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Cold Shoulder / Hot Spotlight

from My Big Break - volume 1 by Ben Seretan

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I wanted to write to you this week about Satan, and how he has wormed his way back into my life in the past few weeks, how I have felt the heavy, sulphur shadow of his being in the edges of my vision when my guard is down. In my band from college we played a song of mine that I had written about the financial crisis and about moving from home to home all the time, among other things, that started out with the following:

Did we die in agony with Jesus as our lord?
Satan with his horned head dies laughing by the sword
Did we die in ecstasy with Jesus by our side?
Satan with his spreading wings was bankrupt when he died

But when I was younger and in God's thrall I was never really scared of Satan, I never saw him popping out from behind a poplar in a darkened wood, flamingly beckoning me into the deeper night. The thing I was terrified of was straying from God's light, from stepping out from the hot spotlight of his love. Once when I was young but old enough to understand the weight of the words "eternal damnation" a counselor at my church summer camp told me about what he thought heaven was like. He told us that there were no roads of gold, no palaces, no clouds, rather just the eternal and omnipotent entity of the lord, his pure and unending love and our basking within it, how we would want for nothing, however improbable and unbelievable as that may seem. So if that's heaven then hell is what - coldness, the cold shoulder, neglect and inattention, distance, the opposite of golden, leaden, dead. It wasn't so much the flames I feared but the cool obsidian of hell, of being outside of god's consideration.

So it was kind of a shock to me when, all of a sudden, I found myself recently addressing Satan directly, verbally, out loud, acknowledging him as a force in my life when I don't believe in him or paradise lost or the bible or whatever. But there he is, beckoning. It started with running (much of the developments in my life start this way, now) - Satan wanted me to stop early, to call it quits after a couple of miles, I felt him telling me to relax, start walking, lay down on the sidewalk. And I had to tell him no, I won't do what you want of me. And now I feel satan's tongue in my ear when I want to sleep in, when I want to be scared, when I want to indulge myself in unhealthy ways, ways that will make me feel worse and more sluggish later. There's this bizarre productivity narrative built into it, but no real morality. I've started referring to things, maybe only to myself, as the Lord's work - things like staying out too late, dancing, taking people to bed, making adventurous music, being open and intimate, in other words things that would normally be discouraged by a god / satan dichotomy. I'm all mixed up. And Satan feels very real.

The other thing I was thinking about and that I wanted to write to you about was making deals with the devil (who is real to me, now), and how when you make a deal with the devil there isn't a contract to sign, no red zoot-suited stranger swinging his barbed tail like a watch chain. Maybe nothing is spoken aloud. A desperation in your heart, a helplessness is manifested, something cracks and the devil rushes in, like water. Like I was very helpless, very desperate right before I got this job I have now. And there were all these omens. My interview took place during the full solar eclipse, little half moon shadows dotting the sidewalk while I took the train in, my parents' house was brutally robbed right after I was offered the job, and right after I started I broke an enormous pitcher of water and sliced my hand open, there was glass and blood all over the sink. Who had I shook hands with? What had I traded in of myself? How's your soul?

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from My Big Break - volume 1, released July 16, 2020

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Ben Seretan Climax, New York

**ECSTATIC JOY**

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