Directory of Lost Causes (By Quentin S. Crisp)

Thought For the Day

First published on Opera, Fri 23rd Apr, 2004.

I spoke to a friend of mine on the phone recently, and he asked if I was still putting my diary up at Terror Tales. I informed him that I had given that up, that although my message board remained, my Opera weblog - this one here - had taken over the role of diary. However, I went on, I wasn't really posting much in the way of events in my daily life and so on, but was leaning more towards the dog-collared vicar in a swivel chair with a cup of tea on late night TV, giving his 'Thought for the Day.' In fact, I enjoyed this impromptu fantasy so much - I've always wanted to wear a dog collar - that I decided it must happen. If someone out there has the power to make it happen, then get in touch with me NOW at nopperabor@hotmail.com.




And now, dearly beloved, my thought for the day... I happened to be watching the television the other day when I tuned into a programme which went by the title of "The End of the Story" or some such thing. It was a competition. A number of successful authors had penned the beginnings to some short stories, and the viewer was invited to finish the story of his or her choice. Representing the horror genre we had that great... er... stalwart Shaun Hutson, author of such edifying works as Slugs and More Slugs and, Yet More Slugs, These Ones Even More Horrible Than the Last. As I listened to the voice of this great luminary of literature, it came to me that this was the very man upon whom Garth Marenghi was based, and not, as I had suspected, myself. Shaun read out that characteristic prose of his, as sharp as a potato, his voice containing all the drama and intelligence of such great orators as David Beckham, or, dare I say it, George Bush. "Slugs is what I would call classical horror," he droned. Ah yes, classical horror! You mean, when great conductors find themselves up against an army of carnivorous slugs with nothing other than their batons and the works of Mozart to preserve them? And I thought to myself, "Is this man talking bollocks, or what? The slug is in the garden, God is in his Heaven, Shaun Hutson is a 'successful' and professional writer and 'master' of the horror genre, and all is right with the world!"

Are You Morbid?

First published on Opera, Fri 23rd Apr, 2004.

I come bearing tidings. The time for the release of my second collection of short stories is at hand. The collection is called Morbid Tales and will be published by Tartarus Press. The cover artwork can now be viewed at their website, and, in fact, in this journal entry, I hope.




I had some trouble with the title of the collection. I wanted to call it "You Put the Dirty Pictures in My Head!", but this was judged unsuitable, along with a number of other titles I devised. Eventually I drew up a list of about thirty or forty titles and this one, that I had put in more or less as a joke, was the one that was chosen. I say 'joke,' but it's very much an in-joke. The title is a reference to a mini-album by the seminal death metal band Celtic Frost, which was called Morbid Tales. There was also a song of the same title on their next mini-album, Emperor's Return. I say 'song,' but I'm using the word very loosely. I don't think there was ever much singing involved. There is a refrain in the song that goes, "Are you morbid?" and this will probably be the quote used in the front of the collection. What does it mean? Search me! Maybe it's a warning not to enter if you are unprepared. Maybe it's a riddle asking you to ponder whether what you believe to be the author's morbidity is in fact your own. Or maybe it's just a silly quote I put in on a whim.


In other news, a new story of mine is now up on the website Gothic Fairy Tales. The story is called 'The Temple' and can be found here.

Just one more question: Are you morbid?


PS - Since I posted this entry I remembered that a book launch for Morbid Tales is dues to be held at Fantasy Centre Bookshop on Holloway Road on the fourth of June, from six o'clock to seven thirty. If your answer to the question heading this entry is 'Yes,' then you might want to come along and pur-chase a copy. Signed, of course.


PPS. ATTENTION, ALL YOU MORBID ONES! THIS NOTICE HAS BEEN ADDED ON THE FIFTH OF JUNE, 2004:


Well, it's saturday the fifth of June. Last night there was a morbid book launch for Morbid Tales at Fantasy Centre on Holloway Road. And a morbid time was had by all...


But it occurred to me that I'm really not doing enough to ... er... promote myself, and my great new album, I mean book, Morbid Tales. Kills 99% of all known household germs.


Anyway, if you were foolish enough not to come to the book launch, don't hang yourself from the nearest rafter JUST YET. Because not only will there be another signing, in Twickenham, but I shall also be reading from MORBID TALES. And it's free, and there'll be booze. What more do you want? Come on and do something NEW... and morbid.


Insert these details into your memory banks:


As part of the Twickenham Festival, the author Quentin S. Crisp will be signing copies of and reading from his new collection, MORBID TALES.


Thursday the 17th of June. I quote from the official Twickenham Festival leaflet:


"MEET QUENTIN S CRISP
7.30pm The Bookstore, King Street
Quentin S Crisp will be reading from his new collection of short stories, Morbid Tales.
Free, but booking essential.
Call on 020 8744 3030"


Good night and thank you!

Not Waving, But Drowning

First published on Opera, Sat 17th Apr, 2004.

I watched a fascinating documentary this evening, on BBC2, about Hokusai's famous painting, The Great Wave off Kanagawa.




I missed the first half of it, but from where I turned on, the commentator was explaining how the Great Wave is an early example of a fractal. This fact apparently showed Hokusai's great understanding of the natural world. A physics professor gave his view of the painting as expressing something akin to chaos theory, the unstable interconnectedness of all things, in the midst of which we live precariously, as on a wave.


Towards the end there were others - an artist who had painted a version of the Great Wave as a mural in Camberwell, for instance - who expressed the view that the painting now signified something of the anxiety of our times, that a wave might come out of nowhere, some terrible catastrophe, and wipe us all from existence forever. Followers of this journal - if such a being exists - will well understand why this programme fascinated me. The wave is coming alright. It's going to be a big one.


After watching the documentary I switched channel. There was nothing much on. I eventually settled on one of the music channels, which for me is what I have heard called 'irritainment', that is, something that irritates you and that you still watch for the sake of entertainment. I find the hegemony of heterosexuality in the music videos utterly tedious and nauseating. If the Great Wave will only wash away the self-congratulation and self-love of yawn-worthy egomaniacs like Beyonce and Justin Timberlake, then bring it on!

Life on Mars?

First published on Opera Mon 12 Apr, 2004

Speaking of ennui... In 1971, David Bowie sung perhaps the ultimate ballad of ennui, Life on Mars?, in which he lamented in a tremulous voice the fact that, after however many millennia of evolution, all we can boast of as a species are vacuous scenes of 'Sailors fighting in the dancehall', and 'The lawman, beating up the wrong guy', and eventually, in despair, he wails out, "Is there life on Mars?" The implication, of course, is that there's no life worth speaking of down here.




I've been thinking of this song recently because those involved in the space programme, and many others besides, now have a very literal interest in the answer to that question. Both British and American missions have been sent to Mars to try and discover signs of life, although the chances are that those signs will be of microscopic life that died out millennia ago. But what if there is life on Mars? What if the question that Bowie wailed rhetorically over thirty years ago turned out to be yes? Would that in some way alleviate the vacuousness of life back here on Earth?




Thinking about this question I quite naturally remember an interview with Thomas Ligotti that made me chuckle to myself. Thomas Ligotti, for those who don't know, is considered by many to be the greatest living writer of horror and the natural successor to Poe and Lovecraft. Ligotti has stated in interviews that his basic position is that "it's a damned shame that intelligent life ever evolved in the first place." I'm not sure if that's verbatim. Here is the quote that made me chuckle: 'On the subject of intelligent lifeforms existing in other precints of the universe, I just don't care one way or the other. I can't bring myself to feel that it makes any difference. I remember my youngest brother saying something funny about this subject. He's a big sports fan and as a way of expressing his devotion to football he remarked that if an alien landing were being televised on one channel and Monday Night Football was on another channel, he would watch the football game and tape the alien landing. I think that I'd probably watch the alien landing because I'm not a football fan and there aren't any decent tv shows on Monday. I do remember being disheartened to learn that there might exist some form of organic life below the glacial surface of one of the moons of Jupiter. "There goes another perfectly good wasteland pure of the agitations of creaturely existence," I thought to myself in a mood of relative detachment.'




It's not just Mars where scientists are looking for intelligent life, however. Radio telescopes, as I understand, are combing all quarters of space for any signals that could possibly have an artificial source, signifying intelligent life. So far no such signals have been found, which doesn't look good for those hoping to experience any kind of close encounters. One theory put forward as to why no signals have been found, and why we have not received visits from alien ambassadors, is that, quite simply, self-destruction is built into the very concept of civilisation (or intelligent life). That is, complex civilisation requires a vast expenditure of resources to support. Perhaps planetary civilisations automatically collapse in the process of what is known as globalisation. Perhaps no one has EVER got to the stage of interstellar travel and never will do.


If you want further evidence to support this, try reading the New Scientist when you get a chance. It's a good place to keep up to date with environmental developments, too. For instance, I have just been reading that surveys of wildlife suggest we could be on the brink of a great extinction. Such extinctions have happened, as far as we know, five times in the history of Earth. We seem to be headed for the sixth. Needless to say, one of those extinctions was the dinosaurs. Perhaps we will soon be joining them.


All this rather leads me to feel that Ligotti is right, and that, if there's really nowhere for us to go in this universe, then it is just a damned shame that intelligent life ever evolved in the first place. At the moment I can only think of one other way of looking at it... A Daoist way.


Somewhere in some Daoist text there is a passage that says when human beings follow 'the way' the smoke will rise straight up from the chimneys in the villages, and the people there will be happy to live from birth to death never knowing what lies in the next village. Maybe, rather than wasting our resources on space travel and other such attempts at progress, attempts always to get to the next village and the next, we should just be happy in the village where we are. If we survive at all, that might be our best option.

My Policy

First published on Opera, Tue 6th Apr, 2004

As I sit upon my dizzyingly high throne of ennui and gaze out across the seething hordes of the human race, I sigh to myself. Really, what is there to say? And who would hear me above this din, anyway? They're far too intent on tearing each other's throats out. So, I suppose I'll just mutter a few things to myself here, to pass the time, even though those things may well not have any relevance to anything. Ennui is so difficult to express directly. It is hinted at in sighs and gestures between words.


I think I mentioned having trouble with one of the fractals I posted a link to earlier. I thought it best that I should explain my policy on this, and, in the meantime, also explain why the content of my weblog might shift in such a way that its continuity is disrupted, references being made to images that are not there, and so on.


It went like this... I wanted images of worms, and so entered the word 'worms', into the Google search engine. I was fascinated to find a fractal called 'Can-o-Worms', since fractals have been such an influence on my novel The Sex Life of Worms. I posted a link to that fractal. The link went on the blink. In the meantime, in my next post, I used images of more fractals. At least one of the images I linked to jammed my link, sending a message instead of the image. The message said something like, "No direct links!" Later, a similar message appeared in place of the blinky 'Can-o-Worms'. I had spent a great deal of time in setting up these posts, researching the images and so on. I heaved a great weary sigh to find I had to edit these entries yet again. Why do these sites feel they have to block 'hotlinking,' as it appears to be called? Are they part of the internet, or aren't they? Let's look at the word 'internet'. It appears to mean 'a network created by interlinking'. And they are shunning the very principle on which this is built. Personally, I want people to link to my part of the internet.


Okay, so they're worried about copyright, being ripped off, and so on. I understand these worries. I am a writer. I don't want people to pass of my work as their own - god knows I came very close to that experience recently. However, anyone who is interested can tell where a hotlink has come from. Just put your cursor arrow over it and it will give you the URL. Failing that, right-click it and then click 'open image'. All the images in my blog are 'electronically tagged' with the address of their copyright. I am not using them commercially. I am not trying to pass them off as my own. And then, there's something else... If these people only said on their sites, "Please do not use these images without permission", then I would respect that request, but I rarely find any site in which the owner bothers to state their policy. In case anyone's interested, 'Can-o-Worms' came from a site called Fractal Domain, the URL is in my list of links. There are some great fractals there.


Anyway, when I was looking for a replacement for 'Can-o-Worms', I found a great fractal site called 'Maria's Fractal Explorer Gallery.' I liked these fractals even more than the ones at Fractal Domain, even though there wasn't a wormy theme anywhere in sight. I also noticed that, joy of joys, Maria stated her policy thus: "All fractals and spot files are free for non-commercial use. Please ask me if you wish to use any of my work for commercial use." I thought to myself, "I love this person!" Tell me your policy and I will respect it! Even though I did not wish to use any of her images commercially, I wrote for her permission anyway, because I appreciated this so much. The URL for her site is in my list of links.


"Wouldn't it be nice," I thought to myself, "if the whole world were like that, if a person could simply state their policy and everyone else would respect it?" Much as I hate to sound supercilious or self-righteous, if everyone was like me, the world would be like that. What a wonderful world that would be!


I suppose I should cast around now for something to stop me feeling superior. Well, one thing is, I suppose, that I haven't really stated my own policy in my weblog. Unfortunately, I'm only really borrowing this space on the internet from Opera, and I don't know enough about how it works to put my policy in a prominent place, so I shall write it here instead, as follows: IF THERE IS ANY STRANGE PERSON OUT THERE WHO WISHES TO USE ANY OF THE TEXT I HAVE WRITTEN HERE, WHICH IS COPYRIGHT TO ME BY THE VERY ACT OF MY WRITING IT, PLEASE CREDIT THE QUOTE TO ME. IF YOU WISH TO USE THE TEXT COMMERCIALLY, PLEASE GET IN TOUCH WITH ME FIRST (nopperabor@hotmail.com). NONE OF THE IMAGES HERE ARE COPYRIGHT TO ME.


Well, not that I have to worry too much about people stealing my text...


Now, to change the subject entirely... Being the writer and philologist that I am, I subscribe to an e-mail group called A-Word-a-Day, and, although for a long time I have found little that really inspired me, recently I was sent two words of particular interest. Here is the first:


resistentialism (ri-zis-TEN-shul-iz-um) noun


The theory that inanimate objects demonstrate hostile behavior against us.


[Coined by humorist Paul Jennings as a blend of the Latin res (thing)+ French resister (to resist) + existentialism (a kind of philosophy).]


If you ever get a feeling that the photocopy machine can sense when you're tense, short of time, need a document copied before an important meeting, and right then it decides to take a break, you're not alone. Now you know the word for it. Here's a report of scientific experiments confirming the validity of this theory:


Completely valid and serious scientific experiment


Well, I've certainly had experience of resistentialism. It's even something of a theme in my novella, The Haunted Bicycle. Perhaps resistentialism should be divided into general resistentialism, and the more pernicious form of animistic, pantheistic, or possibly synchronicitous resistentialism, which emphasises the conspiracy aspect of the theory, that not only objects, but events and the universe generally, are conspiring against you. I've certainly been getting that feeling a lot of late. Searching for literary agents, I find myself taking arms against a sea of rejections, to mix metaphors in the Shakespearian manner. But that's not all - I suppose I feel that... but why put it into words? I am misunderstood. There's little doubt of that in my mind. When people like me, it makes me uneasy. I know I am headed for a fall. In the playground the shame of being misunderstood, the constant, head-hanging ache of it, was nothing other than what I was and where I lived. It shouldn't surprise me that I return here so often in adult life, that I still, all too often, find events conspiring to place me on The Outside.


When I first started this blog, I also started another one with Live Journal simultaneously. But the resistentialism of Live Journal was such that I never managed to post more than one entry on it, and gave it up. However, there was one feature of Live Journal that I liked. (Actually, no, I didn't like it at the time). Anyway, there was one feature that I wish Opera had. There were boxes for each journal entry in which you would write 'current music' and 'current mood.' I would like to combine the two now, by expressing my current mood with a quote from my current (or it has been current, anyway) music. From 'For the Dead,' by Gene: "Everyone's just walking away from me. Am I really that nasty?"


Now for the second word:


petrichor (PET-ri-kuhr) noun


The pleasant smell that accompanies the first rain after a dry spell.


[From petro- (rock), from Greek petros (stone) + ichor (the fluid that is supposed to flow in the veins of the gods in Greek mythology). Coined by researchers I.J. Bear and R.G. Thomas.]


"Petrichor, the name for the smell of rain on dry ground, is from oils given off by vegetation, absorbed onto neighboring surfaces, and released into the air after a first rain."


Matthew Bettelheim; Nature's Laboratory; Shasta Parent (Mt Shasta, California); Jan 2002.


First we have the pain, then the consolation. The smell of rain on a hot pavement (or rock) is one of my favourite - call me Julie Andrews - things in the whole world. Now I know that name for it. But then I began to think, it's not just the smell that I enjoy. It's the sound and the feel of it, too. Maybe there should be aural petrichor, or petrichor gooseflesh.


I was also reminded of a passage from one of my favourite stories, 'Quiet Rain', by Nagai Kafu. I will copy out a passage here, from Edward Seidensticker's translation:


"The rain beating against the window, flowing from the eaves, dripping from the trees, pouring over the bamboo thicket, is a stronger agent to move men's hearts than is the wind moaning in the trees or water roaring down a mountain valley. The voice of the wind is an angry one, and the voice of the water a wail. The voice of the rain does not rage and does not complain. It but speaks, pleads. Human emotions are forever unchanging; and who, alone in bed listening to the rain, is not moved to sadness? Who, in particular, when he is ill?"

Momus Interview (By Quentin S. Crisp)

Hello. This will just be a brief post. If you have already read my journal thus far you will know that I have already interviewed Momus and that the interview is already online. However, it is now in its proper setting, which is Terror Tales Issue Two: Fuck Horror. That's the end of this announcement.

Every Inch a Mammal

First published on Opera Mon 29th Mar, 2004.

Well, on Saturday the day started with me getting some post from a literary agency to whom I had sent a manuscript. They had sent it back. With a rejection letter. Par for the course, really, but I couldn’t help being upset somehow, and dreaming of revenge. I find those standard rejection letters hypocritical and sniffy. I can’t help thinking that what they’re really saying is, “So you think you’re a writer, do you? Do you, eh?” But maybe I’m just paranoid?????


Anyway, later I went off into London and a pub just off Trafalgar Square for the monthly convening of a meeting with certain writing – and drinking – associates. Then it was off to meet another friend of mine and go with him to The Young Vic, where we were to see a play. Before doing that, we grabbed a bite to eat together and I told him about the latest news in the world of would-be freelance writer Quentin S Crisp, which is to say, news of the latest person who has been trying to fuck me over. I won’t go into details here.


Recently, and particularly on Saturday, I have found a certain song by Morrissey hovering vaguely about my consciousness. In fact, I’ve been in something of a Morrissey mood generally. Anyway, the song in question is Why Don’t You Find Out For Yourself, from the album Vauxhall and I, and it has become something of a favourite of mine. Here are the lyrics:


Why Don't You Find Out For Yourself


The sanest days are mad

why don't you find out for yourself

then you'll see the price

very closely

some men here

they have a special interest

in your career

they wanna help you to grow

then syphon all your dough

why don't you find out for yourself

then you'll see the glass

hidden in the grass

you'll never believe me, so

why don't you find out for yourself

sick down to my heart

that's just the way it goes

some men here

they know the full extent of

your distress

they kneel and pray

and they say:

"long may it last"

why don't you find out for yourself

then you'll see the glass

hidden in the grass

bad scenes come and go

for which you must allow

sick down to my heart

that's just the way it goes

Don't rake up my mistakes

I know exactly what they are

and...what do YOU do?

well...you just SIT THERE

I've been stabbed in the back

so many many times

I don't have any skin

but that's just the way it goes




What’s interesting about this song – you probably can’t tell just from the lyrics – is that, despite the fact the subject matter is, on the surface, quite dry, and possibly difficult to relate to – it seems to be about the dirty shenanigans that go on behind the scenes in the music world and in the world of the rich and famous generally – it packs an emotional punch of the kind more usually associated with some plangent love song.


I’m not famous, but I have devoted a great deal of energy to an endeavour – namely writing – whose success is often measured by the level of fame of the practitioner. Even in my limited experience, I have encountered enough ‘behind the scenes’ stuff to become ‘sick down to my heart’ now and then. More than anything, I have the impression that to have any kind of artistic vision, any kind of dream, any vestige of integrity, is to be in a very lonely position in this world of apathy, shabbiness and idiocy. This is a world in which ‘professionalism’ is the highest virtue, in which publishers remind us again and again that ‘this is a business’ as if to rub the artist’s nose in the fact that even here the artistic sensibility and artistic principles are regarded as risible. And what do these publishers do? Well, they just sit there, on their fat arses, knowing full well that it’s a buyer’s market, not giving a toss about talent or originality or art, just waiting for the next fly to stick to the web of formula that they have already woven to feed their bellies. Tell me it isn’t so!


Anyway, we then proceeded to The Young Vic to watch our play. The play in question was The Skin of Our Teeth by Thornton Wilder. In the programme I picked up afterwards the play is described thus: “[Wilder] creates, in The Skin of Our Teeth, a theatrical treadmill of entrapment for the Antrobus family, facing the end of time again and again, until we realise that the human race is perpetually caught in crises, but also perpetually surviving.” Well, I don’t know about the “perpetually surviving” bit. Yes and no. We don’t ,necessarily survive, but we have done so far. I did enjoy the play very much. Recently I have been reading The Purple Cloud by M.P. Shiel, about the last man on Earth after the rest of the human race have been wiped out by a purple cloud of poisonous gas. I have been reading this, I suppose, as I kind of mental rehearsal for catastrophe. In this book there is a lone that goes, “…nothing could be more appallingly insecure than living on a planet.” And that’s very much the feeling I got from the Wilder play, too. However, in total effect I did not find it depressing. It seemed to be saying, “Things have always been like this. All we have is now, and all we can do is try, even knowing that we’re going round and round in circles from existence to oblivion and back again.”


This disanthropocentric view of cosmic insecurity was expressed early on in man’s struggle to evolve, and had Mr. Antrobus elected as president of the Mammal Party. Some of his rivals had accused him of wavering in his convictions in the past. Apparently, before he was born he had vacillated between ‘fin and scale’ or some such thing, before finally becoming Mammalian. Indira Varma – who I note with interest has also appeared in a film called Kama Sutra – played an ambitious maid, giving it a bit of the old Monroe happy-birthday-Mr.President here and there. And one of the highlights for me was when she did a vaudeville turn in honour of the new president, singing such lines as “You could have been winged like a beetle/You could have been exoskeleetal” and “You make me feel so mammalian”. I suppose that there were reminders for me – as I veer off into my invertebrate, worm-holed alien realms – that amidst all this cosmic insecurity I am still mammalian myself, and – kind of – human. Indira Varma was one of those reminders, I must say, making my feel, yes, very mammalian.




But I also recognised myself in Mr. Antrobus’ son, Henry, who it is intimated is actually Kane of ‘Kane and Abel’ fame. I didn’t like the character much to begin with, but when he rebels against his father, the president of the Mammals, I felt my own misanthropy, my will to say ‘no’ instead of ‘yes’, my thirst for revenge, embodied there.


I don’t know what I really want to say about all this ultimately, just that all of these thoughts somehow became associated with each other in my head. Hatred of the human race, and yet anxiety that it might end. Loneliness. Acceptance. Hope. Disappointment. It goes on and on, as the delectable Indira Varma reminded us at the end, when the play came back to its beginning again. It was time for us to go home, but really the play was still going on.