Decasia: The State of Decay. A film by Bill Morrison.

 

My first forays into "experimental" film were courtesy of the International Cinema at BYU when I was an undergrad. Though not as highly-experimental as Morrison's Decasia, my early exposure to such films as Svankmajer's Faust and Wender's Wings of Desire whetted my appetite for more. When a friend of mine, who shared a shift as a security worker at night on campus, invited me and a few others over to watch Lynch's Eraserhead, I was hooked. 

I stumbled on Morrison's work while searching for clips from my favorite directors, The Brothers Quay (if you don't know how much of a Quay fanboy I am, you obviously have not been reading my blog for long). Morrison's Light is Calling came up in my search, and my interest was piqued. I watched it and was entirely blown away. 

Now, while Light is Calling is done in a warm sepia-tone, Decasia is purely black-and-white, which suits my (very mild) hue blindness just fine. Like any experimental cinematic work, this one takes patience and, in places, pure endurance. I admit to nearly shutting the whole thing off during a sequence in which an anonymous diver is climbing a ladder up to a high diving board (at least that's what I think was happening). Everything is in fairly slow-motion. Not super slowmo, but slow nonetheless. Morrison is willing to make you work for your insights. 

What we're given is a series of black-and-white films damaged by time either by smeared development fluid or outright disintegration of the cellulose acetate medium. The images are often difficult to discern, sometimes inscrutable. At other times, there are moments of relative clarity - the many cuts of whirling dervishes that seem to thread the sparse motifs together are decidedly old and far from perfect, but they offer the eyes a bit of a rest from the more challenging segments. 

I find it interesting that so much of Decasia is set in, well, Asia, whether Asia Minor or the Far East. Though Morrison has said nothing of colonialism that I can find in his interviews, a fair amount of footage is taken from documentary film of the middle east and Japan, among other locales. One of the more haunting segments is that of a pair of Catholic nuns standing as sentinels as a group of young uniformed schoolgirls, likely Vietnamese, if I am correct in my surmisings, marching past into what I presume must be a Catholic mission-school, probably in French Indochina. In one particularly attention-grabbing moment, one of the girls looks back at the camera and we see her full face for the first time. There is a strong look of suspicion in her eyes. It's probably just childhood curiosity for seeing a film camera for the first time, but I like to think of her as telepathically saying "I will be freed from this. If not me, then my children, or my children's children. We won't tolerate this forever."

Other segments are mostly banal documentary pieces, with a few bits from dramatized silent movies scattered throughout. I didn't recognize any of them, but my silent movie mental catalog is quite minimal. When such dramatized performances were presented, there was, for me, a mixed tale of the wonder of acting with th tragedy that, while these images survive, the actors clearly did not. It didn't help that there were, in close proximity to these sections, film of underground miners' bodies being dragged out from mines. A strange contrast. 

The music for the film was originally the film for the music. The initial performance of Michael Gordon's composition was the occasion for which the film was initially created. The music came first, then the film came as a reaction to that music. It's obvious that Gordon and Morrison played off of each other, though, to produce the "final" version that appears in Decasia. Gordon's atonal, intentionally de-tuned avant-classical orchestral piece and Morrison's abstract, surreal imagery play well of of each other.

A PRI interview on the DVD provides some insight into both Morrison's motivations for creating the movie and Gordon's thought process behind the music. Though the interview claims that you can't have one without the other, I'm willing to accept that as a challenge and watch Decasia muted with, let's say SunnO))) playing as musical accompanyment. Actually, I can think of a number of bands whose work would compliment the visuals. The Kilimanjaro Darkjazz Ensemble jumps right out front. Much of Wagner Ӧdegard's work would work, as well.

Morrison claims that the work is both existential and life-affirming. There is no doubt about the former. The film throughout evokes an existential dread through a two-fold process of obscuring and revealing, forming a sort of pulsating rhythm between the eerie and the weird. The viewer often feels trapped between several worlds at once: The world from which they are viewing the movie, the world in which the film was initially captured, and the world that some of the captured film is trying to portray (this is particularly true of pieces that show actors from the 1920s or '30s portraying scenes in historical costume).  Decasia is not only a film, it is a place, its own strange world of mixed up timelines bubbling in and out of perception. Needless to say, it is a very strange place to inhabit, even if only momentarily, a discomfiting space that reminds one of one's mortality in the strongest of ways. 

On the flipside, there is a strange element of hope throughout, as well, that maybe something of us can survive that change called death and still affect the world. It's not an overtly spiritual plea by Morrison, but a little whisper of what might possibly be. Just maybe. Time will truly tell, right?

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House of the Nine Devils

 

House of the Nine Devils by Johannes Urzidil
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

As I write this review, I am listening to Lech Jankowski's "Pause in Shadows" from his album Street of Crocodiles . This is done with intent, as I want to set the proper mood for this review and felt that Jankowski, whose music has been used by the Brothers Quay, echoes the Central/Eastern European tradition in his music. Though Jankowski is Polish and author Johannes Urzidil was a German-Czech-Jewish writer born in Prague, I see some tenuous connections. Jankowski's music, as I have said previously, has been used by the Brothers Quay. The Brothers Quay filmed a short based on Bruno Schulz's The Street of Crocodiles, Schulz has been called "The Polish Kafka," and Kafka and Jankowski knew each other and spent time together (along with Gustav Meyrink). So pardon my syncretism as I create my own little artificial Central European world in my head. I live here, so I get to make the connections.

The artifact-qua-artifact of this Twisted Spoon Press book is solid. The hardcover is elegant, with a silk ribbon spilling from the headband for convenience in marking pages. It is just the exact right size for a book, in my opinion: 5.5" x 7.5" and about .75" thick. It really sits in the hand perfectly. The cover, a negative photo of what I presume to be the titular "House of the Nine Devils" is understated, but complex enough to draw one in. I will definitely be buying more Twisted Spoon books in the future, especially at the price point. That's a lot of great book for $23.00.

And what about what's inside? Let's explore. I should begin by saying that, while I bought the book thinking it was fiction, the autobiographical elements tell me that it's not. Or, if it is fiction, it is extremely well-realized. One feels immersed in Urzidil's life throughout. For those who despise non-fiction, I say give it a chance. You'll find that often, as they say, truth is stranger than fiction, and there is enough of a dose of strangeness throughout to whet the appetite of those who love "The Weird".

The title story, "House of the Nine Devils," tells the uncanny tale of a house that might have been the residence of both Faust and Tycho, or maybe neither. A mysterious visitor and his portrait appear and disappear, and the house itself may be the cause, but maybe not. We are never quite sure and this unsurety places the story somewhere between quaint mystery and unsettling frisson. I was reminded, ever so slightly, of the strangeness of Danielewski's House of Leaves. A fabulous start to this volume!

"Vacation in Flames" is far more beautiful than the title indicates; even sublime. Childhood innocence is somehow betrayed and upheld at the same time, with a profound and moving respect for beauty being the tie that binds. It is a haunting tale, but in a light, lovely way, a gentle haunting, if you will, with an ephemeral character who may or may not be a ghost. This story will stick with ne for some time to come.

It was with "New Years Commotion" that I began to suspect that the book was not fictional. I'm still not completely sure if "New Years Commotion" is autobiographical or not. The narrator claims so, but is the narrator a fictional entity or Urzidil himself? Regardless, the author has captured, quite effectively, something that has happened to most of us: being a child who has lost something and is desperately searching for it, along with the many little steps of experience that come with that.

"Porter Kubat" threads its way through Bohemian society among military officers, ballerinas, porter-messengers, and a young man who becomes entangled by his own guilty conscience in a labyrinthine societal maze of which he has little understanding. Like others in this volume, it is a tale of waning innocence, of the shocks of life, all enmeshed in Prague's streets, theaters, and barracks. A sublime story.

"We Stood Honor Guard" is not a story, but a powerful essay (clearly non-fiction) on the causes of the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. The relevant argument holds relevance to any historical or contemporary empire, including the one in which I now live: The United States of America. This is critical to "keeping things together". Simple, yet genius.

The question of why the Francisco-Josephinian era (including the brief reign of Charles) actually came to an end repeatedly elicits all manner of possible historical, political and other explanations, enough to fill up thick books and which, taken on their own, may ring true, but that nevertheless mean very little. For they are only symptoms of an overall attitude. And this overall attitude in the Austro-Hungarian Empire was characterized by utter lovelessness, by the absolute lack of kindness or the willingness to ever do anything for anyone except oneself, by the indescribable callousness and selfishness of everyone. It was the ignominy of an all-embracing mutual lovelessness that ultimately destroyed that era. And if one objects that selfishness is fundamental to being human, is a part of our individual social and political nature, the answer to this is simple: it's exactly what ruins human beings and empires, what has always ruined them, and what will keep on ruining them in the future, however rich or powerful they might happen to be at times. As Heinrich Mann once so magnificently expounded during the First World War, this was what ruined the Second French Empire, what ruined czarist Russia, Wilhelmine and Hitlerian Germany, Britain's world empire, the list could go on and on, backwards and forwards, as long as it is selfishness that underlies the political rationales ostensibly causing these collapses - ostensibly because empires do not fall apart due to external causes but begin to crumble from within. These may be truisms. But, as Goethe once remarked, we have to keep on repeating the truth, since the falsehoods all around us are constantly being repeated as well.

In the Austro-Hungarian Empire, everyone hated and no one loved. Everyone sought their own advantage, no one was willing to make a sacrifice. At best they made a deal and cheated their way around it. How was such an empire supposed to hold together?

A long, seemingly meandering coming-of-age story, "The Last Tombola" starts on the most banal of notes, a father's request to his 13-year-old son to deliver a letter to the father's superior. The story "jumps," then ends on an unexpected note that colors the entirety of the story, flipping a switch on that reveals highlights and shadows from the previous 29 pages. It's done naturally, as well, without artifice.

In "The Assassin," Urzidil's encounter with Gavrilo Princip, who changed world history by triggering the events that led to World War I and hence, World War 2, etc.) turns from a chance encounter of morbid curiosity to a rather erudite philosophical analysis of world events and those behind them. Frankly, his implications are horrifying when one thinks of Trumpism, not because of Trump himself, but because of the impetus behind him, the bleak social fuel for the Trump movement's engine.

Again, I don't know if Urzidil is writing fiction or memoir here. But "A Night of Terror" in which he and another soldier spend the night in a friend's apartment hiding from police will stick with me, either way. If it's a fictional story, I wish it was real. If it's truthful, then truth is, indeed, stranger than fiction. Perhaps it lies in that strange limnal zone in-between, much like the narrator.

"One Last Deed" takes place in a real-dystopia: Nazi-occupied Prague. It's a dark reminiscence punctuated by the light of laughter. Old enmity turns to new friendship and provides a gift from the past, a gift that Urzidil would have liked to forget, a gift that ultimately saves his life. This is a powerful, good story about being human.

"Step and Half" starts and spends most of its pages and energy in describing Urzidil's relationship with his step-mother, recounting her acidic personality and comical mannerisms. I won't say what "Half" represents, but I will say that the story takes a melancholy and poignant turn once this element is introduced. This has caused me deep introspection.

Resignation, melancholy, and triumph swirl around "Paternal Prague," and I am struck by the vision I have, while looking into that whirlpool, of my relationship with my own dead father. Though I haven't had Urzidil's self-same experience in life, I read about his relationship and feelings toward his father, and I understand him clearly, as if we had inhabited the same emotional space for a time.

The collection (translated into English for the first time, incidentally) is profoundly moving. I had bought the book largely because I am hungry for more work by Central and Eastern European authors in translation. I am being fed. Well fed.

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The Haunted Screen: Expressionism in the German Cinema and the Influence of Max Reinhardt

 

The Haunted Screen: Expressionism in the German Cinema and the Influence of Max Reinhardt by Lotte H. Eisner
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I don't know where or when my fascination with silent movies began. Definitely not as a child. I couldn't stand the things back then. I think it might have been after I discovered The Dark Side of the Rainbow and realized that the same technique of watching one piece of visual media while listening to another piece of aural media could easily be applied to silent movies. Suddenly, these often-campy, over-acted films could become something sublime or something sinister, with the right music. Eisner's book was grist for that mill in enough volume to last me the rest of my life. Though I was very familiar with a few of these films and had already tried the trick of using two tabs of Youtube in a web-browser - one (the film) set on mute and the other (the music) with volume UP - I found several other good combinations and a couple of great ones. I will continue exploring this way.

If you'd like to give it a try, look up The Student of Prague (1913) or Waxworks on Youtube. Mute that tab. Now open another tab, go to Youtube, then play something like Ligeti's "Lontano" or Penderecki's "Symphony No. 1" (or, for real ambience, play it on vinyl!) with the volume UP. Or, perhaps you'd like to go another route and listen to some more . . . modern music? I have a few suggestions linked here.

I suggest watching without subtitles turned on, if you can. just enjoy the visual and auditory experience. It's a stark contrast from watching the movie alone, even when, or especially when, someone has attached an old-timey organ soundtrack to the movie. It's your experience - make it yours!

Incidentally, because of this book, I understand why sub-titles are called sub-titles. Only took 52 years to be enlightened. "Titles" was the term originally used in silent movies for the words that flashed up on the screen, in the absence of spoken dialogue. "Subtitles" appear, as the name implies beneath the titles. These are, as you know, most often translations from the original language into another.

52 years.

You can teach an old dog new tricks.

Speaking of new tricks, the early years of cinema were a sort of wild west, when it came to creative innovation, especially when constraints brought on by conflict interfered with the procurement of some materials. Interestingly, the lack of materials in the last years of World War I led to playwrights and cinematic directors using light and shadow, rather than elaborate sets, as they used to use, to give depth to the settings and to indicate the passage of time. A happy accident for early German movies.

The recollections of Carl Boese on how the special effects were done for Der Golem (1920) were absolutely fascinating. These practical effects were very dangerous, so volunteers were asked to try them out. The first stunt-men, perhaps. Knowing this has given me an excuse to watch the movie again. Of course, I will also have to reread Gustav Meyrinks novel, which has little to do with the movie, but hey, a good excuse is okay. After all, the book and the movie were both highly influential on one of my own creative works.

And, speaking of old dogs . . .

Eisner has a fixation on the melancholy and gloom inherit in the German soul, as he sees it. I tend to agree to some extent, but when I see this was first published in 1952, I wonder if some of the hyperbole isn't post-holocaust apologetics or manifestations of guilt. There's a bit too much of "Germans are brooding, dark-minded people as a whole" for me. It's overstated and I wonder why?

It is reasonable to argue that the German cinema is a development of German Romanticism, and that modern technique merely lends visible form to Romantic fancies.

These generalizations of German people as a brooding bunch keep coming up again and again. I don't fully disagree, but frankly (and I don't mean "in the manner of the French"), it got a little, well, old.

But if you can ignore the repeated caricature of an entire nation as, well, goths, there is much to be enjoyed about this work. I would also recommend (whether you read the book or not) following the Pagan Hollywood instagram or twitter account. Sometimes NSFW, you'll want to maneuver carefully, but if you want to catch the glamor of early cinema (and much more) in still photos, that's a great place to start. There's also a great interview with Pagan Hollywood's founder, Charles Lieurance over on Youtube, while you're at it.

I must note that the early text on Doctor Caligari instructed "see frontispiece". I turned to the front of the book, and noted the ragged edges where that key marker had been torn out of the book.

Was that a sign that I should not have entered the realm of the torn page?

Maybe I should have heeded it.

But I'm glad I didn't.



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Quay Brothers: On Deciphering the Pharmacist's Prescription for Lip-Reading Puppets

Quay Brothers: On Deciphering the Pharmacist's Prescription for Lip-Reading Puppets by Ron Magliozzi
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

The Brothers Quay are ageing, and someday, they will be subsumed into the darkness, only to emerge in their memory, their cinematic worlds, their graphic art, and books written about them - along with any residuals contained in the wires and boxes of the intrawebs. I hope to outlive them by many, many years. I also hope to enjoy their legacy that whole time. Not only to enjoy it, but to make something of it, if only in the worlds of roleplaying.

There is a strong element of the weird in the Quay's work, largely because of the presence of life where there should be no life - in hollowed-out puppets, stuffed rabbits, screws, and iron shavings. It's almost as if the trickster gods were granted power to imbue life into whatever they wished to.

On Deciphering the Pharmacist's Prescription for Lip-Reading Puppets is a sort of lost scripture dedicated to these twin trickster gods. We learn a bit of their origins, just enough to hint at their moment of apotheosis in art school, standing before a wall of polish movie posters. We learn of their journey through graphic design, their descent into and alongside the artistic works of Bruno Schulz, Franz Kafka, Emma Hauch, Leonora Carrington, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Lech Jankowski, Michel de Ghelderode, and others. We even learn of the nectar of these gods, wines and beers that influenced them and that are hinted at in some of their works.

Two essays begin the work, "The Manic Department Store," by Ron Magliozzi and "Those Who Desire Without End," by Edwin Carels. These are insightful outsider accounts of the influences that propelled the brothers into their dark world and their navigations throughout. Then comes the mythic interview between Heinrycho Holtzmullero and "QQ" - a mystical text akin to Isaiah in its obscurity, yet revealing much that has been hidden. This, along with the dozens of illustrations of the exhibition (a sort of cryptic alphabet?) which gives the book its name, is the heart of the matter, a peek into the brains of the Brother's Quay provided by them, as if they were being interviewed by the long dead "HH". But one must ask, as one should always ask of any of the trickster god's(s') actions - can they be trusted? Are they deceiving us?

Consider me willfully-deceived.

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Night falls on the Berlin of the Roaring Twenties

Night falls on the Berlin of the Roaring Twenties by Various
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

My initial desire to read this comes out of a snail-mail roleplaying game project that I am currently undertaking (using the De Profundis RPG rules, among others). The idea is to immerse myself into the Berlin of 1933, triangulating this book with Chaosium's Call of Cthulhu supplement, Berlin: The Wicked City (speaking of which, I need to buy myself a hard copy of that one!) and the Trail of Cthulhu supplement Bookhounds of London. I am just starting the actual play of the game, so we shall see how it goes. Getting people on the same page (so to speak) for a snail mail RPG is like herding cats, especially when you have several talented people with wide ranging interests and responsibilities. But I want to game with interesting people, so I sometimes have to deal with the "stop and start" a bit.

Whether you RPG or not (and if not, why not?), Night Falls on the Berlin of the Roaring Twenties is well worth your time and hard-earned cash. It is a Taschen book, which already qualifies it as "good," and it's one of the better Taschen books I've read, which is saying a lot. It is part graphic novel, part educational text, like the old Dorling Kindersley books, but for adults. And it IS only for adults! Nothing is held back in this expose of the roaring '20s. Nothing. So, please, don't let your kids go thumbing through this unless you want them asking "Mom, what's BDSM?" or "Dad, why are they all naked?"

On the other hand, with nothing held back, there's a lot to like here. There are several one page (or sometimes longer) biographies of notable people of Berlin from Marlene Dietrich to Max Ernst to Bertolt Brecht to Albert Einstein and a slew of others you've never heard of, from the police to the underworld, composers to criminals, politicians to prostitutes, it's all here. There are sections on the movies, hotels, traffic, airport, festivals, and brothels of Berlin, noting their features and, oftentimes, events that unfolded at each.

But this is not just a history book, it is a book of cultural unfolding, decadence, and collapse. Its scale is epic, for a work about one city in one decade. This focus provides an immersive experience for the reader. The inclusion of a CD with several recordings of songs from the period help in the immersion, an unholy baptism into the wicked city. You may come to this volume an agnostic, but you'll leave a believer!

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Demiurge: The Complete Cthulhu Mythos Tales of Michael Shea

Demiurge: The Complete Cthulhu Mythos Tales of Michael Shea by Michael Shea
My rating: 2 of 5 stars


I remember the exact moment when I first encountered H.P. Lovecraft’s work. It was eighth grade, and I had just walked out of the lunch room onto the Mission Junior High School courtyard when I heard someone behind me yell my name. I turned, bracing for a fight (which happened frequently at that school – think bully jocks and all that rot), but found one of my good friends, John Hayes (who has since passed away from a heart attack, just a few years ago) running up to me with a book in his hand. “Do you want this?” he asked. The cover was that of a skull with brains exploding out of holes in the top of its head entitled Tales of the Cthulhu Mythos. I was intrigued. If I recall correctly, John said something like “My mom says I can’t keep this book. Do you want it?”. My response was something like “hellz, yeah”! Thanks, Mrs. Hayes!

And so, my journey into Lovecraft and those who shared his mythos began. I can honestly say that this book changed my life and sent me in directions I otherwise would never have explored. It was a rich stepping off point for many of my interests in life (existentialism, philosophy in general, avant classical music, surreal cinema, etc). It has made my life richer. Since then, I have read much and written a few pieces that would be considered “Lovecraftian,” along with a piece or two (read and written) that riff directly off of Lovecraft’s creations.

I still hold a great deal of fondness of weird fiction. Not “Weird” with a capital “W”, necessarily. This has become a marketing category that I’m becoming unenchanted with. Well, not “becoming,” now that I’ve finished this book. I am, I think, fully ready to leave “Weird” fiction for “weird” fiction. I still love the strange, the metaphysical, love cosmic horror and the “Lovecraftian,” but more as a concept than as a marketing category/genre.

I have heard a great deal about Michael Shea’s work and how amazing it is. Forgive my bluntness, but, while Shea’s writing style is excellent, his ideas, characters, and plots are mostly hackneyed. Yes, I know, that’s no way to talk about a dead man who can’t defend himself, but really: as a thirteen-year old, I would probably have loved this work. But I’ve grown up a little and my reading tastes have matured, as a result. I see the potential for greatness here – Shea’s writing, as I have said, is quite good, borderline exquisite, at times. But the matrix in which the beautiful syntax is set happens to be broken or, at best, boring. It’s like setting a single diamond in the middle of a bracelet that is composed of glass baubles. The diamond is cheapened by its setting, and the baubles look even worse in comparison.

With that, here are my story notes:

Groveling at the altar of Lovecraft, no matter how eloquently, is still groveling at the altar of Lovecraft. Clever turns of phrase cannot save a weak, thin, and most of all, unsubtle story. My disenchantment with the "mythos" grows. This is fanfic. Well-written fanfic, but fanfic nonetheless. Two stars to "Fat Face," and I think that's being overly generous. I hope this collection improves or . . . lem!

"Nemo Me Impune Lacessit" sings prettily, but the lyrics are shallow and hackneyed. Three stars and I am quickly losing all patience with this collection. (note that I did read to the end, surprisingly).

In "The Presentation," street art meets comix meets the 1% meets . . . something . . . beyond. While I didn't enjoy the metaphysical aspect of it, this was a pretty good story. The writing, the syntax, the vocabulary were all impressive, but the metafictional aspect of it was quite jarring. Not great, but worth the read. Three stars floating in space around a cosmic blob in the void.

“The Pool”: Again with the metafiction and the outright references to Lovecraft and the extreme strain to my willing suspension of disbelief? Is there no subtlety? Bleh. One step closer to lemming this. (note again that I showed great restraint in not tossing this book). Two stars. If there's another two star, I'm quitting. (I didn’t – shame on me). Life's too short, even with well-written sentences. A waste of talent. But hey, I'm not Shea. Still, bleh.

"The Recruiter" is the kind of story I was hoping for from this collection. A modern dirge of timeless dread. An existential survey of the landscape of death and being. And not one mention of Cthulhu or any of his cronies, at least not directly. Four stars. Pushing on . . .

"The Battery" is a pulp fiction story in the vein of Lovecraft. Maybe too much in the vein of Lovecraft. Frankly, I couldn't get excited about the characters, the premise, or all the Lovecraftian doo-dads. Two stars.

"Copping Squid" is a great story. Far and away better than all the other stories in this collection. Sacrifice and complicity create a tangled web, with some deep characterization, as a result. The horror is just as much in the inner contemplation of decisions as it is in the outward cosmic forces that feed on the universe. This story is a darkly wonderful exploration of agency and respectful awe vis-a-vis stark terror. Five stars. Does this long story make it worth it to buy the whole collection? No. Not by a long shot. But it’s a great story that deserves your attention. Unfortunately, I don’t know where else you might find it. Remember my earlier analogy about a diamond among baubles? Yeah . . .

Dear "Dagoniad", I'm sorry, but we just can't go on like this. Your blunt granting of "mythos" knowledge (and your characters even call it "mythos" knowledge) to common hookers is, well, just obscene. Not because of the hookers, mind you, but because of the unashamed way in which you spit in the face of willing suspension of disbelief. It’s not a wink and a nudge, it’s like you’re opening your trench coat and exposing yourself to strangers on the street. You're the kind of story that would take it for granted that everyone reads Lovecraft and knows everything about the mythos because they read it. Yuck! Uh-uh. No more. We can't go on. One star. Next story up, please.

I'm torn. Some of the writing in "Tsathoggua" is exquisite, Especially the segments about Maureen's transformation. But, again, "deus ex machina" comes in the form of someone, introduced halfway through the story with no preamble, who just happens to have all this mythos knowledge. Honestly, it's getting really, really tiresome. Three stars.

Nothing really happened "Beneath the Beardmore". The protagonists didn't do much protagonizing, and there was a lot of explaining about Shoggoths and tentacles and stuff. But the characters were flat and unimpressive. Meh. All the trimmings and none of the substance of cosmic horror. The poetic voice of the "guide" was at least intriguing. But only intriguing enough to earn three stars.

When I read the words Great Old Ones Ale near the beginning of the story, I thought that "Momma Durtt" might end up a puerile, trivial, mimetic, unoriginal,, silly, bleached-out shell of worn-out Lovecraftian elements that tried in vain to be funny and horrific and the more it tried the worse it became, until it nose-dived into a downward spiral of inane dreck.

And I was right. One star.

Why, yes, of course every Antarctic submarine researcher carries a Tommy gun with them, just in case. And riding a submarine down an icy slope like a bobsled is perfectly believable. Isn't it? "Under the Shelf" comes in under three stars. Two, to be exact.

"Demiurge" is an interesting take on what it's like to be an alien intelligence possessing others' bodies that ends as the most ridiculous thing in the entire collection. It was pretty good until the last page, then, UGH! Three stars.

In essence, my problem is with the bare-faced mansplaining that goes on in the guise of some expert on “the mythos” suddenly showing up out of nowhere and exposing all the mysteries of said “mythos” to protagonists who either just accept what is given them or become so awestruck that you expect them to suddenly yell out “dude, that’s totally rad!” whenever a Shoggoth appears (and Shea had an unhealthy obsession with Shoggoths). It got old. It’s still old. Maybe I’m just getting old. But I can’t do this anymore. Going forward, I am very likely to avoid anything that directly takes Lovecraft’s creatures as inspiration, at least those, like this, that are borderline fanfic (if not outright fanfic). I’m all about the cosmic horror, all about strange stories, but I think I’ve done with tentacles in my fiction. I’ve got plenty of boardgames and roleplaying games if I want tentacles. I am banishing them from my plane of existence. Ia, Ia!

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Gyorgy Ligeti: Of Foreign Lands and Strange Sounds

György Ligeti: Of Foreign Lands and Strange Sounds by Louise Duchesneau
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Though I am an avant-classical enthusiast, I am by no means an expert. I cannot read music and the instrument I play is electric guitar, and that, badly. But I'm willing to learn a few things, even if I clearly don't have time or the gumption to become a true aficionado. So you'll please excuse this layman's delve into a work that would speak far more clearly to the musically-trained. And yet, I can't help but think that while the intellectual appreciation of the book might be somewhat heightened by such training, my enjoyment of the book was only slightly hampered by my admitted ignorance. One need not have a thorough understanding of musical notation to appreciate Of Foreign Lands and Strange Sounds .

In fact, I wonder if such an acute focus on the music on the page itself might not get in the way of really enjoying the exploration of Ligeti's creative mind. Chapter Eight, in fact (which I would argue should have been Chapter One or Two, for the sake of the untrained reader), "Rules and Regulations: Lessons from Ligeti's Compositional Sketches," an essay by University of Washington Professor of Music Theory Jonathan W. Bernard, is an enlightening look into the many different methods Ligeti used to notate his own music-in-progress. Bernard shares a loose taxonomy of the "sketch types" Ligeti used while composing: Jottings, Drawings, Charts, Tables, and finally, Music Notation. Color plates in the middle of the book showing Ligeti's original papers augment the reader's experience. Here, one can get a more visceral feel for what Ligeti's music "looks like" on paper - a wonderful thing for those of us who are visual-kinesthetic learners! If you, like me, have little or no musical training, I would recommend starting with Chapter Eight.

There, now that you've read Chapter Eight, turn to Chapter One: "'We play with the music and the music plays with us;: Sandor Veress and his Student Gyorgy Ligeti," by University of Calgary Musicology Professor Friedemann Sallis. This will give you the background on Ligeti's early studies, the discipline instilled in him by Veress, and his growth both with and against those teachings, much of which was (later) pushed by political circumstances around him, especially the suppression of folk traditions and traditional folk music by the mid-20th-Century Communist regimes in Eastern Europe.

Now that one has this background, the reader can (should?) then skip up to Chapter Seven, written by Ligeti's long time assistant (and co-editor of this volume), Louise Duchesneau: "'Play it like Bill Evans': Gyorgy Ligeti and Recorded Music". Here we explore Ligeti's like and dislikes and take a deep delve into his personal record collection! I found this fascinating, not just because of Ligeti's wide interests (he took a liking to Supertramp at one point, after being introduced to their music by one of his students), but because Duchesneau here outlines the entirety of Ligeti's career, conveniently parsing his music into several distinct phases. Though the borders between these phases were not always crystal clear, sometimes they were, as in the time when he rejected "Modernist" work and returned to his Hungarian folk roots after a many-decades-long absence or, more properly, intellectual exile (partially self-imposed, partially imposed by the external chilling effect of having to flee oppression of expression).

From there, one may read the rest of the book in order (yes, you have my permission), as the sequence of Chapters Eight, then One, then Seven, will give you all the under-girding you need to contextualize the other essays, which vary from examinations of specific pieces to poetic connections, Ligeti's fascination with African music, his appreciation for and the influence on his music by the principles of chaos and fractals, Stanley Kubrik's use of Ligeti's music in his movies (an amazing cross-media examination that my Humanities professors would have loved), and impressions of those who were his students.

One theme that ran through the book, whether explicitly or implicitly, was that of a man un-moored from his homeland who longed to retain some aspect of that homeland which he had left, but who was not blindly beholden to the place of his birth and childhood. This is where the book connected with me emotionally, rather than just intellectually. I am an American citizen, born in Germany into a U.S. Air Force family, and have lived all over the world. Though I love the place I live now, it has taken me many years to call any one place "home". With the recent passing of my parents (who lived in California, though I only lived there for three years, and two of those years as a married man not living at home - not to mention the fact that I was very happy to leave California when that opportunity presented itself), I feel even more "unmoored" and adrift in the world. While Madison has become home, largely because we raised our children here and do genuinely love this city, I still get the occasional sharp pangs of wanderlust in me and long to just begin walking and keep on walking until I can walk no more. But where would I walk? Of course, I would explore new places, I can't help myself or my curiosity. But I have a longing, at times, to go back to see the places I have been before, the places I have lived before, with the full knowledge that some of those places, most, really, don't actually exist as I knew them then. The air base I lived at in England is now a British spy base, and I could not go back and see the places where I spent considerable time. The little town in Minnesota where I lived with my grandmother for a year, has grown from about 3,000 residents to over 17,000, The base I lived at in Italy has been essentially demolished and replaced by a city. The base I lived at in the Philippines may still be under volcanic ash, so far as I know. And the military hospital I was born in now bears almost no resemblance to the place my parents knew. But I still want to see these places, at least once. Ligeti, I think, shared some of the same sentiments, if not the same feelings, given the loss of family members to the holocaust, his flight from his homeland, and his itinerant life abroad. Perhaps I am just projecting, but we wanderers tend to understand each other. The feelings of humans displaced (whether voluntarily or not) are complex and often shared in their complexity and intensity, at least that has been my experience in talking with others who have moved frequently, particularly those who have moved to places where their language was not the local tongue, where they were strangers in a strange land.

Paul Griffiths, in his essay "Invented Homelands: Ligeti's Orchestras" captures the connection between these experiences and Ligeti's creative drives perfectly:

The Violin Concerto is the richest of his invented homelands, and may persuade us that feelings of belonging are complex, ambiguous, mutable and probably illusory.

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Doctor Faustus: The Life of the German Composer Adrian Leverkuhn As Told By A Friend

Doctor Faustus: The Life Of The German Composer Adrian Leverkuhn As Told By A Friend by Thomas Mann
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

It took me nine months to read this book, and now I'm supposed to summarize it in a review limited to 20,000 characters? Pah! I don't dare even attempt it! Many others have outlined the plot (such as it is) and explored in greater detail than that of which I am capable, the parallels between the story and Mann's bout of cultural guilt over the Third Reich. Anything I say about this would only serve to expose how much I did not understand about this novel. And because I didn't understand the entirety of this novel, I will present my thoughts scattershot, with little or no context, as I don't have the capacity to provide it. My reading of this book, like my reading of Beckett's Molloy, Malone Dies, and The Unnamable, has left a great gaping void where my brain used to reside, but a void more capable of being filled now, because of the beautiful trauma that has been inflicted therein.

Since I am ill-equipped to address the slow-burning, then fast-burning plot, the emotionally deep and most-often tragic characters, or even the many clever uses of metafictional technique throughout, I will concentrate, quite simply, on one of the central conceits of the novel: the music of the composer, Adrian Leverkuhn.

Mann has caught my innermost feelings regarding what I will call "avant-classical" music. The sort composed by Ligeti, Penderecki, Part, Crumb, Xenakis, Schnittke, and Stockhausen. I have a perverse love of this seemingly-nihilistic music, a certain spiteful soft-spot for the naughtiness of it all. The brooding goth that lives behind my heart delights in the sheer transgressiveness of the music, while I take great intellectual interest at the same time, a real fascination that I can't explain, but is a core part of my deep life. It's a mixture of fear and delight, a rarefied emotional state that makes me feel connected with the rest of the cold, dark universe. Mann's prose, while not directly explaining the feelings I feel when I'm listening to such music, hints at them in a sidelong way:

Contagious diseases, plague, black death, were probably not of this planet; as, almost certainly indeed, life itself has not its origin on our glove, but came hither from outside. He, Adrian, had it on the best authority that it came from neighbouring stars which are enveloped in an atmosphere more favourable to it, containing much methane and ammonia, like Jupiter, Mars, and Venus. From them, or from one of them - he left me the choice - life had once, borne by cosmic projectiles or simply by radiation pressure, arrived upon our formerly sterile and innocent planet. My humanistic homo Dei, that crowning achievement of life, was together with his obligations to the spiritual in all probability the product of the marsh-gas fertility of a neighbouring star.

"The flower of evil," I repeated, nodding.

"And blooming mostly in mischief," he added.

Thus he taunted me, not only with my kindly view of the world, but also by persisting in the whimsical pretence of a personal, direct, and special knowledge about the affairs of heaven and earth. I did not know, but I might have been able to tell myself, that all this meant something, meant a new work: namely, the cosmic music which he had in his mind, after the episode of the new songs. It was the amazing symphony in one movement, the orchestral fantasy that he was working out during the last months of 1913 and the first of 1914, and which very much against my expressed wish bore the title Marvels of the Universe. I was mistrustful of the flippancy of that name and suggested the title Symphonia cosmologica. But Adrian insisted, laughing, on the other, mock-pathetic, ironic name, which certainly better prepared the knowing for the out-and-out bizarre and unpleasant character of the work, even though often these images of the monstrous and uncanny were grotesque in a solemn, formal, mathematical way.

-And again:

. . . a barbaric rudiment from pre-musical days, is the gliding voice, the glissando, a device to be used with the greatest restraint on profoundly cultural grounds; I have always been inclined to sense in it an anti-cultural, anti-human appeal. What I have in mind is Leverkuhn's preference for the glissando. Of course "preference" is not the right word; I only mean that at least in this work, the Apocalypse, he makes exceptionally frequent use of it, and certainly these images of terror offer a most tempting and at the same time most legitimate occasion for the employment of that savage device. In the place where the four voices of the altar order the letting loose of the four avenging angels, who mow down rider and steed, Emperor and Pope, and a third of mankind, how terrifying is the effect of the trombone glissandos which here represent the theme! This destructive sliding through the seven positions of the instrument! The theme represented by howling - what horror! And what acoustic panic results from the repeated drum-glissandos, and effect made possible on the chromatic or machine drum by changing the tuning to various pitches during the drum-roll. The effect is extremely uncanny. But most shattering of all is the application of the glissando to the human voice, which after all was the first target in organizing the tonic material and ridding song of its primitive howling over several notes: the rerun, in short, to this primitive stage, as the chorus of the Apocalypse does it in the form of frightfully shrieking human voices at the opening of the seventh seal, when the sun became black and the moon became as blood and the ships are overturned.

My dark fascination was inflamed as I read and recognized that Mann could convey that which I could not, my love of that dark, mysterious music. His ability to put into words, albeit indirectly, the feelings I feel when listening to this color of music, is, frankly, astounding. And while there were some sections on music theory that baffled me, there were long stretches of prose that enveloped me. The existentialist in me is in love with a good portion of this book. I can see myself hiding in its shadows frequently. Or maybe I can't see myself at all. And maybe that's the point.


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