[EN] Glaring Through Oblivion Review

Serj Tankian, Glaring Through Oblivion

Illustrated by Roger Kupelian

Release date: March 22 (US); April 1 (UE)

HarperCollinsPublishers, It Book collection

—

Since I got a mail from Serjical Strike Records, asking me my home address so as to send me a copy of Glaring Through Oblivion, I would daily, feverishly, check my mailbox, waiting for any parcel to show up. I would peer at the postman in the distance, hoping to see him coming at me with a packet under his arm. It took me few days and a lot of patience before I could finally get my hands on Serj’s collection of poems, kindly offered by his label, « on behalf of Serj Tankian ».

Once you get the book in your hands, what strikes first is the quite unusual format (8.1 x 6.2 x0.6). A book not as tall as we’re used to, and wider.

As promised, the book opens on a piece of prose wrote by Serj few days after 9/11, describing his feelings on the general ambiance that reigned in the U.S. at that time, on paranoia (« mass media’s modern McCarthyism », in Serj’s terms), but also on the threats that weighed on the band members and himself: «  I live in the U.S.A. and am afraid to say what’s on my mind, because of physical threats and rhetoric directed against my band members and myself in this time of confused patriotism »

The two pages end on what is to become the book’s opening : « I, myself, have vowed to never again hold my tongue ». After that, fifty poems follow, committed ones for most of them.

You don’t need to be a fan of the singer/musician/composer to appreciate the writings. Any English-speaking reader will appreciate the puns and alliterations. But a fan will have this additionnal pleasure to recognize some of the words: one verse here (« you cheat us when you feed us with the lie »), a bit of verse there (« an old man stares at me »), a whole poem is to become a song (Borders), another one will remind you some old memories of SOAD’s eponymous album (« open your eyes, / open your mouths, / close your hands, / and make a fist. » – be sure to check the back of your album), while still another will get you back to Serart’s peculiar atmosphere (Claustrophobia).

But of course, you won’t find only lyrics. Most of the poems are new to the eye and a complete discovery. A complete challenge also, with some verses that are typically Tankian-ian: « perfunctory permeations of functional neurons », « prosthetic proselytizing over the pathetic patsies ». You’d better be warned: some bits will definitely be mind challenging!

You’ll find Serj’s favorite topics alongside the reading: politics, civilization, commitment, ecology, justice, modernity …  while other poems are more personal, more intimate, more meditative, and still others, one-liners, will remind you of ancient asian wisdom (« blindness serves not God, but man » ; « home is a place you can’t walk away from, in the end » ; « you speak to millions but talk to no one ») … not ! (« fancy fucking you here! » ; « she sells sea shells, buy the real whore! »).

While those poems will delight your ears and palate, let your eyes be charmed by Roger Kupelian’s illustrations! A mix between computer matte paintings and photography, Kupelian brings us deep into an atypical universe, between antiquity and modernity. Metal silhouettes precede a tall ancient brick temple ; a bosom is hinted, a child hides ; houses, a forest. The colors vary between red, orange, brown, blue and green, often dark, but always warm. You will find the visual ambiance of Honking Antelope and Reconstructive Demonstrations videoclips, still in a more delightful, more aesthetic, more abstract way. A feast for the eyes at every turn of a page, even though one does not always know what we are looking at. There is the delight, in my opinion.

To put it in a nutshell, Glaring Through Oblivion is a book that rejoices your hands and will need all their attention to be manipulated with its landscape format; deep topics, few « light » poems (even if there are some), that will stimulate your imagination with its fanciful imagery (« I’m being chased by children playing miniature toy accordions made in China ») as well as your civic, political and ecological senses; and Kupelian’s illustrations complete the work wonderfully.

One will only regret the thinness of the book, with less poems that Cool Gardens (80 poems in the first book /  1 prose and 50 poems – 12 of them consist of one line – but nearly twice as more illustrations in the second).