Gloomy Sunday- Diamanda Galas

Rimbaud: A Season in Hell

I have just swallowed a terrific mouthful of poison. –Blessed, blessed, blessed the advice I was given!

–My guts are on fire. The power of the poison twists my arms and legs, cripples me, drives me to the ground. I die of thirst, I suffocate, I cannot cry. This is Hell, eternal torment! See how the flames rise! I burn as I ought to. Go on, Devil!

I once came close to a conversion to the good and to felicity, salvation. How can I describe my vision; the air of Hell is too thick for hymns! There were millions of delightful creatures in smooth spiritual harmony, strength and peace, noble ambitions, I don’t know what all.

Noble ambitions!

But I am still alive! Suppose damnation is eternal! A man who wants to mutilate himself is certainly damned, isn’t he? I believe I am in Hell, therefore I am. This is the catechism at work. I am the slave of my baptism. You, my parents, have ruined my life, and your own. Poor child! –Hell is powerless against pagans. –I am still alive! Later on, the delights of damnation will become more profound. A crime, quick, and let me fall to nothingness, condemned by human law.
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Films of Kenneth Anger on Youtube

We've been watching the wicked strange films of Kenneth Anger over at Youtube today. Here's "Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome," featuring Cameron as the Scarlet Woman.

Twisted Animated Shorts

Don't say you weren't warned.

Nietzsche Ubermensch

"I teach you the overman. Man is something that shall be overcome. What have you done to overcome him?

     All beings so far have created something beyond themselves; and do you want to be the ebb of this great flood and even go back to the beasts rather than overcome man? What is the ape to man? A laughingstock or a painful embarrassment. And man shall be just that for the overman: a laughingstock or a painful embarrassment...

     Behold, I teach you the overman. The overman is the meaning of the earth.Let your will say: the overman shall be the meaning of the earth! I beseech you, my brothers, remain faithful to the earth, and do not believe those who speak to you of otherworldly hopes! Poison-mixers are they, whether they know it or not. Despisers of life are they, decaying and poisoned themselves, of whom the earth is weary: so let them go.

     Once the sin against God was the greatest sin; but God died, and these sinners died with him. To sin against the earth is now the most dreadful thing, and to esteem the entrails of the unknowable higher than the meaning of the earth...

     What is the greatest experience you can have? It is the hour of the great contempt. The hour when your happiness, too, arouses your disgust, and even your reason and your virtue.

     The hour when you say, 'What matters my happiness? It is poverty and filth and wretched contentment. But my happiness ought to justify existence itself.'

     The hour when you say, 'What matters my reason? Does it crave knowledge as the lion his food? It is poverty and filth and wretched contentment.'

     The hour when you say, 'What matters my virtue? As yet it has not made me rage. How weary I am of my good and my evil! All that is poverty and filth and wretched contentment.'

     "Man is a rope, tied between beast and overman--a rope over an abyss...
What is great in man is that he is a bridge and not an end: what can be loved in man is that he is an overture and a going under...

     "I say unto you: one must still have chaos in oneself to be able to give birth to a dancing star. I say unto you: you still have chaos in yourselves.
     Alas, the time is coming when man will no longer give birth to a star. Alas, the time of the most despicable man is coming, he that is no longer able to despise himself. Behold, I show you the last man.
     'What is love? What is creation? What is longing? What is a star?' thus asks the last man, and blinks.
     The earth has become small, and on it hops the last man, who makes everything small. His race is as ineradicable as the flea; the last man lives longest.
     'We have invented happiness,'say the last men, and they blink. They have left the regions where it was hard to live, for one needs warmth. One still loves one's neighbor and rubs against him, for one needs warmth...
     One still works, for work is a form of entertainment. But one is careful lest the entertainment be too harrowing. One no longer becomes poor or rich: both require too much exertion. Who still wants to rule? Who obey? Both require too much exertion.
     No shepherd and one herd! Everybody wants the same, everybody is the same: whoever feels different goes voluntarily into a madhouse.
     'Formerly, all the world was mad,' say the most refined, and they blink...
     One has one's little pleasure for the day and one's little pleasure for the night: but one has a regard for health.
     'We have invented happiness,' say the last men, and they blink."

from Nietzsche's Thus spoke Zarathustra, p.3,4,5, Walter Kaufmann transl.

Rimbaud-- A Night in Hell-- With Robert Mappelthorpe Photos

I have just swallowed a terrific mouthful of poison. - Blessed, blessed, blessed the advice I was given! - My guts are on fire. The power of the poison twists my arms and legs, cripples me, drives me to the ground. I die of thirst, I suffocate, I cannot cry. This is Hell, eternal torment! See how the flames rise! I burn as I ought to. Go on, Devil!
I once came close to a conversion to the good and to felicity, salvation. How can I describe my vision, the air of Hell is too thick for hymns! There were millions of delightful creatures in smooth spiritual harmony, strength and peace, noble ambitions, I don't know what all?
Noble ambitions!
But I am still alive! - Suppose damnation is eternal! A man who wants to mutilate himself is certainly damned, isn't he? I believe I am in Hell, therefore I am. This is the catechism at work. I am the slave of my baptism. You, my parents, have ruined my life, and your own. Poor child! - Hell is powerless against pagans. - I am still alive! Later on, the delights of damnation will become more profound. A crime, quick, and let me fall to nothingness, condemned by human law.
Shut up, will you shut up!... Everything here is shame and reproach: Satan saying that the fire is worthless, that my anger is ridiculous and silly. - Ah, stop! ...those mistakes someone whispered, magic spells, deceptive odors, childish music. - And to think that I possess the truth, that I can have a vision of justice: my judgement is sound and firm, I am prime for perfection... Pride. - My scalp begins to tighten. Have mercy! Lord, I am afraid! Water, I thirst, I thirst! Ah, childhood, grass and rain, the puddle on the paving stones, Moonlight when the clock strikes twelve.... The devil is in the clock tower, right now! Mary! Holy Virgin!... - Horrible stupidity.
Look there, are those not honorable men, who wish me well?...Come on... a pillow over my mouth, they cannot hear me, they are only ghosts. Anyway, no one ever thinks of anyone else. Don't let them come closer. I must surely stink of burning flesh.
My hallucinations are endless. This is what I've always gone through: the end of my faith in history, the neglect of my principles. I shall say no more about this: poets and visionaries would be jealous. I am the richest one of all, a thousand times, and I will hoard it like the sea.
O God - the clock of life stopped but a moment ago. I am no longer within the world. - Theology is accurate; hell is certainly down below - and heaven is up on high. - Ecstacy, nightmare, sleep, in a nest of flames.
How the mind wanders idly in the country... Satan, Ferdinand, blows with the wild seed... Jesus walks on purple thorns but doesn't bend them... Jesus used to walk on troubled waters. In the light of the lantern we saw him there, all white, with long brown hair, standing in the curve of an emerald wave...
I will tear the veils from every mystery: mysteries of religion or of nature, death, birth, the future, the past, cosmogony, and nothingness. I am a master of phantasmagoria.
Listen!...
Every talent is mine! - There is no one here, and there is someone: I wouldn't want to waste my treasure. - Shall I give you Afric chants, belly dancers? Shall I disappear, shall I begin an attempt to discover the Ring? Shall I? I will manufacture gold, and medicines.
Put your faith in me, then. Faith comforts, it guides and heals. Come unto me all of you, - even the little children - let me console you, let me pour out my heart for you - my miraculous heart! - Poor men, poor laborers! I do not ask for prayers; give me only your trust, and I will be happy.
- Think of me, now. All this doesn't make me miss the world much. I'm lucky not to suffer more. My life was nothing but sweet stupidities, unfortunately.
Bah! I'll make all the ugly faces I can!
We are out of the world, that's sure. Not a single sound. My sense of touch is gone. Ah, my château, my Saxony, my willow woods! Evenings and mornings, nights and days... How tired I am!
I ought to have a special hell for my anger, a hell for my pride, - and a hell for sex; a whole symphony of hells!
I am weary, I die. This is the grave and I'm turning into worms, horror of horrors! Satan, you clown, you want to dissolve me with your charms. Well, I want it. I want it! Stab me with a pitchfork, sprinkle me with fire.
Ah! To return to life! To stare at our deformities. And this poison, this eternally accursed embrace! My weakness, and the world's cruelty! My God, have pity, hide me, I can't control myself at all! - I am hidden, and I am not.
And as the Damned soul rises, so does the fire.

From Arthur Rimbaud's "Season in Hell," a version of which exists that was illustrated by Robert Mappelthorpe.
A Season in Hell

Ouija Museum Online

Yes, there's an online museum of talking boards, replete with an interactive Ouija board and lots of images of vintage boards. Check it out.

Strange Musical Genius of Harry Partch

excerpted from Wikipedia's entry on Harry Partch:
Partch was born on June 24, 1901 in Oakland, California soon after his parents, both Presbyterian missionaries, fled the Boxer Rebellion in China. He spent his childhood in small, remote towns in Arizona and New Mexico, where he heard and sang songs in Mandarin, Spanish, and American Indian languages.
Partch was sterile, probably due to childhood mumps, and most of his loving relationships were with men.[1]

As a child, he learned to play the clarinet, harmonium, viola, piano, and guitar. He began to compose at an early age, using the equal-tempered chromatic scale, the tuning system most common in Western music. However, Partch grew frustrated with what he felt were imperfections of the standard system of musical tuning, believing that this system was unsuitable for reflecting the subtle melodic contours of dramatic speech, and as a result, he burned all of his early works.
Interested in the potential musicality of speech, Partch invented and constructed instruments that could underscore the intoning voice, and he developed musical notations that accurately and practically instructed players as to how to play the instruments. His first such instrument was the "Monophone," later known as the "Adapted viola."
Harry Partch's desire to use a different system of tuning inspired him to modify existing instruments and create new ones. He was, in his own words, "a philosophic music-man seduced into carpentry".
His adapted instruments include the Adapted Viola (a viola fitted with a cello neck which extends the range by a fourth, and has changeable bridges to allow triple-stops to be sustained) and three Adapted Guitars: a guitar with the equal tempered frets replaced by a complex system of justly tuned frets, a guitar tuned in octaves, or 2/1's, played by moving a pyrex rod along the strings, much like a slide guitar, and a 10-string fretless guitar played in a similar manner to his other fretless guitar, but with a wildly different tuning.
He re-tuned the reeds of several reed organs and labeled the keys with a color code. The first one was called the Ptolemy, in tribute to the ancient music theorist Claudius Ptolemaeus, whose musical scales included ratios of the 11-limit, as Partch's did. The others were called Chromelodeons, a portmanteau of chrome (meaning "color") and melodeon.

Partch is famous for his 43-tone scale, even though he used many different scales in his work and the number of divisions is theoretically infinite.
Partch created and maintained his own record label, "Gate 5", to release recordings of his works and generate income. Towards the end of his life, Columbia Records made recordings of some of his works, including Delusion of the Fury, which helped increase public attention to his work. He remains a somewhat obscure figure, but is well known to experimental musicians (especially those interested in microtonality) and instrument-builders, and he is considered by many to be one of the most significant composers of the 20th century.

Witch Trials in Africa

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SNAKING AROUND the outer wall of the courthouse in Mbaiki, Central African Republic, is a long line of citizens, all in human form and waiting to face judgment. It’s easy to imagine them as the usual mix of drunks, reckless drivers, and check-bouncers in the dock of a small American town. But here most are witches, and they are facing criminal punishment for hexing their enemies or assuming the shape of animals.

By some estimates, about 40 percent of the cases in the Central African court system are witchcraft prosecutions. (Drug offenses in the U.S., by contrast, account for just 12 percent of arrests.) In Mbaiki—where Pygmies, who are known for bewitching each other, make up about a tenth of the population—witchcraft prosecutions exceed 50 percent of the case load, meaning that most alleged criminals there are suspected of doing things that Westerners generally regard as impossible. source

Witchcraft persecutions remain a huge problem in Africa, leading to murders, and mutilations, often of innocent children. Witch hunts are no joke in some parts of the world, and the chief evil-doers are evangelical Christian charlatans who do it for profit.

Tesla Spirit Radio-- Commune With the Dead and Other Strange Stuff

Instructables has some nifty instructions for building Tesla's spirit radio, a device which may, or may not, allow you to commune with the departed, listen to distant storms, and detect wormholes. All you need is a jam jar and few bits from Radio Shack.

Poem: The Ghost by Charles Baudelaire

SOFTLY as brown-eyed Angels rove
I will return to thy alcove,
And glide upon the night to thee,
Treading the shadows silently.

And I will give to thee, my own,
Kisses as icy as the moon,
And the caresses of a snake
Cold gliding in the thorny brake.

And when returns the livid morn,
Thou shalt find all my place forlorn,
And chilly, till the falling night.

Others would rule by tenderness
Over thy life and youthfulness,
But I would conquer thee by fright!

Family Photo Captures Man, 64, and His Ghost Image of 42 Years Ago

Harry Ross, 64, of Rothesay, Bute, Scotland posed for a family photo recently. Imagine his surprise when he saw a ghost image of a man peering through the window at the sitters, from inside the house. Well, his shock deepened when he recognized the man as himself-- at 22 years-old--wearing the very clothing he'd been married in. Apparently his 22 year-old self popped in to get in the picture of Harry at 64.

The article is here. We'll leave for others the discussion of vital time, and its relation with space. What interests us here is the labyrinth, in all it's multi-dimensional oddity.

"Beneath English trees I meditated on that lost maze: I imagined it inviolate and perfect at the secret crest of a mountain; I imagined it erased by rice fields or beneath the water; I imagined it infinite, no longer composed of octagonal kiosks and returning paths, but of rivers and provinces and kingdoms…I thought of a labyrinth of labyrinths, of one sinuous spreading labyrinth that would encompass the past and the future and in some way involve the stars."- Jorge Luis Borges, The Garden of Forking Paths

"The interior is not only the universe but also the etui of the private person. To live means to leave traces. In the interior these are emphasized. An abundance of covers and protectors, liners and cases is devised, on which the traces of objects of everyday use are imprinted. The traces of the occupant also leave their impression on the interior. The detective story that follows these traces comes into being."- Walter Benjamin

Nina Hagen- MAHAMRITYUNJAYA MANTRA