Teejay Riedl - Opus Incertum

If you continue to scroll down, I'll assume you have a fairly good idea that what you'll encounter is not really "family-oriented" material. There is no graphic nudity, and no profanity in the commentary... but the music will not be to the liking of the "typical" audience.

Actually, that was what I had in mind when I created it.

Thus, Beware.

This work came about as a result of a deepening depression, and the effect it had on the way I looked at the world. These are the actual liner notes from the project, copied and pasted without editing. Thankfully, I managed to weather the storm that this period of my life wreaked... although some scarring remains yet in evidence.

I grew up in suburban America, subjected to two relentless pressures: the first was the Media, unceasingly showing me a perfect world, where everything was basically okay, sunny, backlit on soft autumn afternoons with gentle breezes and golden leaves - making no concession to the reality of life as it actually is. The pressure thus emanated from the advertising itself - whose directive it was to create an anxiety in the consumer which could only be resolved by purchasing the product. Strangely, though, no matter how much product I ever purchased, life never even began to approach that sunny, happy state portrayed on the phosphor screen.

The second stressor was a constant sociological imperative, which was manifested in the form of religion, dictated law, and “manners” which imposed an artificial structure on all of my actions and emotions.

The net result of these pressures was an implication that to whatever height I aspired, I would always be less than worthy to God, and similarly would feel that the world could be a better place - since it would never reach the sunny afternoon fairyland promised by the advertising. Not only was I doomed to be disillusioned, but God was doomed to be disillusioned with me - and I was stranded in a world which I had been promised was Good, but was instead continually attacked by Evil.
Over the years, there was a gradual - almost subliminal - sense of unrest growing within me. I began asking myself questions, which we probably all ask of ourselves: “Is there a God? If so, why is there Evil? What determines the outcome of a given situation? Why do things turn out so poorly, all of the time?” I was left with no answers.

One night in 1994, I found myself in the middle of a personal crisis, doing battle with my own daemons, armed only with a tape recorder and a very large B-52 (y’know, the kind with Bailey’s, Gran Marnier, and Kahlua). Unfettered by an audience - and thus by any sociological principals - I began to speak my mind. The more I reasoned, the angrier I became, and the further down the chain of causality I went. For the first time in too many years, I vocalized some of the questions, which were rattling around, in my head. The alcohol broke down the social barriers, which normally prevented me from questioning too deeply, and as I vocalized, the tape recorder sat patiently cataloging it all.

When I listened to the tape a few days later, I was stunned - I had discovered a plane of viciousness, rage, and disbelief which had lain within me… and I was forced to examine myself in the cold light of day. Was I Evil? On the tape, I certainly sounded so.
I decided to dig a little deeper. I opened my eyes to the presence of Good and Evil in the world. Shunning the Pollyanna response of filtering out the “bad”, I soon realized there is far more Evil in the world than there is Good. Like the ancient Roman architectural technique of using small, bright stones in the facing of a dark, joyless concrete wall, it seemed as if the happy times in our lives are small events embedded into a larger framework of decay and despair. I would begin trying to document both the bright points, and the gray face behind the ornament - with no certainty as to what form the finished product would take. Hence, Opus Incertum - “Uncertain Work”.
Recording this was fun! I had no rules, no framework, no overall mission plan. The primary goal was getting the ideas onto tape, with minimal regard to musicianship or production. Often, there was a soundtrack, news clip, or other source of immediate inspiration or clarification, and these were embedded into the overall process. Of course, I claim no copyright for these materials where they incorporate any outside sources. The object was simply to capture the essence of the idea or observation while the observation was fresh, and before my learned system of values impinged upon the sound of the discovery.
And, for all of this, what did I discover?

I found no evidence whatsoever of God, or Satan… but abundant evidence of Good and Evil. I conclude that Good and Evil are not “forces”, but states of being derived from an unstable origin. Compare this with the concept of God/Satan: supposedly active, autonomous entities pressing in diametrically opposed directions. The seeming capricious onset of misery and trauma in the world, then, I view not as the intervention of God or Satan. Instead, it appears to be the observable result of the wave function collapse of a nonlinear statistical equation. A pencil, standing on its end, will fall. The question is, “in what direction”? We could just as easily substitute the terms “order” (Good) and “entropy” (Evil). The aspects of each are only what we have projected onto an event, based on our personal frames of reference… and we are almost universally biased against entropy.

In the end, the four years I invested in this project finally brought me to the point that my constant vigilance toward ugliness was beginning to affect my personal and professional life. Though I never did find evidence of the existence of God, neither did I find evidence against it. If such a being existed, I reasoned, it would be at a deeper, subtler level than is observable from the world we inhabit. The God I would thus envision would be cold, impersonal, and uncaring - a god of mathematics. Too, one must be careful about what one wishes for - because the duality of things would then stipulate the existence of Satan. Or, maybe one might view the answer to the equation itself as the Grail, meaning that God and Satan were two sides of the same coin, in a dimension where reductionism fails…

Finally, though my belief system took a beating, I did not despair. There were good days, there were bad: and statistically, they should average out to a featureless gray, into which I could yet find small, bright stones. Let me describe three of them:
• My brother, Matt Riedl, whose superb work CYST/VEAL directly provided me with the spark of inspiration for the technical aspects of this project. I admit to plagiarism of method; if not for Matt’s work, I never would have considered recording the way I did, and Opus Incertum would not exist.
• My friend, Mike Masquith, whose constant support, friendship, generosity, and quiet steadfast attitude helped me weather the events recounted in Opus, and many other disillusionments as well. Not documented here are some of the happy and outrageous episodes we’ve been involved in, but the memory of these helps keep me sane.
• My bride, Juli, who disagreed with much of the concept and execution of this project, but never once made a negative comment. Instead, she stood back to let me follow my Muse, and gave her constant support to the work ethic I needed to allow me to do this.

Two postscripts:
• Those of you who have taken umbrage at my questioning of God will be pleased to know that, in the 8 years since I began recording Opus Incertum, my views have changed rather significantly on the subject. I am, however, still in the mode of discovery, and this is not the proper forum to debate these topics. Hopefully, my next work will shed some light on my spiritual developments to date.
• I commend the idea that much of this material will be inappropriate or offensive to some people, and have done my best to ensure you have a fairly good idea of what you’re getting into.