I am missing the days when the shelves at the book stores were brimming with new horror novels from new writers. I did a gig at a Barnes and Nobel as a part time gig for a vacation we were taking. What they told me was that non-fiction was the stuff that was the biggest sellers; especially history. What is up with that? History non-fiction is the top selling genre.
Okay, people where are your imaginations? You realize that when you are reading a book on history you are consuming other people’s ideas. You have no way to know how accurate their ideas are. You just read the book and kind of accept them.
A work of fiction, now there is an experience you can take part in. A good writer will draw you into a world that you know isn’t real and yet you are willing to travel there all the same. You get to picture the places and the people and the situations in your mind as you read. A good writer can take you into a gossamer world of dreams. Or in the case of horror, nightmares. It is magic.
I am afraid that people may feel guilty these days if they are sitting around reading fiction. They can hear the words of some tight ass teacher from high school berating them for not reading something worthwhile. Why aren’t you reading your history they might have said? You are a lazy good for nothing, they might have said? Okay, you probably didn’t go to school around the turn of the century, but you get the idea. You have been made to feel guilty about imagining, and imagining is how we humans do great things. To think beyond what we are told. To imagine what things could be built or painted or sculpted. That is where greatness lies.
And so I move back to my original question. Where are the great horror authors? Stephen King is still going strong. I suppose Stephanie Myers is up and coming and I am glad for it. Anne Rice is still working. But what is new? Who is new? I want someone great to put out a long line of horror novels. The next H. P. Lovecraft. The next Stephen King? The next Anne Rice? It is time for us to have our nightmares stirred up again. To have new landscapes dreamed into existence that we can travel.
Oh, Cormac McCarthy has done just that by the way. If you haven’t read “The Road” do it now. It is horror of the finest caliber.
Monday, December 29, 2008
Friday, July 4, 2008
Sex and Horror
I write "okay" at the beginning of too many sentences. Not what this post is about, but I just did it and it bugged the shit out of me.
Sex. Fucking. Cock sucking, cunt licking, anal, rim jobbing. Bondage, Three-somes, sex with diapers, scat freaks, bestiality. Cheating on your spouse. Cheating with someone else's spouse. Sex with an older man, with an older woman. With a younger man, with a younger woman.
In America your ten year olds can see any number of people murdered on CSI or any cable movie night of the week. Your kids can watch Freddy Kruger or Jason Voorhees kill any number of men and women in any number of ways on Halloween before they go out trick or treating, but they can not see the two teenagers fucking before they have an a long pipe driven through them.
If Janet Jackson's nipple shows up on television for one tenth of a second this is cause to cancel the Bill of Rights and rescind the Constitution. The religious right, they are fascists by the way not Christians. Christ, who is supposed to be the role model for this group, loved everyone. Would never condone killing or torture. Accepted all of us as God's children. The religious right is a political movement that embraces the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, torture and the death penalty. They are against welfare (helping the poor) even though that is what Christ spent a great deal of his time doing just that.
But I digress. The fact is that in our country, we accept violence but not sex.
Having said that, I will say that I love sex. And I will go further to say, so do you. I know you do. In fact I bet you were thinking about sex just before you read this post. Maybe you were thinking about Janet Jackson's nipple just before reading this post? Maybe you were thinking about sex with Janet Jackson before reading this post? Maybe you still are...
But again I digress.
The fact is that we love sex. It is how we procreate and evolution loves procreation. Look at cockroaches for God's sake.
I have been reading this book of horror/erotica off and on for the last couple of months. I say off and on because I keep it in the car for when I am really desperate for something to read. But it is terrible. Awful. The writing is juvenile (maybe some of you are saying that about this little bit of literary genius right now) and the stories are near unreadable. But she got published. Someone, some agent and some other publisher believed in her. And they published her book of short stories.
I say great. But it is not enough. Sex is where we are most honest. Even if we are honest about the fact that we are lying, we are honest. Sex shows a piece of who we are without pretense. Without mask. It is magic.
I love erotica for that reason. All aspects of human interaction can be seen through sex. The mixture of horror and sex. This would be a potent alchemy. One I want to explore.
Sex. Fucking. Cock sucking, cunt licking, anal, rim jobbing. Bondage, Three-somes, sex with diapers, scat freaks, bestiality. Cheating on your spouse. Cheating with someone else's spouse. Sex with an older man, with an older woman. With a younger man, with a younger woman.
In America your ten year olds can see any number of people murdered on CSI or any cable movie night of the week. Your kids can watch Freddy Kruger or Jason Voorhees kill any number of men and women in any number of ways on Halloween before they go out trick or treating, but they can not see the two teenagers fucking before they have an a long pipe driven through them.
If Janet Jackson's nipple shows up on television for one tenth of a second this is cause to cancel the Bill of Rights and rescind the Constitution. The religious right, they are fascists by the way not Christians. Christ, who is supposed to be the role model for this group, loved everyone. Would never condone killing or torture. Accepted all of us as God's children. The religious right is a political movement that embraces the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, torture and the death penalty. They are against welfare (helping the poor) even though that is what Christ spent a great deal of his time doing just that.
But I digress. The fact is that in our country, we accept violence but not sex.
Having said that, I will say that I love sex. And I will go further to say, so do you. I know you do. In fact I bet you were thinking about sex just before you read this post. Maybe you were thinking about Janet Jackson's nipple just before reading this post? Maybe you were thinking about sex with Janet Jackson before reading this post? Maybe you still are...
But again I digress.
The fact is that we love sex. It is how we procreate and evolution loves procreation. Look at cockroaches for God's sake.
I have been reading this book of horror/erotica off and on for the last couple of months. I say off and on because I keep it in the car for when I am really desperate for something to read. But it is terrible. Awful. The writing is juvenile (maybe some of you are saying that about this little bit of literary genius right now) and the stories are near unreadable. But she got published. Someone, some agent and some other publisher believed in her. And they published her book of short stories.
I say great. But it is not enough. Sex is where we are most honest. Even if we are honest about the fact that we are lying, we are honest. Sex shows a piece of who we are without pretense. Without mask. It is magic.
I love erotica for that reason. All aspects of human interaction can be seen through sex. The mixture of horror and sex. This would be a potent alchemy. One I want to explore.
Monday, June 23, 2008
Isolation continued
I never did get to finish this one. I got off topic, or maybe on topic, blogging away about population control. You don't have to have children. Remember that.
Anyway, isolation. Being alone. This blog is interesting. I am blogging away on the Internet. Hundreds of millions of people access this virtual world everyday. I will never in my lifetime share the same space with 500 million people, but I may be sharing this virtual space with 500 million people right now. Right this second, countless millions are on this communication medium with me.
And no one has read anything on this blog. And it is very possible no one ever will. I am alone in this bustling over populated cyber-world. It is like being in a Tokyo and never meeting one single person.
I will have to use this in a story. A man alone on the Internet, isolated. This blog feels haunted. There are creaks at night. Doors closing and the smell of blood at the edge of my perception. This blog is haunted and I am alone in it. And there is no help coming. It is like a wagon train trapped in the Rocky Mountains in the winter time, and the members of the caravan are forced to resort to cannibalism.
We humans are like wolves in that we cannot tolerate being alone for long but we become homicidal when we are forced to live in the proximity of too many others of our kind. We need a balance between alone and accompanied.
Soylent Green is people.
I am rambling now. Being alone for too long can bring on madness. Hallucinations. Delusions. I think there is something in here with me. It is laughing, just soft enough that I can't quite hear it. God it's stalking me. Watching me all the time. It is waiting till dark then it will come.
God loves the sun and its light.
Anyway, isolation. Being alone. This blog is interesting. I am blogging away on the Internet. Hundreds of millions of people access this virtual world everyday. I will never in my lifetime share the same space with 500 million people, but I may be sharing this virtual space with 500 million people right now. Right this second, countless millions are on this communication medium with me.
And no one has read anything on this blog. And it is very possible no one ever will. I am alone in this bustling over populated cyber-world. It is like being in a Tokyo and never meeting one single person.
I will have to use this in a story. A man alone on the Internet, isolated. This blog feels haunted. There are creaks at night. Doors closing and the smell of blood at the edge of my perception. This blog is haunted and I am alone in it. And there is no help coming. It is like a wagon train trapped in the Rocky Mountains in the winter time, and the members of the caravan are forced to resort to cannibalism.
We humans are like wolves in that we cannot tolerate being alone for long but we become homicidal when we are forced to live in the proximity of too many others of our kind. We need a balance between alone and accompanied.
Soylent Green is people.
I am rambling now. Being alone for too long can bring on madness. Hallucinations. Delusions. I think there is something in here with me. It is laughing, just soft enough that I can't quite hear it. God it's stalking me. Watching me all the time. It is waiting till dark then it will come.
God loves the sun and its light.
Saturday, May 24, 2008
Horror and Sex
Fear and Sex. No, that's not right. Supernatural fear and sex. There are more of those fucking slasher porn fucking movies than you can shake a machete at. I am so sick of those. There was a time when those were new, remember "I spit on your grave" or the original "Texas Chainsaw Massacre" ? All sorts of creeping distrubing shit in those bad boys. Now, there is this whole product that is released regularly where some bunch of pretty twenty somethings are getting killed in old and univentive ways. And the whole time you are saying, "Don't go in there." Or "Don't give a ride to the creepy guy carrying the big knife." In fact the characters in those movies are so fucking stupid they desrve to die. It will only make the species stronger.
But are there places where horror and sex mingle in creative, and delicious ways? Or more impotantly, in scary ways. After all the main objective of horror is to horrify. Right? Okay, this is a small start, but here it is. I will be back though.
But are there places where horror and sex mingle in creative, and delicious ways? Or more impotantly, in scary ways. After all the main objective of horror is to horrify. Right? Okay, this is a small start, but here it is. I will be back though.
Wednesday, May 21, 2008
In love of fiction
I just got my first subscription to "Cemetery Dance" and I love it. And I am sad that more people don't buy and read fiction magazines. Especially horror magazines, since that I what I love. Of course it took me years to get the subscription, so I am not better. But, I would say buy these magazines. I just found this magazine "Red Scream" and it looked awesome. But the day I went to buy my subscription, they were out of business. I found them on a Friday, and by the time I had the cash to buy the subscription, they were gone. What is wrong with our culture that we don't read. That we have American Idol as the most watched show on television. Could you find a form of entertainment that involves and requires less creativity? I don't think you could.
Read and read fiction. This sudden love of non-fiction explains why we are no longer the scientific leader in the world. We have lost our cultural and collective imagination. We need them back. We need to imagine, to make up, to pretend, to play.
Read and read fiction. This sudden love of non-fiction explains why we are no longer the scientific leader in the world. We have lost our cultural and collective imagination. We need them back. We need to imagine, to make up, to pretend, to play.
Friday, May 2, 2008
Isolation
An odd thing about horror. It, like mold in a coffin, grows best in lonely dark places. I am certain that a great number of stories of terror have taken place in cities. Many have their protagonist surrounded by people, "Rosemary's Baby" for instance. And yet isolation is required if we are to feel the fear that the author or director wants. Mind you, the separation from humanity in horror does not have to be a person alone. In fact it is often a more satisfying story if there is a group that is isolated. Deane Koontz's "Phantoms". H. P. Lovecraft did like to isolate his characters, and he did so to great effect. Ask any of the number of authors who have borrowed some of his "sugar".
Be it a group or an individual, isolation is required for fear to injected into the story. If the person or group is surrounded by soldiers who are blasting away with weapons, and are calling in air strikes, the reader or audience member feels as though they are reading or watching action/adventure rather than horror. Of course apocalypse movies do play with the entire population as alone. The earth is, after all, a trap. If things go bad here, global climate change, mass extinction leading to a collapse of the food chain, we are stuck.
Hold on, I am taking a side trip here for a second. I have the fix for all of our problems. Now this fix will take some time, it can't happen all at once. I would say, we could see results in about 15 or 20 years. We could fix global climate change, pollution, over fishing of the oceans, deforestation, the energy shortage, and probably some of the other issues, like hunger and poverty. Are you ready for the answer? Wait for it.
Population control.
This is not some stroke of genius. We could use nuclear energy if there was a sixth of the number of people on the planet as there are today. We could feed everyone. We would have lots of open land, forest and such. Fewer people with our current and future levels of technology would solve most of our critical problems. We need to educate the world to have fewer babies. Each couple could have two kids, replace themselves. Some would have more and some would, I am afraid, die. But we could reduce the population on this planet and that would allow us more time with our existing resources.
But alas, I am afraid that we are no wiser as a species than bacteria. If you watch the growth of a bacterial colony in a petri dish, you will see that our species has followed the same pattern of growth across the earth. And the earth is our petri dish folks. Don't kid yourselves. I love how "the environment" is looked at as a political issue. I can tell you that no one will have to worry about a job if the human race goes extinct.
But I digress. I guess that is what these blogs are for. Isolation in horror. Oh, wait I am talking about isolation. About our isolation in space. This is where fear lies. I am tired now and want to stop typing. I will edit this later.
Be well and reach out to the rest of us in the Starbucks, while you are getting your coffee. And for our sake, only have one child. Or no children. We are not Bacteria, we don't have to produce. Oh did I forget to mention, those bacteria in that petri dish don't die because they run out of food. After about 3 weeks the entire dish is sterile again. All the bacteria died in their own waste. That is what kills the colony. There is still a mountain of food as far as the single celled organisms are concerned, but their waste poisons them. Sound familiar? Love Canal anyone?
Be it a group or an individual, isolation is required for fear to injected into the story. If the person or group is surrounded by soldiers who are blasting away with weapons, and are calling in air strikes, the reader or audience member feels as though they are reading or watching action/adventure rather than horror. Of course apocalypse movies do play with the entire population as alone. The earth is, after all, a trap. If things go bad here, global climate change, mass extinction leading to a collapse of the food chain, we are stuck.
Hold on, I am taking a side trip here for a second. I have the fix for all of our problems. Now this fix will take some time, it can't happen all at once. I would say, we could see results in about 15 or 20 years. We could fix global climate change, pollution, over fishing of the oceans, deforestation, the energy shortage, and probably some of the other issues, like hunger and poverty. Are you ready for the answer? Wait for it.
Population control.
This is not some stroke of genius. We could use nuclear energy if there was a sixth of the number of people on the planet as there are today. We could feed everyone. We would have lots of open land, forest and such. Fewer people with our current and future levels of technology would solve most of our critical problems. We need to educate the world to have fewer babies. Each couple could have two kids, replace themselves. Some would have more and some would, I am afraid, die. But we could reduce the population on this planet and that would allow us more time with our existing resources.
But alas, I am afraid that we are no wiser as a species than bacteria. If you watch the growth of a bacterial colony in a petri dish, you will see that our species has followed the same pattern of growth across the earth. And the earth is our petri dish folks. Don't kid yourselves. I love how "the environment" is looked at as a political issue. I can tell you that no one will have to worry about a job if the human race goes extinct.
But I digress. I guess that is what these blogs are for. Isolation in horror. Oh, wait I am talking about isolation. About our isolation in space. This is where fear lies. I am tired now and want to stop typing. I will edit this later.
Be well and reach out to the rest of us in the Starbucks, while you are getting your coffee. And for our sake, only have one child. Or no children. We are not Bacteria, we don't have to produce. Oh did I forget to mention, those bacteria in that petri dish don't die because they run out of food. After about 3 weeks the entire dish is sterile again. All the bacteria died in their own waste. That is what kills the colony. There is still a mountain of food as far as the single celled organisms are concerned, but their waste poisons them. Sound familiar? Love Canal anyone?
Tuesday, March 4, 2008
"House of Leaves"
Okay this is the book. The first book since I was maybe ten years old that scared me. I mean really scared me. The protagonist in the story is a young man named Johnny. As he reads Zampano's work he finds himself having horrific visions and hallucinations. He picks up a case of agoraphobia, and begins to lose his mind.
The night before last, I slept a fitful sleep. I was in and out of consciousness. But the odd thing was that all night long I was wandering those endless and ever changing hallways of the house on Ash Tree Lane. When I would rise out of sleep it was more like I floated to the top of sleep. As if slumber was a liquid that I bobbed in and out of all night. But when I "woke" up, I was still in a dream state. Still wandering lost in those dark hallways. Then I would come full enough awake to go pee or roll over then fall back asleep and back into the Navidson house.
The book has gotten into me. Reading Zampano's labyrinthine work has begun to effect me as it has Johnny. Or am I making something out of thin air?
That is horror. To be able to create an experience in me that the character in the book is having, or something similar. My God what genius. If anyone reads this and can suggest any other books of such incredible skill please post them. "House of Leaves" is a work of fucking genius. READ IT if you haven't already. If you have, tell me about your experience?
The night before last, I slept a fitful sleep. I was in and out of consciousness. But the odd thing was that all night long I was wandering those endless and ever changing hallways of the house on Ash Tree Lane. When I would rise out of sleep it was more like I floated to the top of sleep. As if slumber was a liquid that I bobbed in and out of all night. But when I "woke" up, I was still in a dream state. Still wandering lost in those dark hallways. Then I would come full enough awake to go pee or roll over then fall back asleep and back into the Navidson house.
The book has gotten into me. Reading Zampano's labyrinthine work has begun to effect me as it has Johnny. Or am I making something out of thin air?
That is horror. To be able to create an experience in me that the character in the book is having, or something similar. My God what genius. If anyone reads this and can suggest any other books of such incredible skill please post them. "House of Leaves" is a work of fucking genius. READ IT if you haven't already. If you have, tell me about your experience?
Monday, February 18, 2008
A faithless world
I have been wondering why there has been so little good supernatural horror coming out recently. After looking at the news from around the world a thought occurred to me. The peoples of the world are basically faithless. They no longer believe in Allah or God or any other deities. They have replaced those beliefs with faith in religion and money.
I want to make a distinction here between faith in spirituality and faith in religion. Currently we have the fundamentalist Muslims and the fundamentalist Christians. Both proclaim their faith in a god while having no faith in that being whatsoever. What they truly believe in is their religion; their church. And that is not a faith in the spiritual at all.
We have fundamentalist Muslims killing men women and children who are out shopping or getting a cup of coffee. Allah, the creator of the universe, would not support this behavior. Allah would never say that we should kill each other. Allah is the creator not the destroyer of the world. The Christian conservatives are the same way. They talk about Christ this and Christ that. Then we here about how those same people support a president like George W Bush who is a proponent of war. They support the death penalty, and believe that torture is okay. If Christ were here today and was asked whether or not he supported a war in Iraq or anyplace else what would he say? If you asked Christ whether or not torture was okay if it would save lives what would he say? If you asked Christ if it was okay to kill convicted murderers who had committed vile acts against children what would he say? He would say no. He would say forgive.
The fact is that these are indications that these people have no faith in their Gods. They only have faith in the people who lead their churches and tell them what to think. They have faith in books like The Bible or The Koran instead of the God that is supposed to be described in those books. We have lost all faith in those Gods. We don’t believe that the Divine Creator is up in their heaven and will take care of us. We don’t have faith that when we die, we will go to be next to those Gods. If so, then it wouldn’t matter whether or not we lived in Jerusalem or Kazakhstan. It wouldn’t matter if we were killed by terrorists or by a heart attack. We are going to heaven and that is what would matter. There is no faith.
If there was faith, then we wouldn’t be so worried about terrorists or gay marriage or who lived in the West Bank and who didn’t. We would believe that God or Allah or Buddha or Tara or The Great Spirit or whatever the divine force is in the universe, would have it all covered. We would be more concerned about living well and treating each other well than about making money and conquering the world. But these supposed spiritual leaders are concerned with money and controlling the world not living after the example of their God.
What does this have to do with good horror? Good horror requires a belief in the supernatural which goes hand in hand with a belief in the Sacred. If there is no God, then there is no devil and there is no life after death so there are no ghosts or evil abominations. Instead horror is littered with personality disordered sociopaths with knives or chainsaws or power drills. Freddy Kruger is a wonderful exception to this rule. Sure he started out as a serial murderer of children but he graduated to an evil spirit upon his death at the hands of his neighbors (probably all good Christians). I have noticed that the only good ghost stories have been coming out of Japan as of late. “The Orphanage” is another stellar exception to this rule. But American directors and many writers have lost the ability to write a truly disturbing ghost story. I am reading “House of Leaves” right now and I am happy to say that it has scared me. For the first time in easily 15 years a book has scared me. Yeah. I love Stephen King but am not scared by his work. As an aside I will say that Mister King’s strength lies not in his stories per se, but in his characters. And further, I believe that he is one of the great American writers when it comes to character. I will say, and I am certain I will get a lot of argument here; he surpasses or at least equals the greats such as Hemingway and Faulkner. His characters are real in a way other writer’s are not. He has a knack to capture with his use of dialogue and spare description and action the essence of those of use living in the suburbs or in small non-descript towns. It is what makes his stories so effective; we are the characters in those stories.
But I digress, horror as tied to faith. If we have faith in a divine being then we can be scared by the supernatural. “The Exorcist” is so terrifying because it is tied to faith in a Christian mythology. Today I hear people say that they think William Friedkin’s masterpiece is funny. That it isn’t scary at all. I don’t believe that is because it is dated. It isn’t. I think that it is because people don’t have faith in God any longer so they aren’t scared of the devil anymore either. The whole story just seems silly. Whereas a team of organ stealing crazies in “Turistas Go Home” is somehow horrifying.
I hope that the world can find some faith in something divine so that we can maybe get some decent horror returning to our culture. And maybe it will help to stem some of the real horror that we practice on each other.
I want to make a distinction here between faith in spirituality and faith in religion. Currently we have the fundamentalist Muslims and the fundamentalist Christians. Both proclaim their faith in a god while having no faith in that being whatsoever. What they truly believe in is their religion; their church. And that is not a faith in the spiritual at all.
We have fundamentalist Muslims killing men women and children who are out shopping or getting a cup of coffee. Allah, the creator of the universe, would not support this behavior. Allah would never say that we should kill each other. Allah is the creator not the destroyer of the world. The Christian conservatives are the same way. They talk about Christ this and Christ that. Then we here about how those same people support a president like George W Bush who is a proponent of war. They support the death penalty, and believe that torture is okay. If Christ were here today and was asked whether or not he supported a war in Iraq or anyplace else what would he say? If you asked Christ whether or not torture was okay if it would save lives what would he say? If you asked Christ if it was okay to kill convicted murderers who had committed vile acts against children what would he say? He would say no. He would say forgive.
The fact is that these are indications that these people have no faith in their Gods. They only have faith in the people who lead their churches and tell them what to think. They have faith in books like The Bible or The Koran instead of the God that is supposed to be described in those books. We have lost all faith in those Gods. We don’t believe that the Divine Creator is up in their heaven and will take care of us. We don’t have faith that when we die, we will go to be next to those Gods. If so, then it wouldn’t matter whether or not we lived in Jerusalem or Kazakhstan. It wouldn’t matter if we were killed by terrorists or by a heart attack. We are going to heaven and that is what would matter. There is no faith.
If there was faith, then we wouldn’t be so worried about terrorists or gay marriage or who lived in the West Bank and who didn’t. We would believe that God or Allah or Buddha or Tara or The Great Spirit or whatever the divine force is in the universe, would have it all covered. We would be more concerned about living well and treating each other well than about making money and conquering the world. But these supposed spiritual leaders are concerned with money and controlling the world not living after the example of their God.
What does this have to do with good horror? Good horror requires a belief in the supernatural which goes hand in hand with a belief in the Sacred. If there is no God, then there is no devil and there is no life after death so there are no ghosts or evil abominations. Instead horror is littered with personality disordered sociopaths with knives or chainsaws or power drills. Freddy Kruger is a wonderful exception to this rule. Sure he started out as a serial murderer of children but he graduated to an evil spirit upon his death at the hands of his neighbors (probably all good Christians). I have noticed that the only good ghost stories have been coming out of Japan as of late. “The Orphanage” is another stellar exception to this rule. But American directors and many writers have lost the ability to write a truly disturbing ghost story. I am reading “House of Leaves” right now and I am happy to say that it has scared me. For the first time in easily 15 years a book has scared me. Yeah. I love Stephen King but am not scared by his work. As an aside I will say that Mister King’s strength lies not in his stories per se, but in his characters. And further, I believe that he is one of the great American writers when it comes to character. I will say, and I am certain I will get a lot of argument here; he surpasses or at least equals the greats such as Hemingway and Faulkner. His characters are real in a way other writer’s are not. He has a knack to capture with his use of dialogue and spare description and action the essence of those of use living in the suburbs or in small non-descript towns. It is what makes his stories so effective; we are the characters in those stories.
But I digress, horror as tied to faith. If we have faith in a divine being then we can be scared by the supernatural. “The Exorcist” is so terrifying because it is tied to faith in a Christian mythology. Today I hear people say that they think William Friedkin’s masterpiece is funny. That it isn’t scary at all. I don’t believe that is because it is dated. It isn’t. I think that it is because people don’t have faith in God any longer so they aren’t scared of the devil anymore either. The whole story just seems silly. Whereas a team of organ stealing crazies in “Turistas Go Home” is somehow horrifying.
I hope that the world can find some faith in something divine so that we can maybe get some decent horror returning to our culture. And maybe it will help to stem some of the real horror that we practice on each other.
Saturday, January 26, 2008
What day is today
Last night the moon was almost full. We are bereft of street lights here at the homestead. So I sat and watched the night for a time. The light was so bright and so dim they way moonlight is. They way it comes trickling across the dark side of the earth. Blue and washed out white, like a can of white paint dumped into a busy ocean. The shadows are long and the blackness looks illimitable between the pines and oaks and maples. Those spaces look like the entrance to deep tunnels or maybe thin inky membranes between us and darkness.
There are possibilities out there in the dark. At least that is what I tell myself as I watch the night. Last night was one of those nights. Something hiding in the dark. Hiding in the woods. But here is the thing, here is my lament. I don’t necessarily believe there is. I read once that H. P. Lovecraft was an atheist. What’s more he had no belief in anything supernatural at all. No ghosts, or werewolves or zombies walking the Haitian night. He just liked the stories.
Me, I am like “Fox Mulder”, I want to believe. Aliens, that makes perfect sense to me. I believe that there are aliens in the universe. Of course they would only be aliens when they came visiting here. At home I suppose they might be called (insert alien language here). But I digress. Honestly, I don’t see how there isn’t life on other planets. Especially since we are finding all sorts of planets that are well within the possible distance from their solar center to have water and atmosphere and therefore life. So I think that an infinite universe means infinite forms of life.
But Ghosts, demons, fey? I don’t know. I do love the stories though. And I hope there are. I sometimes believe and sometimes not. What can I say.
There are possibilities out there in the dark. At least that is what I tell myself as I watch the night. Last night was one of those nights. Something hiding in the dark. Hiding in the woods. But here is the thing, here is my lament. I don’t necessarily believe there is. I read once that H. P. Lovecraft was an atheist. What’s more he had no belief in anything supernatural at all. No ghosts, or werewolves or zombies walking the Haitian night. He just liked the stories.
Me, I am like “Fox Mulder”, I want to believe. Aliens, that makes perfect sense to me. I believe that there are aliens in the universe. Of course they would only be aliens when they came visiting here. At home I suppose they might be called (insert alien language here). But I digress. Honestly, I don’t see how there isn’t life on other planets. Especially since we are finding all sorts of planets that are well within the possible distance from their solar center to have water and atmosphere and therefore life. So I think that an infinite universe means infinite forms of life.
But Ghosts, demons, fey? I don’t know. I do love the stories though. And I hope there are. I sometimes believe and sometimes not. What can I say.
Monday, January 21, 2008
A dream journey
The question I will start with is; do you believe your unconscious mind can journey to other realities? Other places? String theory, if I understand some of it correctly, might say this is possible. Of course there are a great many physicists that say that string theory is garbage so who knows. Artists and writers and mystics have for centuries, also said that dream journeys are possible. Here is my experience.
A few months ago I was getting ready to sleep. My preparations on this particular night included meditating on taking a dream journey. I allowed my mind to accept that I was going to take a journey while slept that would help me write a horror novel I was working on. My mental process only accepted the journey as real with no possibility that it was not. The way you might look at a car driving at you and think, “I have to get out of the way”, never considering for a second that the car might not be real. If the mind can see a possibility that something may not exist then there is doubt. If there is doubt; the dream journey will not happen. So I slept with the understanding that some form of my consciousness was going to travel somewhere else and I would be safe while I was there. I would be invisible and incorporeal. And I would return safely.
I fell asleep.
There was a sense of my eyes coming into focus. I could see and I could hear. A soft dripping of water on concrete. The smell of a humid basement during a wet spring. Water stains running down flat cement walls. There is a light bulb hanging by a cord from the ceiling. A man, shirtless with his head drooping, is tied with his hands behind his back in a chair. I am experiencing this from an elevated position.
I watch this man tied into this chair and then I hear a door open. It is steel scraping on the hard surface of the floor. I look to my left, if that is possible in this incorporeal state. There is a man wearing a long rubber or vinyl apron that hangs to his shins. It is black and stained. He wears gloves of the same plastic material. He is carrying pliers, some sort of pliers. There is a stainless steel table next to the prisoner with stainless steel implements on it.
The thin man with the balding pate and the pliers approaches the man in the chair. He grabs the man’s hair with a “day at work” efficiency, pulls his head back and plunges the pliers into the man’s mouth.
The prisoner starts to scream. He sounds like a patient in a dentist’s chair. I can hear the cracking of the teeth as the aproned torturer works the tooth or teeth back and forth. The screaming is awful and the man with the pliers doesn’t hesitate. There is a crack and a pop and the metal tool is pulled from the screaming man’s mouth with the flourish of a conductor at the finish of a symphony. A long string of blood and spit stretches from the mouth to the teeth pinched in the tool’s metal jaws. It stretches and stretches till it snaps and sticks to the black shining apron. Blood is pouring down the bound man’s chin.
My astral body, or dream mind is terrified. Terrified that the man with the tools might turn and see me. Might have a way to keep me here. But he doesn’t. He is focused on his work. And somehow I know that my preparations before sleep will keep me safe in this place.
He picks up a long thick bladed knife off of the stainless steel tray. Again he takes the man by the hair and pulls his head up. Again there is the efficiency of a butcher working with a roast. He takes the knife to right corner of the prisoner’s mouth and makes a confident cut into the taught flesh. The cut runs back and back all the way to the hinge of the jaw. The bound man screams but it is all from his throat. He can’t work his mouth anymore. Can’t open it or close it. And the blood is pouring down his chin covering his chest. The butcher moves the blade to the other side of his victim’s mouth.
The other man is tied and his eyes are wide with pain and helpless terror. I don’t know why these men are in this relationship. I don’t know if they know. But the victim is screaming and staring and the dim light bulb light makes grey shadows on the grey and stained walls. And there is pain and fear in the man’s begging wide eyes.
The man with the apron and the rubber gloves cuts with his sharp knife into the other cheek. He slices a straight and even line through the prisoner’s flesh. There is screaming and the smell of blood and the crimson flow of it down his chin. The man with the knife puts his tool back on to his tray so that it lies parallel with the straight shining edge. He turns back to the screaming man.
I am watching with terror and I want to leave now. I want to return to my bed. To my reality. And I start to feel movement. But it is too late. The torturer has already turned back to the helpless prisoner tied in the chair with his screams and his blood rolling down his chin. The torturer reaches his right rubber gloved hand inside of the prisoner’s mouth. He grasps the back of the bound man’s head by the hair and tightens his grip on the grisly lower jaw. The tall thin aproned man snaps down on the jaw with a twist of his hips. The bottom jaw snaps down and with a twist of the wrist, off. The screaming is all from the throat now. There is no mouth left. The skull has been disassembled. The victim’s eyes are the last thing I see as I leave this place. His eyes that are filled with pain, so much pain. Leaving only enough room for the understanding that the aproned man isn’t done yet. There is more. And there is nothing he can do to stop it.
When I wake up I am sure that it was not a nightmare. I am sure I have been to another place. Another reality. A terrible place. I was not a hero. I wasn’t trying to think of how to save that man, only how to save myself. How to not see what was going to happen next. And I knew it was not a dream. How did I know? I just did. It was knowledge without any physical proof? So the question is, did I take a dream journey? I know I haven’t really tried since. Or was it just a nightmare? And if it was, what is a nightmare? What is consciousness? Have you ever taken a dream journey? Write about it here. We are all friends. Don’t be shy.
A few months ago I was getting ready to sleep. My preparations on this particular night included meditating on taking a dream journey. I allowed my mind to accept that I was going to take a journey while slept that would help me write a horror novel I was working on. My mental process only accepted the journey as real with no possibility that it was not. The way you might look at a car driving at you and think, “I have to get out of the way”, never considering for a second that the car might not be real. If the mind can see a possibility that something may not exist then there is doubt. If there is doubt; the dream journey will not happen. So I slept with the understanding that some form of my consciousness was going to travel somewhere else and I would be safe while I was there. I would be invisible and incorporeal. And I would return safely.
I fell asleep.
There was a sense of my eyes coming into focus. I could see and I could hear. A soft dripping of water on concrete. The smell of a humid basement during a wet spring. Water stains running down flat cement walls. There is a light bulb hanging by a cord from the ceiling. A man, shirtless with his head drooping, is tied with his hands behind his back in a chair. I am experiencing this from an elevated position.
I watch this man tied into this chair and then I hear a door open. It is steel scraping on the hard surface of the floor. I look to my left, if that is possible in this incorporeal state. There is a man wearing a long rubber or vinyl apron that hangs to his shins. It is black and stained. He wears gloves of the same plastic material. He is carrying pliers, some sort of pliers. There is a stainless steel table next to the prisoner with stainless steel implements on it.
The thin man with the balding pate and the pliers approaches the man in the chair. He grabs the man’s hair with a “day at work” efficiency, pulls his head back and plunges the pliers into the man’s mouth.
The prisoner starts to scream. He sounds like a patient in a dentist’s chair. I can hear the cracking of the teeth as the aproned torturer works the tooth or teeth back and forth. The screaming is awful and the man with the pliers doesn’t hesitate. There is a crack and a pop and the metal tool is pulled from the screaming man’s mouth with the flourish of a conductor at the finish of a symphony. A long string of blood and spit stretches from the mouth to the teeth pinched in the tool’s metal jaws. It stretches and stretches till it snaps and sticks to the black shining apron. Blood is pouring down the bound man’s chin.
My astral body, or dream mind is terrified. Terrified that the man with the tools might turn and see me. Might have a way to keep me here. But he doesn’t. He is focused on his work. And somehow I know that my preparations before sleep will keep me safe in this place.
He picks up a long thick bladed knife off of the stainless steel tray. Again he takes the man by the hair and pulls his head up. Again there is the efficiency of a butcher working with a roast. He takes the knife to right corner of the prisoner’s mouth and makes a confident cut into the taught flesh. The cut runs back and back all the way to the hinge of the jaw. The bound man screams but it is all from his throat. He can’t work his mouth anymore. Can’t open it or close it. And the blood is pouring down his chin covering his chest. The butcher moves the blade to the other side of his victim’s mouth.
The other man is tied and his eyes are wide with pain and helpless terror. I don’t know why these men are in this relationship. I don’t know if they know. But the victim is screaming and staring and the dim light bulb light makes grey shadows on the grey and stained walls. And there is pain and fear in the man’s begging wide eyes.
The man with the apron and the rubber gloves cuts with his sharp knife into the other cheek. He slices a straight and even line through the prisoner’s flesh. There is screaming and the smell of blood and the crimson flow of it down his chin. The man with the knife puts his tool back on to his tray so that it lies parallel with the straight shining edge. He turns back to the screaming man.
I am watching with terror and I want to leave now. I want to return to my bed. To my reality. And I start to feel movement. But it is too late. The torturer has already turned back to the helpless prisoner tied in the chair with his screams and his blood rolling down his chin. The torturer reaches his right rubber gloved hand inside of the prisoner’s mouth. He grasps the back of the bound man’s head by the hair and tightens his grip on the grisly lower jaw. The tall thin aproned man snaps down on the jaw with a twist of his hips. The bottom jaw snaps down and with a twist of the wrist, off. The screaming is all from the throat now. There is no mouth left. The skull has been disassembled. The victim’s eyes are the last thing I see as I leave this place. His eyes that are filled with pain, so much pain. Leaving only enough room for the understanding that the aproned man isn’t done yet. There is more. And there is nothing he can do to stop it.
When I wake up I am sure that it was not a nightmare. I am sure I have been to another place. Another reality. A terrible place. I was not a hero. I wasn’t trying to think of how to save that man, only how to save myself. How to not see what was going to happen next. And I knew it was not a dream. How did I know? I just did. It was knowledge without any physical proof? So the question is, did I take a dream journey? I know I haven’t really tried since. Or was it just a nightmare? And if it was, what is a nightmare? What is consciousness? Have you ever taken a dream journey? Write about it here. We are all friends. Don’t be shy.
Welcome to Blood and Midnight
You have found your way to a dark place. A place where the dead may tap you on the shoulder and whisper in your ear. Those whispered words may fill you with terror or lust or obsession.
This is a blog about horror fiction and film and thought. This is a place to discuss what is real and what is not. And how do you know? This is about all things undead and terrifying. This blog will discuss what I think about the supernatural and hopefully what others think of the supernatural. This is a literary conversation around the world about anything that has to do with horror.
Who is your favorite writer of the genre? Who is your favorite director? Do you believe in ghosts? Possession? Lycanthropy? Vampirism? Zombies?
Let’s talk.
This is a blog about horror fiction and film and thought. This is a place to discuss what is real and what is not. And how do you know? This is about all things undead and terrifying. This blog will discuss what I think about the supernatural and hopefully what others think of the supernatural. This is a literary conversation around the world about anything that has to do with horror.
Who is your favorite writer of the genre? Who is your favorite director? Do you believe in ghosts? Possession? Lycanthropy? Vampirism? Zombies?
Let’s talk.
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