tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-45620524156406993302024-03-26T10:06:44.468-07:00Axl Barnes' Blogaxl barneshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05226609236661793688noreply@blogger.comBlogger50125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4562052415640699330.post-77070252065541173232024-03-26T10:05:00.000-07:002024-03-26T10:05:54.589-07:00Review of Curtis M. Lawson's "Couch Surfing through the 12 Chambers of Hell" <p align="justify" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 12.0000pt; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhKexOQxh8c1dEJQyoeoTXqcFz1wyVZgSizNq5FLat_28WsqUqr-SoU6HfQPfN7KL3IexMR6v38gOreoyHcfRRpUgtxrhI1YieihnnLr1EsflTvHvZ-wLjCsXpYz7OkK7q23qSeJJQsCHTOmPKeFyXAPfjF1rNMZD_lTVQ21C-BhoZHKcNs1kIpOPzvT74/s1350/CouchSurfing.webp" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1350" data-original-width="900" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhKexOQxh8c1dEJQyoeoTXqcFz1wyVZgSizNq5FLat_28WsqUqr-SoU6HfQPfN7KL3IexMR6v38gOreoyHcfRRpUgtxrhI1YieihnnLr1EsflTvHvZ-wLjCsXpYz7OkK7q23qSeJJQsCHTOmPKeFyXAPfjF1rNMZD_lTVQ21C-BhoZHKcNs1kIpOPzvT74/s320/CouchSurfing.webp" width="213" /></a></div>I guess I’m becoming familiar with Curtis M. Lawson’s exquisite work because I can trace the origins of this novella, <i><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 12pt;">Couch Surfing through the 12 Chambers of Hell, </span></i><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 12.0000pt; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">to two short stories the author previously published: “Through Hell For One Kiss,” in his collection </span><i><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 12pt;">Devil’s Night</span></i><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 12.0000pt; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';"> and “Orphan,” in The Envious Nothing. The novella </span><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 12pt;">incorporates elements of the two previous stories into an honest and personal narrative about loss, grief, and guilt that is bound to tear at the heartstrings of any reader.</span><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 12pt; text-align: left;"> </span><p></p><p align="justify" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 12.0000pt; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">The main character, Nathan Pharaoh, is a famous musician who is not there for his family when they need him the most. As a result of his neglect his daughter Cloe becomes estranged and kills her mother Dalia and then herself. Nathan is incapacitated by self-hatred and loss. This book is a metaphysical exploration of grief and its stages of anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. These emotions blend into each other and can assault the mourner almost at the same time. What Lawson manages to capture accurately and vividly is that the battle against loss, or the struggle to accept loss, takes place mainly at an unconscious level. At the conscious level, depression weighs heavily and reduces the mourner to a zombielike state. Gravity sags all muscles like a constant underground call to surrender to darkness and oblivion, a call that plagues Nathan Pharaoh throughout his journey. The most minor tasks require herculean force. But while the conscious mind is paralyzed, the unconscious self seeks a key to salvation in a journey through mythological dreamscapes. As we learned from Carl Gustav Jung, dreams are mythological battlefields and realms of magic and sacred alchemy. Pharaoh embarks on a journey to find the pieces of himself left in the wake of a personal apocalypse and try to breathe new life into the ashes.</span></p><p align="justify" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 12.0000pt; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">The part I enjoyed most in the story is when Pharaoh enters a pyramid and the walls of the tomb are covered with reliefs depicting stages in his life. When he touches them they replay the scenes in his mind: his first date with Dalia, going on the first tour, and so on. Pharaoh is on the brink of chaos and oblivion and needs to find the key, just like a musician plays the opening keys to a song to get inspiration for ending it or the way a writer might read the opening chapters of a book to figure out how to move on. The reason why I love this scene is because I see the self as a narrative, in a broad sense. Or, to use a metaphor, I think of how we construct our identities as similar to the way a spider spins its web. Now, in a self fractured by loss, the web is mostly destroyed, and he needs to start the process anew building on the strands of silk that weren’t damaged. </span></p><p align="justify" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 12.0000pt; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">I wasn’t a fan of some aspects of the book, but they didn’t take away from the immersive read. While I’m no expert in mythology, I felt that the symbolism behind the story was a bit cut and dry. The image of the snake as a symbol of chaos, evil or oblivion was overused. The dichotomies had the starkness of Abrahamic religions rather than pagan myths: good vs. evil, dark vs. light, chaos/entropy vs. order, and creation vs. destruction. Ancient mythology usually comes with a mix of these opposites, with deities that incorporate elements of creation and destruction, order and chaos. For example, let’s take one of Nathan’s lamentations: “I was the void in my daughter’s childhood--a ghost, rarely found outside of records and music videos. I was the degradation of something into nothing and now I am nothing given form.”</span></p><p align="justify" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 12.0000pt; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">As paradoxical as it may sound, this passage paints nothingness in an unfavorable light.</span></p><p align="justify" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 12.0000pt; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">(Puts Dissection hoodie on. Turns up Watain’s </span><i><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 12pt;">Lawless Darkness</span></i><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 12.0000pt; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">)</span></p><p align="justify" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 12.0000pt; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">In Sumero-Babylonyan mythology, it is creation that is a degradation of nothingness, as goddess Tiamat was in the slumber of uncreation before before lower gods decided to wake her. As a feminine principle, nothingness contains everything in virtual form, blackness is pregnant with everything, and the birth of something is a degradation of the pristine nothingness. Just like sound may be the degradation of a beautiful silence. Or like form may be the degradation of a wordless revelation.</span></p><p align="justify" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 12.0000pt; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">Now, if I remember Jung correctly, the unconscious itself is feminine while the conscious mind is masculine. The conscious mind is rationality and order whereas the unconscious is irrationality and chaos. Nathan Pharaoh’s journey is a quest through the unconscious mind, through chaos, and the solution or the key to his ascension will come from chaos. So, chaos is good, darkness is good, and blackness holds the answers. Not the light of the conscious, ordered rational mind, but the pregnant darkness of the unconscious. The snake will give Nathan knowledge and wisdom. So, to sum up, pagan thinking features a mix of the opposites which Christian thought sets in stark contrast. And, as a reader, I didn’t get the pagan vibe from this text, but it seemed that the narrative flowed from a Christian matrix.</span></p><p align="justify" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 12.0000pt; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">I could wax philosophical for hours about this book, and I’m sure each reader can come up with their own interpretation of this story just like movie lovers have different takes on a David Lynch movie. My point is just this is a work of art that engages the reader both on an emotional and an intellectual level, as all true art should. Go check it out! And check Lawson’s other books while at it!</span><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 12.0000pt; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';"><o:p></o:p></span></p>axl barneshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05226609236661793688noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4562052415640699330.post-2160334522792134062024-03-05T16:45:00.000-08:002024-03-05T16:45:53.746-08:00Interview with author Christopher Zeischegg<p style="text-align: left;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh7AQDCL_IhFMaX-n5pxsZB0dogDlLhbBhEH-Vy1qXj1qrjvAFa5O8qsFqhSnbR7zMlRCCarAiXWKbAALPVb8ORIslruSlVJgP9eUdpdKzRPScrNXSJRE8eBJkz2jPcM2B-xFMUWulJLBFDwqXaCLUm6oRM020arIVzwgIsenqX55k1V2aseBeJAu3tMwM/s800/creation-hires-300dpi_orig.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="800" data-original-width="500" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh7AQDCL_IhFMaX-n5pxsZB0dogDlLhbBhEH-Vy1qXj1qrjvAFa5O8qsFqhSnbR7zMlRCCarAiXWKbAALPVb8ORIslruSlVJgP9eUdpdKzRPScrNXSJRE8eBJkz2jPcM2B-xFMUWulJLBFDwqXaCLUm6oRM020arIVzwgIsenqX55k1V2aseBeJAu3tMwM/w250-h400/creation-hires-300dpi_orig.jpg" width="250" /></a></div><span><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: medium;"><span style="text-align: justify;">Christopher Zeischegg’s </span><i style="text-align: justify;">Creation: On Art and Unbecoming </i><span style="text-align: justify;">is a unique, experimental, transgressive book. Zeischegg uses a blend of fiction and non-fiction to describe and convey his deepest hopes and fears as he highlights the role of art as a sacred space for his journey of self-invention and self-discovery. </span><span style="text-align: justify;">Zeischegg uses different writing formats (</span><span style="text-align: justify;">essays, memoirs, autofiction, interviews, reviews, and playwriting) </span><span style="text-align: justify;">and manages to mix them perfectly. </span><span style="text-align: justify;">The author writes with disarming honesty, making it easy for the reader to identify with the characters and join the intimate dialogue sparked by the text, both on a cerebral and an emotional level.</span><span style="text-align: justify;"> <br /></span></span></span><p></p><p align="justify" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: medium;">Zeischegg has a minimalist yet striking style, elegant yet merciless. The dialogue is witty and incisive. The prose packs so much emotion that, at times, it reads like poetry. Just a couple of my highlights to illustrate: “All my recent life, I’d looked at tasks as pools of quicksand. To dress myself, I dreaded to be drowned beneath my collar,” “My pillow at my cheek, I thought of starting over. But I was weary from the fight I’d lost against my beating heart.”<o:p></o:p></span></p><p align="justify" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: medium;">Although Zeischegg depicts a lot of graphic horror and violence, his message is not reduced to shock value as in some splatterpunk writings, but the gore appears as an external accompaniment to a deep existentialist dread and sense of loss and alienation. In this sense, Zeischegg’s style evokes Thomas Ligotti’s darkest visions. Violence appears like a temporary distraction from an inner, all-consuming agony.</span></p><div style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: medium;"><b>Axl: Hi Chris, thank you for taking the time to answer a few questions. In the book, you mention Dennis Cooper as one of your literary heroes. What other influences do you have? Also, what gave you the idea for the structure of the book, the collage of different writing formats? </b></span></div><div style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: medium;"><span><b><br /></b></span><span><b>Chris:</b> Of course! I appreciate you reaching out. </span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: medium;"><span><br /></span><span>Regarding my influences: In high school, I got into Bret Easton Ellis, probably because of the American Psycho movie and the fact that Ellis is one of the more commercial authors to delve into subject matter that seemed taboo to me at the time--some combination of extreme sex and violence. I think it's pretty common for young people to be interested in that material. I sought out all the most obvious stuff that was available to me at the time, like Gaspar Noe and Takashi Miike films, black metal, etc. </span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><span><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><span><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: medium;">Then, as you pointed out, I discovered Dennis Cooper in my early twenties. That was exciting to me because he seemed to push those themes beyond anything I'd seen prior. But I think he was also the first writer to make me consciously aware of style. Dennis has this clean, cinematic way of writing that makes me feel like I'm reading an emotional puzzle. I'd never experienced anything that so closely articulated that youthful state of both feeling and being unable to fully express ecstasy, sexual desire, anxiety, suicidal ideation, and so on. </span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><span><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><span><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: medium;">These days, my influences are more diffuse. At any given time, I have a stack of books I'm reading from authors who inhabit the same small, contemporary press I've become a part of--books published by Amphetamine Sulphate, Apocalypse Party, Rose Books; the list goes on. And I typically have one book I'm reading from a literary juggernaut, like Michel Houellebecq or Laszlo Krasznahorkai, or a lesser-known but equally prolific prose stylist like Dodie Bellamy. </span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><span><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></span></div><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span><span style="font-family: Calibri;">As for the structure of the book: The stories and essays in the book were written over the course of ten years. Several years ago, I had the idea to throw together a collection of works I had written on themes of art and violence. I'd simply noticed the pattern and thought it would be a fun collection to release between novels. But while compiling the material, I rediscovered a couple of pieces I'd written about my friend, the multidisciplinary artist Luka Fisher. She and I met shortly before the end of my porn career. We went on to do a lot of video work and other strange art projects together. I realized that much of what I'd been putting into the collection was influenced by her in one way or another. In short, she helped to change my life in pretty drastic ways. So, this idea of transformation, of friendship, of some kind of hopeful path forward emerged; I wanted to explore that further. I just put in everything that seemed relevant, and wrote some new material to explain what this was all about; make it more cohesive. </span></span><span><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><br /></span></span></span></p><div style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><p align="justify" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><b><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Axl: This question is about the title: </span></b><b><i><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Creation On Art and Unbecoming</span></i></b><b><span style="font-family: Calibri;">. In the Preface you claim that </span></b><b><i><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Creation</span></i></b><b><span style="font-family: Calibri;"> doesn’t refer to artists making art, but to the divine creation of the universe.</span></b><b><i><span style="font-family: Calibri;"> </span></i></b><b><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Regarding the subtitle,</span></b><b><i><span style="font-family: Calibri;"> On Art and Unbecoming, </span></i></b><b><span style="font-family: Calibri;">y</span></b><b><span style="font-family: Calibri;">ou suggest that this book is the end of a cycle: “I’ve essentially been writing down the notion that all of these things I see out there, that I desperately want access to, are out of reach. Whether that’s love, or a relationship to God, or even something like financial stability or self-fulfillment. In my writing, and, in my brain, I feel like I’ve been solidifying that I can’t have any of it.” And later on, “I’m trying to find a revised sense of purpose. Maybe transform my writing into a vehicle to hopefully get more of what I want out of life.” So, why don’t you use </span></b><b><i><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Becoming</span></i></b><b><span style="font-family: Calibri;"> instead of </span></b><b><i><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Unbecoming</span></i></b><b><span style="font-family: Calibri;">? And what is the connection between your desire for meaning and purpose and the act of divine creation? </span></b></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: medium;"><span dir="LTR"><b>Chris: </b>I may not be able to answer this question in a completely direct manner. If for no other reason, I believe there's some danger in "revealing your gold" too soon. In other words, if you stumble upon something spiritually or philosophically profound and you start to see your life transform in certain ways but you don't entirely understand the nature of what you're on to, it would be fucking stupid to proselytize this to the world.</span> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span dir="LTR"><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: medium;">But I think a lot of this thought process started in early 2021. We'd all just come out of the COVID lockdowns. For the first time in my adult life, I'd had an entire year off from my interaction with the adult industry and sex work adjacent labor. I'd been retired from performing in porn, and from hustling and camming, for a number of years. But I'd still been working on adult films, as a videographer and editor, semi-regularly. For obvious reasons, that all paused during the pandemic. Then, in early 2021, the job offers came back in full swing.</span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span dir="LTR"><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: medium;">I remember sitting in my office in early 2021, editing a porn scene. All of a sudden, I had this uncontrollable burst of emotion. I was shaking. Tears were pouring down my face. I also felt incredibly angry. For a week thereafter, I was a fucking mess. My wife said to me, "I've never seen you like this. You need to go to therapy."</span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: medium;"><span dir="LTR">So, I took her advice and ended up doing a lot of work on myself.</span><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: medium;"><span dir="LTR">This is relevant because, prior to that specific emotional disruption, I was writing under the premise that the violence in my work was an affectation I picked up from being interested in aggressive music subculture or Dennis Cooper books, or whatever.</span><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: medium;"><span dir="LTR">For example, I'd finish a short piece of auto-fiction, wherein I was the protagonist, and it had something to do with my experience in sex work, and it might even include a number of real-life experiences. And it would end with some fantastical violent scenario, and I'd say to myself, "This is all a joke. It has nothing to do with me."</span><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: medium;"><span dir="LTR">As it turns out, I actually do have massive amounts of trauma associated with my experiences in sex work. And I no longer feel the need to pretend that's not true.</span><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: medium;"><span dir="LTR">I could go on and on about my own bullshit. But to get back to the nature of your question... I'm 38 years old now. I'm interested in what I'm interested in, and I don't think the aesthetic qualities of horror films or 'transgressive' (for lack of a better word) fiction will ever not be what I'm into. At the same time, I'm now invested in the future, in creating a better life for myself and for my family. That has a lot of implications in terms of how I spend my time in relation to my career, wife, friends, and so on. On a personal level, that also has implications in regards to spirituality, to God.</span><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span dir="LTR"><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: medium;">I'm most hesitant talking about my spiritual life in public, because it's still complicated to me. I'm not sure I know how to define this internally.</span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: medium;"><span dir="LTR">When I say that Creation is not about artists making work, but rather a reference to divine creation, I mean that as a metaphor for transformation; my inability to comprehend how life can come from nothing. But I'll also go on record to say this is not just a metaphor to me. It's not bullshit. I surely don't have answers or direction for other people. But in my mind, there's no question as to whether or not God is real.</span><o:p></o:p></span></p><p align="justify" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><b><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Axl: Your fiction is very personal and speaks of your private dreams and fears. On the other hand, all art, as your friend Luka Fisher points out, is an act of communication that involves an audience. Since the audience is not given, this involves the additional steps of marketing and “selling yourself.” How do you reconcile these two impulses? Do you think that the commercial aspects of art take away from the authenticity of the creative act? </span></b><span style="font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';"><o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: medium;"><span dir="LTR"><b>Chris: </b>Personally, I don’t think marketing or selling yourself detracts you from this.</span><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: medium;"><span dir="LTR">I’m not sure that starting a novel or any piece of art with the audience in mind is going to tell you something interesting. But I’m also not going to sit here and pretend that the feedback loop doesn’t matter.</span><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span dir="LTR"><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: medium;">One of the reasons Luka and I get along so well is that she’s constantly scheming up ways to get our work in front of people. We were both interested in the relationship our work has with the public. She’s a producer, but maybe in a way that's been frustrating to a lot of the other people she’s worked with, because I don’t believe she’s inherently interested in the financial ramifications of whatever she’s involved with. Plainly speaking, the films and other projects we’ve done together have cost us a lot of money relative to our incomes; none of it has been primed for commercial success. But without her deliberate ploys to get people involved, these ideals in our heads wouldn’t have made it into the world--at least not with the polish or finesse that requires collaboration with artists who are better than us at whatever we’ve asked them to do.</span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: medium;"><span dir="LTR">When I think of my literary output, I feel beholden to the publishers who’ve agreed to release my books. Ben DeVos at Apocalypse Party or Philip Best at Amphetamine Sulphate – they’ve put their time, energy, and money into my work. They’re essentially backing me, telling the world that my ideas are worth indulging. How fucking selfish and shitty of me would it be to then sit on my ass and do nothing once the book(s) comes out.</span><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span dir="LTR"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">I see some authors complain about not getting enough recognition or money, or whatever, from publishing. People need to understand that there’s nothing inherently valuable about doing this. We’re not feeding people; we’re not saving lives. I believe it’s a privilege to be published, to have someone care enough to sit down and read your fucking book. It requires other people to believe in what you’re doing and contribute in all sorts of ways. I only think it’s fair that you then go out and do your best to make sure it wasn’t a complete waste of their time. Of course, that all depends on your means. I can’t afford a publicist or book tour; it wouldn’t make sense for a release like this. And at the end of the day, there’s always the likelihood that it won’t connect with anyone.</span></span><span dir="LTR" style="font-family: Calibri;"> </span></span></p><p align="justify" class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: medium;">Axl: There is a pessimistic or nihilistic outlook that permeates your writing, probably stemming from your struggles with depression. At the end of the story “Spell,” the character Whitney addresses the MC: “If you’re done your spell I would have asked if your dreams come true. And if so, whether they still seemed, somehow, out of reach.” So, I wonder if it’s the morbid lucidity associated with depression that makes us unable to enjoy the realization of our dreams. Do you think that someone can return to the innocent joy of assigning meaning and purpose to the world after going through the wringer of nihilism and depression? Thomas Ligotti speaks of consciousness as a disease and the fact that we need to narrow our consciousness to make life bearable. This is a complicated act of self-deception. Almost like a magick trick. Do you think it can work? </span></b><b><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 12pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></b></p><p align="justify" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: medium;"><b>Chris:</b> For most of my adult life I've subscribed to a kind of philosophical pessimism. And the depression you reference has been real, though I might describe my experience and indulgence of depression as similar to that of a binge alcoholic. When it's there, it's all-encompassing. But when I'm free of that depression, it seems as though it belonged to a different person. </span></p><p align="justify" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: medium;">Whether or not Ligotti is right in that we need to narrow our consciousness to make life bearable, I don't think it ultimately matters. My current point of view is that I have two options. I can look at the world and say to myself, "The more I discover, the more I learn that none of this matters. It's all fucking meaningless." Or I can look at the world and say, "The more I discover, the more I find out that I don't know much of anything." These days I'm leaning toward the second option. That means that I'm basically a fucking idiot and still have much to learn. Well, I have to learn from somebody. Should I look to the same people I've been studying all my life, who are depressed and miserable? Should I say Emil Cioran is the pinnacle of human expression? Or should I find someone who seems to be experiencing some joy in life, some success, and get their point of view? In all likelihood, I'll do both. But perhaps these happier people are worth looking into. </span></p><p align="justify" class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: medium;">Axl: What’s your next writing project? </span></b><b><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 12pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></b></p><p align="justify" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: medium;"><b>Chris: </b>My last novel, the Magician, is currently out of print. So, Apocalypse Party is publishing a 2nd edition later this year with a foreword by Chris Kelso. I believe Christopher Norris has also agreed to do the cover. I like that it's a bunch of Chrises involved. Makes me feel like we're the indie lit versions of Evans/Hemsworth/Pine. Hah. There's also a German translation coming out through Festa Verlag. I believe it should be out by the end of 2024, but I'm not 100% sure. </span></p><p align="justify" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: medium;">Beyond that, I can't divulge too much, except to say I'm always working on a book. With any luck, I'll have another novel out in the next two-to-three years. </span></p><p align="justify" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: medium;">Check out Chris' website at <a href="https://www.christopherzeischegg.com/">www.christopherzeischegg.com</a></span></p><p align="justify" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: medium;">And IG: <a href="https://www.instagram.com/chriszeischegg/">www.instagram.com/chriszeischegg</a></span></p><p align="justify" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: medium;">And subscribe to his channel: <a href="http://www.youtube.com/@ChristopherZeischegg">www.youtube.com/@ChristopherZeischegg</a></span></p></div>axl barneshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05226609236661793688noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4562052415640699330.post-88646133681718400952024-01-03T10:45:00.000-08:002024-01-03T10:45:06.438-08:00The Underground Tavern (poem)<div style="text-align: left;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiv85ZSzj0sL4em_cfvBHj-k9QeBLnn74G5v8UluLNqRmTY3NG-qmxc-KbsIDh6HSv7OkoSRLuFW2ZTCUqoHlMORf_fnOzCnci7dsvxpfwEF3thm4t04xx-4LP05QLFmkIxEYrryw1835KibT_2L9GpfURzEn5Npma4dy4CwkXaK6xPwGMtnzKPdPTj8FQ/s256/be3c2a8e-1ba7-4486-8008-c1ad1dad4754.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="256" data-original-width="256" height="256" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiv85ZSzj0sL4em_cfvBHj-k9QeBLnn74G5v8UluLNqRmTY3NG-qmxc-KbsIDh6HSv7OkoSRLuFW2ZTCUqoHlMORf_fnOzCnci7dsvxpfwEF3thm4t04xx-4LP05QLFmkIxEYrryw1835KibT_2L9GpfURzEn5Npma4dy4CwkXaK6xPwGMtnzKPdPTj8FQ/s1600/be3c2a8e-1ba7-4486-8008-c1ad1dad4754.jpg" width="256" /></a></div><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 12pt;">The boys were sharing a tampon <br /></span><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 12pt;">as large as a crepe,<br /></span><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 12pt;">one of them had found in the dilapidated washroom,<br /></span><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 12pt;">earlier, when they still bothered to use it.<br /> </span><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 12pt;">They cut the tampon with scissors,<br /></span><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 12pt;">chewed bits of it, sucking on the gem of the menstrual blood,<br /> </span><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 12pt;">chasing it down with beer, vodka, rum,<br /> </span><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 12pt;">whatever came in handy.<br /> </span><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 12pt;">At this point of the night<br /></span><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 12pt;">they stopped using the john<br /> </span><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 12pt;">and pissed freely on the dirt floor,<br /></span><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 12pt;">shriveled dicks hanging out the flies of the jeans<br /></span><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 12pt;">of the ones who cared enough to unbutton.<br /> </span><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 12pt;">On the floor littered with dog noses, tongues,<br /></span><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 12pt;">and mandibles with rotted teeth,<br /></span><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 12pt;">The urine mixed with coagulating blood. </span><span style="color: red; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 12pt;"> <br /></span><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 12pt;">The waitress paid no mind to the wasted customers<br /></span><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 12pt;">this was an underground tavern,<br /></span><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 12pt;">no pigs.<br /> </span><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 12pt;">She played a crossword puzzle<br /></span><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 12pt;">and rubbed her bean in the flickering light of a lamp.<br /></span><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 12pt;">The youth in the corner<br /></span><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 12pt;">hung his head between his hands<br /> </span><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 12pt;">and started puking<br /></span><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 12pt;">the dirt floor in front of his shoes bubbling like a yellow volcano.<br /> </span><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 12pt;">The alpha grabbed the gun next to his bloody machete<br /> </span><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 12pt;">and shot him in the head.<br /></span><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 12pt;">The crumpled face lifted<br /></span><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 12pt;">only to catch a second bullet.<br /> </span><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 12pt;">One eye popped on the soiled floor<br /> </span><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 12pt;">and the snoutless dogs tried to eat it<br /></span><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 12pt;">but only managed to push it around.<br /> </span><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 12pt;">The waitress stumbled to the middle of the tavern<br /> </span><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 12pt;">lay down on her back and spread her heavy legs wide<br /></span><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 12pt;">her clit was a wrinkled plum,<br /></span><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 12pt;">infested by lice from her black, wiry bush,<br /></span><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 12pt;">growing between things stained with feces and blood.<br /></span><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 12pt;">The eye wormed inside her warmth<br /> </span><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 12pt;">and she threw her head back<br /></span><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 12pt;">and gave an ecstatic, guttural moan,<br /> </span><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 12pt;">sagging tits shooting jets of milk<br /></span><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 12pt;">the mangled dogs tried in vain to suck on.<br /></span><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 12pt;">Tongues hanging out<br /> </span><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 12pt;">the teens laughed and barked,<br /> </span><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 12pt;">beating themselves.</span></div>axl barneshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05226609236661793688noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4562052415640699330.post-67474949118925902492023-12-27T07:55:00.000-08:002023-12-27T07:55:41.037-08:00The Defective Animal (short poem)<div style="text-align: left;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjMQRUDv5H8BqmtWTIhojSOjbOPjM44MkvhZaIVol3xikLPMaxT3saOnfz2p_2_yo12JZBsC16rctUZKeMQI3DCCFfxk3hIXBS4R_G2YQEK5V6vcDUM1x4WA2970HebXluQdex2MvY3Glc_uJwQ-397OdY8z9JRbhSDCnMEBzOwrdeal_y43P7suu1FsOs/s256/23e47da4-eb37-4421-99bf-929c8ad18c54.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="256" data-original-width="256" height="256" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjMQRUDv5H8BqmtWTIhojSOjbOPjM44MkvhZaIVol3xikLPMaxT3saOnfz2p_2_yo12JZBsC16rctUZKeMQI3DCCFfxk3hIXBS4R_G2YQEK5V6vcDUM1x4WA2970HebXluQdex2MvY3Glc_uJwQ-397OdY8z9JRbhSDCnMEBzOwrdeal_y43P7suu1FsOs/s1600/23e47da4-eb37-4421-99bf-929c8ad18c54.jpg" width="256" /></a></div><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 12pt;">Out of boredom, I trick my dog:<br /></span><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 12.0000pt; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">I knock on the wood of my desk<br /> </span><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 12.0000pt; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">and pretend it came from the door.<br /> </span><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 12.0000pt; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">“Sic Rocky!”<br /></span><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 12.0000pt; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">The dog jumps from the couch,<br /> </span><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 12.0000pt; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">tail rigid in the air,<br /> </span><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 12.0000pt; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">barking savagely,<br /></span><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 12.0000pt; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">raised hackles,<br /></span><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 12.0000pt; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">barred teeth,<br /></span><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 12.0000pt; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">ready to tear the invisible intruder to shreds.<br /></span><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 12.0000pt; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">There’s no doubt clogging the wheels of this perfect machine,<br /></span><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 12.0000pt; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">as they keep turning inside the placenta of causality. <br /></span><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 12.0000pt; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">A dark thought hits me:<br /></span><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 12.0000pt; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">The dog barks at nothing thinking it’s something,<br /></span><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 12.0000pt; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">But us humans, we bark at nothing<br /></span><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 12.0000pt; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">knowing it’s nothing.<br /> </span><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 12.0000pt; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">us lowly humans,<br /></span><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 12.0000pt; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">we’re only capable of<br /></span><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 12.0000pt; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">barkings of sighs<br /></span><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 12.0000pt; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">and resigned charges. </span></div><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';"> </span></p>axl barneshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05226609236661793688noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4562052415640699330.post-5588140353329848392023-12-07T15:18:00.000-08:002023-12-07T15:18:55.954-08:00Dry Winter Spleen (poem)<p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 12.0000pt; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';"><br /></span></p><p style="text-align: left;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjCd-ZWTOl08aRb9onNuylps8dLU2d03ZrN96XFzwyZQIZnfiZbajr6W-ZG1MAOWihNm5aazUYZ40ZeJeGirqjWInE-DjNBbXG4eXvu5XWo5AOmmCjLoC56gJPuH-zlHtBsgdLJXyquqSPgkn8KQeGb4VqXdyNX-7A3MmbazR1eI3Sh5kXmlv5_jo2JNiw/s1080/385529460_1600577217440926_1889143497350424382_n.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="939" data-original-width="1080" height="278" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjCd-ZWTOl08aRb9onNuylps8dLU2d03ZrN96XFzwyZQIZnfiZbajr6W-ZG1MAOWihNm5aazUYZ40ZeJeGirqjWInE-DjNBbXG4eXvu5XWo5AOmmCjLoC56gJPuH-zlHtBsgdLJXyquqSPgkn8KQeGb4VqXdyNX-7A3MmbazR1eI3Sh5kXmlv5_jo2JNiw/s320/385529460_1600577217440926_1889143497350424382_n.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 12.0000pt; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">The winter holidays are here, <br /></span><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 12pt;">psychiatrists are booked solid. <br /></span><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 12.0000pt; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">My co-worker told me<br /></span><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 12.0000pt; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">his radiation treatment went well<br /></span><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 12.0000pt; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">but that his wife was diagnosed with cancer;<br /></span><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 12.0000pt; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">Liver, late stage, spreading.<br /></span><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 12.0000pt; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">As if his fear has spread the sickness to her.<br /></span><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 12.0000pt; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">He escaped only with diabetes and no thyroid,<br /></span><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 12.0000pt; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">no energy.<br /></span><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 12.0000pt; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">I looked at him thinking:<br /></span><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 12.0000pt; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">is man just a knot of nervous ticks and rotten entrails?</span><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 12pt;"> </span></p><p></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 12.0000pt; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">Merry Christmas! Happy New Year!<br /></span><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 12.0000pt; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">A customer told us,<br /></span><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 12.0000pt; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">The elderly woman who complained about the price of groceries<br /></span><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 12.0000pt; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">was pushed by a junkie in front of the train<br /></span><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 12.0000pt; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">and cut in half.<br /></span><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 12.0000pt; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">She was wrong she’d die of malnutrition.<br /></span><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 12.0000pt; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">On my way home, at the intersection, a collision.<br /></span><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 12.0000pt; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">A woman puked in the bag of her face<br /></span><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 12.0000pt; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">Spread on the frozen pavement,<br /></span><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 12.0000pt; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">Inert lips scraping against the grit,<br /></span><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 12.0000pt; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">One dangling eyeball iced in panic,<br /></span><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 12.0000pt; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">The other missing.</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 12.0000pt; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">The winter wonderland is here at last!<br /></span><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 12.0000pt; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">At my neighbor’s place,<br /></span><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 12.0000pt; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">under the plastic Christmas tree,<br /></span><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 12.0000pt; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">the kids counted their bills<br /></span><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 12.0000pt; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">smoking, grunting, hissing,<br /></span><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 12.0000pt; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">like feral poker players,<br /></span><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 12.0000pt; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">while their parents snorted white lines<br /></span><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 12.0000pt; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">from unemployment lines.<br /></span><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 12.0000pt; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">Back at home,<br /></span><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 12.0000pt; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">The eggnog tasted like a long January hangover,<br /></span><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 12.0000pt; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">the only buzz was a drill through my skull.<br /></span><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 12.0000pt; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">Through my window, suffocating grayness, brown grass.<br /></span><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 12.0000pt; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">they reminded me there was no snow this year.<br /></span><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 12.0000pt; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">No whiteouts blasting forgetfulness,<br /></span><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 12.0000pt; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">no shrouds of ice<br /></span><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 12.0000pt; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">to hide us from ourselves. </span></p>axl barneshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05226609236661793688noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4562052415640699330.post-56901188171778636172023-11-14T16:39:00.000-08:002023-11-14T16:39:58.907-08:00Review of Kristopher Triana's Full Brutal <p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgWPEKZ9jdiZ8hzDanfBAqNQan3tqw_IRqea5wWOYVNWf5LdNzNjnsLNCyItVr9iIz-7zEmg8MUl-zFH0Vv3Vna1x_cQjLgdqe2ibv2TjxK-BGgNj12x2hrm_Q5xF3YkXufOqMSanRSv5D_j8vAkeJonHs2zRskmjr1gnD0KATKFTqVsrEcf4jvzg0fmdU/s1000/71SE-hCxF0L._AC_UF1000,1000_QL80_.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1000" data-original-width="656" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgWPEKZ9jdiZ8hzDanfBAqNQan3tqw_IRqea5wWOYVNWf5LdNzNjnsLNCyItVr9iIz-7zEmg8MUl-zFH0Vv3Vna1x_cQjLgdqe2ibv2TjxK-BGgNj12x2hrm_Q5xF3YkXufOqMSanRSv5D_j8vAkeJonHs2zRskmjr1gnD0KATKFTqVsrEcf4jvzg0fmdU/s320/71SE-hCxF0L._AC_UF1000,1000_QL80_.jpg" width="210" /></a></div><span style="font-size: 12pt; text-align: justify;">Thoroughly enjoyed Kristopher Triana’s Full Brutal. </span><span style="font-size: 12pt; text-align: justify;">Good fiction always gives me ideas so I decided to </span><span style="font-size: 12pt; text-align: justify;">jot down my thoughts on this beautiful novel. From the start, I was enchanted with Kim White, the novel’s main character, a teenage psychopathic cheerleader bent on demolishing those around her both physically and mentally.</span><p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">I loved the premise of violence that springs out of boredom or depression, echoing Kierkegaard's idea that “Boredom is the root of all evil.” Triana points out that his experience with bipolar depression bled into the first pages of the novel, when Kim is described as suffering from suicidal ideation, and seasonal affective disorder among other things; she loves that darkness of winter and hates summer, which might seem weird but I can relate to. Everything seems gray and repetitive to Kim but the only thing that brings a splash of color and joy into her life is torture and sexual depravity. After fucking one of her teachers she becomes pregnant but that doesn’t stop her from ruining the teacher and his family. Now, one of my ideas was that Triana could have stopped here and delved into Kim’s conflicted psyche. Fighting depression with violence and dealing with an unwanted pregnancy has all the ingredients of a solid horror story. The pregnancy and unavoidable arrival of spring and summer would only intensify Kim’s dark moods which, in turn, would require deeper plunges into aggression and depravity. Also, given Kim’s elitist outlook, getting impregnated by a nobody would amplify her self-loathing and make her have an abortion, even a self-induced one. These are severe issues that are bound to plague a conflicted teen like Kim and aren’t fully explored in the novel, which detracts from his value and plausibility. Instead, Triana decides to up the ante by adding that the fetus growing inside Kim is a cannibal that would eat her from the inside unless it’s fed human meat. I sensed that the ante didn’t need upping with such a far-fetched addition, and all the psychological drama and horror were there to be explored even if the baby was perfectly normal. While the addition of cannibalism to the story might increase its shock value, it takes away from its artistic value and plausibility. The first part of the novel opens up some narrative venues that are abruptly closed off when the cannibal fetus enters the stage. The ennui and anguish that plague Kim are always mentioned but never shown in her actions. She’s always engaged in sadistic planning, she’s never empty, paralyzed by meaninglessness, zombified, lazy, and destitute like the truly depressed. Triana doesn’t delve into that nihilistic outlook like he does in his novel </span><i><span style="font-size: 12pt;">They All Died Screaming.</span></i><span style="font-size: 12pt;"> And that, I think, is a missed opportunity.</span></p><p align="justify" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">This brings me to a point about splatterpunk in general, an idea that echoes some social media posts by Wrath James White. Novels like Jack Ketchum’s </span><i><span style="font-size: 12pt;">The Lost</span></i><span style="font-size: 12pt;">, or </span><i><span style="font-size: 12pt;">The Girl Next Door</span></i><span style="font-size: 12pt;">, or </span><i><span style="font-size: 12pt;">Red</span></i><span style="font-size: 12pt;"> offer exquisite psychological portraits that expose the evil in human nature in a realistic framework. Now, a lot of newer splatterpunk, let’s say, Aron Beauregard, sacrifices that psychological realism for the cheaper shock value of the fictional equivalent of ‘80s horror movies. There’s definite artistic merit to both of these trends but they seem to be very different writing paradigms, despite the gray area in between. I feel that </span><i><span style="font-size: 12pt;">Full Brutal</span></i><span style="font-size: 12pt;"> started in the first paradigm and then switched to the second one, failing to live up to the more complex and promising beginning. For lack of a better analogy, it was like wanting to see </span><i><span style="font-size: 12pt;">Amadeus</span></i><span style="font-size: 12pt;"> and ending up with </span><i><span style="font-size: 12pt;">Basket Case</span></i><span style="font-size: 12pt;">. </span></p>axl barneshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05226609236661793688noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4562052415640699330.post-19137812130583022602023-07-24T07:23:00.001-07:002023-07-24T07:23:10.284-07:00Trailer for Strangled Epitaphs<iframe width="480" height="270" src="https://youtube.com/embed/d7zUnDnbeXc" frameborder="0"></iframe>axl barneshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05226609236661793688noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4562052415640699330.post-47702799613204565102023-05-22T09:51:00.005-07:002023-05-22T09:51:57.213-07:00The Mourners <p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjGJCAQ8IUeA1-50fHHs7xl_0ut0zjcLNpzFHBohhinGjhv8xGIIg5f0HlD4k_gnbeEWBVGTZpGaHXevB9N2su0F9tByDUEZtWj0obbYyqpsqahry_D2LlK-0nlnvkJRLjOr1HpPvvVKD5OjgWxO51wB8ABJZGFetoLRgPusqNTkD0uiL5DmRZpOREz/s406/346151608_572732441679131_2205569194158048174_n.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="259" data-original-width="406" height="204" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjGJCAQ8IUeA1-50fHHs7xl_0ut0zjcLNpzFHBohhinGjhv8xGIIg5f0HlD4k_gnbeEWBVGTZpGaHXevB9N2su0F9tByDUEZtWj0obbYyqpsqahry_D2LlK-0nlnvkJRLjOr1HpPvvVKD5OjgWxO51wB8ABJZGFetoLRgPusqNTkD0uiL5DmRZpOREz/s320/346151608_572732441679131_2205569194158048174_n.jpg" width="320" /></a></span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt;">Raining,<br /></span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt;">people in black were gathered<br /></span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">in front of the house on the corner.<br /></span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">A man died by suicide,<br /></span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">One or two days ago,<br /></span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">My mom told me.<br /></span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">Poison? Hanging?<br /></span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">I couldn’t remember.</span></p><p></p><p></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">Later that night,<br /></span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">I woke up to a cacophony of screams,<br /></span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">bangings on the doors and windows,<br /></span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">and crazed dogs’ barking.<br /></span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">The mourners were trying to get in.<br /></span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">My parents were asleep upstairs.<br /></span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">Couldn’t they hear this bedlam?<br /></span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">Was the outside door closed?<br /></span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">I couldn’t move.<br /></span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">The uproar stopped abruptly,<br /></span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">they found a way in.<br /></span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">Stealthily, dark silhouettes moved toward my bed,<br /></span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">holding candles,<br /></span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">their faces pale blurs,<br /></span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">feral small eyes shining with hunger.<br /></span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">Their whispers rustled<br /></span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">like wind-blown autumn leaves.<br /></span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">I wanted to tell them I wasn’t dead,<br /></span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">that they must be looking for the suicide<br /></span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">in the house on the corner.<br /></span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">But maybe I looked dead to them?</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">The old hag in the lead<br /></span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">had her gnarled hand closed in a fist.<br /></span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">I opened my mouth to scream<br /></span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">but only a throaty hissing sound came out<br /></span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">and my jaw locked open.<br /></span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">Dirt trickled from her fist into my mouth<br /></span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">like sand through an hourglass.<br /></span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">My tongue fought the falling soil<br /></span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">like a cornered worm.<br /></span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">The mud choked me,<br /></span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">and I burrowed deeper<br /></span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">into darker slumber. </span></p>axl barneshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05226609236661793688noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4562052415640699330.post-19242379072262320082023-05-16T09:53:00.008-07:002023-05-16T09:56:20.288-07:00Dog Days Attack <p style="text-align: left;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgFK-UAXCaYMXFYVFs340PvzX8unZ3c-WJdp--39tvzRbL3vPwhD5iNddZMXND7wcbEoemKyaupn-fhWOlhZ-wLhQymR8Zpcpn7BwgCSfK8tWPFUaortfuqHuEjT-796XVKzTw03blPFMSziGRwQodYxLYzCkr8_ZK5CT9QShl7RI3lOuAz1lfaWlXy/s850/desktop-wallpaper-seasonal-depression.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="638" data-original-width="850" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgFK-UAXCaYMXFYVFs340PvzX8unZ3c-WJdp--39tvzRbL3vPwhD5iNddZMXND7wcbEoemKyaupn-fhWOlhZ-wLhQymR8Zpcpn7BwgCSfK8tWPFUaortfuqHuEjT-796XVKzTw03blPFMSziGRwQodYxLYzCkr8_ZK5CT9QShl7RI3lOuAz1lfaWlXy/s320/desktop-wallpaper-seasonal-depression.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><span style="font-size: 12pt;">Summer is here, and all your teams have lost; </span><div><span style="font-size: 12pt;">your jerseys are but shrouds in the dusty closet.<br /></span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">Summer is here, the sun spits its venom,<br /></span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">chicks show more skin,<br /></span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">those coltish legs and round buttocks<br /></span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">are bitter poison down your throat<br /></span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">spreading paralysis.<br /></span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">Even the diabetic woman with a cane<br /></span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">and a cesarian scar,<br /></span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">has ghosted you.<br /></span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">Your overdrawn account puts a toothless bj<br /></span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">beyond your reach. <br /></span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">These dog days have ambushed you,<br /></span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">and stole your breath.<br /></span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">The sweet stench of fresh-cut grass<br /></span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">turns your piles of movies and video games<br /></span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">into distant graveyards<br /></span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">suffocated by hazy loneliness. <br /></span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">Summer is here, the vast blue sky<br /></span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">is a noose around your neck.<br /></span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">All your teams have lost,<br /></span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">nothing left to cheer for,<br /></span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">no bullets left.<br /></span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">It’s time to wipe off your anxiety sweat,<br /></span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">and throw in the towel. </span><p></p></div>axl barneshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05226609236661793688noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4562052415640699330.post-82513070568954486442023-05-08T14:49:00.000-07:002023-05-08T14:49:01.661-07:00Neighborhood Morbidity Watch <p style="text-align: left;"><br /></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg_4gfFtGvSm2ATbUmLLaSTF2KnpLdUP85XKApAi7xpPBmyXm5Oeq2roteHuf_T9jq5MOxn2ONpGh8cPxpMRrNgBMQ_UePDseO42zg5tAuURpzrTgZbBD2mVuSzhXbawc41wvHim6H9iOa-dgCJ52_FYCV-yU8Tx4j41zkQRgTL8gUMtHAXLi-2PfVz/s630/240451541_368941124589015_9136030916074761761_n.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 12pt; text-align: left;"> <table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="550" data-original-width="630" height="279" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg_4gfFtGvSm2ATbUmLLaSTF2KnpLdUP85XKApAi7xpPBmyXm5Oeq2roteHuf_T9jq5MOxn2ONpGh8cPxpMRrNgBMQ_UePDseO42zg5tAuURpzrTgZbBD2mVuSzhXbawc41wvHim6H9iOa-dgCJ52_FYCV-yU8Tx4j41zkQRgTL8gUMtHAXLi-2PfVz/s320/240451541_368941124589015_9136030916074761761_n.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" width="320" /></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Picture by <b><a href="https://www.facebook.com/ChrisMarsArt">Chris Mars</a> </b></td></tr></tbody></table></span></a><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg_4gfFtGvSm2ATbUmLLaSTF2KnpLdUP85XKApAi7xpPBmyXm5Oeq2roteHuf_T9jq5MOxn2ONpGh8cPxpMRrNgBMQ_UePDseO42zg5tAuURpzrTgZbBD2mVuSzhXbawc41wvHim6H9iOa-dgCJ52_FYCV-yU8Tx4j41zkQRgTL8gUMtHAXLi-2PfVz/s630/240451541_368941124589015_9136030916074761761_n.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 12pt; text-align: left;"><br /></span></a><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg_4gfFtGvSm2ATbUmLLaSTF2KnpLdUP85XKApAi7xpPBmyXm5Oeq2roteHuf_T9jq5MOxn2ONpGh8cPxpMRrNgBMQ_UePDseO42zg5tAuURpzrTgZbBD2mVuSzhXbawc41wvHim6H9iOa-dgCJ52_FYCV-yU8Tx4j41zkQRgTL8gUMtHAXLi-2PfVz/s630/240451541_368941124589015_9136030916074761761_n.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 12pt; text-align: left;"> </span></a></div><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 12.0000pt; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">The two obese brothers cackled </span><div><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 12.0000pt; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">as they threw bricks at each other.<br /></span><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 12.0000pt; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">On the street, some guys played soccer with a cat<br /></span><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 12.0000pt; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">filled with sand,<br /></span><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 12.0000pt; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">while others used sparrows and rocks<br /></span><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 12.0000pt; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">as tennis balls.<br /></span><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 12.0000pt; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">Cars kept passing by, now and again,<br /></span><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 12.0000pt; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">a monotone procession,<br /></span><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 12.0000pt; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">driving the faceless from work.<br /></span><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 12.0000pt; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">Car horns and swears slashed the dusty daylight.<br /></span><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 12.0000pt; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';"> <br /></span><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 12.0000pt; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">On the playground, George stopped swinging,<br /></span><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 12.0000pt; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">and injected mud into his forearm.<br /></span><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 12.0000pt; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">On the front stairs to my cubical apartment building<br /></span><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 12.0000pt; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">John was getting a frantic bj<br /></span><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 12.0000pt; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">from his chubby girlfriend<br /></span><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 12.0000pt; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">as he stroked his favorite stray dog. </span><p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 12.0000pt; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';"> </span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 12pt;">At the place across the street,<br /></span><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 12pt;">Tudor and his gang were gathered<br /></span><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 12.0000pt; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">around a broken cellar window<br /></span><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 12.0000pt; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">throwing in firecrackers<br /></span><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 12.0000pt; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">and lighted cigarette butts.<br /></span><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 12.0000pt; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">Screams and guffaws<br /></span><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 12.0000pt; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">cut into the evening’s<br /></span><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 12.0000pt; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">jaundiced underbelly.<br /></span><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 12.0000pt; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">Up on the second floor,<br /></span><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 12.0000pt; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">Mr. Sharp took long puffs from his smoke,<br /></span><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 12.0000pt; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">face twisted in a scowl,<br /></span><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 12.0000pt; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">soccer game commentary<br /></span><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 12.0000pt; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">blasting from inside.<br /></span><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 12.0000pt; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">His wife-beater was stained with blood.</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 12.0000pt; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';"> <br /></span><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 12.0000pt; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">I walked to the gray building next to mine.<br /></span><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 12.0000pt; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">Old Dick was doing his thing<br /></span><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 12.0000pt; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">Climbing between the opposing walls of the two places,<br /></span><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 12.0000pt; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">Hands against one, feet against the other.<br /></span><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 12.0000pt; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">He got to the first floor, </span><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 12pt;">shaking,<br /></span><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 12.0000pt; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">Face red with strain.<br /></span><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 12.0000pt; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">A small group of fans looked up,<br /></span><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 12.0000pt; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">Mouths agape.<br /></span><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 12.0000pt; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">The ponytailed girl with a short leg<br /></span><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 12.0000pt; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">counted for hide and sick<br /></span><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 12.0000pt; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">as the Siamese twins<br /></span><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 12.0000pt; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">hid behind the abandoned car on bricks.<br /></span><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 12.0000pt; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">Inside, Andy “Fathead” went “V</span><i><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 12pt;">room-vroom-vroom.”</span></i><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 12.0000pt; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';"> </span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 12.0000pt; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';"> <br /></span><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 12.0000pt; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">Angela was at the usual spot,<br /></span><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 12.0000pt; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">On the stairs around the corner,<br /></span><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 12.0000pt; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">Talking about a telenovela<br /></span><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 12.0000pt; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">with the brown and chubby midget woman.<br /></span><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 12.0000pt; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">Angela ruffled my curly hair.<br /></span><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 12.0000pt; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">“My handsome lil’ prince,” she said.<br /></span><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 12.0000pt; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">I sat next to her, began eating sunflower seeds,<br /></span><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 12.0000pt; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">and caught glimpses of her generous cleavage,<br /></span><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 12.0000pt; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">and the tender skin under her flowery dress.<br /></span><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 12.0000pt; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">Her hairy warmth was as salty as the seeds in my mouth.<br /></span><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 12.0000pt; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">Angela’s husband was in jail,<br /></span><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 12.0000pt; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">and her boy was subnormal, housebound,<br /></span><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 12.0000pt; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">with a leaking eye. </span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 12.0000pt; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">To the west, beyond the tops of the drab buildings,<br /></span><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 12.0000pt; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">the sky was bloodied and bruised;<br /></span><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 12.0000pt; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">the night would be warm and wet<br /></span><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 12.0000pt; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">like a festering wound. </span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 12.0000pt; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 12.0000pt; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';"> </span><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 12.0000pt; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';"><o:p></o:p></span></p></div>axl barneshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05226609236661793688noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4562052415640699330.post-59668202159748376742023-05-02T08:42:00.019-07:002023-05-02T10:36:48.012-07:00Deep Down Necrosis <p><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg7r6LemrJblivwUi_yy-7hJIH-_NFrvnAB-PTWhh_S26QF8X4_zm2reo2HXvPvojbImi6lwYbkieyeodjhf6dt8TNrmmZ0JT5rptwLjAsFge0BZsDytYUIyJKUFXUG1ftEDQdy3QEOnHhRn4k7V7rhNKg8wxeF8eoIcUUHyS8mL3T1r0IvNtlbd0-b/s2048/325854037_2206873832807612_2169115932637689810_n.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="1368" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg7r6LemrJblivwUi_yy-7hJIH-_NFrvnAB-PTWhh_S26QF8X4_zm2reo2HXvPvojbImi6lwYbkieyeodjhf6dt8TNrmmZ0JT5rptwLjAsFge0BZsDytYUIyJKUFXUG1ftEDQdy3QEOnHhRn4k7V7rhNKg8wxeF8eoIcUUHyS8mL3T1r0IvNtlbd0-b/w275-h400/325854037_2206873832807612_2169115932637689810_n.jpg" width="275" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Dysmorph by <a href="https://www.facebook.com/Eigengrau.BrendanMcCarthyArt"><b>Brendan McCarthy</b></a> </td></tr></tbody></table> <span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt;">I scrape off your face, </span></p><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">your plastic smile,</span></p></blockquote><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">like tooth decay.</span></p></blockquote><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">Through the cavity hole </span></p></blockquote><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">I press on the wormy tangle </span></p></blockquote><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">of upchucked nightmares </span></p></blockquote><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">and leftover words,</span></p></blockquote><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">but those nerves are too spent</span></p></blockquote><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">to carry electricity. </span></p></blockquote><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">The impulse floats</span></p></blockquote><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">like a dead fish in a murky pond. </span></p></blockquote><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">The yellow, fermenting pus </span></p></blockquote><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">of your resignation</span></p></blockquote><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">stains my gloved fingers,</span></p></blockquote><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">And it reeks of abandoned theaters </span></p></blockquote><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">turned squatter houses. </span></p></blockquote><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">You’re but a wrinkled mask</span></p></blockquote><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">stretched over a swamp,</span></p></blockquote><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">bubbling with rot. </span></p></blockquote><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">Your screams gargle like clogged drains.</span></p></blockquote><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">Your gums are mush,</span></p></blockquote><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">no bone, no story. </span></p></blockquote><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">All we can do for you is cover the gray ruin deep down </span></p></blockquote><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">with a waxy ruin,</span></p></blockquote><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">and hope for a good embalmer. </span></p></blockquote></blockquote>axl barneshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05226609236661793688noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4562052415640699330.post-38102360593443985442023-04-14T09:29:00.106-07:002023-04-14T16:17:51.958-07:00Review of David Peak's Corpsepaint <p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjzb5Kk4YA5qwh3MwkUPShvjJY7KH8Rqth5aYuDNzSjnBO31Frncn-sidUk3qcxNo4gOdEmMVZYGOg0gtGqxbGabx1Hogp0APJAPnj4dGIfcjtAPIdEh7U5Rqh-_u6el0usILEiOqTA05mrP0OhdFrB6sPph2COemZ2ugCRFUMBJ6T3LCnaFNt8HDO9/s499/515E+OMdAsL._SX322_BO1,204,203,200_.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="499" data-original-width="324" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjzb5Kk4YA5qwh3MwkUPShvjJY7KH8Rqth5aYuDNzSjnBO31Frncn-sidUk3qcxNo4gOdEmMVZYGOg0gtGqxbGabx1Hogp0APJAPnj4dGIfcjtAPIdEh7U5Rqh-_u6el0usILEiOqTA05mrP0OhdFrB6sPph2COemZ2ugCRFUMBJ6T3LCnaFNt8HDO9/s320/515E+OMdAsL._SX322_BO1,204,203,200_.jpg" width="208" /></a></div><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 12pt; text-align: justify;">David Peak’s </span><i style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 12pt;">Corpsepaint</span></i><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 12pt; text-align: justify;"> is a treat for black metal fans and readers of cosmic horror. As I count myself in both these categories I fully enjoyed this book. Peak’s writing is concise and penetrating, poetical yet punchy, he does an amazing job describing physical and psychological decay and degradation, suggesting pessimism, hopelessness, and damnation. The tone of the book reminded me of B.R. Yeager’s </span><i style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 12pt;">Negative Space </span></i><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 12pt; text-align: justify;">as well as the atmospheric horror movie </span><i style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 12pt;">The Witch</span></i><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 12pt; text-align: justify;">. Peak is good at conveying the heaviness of a curse, the moral paralysis of being forsaken by a god. His descriptions of the transfigurative power of music come close but don’t match those of another champion of cosmic horror, Curtis L. Lawson, in </span><i style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 12pt;">Black Hearts Boys Choir.</span></i><p></p><p align="justify" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 12pt;">Now, something nagged me while reading </span><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><i>Corpsepaint</i></span></span><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 12pt;"> and I think it points to some tensions in the thinking behind the work. Nerding out alert! </span><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 12pt;">Black metal clusters together a number of extreme ideologies that are sometimes at odds with each other. With his seminal early albums, Varg Vikenes, the man behind </span><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">Burzum</span></span><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 12pt;">, influenced Satanic Black Metal (SBM), National Socialist Black Metal (NSBM), as well as Depressive Suicidal Black Metal. Other central acts of second-wave BM like </span><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">Darkthrone</span></span><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 12pt;"> and </span><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">Mayhem</span></span><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 12pt;"> displayed both Satanic and NS sympathies. However, Erik Danielson</span><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 12pt;"> from </span><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">Watain</span></span><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 12pt;"> is careful in separating the two. "Racial ideas, to me -- from my perspective as a spiritual person -- are really irrelevant. I study other cultures, and I'm interested in radical ideas of viewing the world, but when it comes to racial ideas, I've never really found a speech or text about it that could make sense to me. When we view the world from a spiritual perspective, racial ideas become very mundane, and insignificant. We are talking about an animal that developed into man and that is, to me, where my primary enemy lies. Not in any specific kind of that animal. We are all that animal, and I am completely uninterested in any ideas contrary to that, to be honest.<span style="background-color: white;">" </span></span></p><p align="justify" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">The anti-human impetus behind acts like Watain, Funeral Mist, or Inquisition, the satanic desire for liberation and transcendence of human nature is in conflict with any narrow interest in race or the war between races. </p><p align="justify" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 12pt;">These tensions amongst BM ideologies are reflected in </span><i><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 12pt;">Corpsepaint</span></i><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 12pt;"> and the world-views of the main characters. Max and Roland are rebels without a cause marching on a path to self-destruction. “Black metal is not for well-adjusted people,” Max thinks. “Hard drugs and corpsepaint are symptoms of the same disease.” On the other hand, Seph is more into the NS, land and blood side of things. She is dedicated to her community and the preservation of its heritage, something reminiscent of Varg Vikernes’ eurocentrism, except Seph is more focused on her pure Ukrainian heritage and blocking out any Russian contamination, and the decadent modern world in general. (David Peak proves to be a bit of a visionary here, given the war between the two countries that started last year.) </span></p><p align="justify" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 12pt;">Now we finally get to what’s been nagging me about this book. Seph doesn’t believe in Odininsm or something that fits NS ideology, but in the Lord Leviathan, which sounds a lot like a god of death and destruction, something that a Satanist would worship. In other words, a god that doesn’t care about races, but is out to destroy all of humanity. Let’s take a closer look at how Leviathan is introduced:</span></p><p align="justify" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">Seph states, “</span><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 12pt;">He clears the path to ascend and wages war on the primordial being --</span><span style="background: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Calibri; font-size: 12pt; letter-spacing: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"> </span></span><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 12pt;">chaos itself, the bornless one <span style="background-color: white;">--</span></span><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 12pt;"> unleashing the black miasma that covers the world. The war is long and it is difficult, but ultimately the Lord is crowned the victor. He becomes the all-knowing, ever-seeing protector of our lands. From that day forward, He reigns supreme as the Lord of the lords, ruler of the Black Sea, and bringer of peace. And we are all his children. His blood is our blood, the blood of the land’s firstborn son and daughters. He provides the air we breathe, the food we eat, and in doing so, he lives forever within each of us. And in death we return our bodies to the earth, joining our flesh to his flesh, the Lord Leviathan.”</span></p><p align="justify" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">Initially, I was tempted to interpret this through the lens of the Sumero-Babylonyan myth of the goddess Tiamat, the primordial chaos, who was defeated by Marduk. However, Tiamat, being bornless, is also deathless and one cannot kill what is already dead. Thus, even though Marduk proceeds to create the world and mankind, he cannot fully extinguish the principle of chaos that slowly penetrates the created universe and eventually brings about its destruction. So, in this interpretation, Leviathan would be the equivalent of Marduk, a creator god, a god of order, which fits the description of him as “bringer of peace.” Although, even on this view, it’s unclear why Leviathan favors one race or nation (Ukrainians, in this case) over others. The god seems to have local and universal attributes, making its nature difficult to grasp. Incidentally, this is also an ambiguity in the nature of the Christian god, who is both the god of the Jewish people and the god of humanity as a whole.</span><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 12pt; text-align: left;"> </span></p><p align="justify" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">But even this line of charitable interpretation is called into doubt when, on the next page, Leviathan is characterized as “formless,” “the black and unknowable abyss that surrounds our world,” “the darkness between the stars,” “always at war with others like him.” These attributes again call to mind the goddess Tiamat, the dark mother of chaos, rather than Marduk, the creator. Moreover, Leviathan’s plan turns out to be the destruction of everything. He shows no mercy to his own people, those of his blood, he’s just ready to swallow the world. However, in an NS framework, one would expect that the creator God would favor one race over others or people exemplifying certain virtues like courage or loyalty, over cowards or cheats. That’s why Odinism and the promise of Valhalla are a good fit for an NS outlook. But there’s no Aryan paradise awaiting the followers of Leviathan, both believers and non-believers are turning to ashes and dust.</span></p><p align="justify" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">We may note that, like many ancient gods, Leviathan has a dual nature; he’s torn between opposites, creator and destroyer, bringer of peace and war, local as well as universal. But this unclear and paradoxical nature makes him a bad story character as the reader has no clue what he is exactly and this drains the emotional oomph of the narrative and its overall cogency. </span></p><p align="justify" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">Nerding out stops here. All in all, mythological discussions aside, I truly enjoyed </span><i><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 12pt;">Corpsepaint</span></i><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';"> and its portrayal of music as an act of transcendence, liberation, and transfiguration. As Mortuus from </span><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 12pt;">Funeral Mist</span><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';"> writes, "I choke the human within, to gain the will of a god." </span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 12pt;"> </span></p>axl barneshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05226609236661793688noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4562052415640699330.post-60637209056745537032023-03-01T14:11:00.117-08:002023-03-01T16:35:31.813-08:00The Loser (Ode to Emil Cioran) <div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">When puberty hit <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi2mX8Z_KT_IM91Lg1yACYdKT7Y2e1eVP6lSreccYF4nl-m8IpNSms7nygldhW4t04NrwLsmqJGXkljcri4h3FIwJGEg1nU8RnzBd9K8K_2mkk3at026UsXAcfRvBB5cmIbn9hZxtP2HAzcfo1CWp6qR6NS5bjrJygiQmS0Xdh9BfQfVHGzaG0WnCzh/s300/301763719_625338065646183_2475912164012731026_n.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="300" data-original-width="300" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi2mX8Z_KT_IM91Lg1yACYdKT7Y2e1eVP6lSreccYF4nl-m8IpNSms7nygldhW4t04NrwLsmqJGXkljcri4h3FIwJGEg1nU8RnzBd9K8K_2mkk3at026UsXAcfRvBB5cmIbn9hZxtP2HAzcfo1CWp6qR6NS5bjrJygiQmS0Xdh9BfQfVHGzaG0WnCzh/s1600/301763719_625338065646183_2475912164012731026_n.jpg" width="300" /></a></div></span><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">I resigned from humanity,<br /></span><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">and applied for the job<br /></span><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">of full-time ghost.<br /></span><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">Raging hormones<br /></span><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">made me hang up my cleats, </span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">and exile myself in libraries</span><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 12pt;"> </span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">to quench my thirst for losing.<br /></span><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">I painted graffiti with my cum<br /></span><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">on bathroom stalls<br /></span><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">in the language of boredom.<br /></span><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">Even as a ghost I was shy and clumsy,<br /></span><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">couldn’t perform a decent haunting,<br /></span><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">a small part in a nightmare,<br /></span><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">or even a mildly unsettling apparition;<br /></span><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">I was mostly slacking, killing time,<br /></span><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">In the backrooms of the night.<br /></span><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">Being a ghost ended up scaring me,<br /></span><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">haunting me,<br /></span><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">stressing me out. <br /></span><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">Naturally, I’ve been demoted from full-time ghost<br /></span><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">to casual phantom,<br /></span><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">but even that minimal responsibility mortified me.<br /></span><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">Next step, I quit being a specter altogether,<br /></span><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">and pursued a fulfilling career in nonexistence</span></div>axl barneshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05226609236661793688noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4562052415640699330.post-26690574842076339322023-02-20T08:25:00.020-08:002023-02-20T08:30:57.167-08:00Dementia Games <div style="text-align: left;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjhmtXnUorgi_OsyjU_-hgd72gELSBlKvn0lBhBmd1tXVjrza3fUiuSRfD4U2nHZthLsLwrxJ_s8vxVyrn_LpoUwwSDgeBcLo7dE66rQRWLHKWajhs31za5hE1qGjGa8FdQl0q2pUnJD_Nbg3xHtc3pFRU0Swm3OTi0yiEINaDabGmtI5_0KJfLsgGG/s3296/Half%20Buried.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"></a><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 12pt; text-align: left;"> </span></div></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 12pt;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhkM0jtv6FIlw9BUQhav-jBburfOhtsonLr7vClHHW6jNWRXI8fyfeAFyjT26pmnAPEmzvx7G-baUDGe0jX-0NjwdXrBdxvJcn5rPAq4FqD7ix3Upza6G5QDopaLKDvLcE4G4XgmfpZwMLKuBYoMp6SdQj0YcFuotaQ3YNvOfcoqP7hRiYgoZUi6UhD/s3296/Half%20Buried.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3296" data-original-width="2544" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhkM0jtv6FIlw9BUQhav-jBburfOhtsonLr7vClHHW6jNWRXI8fyfeAFyjT26pmnAPEmzvx7G-baUDGe0jX-0NjwdXrBdxvJcn5rPAq4FqD7ix3Upza6G5QDopaLKDvLcE4G4XgmfpZwMLKuBYoMp6SdQj0YcFuotaQ3YNvOfcoqP7hRiYgoZUi6UhD/s320/Half%20Buried.jpg" width="247" /></a><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhkM0jtv6FIlw9BUQhav-jBburfOhtsonLr7vClHHW6jNWRXI8fyfeAFyjT26pmnAPEmzvx7G-baUDGe0jX-0NjwdXrBdxvJcn5rPAq4FqD7ix3Upza6G5QDopaLKDvLcE4G4XgmfpZwMLKuBYoMp6SdQj0YcFuotaQ3YNvOfcoqP7hRiYgoZUi6UhD/s3296/Half%20Buried.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><br /></a></div></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 12pt;">The two grandparents play hide and seek</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 12pt;">with their meds and memories,<br /></span><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">inside their cabin,<br /></span><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">at the heart of a distant winter.<br /></span><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 12pt;"> <br /></span><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">Surrounded by mountains of fog,<br /></span><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">they pet their broken cats</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">and play fetch with their frozen dogs.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">They play makeup with feces<br /> </span><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">and formaldehyde.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">The holes in their brains are for their children,<br /> </span><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">and the depressions in their bleeding gums<br /> </span><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">are for their grandchildren.<br /> </span><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">But the thieving wind stole their marbles,<br /></span><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">and they can only count between zero and minus,<br /></span><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">between nobody and gray.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 12pt;"> </span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">Their children are unconcerned:<br /></span><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">the two loved each other<br /></span><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">and have passed away together,<br /></span><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">hugging.<br /></span><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">No one deserves to die alone! </span></div><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';"> </span><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';"><o:p></o:p></span></p>axl barneshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05226609236661793688noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4562052415640699330.post-60024858183457787462023-01-27T10:24:00.001-08:002023-01-27T10:41:45.694-08:00Cemetery with Falling Teeth (vignette) <p><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEisVvPY3tJyDMjVlzHoY6rUlXjT6DS3ON9pRElsv2JZW3wcwamC3Z9Uqoi2_nGsLhoawBkIZeq7xwXjOWZHtP7_d3lrhE7ik7-TrIjBu1iCDvVbxOU7Ji1quA0LcNQ3R-RMQrRcPgO6lWQk_31iDi_BQHz3oq7nZLVS-jv1AFd08K5XnqbnzLqk5MyP/s3300/2020-10-08_095455.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3300" data-original-width="2550" height="373" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEisVvPY3tJyDMjVlzHoY6rUlXjT6DS3ON9pRElsv2JZW3wcwamC3Z9Uqoi2_nGsLhoawBkIZeq7xwXjOWZHtP7_d3lrhE7ik7-TrIjBu1iCDvVbxOU7Ji1quA0LcNQ3R-RMQrRcPgO6lWQk_31iDi_BQHz3oq7nZLVS-jv1AFd08K5XnqbnzLqk5MyP/w247-h373/2020-10-08_095455.jpg" width="247" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Illustration by <a href="https://www.facebook.com/search/top?q=foul%20apparatus" target="_blank"><b>Thomas Stetson </b></a></td></tr></tbody></table><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 12pt; text-align: justify;">I was on my way to school on that ashen morning when my teeth started coming loose. My backpack was too heavy and my head bowed down. I spit out a tooth and it landed in a puddle of mud at my feet, its white like ice, like hail. I swallowed the next ones out of fear and shame. I avoided biting and kept my mouth slightly open, but my tongue was restless and it kept pushing at them. On my way, I met two of my classmates, my usual companions, and gave them a tight-lipped smile. They weren’t talking much anyway, burdened by their packs, not fully awake. It was foggy and started to drizzle. We made our way down the familiar streets, between the usual gray apartment buildings, mud sticking to our boots, as heavy as silence.</span></p><p align="justify" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 12.0000pt; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">There was construction on one of the streets. Beyond the orange barricades, the street was now a giant crater, extending to the foundation of one of the structures. Was that building sinking slowly? I couldn’t tell for sure, but it didn’t look straight. When we negotiated our detour I remembered I had to recite a poem in class. My heart sank. How was I to recite with no teeth? I’d be a laughingstock. Panicked, I lagged behind my classmates and darted inside one of the buildings. I ran up the steps to the top floor and huddled up in a corner, my tongue still working at dislodging my front teeth. Doors opened and closed below me, steps descended, whispering shadows, people going to work.</span><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 12pt; text-align: left;"> </span></p><p align="justify" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 12.0000pt; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">I waited as more teeth fell. Their roots snapped and sent jolts to my brain, like earthquakes just behind your eyes. I pressed my lips tight and fought back tears.</span></p><p align="justify" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 12.0000pt; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">When I felt that the class has started I went out on the muddy streets, my legs unsure where to take me. I couldn’t go back home. My mom would yell at me for skipping school and losing all my teeth. She’d say I must be contaminated and would take me to the hospital, leaving me there with strangers, needles, and scalpels. Those green walls and nauseating smells, the eternal waiting. It was worse than being on the playground when no one wanted to play with you. The hospital was a deserted playground with barbed wire.<br /></span></p><p align="justify" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 12.0000pt; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">I found myself in the cemetery. The rain picked up, hard. Through the deluge, I saw a hole waiting in front of a marble cross. The earth under it softened, and the cross started to lean over. Finally, it fell inside the muddy hole with a wet thud, just as I spit out my last tooth. </span><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 12.0000pt; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-spacerun: 'yes';"><o:p></o:p></span></p>axl barneshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05226609236661793688noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4562052415640699330.post-41286204035422072812022-10-05T11:26:00.000-07:002022-10-05T12:25:23.193-07:00Axl Barnes' Strangled Epitaphs<iframe width="480" height="270" src="https://youtube.com/embed/5LtWaHXkKaw" frameborder="0"></iframe>axl barneshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05226609236661793688noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4562052415640699330.post-27233110668283015012022-07-24T11:37:00.000-07:002022-07-24T11:37:12.737-07:00Review of Curtis Lawson's The Envious Nothing <p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEioqQZufpmMZ1UNPe_rtPxRb3C78mLA2TbjrnJqtztJSROZTWzBOmiFEWDw9bLJUSRPvlwLTszJ1J4Rn3CoLJ-AU5S0DOvaJ0fRMMOpET5ppEjRpjnpNCDQvNW0CZpSxls34ONRTdtWEkkJfGxU40g8SXBLYM0Xe1tiuWC_VD-cPJNcYaeq6X0sE6BH/s475/61295512._SY475_.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="475" data-original-width="317" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEioqQZufpmMZ1UNPe_rtPxRb3C78mLA2TbjrnJqtztJSROZTWzBOmiFEWDw9bLJUSRPvlwLTszJ1J4Rn3CoLJ-AU5S0DOvaJ0fRMMOpET5ppEjRpjnpNCDQvNW0CZpSxls34ONRTdtWEkkJfGxU40g8SXBLYM0Xe1tiuWC_VD-cPJNcYaeq6X0sE6BH/w268-h400/61295512._SY475_.jpg" width="268" /></a></div><span style="text-align: justify;">I</span><span style="text-align: justify;">
</span><span style="text-align: justify;">remember having high expectations for Curtis Lawson's </span><i style="text-align: justify;">The Envious Nothing</i><span style="text-align: justify;">. They were surpassed<br />
and pulverized. This is a rare treat for horror fans as Lawson expertly
integrates elements of body horror, psychological horror, folk, and supernatural
horror in a style firmly rooted in Lovecraftian cosmic horror.</span><span style="text-align: justify;"> </span><span style="text-align: justify;">In his earlier volume, Black Pantheons,
Lawson claims that "Cosmicism is a literary philosophy that suggests we
live in a vast, indifferent universe, devoid of any cosmic father figure. If
you take it a bit further it is the view that the universe and any higher intelligence
within it, is actually malevolent in nature." That early volume features
many stories of trickster demons and other supernatural entities bent on
torturing humans both physically and mentally.</span><span style="text-align: justify;"> </span><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">In <i>Devil's Night </i>and <i>The Envious
Nothing,</i> Lawson departs gradually from that initial characterization of
cosmicism and offers a more complex picture of human nature and its
relationship with the supernatural. There's a certain moral ambiguity that
permeates some of these stories. In "Orphan" or "The
Rye-Mother" the main characters are misfits who want to find a place to
belong, a place outside the confines of the ordinary world, and beings from
beyond the natural order offer their help. In addition, evil becomes more
diffuse, so much so it turns into nothing, but it's a dynamic and dangerous
Nothing. Lawson doesn't go as far as B.R, Yeager in <i>Negative Space</i>, to strip these otherworldly forces of any human
characteristics. Nothingness is described as envious, hungry, vengeful,
although those properties are immense and grotesque in comparison to their human
counterparts. Lawson here echoes ancient creation myths from the
Sumero-Babylonian to the Norse traditions. The goddess Tiamat is famously described as a
primordial abyss, beyond space and time, life and death, both life-giving and
vengeful and destructive. By introducing Nothingness as a malevolent force Lawson
takes us to the limit of our conceptual scheme, to the realm of paradox, the
point where ancient mythology merges with modern physics. If Nothing is envious
isn't it Something? Isn't envy a property or a predicate that requires a
subject, a substance to have it? How can something be envious while outside
space and time? Don't emotions have duration, a certain feel to them? Lawson's
power as a horror writer lies in being able to weave imaginative, evocative stories
around these perennial cognitive cramps and conceptual dead-ends, and to
vividly express that which cannot be told.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">I enjoyed all stories in this
volume as the author not only spins original tales but uses a variety of
literary techniques and forms to deliver them. The reader is never bored and
kept on his toes. Stories like "Elvis and Isolde" are so well-crafted that you probably need a strong cup of coffee before delving into them. The stories that will remain tattooed on my
brain are "The Happiest Place on Earth" (it reads like a mix of
Stephen King's <i>The Mist</i> and<i> The Girl who Loved Tom Gordon</i>, steeped
in deep, thick melancholy), "Secretes of the Forbidden Kata," The Rye
Mother" (I have a soft spot for amoral elitist characters and the imagery
is stunning) and "The Truth about Vampires," (this one's aggressive
weirdness and demented depravity reminded me of Nicole Cushing's "Mr.
Suicide") As a small lament, I think some of these stories deserved a
larger canvass, maybe a novella or even novel treatment. For instance,
"Monsters have no Place in the World to Come," a story about the
Hitler Youth, could easily grow into a novel in the vein of <i>Lord of the Flies </i>set against the
desolate background of a ruined Berlin. All in all, I warmly recommend this
darkly beautiful and challenging book!</p>axl barneshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05226609236661793688noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4562052415640699330.post-42562040725380275822021-07-25T16:48:00.003-07:002021-07-25T16:48:42.072-07:00Trailer for Stillborn Gallery <iframe style="background-image:url(https://i.ytimg.com/vi/FYaY52PAzfI/hqdefault.jpg)" width="480" height="270" src="https://youtube.com/embed/FYaY52PAzfI" frameborder="0"></iframe>axl barneshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05226609236661793688noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4562052415640699330.post-91718483497885347382021-05-21T16:26:00.000-07:002021-05-21T16:26:22.844-07:00Intro to Stillborn Gallery<iframe width="480" height="270" src="https://youtube.com/embed/ZUzRVt4-gws" frameborder="0"></iframe>axl barneshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05226609236661793688noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4562052415640699330.post-13026881894836748742021-04-14T10:16:00.019-07:002021-04-14T19:42:47.372-07:00Interview with horror writer B.R. Yeager<script async="async" src="https://platform-api.sharethis.com/js/sharethis.js#property=5fda4ed259355a00124f7de7&product=inline-share-buttons" type="text/javascript"></script>
<div id="i4c-draggable-container" style="height: 0px; position: fixed; width: 0px; z-index: 1499;"><div class="resolved" data-reactroot="" style="all: initial; animation: initial; appearance: initial; backface-visibility: initial; background-blend-mode: initial; background: initial; block-size: initial; border-block: initial; border-collapse: initial; border-end-end-radius: initial; border-end-start-radius: initial; border-inline: initial; border-radius: initial; border-spacing: initial; border-start-end-radius: initial; border-start-start-radius: initial; border: initial; box-decoration-break: initial; box-shadow: initial; box-sizing: initial; break-after: initial; break-before: initial; break-inside: initial; caption-side: initial; caret-color: initial; clear: initial; clip-path: initial; clip-rule: initial; clip: initial; color-adjust: initial; color-interpolation-filters: initial; color-interpolation: initial; color: initial; column-fill: initial; column-rule: initial; column-span: initial; 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transform-box: initial; transform-origin: initial; transform-style: initial; transform: initial; transition: initial; translate: initial; user-select: initial; vector-effect: initial; vertical-align: initial; visibility: initial; white-space: initial; width: initial; will-change: initial; word-break: initial; word-spacing: initial; writing-mode: initial; x: initial; y: initial; z-index: initial;"></div></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjyDs8bQz5Q0oisYE96vQWu7E1Snk4bJ9YjpL8ClC8I2c2U9iAfvNccIWcdbPPPhytJK5paILpwhom2Y5LDNHKuodK8QwiSm0-LVZNmwYpycRFgl3NqdwPwCdfl7Q3rAlW5c3hUIVuHLZE/s400/images.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="400" data-original-width="250" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjyDs8bQz5Q0oisYE96vQWu7E1Snk4bJ9YjpL8ClC8I2c2U9iAfvNccIWcdbPPPhytJK5paILpwhom2Y5LDNHKuodK8QwiSm0-LVZNmwYpycRFgl3NqdwPwCdfl7Q3rAlW5c3hUIVuHLZE/w253-h400/images.jpg" width="253" /></a></div>B.R. Yeager's <i>Negative Space </i>was a mind-blowing surprise of the same magnitude as Curtis Lawson's <i>Black Heart Boy's Choir</i> and Nicole Cushing's <i>Mr. Suicide</i>. All of these novels vividly capture teenage angst and courageously follow their characters into the mouth of madness, to the point where the cold edge of the blade cuts through tender skin. B.R. Yeager does away with the cannon of mainstream horror—the building of suspense to a climax, the protagonist vs. antagonist dichotomy, detailed analysis of the main character's motives and thinking—and reads more like the account of a collective bad trip, the chronicle of the gradual physical and psychological ruination of a group of teens in the small town of Kinsfield. From the outset, we learn that Kinsfield is plagued by a wave of teen suicides. Tyler, the main character, wants to contact the sinister supernatural forces behind that wave, with the help of hallucinogens and black magic. We only learn about Tyler through the lenses of those close to him and can only speculate about the motives behind his erratic and often self-destructive behavior. Reckless and cruel, Tyler is ready to sacrifice himself and those around him in his attempt at transcending his humanity. As with any act of hubris, Tyler is physically and spiritually mutilated by the malignant forces he summoned. The gloomy story and morbid imagery in <i>Negative Space</i> project a thick sense of mystery and doom similar to what you experience while watching a David Lynch film. The nightmarish dreamscapes are like the surrealist landscapes of Dali, and reflect hidden symbols and archetypes. <i>Negative Space</i> is a hypnotic book, with an almost subliminal rhythm and sound it calls us to explore the network of caves and catacombs below consciousness.<div><br /><div>Mr. Yeager was kind enough to answer some questions for my blog. </div><div><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><b>Axl: First, Mr. Yeager, congratulations on writing such an amazing novel! Although it is very stylized, the reader can guess it's partly rooted in personal experience. Can you please share with us some of the biographical sources of the novel, as well as giving us a sense of its literary influences? </b></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiCjAi3MsTCKHqvQzgB26ui10_EC-kE7B4BzMwAWrcOSuRFrxWo9Tz0sKVqqTb-kV3Oov4d6_3iMZ-orFTueR38MI-o_z2NwZsv4H_IvigT0YGNfgeUR-OoY5g5gIh0J6tsFcM0D2y6H0A/s1788/169127395_498695624873810_8095463643266748005_n+%25282%2529.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1788" data-original-width="1776" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiCjAi3MsTCKHqvQzgB26ui10_EC-kE7B4BzMwAWrcOSuRFrxWo9Tz0sKVqqTb-kV3Oov4d6_3iMZ-orFTueR38MI-o_z2NwZsv4H_IvigT0YGNfgeUR-OoY5g5gIh0J6tsFcM0D2y6H0A/s320/169127395_498695624873810_8095463643266748005_n+%25282%2529.jpg" /></a></div><br /><div><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><b>B.R. Yeager</b>: While I would definitely agree that much of Negative Space is rooted in lived experience, it’s much more complicated than it being strictly biographical. The short version is that the book emerged in response to a close friend’s suicide. Beyond that, there are bits and pieces of experiences taken from my own life, or the lives of people I’ve known, or things I’ve observed, and integrated into the story. But ultimately, it’s all been smeared together in a way that makes it completely fictional. </div><div><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Major literary influences would include Kathe Koja’s <i>The Cipher</i>, Ray Bradbury’s <i>Something Wicked This Way Comes</i>, Dennis Cooper’s <i>My Loose Thread</i>, Grace Krilanovich’s <i>The Orange Eats Creeps</i>, Philip K. Dick’s <i>Flow My Tears</i>,<i> the Policeman Said, The Kybalion</i> by Three Initiates, Blake Butler’s <i>300,000,000</i>, Toni Morrison’s <i>Beloved</i>, Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Fall of the House of Usher,” and John Keel’s <i>The Mothman Prophecies. </i></div><div><b><br /></b></div><div><b>Axl: <i>Negative Space</i> seems to fit the subgenre of cosmic horror but at the same time is wildly transgressive and subversive in both content and structure. Where would you place it in the landscape of contemporary horror fiction? </b></div><div><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><b>B.R. Yeager</b>: I have no idea. Honestly, I feel a bit out of step with—or at least not particularly knowledgeable—about the contemporary horror landscape. I tend to have a very broad and personal conception of horror as a genre, which would likely include works that many wouldn’t label as horror. Ultimately, I don’t think it’s my place to square <i>Negative Space</i> into any particular realm within the genre, though cosmic horror and transgressive fiction seem like appropriate tags. </div><div><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><b>Axl: In the novel, you introduce the concept of mind without life. The way I understand it, the mind emerges in the brain but it can emerge in any kind of dead matter that has a certain pattern. Is it fair to say that Tyler dies but also preserves his consciousness? Can we still say that he's alive, but more like an astral body? </b></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><b>B.R. Yeager:</b> I’m becoming more and more hesitant to answer any clarifying questions about the text, not to be an asshole, but mainly because I think any answers I give will be infinitely less interesting than the questions being posed. I will say that this interpretation is a valid one. </div><div><br /></div><div><b>Axl: As a Satanic hero or anti-hero, Tyler seems consumed by the desire for power and control. Is it fair to say that he was used and then discarded by the higher negative force engulfing the town of Kinsfield? Also, did you focus on a group of teenagers because teens are more receptive to the actions of supernatural forces? </b></div><div><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><b>B.R. Yeager</b>: I think you’re correct in that Tyler is more a conduit than an original agitator. I’m not sure I would go as far as to say he was being used by the higher forces at play, as that implies those forces possess a somewhat anthropomorphic will, which I’m not entirely sure is the case. I’d say it’s more akin to a large stone placed in the middle of a stream. The stone diverts the water, but the water is not aware of this action, nor is the water aware of this change (as far as we know). But I could be wrong.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><div style="text-align: justify;">(I realize this uncertainty on my part may seem strange. But with this book I wanted to write about the Unknown, and in order to truly do so, it was essential that I kept myself in the dark regarding the inhuman forces at play). </div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">There were two main reasons I focused on teens. The first was that I wanted to write a horror novel in the tradition of “kids on bikes uncover nefarious forces,” i.e. Stephen King’s IT, or the film The Gate, etc. The second (and more practical) reason is that there has been far less drama and “excitement” (if one could call it that) in my adult life than there was in my teens and early 20s. By making the main characters teens, I had more experiences worth drawing from, in terms of drama. </div><div><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><b>Axl: While the novel avoids a standard good vs. evil plot, and there are lots of gray areas, Tyler seems to be at the darker end of the spectrum and Lu at the lighter end. There's also a distinction between the moths and wasps that accompany a nefarious act and the bees that are present when something "positive" takes place. Can you comment a bit about the mythological symbolism of these insects or what made you use them? </b></div><div><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><b>B.R. Yeager: </b>I’m genuinely not sure I can speak to the insects’ relation to broader mythologies. Ultimately, I think these insects are very personal manifestations of aspects of the characters who invoke them. In the book, I did want the divine or the beyond to be accessible through a number of methods and ritual, not a single dogmatic practice, as I believe this to true in reality. As a result, all the magickal or spiritual practices occurring in the book are very personal in nature, and outside of a dogmatic framework or formal institutions.<b> </b></div><div><br /></div><div><b>Axl: What are your writing plans for 2021? </b></div><div><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><b>B.R. Yeager</b>: Right now I’m co-writing a low-budget horror film directed by Nick Verdi (https://twitter.com/Verdi___Nick) that I’m very excited about. I don’t think I can say much now, but I feel like it’s in a similar vein of a lot of great low-budget debuts, like Abel Ferrera’s <i>The Driller Killer</i>, or Wes Craven’s <i>Last House on the Left</i>, or Gaspar Noe’s <i>I Stand Alone</i>. </div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">I also have a short story in <i>Hymns of Abomination</i>, which is a forthcoming anthology tribute to Matthew Bartlett, published by Silent Motorist Media. Bartlett is from my hometown, and primarily writes about a fictionalized version of it, so it was fun to play with that world.
I’m also in the early stages of my next novel, but that’s likely 3-5 years away. </div><div><br /></div><div>Follow B.R. Yeager on Twitter @BRYeager
</div></div><div id="i4c-dialogs-container"></div>
<div class="sharethis-inline-share-buttons"></div>axl barneshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05226609236661793688noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4562052415640699330.post-57533184132613378602021-01-24T10:07:00.062-08:002021-01-28T11:17:59.595-08:00Interview with horror writer Curtis Lawson<script type="text/javascript" src="https://platform-api.sharethis.com/js/sharethis.js#property=5fda4ed259355a00124f7de7&product=inline-share-buttons" async="async"></script>
<div class="separator"><p class="MsoNormal" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em; text-align: left;"><br /></p></div><div id="i4c-draggable-container" style="height: 0px; position: fixed; width: 0px; z-index: 1499;"><div class="resolved" data-reactroot="" style="all: initial;"></div></div><p></p><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjMp_oFe2VP2KvEK48JrTR2MSDQVlIMuIfAnaItXq3GJFI4QvPxC9S-1of5vrcfVrAyUPATYtqnzSOE0iMI3wVqWa3kdz9CiK3U1OvWt6-2pNP-eOMfLRGlGiHaXrkgXQpHpOAWCBMpn7I/s1008/141075225_721425781852391_4070283579637095891_n.png" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1008" data-original-width="738" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjMp_oFe2VP2KvEK48JrTR2MSDQVlIMuIfAnaItXq3GJFI4QvPxC9S-1of5vrcfVrAyUPATYtqnzSOE0iMI3wVqWa3kdz9CiK3U1OvWt6-2pNP-eOMfLRGlGiHaXrkgXQpHpOAWCBMpn7I/s320/141075225_721425781852391_4070283579637095891_n.png" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Illustrator Luke Spooner from <b><a href="https://carrionhouse.com/" target="_blank">Carrion House</a></b></td></tr></tbody></table><span style="font-size: 12pt; text-align: justify;">I've first encountered
Curtis Lawson's fiction last year and was blown away by his novel </span><i style="font-size: 12pt; text-align: justify;"><b><a href="https://www.amazon.ca/Black-Heart-Choir-Curtis-Lawson-ebook/dp/B07V1YNJC4" target="_blank">Black Heart Boys' Choir.</a> </b></i><span style="font-size: 12pt; text-align: justify;">Lucien Beaumont,
the main character, is a musical prodigy who discovers an unfinished song
composed by his dead father. Obsessed with completing the song Lucien starts
playing a damnation game with the demon Amduscias. I think of this novel as a
perfect work, like Athens coming out whole from Zeus' forehead. Lawson's style
carries a mathematical beauty and elegance, but at the same time is visceral
and emotionally dizzying. When Lawson started promoting his new book, </span><i style="font-size: 12pt; text-align: justify;"><b>Devil's Night</b></i><span style="font-size: 12pt; text-align: justify;">, the title shot up to the
top of my TBR list. </span><i style="font-size: 12pt; text-align: justify;">Devil's Night </i><span style="font-size: 12pt; text-align: justify;">is
a collection of horror stories centered around the legend that every year, the
night before Holloween, Detroit, the Motor City, becomes possessed by demonic
forces of chaos and destruction. The book is a rocking eruption of original
writing fuelled by a devilish imagination. I'd compare it with classics like
Clive Barker's </span><i style="font-size: 12pt; text-align: justify;">Books of Blood</i><span style="font-size: 12pt; text-align: justify;"> or
Stephen King's </span><i style="font-size: 12pt; text-align: justify;">Night Shift </i><span style="font-size: 12pt; text-align: justify;">as well as
more recent works like Joe Hills's </span><i style="font-size: 12pt; text-align: justify;">20th
Century Ghosts</i><span style="font-size: 12pt; text-align: justify;">. Curtis was kind enough to answer some questions about his
new book and his writing plans.</span><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><b><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">Axl</span></b><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">:
<b>On social media, you mentioned <i>Sin City</i> and <i>The Crow</i> as
inspirations for <i>Devil's Night</i>. What other books or movies inspired you?
And what makes <i>Devil's Night</i> stand out?</b></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><b><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">Curtis</span></b><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">: One of the things I wanted to do with Devil’s Night was explore several
different types of horror stories while keeping them tied together in theme and
with a loosely connected narrative. The idea for having the stories loosely
connect definitely stems from Sin City, but the individual stories all draw from
different inspirations.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">
80’s horror films were a big influence, <i>No One Leaves The Buther Shop</i>
being the most notable example of that. <i>Through Hell for One Kiss</i> draws
heavily from <i>The Crow</i>. I pretty much lifted the structure of Trashfire
Stories from a <i>Batman</i> animated short.</span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiVF0dTnuO9Eor72_4FQSII_vm0OIJPFYmJqIb1U06DYET-ZU6ZHQPPhW-te3h9IRIPBfIB8V6qC8boYpQ3E5OQ9FcYnrLr7CNSKV9E0RAdYIdS9SJXgacQ1rp5Dta5ONngAYXzy-VgEYM/s648/141112671_885494805519259_6896826718610555981_n.png" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="648" data-original-width="432" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiVF0dTnuO9Eor72_4FQSII_vm0OIJPFYmJqIb1U06DYET-ZU6ZHQPPhW-te3h9IRIPBfIB8V6qC8boYpQ3E5OQ9FcYnrLr7CNSKV9E0RAdYIdS9SJXgacQ1rp5Dta5ONngAYXzy-VgEYM/s320/141112671_885494805519259_6896826718610555981_n.png" /></a></span></div><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span><p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">
The biggest influence outside of <i>Sin City </i>is probably <i>The Willows</i>
by Algernon Blackwood. I wanted to make the environment itself antagonistic,
and <i>The Willows</i> is the most exceptional example of that kind of thing
that I can think of. <i>The Graveyard of Charles Robert </i>Swede is a direct
homage to The Willows.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">
I suppose I probably drew on <i>IT</i> in regards to creating my version of
Detroit. King’s town of Derry is a character in and of itself and I find it to
be the best part of the book.</span><span style="font-size: 12pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">What makes it
different? I think the shared lore and the way in which the stories are woven
together makes it stand out from a lot of other short story collections. If I
did my job right, the stories also present important questions and shine a
light on sensitive issues without judgment or bullshit platitudes. I find it
the job of the writer to get people to think, but never tell them what to
think.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><b><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">Axl</span></b><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">: <b>In <i>Hideaway
</i>Dean Koontz describes Vassago as a rebellious teen whose dark mind attracts
a demon, resulting in demon possession. In
<i>Black Heart Boys’ Choir, </i>we have more of a collaboration or pact
between Lucien and the demon Amduscias. In <i>Devil's Night,</i> it seems that
most characters are trapped by an inescapable demonic force. How do you see, in
general, the relation between demonic forces and a character's will? Does the
character still exercise any free will?</b></span><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><b> </b></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><b><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">Curtis</span></b><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">: I
suppose it depends on the story. Koontz clearly intended for his demon to be a
real thing, so I think Vassago had less free will. It’s been a long time since
I revisited <i>Hideaway</i>, so I can’t speak with strong authority on that. </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">
The dynamic between Lucien and Amduscias in <i>Black Heart Boys’ Choir</i> is
different. I leave it intentionally ambiguous as to if the demon is real, but
beyond that, even if the reader decides that Amduscias is real in story terms,
the character is still a symbol of Lucien’s obsessions, resentments, and
trauma.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">
I suppose there is a question of free will there, but it’s more of a battle
between Lucien’s ID (Amduscias) and his ego (Lucien himself). The lack of an
avatar for his superego represents how he was failed by society and his
parents. That moral compass is simply absent.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">
I tried to show that by having the adults fail him in some large or small way
in each encounter. That’s also why there is no direct dialog from Lucien’s
mother and why she pretty much stays hidden away in her room for the entire
book.</span><span style="font-size: 12pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><b><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">Axl</span></b><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">:<b> <i>Black
Heart Boys’ Choir</i> seems rooted in your personal experiences as an artist
struggling for aesthetic perfection. Are some stories in <i>Devil's Night</i>
also inspired by personal experiences?</b></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">
<b>Curtis</b>: <i>Black Heart Boys’ Choir</i>
was the most deeply personal thing I’ve ever written. That book was very
emotionally autobiographical, and a few of the scenes mirror actual events from
my childhood. It was cathartic to write, but it was also emotionally
exhausting.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">
<i>Devil’s Night</i> was a nice change of
pace because I wasn’t as intimately attached to the stories. </span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhabp250Sg1j_9c1oCRJiIjpd4lAYXISP8WSgdqd6TvPLbIfRWSGj5e-NcBbgz2OwQBJWdTWFChscx0gou9Gw_sjnSBGfrnpRm-rwasD7bYFX0bOOK9wNrqBDe4OwBScnn1UwLFb_NoeKI/s648/141543965_236490238042892_1424811897832414792_n.png" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="648" data-original-width="432" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhabp250Sg1j_9c1oCRJiIjpd4lAYXISP8WSgdqd6TvPLbIfRWSGj5e-NcBbgz2OwQBJWdTWFChscx0gou9Gw_sjnSBGfrnpRm-rwasD7bYFX0bOOK9wNrqBDe4OwBScnn1UwLFb_NoeKI/s320/141543965_236490238042892_1424811897832414792_n.png" /></a></span></div><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><o:p></o:p></span><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><i><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">D20</span></i><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"> is inspired by some childhood friends who grew up in
a similar situation to the boys in that story. <i>Breaking Wheel</i> captures
my yearning to escape the shitty neighborhoods I lived in and to build a new
life away from all that. <i>A Night of Art and Excess</i> ties into the
unearned sense of elitism I felt as a teenager– the belief that I was destined
for and entitled to bigger and better things and that the world just didn’t
understand.</span><span style="font-size: 12pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">Those are probably the most personal
stories. The rest are just made up of insights and fantasies.</span><span style="font-size: 12pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><b><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">Axl</span></b><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">: <b>Stories
like <i>Fire Sermon</i>, <i>This City Needs Jesus</i>, <i>An Angel in Amber Leaves</i>, or <i>The Exorcism of Detroit, Michigan</i> seem
to convey an anti-Christian message in the sense that those who want to carry
out the work of God seem themselves evil, and angels become demons. But at the
same time, a lot of Christian imagery is employed in describing the Devil's
Night as a night when the gates of Hell are open. So, I wonder, if you strip
away the Christian outlook, what's bad about the Devil's Night. And in what
sense does it belong to the devil?</b></span><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><b> </b></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><b><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">Curtis</span></b><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">: I
don’t think I did any of that intentionally… or I guess I wasn’t consciously
thinking “Let’s demonize religion.” That being said, I’ve never had much love
for the Abrahamic faiths. That shines through in a lot of my work, perhaps to
my detriment at times.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">
As I enter middle-age I’ve grown more tolerant of religion and have even found
some allegorical value in Abrahamic myths that I used to abhor, but I think
I’ll always have a bit of a chip on my shoulder in that regard.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">
That being said, I want to express that my problems with religion don’t
necessarily extend to the religious. I actually find it quite unfortunate how
chic it is to mock people for their belief in God or their adherence to
religious tradition.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">
As for <i>Devil’s Night</i>, I think it is a little glimpse into a much more
literal hell than the apostles or Dante ever show us. Have you ever known a
really messed up person? A hard drug addict or a career criminal? For people like
that every moment is hell because their minds are a minefield of insecurity,
resentment, and rage. The real Devil’s Night was an expression of that. It’s
the personal hell inside of hundreds of people bleeding into the real world in
a tangible way.</span><span style="font-size: 12pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><b><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">Axl</span></b><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">: <b>What are
your plans for 2021?</b></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">
<b>Curtis</b>: I have three short stories
scheduled to be published, one in the second issue of S. T. Joshi’s <i>Penumbra
</i>journal. I’ll also be publishing a new Adze (a character introduced in <i>Devil’s
Night</i>) short story each month via my Patreon page.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">
For bigger projects, I’m working on a novella for a shared universe project that
I can’t really talk about, but that I am extremely excited for. I will say that
I get to share a pretty exclusive TOC with a few of my favorite authors. I
actually have this huge case of impostor syndrome going into the project, but I
hope it gives me a chance to prove that I belong there.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">
I’ll also be writing my next novel for Weird House Press which is my first deep
dive into the Lovecraft Mythos. I’ve been reluctant to play in that sandbox
given my deep love for it, but I think I have something interesting to bring to
the party. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">You can order Devil's Night here: </span><a class="oajrlxb2 g5ia77u1 qu0x051f esr5mh6w e9989ue4 r7d6kgcz rq0escxv nhd2j8a9 nc684nl6 p7hjln8o kvgmc6g5 cxmmr5t8 oygrvhab hcukyx3x jb3vyjys rz4wbd8a qt6c0cv9 a8nywdso i1ao9s8h oo483o9r f1sip0of lzcic4wl oo9gr5id gpro0wi8" href="https://l.facebook.com/l.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.weirdhousepress.com%2Fproduct%2Fdevils-night%2F%3Ffbclid%3DIwAR12X3bhQWjGf7ktL8gW2Rj6nuEkOEq2KDw7aTa_mUOo2Tdt_lBH_ImcxmE&h=AT2xB6rCpkErYgngELmXM1DENUtivrSu47fTbOKuQtFvB7x_OCek7GvNxkbleN4ydMUUiLM86mq1NJhvbnYdTKdhKAQ2qk9_DZKzHMiPueMB75zMYW-TF7njDCuAOVu0V79g0hNt902q3vQcIQ" rel="nofollow noopener" role="link" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; background-color: #e4e6eb; border-color: initial; border-style: initial; border-width: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; cursor: pointer; display: inline; font-family: "Segoe UI Historic", "Segoe UI", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; list-style: none; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px; touch-action: manipulation; white-space: pre-wrap;" tabindex="0" target="_blank">https://www.weirdhousepress.com/product/devils-night/</a></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">You can find Curtis Lawson on Twitter @c_lawson</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">Instagram @curtismlawson</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">Facebook @curtismlawson</p><div id="i4c-dialogs-container"></div><div id="i4c-dialogs-container"></div>
<div class="sharethis-inline-share-buttons"></div>axl barneshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05226609236661793688noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4562052415640699330.post-3167122421402742532020-09-22T09:13:00.005-07:002020-12-16T10:20:30.214-08:00Interview with horror writer Nicole Cushing <script type="text/javascript" src="https://platform-api.sharethis.com/js/sharethis.js#property=5fda4ed259355a00124f7de7&product=inline-share-buttons" async="async"></script>
<div id="i4c-draggable-container" style="height: 0px; position: fixed; width: 0px; z-index: 1499;"><div class="resolved" data-reactroot="" style="all: initial; animation: initial; appearance: initial; backface-visibility: initial; background-blend-mode: initial; background: initial; block-size: initial; border-block: initial; border-collapse: initial; border-end-end-radius: initial; border-end-start-radius: initial; border-inline: initial; border-radius: initial; border-spacing: initial; border-start-end-radius: initial; border-start-start-radius: initial; border: initial; box-decoration-break: initial; box-shadow: initial; box-sizing: initial; break-after: initial; break-before: initial; break-inside: initial; caption-side: initial; caret-color: initial; clear: initial; clip-path: initial; clip-rule: initial; clip: initial; color-adjust: initial; color-interpolation-filters: initial; color-interpolation: initial; color: initial; column-fill: initial; column-rule: initial; column-span: initial; 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scroll-padding-inline: initial; scroll-padding: initial; scroll-snap-align: initial; scroll-snap-type: initial; scrollbar-color: initial; scrollbar-width: initial; shape-image-threshold: initial; shape-margin: initial; shape-outside: initial; shape-rendering: initial; stop-color: initial; stop-opacity: initial; stroke-dasharray: initial; stroke-dashoffset: initial; stroke-linecap: initial; stroke-linejoin: initial; stroke-miterlimit: initial; stroke-opacity: initial; stroke-width: initial; stroke: initial; table-layout: initial; text-align-last: initial; text-align: initial; text-anchor: initial; text-combine-upright: initial; text-decoration-skip-ink: initial; text-decoration: initial; text-emphasis-position: initial; text-emphasis: initial; text-indent: initial; text-justify: initial; text-orientation: initial; text-overflow: initial; text-rendering: initial; text-shadow: initial; text-transform: initial; text-underline-offset: initial; text-underline-position: initial; touch-action: initial; transform-box: initial; transform-origin: initial; transform-style: initial; transform: initial; transition: initial; translate: initial; user-select: initial; vector-effect: initial; vertical-align: initial; visibility: initial; white-space: initial; width: initial; will-change: initial; word-break: initial; word-spacing: initial; writing-mode: initial; x: initial; y: initial; z-index: initial;"></div></div><p> <span face="Calibri, sans-serif" style="font-size: large; text-align: justify;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjTiiPqOP_MTb_a8zUCdb3Ob3Eb46tOG6MNTtZ9BQWQD4akpr0yt4mYkGESiWBqnM2knvnS8KWxb625OLHL9A-Vi4pPrpodGnR2Z1v9b-hQa9foJLAFzpn7y7RmorW1EjeFo6iEZXA4YVg/s1855/a-sick-gray-laugh.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1855" data-original-width="1200" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjTiiPqOP_MTb_a8zUCdb3Ob3Eb46tOG6MNTtZ9BQWQD4akpr0yt4mYkGESiWBqnM2knvnS8KWxb625OLHL9A-Vi4pPrpodGnR2Z1v9b-hQa9foJLAFzpn7y7RmorW1EjeFo6iEZXA4YVg/s320/a-sick-gray-laugh.jpg" /></a></div><span style="font-size: medium;"><span face="Calibri, sans-serif" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: white;">Nicole Cushing's novel</span><span style="color: #cccccc;"> </span></span><i style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #cccccc;">A Sick Gr</span></i></span><span style="color: #cccccc; font-size: medium;"><i style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; text-align: justify;">ay La</i></span><span style="font-size: medium;"><i style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #cccccc;">ugh</span></i><span face="Calibri, sans-serif" style="color: white; text-align: justify;"> has hi</span></span><span style="color: white; font-size: medium;"><span face="Calibri, sans-serif" style="text-align: justify;">t me</span></span><span style="color: white; font-size: medium;"><span face="Calibri, sans-serif" style="text-align: justify;"> w</span></span><span style="color: white; font-size: medium;"><span face="Calibri, sans-serif" style="text-align: justify;">ith the force o</span></span><span style="font-size: medium;"><span face="Calibri, sans-serif" style="color: white; text-align: justify;">f a revelation. </span><span face="Calibri, sans-serif" style="color: white; text-align: justify;">Recipient of the prestigious Bram Stoker award, Cushing
transgresses the boundaries of the horror genre, moving seamlessly between
history, philosophy, satire, and nightmarish grotesquery. The novel is
thought-provoking and emotionally dizzying. Written in a funny, lighthearted
tone, </span><i style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #cccccc;">A Sick Gray Laugh</span></i><span face="Calibri, sans-serif" style="color: white; text-align: justify;"> has a gloomy,
eerie undertone that, coupled with the creepy, outlandish visuals, will haunt
the reader long after finishing. The author was kind enough to take the time
and answer some of the main questions I have about her novel, but before we get
to that I'll offer a brief outline. Noelle Cashman, the main character, decides
to write a book about "the overwhelming Grayness that's slathered over
everything like a thick coat of snot." Grayness is a soul-crushing disease
that affects many small towns, and Noelle is able to establish that the source
of the infection is the town of Naumpton, Indiana. Digging into its history,
Noelle discovers two utopian cults that settled in the area but were ultimately
crushed by civilization. The leader of the first cult was known as The New
Moses and preached a synthesis between Christian principles and those of
industrial capitalism. Basically, The New Moses claimed that if infused with
the divine spirit of moral joy, factory workers and their employers would live
in perfect harmony. One necessary step toward achieving this state of bliss was
that all members of the cult were to cover their faces with black veils,
symbolizing ego death, and their absolute submission to God. The second cult was
The Brides of the Holy Ghost who, under the influence of local Evelyn Wilson
aka The Great Prophetess, come to believe that sordid Naumpton is the place of
birth of the Antichrist and, hating both men and sex, were able to temporarily
turn the struggling town into a matriarchy. Studying these two cults, Noelle
deduces some of the principles of fighting Grayness. Grayness means order and
civilization and should be countered with chaos and madness. Grayness is
conformity and coagulation and should be countered with rebellion and separation.
Animated by the aggressive weirdness of the two pioneering cults Noelle decides
to form her own cult of misfits, built around female supremacy, chaos, and the
Principle of Separation. </span><span face="Calibri, sans-serif" style="text-align: justify;"> </span><span face="Calibri, sans-serif" style="text-align: justify;"> </span></span><p></p><div style="border-bottom: none windowtext 1.0pt; border: medium none; mso-border-bottom-alt: none windowtext 0cm; mso-element: para-border-div; padding: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<p class="normal" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: medium none; line-height: 137%; padding: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><b><span face=""Calibri","sans-serif"" style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="color: #cccccc;">Axl: Stephen King famously said, </span><span><span style="color: #cccccc;">"I recognize terror as the finest emotion and so I
will try to terrorize the reader. But if I find that I cannot terrify, I will
try to horrify, and if I find that I cannot horrify, I'll go for the gross-out.
I'm not proud." "A Sick Gray Laugh" doesn't fit neatly into the
mold of mainstream horror; there are no monsters (human or inhuman) and almost
no gore. How would you describe your brand of horror in relation to King's
dictum and more established subgenres like body horror, cosmic horror,
psychological horror and so on?</span></span></span></span></b></p>
<p class="normal" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: medium none; line-height: 137%; padding: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span face=""Calibri","sans-serif"" style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri;"><span style="color: white; font-size: medium;">Nicole: You're correct when you point out
that my characters don't struggle against traditional antagonists. They
struggle against the menacing, palpable atmosphere around them. They struggle
against reality. Each realizes they’re a part of a vast, hideous machine, and
they struggle against that machine. Often, they struggle against their own
brains. Therefore, I don't think King's taxonomy is all that helpful when
applied to my work. Instead, I would describe my work as a variety of weird
fiction, because weird fiction often depicts an alienated individual’s struggle
against their surroundings, or against reality.</span></span></p>
<p class="normal" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: medium none; line-height: 137%; padding: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span face=""Calibri","sans-serif"" style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri;"><span style="color: white; font-size: medium;">However, even <i>that</i> label may confuse the issue. So often, when someone says
“weird fiction” they really mean “cosmic horror” or “Lovecraftian fiction” or
“Ligottian fiction”. They use “weird
fiction” to refer exclusively to the Anglo-American tradition of cosmic horror,
as articulated in short stories. I feel a stronger connection to the
Continental European tradition of the weird, and to a couple of weird works
from the Middle East and North Africa. Moreover, I feel connected to the
tradition of the weird <i>novel</i>. Right
now, I’m not interested in short stories.</span></span></p>
<p class="normal" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: medium none; line-height: 137%; padding: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span face=""Calibri","sans-serif"" style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri;"><span style="color: white; font-size: medium;">Don’t get me wrong, I continue to respect
and admire the work of Thomas Ligotti. But if you study his work and read his
interviews, you soon realize he’s influenced not only by Anglo-American
Lovecraftian fiction, but also by the global weird tradition. Upon exploring
the international influences mentioned in his interviews I got hooked on them,
myself! Therefore, Ligotti has been my “gateway drug” to the global weird
tradition (and translated fiction, in general). For me, Ligotti’s work isn’t
the final destination of the weird. It’s not a destination at all, but rather a
door. And doors are meant to be walked through.</span></span></p>
<p class="normal" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: medium none; line-height: 137%; padding: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span face=""Calibri","sans-serif"" style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri;"><span style="color: white; font-size: medium;">That’s how literature advances. We stand
on the shoulders of giants, yes. But we don’t stand on the shoulders of giants <i>so we can look down at the giants</i>. We
stand on the shoulders of giants so we can better reach the next frontier.</span></span></p>
<p class="normal" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: medium none; line-height: 137%; padding: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span face=""Calibri","sans-serif"" style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri;"><span style="color: white; font-size: medium;">My work follows in the tradition of
novels like <i>The Tenant</i> by Roland
Topor and <i>The Unbearable Lightness of
Being</i> by Milan Kundera. I’m also influenced by novellas like <i>The Blind Owl</i> by Sadegh Hedayat, <i>The Hospital </i>by Ahmed Bouanani, <i>The Great Shadow</i> by <span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial;">Mário de
Sá-Carneiro, and <i>The Seven Who Were
Hanged</i> and <i>The Red Laugh</i> by
Leonid Andreyev. Most recently, I’ve been influenced by the novels of Witold
Gombrowicz. His work exerted a strong influence on <i>A Sick Gray Laugh</i>.</span></span></span></p>
<p class="normal" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: medium none; line-height: 137%; padding: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span face="Calibri, sans-serif" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial;"><span style="color: white; font-size: medium;">Lest I seem unpatriotic, I should mention that I feel a kinship with
some American weird novelists, too. Shirley Jackson and Caitlin Kiernan, in
particular. But neither Ms. Jackson nor Ms. Kiernan weave absurdity into their
work. You couldn’t call either of them “playful”. I, on the other hand, revel
in gallows humor, and I see writing as a combination of self-discipline and
play.</span></span></p>
<p class="normal" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: medium none; line-height: 137%; padding: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><b><span face=""Calibri","sans-serif"" style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri;"><span style="color: #cccccc; font-size: medium;">Axl: "A Sick Gray Laugh"
features elements of both postmodernism and existentialism. Metanaration and
irony are blended with more sombre reflections about the human condition,
mental illness, and existential dread. What are your thoughts on mixing these
two traditions?</span></span></b></p>
<p class="normal" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: medium none; line-height: 137%; padding: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span face=""Calibri","sans-serif"" style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri;"><span style="color: white; font-size: medium;">Nicole: I don’t want to
quibble too much with your question, but I’m not sure “existentialism” is quite
the right label. For me, the phrase “existentialist fiction” conjures up images
of Sartre and Camus and Simone de Beauvoir. It implies fiction that advocates
for existentialist values. Didactic fiction. That’s not what I’m about. I’m not
cheerleading for any particular system of thought.</span></span></p>
<p class="normal" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: medium none; line-height: 137%; padding: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span face=""Calibri","sans-serif"" style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="color: white;">But I get the gist of what
you’re asking, and I can only say that the use of metanarrative and irony to
address serious literary subjects is a very old trick. In the 1930s, Gombrowicz
pulled it off in his novel <i>Ferdydurke</i>.
Kundera’s novels do something similar, although his irony is more muted than
that of Gombrowicz. It’s less nightmarishly absurd. One could argue that it
goes back much further. Kundera, for example, claims Cervantes and Rabelais as
influences. When it comes to matters of style and tone, my work isn’t really
experimental. Or perhaps it is experimental, but only in the sense that I’m <i>replicating</i> an experiment that’s been
performed many times before. Perhaps my only <i>stylistic</i> innovation is carrying that tradition forward into the
realm of twenty-first century weird fiction, spiking it with a shot glass of
transgression, and imposing it on a cast of working-class characters scrabbling
together lives in the American Midwest. </span><span style="color: #222222;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></span></p>
<p class="normal" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: medium none; line-height: 137%; padding: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span face=""Calibri","sans-serif"" style="color: #222222; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri;"> </span><b><span face=""Calibri","sans-serif"" style="color: #cccccc; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri;">Axl: Noelle Cashman, the hero (or anti-hero) of
the novel, is a self-professed nihilist, fan of the work of Thomas Liggotti.
She claims all beliefs are ridiculous and warns us against Moronic Hope. And
yet, she's very determined to fight Grayness. What's the point of that fight?
What is she trying to defend? Wouldn't a pessimist like Liggotti say that the
whole world is Gray; that there's no exit? That maybe even Colors are Gray?
Doesn't her ambition to destroy Grayness turn Noelle into an optimist? And
doesn't her commitment to things Colorful and The Principle of Separation
betray the fact she's still a victim of grandiose narratives and Moronic Hope?</span></b></span></p>
<p class="normal" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: medium none; line-height: 137%; padding: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span face=""Calibri","sans-serif"" style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri;"><span style="color: white; font-size: medium;">Nicole: It’s been a while since my brain
was fully marinated in<i> A Sick Gray Laugh</i>.
(It’s now fully marinated in my work-in-progress.) But, if I recall correctly,
Noelle’s quest is a quest for psychological comfort, above all else. That’s
what she’s trying to defend (or, at least, obtain). She’s suffocated, in a
psychological sense, and she wants to breathe.</span></span></p>
<p class="normal" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: medium none; line-height: 137%; padding: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span face=""Calibri","sans-serif"" style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri;"><span style="color: white; font-size: medium;"> The fact that she makes an effort to breathe
doesn’t really indicate that she’s an optimist. At least, not a capital-O,
philosophical Optimist. She’s merely succumbing to the same reflex any
suffocated individual feels: the reflex to fight for air.</span></span></p>
<p class="normal" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: medium none; line-height: 137%; padding: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span style="color: white; font-size: medium;"><span face=""Calibri","sans-serif"" style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri;">But, for the sake of argument, let’s
assume that you’re correct: she’s an optimist, of sorts. If this is the case,
she’s a terrifying optimist, a sadistic optimist, the kind of optimist who is a
walking advertisement for pessimism! </span><span face="Calibri, sans-serif"> </span></span></p>
<p class="normal" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: medium none; line-height: 137%; padding: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span face=""Calibri","sans-serif"" style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri;"><span style="color: white; font-size: medium;">But shouldn’t I be bothered that Noelle
contradicts herself? I don’t believe this is a problem because Noelle admits as
much. She tells the reader, directly, that she finds it impossible to stay
committed to <i>any</i> belief. Her mind is
hideously mutable. Her brain is like a kaleidoscope, with one important
difference. Instead of constantly changing into various neat and tidy
geometrical patterns, it changes into a series of monstrous, foul, asymmetrical
blobs.</span></span></p>
<p class="normal" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: medium none; line-height: 137%; padding: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><b><span face=""Calibri","sans-serif"" style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri;"><span style="color: #cccccc; font-size: medium;">Axl: Early on, Noelle discovers that The New
Moses and his utopian cult use black veils to cover their faces upon their
arrival in the New World. To them, face-covering is a means of erasing the ego
and ushering in the Utopia of selfless moral joy. Later in the story, Noelle
realizes that when wearing her balaclava she has the power to part the Gray Sea
just as the original Moses parted the Red Sea. Does this power have to do with
suppressing the ego like in the case of the New Moses? And, more generally,
what is the role of Noelle's ego in her fight against Grayness. As a wannabe
cult leader, she must be prideful and arrogant, which is also what separates her
from the conformity of Grayness? Yet, at the same time, her ego must be deemed
fluid and illusory by her commitment to nihilism and the unreality of
everything. What are your thoughts on this dilemma?</span></span></b></p>
<p class="normal" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: medium none; line-height: 137%; padding: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span face=""Calibri","sans-serif"" style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri;"><span style="color: white; font-size: medium;">Nicole: There’s a lot to unpack here.
Let’s take the questions one at a time.</span></span></p>
<p class="normal" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: medium none; line-height: 137%; padding: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span style="color: white; font-size: medium;"><span face=""Calibri","sans-serif"" style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri;">Does Noelle’s power to part the Gray Sea
derive from suppressing her ego? No. It stems from her “re-enactment” (for lack
of a better word) of something Colorful.</span><span face="Calibri, sans-serif"> </span></span></p>
<p class="normal" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: medium none; line-height: 137%; padding: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span face=""Calibri","sans-serif"" style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri;"><span style="color: white; font-size: medium;">What’s the role of Noelle’s ego in her
fight against Grayness? Noelle’s sense of self is unstable, bordering on
nonexistent. However, her suffering is a very idiosyncratic sort of suffering,
the type of suffering that separates her from the rest of humanity (who don’t
notice, or at least don’t <i>obsess over</i>
Grayness). Her suffering seems distinctly her own. Thus, her suffering seems to
confirm her selfhood. If Noelle herself were here to speak to you, she might
paraphrase Descartes and say “I suffer, therefore I am”.</span></span></p>
<p class="normal" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: medium none; line-height: 137%; padding: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span style="color: white; font-size: medium;"><span face=""Calibri","sans-serif"" style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri;">Is this a dilemma? I’m not one hundred
percent sure. I would call it <i>a
complication</i> or a paradox. I try to honestly depict life, and the
experience of consciousness in particular. There’s no way to take on those
subjects without encountering paradoxes. In many ways, the paradox is the
point. I’m not giving the reader a puzzle to solve, or a philosophy to
evaluate. I’m giving the reader an experience to be felt and an aesthetic to
appreciate.</span><span face="Calibri, sans-serif"> </span></span></p>
<p class="normal" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: medium none; line-height: 137%; padding: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><b><span face=""Calibri","sans-serif"" style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri;"><span style="color: #cccccc; font-size: medium;">Axl: Do you think Satan, as depicted let's say in
Milton's <i>Paradise Lost</i>, as the rebel
and opposer, would be an agent of Color and Chaos on Noelle's view. Can her
outlook be described as essentially Satanic?</span></span></b></p>
<p class="normal" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: medium none; line-height: 137%; padding: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span face=""Calibri","sans-serif"" style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri;"><span style="color: white; font-size: medium;">Nicole: I’ve not yet read <i>Paradise Lost</i> (though the Norton
critical edition is in my to-be-read pile). That caveat aside, I think that
even rebellion can be Gray, if it allows itself to become too <i>predictably</i> rebellious. Kneejerk
rebelliousness can quickly turn into a dull, tiresome affectation. Only a thin
line separates an opposer from a poser.</span></span></p>
<p class="normal" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: medium none; line-height: 137%; padding: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span face=""Calibri","sans-serif"" style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri;"><span style="color: white; font-size: medium;">So I don’t think her outlook can be seen
as Satanic. A static Satan is a Gray Satan. For Satan to truly be Colorful, he
would need to rebel against <i>himself</i>
from time to time. </span></span></p><p class="normal" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: medium none; line-height: 137%; padding: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><div style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: medium none; line-height: 137%; padding: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span>You can find a good deal on </span></span><span style="color: #cccccc;"><span style="font-size: medium; text-align: left;"><i style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; text-align: justify;">A Sick Gr</i></span><span style="font-size: medium; text-align: left;"><i style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; text-align: justify;">ay La</i></span></span><span style="font-size: medium; text-align: left;"><i style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #cccccc;">ugh</span> </i></span><span style="font-size: medium;"><span>and other horrors at </span><a href="https://bit.ly/3mLLIm2">https://bit.ly/3mLLIm2<br /></a></span><span style="font-size: medium;">Follow Nicole on Twitter <a href="https://twitter.com/NicoleCushing?fbclid=IwAR2uBHGG6pJ2bO6nihfafF6E8EFdfHqCQbafviI5OgrRNypOX8CMT6kzsos">@nicolecushing</a> and Facebook <a href="https://www.facebook.com/nicole.cushing.9">Nicole Cushing</a></span>.</div>
</div><div id="i4c-dialogs-container"></div>
<div class="sharethis-inline-share-buttons"></div>axl barneshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05226609236661793688noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4562052415640699330.post-36706539855521982322020-03-11T13:25:00.008-07:002020-12-16T10:32:27.685-08:00The Cheerful Nihilist (On Ligotti's The Conspiracy Against The Human Race)<script type="text/javascript" src="https://platform-api.sharethis.com/js/sharethis.js#property=5fda4ed259355a00124f7de7&product=inline-share-buttons" async="async"></script><div id="i4c-draggable-container" style="height: 0px; position: fixed; width: 0px; z-index: 1499;">
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<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><font style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh8dA0vzkDNX4tKGKhy6kmtYyZ_RCGLXaXxDQBIZLlR_gF06PLjF-luQM-5ulnZrWeUrnj4TDO6sBn76lwsqB2gEuDZ2Yw6LRVWlHygqgqzVwQoqurxbvBDCHjdvF58MECJE7uszPOipF0/s1600/87813263_1529069123914184_1299821059851157504_o.jpg" style="clear: right; color: black; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="960" data-original-width="742" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh8dA0vzkDNX4tKGKhy6kmtYyZ_RCGLXaXxDQBIZLlR_gF06PLjF-luQM-5ulnZrWeUrnj4TDO6sBn76lwsqB2gEuDZ2Yw6LRVWlHygqgqzVwQoqurxbvBDCHjdvF58MECJE7uszPOipF0/s320/87813263_1529069123914184_1299821059851157504_o.jpg" width="247" /></a><br /><font color="#ffffff">by</font></font><font color="#000000" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"> <a href="https://www.facebook.com/foulapparatus/?epa=SEARCH_BOX" style="text-align: left;">Foul Apparatus </a><span style="text-align: left;"> </span></font></td></tr></tbody></table><font color="#ffffff"><span style="text-align: left;">From the first pages of Thomas Ligotti's
</span><i style="text-align: left;">The Conspiracy Against The Human Race</i><span style="text-align: left;">,
I knew this author would have his place
among my spiritual masters, alongside Nietzsche, Cioran, Camus or Heidegger. This
is a book I'll come back to again and again, as it reignited a private argument
which will only end when I crumble under dementia or am six feet under. Besides
the philosophical content, one of the most original aspects of this work is the synthesis between philosophical pessimism and supernatural horror. As both
philosopher and horror writer, Ligotti is able to draw connections between
abstract ideas and the concrete stuff that scares us in horrors: creepy dolls,
clowns from outer space, unknown monsters of the deep sea, The Old Ones, decrepit
mansions, and so on.</span></font></div><div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<font color="#ffffff" style="background-color: white;"><br /></font></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><font color="#ffffff">
Ligotti draws the distinction
between optimists and pessimists about life. Pessimists think that the
existence of the human race is a tragic anomaly and that being alive is mostly
meaningless suffering. The evolution of consciousness is a terrible accident as
it amplifies our torment, making us aware of our own mortality and the fact
that we're basically meat in a meat-grinder. The universe is a cold, dark place
where no one can hear our screams and our horizon is smeared with blood. For
the pessimist, the faster this nightmare existence ends, the better it is for
everyone, and we should lament every birth as a violation of blissful
nonexistence. By contrast, for the optimist being alive is all right; he has no
major complaints as he's likely under the spell of a grand narrative featuring
God, Family, Nation or The Good, a fabrication that infuses his life with hope
and meaning. For the optimist, consciousness is a wonderful thing as it allows
us to know the world and gives us the power to plan and change it for the
better. On his view, the human race is special and noble, it rises above the
rest of creation as man alone was awarded the power of consciousness, and the
freedom and responsibility that come with it. </font></div>
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<font color="#ffffff" style="background-color: white;"><br /></font></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><font color="#ffffff">
Following Norwegian philosopher
Peter Zapffe, Ligotti argues that optimists manage to stay optimistic because
they're able to minimize their consciousness and zombify themselves. This trick
can be achieved in four ways: isolation, anchoring, distraction, and
sublimation. On Ligotti's view, these four methods constitute what he calls
"the conspiracy against the human race," in the sense that by this
process of more or less conscious self-deception we avoid facing the pointless
cosmic butchery we're trapped in, and thus we miss our only salvation, which is
our outright extinction as freaks of nature. </font></div>
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<font color="#ffffff" style="background-color: white;"><br /></font></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><font color="#ffffff">
When we use the first method,
"we <i>isolate</i> the dire facts of
being alive by relegating them to a remote compartment of our minds. They are
the lunatic family members in the attic whose existence we deny in a conspiracy
of silence." According to the second method, in order to "<i>stabilize</i> our lives in the tempestuous
waters of chaos, we conspire to anchor them in metaphysical and institutional
"verities"<span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">—</span><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">God, Morality,
Natural Law, Country, Family</span><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">—that inebriate us with a sense of being official, authentic,
and safe in our beds." The third method aims at turning a blind eye to
cosmic horror by "<i>distracting</i>
our minds with a world of trifling or momentous trash. The most operant method for
furthering the conspiracy, it is in continuous employ and demands only that
people keep their eyes on the ball—or their television sets, their government's
foreign policy, their science projects, their careers, their place in society
and the universe, etc. The final method consists of us <i>sublimating</i> "our fears by making an open display of them. In
the Zapffean sense, sublimation is the rarest technique utilized for conspiring
against the human race. Putting into play both deviousness and skill, this is
what thinkers and artistic types do when they recycle the most demoralizing and
unnerving aspects of life as works in which the worst fortunes of humanity are
presented in a stylized and removed manner as entertainment. In so many words,
these thinkers and artistic types confect products that provide an escape from
our suffering by a bogus simulation of it—a tragic drama or philosophical
woolgathering, for instance." </span><br />
<br />
<span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;"></span><br />
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<span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhjhnR5GH2TLZknS7vsPYZPXvPEp4wOFOjVJqYN5nOno9KSoR0j_pKHOzjE_L5-6o-k5kZIQFLQkZDHR6M-ygTgfQHMw-RiEFHoE_opTKyKoYqYAchB7fYRQCBTcY10IlvlzrIBgU3UkK8/s1600/emil-cioran-quote-lbm7m8e.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><font color="#ffffff"><img border="0" data-original-height="630" data-original-width="1200" height="168" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhjhnR5GH2TLZknS7vsPYZPXvPEp4wOFOjVJqYN5nOno9KSoR0j_pKHOzjE_L5-6o-k5kZIQFLQkZDHR6M-ygTgfQHMw-RiEFHoE_opTKyKoYqYAchB7fYRQCBTcY10IlvlzrIBgU3UkK8/s320/emil-cioran-quote-lbm7m8e.jpg" width="320" /></font></a></span></div>
<font color="#ffffff"><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> </span><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; font-family: "times new roman", serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"> <o:p></o:p></span>
</font><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; font-family: "times new roman", serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><font color="#ffffff"><br /></font></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><font color="#ffffff">Ligotti's main message is not news to me, since
I've been an Emil Cioran (whom Ligotti calls "a maestro of
pessimism") fan since the tender age of thirteen. Furthermore, I'm deep
into existentialism, have a couple of <b><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Axl-Barnes/e/B082YHDSZ8/ref=dp_byline_cont_book_1">grim horror books of my own</a></b>, and am also
into Depressive Suicidal Black Metal, a subgenre of Black Metal aimed at
conveying feelings of alienation, loneliness, despair, and at reminding people
that suicide isn't such a bad idea. However, Ligotti's passionate and clear
arguments, his beautiful and honest style, and the graphic way he portrays our
sorry existence has made me revisit my stance on these core existential issues.
I have two interrelated critical comments on Ligotti's book, after a first
reading. The first one concerns the psychological type of the cheerful
nihilist, and the second one describes one of the main challenges for the
pessimist, the challenge of being a nobody.<o:p></o:p></font></span></div>
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<span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><font color="#ffffff"><br /></font></span></div>
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<font color="#ffffff"><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">First, I and many others I would imagine,
don't consider ourselves either pessimists or optimists, but are cheerful
nihilists. Being a true pessimist is pretty hard. In <i>The Trouble with Being Born</i>, Cioran claims "I do nothing,
granted. But I <i>see</i> the hours go by</span><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">—which is better than
trying to fill them." Cioran here refers to the excess of lucidity the
pessimist endures, which, however, brings him closer to the ugly truth of life,
and he proclaims this to be better than being a busy self-deluded puppet
invested in killing time. Be that as it may, not many people are inclined to
just sit around and see the hours go by. Eventually, they'll start doing <i>something</i>. Off themselves? Maybe. But
the "maestro of pessimism" is quick to point out: </span><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial;">"Only optimists commit suicide, optimists who no
longer succeed at being optimists. The others, having no reason to live, why
would they have any to die?"</span><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;"> So, do what then? Camus' point in <i>The</i> <i>Myth of Sisyphus</i> is that the absurdity of the universe, in and of
itself, has no bearing on how we should live our lives. Whatever we do is of no
consequence in the big picture. Now, some might find this depressing and just
decide to see the hours go by and wallow in self-pity. But the cheerful
nihilist sees this grim state of affairs as pretty liberating. The universe is
a playground where you can do whatever, as there are no parents in sight (or gods).
The world is an amusement park and why not have some fun before surrendering to
infinite darkness? The cheerful nihilist is neither a pessimist nor an
optimist, he's mostly agnostic and non-committal. While he's aware that
consciousness amplifies suffering, he also knows that it makes possible higher
pleasures, like reading and writing books, which even Cioran himself has
indulged in most of his life, when sick of watching the hours go by. So, the
cheerful nihilist is not prone to any extreme views as the total eradication
of humankind. Also, his commitment to life doesn't involve the delusions the
cowardly optimist clings to. The cheerful nihilist is not fully anchored in any
values and keeps a critical, ironic distance toward any grand narratives with a
happy ending. He is, after all, a student of postmodernism. The cheerful
nihilist might engage in sublimation for the fun of it, not with the heroic,
virginal fervor of someone like Nietzsche, but with more restrained
enthusiasm. The cheerful nihilist floats in a universe of scepticism,
uncertainty, and irony, but, despite his awareness of the ugly truths behind the
scenes of daily life, he's trying to enjoy what existence has to offer till
sickness and the Grim Ripper make their necessary appearance. </span><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> <o:p></o:p></span></font></div>
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<span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: white; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><font color="#ffffff"><br /></font></span></div>
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<font color="#ffffff"><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Second, I think being a true, fully
consistent pessimist is not only hard but almost impossible. It's really a
tough position to hold, without appearing hypocritical. Martin Heidegger has
argued that human beings, as beings-in-the-world, exist mostly in a state of
inauthenticity. That is, simply put, they do what others do, what They do, what
is done. We mostly live in the inauthentic human soup of The They, we do what's
expected of us in a zombie-like fashion. We keep busy, plan for the future,
always ahead of ourselves, absorbed by some job or another. This goes on,
Heidegger argues, until our awareness of our own death hits us and our knees
buckle. No one else can die in our place, we face death alone. This gives us
anxiety, and only in this state of fear of death do we become authentic,
because death forces us to see our lives as our own, and no one else's.
However, Heidegger argues, humans don't linger in this state of anxiety for
long. Eventually, they reach a decision about the trajectory of their lives and
then succumb again, willy-nilly, to the force of The They. The They is our home.
Authenticity is just a bad trip we normally forget about. Now, the options of
what to do with our lives are provided on the public market as predefined
social roles. Tired of your job? Go back to school. A recent injury doesn't
allow you to have a career in hockey? Try an office job. You don't know what
degree to aim for? Try traveling around the world to find yourself. It follows that, like most of us, the pessimist cannot
sustain the state of anxiety for long. Eventually, he'll submit to the power of
The They and just live like others do. Like in the case of Cioran, he gave up
on watching the hours go by and became a famous writer. He was also a voracious
reader. In the same vein, Ligotti points out Lovecraft's interest in
architecture. Schopenhauer was a monarchist and professional Hegel hater. My
point is that despite the dramatic posturing, most pessimists are just like the
rest of us, subject to the force of The They, they live like most of us,
enjoying some things, hating others. And if they <i>de facto</i> </span>take
part in this inauthentic communal life, then what right do they have to say
life is no good? Isn't that a bit hypocritical? Like some emo youth with a Nocturnal
Depression t-shirt shopping in the organic section and complaining about the poor
selection or an antinatalist trying to become a nurse. This schizoid Dr. Strangelove-type
appearance is not a good look for the pessimist. It raises doubts and questions.
Moreover, pessimists can't kill themselves either because only optimists kill
themselves. Suppose then that they decide to live like pariahs, losers, at the margins
of society? After all, Cioran famously claimed: "Only one thing matters:
learning to be the loser." However, this, on the face of it, is a project,
something to strive for. Like being the town drunk, being the loser is a social
role, still in the social space of The They, though, admittedly, on the margins
of that space. Cioran was well-aware of this challenge the true pessimist faces,
which is one of the reasons he turned down a handful of prestigious literary awards
claiming that one cannot write a book like <i>The
Trouble With Being Born</i> only so one can cash a literary prize. <o:p></o:p></font></div>
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><font color="#ffffff">
Ligotti is aware of the power of the survival instinct and
how it can blindside us even if consciously and intellectually we want to
reject it. Then, given that humans, like all animals, are hardwired to be social,
maybe it's best to look for the authentic pessimist in the ranks of the mentally
ill, those malfunctioning brains that make installing the sociability program
almost impossible. In this respect, Ligotti's description of depression is
telling: <o:p></o:p></font></div>
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"This is the great lesson the depressive learns:
nothing in the world is inherently compelling. Whatever may be really "out
there" cannot project itself as an affective experience. It is all a
vacuous affair with only a chemical prestige. Nothing is either good or bad,
desirable or undesirable, or anything else except that it is made so by
laboratories inside us producing the emotions on which we live. And to live on
our emotions is to live arbitrarily, inaccurately<span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">—imparting meaning to what has none of its own. Yet
what other way is there to live. Without the ever-clanking machinery of
emotion, everything would come to a standstill. There would be nothing to do,
nowhere to go, nothing to be, and no one to know. The alternatives are clear:
to live falsely as pawns of affect, or to live factually as depressives, or as
individuals who know what is known to the depressive. How advantageous that we
are not coerced into choosing one or the other, neither choice being excellent.
One look at human existence is proof enough that our species will not be
released from the stronghold of emotionalism that anchors it into
hallucinations. That may be no way to live, but to opt for depression would be
to opt out of existence as we consciously know it."<o:p></o:p></span></font></div>
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<span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;"><font color="#ffffff">Thus, the depressive would be a good candidate for an
authentic pessimist. From a Heideggerian perspective, a depressive is no longer
a being-in-the-world. He's a puppet with its strings cut off, an existential
abortion. As Ligotti puts it, depressives need not "apply for a position
in the enterprise of life." There's a gaping abyss between the depressive
and the world, a darkness that strips him of the luxury of an identity or a sense
of will. For the depressive, saying or thinking "I" is nothing short
of a miracle. There's usually telltale signs of depression, so that even when a
depressive decides to participate in the enterprise of life, they give
themselves away easily. They're awkward and out of synch with the others, they
either talk too much or are too quiet, they laugh too hard as if to keep the
inner darkness at bay and reassure themselves that they're really succeeding at
playing the game of life like all the others, and that the game is real.
However, deep down, they know that the trick won't work and the illusion will
dissipate soon, like the makeup running down the face of an alien dressed as a
clown. When it comes to parties or other social gatherings, the depressive
either cancels at the last moment or leaves early as they feel they can't
ignite their socializing engine. If the engine starts, the depressive is the
last one to leave the party as he knows this is as good as it gets for him and
the usual darkness patiently awaits at home. A few years ago I had this friend
suffering from Borderline Personality Disorder. I've noticed that even when
she'd take a stab at socializing, she would refuse to appear in group pictures.
Later, she explained to me that she wants to live like a ghost. After she dies,
she confessed, she wants people to wonder if she truly existed. <o:p></o:p></font></span></div>
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<span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;"><font color="#ffffff"><br /></font></span></div>
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<font color="#ffffff"><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">This notion of being a living ghost reminded me of John
Darnton's brief portrayal of someone suffering from Cotard's syndrome in his
book <i>Mind Catcher</i>, when his
character, neurosurgeon Kate Willet, visits a psychiatric ward for severely
mentally ill. </span> <span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;"><o:p></o:p></span></font></div>
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"The room was dimly lit and
she could not see very well, but she didn't care to get a better view. There
was one bed in the room and a young man supine on it. His wrists and ankles
were tied to the sides of the bed with thick white straps, and he was lying
totally stiff, as if he were a piece of wood. His eyes were open and staring
straight up at the ceiling; they didn't move. Nor did he seem to blink. His
skin was ashen gray. His shirt was off, and when Kate looked closely, she saw
that his upper torso and his arms and his ankles and his face were covered with
wounds<span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">—deep
angry red gouges running in parallel lines. He had evidently inflicted them
upon himself with his fingernails. <o:p></o:p></span></font></div>
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<span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;"><font color="#ffffff">The
administrative assistant came up behind them. When she spoke, Kate almost
jumped out of her skin.<o:p></o:p></font></span></div>
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<span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;"><font color="#ffffff">"That is
an unfortunate man," the woman said. "He has an extremely rare
illness called Cotard's syndrome. [...] In this case, the patient has no
emotions whatsoever. He's totally without affect. The patient is stripped of
all signs of life. In fact, he becomes convinced that he is actually dead, and
it is impossible to rid him of this particular delusion. At times he will smell
his own flesh rotting. And at other times he becomes convinced that worms are
crawling over his rotting corpse, and he scratches himself without ceasing. For
that reason, he must from time to time be restrained."<o:p></o:p></font></span></div>
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<font color="#ffffff"><br /></font></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><font color="#ffffff">
To sum up, the
authentic pessimist, as opposed to the emo poser, is most likely to be found in
the ranks of those suffering from mental disorders. Unable to fully dissolve himself
in the forgetfulness of the They, his surplus of consciousness giving rise to a
chronic alienation, the true pessimist is a master of killing time, time is the enemy as each second takes him closer to inevitable death, and also because
time is the reminder he already is dead, but not yet buried. As Cioran says,
"A book is a suicide postponed," a suicide that will always come too
late, as the true pessimist, being already dead, sees no point in final
gestures or affirmations.<o:p></o:p></font></div>
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</font><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><font color="#ffffff">
Like I said,
these are just two of the multiple thoughts and ideas I've had while reading
Ligotti's marvelous book <i>The Conspiracy
Against The Human Race</i>. His incisive style, clear argumentation, beautiful
prose, and grim imagery will make me come back to his book and read his fiction
work as well. As a cheerful nihilist, I hope Ligotti's dark fiction is
delightful and that my ability to enjoy good books lasts for many years to
come. </font></div><o:p></o:p>
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<div class="sharethis-inline-share-buttons"></div>axl barneshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05226609236661793688noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4562052415640699330.post-59665535968830825362020-01-17T09:53:00.002-08:002020-12-16T10:32:19.017-08:00Odin Rising and Lords of Chaos (part 1)<script type="text/javascript" src="https://platform-api.sharethis.com/js/sharethis.js#property=5fda4ed259355a00124f7de7&product=inline-share-buttons" async="async"></script><div id="i4c-draggable-container" style="height: 0px; position: fixed; width: 0px; z-index: 1499;">
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<div class="sharethis-inline-share-buttons"></div>axl barneshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05226609236661793688noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4562052415640699330.post-18588737859787496682020-01-01T10:14:00.004-08:002020-12-16T10:32:16.315-08:00The Writing Dead<script type="text/javascript" src="https://platform-api.sharethis.com/js/sharethis.js#property=5fda4ed259355a00124f7de7&product=inline-share-buttons" async="async"></script><div id="i4c-draggable-container" style="height: 0px; position: fixed; width: 0px; z-index: 1499;">
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgpncJ_wZEyRKEfwIq2t3q76KOlFt2EDXBi-RmV7mhfwQvsngtTjP6xGPS_RaFsAd8PxxnBeH_5a2DMyFUlYl3Fvf8Isrb_qu-bcYK0srpEIqE3XZVf3rI3kLgy1LZXGU-LujoJzSC6tc0/s1600/71DciB8X5vL._AC_SL1280_.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="962" data-original-width="1280" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgpncJ_wZEyRKEfwIq2t3q76KOlFt2EDXBi-RmV7mhfwQvsngtTjP6xGPS_RaFsAd8PxxnBeH_5a2DMyFUlYl3Fvf8Isrb_qu-bcYK0srpEIqE3XZVf3rI3kLgy1LZXGU-LujoJzSC6tc0/s320/71DciB8X5vL._AC_SL1280_.jpg" width="320" /></a><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: georgia, "times new roman", serif;"><font color="#ffffff">Beware, the dead are
writing! They happened on a new way to trap us and eat our brains: zombie
writing. As it's to be expected the writing of the undead is boring and foggy,
impersonal and vague, tinged with unfocused nostalgia for real life. However,
that writing has the terrible power to induce sleep and leave one defenseless
in the face of a zombie attack It's crucial for our survival to be able to
distinguish zombie writing from real writing. For that, we need to go back to the
source of authentic writing and tattoo on our still-functioning brains the words of a master about his craft. I speak, of course, of Emil Cioran, Nietzsche's most significant disciple. </font></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: georgia, "times new roman", serif;"><font color="#ffffff"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">“A
book is a suicide postponed,” Cioran reminds us. “</span><em><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">Write</span></em><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"> books only if you are going to say in them the things
you would never dare confide to anyone.” "True confessions are written
with tears only. But my tears would drown the world, as my inner fire would
reduce it to ashes" </span><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">"I
like thought which preserves a whiff of flesh and blood, and I prefer a
thousand times an idea rising from sexual tension or nervous depression to
empty abstraction."</span></font></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: georgia, "times new roman", serif;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjFWrIv56ppIA4xbFGTD33Ddc9vUSoc2PK5XeULID2fMYgPQEDaC2Hkm-JWyAhqvfgA_NwciEn0E8yOk18kc9WQnaiydgNKQ7-LNXn8K7o602Ya8wmY9Q9oUATQyplWWQ0CDtrrAzgAFlM/s1600/3692004-Emil-Cioran-Quote-To-write-books-is-to-have-a-certain-relation.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><font color="#ffffff"><img border="0" data-original-height="900" data-original-width="1600" height="180" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjFWrIv56ppIA4xbFGTD33Ddc9vUSoc2PK5XeULID2fMYgPQEDaC2Hkm-JWyAhqvfgA_NwciEn0E8yOk18kc9WQnaiydgNKQ7-LNXn8K7o602Ya8wmY9Q9oUATQyplWWQ0CDtrrAzgAFlM/s320/3692004-Emil-Cioran-Quote-To-write-books-is-to-have-a-certain-relation.jpg" width="320" /></font></a></span></div>
<font color="#ffffff"><span style="font-family: georgia, "times new roman", serif;"> <o:p></o:p></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: georgia, "times new roman", serif;"><font color="#ffffff"><br /></font></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: georgia, "times new roman", serif;"><font color="#ffffff">Now we
have the litmus test for zombie writing. The dead don't commit suicide, being
already dead and all, and therefore they can't <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">postpone</i> their suicide. The undead have no confessions to make and
no tears to shed. The dead don't hurt, they have no emotions, no sex drive, no
melancholy, they just want to feed on flesh and brains. The dead don't bleed either. If you cut the words of zombie writing with a knife, the wound doesn't
bleed, no tears come out, but only the pungent stench of busy locker-rooms,
the boiling pus of repressed nightmares, and the white sand of boredom.<o:p></o:p></font></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: georgia, "times new roman", serif;"><font color="#ffffff"><br /></font></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: georgia, "times new roman", serif;"><font color="#ffffff">Zombie
writing is a serious threat to our survival as a species. Zombies write for
money, the living are their customers. The undead use money to produce more
dead prose and gradually annihilate their hapless victims with their poisonous
offerings. The larger the web the more flies get stuck in it. Why are the
living paying for this junk? Well, for the same reason they buy heroin:
sedation, abdication, the promise of decay hidden in a shot of Krokodyl, the
thrill of forgetting. Being human, let's face it, is hard work. All these
thoughts and emotions, this constant torment of lucidity, it can get pretty
exhausting. And for what? There's no reward for being human. Most of us want
out, whether we know it or not. We want to apply for bankruptcy, we instinctively
know there's no winning here. The EXIT sign flashes red under our fragile web of
mundane thoughts and empty gestures. We just want to die and shed our
consciousness. We dream of the Paradise of mummification. We want to discard
our existence like a filthy rag. We crave the bullet, the guillotine blade, the
black sack over our heads before strangulation. We're eager to find our Jim
Jones and ask for our promised cyanide. That's why we read about riding
nonexistent dragons and setting nonexistent cities on fire, we fantasize about
nonexistent castles and kings and Disney princes and princesses, we fancy
ourselves superheroes to make up for the deeper, nagging knowledge that we're
not fit for life. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></font></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;"><span style="font-family: georgia, "times new roman", serif;"><font color="#ffffff"><span style="font-weight: normal;">I voice this warning about zombified art but it might be too late, the
infection is spreading fast, the siren call of Death has turned into a
totalitarian command. Besides the </span><a href="http://cuntrape.com/">Edgetivist </a><span style="font-weight: normal;">trend, no one seems to care about
their lives. Human life is cheaper than during the Black Plague. On the positive side, I realize I have something in common with
the undead, there's something to cannibalism. And I don't mean in Jeffrey
Dahmer's sense, clean skin is probably just as disgusting to chew on as inked skin. But
more in line with Emil Cioran's dictum: </span></font></span></span><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: georgia, "times new roman", serif;"><font color="#ffffff">“Sometimes I wish I were a cannibal – less
for the pleasure of eating someone than for the pleasure of vomiting him.”</font></span><font color="#181818"><o:p></o:p></font></span></h1>
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<div class="sharethis-inline-share-buttons"></div>axl barneshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05226609236661793688noreply@blogger.com0