Directory of Lost Causes (By Quentin S. Crisp)

The Sex Life of Worms (Episode Three: The Jangling Rejection of the Seals)

As I contemplated her horizontal trance of twisting – slow, pink, glistening, blind – I was aware of two unusual reactions in myself. First was a comparative lack of the usual relief at escaping the vile burden of pregnancy, that consuming catalyst of replication inside. I had known from the start that my opponent would not put up a sufficient fight to inseminate me, so, for all that our copulation had been rich in many unusual elements, it had been lacking in the suspense of competition. Second was a revival of the cold feeling that had flushed through me when I first noticed this creature. I believe there are fixed word compounds to describe this feeling, but I would prefer to describe it afresh with words of my own. It was a kind of reaching out of my emotions, just as my senses reach out. The pathetic state of my victim somehow moved me as if I were viewing myself. And yet the very fact this was another being, infinitely and eternally removed from my understanding, only made this emotion sharper, more exquisite, and harder to endure. Soon as it had come, though, this feeling burst like a bubble. The attainment of purple was yet a long way off. My self-imposed labour had only just begun.

* * * * *

The next stage of my labour consisted of tracking the thing I had made she to her abode. I withdrew from her slug-bloated, vanquished form, which already seemed to teem with the inner-hatching of odious life, like the multiplying bubbles from the mouth of a dying crustacean. Still bedraggled with her acrid discharges, I hid behind some ornamental stalagmites and waited. At length, as if returning from the swampy realms of some I-dissolving, temporary death, a suggestion of focused awareness informed her flops and twitches and she raised herself to an upright position. I say upright, but there was something bowed about her, as if with the weight of her new burden. She swayed a little, seemingly still dazed. With her senses disordered, she did not seem to be aware of my presence. In an attitude of infinite defeat and infinite resignation, she continued on her way, her wriggle full of the same snags that had first caught my attention and which had made her so painfully appealing.

I gave her a considerable head-start. There was no chance of me mistaking her slime-trail. When eventually I did start on that trail, I thought again of the other, metaphysical trail I followed. At some point it had become a little clearer to me, but I still could not trace it to its final destination. That was only as it should be. Perhaps, though, there was no way ahead at all. I was simply taking those turnings which seemed to have about them the deepest glow of purple.

The slime-trail left the old side-burrow and came out on the fringes of a brightly lit commercial district. At first I was disorientated by this sudden shift from soft-hued gloom to dazzling white light. My antennae recoiled and my gills shrivelled. Even when my senses adjusted a little, the activities of the worms to-and-froing in the semi-plaza before me seemed utterly incomprehensible. They descended on the space from long ramps, from bore-holes and wynds, all partaking of the anonymity of elsewhere which was their source. After an interval, rationalisations for their various occupations seeped into my brain; this worm was being re-hydrated, that worm was composing odours at an odour-lamp, this other worm was milking acid glands. Still I reared dumb before this civilised multiplicity, unbounded and undefined by any future as the past is defined by the present. Over all this was impendent a trade and leisure complex of polyhedron cells in three-dimensional tessellation, like a chunk of metal honeycomb that had crashed into the earth. I felt weak and palsied, a mere creature of the caves, suspended amidst nameless things. Does no other feel this way, I wonder, when suddenly confronted with the solid mass of the present?



Taking hold of myself again I remembered my personal mission. I realised that if the she-thing had taken some form of transport from here, particularly if it had been a slime pod, that I might lose the trail. I discovered with some satisfaction, however, that the trail did not even enter the semi-plaza. Instead it smeared off to the left into a ribbed gallery that led eventually to a residential excavation.

The slushy trail was unbroken right to my victim’s apartments. They were of the ambient grotto variety. I reared before an iris-membrane portal in brightly-lit, metal-encased tunnels, surprised that such a malformed creature should inhabit apartments in such a respectable area. Clearly she was a worm of reasonable social status. I could only think that my inference with regard to her exceptional intelligence had been correct. I noted the exact location of these apartments, as well as the date according to sidereal time, and, my business there, for the time being, at an end, I slithered off back to the commercial district I had recently passed.

* * * * *

As I did so I pondered the question of light. When worms are capable of functioning in semi and total darkness, have for the vast bulk of their history, in fact, existed without bright light, what can be the meaning of the modern craze for bathing public spaces in clinical white light? Clearly, any benefits are aesthetic rather than practical. Some worms remind us knowingly that white contains all other colours, implying that it represents the synthesis of all worm thought and experience. I have even heard that some worms have become loath to stray from the light-saturated central areas of Frfrspfshuul. It seems this light gives worms a sense of security, the symbol of our enlightened age. Is this why the memorial of Yqstlss in the Hall of Philosophy is also brightly lit, despite the fact that such lighting would have been unknown to the Grand Philosopharch when shi-he was alive? For myself, I am neither opposed to nor overly fond of the use of white light. I would just like to note that while it makes others feel secure, it makes me feel rootless and alienated.

This feeling bore down on me with some intensity when I arrived back at the semi-plaza and raised my head to take in the great architectural vug of the trade and leisure complex. A rotten hunger had got into me after my exertions. It is at such times of anonymous physicality that I feel most literary. Moments that are lost as soon as they arise. Moments without posterity. Moments of pure waste. Moments such as the allaying of hunger with food, completing a trivial business transaction, feeling the slime of another congeal on one’s skin after sex. I told myself in my weariness that in this sense I was in for a minor literary treat, and reared there proudly for a moment, enjoying the picture of myself in the foreground, the complex the looming background, myself solitary, soiled, with gills dandily plumed and full of the proud swellings of things as yet unwritten.

After slouching faintly up the ramps, automatic and otherwise, that intersected the inside of the complex, I came to a fungus bar that looked suitable. It was an establishment called The Colony. Inside, the general white light of the complex had been dimmed the better to emphasise the polychromatic phosphorescence of the multifarious moulds, fungi and lichens that had been carefully cultivated in the terraced and suspended gardens between the dining areas. The place was seething with customers, more like a newly hatched brood than selected survivors, and their pigmentation squirmed liquidly in social display. The inner walls of this polyhedron were of such blackness that it seemed they were not there at all. Their surfaces were near undetectable, giving only a reflective gleam here and there, and as a result it appeared as if all the gardens and the squillion customers were superimposed garishly upon ultimate nowhere. “Even these nameless squillions are finite,” I thought to myself. An attendant crawled out from the ledger office and approached me. Shi-he was obviously dosed up on the pigmentation inhibitors so common in such service posts, and even wore a dorsal mantle over which played artificial muzak pigmentation. Yet sh-his ventral and anterior colouring, which was still apparent, seemed to me an aggressive mix of red and white.



“I need to check your seals,” shi-he said, extending a braid of slick tentacles.

I retrieved my seal book and my own seal from my pouch and relinquished then to the baffling attendant. Shi-he gave them a cursory inspection, returned sh-his attention to me for a moment of scrutiny whose meaning I could not guess, then crawled back into the ledger office. There, apparently, my seal and book were subjected to closer examination. When the attendant returned I noticed that my seal had not been used. I raised my antennae quizzically.

“No,” said the attendant.

“’No’ is not the answer to my question.”

“No, I cannot permit your partaking of the services and products of this establishment.”

“Is an explanation to be expected?”

I thought I detected a suppressed orange simmering around the attendant’s white mottles.

“There appear to be only two seals in your book.”

“If you inspect it carefully you will be aware that one of those seals belongs to Doctor Jsshloamgs, my mentor.”

“That seal is due to expire.”

“But it has not expired. There is a vital difference there.”

“Your credentials are dubious.”

This remark did not fail to alarm me. I regretted that I too was not under the influence of pigmentation inhibitors. To lose ground in a bluffing match is deadly. I turned away in confusion and let my senses wander flutter-snufflingly over the interior of the bar. They rested finally, flicker-jitteringly, upon a delicate, wispy mould that grew atop a small dais of black crystal. The fibres of the mould were glowing a beautiful moon-dust grey, with the merest suggestion of filmy blue. For a moment this gossamer translucence became a spyglass onto a world of strange longing, where I was lost. Then my senses returned to me. I collected myself.

“One of those seals is fourth and one third level, and judging by the texture of your establishment here, I should not need more. The second seal is from my superior at the seal exchange bureau. I hold a position there. I know something about seals.”

The attendant did not respond. Because of my befuddlement at the exceptional circumstance of being refused service, a suspicion grew on me, turning into fixated conviction, which in retrospect I was to see as a wild misjudgement.

“Do you require money?” I asked.

“Money?” The attendant physically recoiled at this unexpected word.

“There’s no need to be so surprised. It’s common enough to keep some in case of emergencies. If you go to The Crevices they won’t accept anything else. They’re not part of the seal system there.”

It was clear I was only making the situation worse.

“There is no provision made in our accounts for money.”

“Well, then, why not accept my seals? You have no grounds for describing Dr. Jsshloamgs’ seal as ‘dubious’.”

“Business is not as one-dimensional as you think.”

This last insult was delivered in a suppressed hiss. I had been forced into a zone where all dignity was denied me. The vital, naked I flared up from within me, embattled, defending the dignity of its existence beyond dignity.

“Are you questioning my survival skills? You? A purveyor of edible fungi? You who needs pigmentation blockers just to perform your duties? Your type knows nothing of the subtlety of squirming through the sea of bodies that is our race. Uniqueness? Abstraction? It’s quite beyond your sensory range. It would be a satisfactory propriety to take you outside now and inseminate you, but unfortunately I have recently donated. You’d know the tang of my fluids with eggs inside you.”



By this time our altercation had attracted the attention of a number of the guests. I had been unable to keep myself from flashing in a variety of anti-social patterns. I realised it was time for me to cut my losses and leave.

* * * * *

Purple, I say.

The chagrin, the sickness of rearing my conscious head alone. There is a plateau, high and empty. Surrounded only by so far away, so far away, I, uncrowned by the ultimate self that is by right of this existence mine, through tunnels that enclose me in all directions, doppelganger me with strange and isolating limitations, am battered and turned aside. Sashaying, sashaying, squirming, wriggle-looping, blind as the curving tunnels, blind as movement only, sticking with the threads of my skin-slime to the bedrock that remains the same as I forever peel myself away.

Tunnels wander into an abandoned, draughty zone were time is as circuitous as they. Veering up and wide towards the surface to a nowhere hump that I know wordlessly, where the outer light creeps through a crack. Exhausted, I rest. The light that is external to everything I know coats my gills like spittle. I am half absorbed in a membranous web of floating and transparent microbe traceries. This must be where time sifts away from these tunnels into the endless outside.

Grey fibres of mould glowing soft with ‘no-part-of-this’ allure, become the axis of worlds and false memories. Revolving prismatically, they open up in self-dissecting efflorescence. That shivering, glaucous hunger in my flanks. An urge to reach out that is never more than an urge. Twitching, here come the fuzzy vistas of a time before the academy. All the images seem full of dustballs and scratched with turquoise springs. Then all was infant death and nameless. A time of looming portals and tunnels stretching off, vast and unknown. Remember the Atrium of Pendulous Waiting at whose centre was the brittle, zig-zagged fascination of the hybrid glassberry tree? Somewhere, I thought, there must be a world of such trees. Why cultivate such an exoticism here? As if to tantalise and mystify, whatever way the pendulum of decision swung. The oscillating uncertainty, waiting upon the judgement of the many-celled clockwork they called the Examinations, administered by philosophy-suckled masters, themselves bulging with the clockwork of letters, their florid gills and classically-moulded segments like living acid seals, and grasped in their tentacles like fescues, the keys to acid eternity.

Reasons to be Morbid (Part Three)


There will be points awarded to any who can spot the two (or more) allusions in the title of today’s blog entry.



Actually, I have little to say, and little time to say it in. The third issue of Horror Quarterly (formerly Terror Tales) is now online, and with it the third part of my three part essay, ‘Stray Thoughts on the Phenomenon of Japanese Horror’.

Parts one and two may be found here and here.

I am currently experiencing the form of insufferable oppression known as ‘work’, and for that reason literary production of all kinds has been crippled. However, there are things moving, under the surface. If you want to know what they are, you only have to ask.




Mind you, I might not answer.

He's Got a Little List

It is symptomatic of the dilatory way in which this blog is written – and in which my life generally is lived – that this particular blog entry was conceived some weeks ago when I happened to watch The Last Night of the Proms on television one evening. That must have been the 11th of September.



I’ve never really been able to get a taste for classical music, though I have been interested and even tried to like it. However, as I grow older I find that my tastes change. In some ways they become more inclusive, in some ways they become less tolerant. For some reason, when Last Night of the Proms came on that night, I really wanted to watch it, though even someone like myself, who is hardly a connoisseur of the subject, can easily see that it’s a very populist form of classical music purveyed at the Proms. I suppose there was in my desire some hint of nostalgia for a middle-class England that I’ve never really been part of, but which is ingrained in the English consciousness through, for instance, the works of Dickens and some of his contemporaries. Somehow, Last Night of the Proms seems to be a kind of party in celebration of just that England – cosy drawing rooms and brandy and rosy-cheeked daughters of kindly doctors in waistcoats and... you get the general idea. It’s no accident that Land of Hope and Glory, Rule Britannia and Jerusalem are all regularly aired at the Proms. Anyway, I was watching the orchestra and the swaying drunken crowd in a warm vegetative state, when one of the guest singers gave a rendition of a song by Gilbert and Sullivan that particularly caught my attention. The song in question was As Some Day it May Happen from the opera The Mikado. There was a refrain that ran throughout about having 'a little list'. The rest of the song enumerated the kind of people who were on that list. The purpose of the list was not exactly clear, though mention was made near the beginning of 'a victim' that 'must be found'. I’ve not seen The Mikado, and I don’t know its plot. (I do know that no Japanese person in history was ever called ‘Nanki-Poo’ or ‘Poo-Bah’.) However, it seemed to me that the list was actually an assassination list; further, I was suddenly convinced that we all have such lists inside us, and that I had to articulate mine as a matter of some urgency.



The guest singer at the Proms had changed the lyrics slightly, and I decided that I would do the same. To this end, I looked up the original lyrics on the Internet. I found them to be quite lame. Maybe they had had a bit of bite at the time, but really, I couldn’t rally my bitterness and bile behind, "All people who have flabby hands and irritating laughs". This satire itself had flabby hands – limp flabby hands that were like lettuce when you tried to grip them. What’s more, I just didn’t agree with the smug, jovial conservatism of most of the lyrics. There’s a reference to "the nigger serenader" which seems worrying, but is explained in footnotes as alluding to singers who would black up their faces a la Al Jolson. I’m ready to believe that, but when I hear another reference to "that singular anomaly, the lady novelist", it fails to tickle my ribs. If we reverse the dictum of Homer Simpson, "It’s not funny, because it’s not true." Rather, I can see the author of the line smiling to himself at his own 'brilliant wit', and I find it tedious.

While not particularly confident of my wit, I am at least confident of my venom, and I thought I could write a much better version of the lyrics in terms of bite than those flabby, floppy Gilbert and Sullivan fellows.

While I was contemplating this task, something rather synchronicitous happened, and the comments section of my blog, specifically the comments section attached to a rather melancholy post entitled 'The Dark Nights are Drawing In', was visited by a purveyor of rhyme, whose metrical response to my ponderous ponderings chimed in rather neatly with the idea of the lyric I wanted to write. I just about managed to respond in kind, and I hope that it provided me with a bit of limbering up for the 'big fight' with Messrs Gilbert and Sullivan. Anyway, here is part of the exchange that I had with my versifying visitor:

Lokutus Prime:

Your 'monologue', it seemed to me,
Lacked an ingredient - 'brevity'.
It looked as if your writing skill
Was used to show us how you "thrill"
Yourself, your ego, artistically
By utlising - dramatically -
A self-made 'prop' which, while macabre,
Reminds one of "Les Miserables"

It's clear you have an aptitude
For narrative, beyond the 'rude'
Employment of plain noun and verb,
But if your 'patron' - the late Quentin -
Were around to read your writ
He might suggest you use some "wit",
For no one, I suspect, much cares
For stories with depressive airs

Q:

Tempted as I am to try
To match your wit and versify,
I fear my version of the same
Would not add greatly to my fame.

If natural talents I possess,
Therewith my fellow being to bless,
They are talents not of wit
(Or not as most would notice it).

Are laughter, then, and talent one?
That most profound which is most fun?
Must talent, too, come easily,
As laughter does not come to me?

If there is mirth in what I do
It's recognised by those few who
Have felt such pain as I, such as the damned
Do feel when in Hell's gate their toes are jammed,

And this deep, everlasting pain
Does rise in spasms to their brain;
In madness do they laugh and cry;
In madness does my talent lie.

But enough of this limbering up. Without further ado, here are the lyrics to As Some Day it May Happen, as re-written by me:

Q:

As someday it may happen that a chance will come my way,
I've got a little list -- I've got a little list
To assassinate the evil swine who haunt my every day
And who never would be missed -- who never would be missed!
There's the Philistinic publishers who ceaselessly insist
That struggling writers their rear-ends do regularly kiss
And to whom a story’s wordcount’s more important than its soul
And who mock the artist but then flock like vultures when he’s cold
And all the morons who from buying trash do not desist
They'd none of 'em be missed -- they'd none of 'em be missed!

Chorus of Men:
He's got 'em on the list -- he's got 'em on the list;
And they'll none of 'em be missed -- they'll none of 'em be missed!

Q:

There’s the advocate of ‘progress’ whatever that word means,
And the vivisectionist – I’ve got him on the list!
In the pursuit of science he would splice his mother’s genes.
They never would be missed -- they never would be missed!
There’s the suit who bursts out laughing if you venture to suggest
Integrity in business dealings might be for the best
And advertising executives who think their work is art
And believe all real artists, must, like them, be tarts
And the swarm of modern artists who truly do agree with this
I don’t think they’d be missed! I’m sure they’d not be missed!

Chorus of Men:
He's got ‘em one the list -- he's got ‘em on the list;
And I don't think they'll be missed -- I'm sure they'll not be missed!

Q:
And self-satisfied actresses who say, “Because I’m worth it!”
And that Gates monopolist – I’ve got ‘em on the list!
And all men with a bulldog’s gonads where their brains should sit,
They'd none of 'em be missed -- they'd none of 'em be missed!
And politicians, naturally, only fit for plots and schemes
Who make us choose between their lies, and still they have sweet dreams,
And all God’s angels and the cosmic forces who presume
To rule us, judge us, toy with us, then lay us in the tomb
These are just a few of the bastards on my list
For they’d none of ‘em be missed – they’d none of ‘em be missed!

Chorus of Men:
You may put 'em on the list -- you may put 'em on the list;
And they'll none of 'em be missed -- they'll none of 'em be missed!

While I was mentally engaged in re-writing this lyric – the rhythm was simple and regular, so I could do it in my head without too much difficulty as I went for a stroll, or something – it occurred to me that, actually, what I was proposing with such a list was something like, was, in very fact, a form of Final Solution. What it meant ultimately was that, these are the people or entities who should be sent to the gas chamber. I’ve had – and managed to forget – the same realisation before. And this realisation, not mine alone, seems to point to the fundamentally insoluble nature of the human problem. To put it another way, in solving the problem, I create the problem.

In his famous play, Huis Clos, Jean-Paul Sartre formulated the equation that Hell is other people. For many people this equation is manifest as xenophobia. "If only those foreigners weren’t here, there would be more employment, less crime, and life would be okay." And that is more or less the position taken by the likes of Adolf Hitler. For someone like myself, the equation 'Hell is other people' is manifest not in relation to ethnic groups, but in relation to certain types of behaviour, the types of behaviour enumerated on my 'little list'. However, I wonder if, imagining for a moment that I was in the position of Adolf Hitler, whether the result would be any different if I were to round up advertising executives rather than Jews.

Hell is other people – it is the basic inability of one human being to get on with a slightly, or greatly, different human being that has been the cause of most of our human problems. What can I say? War, crime, loneliness, addiction, segregation of all kinds. There are people who believe that, for instance, problems of racism have been solved. Of course they haven’t. The conflict and violence that is rife throughout the world is proof enough of that. While one human being can justify violence towards any other on the basis that they are different, that they are, in other words 'not me' or 'not us' racism exists, because this ultimately is the source of racism.

The liberal solution to all this is tolerance. We must tolerate each other. But that only works if everyone is liberal. In other words, the eternal dilemma for liberalism is, should we tolerate intolerance? Whether you tolerate it or not, intolerance will exist.

If, as a liberal, you decide not to tolerate intolerance, you have ceased to be liberal as such. You have, instead, chosen sides in a war. Liberalism simply becomes the banner you wave as you march into battle. Is this inevitable, I wonder?

When I read The Place of Dead Roads by William Burroughs, I was half horrified and half delighted to discover the concept of 'shiticide'.

Let me put on my Burroughs drawl for a moment:

"A wise old queen once said to me, 'Darling, some people are shits.' I have never been able to forget it."

In The Place of Dead Roads Burroughs puts forward the (modest?) proposal that we should "slaughter the shits of the world". Just how much Burroughs is playing devil’s advocate and how much he is sincere is difficult to tell, and probably beside the point. Here we have a perfect expression of the liberal finally getting fed up of tolerating others. It’s the old feeling of, "If only everyone else was as liberal as me, the world would be a wonderful place." Looked at another way, it’s a return to the child’s sense of injustice. "They started it!" might be the rallying cry of such a crusade. There’s a sense behind such anger of the incredible potential of the human race if only – if only!!!! – it were not held back by the greedy, the stupid, the spiritually myopic. Somewhere in there is the dream of a community of artists, supporting each other, caring for each other, being creative together. We could have that beautiful world IF ONLY it weren’t for the shits who insist on spoiling it all. And thus, shiticide. Of course, if you want to justify it with a kind of moral logic, you can’t. The contradictions are insurmountable. Still, that feeling of 'if only' calls. It’s a matter of just taking sides in the war, winning it – or, more likely, losing – and then, if you’re not dead, sitting down with a sigh of relief for a moment before getting up again to start building paradise.

But first, how do we identify who the shits are. I’ve made my list above. But what if the people are like have lists that disagree with mine. Do we just pool them? Then there’s the fact that, even if only my list were used for this imaginary revolution, it really looks like a case of destroying almost the entire human race. I don’t think the Utilitarians would approve. Okay, let’s look at Burroughs’ criteria for a moment. He seems to think, metaphorically or otherwise, that the human race has been infiltrated by Venusians. Now, this is an interesting idea, and one that I find simultaneously fascinating and just a bit disturbing, which is what I like Burroughs for, I suppose. Let me explain. I’m sure his choice of Venus and not Mars as the source of the alien invasion is very purposeful. What he is attacking is the romantic viewpoint. He is attacking the notion of Love, certainly as it is propagated within the Judeo-Christian tradition. Addiction is one of the main themes of Burroughs’ work, and in attacking the romantic notion of love he is attacking an addictive illusion. As he says elsewhere, "The face of evil is always the face of total need." And what is love, in its romantic aspect, if it is not need? The idea of love as a kind of sickness or corruption is not new. I’m reminded of a line from T. S. Eliot: "The heart is wicked and deceitful above all things." The quote is, in fact, echoed by Burroughs. Developing his interest in Egyptian mythology, Burroughs tells us in The Western Lands that, "[t]he Ancient Egyptians postulated seven souls." He begins to list the seven souls in order, giving a brief description of their properties: "Number Four is Ba, the heart, often treacherous. This is a hawk’s body, with your face on it, shrunk down to the size of a fist. Many a hero has been brought down like Samson by a perfidious Ba."




While this fascinates me, I’m beginning to worry that I might actually end up on Burroughs’ shiticide list. After all, I’m not entirely free of the disease of romanticism myself.

Let’s not worry about all this abstract theory. What do shits actually do? According to Burroughs, shits are basically those who can’t mind their own business. They support the notion of 'victimless crimes'. They are in favour of censorship and they want to spread their religion. I’m starting to feel a little safer. That’s easy enough. I certainly mind my own business. I’m off the hook. And, I really can’t argue with that criterion. If we’re going to commit shiticide then that’s the criterion it seems most logical to use. It’s like the old chestnut, "we’re free to do what we want as long as it doesn’t impinge on anyone else’s freedom."

Is it really that simple? I rather tend to think that I’m going round in circles here, as is the entire human race. The ideal of shiticide is very much like the ideal of Hitler’s final solution. Ideals destroy themselves. If we engage in shiticide, we cease to mind our own business.

I suppose I don’t really have to worry about this dilemma – and that means the people on my list don’t have to worry, either – because I’m just not the kind of person who is ever going to be in the position where I will have to make the decision of carrying my ideals to their logical conclusion. I’ve already made my position clear just by being who I am and NOT HAVING the power ever to put my list into action. Are you worried that I’m even thinking this deeply about it? Well, there’s another reason not to worry, for me, anyway, the human race will do the dirty work for me without me having to lift a finger. Buy more oil. Drive more cars. Wage more wars. It’s shiticide-suicide. And all that’s left is….

Hell is other people helis othei peple hell is other people heli is oterpeple HeLl is o ther peo pel hell iS other people hell is other people helll is aothte people hell is oathe people hell is other people hell is other people
H
E
Lll
Is othe
R peo
P l e

There'll Always Be a Place for You in My Heart

"Give me your hands, ‘cause you’re wonderful!"



Yes, I am in expansive mood.

That deadline is so close I can almost smell it. And so, I have decided to celebrate by using my time irresponsibly and posting another entry.

Recently, good people, I believe I told you that, although The Dead Bell is, well, long dead, its spirit lives on and has reared its head in the shape of The Cock. Peter Black, formerly of The Dead Bell with my former self, and now of The Cock, after he informed me that he had taken up playing with The Cock on a regular basis, sometimes before an audience, I believe, and often for hours at a time, asked me if I might assist by...

I don’t think I can keep this up much longer.

I mean the whole double entendre thing.

Basically, he asked if I could write some lyrics. I agreed to this suggestion quite happily, glad to be of service to The Cock. And I’ve been scribbling silly little lyrics ever since then - whenever they have come into my head.

How overjoyed I am, then, to learn that my union with The Cock in this way has proved fruitful.



I may not actually be playing with The Cock. I may not be what you might call a full member. But I like to think of myself as a sort of Cock extension. And I am honoured to think that The Cock, having used me before, is willing and eager to use me again...

as a lyricist.

Anyway, enough of this silliness. You too may let The Cock’s warm message of love flow over you. Damn... somebody stop me.

Okay... Deep breaths.

I’m alright. It’s okay.

You too may embrace the message of love sent out by The Cock. The Cock’s first Internet release, lyrics by yours truly, is available here:

There’ll always be a place for you in my heart!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Work is a Four Letter Word


For those of you who think I've gone to ground, just a very brief post to remind you that I'm here... And to inform you that another review of Morbid Tales has gone online.

Just remember, that is not dead which may eternal lie...

Who’s That Girl?

I’m afraid I couldn’t bear to have the picture in the post below appearing at the top of the screen each time I looked at my journal, so I decided to write an entry quickly to push it down a bit.

Someone in the house where I have a room subscribes to New Scientist magazine, and, occasionally, when I’m eating my lunch or have nothing else to do, I’ll pick up a copy and absorb all the latest information on a world that seems to be changing far too quickly.

The 2nd of October issue of New Scientist fell on the doormat with the morning post and I picked it up and put it, with the letters and so on, on the kitchen table. The magazine was still in its plastic wrapping, but I could see the cover. Next to the headline ‘the secrets of the face’ was a very simple picture of a young lady’s face. It appeared to be a photograph treated in some way or another, perhaps with airbrushing. I know very little about these things.



It was a simple picture, as I have said, and yet I found it fascinating. This model, whoever she was, had been chosen to represent the concept of ‘face’, and what an inspired choice she was! How had they found her? Her face seemed very pure and, yes, simple, but it seemed to glow with some inner light. I also felt that maybe I had met her before somewhere. Does this girl have the same effect on everyone she meets? Did the photographer or designer, or whoever was responsible, see her walking down the street and think, “It has to be her!”? Or was she one of a number of models who could have been chosen, whom, it was decided, they could work some photographic magic upon to create a particular effect they already had in mind of… But how would they have formulated this effect in their plans? Innocence? Enigma? Beauty? It was not quite any of these. Or rather, it seemed to be something more. I tried to formulate why the face was so fascinating and the closest I could come was that it was something of the ‘girl-next-door’ appeal, but elevated to the level of the sublime.




Since the magazine was not mine, I did not take it out of its plastic wrapper to read the article within and solve this mystery. I had to wait. But I wanted to know, who is that girl? Who is she?

Eventually the magazine was taken from its wrapper and I discovered the truth. The picture is the work of artist Chris Dorley-Brown and is part of an exhibition called ‘Future Face’ that is running in London from the 10th of October to the 13th of February. The face is actually a composite face. That is, with the aid of computers, sixteen different faces have been taken and merged together into one face. The girl on the cover who I was sure I had met before somewhere – she didn’t exist. She was a ghost distilled from other people. A ghost that had never lived.

I practically shivered at this discovery.

Inside the magazine was a similar picture of a male face. He looked like her brother. In fact, he too was a ghost of averages, created by the same technique. As the article says:

“They have an eerie, luminous, almost ghost-like quality… As more and more faces were added, this unearthly beauty emerged as the distillation of youth. True beauty, it seems, is the average of everyone.”

Well, that’s the end of my little ghost story. It is short, I’m afraid, and very simple, but it does have a twist at the end, as all ghost stories should. However, I’m at a loss as to what the moral of the story might be. Is it something to do with the responsibility that both artists and scientists should feel when they play God, but too often don’t? Is it to do with the loss of the soul behind the face in modern society? Is it to do with unreachable ideals? Is it to do with the unnoticed beauty of the ordinary? I really don’t know. Only, it continues to haunt me.

President Kill

Okay, I was going to be all Zen and ignore the upcoming American election, but I have been asked if the rest of the world is as scared as America. So, this is something like an answer. I don’t expect anyone will read this who is thinking of voting for Bush, but I will write for the moment as if they are. The American election affects the entire world. You vote, we suffer. Really, if there were any consistency in the concept of globalisation the entire planet would be able to vote in the American election. And Bush would not get in, because, let’s face it, Bush shits upstream and we, the rest of the world, are downstream. Don’t do it! Don’t vote Bush. A vote for Bush is a vote for this:



If I tried to list all the many reasons that a vote for Bush is a vote for the degradation of the human species, it would take me all day. Let’s be brief. Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11. It had nothing to do with Al Qaeda. It had a lot to do with making money and distracting the American populace, and it involved the murder of thousands of civilians. In fact, the death toll continues to rise.

Bush is also opposed by the scientific community, for putting the interests of the oil companies and the American economy ahead of environmental interests, and ignoring the current ecological crisis we are facing.



It is surely also degrading to an entire nation that their president cannot even string a sentence together in his own mother tongue.

I don’t know why it is that war makes leaders so popular, but I append some lyrics that seemed appropriate. The reference to Russia may, of course, be swapped for Iraq.


Here Comes President Kill Again (Lyrics)

By XTC

Here comes President Kill again,
Surrounded by all of his killing men.
Telling us who, why, where and when,
President Kill wants killing again.

Hooray, ring out the bells,
King Conscience is dead.
Hooray, now back in your cells,
We've President Kill instead.

Here comes President Kill again.
Broadcasting from his killing den.
Dressed in pounds and dollars and yen,
President Kill wants killing again.

Hooray, hang out the flags,
Queen Caring is dead.
Hooray, we'll stack body bags,
For President Kill instead.

Ain't democracy wonderful?
Them Russians can't win!
Ain't democracy wonderful?
Lets us vote someone like that in.

Here comes President Kill again,
from pure White House to Number 10.
Taking lives with a smoking pen,
President Kill wants killing again.

Hooray, everything's great,
Now President Kill is dead.
Hooray, I'll bet you can't wait,
To vote for President Kill instead...