over workers, have been communicating freely with one another around the globe. Our lessons and experiences are now global and you can relate that to the continuing fuckery over on Social Media however you like. The fact remains, a connected, organized and increasingly educated global working class is the truly the most dangerous thing to any power.
Coming back to the purpose of this project then: it is precisely that. Identifying those that are responsible, identifying the systemic oppression and collectively working towards a better tomorrow. Of course, narrative, story telling, education - which this is here - doesn’t change the world, direct action does. However, direct action without knowledge is wasted energy. I cannot pick any of you up and drive you to the next meeting, hell, I don’t even a car and my damn bike is still stolen but I hope that I can offer insights into the systemic injustice of capitalism and offer tools and avenues to help you end those in your world. Obviously mixed with an unhealthy amount of sarcasm, rage, doodles and artwork, music and the occasional merch project thrown in for good measure. The notion that we, the people that see the problems and want them changed are disgruntled angry, misanthropic assholes is just another classic example of western media manipulation as the exact opposite is true. I cannot feign happiness whilst other suffer only so that my selfie on IG gets more like, but the real joy, the sense of purpose in organizing to fight this insanity for a better tomorrow for everyone is indescribable. The best art, stories, music, love and hope all comes from getting together and showing the bastards at the top just how amazing life is without them.
This is why we are here. Thank you for being here, your interest, contributions, attention and support.
By all means, share this newsletter if you like it with everyone, that’s how the word gets out. It’s the only way for all of us to grow and outgrow the dreary and deadly existence under capitalism.
Yours, without compromise,
V