about Midnight

submitted by Carine

          May I begin by confessing a sacrilege? My first introduction to Midnight came in the form of a notice and a link to his obituary. In most cases this would lead to a door recently shut, a lost opportunity, but, as I found out quickly enough, in the strange and beautiful world according to Midnight, the laws of our physical clockwork universe are not quite as eager to jump to attention and obey.

     All the way across the Atlantic Ocean near a section of sea haunted by the ghost of a Dutch sea captain who allegedly sold his soul to the devil, I experienced the pull of Midnight’s powerful personality. Following the siren song of his music, I found the rekindling of my own love for playing guitar - whatever chasms of time and pain lay between then and now, I was led by the radiance of Midnight's passing along a similar path. Absences matter less than comebacks, his history seemed to say and I felt the lucky recipient of the warmest posthumous hug, with the words 'Hey, sister, you're okay. Really', slipping in through the ether. Midnight became the Don Juan Matus that woke me up to lost enchantments, to the fact that the world around us is hardly the impenetrable facade we perceive. There are broken windows everywhere, through which magic still seeps day and night, whether we are paying attention, or not.

Is Midnight really gone? The details of flesh and blood would say YES, but if you read some of his interviews, you might make out a clear and very emphatic NO between the lines.

     While Midnight was still on our side of the divide, he claimed 'Spirits float through  me', hinting in those words that the boundaries between life and death were never as impassable to him, as to most people. To suggest now that losing the encumbrance of a physical form somehow limits him to a greater extent would be ridiculous. It is only the weakness of our own imaginations that keeps him out. We choose how much disbelief we can bear to suspend.

     When I close my eyes sometimes I see Midnight reclining in a rocking chair (of course). The look on his face is indescribable, but I'll try: part amusement, part interest, part wonder, part peace, with just a hint of mischief bubbling under as if he is looking at something only he has seen the funny side of so far.

Sometimes my eyes don't have to be closed for me to see it... and if he were to open his mouth, he might say something along the lines of what he told Brett VanPut 
in 2005.

     "Remember time is only in your mind and nothing is real. Everything you see is only the retina of your eye responding to light rays provided by a certain light source. Not even colors are real, only fragments of the light spectrum captured by our eyes- and each sees things differently. You are never alone."

     Both quotes were taken from an interview of Midnight that appeared at:

Transcending the Mundane (ed-this interview is no more online)

     Other interviews featuring Midnight speaking his own weirdly wonderful mind can be found at:

Archaic Magazine
Ultimate Metal