I didn't exactly have the highest opinion of Andrew WK for a while. What changed my mind is the time he called into the RIP a Livecast, and his super cool attitude made me realize he's a great guy.
Even greater is his response to a recent question in his weekly Village Voice column from a girl who goes by "Sick of Negative Vibes." This girl has a boyfriend who is into metal, and she is not into it at all. She mentioned he's always been a metalhead but currently "his musical taste seems to be getting truly evil." Check out this excerpt from her question:
I'm not a Goody Two-shoes or anything, but I was raised in a very loving family who taught me that stuff like this really can be bad for your karma, and I really don't feel comfortable around it. And even more than that, I really don't want this stuff corrupting my boyfriend and making him change from the loving, positive person he is. I tried removing some of the albums from his room and he freaked out. I tried telling him I wouldn't come over with that stuff in his house, but that didn't work either. I don't want to make him mad, but I do want this negative stuff out of our lives.
Sounds like this girl is kind of crazy. For his part, Andrew knows just how to handle this:
You know what the biggest negative vibe is in this situation? You. Trying to make your boyfriend give up the music he enjoys — that is true negativity. I understand how you're feeling, but rather than censoring someone's experience, I suggest you strive to develop your own spirit and make it large and strong enough to appreciate and interact with all types of emotional concepts, all types of feelings, all types of people, and all types of beliefs — including those that deal with the ideas of darkness, cruelty, death, destruction, anger, hatred, and evil. Desperately trying to hide — or make other people hide — from certain types of feelings is a losing battle. And it's likely that we'll experience more hurt and damage in our efforts to avoid that part of the world than we will by developing a heart and mind capable of engaging with the full spectrum of reality, from light to dark, and beyond.
It's interesting how often people confuse "evil sounding" music with true evil. By its very nature, music is benevolent. Music means well. It's virtually impossible to bend the will of music toward a truly negative intention. Music can be used to achieve all sorts of things, depending on who wants to use it and for what purpose, but the music itself is pure goodness. Music doesn't waste its time in dealing with human concepts like "good and evil." Thankfully, music exists in a realm above and beyond the need for logical ideas and theories. Music is where we can find relief from reason and truly experience "pure feeling." Music is what feelings sound like — feelings before we analyze and deconstruct them into digestible abstractions like "happy feeling" or "sad feeling." Music is just pure feeling.
Preach brother Andrew! That's not even the entire answer, he has plenty more to say in his advice column. Check it out here.
