Emerson Dameron

Oct 31, 2024 | riylmag.com | Emerson Dameron

The Geto Boys blew into the mainstream consciousness in 1990 with shock tactics borrowed straight from low-budget horror films. At a time when rap lyrics and B-movies could still stir up intense controversy, the Geto Boys combined bloody slasher tropes and bleak personal narrative, accidentally created a new subgenre, and nearly destroyed themselves in the process.

Oct 15, 2024 | riylmag.com | Emerson Dameron

Charlatan. Clown. Carnival barker. Post-modern philosopher. Extreme individualist. Anton Szandor LaVey, the “Black Pope” of the Church of Satan, was all that and more, and there isn’t much you can call him that he wouldn’t have proudly called himself. LaVey remains an icon for spelunkers of the dark caverns of their own psyches and the collective unconscious at large.

Jul 30, 2024 | riylmag.com | Emerson Dameron

You’re not the first person to ask me about this. More than anything else, I’m embarrassed I haven’t come up with a better answer for you. It feels… weird, being dead. Yeah, I know how that sounds. I’ve been actively preparing myself for death at least since I was 12. Much of my life has consisted of dress rehearsals for the arrival of this eventuality, the motherfucker of all cessations. Now it’s here. It’s been here for years. And it’s just not at all what I would have ever anticipated.

Jul 19, 2024 | riylmag.com | Emerson Dameron

There was a time when I didn’t believe in love. That’s not true, exactly. I’ve always known love was real, because if it’s not, there is no ontology worth the sweat. I’ve felt love’s sting many times, and each has felt like the first, in my life if not in plant and animal history. I taught myself to live in fear of love, a conditioned ambient dread that curdled defensively to bitter resentment. I knew love was real, and I feared it was not for me. Love won’t save you. But love will find you.

May 3, 2024 | riylmag.com | Emerson Dameron

Few things provide me the torrents of cackling, schadenfreude-dripping delight I get from watching people who should know better get extremely heated over things that simply and unequivocally do not matter. Observing other people’s esoteric turf wars, internecine family feuds, and frantic spirals of obsession is one of the best ways I know to put my own adorable little problems in perspective, as well as distract myself from the holy-shit horrors of the actual contemporary world.