Axiom
A statement or proposition which is regarded as being established, accepted, or self-evidently true.
An-
Prefix, meaning "not,” “without,” “lacking"
Or, in other words, Anaxiom is a way of saying "A lot of things that people tend to accept as an established fact aren’t as correct as they think". That just because you've always done it that way, it doesn't make it the best way to do it, and there is no shame in doing it in a different way. Or that just because for a long time it was thought that something was true, new information can come along and challenge or outright change that, and that it’s perfectly fine to change your view on it.
That shouldn't be all that crazy of an idea, but somehow we all manage to get dragged into those kinds of outdated, inefficient, pointless, and at times downright harmful norms whether we like it or not.
They become part of how society works and as an overall people we don’t tend to question how they came to be and if they’re still really applicable, nor push back on them, partially because they’re so widespread that getting rid of them is a monumental task that apparently only time can complete.
Shaking hands when neither person really wants to shake hands, asking people how they’re doing when you blatantly aren’t actually asking how they’re doing, writing nice and flowery emails that dance around solving the problem at hand are some of the more obvious ones, and I wish they would all die a painful death at the hands of progress.
I go out of my way to be a dick by actually telling people how I’m doing and shaking hands like a limp noodle of pure disdain explicitly because these things irritate me on some very primal level. It's stupid and petty, I know, but doing otherwise feels wrong.
If I ask you how you’re doing, I’m asking how you’re doing. If I want to say hi, I’ll say hi. That shouldn’t be something I have to state, yet for some reason here we are.
But those aren’t all that I’m digging at with this despite the fact that I abhor them, I also mean cultural norms that are much more personal, and emotionally connected to the average person. The idea that certain emotions and difficulties make you weaker than another person just because of the way they’re perceived, and that expressing those somehow is something you should be ashamed of.
Loneliness, depression, directionlessness, lacking identity, etc. are all things that probably almost everybody deals with to some extent at some point in their lives. You’re going to have times when you feel like nobody is there for you, or where you’re worn out and tired and feel nothing but grey, or where you don’t know why you exist and who you are and what you’re supposed to be doing here.
A bit existential, yes, but normal, human, and real.
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In my own life, friendship is something I don’t have a whole lot of and trust’s something I give less and less over time. I spent a lot of my life trying to figure a lot of things about myself and how to exist in general out, and by time I did the damage had been done, both on my end and others’. Being able to hold one fairly stable real life friendship while being the mental health disaster I am is something I genuinely pride myself on after years of being, quite frankly, an emotionally underdeveloped weirdo with anger issues. Anger issues that came about because I’m literally terrified of people, mixing Autism and a never ending stream of bad experiences does that kind of thing to you (who knew), but anger issues nonetheless.
Despite all that, and despite my inability to form a sentence when there are more than two people in a room because of my anxiety, I’ve met a lot of people online and made... not what I’d call friends, for the most part, because my standards for that word are a lot higher than most, but close and fairly enduring acquaintances at the very least.
Some of them are fairly average people, but most of the ones I get to know are, in some ways, like me. Anxious or depressive, night owls, abused or bullied, oddballs, loners, generally "outcast" people to various degrees and for various reasons, and those who can’t be the person they feel they are without fear of reproach.
Basically everyone I know online’s gay as all get out, has bad taste in music, a worse sleep schedule, and couldn’t socialize if Marx himself was running their lives.
I’ve gotten to talk to (read: keymash at) these people a lot and somehow I ended up being the local internet counselor for several of them and... they’re just people. That’s the most honest, accurate way to describe them.
One just wants to have companionship and friends that appreciate him after spending his childhood being bullied. He’s a guy in his 20s who often feels kind of alone, and he’s not the weirdo sleazy stereotype people have of loneliness. Sure, he's fairly terrible at actually heeding fairly obvious life advice and comes back saying he regrets it every time, but he’s genuinely good person who cares about people and wants to do things with himself, both as a musician and as a human being.
...I’m not trash talking him to be cruel, we just do this to each other. Same applies to the rest of these.
Another struggles with depression and her emotions because of abuse and neglect growing up, as well as bullying at school. She’s pretty ruled by her emotions and doesn’t tend to make very good life choices, but sometimes I genuinely don’t think she’s capable of malice. She’s not the self-pitying, selfish stereotype people somehow have of depressed people. She genuinely wants others to be happy, is a talented artist, and knows good people when she finds them.
Yet another is one I’ve known for a very long time. She’s autistic, transgender, and from a very strict and, to be honest, pretty backwards religious family who would most likely disown her in a heartbeat if they knew of the latter. She spent a long time not sure of what to do with herself, and not knowing why she was put in the situation she’s in, trying to find people who wouldn’t hate her for her identity or her social difficulties. Like me, her autism has prevented her from making many friends in reality, and frankly we butt heads plenty on our own just because of personality differences. But she’s a very honest, loyal, and intelligent person who I’m thankful to have known for so long.
All of them and quite a few more are people who did nothing wrong but not fit the specific archetype that society wants. Even in reality, given what I've heard from other people who've known them outside of the great misinformation highway that is the internet, they’re not unlikable or antisocial or anything of the sort. They’re just not accessible. They take some effort to get past the initial wall and form a connection with, and as a result very few people even care enough to try.
And while it’s understandable that some people can end up in these kinds of mental and emotional situations of their own fault, in my experience very, very rarely are any of them unpleasant people. For every bit of ignored wisdom (what little of that I have to give), each hurtful bad decision made, and all the frustration and headbutting, there are dozens of times where they go out of their way to be nice or do good things. I’m still around these people because, despite being outside of the social norms and things traditionally considered “right”, they’re human beings with real lives and emotions and experiences, and they want and deserve to be accepted as such.
Most of the time successes and joy are shared among us all, everyone taking their own slice of the pie to feel better in the moment. Throwing parties, offering acknowledgements, congratulations, and gifts, at times even with people we barely, if at all, know.
But difficulties are shoved aside, where we can’t be bothered to acknowledge or offer a hand to the people who’re struggling, the ones nobody’s heard from in a while, the ones who might be awkward or quiet.
Because it’s not immediately gratifying, and it requires stepping away from our comfort zone and doing something that might be difficult for someone else’s good.
And maybe that’s the only reason I’ve talked to as many of these people- comfort zones aren’t something I’ve had the luxury of being in very often anyway because of my own anxiety and depression, so I’m generally as surprised to have someone acknowledge my existence as they are.
I’m not making some proclamation of my own goodness as a human being, or trying to put anyone down for anything that they’ve done to me or anybody else, it’s to be expected that things would work this way. It’s counterintuitive to put yourself in a more difficult situation for somebody else’s benefit. There’s a reason good samaritans are noteworthy.
But for as counterintuitive as it may be, I’ve never met a “perfect” person with stories worth hearing, and I doubt I ever will, so I'd like to keep my weirdos around.
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We still shake hands for no reason. We still give nice sounding greetings and offer nice sounding platitudes instead of extending genuine care and empathy, if we acknowledge someone at all. We still dance around problems because the best solution isn’t the one people want to hear.
We still go to work in our cubicles when working from home is more productive. We drive our cars to work and back every day, polluting the air needlessly. We push people to their physical and mental limits, working and overworking for the sake of tradition, not productivity. We force kids to learn pointless tripe instead of learning to think critically and educate themselves.
We reject people for things about themselves that they can’t control, their attraction to others, their identities of themselves. We tell people they can’t achieve certain things or have to act a certain way simply because they were born a certain gender. We take more than we need or could ever use, and blame the poor for being left wanting. We take our religious ideals and twist them far from what they were intended to be to fit our preconceptions of what is right and wrong, using them as a weapon against anyone we dislike. We see those with differences and struggles and treat them as lepers, avoiding them at all costs for the sake of our own comfort.
We rape and pillage the very planet we live on, going so far as to make conspiracies and politicize basic science to avoid taking responsibility and safeguarding it. We cannot accept progress because, in our arrogance, we take it as a personal attack on our intellect. We see one person’s struggle and try to negate it with the struggles of others, as if that somehow invalidates them.
We do everything we possibly can to hold onto what we’ve always known instead of doing what we know is right, because we’ve been conditioned to believe that the world works in this specific way, and cannot work in any other.
We’re still human, and we still forget that everyone else is, too.
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I named my main musical project Anaxiom because that’s how I feel about the world. It’s been this way since long before you and I were born, it will be this way for long after we’re gone. There’s no solution for it. That’s the shitty reality of it. Human nature is made to be cooperative, yes, but only as much as it needs to be. We’re still selfish and value our own comfort more than nearly anything else, and there are those of us who wield power that they can’t comprehend, and refuse to loosen their grip for long term benefits, because human nature isn’t based around thinking like that.
But that doesn’t mean that you and I have to accept it, or that we can’t do our best to improve things in our own right.
We can push for changes in the world, we can make things better for humanity as a whole.
And we can extend a hand to those going through difficulties, we can lend an ear to those who need one and be a voice for those without it. Hell, if you need to, be a fist for those who can't throw theirs. For all our misgivings as the dumbasses we all are, we are born with a sense of empathy that nothing else on this planet has. We have the ability to do right and be just, and so we should try to above all else, regardless of whether or not it's the norm.
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I write music as a way of giving voice to my own difficulties and those of the people I’ve known. Cambodian Death Cult and Cambodian Road Trip are about my own depression and feeling defeated and meaningless. Ma’iingan is a song to encourage people dealing with traumatic experiences, a reminder not to blame themselves. Balisong about the stresses of abuse, bullying, self harm, and anxiety, inspired by my own experiences and the experiences of my friends.
Being a metal musician doesn’t get you any admiration. You’re not the guy at every party with an acoustic guitar playing Wonderwall, and nobody understands why you’re playing loud, obnoxious music and screaming at the top of your lungs, nor should they.
I’m not writing songs for anyone’s sake but mine. I don't write songs about peoples' lives to make them feel better. I don’t write them expecting anyone on earth to actually listen to it, nor to shower me with praise and adoration for making what most people would consider a cacophony. The fact that I’m here writing this pretentious sounding tripe right now isn’t because I think anyone’s going to read it and care.
I write songs because after the years of suicidal depression and trauma and often feeling like I’m more or less on my own in the world, I don’t know how else to put my feelings into something real.
Because I don’t have any other way to explain why I keep going.
