Ben Chasny. An American Mystic

In some way or another, in our personal life, we are all shaping something like our inner destiny. We are looking for these works of art, for these philosophies, for these people which might help us to refine this essential, singular project. If we are asked though to explain this destiny, we do not find the right words. Of course, we do not give up on reflection. We do not neatly separate life from thought. There is philosophy, as a meaningfull and indispensable figure on this path; but there is no ready-made intellectual framework which fits this destiny. The great joy of music is that (in rare cases) it allows us to catch a glimpse of precisely our own project; that it embodies a vision which is so closely connected to our own destiny, that it strikes us immediately, on a wordless and intuitive basis.

Speaking for myself, Ben Chasny's Six Organs of Admittance hits the right chord there. Independent of his personality, his interests or his lyrics, most of his music embodies a perspective which haunts me in a partly incomprehensible but direct and effective way. Added you find the opening song of his new album 'Shelter from the Ash', out on Drag City. Reading the liner notes, I was very surprised to discover that the song takes its title from a book from Henry Corbin, a French philosopher and scholar of Islamic Mysticism. In his explicitly gnostic readings of the three monotheistic traditions, Corbin is known for affirming their essential unity in strictly dividing the inner religion (the 'inner church') from the different ecclesial masks. As such, together with his pupil Christian Jambet and Michel Henry, Corbin represents the fascinating other side (the esoteric side) of French postmodernism, opposing the superficial playfullness of the exoteric postmoderns with a deeply spiritual vision.

Six Organs of Admittance - Alone with the Alone (mp3)