Tag: opium
Virgil Finlay illustrates Hallowe'en in a Suburb by HP Lovecraft for Weird Tales, September 1952.
• Literary Hub does Halloween with an abundance with Draculas, a lazy option but the pieces are good ones nonetheless: Olivia Rutigliano attempts to rank the 50 best (screen) Draculas, and also recalls the Broadway production designed by Edward Gorey. At the same site, Katie Yee discovers that The Addams Family (1991) is really about the importance of books.
• The inevitable film lists: the always reliable Anne Billson selects the scariest ghosts in cinema; at Dennis Cooper's, TheNeanderthalSkull curates…DC's Weirdo Halloween Horror Movie Marathon, a list featuring a couple of oddities which have appeared in previous weekend links.
• More books bound with human skin: Megan Rosenbloom, author of Dark Archives: A Librarian's Investigation into the Science and History of Books Bound in Human Skin discusses the subject with S. Elizabeth.
Beyond all this, however, readers are most likely to read De Quincey for his compellingly strange writing on opium and its effect on the mind. For it is opium, rather than the opium-eater, he writes in Confessions, who "is the true hero of the tale". He explains the drug cannot of itself create imaginative visions—the man "whose talk is of oxen" will probably dream about oxen. But for De Quincey, with his love for reverie, it gives "an inner eye and power of intuition for the vision and the mysteries of our human nature". Wine "robs a man of his self-possession: opium greatly invigorates it". It "gives an expansion to the heart and the benevolent affections". "This", he claims, "is the doctrine of the true church on the subject of opium: of which church I acknowledge myself to be the only member."
"Thomas De Quincey's revelatory writing deserves greater attention," says Jane Darcy
• New music: Weeping Ghost by John Carpenter is a preview of the forthcoming Lost Themes III; Moments Of Clarity is a new album of psychedelic(ish) songs from Professor Yaffle.
• "How now, you secret, black, and midnight hags!" Sean Connery (RIP) was often playing kings in later life but he started early with this performance as Macbeth in 1961. (Ta to TjZ for the link!)
• Mixes of the week: a (non-Halloween) guest mix by Paul Schütze for Toneshift, and the by-now traditional Samhain Séance Mix from The Ephemeral Man.
• Clive Hicks-Jenkins' big new adventure: an illustrated "reinvention" of Jean Cocteau's La Belle et la Bête.
• Drew McDowall (of Coil, et al) talks Musick, magick and sacred materiality.
• "No one loves the smell of a Kindle," says Thomas O'Dwyer.
• Brüder des Schattens (1979) by Popol Vuh | Nosferatu (1988) by Art Zoyd | Vampires At Large (2012) by John Zorn
Author JohnPosted on October 31, 2020 Categories {art}, {books}, {drugs}, {electronica}, {film}, {horror}, {illustrators}, {music}, {occult}, {psychedelia}, {theatre}Tags Anne Billson, Art Zoyd, Clive Hicks-Jenkins, Coil (group), Dennis Cooper, Dracula, Drew McDowall, Edward Gorey, HP Lovecraft, Jane Darcy, Jean Cocteau, John Carpenter, John Zorn, Katie Yee, Macbeth, Megan Rosenbloom, Nosferatu, Olivia Rutigliano, opium, Paul Schütze, Popol Vuh, Professor Yaffle, S. Elizabeth, Sean Connery, The Addams Family, The Ephemeral Man, TheNeanderthalSkull, Thomas De Quincey, Thomas O'Dwyer, Virgil Finlay, Weird Tales
In Voluptas Mors (1951) by Philippe Halsman.
• "Equation to an Unknown (1980) is [Dietrich de Velsa's] only film, and stands without a doubt as a masterpiece and the best French gay porn ever made." Related (sort of): the US division of Amazon Prime had been showing a censored print of Francis Lee's gay romance, God's Own Country, until the director was informed and complained.
• "They lasted just one night as tour support for U2 before being thrown off. The outraged and hostile audience threw bottles of urine. The band responded by throwing iron bars back at them." Daniel Dylan Wray on the wild times (and cookery) of Blixa Bargeld and Einstürzende Neubauten.
• "Japanese art evolved, in Saunders's words, 'from a distinctive alchemy of silk, soot, gold, fire, and fur,' from a playful and curious fascination with the subject matter and tools provided by the natural world." Tamar Avishai on art in isolation: the delicate paintings of Edo Japan.
To me, the Diggers were a phenomenon. I don't know that there's been anything like them in history—yes, history repeats itself, so there probably was somebody at some time, I'm just not aware of it—a situation where you have a group of people whose goal is to help other people, to bring them not just the basic necessities you need to survive but the things that you need for your imagination, your brain, your growth on other levels. It was like an opium dream or something.
Siena Carlton-Firestone (aka Natural Suzanne) talking to Jay Babcock for the fourth installment of Jay's verbal history of the hippie anarchists
• A psychic has been ordered to pay the costs of exhuming Salvador Dalí's corpse for a failed paternity test.
• Feel the crushing steel: David Bennun on Grace Jones and the Compass Point Trilogy.
• Sleep Tones by Six Organs Of Admittance, name-your-price music for insomniacs.
• Mix of the week: XLR8R Podcast 645 by Juan MacLean.
• Playing the Piano for the Isolated by Ryuichi Sakamoto.
• David Lynch Theater presents: Fire (Pozar).
• Fire (1967) by Koko Taylor | Fire (1984) by 23 Skidoo | Fire (2002) by Ladytron
Author JohnPosted on May 24, 2020 January 25, 2021 Categories {art}, {electronica}, {film}, {gay}, {music}, {photography}, {politics}, {surrealism}Tags 23 Skidoo, alchemy, Blixa Bargeld, Daniel Dylan Wray, David Bennun, David Lynch, Dietrich de Velsa, Einstürzende Neubauten, Francis Lee, Grace Jones, Jay Babcock, Juan MacLean, Koko Taylor, Ladytron, opium, Philippe Halsman, Ryuichi Sakamoto, Salvador Dalí, Siena Carlton-Firestone, Six Organs of Admittance, Tamar Avishai