The Mask and the Mirror

My therapist diagnosed me – and simultaneously all of you, my dear conscientious readers – 

with a new syndrome: 

Philosophical Attachment Style.

This specific attachment style dictates that attraction is only possible through the matrix of a shared philosophical universe. That's the first law of attraction and comes first before building everyday convenience.

It is for those who are restless, and really want more out of life.

As our dear Nietzsche wasn't simply provocative when he said:

"Everything in woman is a riddle, and everything in woman has one solution: it is called pregnancy. Man is for woman a means: the end is always the child."

 

But told us about the safe attachment style: the physiology behind all the masks, the evolution psychology –  where consciousness is the last part of the body that is developed and therefore weakest.

But continued to honor a different kind of Truth:

"Supposing that Truth is a woman — what then? Is there not ground for suspecting that all philosophers, in so far as they have been dogmatists, have failed to understand women?

That the terrible seriousness and clumsy importunity with which they have usually paid their addresses to Truth, have been unskilled and unseemly methods for winning a woman?

Surely she has not let herself be won — and today every kind of dogmatism stands with sad and discouraged posture. If it is still standing at all!"

 

If Truth is indeed a woman who refuses to be won by clumsy, dogmatic, and over-serious suitors, then how does the Philosophical Attachment Style survive its own depth? How do we court the abyss without collapsing into a "sad and discouraged posture"?

To find out, we must leave the lecture halls and enter the grand theaters of shock rock, where two different architects of the dark romantic myth tried to solve Nietzsche’s riddle: 

Marilyn Manson and Alice Cooper.

Both built their castles out of the same gothic materials—vampirism, danger, and theatrical masks. But their strategies in courting the "Truth" were radically opposite. One became the tragic, clumsy philosopher who bled out on his own altar; the other became the master showman who knew exactly how to dance with the riddle without losing his head.

Together as one, against all others...

 

Let's look at Marilyn Manson and the album he made for Evan Rachel Wood called 'Eat Me, Drink Me'. It's an example when you mistake "love" for idealization, and do not accept the other as fragile human being. When one demands the other to be something from a pedestal, and can't accept his/her human aspects, faults, and live as failures together that nonetheless drive to reach out something together in kindness. Not as 'subjects to one another' but as objects of idealization. This ultimately destroys the objects, because no human can ever reach the demands of an ideal. 

In the album lyrics:

"Blow out the candles on all my Frankensteins, at least my death wish will come true"

It doesn't just mean some old Frankensteins getting killed for the sake of growth, but death itself becomes the goal.

"I want what I see in your eyes

So give me something to be scared of

Don't give me something to satisfy"

Shows that Manson isn't interested in sex. But also shows that he destroys Evan because he yearns to get the same experience back, being scared like she is of him.

And finally:

"I was invited to a beheading, today

I thought I was a butterfly next to your flame

A rush of panic and the lock has been raped

This is only a game, this is only a game..."

What goes on in their relationship is so traumatic that the mind interprets it as "only a game"

You wear your ruins well, please run away with me to Hell...

It was the innocent little girl's idea - who put a knife to Manson's hands when he was desperate and told him that he should kill her - to use Manson's and Dita's wedding bed for the raining blood scene. Retrospectively she accused Manson of penetrating and raping her during that scene. But all in all, there's no doubt that their relationship became Manson's vampiric horror myth, and a drug-infused Relationship of Death.

He tried to own the Truth and the Woman by making their relationship something bloody, consuming tragedy. He became a discouraged dogmatist because he couldn't let go of his myth.

This ain't your daddy talkin'; You know, I know.

Your story ain't so shocking: You know, I know.

Enter Alice Cooper—the ultimate antidote to the tragic dogmatist.

With these lines, Cooper steps out of his own gothic smoke, breaks the fourth wall, and strips away the heavy, life-destroying vanity of our own pain. He reminds us that we do not have to be cursed, mythical creatures doomed to bleed out; we are human beings, and we can choose not to drown in our own tragedies.

If Manson's approach to the Philosophical Attachment Style was a one-way ticket to a real slaughterhouse, Cooper's approach is the grand theater. He understands that to survive the myth, both people need to know it's a play.

Look at how he handles the darkness in Billion Dollar Babies:

"We go dancing nightly in the attic

While the moon is rising in the sky

If I'm too rough, tell me

I'm so scared your little head will come off in my hands"

There is extreme, macabre overindulgence here, but look at the crucial difference: "If I'm too rough, tell me." Cooper leaves room for the fragile human being behind the mask. He doesn't demand his partner to be an unbreakable object of idealization. He invites them into the madness, but keeps the safety net intact. It is a shared game of dark romance, not a hostage situation.

And when the game goes too far—when the romantic myth threatens to swallow reality—the master showman knows exactly how to end it. At the end of the Love's a Loaded Gun video, when the woman has literally bitten another man's neck, Cooper doesn't join her in the bloodbath. He doesn't make a religion out of it. He simply walks up to her, takes her by the arm, and says:

He pulls her back to reality. He owns the darkness; the darkness doesn't own him.

The Choice of the Architect

Those of us cursed—and blessed—with the Philosophical Attachment Style will always crave the supernatural. We will always want to dance on the edge of the abyss, speaking in symbols, and demanding more than just everyday convenience.

But Nietzsche’s riddle remains. If we approach the Truth—or the person we love—with the terrible seriousness of a clumsy philosopher, we will crush them under the weight of our idealization. Our grand cathedral will become a prison of mirrors. We will destroy the very connection we sought because human beings are meant to fail, and myths are not.

But if we approach love like the master showman, we can build a stage where two people can play, explore the dark, be "supernatural" together, and still walk out alive when the curtain falls.

So, to my fellow architects and restless readers: When you invite someone to dance nightly in your attic, are you locking the door forever, or do you know when it's time to drop the mask?