No One Behind the Eyes

Depersonalization. To no longer inhabit oneself. To drift listlessly through fleeing days, a powerless spectator to one’s own nonexistence—an extinguished automaton, yet boiling quietly with anxiety beneath the surface. The ultimate disincarnation of being, suspended inside an ever-deepening vertigo. A muffled perception of the world. The sensation of witnessing everything else from behind a pane of glass—dirty, greasy, tarnished, dust-choked, veiled beneath the cobwebs of a thousand years. To feel— no. To KNOW —that our gestures are no longer ours. That everything surrounding us is merely subterfuge: some futile, haunted theatre performing itself for nobody. To live inside a waking nightmare. To attempt, often in vain, to anchor oneself through obsessive rituals and unhealthy compulsions. Anything to remain here. Anything to prove that here still exists. My hands tremble. An opaque fog settles over everything. Voices arrive from very far away. Mechanical. Deliberate. Calculated. Faces become representations of faces. Rooms become representations of rooms. The body continues its little procedures without asking whether anyone is still inside. And somewhere behind the eyes— nothing answers. ḙ̴̲̲͈̜͚̈́̐͋̄̑̚͜͝m̵̳̩͙͓̲͈̙̳̾̐̋͘͜͜p̴̛̺̲̭̩͖̞̝̘͚͑͛̃̓̅̐͊̈́̕ț̸́͛̏̎͘ý̵͎̥̪̣͊̈́ ̸͖͍͖̞͈͉̝̭̌͊̓́́̉͛̚͜v̸̧̛̀̈́̅͂̂̓̕a̶̙̖̘̓̅l̵̗͍̲̪̻̖̫͋̉̀̉ṳ̵̥̩̙͈͛̋́͋̂̽̑̆̇̋e̵̛̹͖͓͌̋̉̓̑ Listening to this album—so grey, so dim, so drained of all warmth—from minimal noise wall master Empty Value feels like sinking directly into the torments of depersonalization and derealization. A wall not erected before you, but somewhere between yourself and the world. And gradually, quietly, terribly— between yourself and yourself. A masterful work. -Sir Kuliktavikt