Large Fierce Mammal

Who among us hasn’t heard, diplomatically thought, or outright spoken some iteration of, “Do you have a point to make or are you just talking out your ass?”

Spoiler alert: It will happen again, but not because of today’s revelations on the historical genre of demonically inspired ass music.

This age postures in its conceit as some sort of modern enlightenment, self-empowered to root out and punish the sins of currently unpopular ancestors in accordance with present day criminal codes, all within the lifetimes of its frenzied acolytes, by hook, crook, force, redefinition, and change of nomenclature as the ends may be deemed by the faithful as justification of the means. In this, much has been temporarily misplaced in the clamour.

There was a time in history when Facts were understood as those unassailably objective and Natural connections between cause and effect — do this, expect that; don’t do this and suffer the consequences — and from Facts spring Truth, and they are eternal. Of all things in Nature, only Humans persist in structuring their societies and social interactions as though Nature missed something only they can provide. From this, we get the smugly fast talking, scream downing, bullying, self-anointed winner of the popularity contest — truth — that impossible to pin down, fence sitting, wishy washy, constantly moving target homonym pretender to the Title.

You see, unlike Truth, which has been and will be around forever, truth has only existed as long as Humans, and as such is known by people who stick to the Facts as something invented and imposed by people with power to fuck with your very life that you are obliged to make a credible pretense of believing on pain of ridicule, loss of social position, ostracism, excommunication, imprisonment, torture, and/or death, depending on what’s in vogue. This may affect how you express yourself in public, but not when nobody’s looking, and even when someone is, much can be achieved by the bastard child of camouflage and sleight of hand. And that’s the Truth. Right up until the masks come off and the blades come out, and all we’re dealing with are Facts.

I won’t wax political in this as that would draw us away from the fundamental reason we’re here today, and that is just how downright close to the bone life was through most of history. Modern medical science has permitted people in at least developed countries to live to an age denied to most of their ancestors of only a few generations ago, albeit often confusing quantity of life with quality. We now live in a world built to even out the highs and lows of Life into a shambling mediocrity, with stately standby salons carefully crafted from truth waiting at the end of it to care for those imbued with the right combination of temerity and ill fortune to find themselves old and alive but unable to shamble another step.

I speak not of “better times”. There have never been better times, although truth would have it otherwise. In Truth, there have only ever been those who were more or less favourably positioned to deal with the Facts prevailing in their particular place and time, even as some found their vantage opportune to piss down upon the heads of those they saw beneath them while alleging that it was, in truth, raining.

In the not particularly better times spanning the years 1490–1510, Dutch artist Hieronymus Bosch (born Jheronimus van Aken, 1450-1516) painted what has come to be known as The Garden of Earthly Delights. For informative descriptions of the work, I encourage you to read Bosch, The Garden of Earthly Delights by Dr. Sally Hickson and Hieronymus Bosch’s ‘The Garden of Earthly Delights’, A Journey from Heaven to Hell and Back by Southby’s For myself,, I will haul ass, as it were, to what I trust you will find to be a fulsome and well rounded end.

Little is known beyond his professional life, and Bosch rarely signed or dated his work, including the one under discussion. What is known is that he was born into a family of painters in a time and place ruled by conniving nobles and church nabobs within which he found great success in his craft, and as befits a fashionable man, he died in a manner fashionable for his times in the plague outbreak of 1516. Very much in style and spawning many emulators, all this points to Bosch being well acquainted with the aforementioned bastard child of camouflage and sleight of hand, for much can be said in art of all genres that would raise the hue and cry if uttered otherwise.

In the eyes of the Christian Church and its adherents, you can never go wrong with depictions of the wages of sin, and we’ll close today with a singular bit of hellish punishment as depicted at the top of this piece, and writ upon the posterior of one hapless sinner by what I would posit to be the Demon of Prison Tattoos. Here is a 600 year old dose of butthurt, presented for your exquisite torment in two arrangements.

The choral arrangement …

And for the piano …