Our Great War

A Story of Loss

‘The Battle of Nashville’ by Howard Pyle

"Being a religious believer is a consistent struggle with the logic of the universe"
- Ben Shapiro

Grief is a weird thing. You never quite know when that feeling of unsatisfied loss, that longing for a thing that can never be again will return. That happened to me recently. I was scrolling through my phone when a friend shared a clip of Evil Lyn and Skeletor overdubbed with a scene from My Cousin Vinny. It is perfect. Marisa Tomei and Joe Pesci were magical in that movie and the overdub was perfect. It is so obvious, Skeletor and Evil Lyn had a very similar relationship to Vinny and Mona Lisa are Skeletor and Evil Lyn, at least through nostalgia filled glasses. When I saw this clip I immediately thought “I need to send this to Brian.” Then a wave of profound sadness washed over me.

As I write this, that feeling returns. Somehow both piercing and aching. It nauseates me as my gut tries to transform it into something more visceral, more kinetic. Unbridled rage could at least be dissipated in an explosion of violence or profanity but the pretense of fury just produces more acidic bile. The sadness and anger literally eating away at my stomach lining as my eyes grow tired and heavy. My contacts cloud over, a film of tacky gunk obscuring my vision. The literal fogginess of my vision matches the emotional murkiness as I write.

I do not know how to mourn the living dead. I have yet to find a way past this profound loss of someone who didn’t die but chose to separate himself from what is good, what is right. Brian was truly beloved by friends and fans, but like so many men of his age - of my age - has deep seated hurt. Insecurities that drove him into a spiral of substance abuse that he managed to get himself out of. I actually met him when he was near the bottom of the spiral when he played a festival I was staff for. He got so inebriated that the venue bounced him. An artist at a festival got bounced. That’s hard to do but he managed it.

Despite this, we hit it off. Two weird, lanky dudes in the industrial scene who shared a lot in common. We talked semi-regularly. I arranged a small tour for him with a couple local bands. One of those bands, a duo from Ottawa, told me that for a school project someone created a “wishing wall” where people could place their wish in it. It was basically a secularized Western Wall ritual. They confided in me that they wished to play with Brian’s act so I made it happen not once, but three times over a number of nights.

A few years later I was DJing much less and Sataning much more, but we still kept in touch. We weren’t just promoter/band buddies but there was something more. That’s when he got an invite to play Devil’s Night at the Salem Art Gallery. While interested he was slightly concerned because he really didn’t know anything about The Satanic Temple. Searching on the internet could lead someone down so many different paths and he didn’t know what to think. So he asked me, his Satanist friend. So I walked him through my experiences with the Temple, what our beliefs are, and that he could go and have a fun time knowing that it would be a safe, fun time. And it was both those things for him, for the attendees, and for the organizers based on everything I have heard about that night.

Beyond these handful of stories there were many more. He was a friend through my divorce. I celebrated his marriage. We talked music, games, and just general nerdy shit because we were both a bit nerdy. Our energies matched. Our interests matched. He was someone who I cared about a lot. So when I found out he was getting divorced I wanted to be there for him. He was there for me. That’s what friends do. But then stories start coming out.

The lies. The deceit. The slide down the alt-right pipeline.

It was a lot to take in. Turns out that void he was previously filling with booze that I thought was replaced with working out was not. Instead of reps it was Reich that was filling that hole. Turns out his trainer had some ties to various alt-right. From conversations at the gym he started supplementing his Aquaman comics with a steady stream of shamefully consumed Daily Wire. The severe inconveniences of the pandemic became grievances about freedom. From grievances about pandemic he was led towards vaccine hesitancy. And once you can’t trust doctors about vaccines it becomes really easy to dismiss other scientific claims. Eventually that credulous skepticism led him to think that his fun podcast where he talked to fellow musicians about their interests and hobbies was the correct place to bring on an outspoken transphobe to have conversation about the trans-community.

The reaction was swift and unforgiving. His career functionally died that day. But our friendship didn’t. When his world fell apart, when he was in a suicidal state I stayed there to try to catch him. This is the same guy that for a Twitch festival enthusiastically supported me playing an unapologetically Black Lives Matters set. His morals were not completely corrupted, I thought, and there was no way I was letting a bunch of weirdo losers take my friend. So I tried. I tried so damn hard. Right up until he started gleefully celebrating Trump’s re-election with language that hurt my partner. A choice needed to be made in that moment and I will never choose anyone over Jen.

That was the day that everything good in our relationship died. Intellectually I know that there is still a chance. I also truly believe in the Seven Fundamental Tenets, that there is a theoretical way back but I do not know what that is. What I do know is that I am still mourning two years later.

Every once in a while I still check in on him. All that is there is bitterness and anger. He lost a ton of money on a crypto or NFT scam. His listener count on Spotify is a fraction of what it used to be. Recently he was a guest on Tim Poole’s show, though not with Tim, only for Brian’s relevance to be so unremarkable that when people responded to the show everyone ignored him and focused on the cringe lord “Goth Daddy” and Temu Kid Rock, Phil Labonte.

Looking upon all this I feel sad, angry, hopeless. Brian crafted a myth where he was the beaten and the down trodden but also where he would be the one to rise up, kill the lich king and break the spell. Instead he’s seething, lonely in Tennessee. The people who he threw his lot in with have used as a prop for their own purposes while scamming him not only out of his financial security but any remaining dignity he had left. At best he’ll be a tweet read out by Big Joel in a future Folding Ideas video essay, though I feel Dan Olson has moved on from these kinds of topics.

So when I think about Hexennacht this year, this is what I am mourning. And I am mourning all the Brians in your life that you have known. I don’t know anyone that has not been touched by conspiracies unleashed over the last six years. So many of us have ghosts that still tweet, still post on Instagram, still show up at clubs and tables. The person we loved is dead and should be mourned. It would just be a hell of a lot easier if they would just shut up. So maybe, just maybe, this can be another step of healing for me and for you.