Automatic Starlight from Teratogenesis by Cataldo Cappiello

Fourth single taken from the "Teratogenesis" album, out in 2019.

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Research says that you can actually die in as few as three days if a major trauma makes you give up on life.

This is not about being depressed or going through a burnout: this can only happen when absolute lack of motivation occurs.

This phenomenon is medically known as "Psychogenic Death" - total withdrawal from existence.

It's not linked to suicide in any way. You just shut down at a certain point.

As experts state, five stages of this psychological decline have been identified.

1) Total isolation - Usually following severe psychological trauma, this phase typically involves complete retreat in isolation. A state of apathy and absent-mindedness swallows everything like a black night.

2) Loss of self-preservation instinct - Total lack of energy and love for oneself take over, and this results in not putting efforts up into doing anything. Subjects stop exercising, walking - they even voluntarily neglect their self-hygiene.

3) Aboulia - Extreme withdrawal into isolation. No ability or desire to care for anybody or anything. After losing motivation to care about the others and themselves, subjects enter this phase in which they totally refuse to speak, usually showing little to no emotional response.

Experts describe this phase as if the mind essentially went on stand-by. Aboulia is like having "an empty mind or a consciousness devoid of content."

4) Psychic akinesia - Subjects reaching this state are said to be in such a deep apathy that any physical stimuli from the outside sorts no effect or reaction. Even extreme pain will prompt no response - their body just lying down, doing nothing.

A subject going through psychic akinesia would completely stop bathing and often even just lie in their own waste.

5) Psychogenic death - This is the final stage of the process, as it involves the person completely giving up and subsequently disintegrating.

A subject who got to reach this state "might be lying in their own excreta and nothing - no warning, no beating, no pleading can make them want to live.", experts say.

It's pretty ironical that this happens on the same planet where a 3D-printable suicide machine now exists.

An individual with a strong desire to end their own existence can just print one of these homemade coffins, which are simply made out of a detachable pod, mounted on top of a stand containing a nitrogen-filled tank.

“The person who wants to die presses the button and the capsule is filled with nitrogen. He or she will feel a bit dizzy but will then rapidly lose consciousness and die”.

What really struck me like a thunderbolt is a tiny detail: people dying in a suicide pod are often found with a serene smile on their own face.

It's called nitrogen narcosis, and it's common among deep sea divers already. The effects can be compared to the ones of alcohol, so you basically become drunk.

In a world where people shut down in their own dirt, alone and miserable, leaving this world while smiling like a drunk idiot feels like the ultimate treat.

I like thinking that one day, in a few centuries from now, dying in a pod will be such a normal thing that the very idea of dying will be linked, if not to happiness, at least to positivity.

Nowadays, it would just be the creepiest thing if all corpses started smiling like dorks. But what if it was like that since you were born? Even since your parents, and your grandparents were born?

It's a tiny stupid detail. But such a thing could be key to a new understanding of the relationship between life and death. "Life is not the opposite of death. Life is eternal".

Post-mortem shots could be the most sincere photos for lots of unlucky people, that's for sure. I imagine most of them saving money during their lifetimes just to ensure themselves a photo of their most beautiful time.

Would it be possible? Could such a tiny detail make the difference, and transform the fear of death in a serene acceptance of our role as transitory beings of flesh? A mere contraction of face muscles, saving a cursed race from shutting down?

That's why I like saying that we are Automatic Starlight.

We are many, we are all different, bound by fictitious correlations. We try our best to bring light to the life of the ones we love but, ultimately, we cannot choose: we must shine in a dark sky, surrounded by aeons of nothingness.


Hopefully, that's bound to change. And when that happens, we may all be a step closer to freedom.

Films to watch with your eyes closed.

Crafting cinematic soundscapes, one dream at a time.

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