Dear Amalie...

I'm not a music critic. I don't know shit about music. It's structure is a mathematical mystery to me. I can't read or play notes. Believe me, I've tried. Music is a language I cannot speak. But I can understand it. Not all of it, just certain dialects.

Same with paintings. All art speaks to me. Some of it is friendly, some rude, a lot of it comes off as the desperate attention seeking pleas of a spoiled child.

Films. Writing. Sculpture. Fucking Scrimshaw, whatever. The way that art speaks to us on an individual basis reminds me of a course I took in civil liberties long ago. I forget the actual examples that the text book provided, but it was something along the lines of: "So and So Clothiers advertises their blue jeans as the Best Jeans on Earth! Is this legal or false advertising? Answer: It is legal, because even if there is only one single person on Planet Earth who agrees that So and So's jeans are the best ones in the whole entire galaxy, that one person makes their boast true." That was a revelation to me. I was seventeen at the time, give me a break.

You see, up to that point, I'd been a pretty pigheaded kid. What I liked was "right" and those who didn't agree were wrong and were missing out, choosing to read/watch/listen to/etc. stuff that was clearly inferior and which they would regret wasting their time on someday.

I was wrong. Wrongy Wrongest WrongFace McFuckWad, I admit it. All art is beautiful and unique and perfect and utterly flawless, even if I don't happen to think it is. Somewhere out there, someone thinks it's the proverbial shiz-nite, as the kids say. And that makes it so. I still have trouble accepting the fact that somewhere in the world, someone actually thinks that Ulli Lommel is a fucking genius, but hey - if it makes you happy, more power to ya. I can certainly argue with you on the topic and give you my viewpoint as to why I think you may have a serious mental illness, but in the end, my opinions will not be magically transformed into solid facts, no matter how stubbornly I may insist that they do so. There is no universal viewpoint when it comes to art. You either accept this, or you're an asshole.

You know what else assholes do? They send anonymous hatemail to artists they don't like. They offer no constructive criticism, they simply take a verbal dump in their hairy little chimp paws and hurl it across the interwebs in frustration. I've gotten my fair share of hatemail from authors, directors, producers, actors, fellow critics and self-appointed experts who feel the need to belittle me personally if I didn't think that their film was anything less than brilliant. I've been called a bitch, told I'm stupid, yadda yadda like I care. And I'm just a nobody, a freelance film critic with zero professional schooling and no impact upon the film world at all. Why the fuck do people even care what I think? It's an opinion. If you don't like mine, don't read mine. Write your own. Problem solved.

However, in all my years of dubious pseudo-fame as a horror critic, I never, ever received a single death threat, though. So I cannot even begin to imagine how Amalie Bruun must feel.

Amalie Bruun is an artist from Denmark. Her chosen medium: black metal. I like metal, all kinds of metal. I know a lot of people don't. That's fine. You're not required to, just as I am not required to limit myself to one subgenre. I love Darkthrone and Ulver and Mayhem. I also love R.E.M. and The B-52s. I don't owe anyone an explanation for that. I like what I like.

I'd never heard of Amalie Bruun up until two days ago, when the Facebook page for Helvete Music Store in Oslo, Norway posted her story via Metal Injection. I read the article and was outraged, disgusted and angry for her. Then I scrolled down and found a link to her latest album streaming free. And clicked it. And listened.

Dear Amalie:

You are lovely. Lovlier than a frozen Northern forest filled with copper bells. Your voice is Beauty's ghost, which the wild wolves long to echo with their ancient howls. Your shrieks are a banshee's deepest mourning, sorrow incarnate, pure white rage shattering the icicles and leaving the trees to weep. I only listened to your album once (thus far), but I heard the truth within it. This isn't the sound of empty throwaway jingles or lifeless ditties for puppets to jerk to upon a colorless dance floor. This is pain, and fierce remembrance and ancestral pride. This is bone dust and black oak, virgin's blood and crone's damnation. Some argue as to whether your chosen medium is indeed black metal, or even metal at all. I don't really care. I hear you, not just with my ears but with all of me; my nerve endings, my blood, my dreams, my sorrows and regrets. And, of course, my anger.

I am an American woman. And I am so ashamed of the men in my country. I swear to you, they are not all like these ill-mannered monkeys who envy your talent and cannot fathom or respect the power of a woman to draw upon her her bloodline back down through the ages. I am sorry that these few poor examples of the male sex are so envious of your ability and so threatened by your strength that they feel the need to tear you down. It enrages me to think that any man could dare equate his masculinity with the ability to physically overpower a woman, rather than using that same power to protect and honor her instead.

I will not waste my time attempting to shame these men who know no shame. I would rather thank them for giving me, through their ugliness, the chance to find your beauty. I would rather thank you for rising above their animalistic baseness and shining like a mirror upon them, reflecting back all of their ignorance and cowardice. These are not men. No real man would wish to see a woman destroyed, for what then would he fight for and prove his valor to? Men without honor are no men at all, but low pigs wallowing in their own filth and misery.

I am sorry. From the bottom of my heart, I am deeply sorry that my male American counterparts have regressed and degenerated and forgotten what it means to truly be a man. But the blood in your veins never forgot that you were descended from giants and warriors and goddesses, singing elven songs and showing us the beauty in the darkness. You dwell where most fear to tread. Men - the immature, inferiority-plagued ones, anyway - always want to control what they don't understand, always want to reign in the wild and break the resistant. Especially American men, raised in steel, surrounded by plastic, promised perfect porcelain dolls without souls as prizes for every pain they inflict. They've forgotten that Nature is female, and Nature always wins. You can beat it back, tame it for a while, maybe even force it to follow your rules. But it will always come back exactly the way it wants to, and the hell with society's ill perceived boundaries. It will be here long after we are gone. And it will be the ones who acknowledged its purity, respected its strength and did not fear its shadows who will be remembered.