To See It All / To Hear It All: Michael Gira’s Songs of Experience Cover Image

To See It All / To Hear It All: Michael Gira’s Songs of Experience
To See It All / To Hear It All: Michael Gira’s Songs of Experience

Author(s): Sławomir Kuźnicki
Subject(s): Music, Theory of Literature, British Literature
Published by: Uniwersytet Opolski
Keywords: Swans; William Blake; post-Christianity; innocence–experience dichotomy; visionary poetry; rhythm;

Summary/Abstract: Between 2012 and 2016, the American experimental rock band Swans, led by the vocalist, multi-instrumentalist and visionary Michael Gira, released a monumental trilogy of albums comprising The Seer, To Be Kind, and The Glowing Man. The lyrics on all of them portray Gira’s own search for identity, with the result being a peculiar version of spirituality that is both philosophically religious and ideologically anti-religious. Forced to exist in the hostile, incomprehensible and spiritually-barren reality, the artist finds himself alienated in the state of the end of childhood and loss of innocence. In other words, he locates his identity in this final stage of spirituality and primal religion that could be named post-Christianity.

  • Issue Year: 2018
  • Issue No: 6
  • Page Range: 67-78
  • Page Count: 12
  • Language: English