Please note that the poems and essays on this site are copyright and may not be reproduced without the author's permission.


Friday 31 October 2014

Red State Scream Preview (A Period Haunting)

.



A bleak living room complete with an old television set and armchair, abandoned house, Ohio: photo by Jonny Joo via The Guardian, 17 October 2014


No, man, it's cool, really, No worries. Still only top of the third. The cable guy is on the way over right now. Going to be a good night, I can feel it. We're going to own these guys.






Chicago, Illinois. Halloween masks on sale at Fantasy Costumes: photo by Scott Olson via The Guardian, 29 October 2014

It's a HEALTHY world (she said) nothing LAME asked to be brought into it then you can't stand It NOTHING'S just dead FISH SMELLS lost eyes a lot of smashed President KING more than just the present moment's intermittent or latent shape-shifting OH NO the continuous micro-slaughter

the SHE President personifies a piece of the planet in shreds now the universe itself existed as a dream of itself back in the age of ME in the underworld mask shtick whatever works just feeling funny a little bit about being a grownup

and loving people who are adorers out of antiquity nor anyone's body or brain for long but this line works and remembers every past action of yours and anyone's trivial why in the container and burn your tender crocodile tears in the obsidian vagenda of your POWER your SOUL




Wallops Island, Virginia. An unmanned rocket owned by Orbital Sciences Corporation explodes just seconds after launch, on what was to be a resupply mission to the International Space Station: photo by Steve Alexander / AFP via The Guardian, 29 October 2014

and all that dross bogus TREAT-BAG CULT VOID underworld of adorer followers in no space a BROken WINdow little man crushed instead of a SELF a bottle of WINdex blue spray WITH THE FINGER OF NO MAN extant in the AEROSOL YOUNIVERSE supposing every past action of yours and anyone's trivial why were you alive wanting everything to gratify HALF and astound the other my I want ADORER TIC kicking in your BROken WINdow O ver and O ver a TICKing trick no treat the easy after the hard the painful the history after the math the reverb of the primal the inner the outer as my SHELF en LARGEs you can fit MORE BOOKS (serious) Hey, man, I know you! You're a carpenter if I were you I'd be aSHAMED (where are my tools) I AM TRYING TO TELL YOU YOUR FACE CHANGED in the night 2.0 I reach out feel around in the dark later left elbow purple bruise lights out haunted not answering door no one CRAZY enough to risk appearing to feel my disease It will get you and it's never what you think it will be It will get you and it's never what you think it will be no MEN will decide (JOKE)
 

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/60/Topeng_Bali.jpg

Various Balinese Topeng (dance masks), Taman Mini Indonesia Indah, Jakarta
: photo by Gunawan Kartapranata, 2009


There is an unconscious propriety in the way in which, in all European languages, the word person is commonly used to denote a human being. The real meaning of persona is a mask, such as actors were accustomed to wear on the ancient stage; and it is quite true that no one shows himself as he is, but wears his mask and plays his part. Indeed, the whole of our social arrangements may be likened to a perpetual comedy; and this is why a man who is worth anything finds society so insipid, while a blockhead is quite at home in it.
 
Arthur Schopenhauer: Psychological Observations, from Studies in Pessimism in Parerga und Paralipomena, 1851 (translated by Thomas Bailey Saunders)
 

The powers of the dead are only strong when the lights are out* (*joke)

Embedded image permalink

nights like this I become afraid of the darkness in my heart #halloween: image via Drew Patrick @drewpatrick143, 30 October 2014

The moon to the left of me
is a part of my thoughts
is a part of me is me

one never does that

in the night I am real
in the night I am real

The moon to the left of me
is a part of my thoughts
is a part of me is me

Wherever is the wind
is a part of my thoughts
is a part of me is me

In the night I am real
 
*

Forever is the wind
to the left of me
is a part of my thoughts
is a part of me is me

I don't want my
fangs too long

If you have ghosts
then you have everything
 
--Roky Erickson: from If you have ghosts

... behind the mask, nights like this: all the clocks have stopped, am I real, am I alive?



Detroit, Michigan. Several dead bodies were found in the cellar of this former high-class brothel: photo by Seph Lawless via the Guardian, 30 October 2014

and all that dross bogus TREAT-BAG CULT VOID underworld of adorer
followers in no space a BROken WINdow little man crushed
instead of a SELF a bottle of WINdex blue spray WITH THE FINGER OF NO MAN
extant in the AEROSOL YOUNIVERSE supposing every past action of yours
and anyone's trivial why were you alive wanting everything to gratify HALF
and astound the other my I want ADORER TIC kicking in your BROken
WINdow O ver and O ver a TICKing trick no treat the easy after the hard
the painful the history after the math the reverb of the primal the inner
the outer as my SHELF en LARGEs you can fit MORE BOOKS (serious) Hey, man, I know you!
You're a carpenter if I were you I'd be aSHAMED (where are my tools)
I AM TRYING TO TELL YOU YOUR FACE CHANGED in the night 2.0
I reach out feel around in the dark later left elbow purple bruise lights
out haunted not answering door no one CRAZY enough to risk appearing
to feel my disease It will get you and it's never what you think it will be
It will get you and it's never what you think it will be no MEN will decide (JOKE)
 
 


Michigan Central Station: photo by Yves Marchand and Romain Meffre, from The Ruins of Detroit (Steidl), 2010

Melted clock, Cass Technical High School

Melted clock, Cass Technical High School: photo by Yves Marchand and Romain Meffre, from The Ruins of Detroit (Steidl), 2010

Room 1504, Lee Plaza Hotel


Room 1504, Lee Plaza Hotel
: photo by Yves Marchand and Romain Meffre, from The Ruins of Detroit (Steidl), 2010

Packard Motors Plant

Packard Motors Plant
: photo by Yves Marchand and Romain Meffre, from The Ruins of Detroit (Steidl), 2010


I Am Alive: graffiti at "The Ridges", aka Athens Lunatic Asylum (formerly Athens State Hospital, in operation 1874-1993), Athens, Ohio: photo by Tyler McSheehy (ShockMeAwake), 9 June 2013

SementeryoMoments (If you have ghosts)

 

The Ridges: Lin Hall Underground. Graffiti found in the tunnels under main building
at "The Ridges", aka Athens Lunatic Asylum (formerly Athens State Hospital, in operation 1874-1993), Athens, Ohio: photo by stimply, 12 May 2009



The "Ridges" cemetery, former Ohio State Asylum for the Insane, (operated 1874-1993), Athens, Ohio.This cemetery at the Ridges in Athens was used until 1913 as a final resting place for deceased patients of the Athens Lunatic Asylum whose families failed to claim their bodies. Grave sites were mostly numbered, though a few bear names.The "Ridges" cemetery gravestones were laid out in straight lines, with the exception of the northeast corner of the cemetery where you will find a circle of graves. The cemeteries were vulnerable to vandals for many years. Some believe witches created the circle to hold seances inside of it, others speculate that it was a prank by college students: photo by Todd Bender (holysniki), 9 November 2008



Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. An abandoned mansion: photo by Seph Lawless via the Guardian,
30 October 2014
 

Full moon rising above "The Ridges" (former Athens Lunatic Asylum, Athens, Ohio): photo by Mdombroski, 18 January 2079




Houston, Texas. A former bed and breakfast where a number of people are said to have been killed: photo by Seph Lawless via the Guardian,
30 October 2014



Full moon above "The Ridges" (former Athens Lunatic Asylum, Athens, Ohio): photo by Mdombroski, 18 January 2079


SPL836825_001
 
Cyrus shock ... On Saturday night after Alexander Wang's spring '15 show, the designer held a top-secret after party at a Brooklyn warehouse, where he and his friends had pretty wild time, including Miley Cyrus, wearing nothing but nipple covers!: photo by AKM-GSI / Splash News, 8 September 2014

Miley Cyrus
 
Cyrus shock ... On Saturday night after Alexander Wang's spring '15 show, the designer held a top-secret after party at a Brooklyn warehouse, where he and his friends had pretty wild time, including Miley Cyrus, wearing nothing but nipple covers!: photo by AKM-GSI / Splash News, 8 September 2014

Embedded image permalink

Mapapatingala ka nalang sa sobrang taas ng puntod ng bibisitahin mo #SementeryoMoments: image via kaka @Wizkhalifa, 30 October 2014



and all that dross bogus TREAT-BAG CULT VOID underworld of adorer
followers in no space a BROken WINdow little man crushed
instead of a SELF a bottle of WINdex blue spray WITH THE FINGER OF NO MAN
extant in the AEROSOL YOUNIVERSE supposing every past action of yours
and anyone's trivial why were you alive wanting everything to gratify HALF
and astound the other my I want ADORER TIC kicking in your BROken
WINdow O ver and O ver a TICKing trick no treat the easy after the hard
the painful the history after the math the reverb of the primal the inner
the outer as my SHELF en LARGEs you can fit MORE BOOKS (serious) Hey, man, I know you!
You're a carpenter if I were you I'd be aSHAMED (where are my tools)
I AM TRYING TO TELL YOU YOUR FACE CHANGED in the night 2.0
I reach out feel around in the dark later left elbow purple bruise lights
out haunted not answering door no one CRAZY enough to risk appearing
to feel my disease It will get you and it's never what you think it will be
It will get you and it's never what you think it will be no MEN will decide (JOKE)




Toledo, Ohio. Locals suspected the owner practised witchcraft: photo by Seph Lawless via the Guardian,
30 October 2014


and still no sign of the damn cable guy... 
 




RCA Victor. "We got to move these color TVs..." Keeler, California: photo by Jody Miller, 31 March 2014 

... unless... wait... could this be him?
 


Noctilucent Night by @MikkoLagerstedt #Halloween: image via 500px 500@px, 30 October 2014

8 comments:

TC said...

Roky Erickson: If You Have Ghosts

John Wesley Harding: If You Have Ghosts, 1990 (from Where The Pyramid Meets the Eye: Roky Erickson covers LP)

John Wesley Harding and the Good Liars: If You Have Ghosts (Roky Erickson cover -- music video)

Anonymous said...

love this piece and pictures.......I agree with that reasoning about masks...how much life do those old rooms and places keep!

Hazen said...

At some point, some moment marked by no one, that no one noticed and no one held to account . . . every night became Fright Night; Halloween is now that one lone night in the year when we can pretend The Fear is not real, that the horror we created will, like some terrifying movie, soon be over; a time when we’ll assure ourselves that we’re in control of our emotions (and all else), that we know what we’re doing—when the truth is, we don’t know shit from imported Shinola. To my mind, the most haunting of images by far is not here but from yesterday’s post: the cutline reads “Challenges of Poverty” and shows life (?) in a Freetown slum built on garbage; the whole fetid, gray, decaying mass spills and oozes outward, the foundation slewing and crumbling and collapsing toward the viewer. This is what our culture of organized hysteria has produced.

TC said...

Those old houses and rooms hold a lot of life -- and death.

Hazen, I'm still reluctantly returning to that Freetown photo, which has been bothering me awhile, too -- that slimy grey midden, in lieu of a foundation. Always an eye out for alternative solutions, here, as the winter rains begin and the buckling landfill hillside resumes its inexorable declension; and there's the grim answer, you erect your dwelling on garbage and sewage, perhaps the only building materials both free and in virtually unlimited supply -- until, of course, you die, which is the likely immediate future of whoever it is unfortunate enough to inhabit that appalling dwelling close to the epicentre of the terrible epidemic.

Halloween every night in Sierra Leone, here only once a year, the fairy princesses with the cautious parents timidly braving the perilous pedestrian crossing of the freeway feeder, then a little later the brash middle schoolers, still in slack shirt-tails from schoolday, "costumed" in dad's tie slung loosely round neck (casual business pirate look?), ambling through streets with plastic trash bags, collecting death sugar booty.

Anonymous said...

and life may be also in death...

Mose23 said...

We're in a world full of Schopenhauer's blockheads now.

Detroit is the American city I've always compared with my hometown. Built on the same industries, I suppose.

"...the universe existed as a dream of itself..."

erin said...

a conversation at work hallowe'en day - what are you afraid of? the ladies giving answers that made them literally shiver, real answers for them, real fears, the dark, strange sounds, hauntings. the ladies were already rolling their eyes because i was present and they were about to ask me. i'm not afraid of anything like that, i said. nothing? they asked, incredulous. not like that, i said, but rather environmental devastation, cruelty, what people manage to do to other people.

oh, they shouldn't have asked. at least that is what their masks, hardened into grimaces, told me.

on a lighter note, we had a foot of snow on hallowe'en. each trick or treater who braved the cold was costumed like a canadian child - whatever they were pretending to be was buried deep beneath their winter coats, so that essentially people simply knocked on doors and held out flimsy plastic bags or pillow cases. somehow the honesty of this warmed me.

xo
erin

TC said...

Many thanks to all. And okay, I'll take that offer, Halloween in Chile, even Detroit or Birmingham if need be, or snowy North Ontario, as long as we all get to come as we, the living.

It's the oddest sort of festive holiday really -- the meaning seeming a bit more complicated with each passing year (inevitable no doubt, as the mind along with the year and everything else goes...)

As a big city child during the early Mesozoic, I was encouraged by what it seems would now be called "context" to regard Halloween as a time of ultimate licence, when one did even more outrageously destructive things than the common garden variety destructive things.

In the proper pagan spirit I suppose, though I've never heard of any pagan ragamuffins inspired by a comparable level of pure antisocial rudeness.

Now the "meaning" of the "holiday" seems irrevocably detached from the idea of "fun", but that, again, would be the case strictly within the obscure geriatric perimeter of the immediate here and now.

Where, it appears, all momentary local understandings quickly expand into the blurry cosmic universal, and the joy never ceases.