Through all of the coincidental nonsense of fiction, Fern knew what HRH was asking.
She knew all about Varg Vikernes.
This was because of Anthony.
Her dead boyfriend had co-authored a posthumously published academic paper on Norwegian Black Metal.
This paper had appeared in 22:4 of Popular Music and Society.
Anthony’s co-authorship had been, mostly, a favor to a fellow doctoral student named Jacob.
Jacob had been browsing compact discs at Generation Records on Thompson Street when he’d stumbled across the Fierce Recordings reissue of Darkthrone’s Transilvanian Hunger.
This was back in The Year of the Speckled Band, which roughly corresponded to 1995 AD, 1415 AH, and 5755 AM.
When he first held the compact disc and its jewel case, Jacob had no idea what the hell was in his hands.
But the ultracontrast black-and-white cover art convinced him into an impulse buy.
Jacob went home and listened to Transilvanian Hunger.
He used the Internet, then in its pre-Google days, to search on Darkthrone and Transilvanian Hunger.
Jacob used a search engine called AltaVista.
AltaVista helped Jacob find out that Darkthrone was one of the foremost bands in the second wave of a subgenre called Black Metal.
AltaVista also helped Jacob find out that the words printed on the album’s back insert—Norsk Arisk Black Metal—translated to NORWEGIAN ARYAN BLACK METAL.
Jacob had that old familiar feeling.
Heavy Metal, of which Black Metal was a subgenre, was like all rock music in the Twentieth Century AD: totally indebted, and dependent upon, the influence of African-American blues and R&B.
But there had been a trend in Heavy Metal.
Its practitioners had gazed towards the structures and presumed virtuosity of Classical Music.
Heavy Metal was a genre that pulled away from the African-American influence and sought inspiration amongst received conceptions of European tradition.
Jacob saw Black Metal as the furthest possible extension of this trend.
Transilvanian Hunger was an album defined by its abject rejection, ideologically and aesthetically, of the African-American influence.
By virtue of this approach, and its resulting sound, the album was something totally new in quasi-popular music.
That old familiar feeling arrived whenever Jacob stumbled into the cheap wordplay that animates minor academic papers.
In an instant, he came up with a title: “Why are Black People Absent from Black Metal?: National identity, artistic convention and racist ideology in a new subgenre of heavy metal music.”
Jacob got to work.
And he involved Anthony.
Jacob returned to Generation Records in search of more Norwegian Black Metal.
The early Internet had recommended several bands.
One name in particular kept popping up: Burzum.
Burzum was a one-man outfit.
Burzum’s one man was Varg Vikernes.
In 1995 AD, while Fern was in New York City and worried about the effects of her magic on Anthony’s health, she had spent a great deal of time listening to Burzum.
Anthony called it research.
But the truth was that he really liked Burzum.
And so did Fern.
Years after Anthony’s death, Fern had ended up at a waterfront penthouse party in the Karşıyaka district of İzmir, Turkey.
The party was full of soft Turkish college boys who hadn’t yet done their mandatory military service.
Or had parents rich enough, and well connected enough, to buy their sons out of mandatory military service.
On the penthouse’s television, a pirated download was playing.
The pirated download was an iterative copy of the 2008 AD documentary film Until the Light Takes Us.
Until the Light Takes Us was about Norwegian Black Metal, and it had been named after the English translation of a Burzum album.
The Burzum album was called Hvis lyset tar oss.
It had been released in 1994 AD.
The party wasn’t much more than soft Turkish boys giggling as they looked at pornographic videos on each other’s smartphones.
So Fern had no real choice.
She watched Until the Light Takes Us.
It all came back.
Anthony in 1995 AD.
New York City.
Black Metal.
And as she watched Until the Light Takes Us, Fern saw the story of Varg Vikernes.
How he’d come from Bergen, how he’d gotten involved with the Oslo Black Metal scene based out of the record store Helvete, how he’d dedicated himself and his music to a racist doctrine of vaguely Satanic neo-paganism, how he’d started burning down old wooden churches as a protest of the Semitic Christian invasion of Norway, how he’d murdered Euronymous, who was the owner of Helvete and founding member of the band Mayhem, and how Euronymous himself was no piece of work, having stumbled upon the corpse of Mayhem’s lead vocalist after Mayhem’s lead vocalist had blown his head open with a shotgun, and how Euronymous photographed the body and later made necklaces from the body’s skull fragments.
Varg Vikernes was the star of Until the Light Takes Us, unfathom-ably pompous, unchallenged, serving out his sentence for the murder of Euronymous, spouting neo-Nazi Norsk ideology from within prison walls, adopting the same insufferable persona that he’d developed for the Norwegian press of the early 1990s AD.
As she watched, Fern remembered how Burzum had soothed Anthony in his creeping pain.
She remembered Anthony telling her that Varg Vikernes was the key to the whole Norwegian Black Metal scene: he had released his own albums as Burzum, but he’d also played bass on Mayhem’s De Mysteriis Dom Sathanas and written the lyrics to one side of Transilvanian Hunger.
And yet Varg Vikernes was a total fucking idiot.
He was just a crap Nazi with an Odin fetish.
And after being released from prison, he’d done the same thing as every crackpot with his glory days behind him: he’d started a YouTube channel.
But the albums that he’d recorded before prison?
Absolutely fucking brilliant.
So when the fractured astral projection of HRH confronted Fern with his inquiry about Varg Vikernes, Fern could answer his question.
Ever since that penthouse party in Karşıyaka, she’d been wondering how Varg Vikernes’s brief period of aesthetic genius could emerge from the body of an idiot.
“It’s my guess,” said Fern to the astral projection of HRH, “that generating art, and experiencing it, has no connection to the possession of intelligence. There have been millennia of humans writing words and making music and printing posters that insult politicians. Nothing has changed. Still you wallow in your filth. Still you elevate pigs above you. Only a fool would seek intellect amongst human aestheticians. Better if you look for inspiration amongst your plumbers.”
“Madame,” said HRH, “when next I relieve the vital center, with your words alone shall I shake, rattle, and roll.”
HRH felt his spirit begin to return to his body.
“Yet my short time is not up! As you have expressed some interest in America, may I repay your kindness? Do you wish to know the secret of this great depraved land?”
“Amuse me, mortal,” said Fern.