Introduction to Brian Matthew Kessler


Here I am.

Good start.  Where is here?  Who am I?  What does it mean to be?

Here.  Inhabiting a twenty-nine year old human body, a body born on 31 July 1973 (see Natal Chart for BMK ).  The body is currently five foot eleven inches, and as of a couple days ago, just shy of 160 pounds.  The hairy body betrays an eastern European heritage (about half Hungarian, half Romanian, a bit of Austrian and Czech thrown in).  The long hair displays his sense of aesthetics, implies his willingness to allow nature to take its course, hints at his Nazarene tendencies, and remind us that this man was born a Leo.  The body is drapped in black; whatever else it may imply to any and many, it ultimately states nothing more than a strong aesthetic belief that humans look best in black.  The various silver or silver-coloured metal that sometimes also adorns this body, is ultimately nothing more than a statement that just black can be boring: here are some conversational pieces (but I'll save them for later conversations).  Pictures can be found at BMK's Photopage.

This clothed body sits in a bedroom.  The bedrooms half-ravaged, half neurotically organized state, is an expression of it's occupant's extremist tendencies where everything must either be chaotic or orderly to be properly appreciated.  Also in this rooms are various tributes to his bohemian and technophilic ways (but we may discuss this more later).  The room itself sits on the second story of a detached house belonging to his parents, both biological, both still together.  In this house also lives his 25 year old brother.  A loving family, even if not always an understanding or respecting one.

The house is one of too many in a suburban neighborhood named "Larchmont".  Fortunately, most of these houses were built before the architectual cookie cutters came to prominense.  Unfortunately, the occupants of these homes were not biologically so fortunate.  Over the last twenties years, most have conformed to an image of white aluminum siding.  This is quite representative of the general attitude of the people who live here in Larchmont: If you don't look like me, if you don't talk like me, if you don't think like me: You don't belong here.

That attitude actually well describes the entire town of Union, within which Larchmont is situated.  To varying degrees, it is my experience of this entire state of New Jersey, which I forever leave and inevitably come back to.  Leaving may mean intellectually by surfing the internet, reading a book, writing a story, drawing a picture.  Or it may mean more literally travelling to any part of this planet which my budget or my thumb can get my body to.

Yes, so I am here in this body and in this room.  But who am I?  Too often, people ask that and they really mean "What are you?  What do you do?"  And the implication is on employment, equating worth with income and perhaps prestige.  Such a utilitarian view has always disgusted me: the value of a man or woman lies not in his value to exploit nor to be exploited.  Nor can we find any necessary correlations between paychecks and usefulness to society anyway.

What am I?  If I am my body, than I can not deny myself to be human, but my sympathies with the general population often seems so scarce that it's with a reluctance I am to admit it and with a reminder that this was not my fault (putting issues of what I may have chosen before being born aside).  Labels I am more ready to accept include artist and student, but quite often I feel to be neither and the assertion becomes fraudulent.  Either is just a state of being and not an indication of identity, any more so than anything else.

Quite often, the question is not to my income, but to my cultural identity, but that presumes I have one... My image tends people to associate me with goths, metalheads, hippies, punks, or sometimes bikers; except for the last (for lack of a bike), all have shades of truth as I am friendly with all (although I often stear clear of bikers out of NYC since many have bad attitudes and think I look too much like a biker for someone who is not), but I attribute no labels to myself.  If I spend a disproportionate amount of time with goths lately, it is more because they (the elder goths, not so much so the kindergoths, especially in FL where they listen to way too much electonic shit) best share my aesthetics and because if I can even find metal events anymore they tend to be sausage parties.  Yes, there is another truth there to, I have a severe weakness for women dressed in black, so I go where I am likely to meet them.

But I still haven't said who I am.  I don't even know if I can say who I am.  Language was developed to define and work with objects, things.  But people are not things (thus the three catagories of nouns).  A label delimits an object, but it is human nature, perhaps the nature of life itself, to transcend and deny limitation.  I have written a couple bios (BMK's Old BioSketch and BMK's Personal Ad) but as lengthy and well written as they may be, I can hardly deny that they skirt the issue and challenge the reader.  Perhaps they even come off as arrogant and pretentious.  Perhaps even this does.  Maybe I'm a Leo.

How can I tell you who I am?  Give me a word that is a "who", not a "what".  What is a who?  A person is a who.  Perhaps I should list famous people who I have found myself sympathetic to:

Aleister Crowley (best known for Thelema ["Do as thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.  Love is the law, love under will."] and his tarot (jointy designed by Frieda Harris) -- his ideas, even unto "Thank God I am an Aethiest" and "Doubt even you are doubting" are ideas which strike a cord within my own sole and no words are more uplifting than "Remember all ye that existence is pure joy; that all the sorrows are but as shadows; they pass & are done; but there is that which remains." [Liber Legis 2:9].  

Eric Blair (better known as George Orwell, best known for "1984" and "Animal Farm") -- turning his back upon the values of the capitalist class to which he was born, he friended the poor and lived by choice among the lower classes, although always as an outsider because he always had a home with wealthy parents he could return to.  He saw the folies of political ideologies and the parties that would practice them.  And he saw too how the media was the government's puppet.

But as I sit here trying to list named, I realize that I can only mislead you by naming these people.  For I am not these people; not by a far cry.  And if you have any notions about these people, they may not be the same notions I have about these people.  If I tell you "Marquis de Sade", you'd likely think S&M (unless you've studied enough of him to know better); I, on the other hand, sympathize more with his logic, his relevating ethics, his love of truth and learning, and his extremely large imagination and the ability he had to shock and disgust his contemporaries.

But even as I write those words, I realise they are not telling you who I am.  They may indicate who I have been and who I am capable of becoming, but they do not identify a kernal nugget of truth which is my being (the final of the three questions I asked above) -- a me which is immutable, transcending time and space.

Ah hah!  There is the problem, for I do not believe in the immutable.  All is transient.  Though I may share some memories with the boy who had my name twenty years ago, I am hard pressed to identify him as me.  I look different, I dress different, I eat different food, I think different, I feel different.  A necessary prerequisit to my present identity he may be, but me he was not, just as I will not be the man who bares my name twenty years hence.

So let me, if for just this very moment, drop the issue, less my identity crisis becomes contagious and the tristate area has a sudden influx of black walkers all going around asking "who am I" and meanwhile nothing gets done.

If you have any questions, answers, or tangental notes, I'd be happy to hear them, here or in private.  My E-mail is briankessler@nowhereatall.net and you can also explore my website at http://www.nowhereatall.net.

-Brian.