"Let it rest and be done"

A eulogy for a Goth dog and some recent viewings/listenings

I keep telling myself I will be better about these little newsletters and will send them out at least monthly, but here we are and its my first of the “new” year. I’m still fairly convinced that no one actually reads these anyways, so I suppose its ultimately of little consequence how prolific I am with these. I am going to get a little excessively sincere and emotional on this one, my apologies in advance. As always, I do very little editing on these, so my apologies in advance for that as well.

My dog Elvira died one year ago this week (5/8/23). When she initially died, I was too overwhelmed by grief to say much more than the obligatory IG post, but now that we are almost 365 days removed from her last breaths, I feel obliged to give her some sort of eulogy.

Elvira Poe-Kent was a Flat Coat Retriever/Chow mix. My girlfriend (now wife) and I adopted her as an 8 week old puppy in early August of 2018. To be blunt, I did NOT want to adopt this puppy. My girlfriend and I were going through a rough patch at the time, and I was worried about the idea of us adopting a dog, me growing close with it, and then us breaking up and me not seeing it again. Also, my anxieties of animal care were pretty strong at the time, and the jump from having one dog and two cats to now two dogs felt like a vast leap (its honestly not that bad. The jump from 2 to 3 dogs though is another story). When we went to the house in the Virginia Beach area to meet the puppy, I was forcing myself to become so emotionally detached from the puppies that I barely took the time to hold the little black puppy we were meant to take home. Although I am very much the same person I was then, I cannot imagine now letting myself be so emotionally cold as to ignore the cutest puppy in the world. That night when home alone with the puppy, I got drunk on cheap whiskey and watched the goofy body horror film Tusk, and in my emotionally inebriated state I just fell in love with this little black blob, holding her close and crying over her purity.  She was the first dog I had ever had since they were a puppy (at least since I was a young child), and the experience of watching this creature grow with me quickly became a powerful experience. She had the fluffiest black coat, with long vampire esque teeth that would stick out at the cutest moments. 

-Left: Drunk on whiskey and adoring this puppy we brought home that day, right: one month later-

The days with this puppy quickly turned to weeks to months and eventually into years. She was my buddy and my shadow and my dear little raincloud. She was a good natured dog who would lose her mind every time we got home, letting out Chewbacca esque moans out of pure excitement. Like many of the best dogs, she was the perfect balance of playful and relaxed, seemingly equally as content to do zooms around the back yard as she was to lay on the floor/couch with us, always letting out a deep sigh as she did so, truly seeming like the pouty emo/goth kid that I always envisioned her as. We moved multiple times with Elvie, and she always handled it unphased, as long as she had a yard to frolic in.

She was with me in my happiest moments, as well as my worst, watching me as I bottomed out into deep depressions and alcohol fueled blackholes. She was there as I grew through perhaps my greatest period of growth, from a mid 20s hot mess into a 30 year old with a steady job and wife and mortgage.  She was there when we lost our precious Husky Ana, and as we experienced a devastating loss with my wife’s first pregnancy. She was always there. She would sit on the couch with me to watch Body Horror movies, always eventually walking off to lay in the hallway by herself to pout. I quite simply adored her in a way that I had never loved an animal.

-Elvira a month before her passing-

In May of 2023, she kept getting sick and lethargic. I will never forget my wife holding her in the back yard, laying on the concrete with Elvie as she looked tired and scared.  I took her to the vet where they said she had a minor stomach bug. The next day she was still sick, so I took her back to the vet that morning, and by the end of that day, she was just… gone. She died of a hidden ulcer that was identified after it was already too late to do anything about it. We could have tried a surgery, but were given very little assurance that it could save her, and even if it did, she allegedly would have never been the same. I held her paw as she got the shot that would make the life fade from her eyes, her vampire teeth poking out of her black lifeless gums. 

My life is so different now than it was even just a year ago. The beautiful entrance of my son to my life has rewired my brain in the hardest to describe ways. Seeing him grow incrementally over the last 6 months is the most beautiful feeling of my life. I wish Elvie could have met him. She would have been his best friend just like she was mine. She taught me the beauty of watching life grow.

 I miss her every day, with the pain ranging from a pale sadness that I can push aside to crippling sorrow.  Some days I feel strength from carrying her in my heart and cherishing our memories, and some days the feeling of loss is overwhelming. I have had a number of dogs and cats too mine pass in my lifetime, but never anything close to feeling like this. I don’t know if you get many relationships with animals like this in one’s lifetime. My goal with this eulogy is that by publicly speaking something I’ve carried for the last year, I can begin to move past it. Five years just isn’t enough. But even despite her brief life, I deeply cherish the moments we had together. I wish so badly I could just sit not the couch and watch a movie with her one more time, or watch her zoom around the lawn after receiving a bath. I will carry those moments in my heart until my own last breath. 

……

One of the only sources of cathartic comfort is the 3 (or 4 depending on who you ask) song “Virtute” series of songs by The Weakerthans/John K Samson. The songs tell the story of his adoption of his cat Virtute, the time the cat ran away, and it’s eventual death, all from the perspective of the cat. I am incapable of listening to the 2nd and 3rd song without at least several shed tears. If you have ever lost a pet that means more to you than you are capable of putting into words, than I highly recommend you check out this playlist I made of the three songs. Like any other Samson joint, I recommend reading the lyrics along with your listening. I talked with a dear friend about the Weakerthans on a recent road trip, and they are a band that can often attract insufferable fans, but much as is the case with the Mountain Goats, there is a vast amount of beauty to be experienced through their music. Give the trilogy of songs a listen if you want to feel something.

….

 Ok, that’s enough doom and gloom for now. Here’s some stuff I’ve dug lately:

• Under the Bridge (Hulu): This show really scratches the True Detective itch that the recent series simply didn’t. Lily Gladstone has such a peculiar sort of acting style that was hard for me to adjust to for the first hour or two of Killers of the Flower Moon, but I’m all in on it now. 

• This song was written for the recent film the Iron Claw, a fantastic wrestling biopic. Its really beautiful with its Springsteen-esque chest pounding emotion. Some days I really wish I was into wrestling. I have seen multiple wrestling documentaries I really enjoy and don’t even get me started on the movie The Wrestler (easily Aronofsky’s best movie). I think I just don’t have the time or emotional bandwidth to have ANOTHER time consuming hobby. Maybe I just need a friend to watch it with. Bang my line if you want to hold my hand in getting me into AEW, it seems cool

• The Hidden (1987): this movie FUCKS. My elevator pitch of it would be The Terminator meets Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978). This isn’t quite on the level of those works, it meanders in a way that feels amateurish at times, but man this movie rocks. Like any sane human, I adore Kyle MacLachlan and this movie at times feels like his demo of the role he would develop with his Twin Peaks persona. If you like 80s Sci Fi/action/horror, than this is an essential watch. I simply don’t know how I had not heard of this movie before, because this thing should be a real cult classic.

• Humanist Vampire Seeking Consenting Suicidal Person (2023): This was a great watch. The title kinda says exactly what its about, but man this movie was so charming. Sure, its a bit twee, but in a way that I never found to be annoying. This is perfect for the person who wants to watch something horror adjacent but nothing actually scary. The allegory of the movie is pretty on the nose, but sometimes subtlety can be a bit overrated, ya know?

• Unto Others - Butterfly: I have been following this band since their first EP when they were named Idle Hands, and they just keep getting better and better. With this new album cycle they seem to be entering, I really hope they finally get pushed over the edge and reach the popularity they deserve. For the uninitiated, they are a goth metal band in the most literal sense of that genre tag. My pitch with this band has often been that they sound like a band that could play at both the Bat Cave and at New Wave of British Heavy Metal gigs. At this point, I think they have developed their own sound and feel a bit more modern than my old description, but it still mostly applies. Sometimes they edge closer to mid era Sisters of Mercy anthemic goth rock, and sometimes they have a real melodic metal stompiness that would scratch the itch of your hesher buddy in an Iron Maiden tee. At the risk of sounding vain, I think this band is maybe slightly held back by their lack of a singer with a lot of the sleek swagger that a big room rock/metal band typically needs, but hey, far dorkier frontmen have prevailed, so Unto Others could still make it through. I hate to sound so superficial, but you’re kidding yourself if you don’t think aesthetics or performance isn’t an essential element of goth (or metal for that matter).I don’t equate popularity with artistic quality in any way, but I would love to see a band like this really pick up bigger audiences. 

• Napalm Death- Throes of Joy in the Jaws of Defeatism : I have been revisiting this 2020 album over the last week. I listened to it extensively during the peak of the pandemic/quarantine era. I had not really revisited it since then, but now that I have, I feel validated for praising it so much at the time. It’s pretty rare for a band as seasoned and prolific as ND to continue putting out records that are both this ripping and musically adventurous. There is of course the things you’d expect from an ND album like blast beats, leftist political musings, d beats, etc, but there are some really cool left turns on this album, including the song below, which shows them really leaning into the Killing Joke influence that they’ve cited for decades (linked below). There is also a great Swans esque closing track, which I dig a lot. They have had a touch of Swans ever since their second LP, but this one really expands upon it. Give it a listen.

• Cocteau Twins- Discography:  I often will give myself music listening assignments, both to fill in gaps in my musical awareness and also because I’m a buffoon who has to gamify everything. I’m currently in the midst of a Cocteau Twins spurt. I only previously knew their collab album and Heaven or Las Vegas, never listening before to their earlier material. It’s really great stuff. I don’t have a lot of insight into it, but man, those early 4AD records were really special. The second LP is especially strong.

• Farmer Wants a Wife: Every once in a while, my wife and I will watch some truly stupid TV shows to break up my occasionally pretentious taste. Let me tell you what, those farmers do indeed want wives.

• I Get Knocked Down: This documentary was absolutely fantastic. It follows the singer of Chumbawamba as he reckons with his past as an an anarchist pop star and his present as a disillusioned man sliding well through his middle age years and is trying to find out how to make sense of his past while still being a radical in a way that makes sense for someone who is well past his prime. I feel like the trivia fact of “DiD YoU kNOW THaT ChuMbaWAMBa WaS aN aNaRcho PUnK BaND? Is incredibly played out at this point, but I feel like even still, we really don’t often talk about just how it was that an anarchist band on Crass records released one of the biggest songs of an entire decade. I have myself been having a little bit of an inner struggle lately with my place in the world of punk/DIY. I still find a great deal of meaning and value in the music and taking part in counter culture, but now that I have a kid and am not able to go to many shows (at least ones that I’m not playing), I feel like a bit of an outsider. There is nothing inherently wrong with this, Punk is in fact meant to be ALL ages, but I do still ask myself why I continue to try so hard to push my music forward against a scene that generally is apathetic towards my presence. I don’t mean to sound gloomy, I still adore playing punk music and I can’t imagine my life without that element to it, but it has left me assessing just what it all means and what its all for. Give this doc a watch, you can rent it on amazon or youtube for like $3.

While you’re at it, watch this INCREDIBLE live set of Chumbawamba at 924 Gilman in 1990. Neurosis and The Offspring opened. It makes me smile thinking about how this lineup wasn’t too strange at that brief moment, but the 1996 incarnations of these bands playing together would have looked VERY different. Regardless, this set is incredible and looks like such a good time.

And that’s about all I’ve got for now.  Thanks for listening to my meandering bullshit. I’ll go ahead and hit the “send” button before I chicken out and decide not to share my excessive sincere ramblings.

Be kind and be patient with your fellow animals, human or otherwise. 

“It takes strength to be gentle and kind.”

-MK

Elvira forever.