Appropriation and Metatron (Part 1) is a work of fiction whose narrative derives from an original musical composition. It is a project which focusses on the primacy of music over imagery. The conflation of music and film imagery began before the advent of television, during the era of the second generation of film technology at the advent of the “talkie”. Prior to the talkie, monopoly control of radio (i.e., sound only) broadcast technology was held first by the British Broadcasting System in the UK in the 1920s and shortly afterwards on the European continent by its main European competitor, Radio Luxembourg. Silent film technology operated independently of these radio broadcast monopolies at first. Minor, improvisational music compositions would be performed during the showing of silent films, but live performances of classical music compositions and news broadcasting was the main focus of early radio transmissions.

The popularity of film lead to the synchronization of sound dialogue with film imagery. Rather than just frames of written dialogue between action film sequences, talkies successfully integrated dialogue into the action. At that point, the broadcast monopolies realized there was a new medium in which to employ music as well as dialogue. The entry of compositional music into film production replaced the improvisational live music performances that originally accompanied silent film. When it was realized that not only could music composition “enhance” the film experience, but that the music made popular by movies could be a new medium for broadcast revenue on radio, the broadcast radio monopolies turned their attention to film. Furthermore, they also realized that if imagery could be broadcast in the same way that sound was, they could potentially overtake the film industry. Television was that technology.

Today, the world of film music scores is distinct from broadcast music. However, television is tied directly to the music industry as it relates to broadcast technology. The old radio broadcasting monopolies morphed into a web of interconnected companies and pursued “broadcast music”, which we now know as pop music, in both the media of radio and tv. The inversion of music set to film was attempted with the MTV model. The concept of setting film to music eventually gave us the music video, but the longer, developed narrative of film was largely sacrificed in favor of the trite, frenetic and adolescent imagery of the pop music video.

The financially driven usurpation of corporate broadcasting over both film media and broadcast radio media has now given the world essentially a tiny handful of multinational corporate entities which originated from two early monopolies and which now profit from the exclusive control of both technologies. The internet is the last and only broadcast distribution channel left for artistic production that is free of that megalithic corporate control. But take note. Digital streaming of music is now almost completely limited to the control of a few “platforms”, which are themselves owned by the same companies that originated from the early monopolies.

The Story of Part 1 of Appropriation and Metatron.

Track 1: The Preamble (6:52)

Appropriation and Metatron is the pre-apocalyptic story of the second fall of humankind. It begins, like Milton’s Paradise Lost, with an argument, which is contained in the Preamble. The fallen angels, ruled by Lgion, have successfully established their stronghold, formerly known as Hell, in the non-physical realm of anti-heaven. In imitation of the Creator, who once walked on Earth with Adam and Eve, and who separated Himself from the physical world following the first fall, Lgion and his fallen angels move freely and discreetly between the new non-physical anti-heaven and Earth so as to establish strong dominance in the physical world.

Track 2: Memater (3:09)

Memater, the aide-de-camp to Arch-Angel Metatron, is sent to the physical world to report back on Lgion’s activities in that realm. Unlike the first appearance of the Messiah, in which the Creator called upon believers to abandon the fallen material world for the true Heaven, Lgion seeks to expand the territory of immaterial anti-heaven and merge it with the fallen material world. He does so through the use of music, reason and lust-driven procreation. Memater witnesses humans and fallen angels in an orgy of dance and death, both ecstatic and sad, arrogant and meek, striving to lay the groundwork for a great civilization of their own, unaware that that Lgion has entered into an alliance with them to usurp their planned vision of an independent, secular Earth and annex the physical world to anti-heaven. Memater descends to find a new jubilee of human carnality. Memater is moved by how human beings have chosen to embrace and apotheosize both beauty and ugliness, both innocence and corruption in the world, and is initially compelled to participate in the jubilee. Lgion then appears.

Track 3: Memater Attempts to Reason with Lgion (2:15)

Memater explains that the hope of the Creator was that the new creation of humans might show the fallen angels that the first creation of the angels was not as a foil for Him or a means for self-adoration, but that the act of creation was an expression of love where any and all might share in the wonders of His own eternal conscious existence. This could include both physical and non-physical beings or even neither physical nor non-physical beings that the Creator was now contemplating. Humans, although limited to the physical world, would exist eternally just as the angels do, and inspire the fallen angels to see that human beings need not be jealous of angels any more than angels need be jealous of their Creator.

Track 4: The Expense of Spirit (3:04)

Lgion’s response appropriates the future words of Shakespeare, who even the angels know will be. The future words of Shakespeare will be contextualized differently for humans if Lgion uses them, which is why he chooses to respond in this way. The meaning (which is the Word) precedes all mere words. Just as music breathes life into words, the meaning (which is the Word) breathes life into music. Lgion’s strategy is to compel human beings that he is the Word and so he draws the breath from Shakespeare with music.

Track 5: Lgion Calls Upon the Nephilim (3:20)

In addition to compelling the fallen humans to expand their population, Lgion also directs the fallen angels to procreate with them. These off-spring are manifested both physically, intellectually and in intensifying degrees of anti-spirit. Anti-spirit is the distrust and contempt for religions of immaterialism. It is spirituality of the physical and material turned inward.

The most impressive physical human beings are the New Nephilim. The Old Nephilim were the descendants of both fallen and unfallen angels who procreated with some of the post-lapsarian human females. This practice was ended sometime up to the point of the first redemptive descent of the Messiah back to Earth. After the re-ascent of the Messiah to the true Heaven, Lgion launched a renewed assault on human beings, which included a directive that the fallen angels procreate again specifically with the descendants of the Old Nephilim. These offspring are the most physically beautiful human beings or the most exceptionally athletic.

Track 6: Lgion Doubts (3:07)

The creation of the angels preceded the creation of human beings. After Lgion led one-third of the angels in rebellion against the creator, he was replaced by Metatron, who guards the Throne of the Creator. Metatron becomes aware of Lgion’s new assault on humanity. Lgion knows that. He contemplates Oliver Goldsmith, from which the lyrics here derive, and wonders if he should reconsider Memater’s attempts to reason with him. His motivation is fear and contempt and pride, though. Lgion appears incapable of imagining existence as anything more than conflict.

Track 7: From What Height Fallen (2:42)

Fear, contempt and pride reside most strongly in memory. Memory is the attempt to compress time into a single moment of consideration. He recalls the fall of the angels in terms of Milton’s Paradise Lost, from which the lyrics here derive.

Track 8: The Seductive Caress (3:24)

The Seductive Caress are the unique and original words of Lgion. They encapsulate his vision, which is to fathom how to become a new creator. It’s important to remember that Lgion does not limit himself to a vision of an anti-creator. Lgion wants to be the Creator. This is essentially his offer to human beings, too, that each and every person desire to be the Creator.

Track 9: Memater reports to Metatron (4:37)

Memater’s report of his findings and his discussions with Lgion are reflected in the first part of the music, which proceeds with a delicate cadence. Metatron’s reaction heralds the next album which leaves us with the question of how a lesser angel (and self-styled devil) like Lgion can hope to withstand the assault of a titan like Metatron. But we humans tend to become preoccupied with grand battles between colossal figures. Humans up until now have been witnesses to uncontrollable natural forces and child-like imitators of epic intellectual struggles that exceed our understanding. We play out epic scenarios and inflict pain on one another because we can not fully grasp our origins, the origins of the universe, our own consciousness, or the concept of the Creator.

Track 10: Centurie (1:42)

This is Nostradamus. Make of it what you will.

Preamble: Appropriation and Metatron (Track 1)

Of Humanity’s First Disobedience (1)

And the Fruit of that Forbidden Tree

Sing Heavenly Muse from atop green peaks,

Of new lands promised, as was foretold

In prophesy. Sing the explorers’ tales (5)

Of primitive peoples unknown in times

When emperors became kings and sought

New politic coupled with epiphanic

Quests to regain the heart which might reopen

The Edenic gates barred long ago by (10)

Human reach for Heavenly glory.

Each destiny manifest in the will

For control and pursuit of reformation

Of the Old World and the restoration

Of joy, kindness, love and obedience. (15)

Alas, in imitation of the one who

Holy in first creation rebelled

Against himself, becoming unholy

Not as Supreme Love but by self-loathing,

He that proportioned joy inversely (20)

Not by mitosis in futile grasp

Of joy exceeding joy or freedom aspired

To transcend limits set by joy itself,

Or to cage liberation with bondage,

But in upside repositioned down, (25)

Second imagined as first, bottom as top

The flop of belief in antithesis

Fixated on binary of best, worst

In the stead of Trinity, the third

Element in which exists better and (30)

Worse in Leibnizean contrast, lesser

As mere possible; best as actual.

It is a tale difficult to grasp

As Faith is among they who hold fact dear,

They who covet the rule of physic (35)

In rule’s mere result, like the prisoner

Who grasps the tangible iron bar

As incarceration, but regards

The air breathed as evidence of freedom, (40)

The ability to roam unhindered

If only unconstrained by coarse matter.

But the air, too, breathed into clay exhales

Life which must again obediently

Depend on earth’s abundant gift to reign. (45)

Second by second an agreement stands

That will, though free, is by grace offered,

That life exists within bounds of atmosphere

And that, though we might explore ocean depths

And heavenly silence, the mortal coil (50)

Reminds that spirit is too contained.

The Rule never broken though we alter the rule.

Strive then, Heavenly Muse, to reveal

How evil, once thought substantive as form

A striving for perfection of the One (55)

Is immodest vanity burned away,

By both elusive grasp and forge of reach.

Behold! The white dove with black wings descends;

Memater, scintillate and curious

To witness humanity’s struggle (60)

To emerge from a protected chrysalis,

Long hidden within the epic struggle

Of Creator and first created.

The latter once content to remain

Anti-king with crown perpetually (65)

Neither seated fully nor toppled but

Until now content to rule from beneath

A Wheel of Fortune, imagining

Top or bottom as mere perspective.

Aware of humanity as nascent seed (70)

Which might now afford new perspective,

Three points from which to measure dimension

The anti-king would human space-time

Violate, with rapacious greed, matter

And flesh and sound to penetrate, produce, (75)

Destroy and by disequilibrium

Topple the scales which held evil fettered

By self-reflective paradox for aeons.

Then sing, Heavenly Muse,

The flight of Memater to divulge (80)

The work of the un-good aspirants

Whose whispers human beings now echo.

The Story of Part 2 of Appropriation and Metatron

Track 1: Metatron Arise and Prepare (3:38)

Metatron, having been advised by Memater of Lgion’s activities among the humans, contemplates the best course of action for Heaven and Earth. The fallen angels, having been ejected from heaven, have resisted all attempts at making amends and instead are choosing to actualize plans to proceed with the annexation of the physical world to their anti-heaven. The Creator has endowed both the angels and human beings with all possibilities, the only stipulation being that His presence remains hidden to the extent that His created beings choose to give primacy to actualizing for themselves a world where He is present. For Metatron, the concern is that no informed choice is possible for human beings if Lgion dupes them into believing that either they alone exist or, like the fallen angels, that they should reject the Creator under the pretext of liberty and a misguided understanding of oppression.

Track 2: Lgion Addresses the Creator (2:54)

Lgion requests to re-enter Heaven to address the Creator. The Creator, with Metatron to the right of His Throne, remains silent, so that Lgion may experience a fleeting moment of self-adoration.

Track 3: Wartopia is Born (3:23)

Lgion finishes addressing the Creator and implodes before the Him and Metatron, forming the bLACK hOLE with reddish event horizon, which will now be the quantum wormhole bridging the physical world to the new aNTI-hEAVEN. Across this bridge passes all knowledge of the universe to the physical beings. Only the New Nephilim have the capacity to understand it, though, and confusion and sadness poisons the new ecstasy felt by human beings in light of this sudden burst of knowledge. The new knowledge manifests in technological advances that overwhelm the humans, who begin to use the new technology to create elaborate spectacles of fornication that culminate in ecstatic acts of suffering and destruction. The New Nephilim, realizing that humans think simply and generally in terms of only reproduction and destruction, immediately propose the use of neurotechnology to help humans evolve more quickly. Planned organic reproduction, it is argued, must be replaced with a new plan for a kind of being which exceeds both the physical and non-physical. Conflict breaks out among the New Nephilim as to whether the new being should be physical with the ability to fully perceive the immaterial world as virtual with the help of a personal apparatus or whether the new being should all be made non-physical by uploading their consciousnesses of humans collectively into a single Matrioshka Brain which could act as a gateway for them to reside in the immaterial world.

Track 4: Metatron Descends (2:40)

Lgion chastises them, arguing that the only possibility for a fully transcendent being is one that is both physical and non-physical at the same time. The Old Nephilim support Lgion even though they don’t understand how that is possible; the New Nephilim claim that Lgion’s proposal is contradictory, irrational and meaningless. Lgion argues that his proposal is based on the knowable, if not fully observable, quality of divine understanding which forms the basis for a continued “belief in” the Creator despite their chosen rejection of Heaven. Rejection, he says, is not based on their “belief that” the Creator no longer exists merely because they’ve rejected Him. It is based on a choice not to “believe in” the Creator anymore. Consequently, Lgion argues, the fallen angels and the Nephilim have already opted instead to “believe in” him, Lgion, as the new creator. Thus, Lgion argues, instead of caring about adding humans to the army of the new dispensation of angels, the Nephilim should focus on formally endowing him with the ability to usurp the power of the Creator. A silent faction of the New Nephilim fear this will lead to the destruction of all they have accomplished so far and leak this information to Metatron. Metatron then descends to Earth, transversing the night sky as an alcubierre bubble, a bright aura emanating like the halo of a dark star, to the undulating mouth of the faint red wormhole bridging the material world to the aNTI-HEAVEN. He enters the wormhole with a blinding flash, causing the Earth to shake violently. Lgion is notified of his descent and orders to the fallen angels to engage Metatron.

Track 5: Metatron Prepares to Annihilate Lgion (3:40)

Metatron, protected by the hand of the Creator, divides the legion of fallen angels assembled against him and, as if parting a mighty sea, creates a tear in the wormhole and infuses aNTI-HEAVEN with blinding light, causing great suffering to the fallen angels. They are overwhelmed and beg for mercy. Lgion is subdued, driven low and witnesses the light focus into the flaming sword of St. Michael. Its power condenses into the sword-tip of the apocalypse. Both Lgion and Metatron experience a vision of annihilation which manifests as fire that passes up through the wormhole and into the physical world as a great conflagration. Human beings and the Old and New Nephilim erupt into flames.

Track 6: The Creator Intervenes and Stretches the Quark (2:29)

Flames rip through the tear in the wormhole and reach even toward Heaven. The Guardian Angels of the Throne, thinking it is an attack either from the fallen angels or from human beings, encircle the Throne of the Creator and use the sound of divine song to absorb the heat of the flames. The Creator then, unexpectedly, releases his protective grip around Metatron and draws the annihilating flames and the song of the angels and the merciful cries of the unfallen, the screams of the suffering and all sound and all light into Himself. And suddenly, all consciousnesses become the Last Consciousness. Each entity abruptly perceives itself as a Oneness, itself as an only Creator amidst a great void. Every thought becomes self-thought, every praise self-praise, and there is no existence other than self-existence. There is only omnisciency of the One. No memory. No anticipation. Only solipsistic self-awareness without awareness of any other. The Last Consciousness becomes the void and the last emotion is contempt. The Creator views the experience of existence as the consciousness of all beings who, now viewing only themselves as the One, grow jealous of the great void. Except for the Creator and one other, Lgion.

Track 7: Suffering and Hate Become the Old Eden (3:23)

Lgion alone finds himself in the presence of the Creator, who with expanding force, first places His protective grip back around Metatron, who attempts to call out to all conciousnesses who have become untethered. But this is the point where force no longer binds particles. Lgion is become the lodestone, a heavy, dense, physical mass which attempts to contain and crush force into himself by a process of annealing. As his physical matter grows denser and force is compressed, the energy of the void reaches critical mass. The universe grows heavy and dense and slow as Lgion continues to try to absorb force into matter and bring all life trudging to the void, further refining his ecstasy of contempt. Lgion contemplates that at the point of critical mass he and the Creator may either explode into void or all matter, including himself, will be de-created and absorbed back into the Creator. Lgion opts to try and achieve critical mass.

Track 8: Metatron Prepares the New Eden (3:29)

Metatron, knowing force can not be matter, knows that the compression of force by the growing density of matter will not result in the explosion of force and matter into void, but instead will result in the annihilation of the void, a new creation, and the restoration of the Creator. Each former being, now raised to Oneness, is encroached upon by the void through the knowledge that eternal existence as the One for any created being will be devoid of all force. All attempts at acts of creation to give structure and dimension to their own universe fail in the absence of force. Each then becomes jealous of the void, realizing that all beings, having been created by the Creator, wrongly assume that force can become material through any but the Uncreated. At the point of the greatest suffering of the Creator, under the weight of the material and physical compressing force to the point of critical mass, the Creator tells Metatron that he will soon prepare a place in the new creation called The New Eden.