Of Garnets

We all make mistakes, ok? Garnets was once what was going to become the Zephyr Winds, and now it feels ridiculous to have had that idea, but back then it felt right. But it’s not because it has failed as a name before that it must be treated like a cursed word, so I’m giving a second chance. As its common color is dark red, I have a good feeling about it.

Garnets represent to me all that is eerie. It is my taste for the spooky, creepy and scary. It’s my taste for ghost stories, legends and supernatural beings. It’s the excitement of the exploration of the darkness, the thrilling emotion of dealing with the unknown and forbidden.

For a long time, I’ve been calling this the Castlevania feeling, even if the game is more about action and adventure than actually a scary experience. One of those years I was playing the one for Super Nintendo and you start in this stable, and I remember back then there was a real horse stable near our house. The horse was neighing during the night. Since then, the thought had become excitingly eerie: Wehmut Process had made it into a crest.

Some Diablo II sessions also helped the shaping of this crest, but it was mostly because of the soundtrack by Matt Uelmen, which would create mindscapes with those lonely and bitter-looking trees in the vast fields around the region. Those trees had always attracted my attention as they were as if designed for a horror movie. The landscape around here can sometimes be very frightening, specially in a dark, cloudy day with whistling winds. And here and there we used to find those chapels and cemeteries. See, neighing horses at night can bring up sparkle quintessences of cursed creatures treading our lands.

There’s this Eastern Europe eeriness that appeal to me as well. I think it’s from the Ukrainian and Polish immigrants that strongly spiced the culture of the city I grew in. It could also be those gypsy people we used to see in the circus that visited the town, and that used to have this strange and curious lifestyle, and having this aura of mystery to them. Or maybe it’s this Dracula-scented taste that makes me like the Transylvanian region. There is also the account of these scary tales from the Slavic countryside folklore that are creepy as fuck.

Garnets are in stormy nights surrounding towering castles with stone walls or long corridors. It’s in the claustrophobic dark rooms and chambers lit merely by torch fires. It’s in candles, bells and crosses. Abandoned buildings, mansions and theaters also have this feeling to it. It seems there’s this luxury that somehow connects well with the tone. Gothic architecture has the heavy tone to it that appeals to me as well, just like most gothic-related things.

Here’s something interesting. It’s in baroque art and architecture too. It’s in classical music, or opera-like staging. It’s a strange relationship, but maybe it’s because of how dramatic and gloomy it can be. Classical music can be bombastic and heavy to our soul that it might have reached this level of sublimation.