Happy Helloween from Spooksville

Happy Helloween from all the deadbeats down in Spooksville!
Just a quick vid for all the spooks on All Hallow's Eve.
Video brewed and soundscape decanted by Arthur Durkee 2013.

Just some gratuitous spooky fun. . . .

The Day After the Day of the Dead

Some of these guys look a little hungover. Too much fun the night before, maybe. Or blood.





When I went out this morning to start taking down my decorations, I found someone had put a Peanut M&M in the mouth of one of the hanging skeletons. So even the hungry ghosts got fed last night.

Witch Tree

All Hallow's Eve 2011

Poems for Samhain

Two older resurrected poems for Samhain, brought back to life temporarily. The first a boneyard poem, an existential poem. The second of defeat and victory, reminding now, years later, of nothing so much as poems George Herbert used to utter. The collars we fight against that bring us home.

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the skull behind the sky

the imbrecating winds, the desolating sun.
the shock of the other: the sun
moves; a turn of phrase wakes it,
you see the skull behind the sky.

mare’s tails split you open,
spit your heart over the fire;
suddenly sober, watching a raven’s
aerial dance: a hole in the sky

everything will always come to nothing:

children laugh in the distance,
there are birds, and freshets in the leaves:
still the hollows fill you, emptying you,
leaving nothing but your plucked eyes

and the unvision that fills them,
seeing nothing but vacuum beyond the blue.
only the desert never lies:
the bones beneath the brush.

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the unnamed

I give up, great christ!,
I give in.
if you still want me, I am yours.
I have spent so many years
beating my way out of your church
of bones, only to find myself
again at your altar of blood.
I would turn this way and that,
fighting my way to an exit,
and, bloodied, succeed.
and then the door would open
only into your own cathedral.
now I grow tired,
unwilling to battle on;
if you still want me, take me,
hard master, or discard me,
or chastise me, or fill me.
it is all the same, I know,
I know.

(The illustration here was developed from acrylic paintings and technical pen drawings I had made as a teenager, in the 1970s. Apparently I already knew I was destined to make visionary/shamanic art and poetry even as a boy; apparently I have spent most of my adult life coming to terms with that, and undenying it.)

In the Bone

I was searching for more things to write about Halloween, for more bones from the boneyard, when I came across an old exercise and workshop.

Back a few years ago, when I was involved in poetry workshopping with others, I was asked to craft an exercise, present a writing prompt, however you want to put it. I wrote an introduction and essay on stream of consciousness writing in poetry, and then presented an exercise about one way to do it, and how to mine it for ideas.

One only has to murmur the phrase "stream of consciousness" and many poets look up in alarm. We have come to think of this style of writing as: diary fodder, illegible nonsense, meat for a poem but not yet itself a poem, awful drivel, teenage journal-rambling, and worse. But we perhaps miss the fact it can be done extremely well, if it's done with concentration and attention. More to the point, it's a valuable tool in any poet's briefcase: even if your poem only starts in that vivid stream, it's a fine place to fish. A poem can be made from the mush. The free flow of words doesn't have to edited till later. Revision as visioning. You can be a completely metrically-minded formalist poet and still mine poems from this exercise. You don't have to mine anything but the mood, maybe an image, you're not required to recycle any of the language. Maybe all that happens is that a door opens to possibility.

A lot of contemporary poetry is too intellectual, too planned, too verbal in origin (as opposed to imagistic, or somatic), too left-brain. The list goes on. With this workshop prompt, I was hoping to get some good responses, to shake some people out of their writing habits, and I did, if only temporarily. The poets who participated presented first their raw passages, then the poem they had extracted from the flow. It was fascinating to observe. A real lesson in how consciousness works, and how the editing mind pulls out of the random flow something that has a shape and form. I heard comments from participants along the lines that this had stretched them out of their usual ways of writing; I heard comments that this had produced unexpected results, atypical poems, different sorts of writing. The project was declared a success, and pretty much everybody went back to doing their writing the usually do. Habits weren't really changed. A door was briefly opened. People made their own choices as to whether to go through it.

But I realized for myself, those years ago, how important writing in the flow was for my own process. I already knew this, but this exercise helped crystallize my self-awareness. I articulated it clearly to myself as a method, perhaps for the first time.

(I later rewrote this workshop exercise as an essay, which can be read here. And the poem I myself contributed to the process, seen below, was published, as mentioned here.)

Here, in the theme of Halloween, Samhain, October light, the Day of the Dead, the boneyard piling up with fresh bones, is what I myself wrote for this workshop exercise. I leave it more or less unedited, to show how the exercise worked: first you write in the flow, not pausing to "fix" the language or make it pretty; then you pull a poem out of what you're written.

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stream-of-consciousness flow writing exercise:

Samhain

that time of year: the cold dripping rain outside tonight getting into everything bones heart lungs and cheer; taking the trash outside before bedtime, 2am, stopped raining, ground still wet; I'm the only one awake in the neighborhood; trees move in the wind, shipping streetlight shadows across grass and driveway and cold pooling water, gutter choked with leaves; smell of burning, somewhere distant; memory of candles being snuffed, whiff of matchblack and quenched wick, waxtouch and watery shiver; the walls getting thin: the walls between worlds; easier to hear those voices, inner and other, this time of year; walls between worlds thinning till All Hallow's, they break through, and all over Latin America children play with their dead ancestors in cemeteries decorated for afterlife birthdays; raucous and wild, the spinning fireworks, sparklers on a wheel;

coal black eyes in the trees; roosting wild turkeys beaks tucked underwing; sleep of prey and predator alike, the game resuming in cold dawn; roost high, roost lightly; drone of tires on the highway past the river, past the fields and woods; find in the centre something like a nutshell, cracked, opening, black light within; what the right hand says to what's left; palmlight glow both hands burning with ornage fire; every year, this time, scrying; i rememebr the boy that was, blood luck dripping from both hands, standing crucified before the iron doors of a schoolyard in the cold wind and rain; wanting to be loved, wanting to not go in, knowing what would happen: fright, what is unknown and different scares us; trying for years to fit in, be like everyone else, incapable of pulling it off, incapable of effective masks; crippled at last by self telling self to hide pretend to powerlessness; and the blue electric explodes shimmering pop of fire falling from the skypole onto the snow, hands punching through drywall and stem unbruised, unbloodied, capable beyond capability; I become the thing we fear the most; I become capability;

candles in a circle of silver; Buddhalight; litter of otters spilling across my grandma's secretary desk; leave pull and fall all around; orange leaves, gold yellow red green amber, all together, scatter under tree, stillfall leaffall notyetfall; all one tree, all reflections of that One Tree; what do you tell people who can't see the archetypes directly like you can; what do you tell as a lie to make them love you, to pretend to be less than you can see; parlor tricks and seances, masks to cover the truth of experience; when you open wide, things get in, not all of them friendly; shunt attention and pain to a dot four feet in front your eyes, pain fades, goes away, jawache subsides to root and readiness;

dark brown wood of memory and longing; masterful emulation of something real, without being anything more than hashmarks on blank white page; superstition of the printing press; turbulent anticipation of the doors between worlds opening, and the dead stepping out from between the trees, watching benignly and wanting to tell you their stories, all their stories told silent and austere and with mouths filled with bees and leafrustle and mold; the dead open their hands: their hands are filled with light; the dead move easily between trees, gathering dreams and memories like fuel for an invisible fire; signal fires on the hills; bonfires leapt by naked young men and women, sparks rising into the clouds that reflect fireglow from the high peaks; castoff and dionysiac, emblems of blinded third eye remnant pressure behind the forehead exploding out into the night, you see, you see, you cannot help but see;

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poem made from the writing exercise:

come see: how quietly they move through the stones.
parchment fingers rustling their leaf tambourines.
the dew is on the grass. their feet, in all their wanderings, do not touch.
they float above the earth, or dissolve near to it, into it.
their compass rose is of the greater earth: these leaves fall through them.

we rise up out of the very fields we tilled: these cemeteries, plowed anew.
every year, the miracle of wheat. sweep the garden for next year’s roses.
snow falls around us, whitens our scalps: no summer’s day outruns us.
shake the leaves off the headstone: a million butterflies take wing.
the ash tree whispers: home; we’ve come home.

Boneyard

Decorating the house and front garden for Halloween, planning on having the spookiest house in the neighborhood if at all possible, again, I found myself the other day out looking for decorations to use, and my heart wasn't in it. I wasn't seeing what I wanted to see. Granted, this year things seem smaller in terms of what's being offered for sale, few new designs, little new marketing in the usual stores, that sort of thing; perhaps a reflection of the overall economic gloom and political fearmongering that has dominated public discourse all this year. When I was out driving, and engaged in shopping, it seemed to me people are ruder than usual right now, too; perhaps because they're distracted by their own worries into being less observant, less courteous. On the flip side, the wingnuts certainly seem to feel more empowered to express their sociopathic tendencies by the current political climate, empowered by heartless example, out of the mouths of wingnut politicos.

So it's strange times. As we approach the Day of the Dead, and the walls between the worlds get thinner, my dreams become more vivid, as usual, and my own restless spirit feels the need to wander. The political is also the personal.

This past year, having almost died, having come close to seeing my own guts spill out, held in only by staples over a suture after my surgery to have my ailing colon removed, i've been more close than ever to a sense of my own mortality. This Day of the Dead I can't help but think about myself as one of them, almost. I still feel very close to death—not to dying, as I am recovering on schedule, and coping with life as best as one can—to death itself as an experience and an abstract concept. I am more aware than ever of my own mortality, the limited span of life I have left, barring accidents or illness, and more aware than ever of how much i want to get done.

The experience of illness and surgery has made me impatient with people who would thoughtlessly waste my time; I was never a very patient person to begin with, but if anything has changed it's that I don't censor my mouth the way I might have before, and if someone is wasting my time I don't suffer their presence as well as I used to. Conversely, and hopefully to my credit, the long, mutually-supportive talks I have had with my best friends who are fellow artists have deepened and become more profound, more durable, and more inspirational. Now I have no reason anymore to put off making art, and I make art every day, one way or another. I hope I have enough time left to make the art that I'm supposed to make, before I'm done.

I am looking at the autumn cold nights, the chill in the air, the fallen leaves, the crisp fall air, and can't help feel annoyed that once again I completely missed the summer. Last year I missed summer because I was too ill to do anything, and this year because of the curative surgery. Not in two years have I been able to bask in the July heat, as I was too frail each time to survive it unaided. Now it's getting cold, and I feel, for the second time in a row, that I never got to experience feeling warm enough to satisfy my needs. I am having flashbacks to the time when my family returned to the US from India, when I was almost seven: it was in fall, and I spent that first year shivering. After an early life spent in tropical heat, the thin sunlight and cold winters of North America were a profound shock to my young self. I still love to linger in tropical heat, whenever I can get it.

So, in wandering around thinking about the Halloween decorations I want to put up, perhaps it's my brush with near-death this past year, perhaps it's my increased sense of mortality, perhaps it's the feeling of having died and been brought back to life—and all I want to decorate with this year is bones, bones, bones.



Bones, bones, bones. Skeletons, skulls, bones hanging from the tree. The revealed flesh of mortality that melts away. The skull as a symbol of what remains behind after we're gone. A symbol of the dead, but also of immortality. The skull and bones that endure after the soul has moved on, making symbols of what remains as a sign of what doesn't die. Do we all die, or do we all live forever? Which is it? What is there, after the body dies? No one really knows. We all have beliefs, and some of us who have almost-died bring back images and narratives of afterlife and near-death experiences—which are remarkably the same, no matter where or when they come from. So maybe there is something to it. Whatever you believe is not my concern. I know what I know. I don't care if anyone believes what I know. It doesn't concern me.



The shaman's path can be a lonely one, but then again, you're never alone, because you're always surrounded by the spirits, those hollow voices in the wind, the song of the skull, and the jaguar that drops from the tree to rip out your diseased guts in the Otherworld, and the bears who fill you with healing bread that nourishes your spirit-body and heals your scars. You die and are reborn a thousand times in this life. Some deaths are more enduring, but you always come back to life. You go on, having died. The spirits kill you many times, in the Otherworld, and you bring back something of being healed when you return, to be used to heal others, and yourself. And there is a platter of wisdom that comes with each disembowelment, a bit of self-knowledge gained, as well as the knowledge given you to be passed on to others. Death and rebirth, an endless wheel of schooling.



This Halloween, this Day of the Dead, I feel very close to the Otherworld, the thinning of the Veil between worlds is very personal for me this year, not abstract, not theoretical, but gut-real. So in decorating the tree and garden and front door with skeletons, bones, tombstones, skulls, and more bones, I feel a very personal reflection. I am mirroring my experience of recent death and rebirth. I am seeing my own "skull beneath the skin," and I am mirroring artistically and creatively what I feel in my bones was a near-miss, a near-death, and I am commemorating that near brush. It's not a superstitious keep-away kind of anti-magic, the way many Day of the Dead celebrations are. It's an acknowledgment of the truth of my own mortality.

Bones, bones, bones. I make poems, a jumble of words, a jumble of bones. I make food for the living and the dead. The dead eat the essence of the food brought to the gravestones by the living, the night of the Day of the Dead. While they wander, we feast, too. Everybody says hello, one last time. It's a chance to finish unfinished business, neglected and unfinished conversations. It's a chance to connect to eternity, and to heal the world's wounds. Not just yours, not just your family's wounds, but the hurt that chasms the dead from the living. Even this mortality was a rare chance for growing up. Bones are growth, have growth rings like trees, bones are how tall you are, look how much you've grown, your height in life, seeing around the open grasslands to the horizon, bones take you taller from the ground till you fall down again. You stand to die. You contemplate your own mortality in the images of the wedding of the dead. The dead marry the dead, and the living. But they're not separate anymore, not on these cold nights when the Veil is thin. Let the dead bury their dead. But they don't stay dead, they come to visit. Bones, bones, bones. Rattle and play. Them bones gonna rise again. Rattle, rattle, bones, bones. Music of humming bones.

Spooksville: Getting in the Mood

    Night Music
—AD, piano, processing, bells, effects, soundscape

Spooksville

There's a small town, not far from that corner of the Twilight Zone in which worlds unravel and blur, known as Spooksville, where the moon hangs in a chill sky while the ghosties and ghoulies and things that go bump in the night come out to play. . . .

Poems for Samhain

barrow-god, bower-god

barrow-god, bower-god
mice rubbing in the night

fear-child, fallow-child
that lingers, whispering, in flames

make the stones rustle
leafshadows quiver in no wind

whisper at the end of the hall
dreams of dead things, below-ground

eat the dark heart, your own
barrow-god, bower-god, born again



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moon burning

seeds in the darkness growing white moon silver egg sky.
white wolf raising voice bat shrieks night flying.
all whisper here. where blood roars. who would hunt
would kill. moonlight circling in tree bare knives.
branches beat up the clouds kill them whip them defend.
not whole not half. all the dead hours. moon spinning.
magnesium light. watching me I walk under her gaze
her single white eye. see me run. the night burns. I burn.



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Two older poems, from the 80s or 90s.

Two from the set of what I used to call "October poems," which were not only mostly written in October, but partake of the autumnal light, the ceremonies of the changing of the year, the ceremonies of remembrance of the dead. A certain mood this time of year, that lingers for awhile after All Hallow's, taking a few days to fade.

Two poems written from liminal states, reflecting liminal experience. The experience of the threshold, the numinous stepping over into other worlds. Worlds: expressed as states of being, as states of consciousness, of the shape-changing of the self and of consciousness.

In poetry of liminal being, I often find myself using non-normative syntax, non-standard grammar. An attempt at depicting the direct perception of the consciousness behind the poem. A way of making the poem reflect the experience. I have a number of poems that are simple transcriptions of liminal experiences, using the appropriate syntax to recreate the experience. I have other poems that seem almost without verbs, like a sequence of cinematic images where in time-binding is generated purely by the sequencing itself.

Is this "experimental" poetry? It seems to me that the definition of "experimental" in poetry usually means non-normative, non-formal, non-standard. It is a term co-opted by most avant-garde movements and -isms to try to describe themselves as different from the mainstream.

But the other meaning of "experimental," the meaning specifically connected to scientific research, is the meaning that I find more applicable: writing as attempting an experiment.

An experiment in consciousness. An experiment in style, in form expressing function directly. An experiment in making the form and style of the writing match the consciousness of what lay behind the writing. What prompted it, what triggered it.

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Mostly whenever I discuss this, I receive a ringing silence. It seems no-one else wants to talk about it. To me, it seems the most essential element of poetry, that one that really needs to be talked about. It is not a mode of writing that is foreign to poetry, but in fact lies at its foundation, its origins, and its purpose. Granted, it's far easier to talk about the mechanics of craft and feel certain of one's own mind. I am exploring—experimenting with—realms of uncertainty that make some poets squirm. Even those poets who proclaim that "meaning" is dead, and are anti-linguistic or pro-language while being anti-sense, would rather not talk about consciousness, liminality, and form expressing function.

Similarly, many discussants bend over backwards to find literary-critical ways to make liminality go away. They bring up the so-called "pathetic fallacy," one of the worst dead-ends in critical theory. They bring up their doubts that empathy and unity are even possible, much less desirable. They find ways to dismiss it all. It requires a stern denial to avoid admitting that magic might, just might, be real. And that even ordinary people can have liminal experiences. (Maslow called them peak experiences.) Attempts to deny or make liminal experience go away, though, indicates nothing so much as many readers' desire to have a nice, neat, orderly, non-chaotic, perfectly comprehensible universe within which to exist.

The problem is: The denials ring false. We experimenters in consciousness, and in writing about consciousness, continue our experiments. Many experiments quite rightly fail. But not all. So there is after all something there, deny it how they may.

Restless Spirits

It's that time of year again. That time of year when the ghost stories and the ghoulie images and the badly clichéd horror movies are all dragged out, dusted off, and given an airing. I found a few vintage "ghost" images by doing a simple Web search:



These classic photos are heavily influenced by the Spiritualist craze of a century or so ago. THe ghosts are painted in, or multiply exposed. One image contains Spiritualist symbols hovering in the air around the person's head, no doubt meant to be seen as floating in his aura. During that time, lots of mediums held seances to contact the dead, the Ouija board became popular, and it all became rather a parlor game. Some mediums were exposed as hoaxes; Harry Houdini made a particular crusade of debunking Spiritualism. The Ouija board does work, certainly—but it doesn't contact any spirits you really want to talk to. More parlor games. Cheap thrills. A little spooky titillation. An evening night's fun scaring each other.

Randolph Stow, an Australian writer, set his novel The Girl Green as Elderflower in Suffolk, where he lived towards the end of his life. It's one of the most memorable novels I've ever read, along with another of his, Visitants. A lot of The Girl Green as Elderflower is based on Suffolk folklore, including the local Green Man nature spirits, and one contacted via Ouija board who appears to have evolved from ghost to genius loci. In this novel, the Ouija board is believable, and benign; it's operated by a rather fey child, who seems half-spirit herself at times. Anyway, it's an excellent, even thrilling novel, which I recommend.

Otherwise, I hate Ouija boards. They're nothing anyone wants to fool about with.

The Spiritualism of seances, mediums, and contacting the dead, even though it was a popular craze a century ago, never developed into anything substantial. It's associated somewhat with some of the founders of The Theosophical Society, many of whom were influenced by the Eastern mysticism just being discovered in the West at that time, and some of whom were active explorers and documenters of psychic and supernatural phenomena.

The Day of the Dead, Hallowe'en, All Hallow's Eve, All Saints' Eve, has an older history. It's the old Celtic pagan festival of summer's end, called Samhain. In Mexico, it's the Day of the Dead, when people go to the cemeteries to commune with the ancestral dead. Whole hosts of cultures have similar celebrations. The Japanese festival of honoring the ancestral dead, the O-Bon festival, ostensibly Shinto-Buddhist, is in fact much older, and predates the arrival of Buddhism in Japan. Other cultures all have their days of the dead, when the living connect with the dead. Many cultures feature rituals of cleaning and decorating the ancestral gravesites, be they cemeteries or caves.

This time of year, it is said, the Veil between the worlds grows thin, making it easier to contact the dead. And making it easier to walk between worlds, especially on Samhain night, when the Doors open between worlds. So modern neo-pagans will often scry during Samhain rituals, to divine their near future, to finish whatever unfinished business with the dead is left to be handled. It's a rich time.



Ray Bradbury wrote a short illustrated novel titled The Halloween Tree, a version of which was made into an animated TV movie special, first aired in 1993. The story takes a small group of children traveling through time to discover the real meaning and historical roots of Hallowe'en, and where some of the customs of the night originated. It's a genuinely scary and thrilling story, even for adults. I recommend the book and TV special alike to your attention; actually, I recommend Bradbury's entire opus as some of the best writing of the 20th C. Two Bradbury novels which made a huge impact on me, and which I still re-read occasionally are Dandelion WIne and his genuinely creepy fantasy thriller Something Wicked This Way Comes.

Last Hallowe'en, handing out candy to the many neighborhood kids from my front door, I received what I took to be a great compliment. A group of older teenage girls came up to me, all smiles, and told me that I had the spookiest house in the neighborhood. that made my day. Although I've been ill a lot, and am tired, and have been struggling to do errands this month, I intend to have the spookiest house in the neighborhood again this year.

Of course, one of my secrets to achieving that honor was that I hid a small sound system in the bushes in front of the house, next to the walkway, where no one could see it, but from where emerged lots of spooky sounds that I'd edited together. I mixed for this playback event a custom full-length CD of horror sound effects, spooky classical music tone-poems such as Mussourgsky's "Night on Bald Mountain," and other material. It was lots of fun making that edit, actually.

Having led off with some silly vintage photos, I'll end with two more serious ones, which for me evoke the mood and spirit of this time of the year's turning round.


O-Bon


the Witch Tree

Hallowe'en Night 2009

Late night.

I had about two hours of kids coming to Trick or Treat. Probably around 60 or 70 kids total. Some big groups, some individuals, mostly with parents watching from the curb.



I decorated the house extra-spooky this year, with as many candles as other kinds of lights. One group of girls thought it was really spooky. Watching from the windows, I saw some kids turn away from coming up the driveway, turn back, turn away, then go on. So I guess I managed to actually scare away some kids this year!



Scaring the kids is all good fun on Hallowe'en, and I enjoyed myself. Some really little kids were very shy and scared, and their older siblings helped them take candy. I have a bowl with a dead man's hand in it, that will at random grab the kids' hands as they reach into the bowl for the candy. Some kids knew already knew about the trick, others it was their first time with The Hand.



I spent some time over the past few days, decorating, putting things up, hanging the skeletons in the trees, making the candleholders ready, and so on. I concealed a computer speaker system in the bushes by the door, with a remote link to the studio computer. I had made a scary music and sounds mix, and played it back over the speakers in the bushes all the while. About a full CD's worth of spooky sounds and samples, the usual clichéd classical Hallowe'en music, plus more contemporary music no doubt unfamiliar to most listeners. George Crumb, Jon Gibson, and more; experimental noise music, and Night on Bald Mountain. I was hoping it would contribute to the overall spooky vibe, and I guess it did.



This year, unlike last year, I did not run out of candy, and have to go get more. In fact, I have leftovers. None of it really appeals to me, at least, not in bulk. If I don't give away most of it, I'll be nibbling on it for weeks. I no longer fill like bingeing on candy, and to be honest, my stomach can't take it, anyway.



They came and went for about two hours. Later in the night, I went out and took these photos. Then I took down some of the decorations, mostly the things hidden in the bushes and other places that I didn't want to forget about. I'll take down the rest sometime later. But I've left some candles to burn on into the night, for the spirits of the dead, who are with us always, who visit on this night when the veil between the worlds is thin. And I will leave out some food and cider for them, too, for their sustenance. And thus we go on.

A Poem for Samhain

A Book of Leaves

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Atlas of the Dead

come see: how quietly they move through the stones.
parchment fingers rustling their leaf tambourines.
the dew is on the grass. their feet, in all their wanderings, do not touch.
they float above the earth, or dissolve near to it, into it.
their compass rose is of the greater earth: these leaves fall through them.


Disperse Into Twilight

still silence before the storm: premonition
of the desolation of salt marshes.
forest of crucifixes. the writhing.
lamp that recalls the last ecstasies of moths:
light, guttering, lifting, remember his hands.


Bonfires To Leap

burning, cascading, futons chimneyed with fire.
bitter brush, uprooted. trapped wooden serpent roots.
graduate degrees in the design of balefires.
trapped sunlight released: stand-in for the green flash.
re-cycle of mineral, root, and vapor. water returns.

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Previous Samhain entries: here, here, and here.

Some Icons for All Hallow's Eve

Courtesy of feuilleton and A Journey Round My Skull, here are some All Hallow's-esque images from the short-lived Austrian magazine Die Orchideengarten, which published from 1919–1921.



This was perhaps the world's first fantasy magazine, predating the F/SF pulps in the US and Britain by a few years. A lot of the illustrations from the magazine are grotesque, macabre, occasionally bordering on German Expressionism. Some would do Poe and his followers proud; in fact, these illustrations are rather superior to the usual post-Poe thriller/chiller horror art.



In some ways, I feel like rediscovering this old graphic illustration, because of its freshness and power today, underlines the idea that, in the creative world, what is new and good is often a reprise of what's old and good. It's no secret that waves of fashion in graphic design, typography, and illustration occur like eaves of fashion in any other creative or commercial-creative work. Trends and styles come around again. Sometimes it's a matter of rediscovering old ideas in order to revitalize the current ones.



Yet imagery like this from Die Orchideengarten is so psychologically charged, it retains its power, its keynote of horror, when seen afresh today. There are icons and images in this material that are literally of The Day of the Dead, but beyond even that, there is something chthonic and archetypal here. There is psychological depth to the best of fantasy art, be it macabre or transcendent, that carries it past mere illustration into representing something powerful and innate in our secret selves. They bring out our sense of wonder; and they also can inspire a frisson of terror which evokes our deepest, reptile-brain selves.


The WIld Hunt

A great deal of the writing and artwork from Die Orchideengarten is decadent, in the sense of the word used to describe the arts at the fin de siecle and between the World Wars in Europe. An almost Dionysian chaos erupted in those periods, challenging the Apollonian cultural institutions, bringing fresh air in the stale rooms of the Academy; but also a whiff of rot and decay. There was intent to shock, of course; but the slap in the face was at that time, not the hollow mannerism it has become in contemporary art, but a vital attempt to wake up the dead. The subconscious mind had been discovered, and it was erupting everywhere, in Expressionist painting, in Futurism and Surrealism, in every attempt by artists, who are usually the prophets of change in culture, to shake things up and make them come back to life.


Die Angst

A century or so later, we need to remember that what we now perceive as familiar mannerisms did indeed have the power to shock and change, in its time. It was a genuine eruption of the liminal and numinous into everyday life which had become stagnant and overly-concerned with social acceptability. But humans are chaotic beings, as much as we're beings of order: to be fully alive, we must give ourselves the freedom to not know what we're doing, at least some of the time.



So the artwork from Die Orchideengarten has a contemporary charge of Otherness and numinous power to it, even now, that serves well to remind us that our own times have become too stifled with authoritarian rules and regulations: the ordinary person is hemmed in with totalitarian laws eroding basic civil rights, while the elements in authority have set themselves to normalize their self-centered rapaciousness and greed as just the way things are meant to be. If Die Orchideengarten reminds us of anything, it's perhaps that our own shadows contain a great power, which can be harnessed creatively to shake things up, and set ourselves free, again. The numinous charge to this artwork can be interpreted as self-empowering: what better night to light a fuse and blow up Parliament than All Hallow's Eve, which according to the old pagan calendars was in truth New Year's Eve?



I'm not really into the grotesque, the goth, or the macabre. My own life psychological health at the present time requires me to balance light and dark, and not plunge forever into either one. I've spent a great deal of time in the shadows, as well as the light; I've explored both. My path at present is more Taoism's awareness of their dynamic balance and eternal circulation. So, much of what I see in Die Orchideengarten does not really appeal to me purely as art—except that some of these charged images evoking the dead and the realms of dark fantasy are appropriate for Hallow's Eve. What appeals to me here is the power rising up from that black river of life, that well within the cave at the back of the mind, that deep layer of source and life, that moving shadow our of which the light of new life may emerge. If only we embrace the shadows, and let the light come out through us into the world. Which of course is what a renewed life, in the New Year, is all about.