Directory of Lost Causes (By Quentin S. Crisp)

New Review and Interview with Me

Recently a new review of Rule Dementia! has gone online on the blog of the Great Swifty. It's quite an eclectic blog, dealing with literature film and music, with a distinct leaning towards J-pop. The contributors are the Great Swifty himself (filmmaker Edmund Yeo (see a sample of his work here), Justin Cartaginese and May Zhee.

The review is written by Justin Cartaginese, a writer who, as the narrator of 'The Call of Cthulhu' remarks of the sculptor Wilcox, "will... some time be heard from". Sooner rather than later, I expect. You can also read many of his other reviews on the same blog. Of particular interest, I think, are the reviews of Mishima's The Sea of Fertility and Jorge Luis Borges' Labyrinths.

There is also, following the review of Rule Dementia!, an interview with me. Perhaps 'conversation' would be a better term, since I believe Justin and I share many of the same interests, and I am especially happy with the 'interview' for that reason. I'm also happy to be given a venue a little outside of the stamping ground to which I am used - of horror/fantasy. I think this is particularly gratifying to me, as I am increasingly bored and irritated by partisanship to categories of fiction or prejudice against categories. If we must have them, let's not take them too seriously, please. Only yesterday I heard tell of someone who was disappointed to learn that the book she was reading had a supernatural ending, and would apparently have been glad if the book had been labelled supernatural, because then she simply would not have read it in the first place. I sigh at such accounts and ask myself, why is she bothering to read in the first place if she's going to be so narrow-minded about it? In fact, suddenly I feel like saying, let us destroy all categories!

So, well, please enjoy the review and interview.

Death is My Joy

All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy all work and no play makes etc.

I've been rather busy recently. In fact, I should try and keep this short. I find working an experience something like being submerged under water. I cannot stay in the environment for very long without feeling a need to come up for air. It doesn't seem to be my element at all.

Anyway, at times like this, I tend to think a great deal about the release that comes with death. I suppose I have had this disposition for a long time. I remember, as a teenager, 'singing' to myself (or rather croaking) the lines of the Celtic Frost song Inner Sanctum, until they almost became unconscious habit. I can't find the song on YouTube, but here are the lyrics:

Inner Sanctum

Sleep brings no joy to me
Remembrance never dies
My soul is given to misery
And lives in sighs ...
The shadows of the dead,
My waken eyes may never see,
Surround my bed
That from which they sprung - eternity

Beneath the turf
The silent dead

Sleep brings no wish to knit
My harrassed heart beneath
My only wish is to forget
In the sleep of death
Death is my joy
I long to be at rest
I wish the damp earth covered
This desolate brest

Beneath the mould
The silent dead

But the glad eyes around us
Must weep as we have done
And we must see the same gloom
Eclipse their morning sun

Oh not for them - Should we despair
The grave is drear - But they're not there
Their dust is mingled - With the sod
Their pale souls - Are gone, to god

Well, may they live in ecstasy
Their long eternity of joy
At least I wouldn't bring them down
With me to weep, to groan
And what's the future
A sea beneath the cloudless sun
A mighty, glorious, dazzling sea
Stretching into infinity

My inner sanctum
R.I.P

And here's a sample of the band's music (after an interview in German):



So, the music to which I am currently leaping around the kitchen is Celtic Frost's Into the Pandemonium, and particularly Inner Sanctum.

One more time:

"Death is my joy. I long to be at rest. I wish the damp earth covered this desolate breast."

Some people are puzzled that I enjoy this music, but to me, Celtic Frost were always obvious artistic originals. Tom G. Warrior's guitar sound is possibly the best guitar sound I have ever heard. And his vocals sound like some kind of Lovecraftian language more cthonic than aural. With the songs for which I don't have the lyrics, I listen to them as sort of Rorscharch songs, making up my own words out of the inhuman croaking.

Talking of Lovecraft, the Old One are coming:

She's Lost Control?

I'm not a fan of Britney Spears, but I couldn't help admiring her new haircut. I think that suddenly she looks genuinely attractive.



I was surprised to find the text of the articles featuring pictures of this new haircut to be, well, deeply negative.

Here's Professor Gary Cooper, professor of psychology and health at Lancaster University:

"She's obviously quite a disturbed girl at the moment, she doesn't know who or what she is."

Oh, and the rest of us do, I suppose, Professor Cooper? You know what Socrates said, realising that you know nothing is the beginning of true wisdom.

Maybe Prof. Gary Cooper is just 'concerned', but this is how it looks to me: For the first time in her career Britney Spears is doing something that hasn't been coordinated by some cabal of faceless executives, and a lot of men in suits don't like it and want to encourage the idea that she's gone crazy and needs to get back on the rails.

Maybe she's just beginning to go sane. Who knows? In any case, I wish her luck. And nice haircut!

Errata

I've just noticed a couple of rather annoying mistakes in my collection Rule Dementia! They occur on pages 46 and 47 of that book, in the middle of 'The Haunted Bicycle'. The first of them is as follows: There should be no break in text between "This was not just an isolated spooky bicycle in an otherwise normal world" and "Is it just us?"

Secondly, the following line should be inserted between "After a number of exchanges of this sort we gave up" and "This suggestion was taken up very enthusiastically by Les":

“Perhaps we have to ride the bike first,” I suggested.

Sorry about that.

If anyone out there has puzzled over any similar omissions or mistakes in any of my books, please let me know and I shall do my best to supply the omissions and correct the mistakes.

What will survive of us...