if words unsaid could sway

angevin2's Western Civilization students were asked by their textbook "Do you have an answer to Job's dilemma? Explain."

I'm not sure that I can comprehensively justify the ways of God to man; not with beer, like Benjamin Franklin, or with modal logic, like Leibniz. Though I think both of these things are awesome. But on my way home this evening, it struck me that the mere existence of Skinny Puppy's "Worlock" may not be a theodicy all by itself, but somehow it makes life infinitely better.

Why this should be is a little mysterious. It is not, on the face of things, a cheery song. Musically, it is sort of a Dalek piloted by the tiny, twisted, mutated body of "Helter Skelter" left over after some kind of very nasty viral warfare. The Dalek is loud and scary and unstoppable, and yet it is clear "Helter Skelter" is in terrible torment. Lyrically, there's sort of a Noam Chomsky media manipulation thing going on. And also some self-hatred! And something about eating a dog.

Yet also: it is (to me anyway) irresistibly danceable; I have danced to it while falling in love, while mourning, in crowds, in my bedroom. And like all the best Skinny Puppy songs, you emerge at the end feeling like you have stared into the abyss with Ogre, your best friend, paid respects to the wounded animal inside you, and that, fucked up as the world is, things are, somehow, for now, going to be OK.

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