Author: Jenny Ashford
The Nightmare Collective
As I mentioned in a previous post, my short story “The Mother of Foresight” will be appearing in an ebook anthology called The Nightmare Collective published by Play With Death. The anthology also includes stories by Tom Wortman, M. B. Vujačić, Manen Lyset, Kyle Yadlosky, G. T. Montgomery, Ari Drew, Patrick Winters, Trevor James Zaple, John Teel, Dexter Findley, and Kyle Rader. For the first week after its release, the book will be a FREE DOWNLOAD! Click this link and sign up to get notified when the ebook is released!
The Goddess Has Gobs of Exciting News!
Well, kiddos, it’s been a crazy week, hence my relative dearth of posts, but you’ll be edified to know that a bunch of stuff has been going on behind the scenes, so here’s a brief wrap-up!
If you happen to live in the central Florida area (and I know I do), then put on your charity panties and head on down to the Whole Planet Music & Art Festival at Bombshell’s Tavern! It’s a big ol’ concert event put on by a few good friends of mine, and all proceeds will benefit the Whole Planet Foundation. There will be bands and art and general debauchery (probably), plus there will be a raffle in which you may WIN music and art from local performers, or perhaps even a SIGNED copy of either my novel Bellwether or my short story collection The Associated Villainies! Please try to make the trip if you can!
![Pageflex Persona [document: PRS0000038_00060]](https://goddessofhellfire.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/mammothmountainbookcover_blog.jpg)
The book I coauthored with the God of Hellfire himself, The Mammoth Mountain Poltergeist, should be out by next week! The proof copy is making its way toward me as we speak, and provided there are no terrible fuckups, the book should be for sale on Amazon and the regular channels very soon. By the way, if you or someone you know has a paranormal blog, podcast or suchlike on which you’d be willing to review the book and/or interview its charming authors, shoot me a message and I’ll get you a free copy and all the info you may need. I’m also planning on doing a giveaway for free copies on Amazon sometime in the next few weeks, so keep watching this space!
Remember, my short story “The Mother of Foresight” will be appearing in the new ebook horror anthology coming next month from Play With Death. More details as I have them.
And finally, please remember I still have that Patreon campaign going, so if you’d like to contribute a few bucks and get yourself some sweet writer-style swag, click the link and give until it hurts. Or at least until it mildly stings, y’know the kind of sting you get when you just scrape your knee and can make it feel better by spraying some Bactine on it. Let’s not get too insane here.
Oh, and speaking of insanity, did you guys see “The Walking Dead” this past Sunday? Holy FUCKBALLS, y’all. Shit’s getting real. I think I may need therapy. Hold me.
Until next time, Goddess out!
A Short History of the Corset
In the dogged pursuit of an hourglass figure, people have subjected themselves to many extreme undergarments.
Though the waist-cinching garment known as the corset is now primarily associated with the Victorian era, its roots actually go much further back in history. For as long as humans have worn clothing, it seems, they have sought to manipulate their figures in myriad ways to make themselves more attractive to the opposite sex. Whether a smooth silhouette or a tiny wasp waist was desired, the corset has long been the undergarment of choice, undergirding a dazzling variety of clothing styles.
Corsets in the Ancient World
Ancient Greek, Cretan, Theban and Minoan societies all display evidence that corsets were worn by both men and women; the Minoans in particular wore them, possibly as support for the waist and back while they participated in various sports. Figurines of goddesses in ancient Crete wear corsets as outer garments.
Greek corsets were evidently made of leather, while those of Thebes may have been constructed primarily of metal. There are even mentions of corsets in the literature of the early Middle Ages, and some gowns from the period show a sort of corset construction beneath the bodice. But it wasn’t until around 1400 that corsets really began coming into their own.
Corsets in Spain and Italy
The powerful Spanish were highly influential on European fashion in the 15th century. Both men and women wore corsets in order to achieve a smooth torso and an upright, dignified posture. During the next century the Italians took corsets a step further, adding a busk beneath the lacing of the corset for a smoother look, then adding a hinged metal cage for extra rigidity. Later in the 16th century, Catherine de’ Medici popularized a corset with a more flexible frame made of steel, which retained the chest-flattening and waist-cinching properties of the garment while lessening the discomfort somewhat.
Corsets in France
In the middle of the 17th century, the French took the concept of the corset and ran with it; soon corsets were worn by almost everyone, including children just learning to walk. The French, rather than seeking to flatten the chest as the Spanish and Italian fashion had dictated, instead used the corset to force the bosom upward, resulting in a pleasing décolletage. The material of the corset was made stiffer with paste, and the busk was refined, becoming a removable slat usually made of ivory, silver, wood or whalebone.
The popularity of corsets in France was only interrupted by the French Revolution, whose ideal of liberty also extended to freeing people from their corsets. For a time French ladies favored flowing, high-waisted gowns reminiscent of the draped robes of classical Greece and Rome. However, by the 19th century the French were tightening their laces once again, getting back into line with the rest of Europe and the United States, where corsets had never gone out of fashion.
Corsets in the 19th and 20th Centuries
Even as clothing styles waxed and waned, corsets remained, underpinning changing fashions. Corsets for men began to fade, though in the early 1800s dandies wore suits tailored to give their bodies an hourglass shape without the hassle of a corset underneath.
For women, though, liberation from lacing was still a long way off. Corsets were worn routinely throught the Victorian period (1837-1901). By the end of the century, despite the abandonment of the “wasp-waisted” look prevalent in earlier times, women still wore newer corsets manufactured to give them a sleek, long-waisted silhouette beneath the more straight-line and Gibson Girl fashions of the 1990s. A smaller waist was always a goal, however, and women laced their corsets tighter and tighter, sometimes to the detriment of their health, trying to achieve and maintain waist sizes well below twenty inches.
After World War I, the 1920s saw a change in fashion, with young women abandoning the corset in favour of simple panties, bras and underslips. In 1930 the panty girdle was introduced, a garment consisting of a corset and bra all in one.
With the New Look of the late 1940s came the waist cincher, and both it and the girdle remained the foundation of women’s clothing styles until the feminist movements of the 1960s finally freed women from the supposed prisons of their clothing. Though bras are still de rigueur beneath the more casual styles of today, corsets in the modern era are generally only worn by enthusiasts in the goth and fetish subcultures.
Additional Source:
- Steele, Valerie (2003). The Corset: A Cultural History. Yale University Press. ISBN: 0300099539.
New Short Story To Be Published Soon!
My new short story “The Mother of Foresight” (inspired by the severed foot dream I posted about a while back) will be appearing in an ebook anthology published by Play With Death! Tentative publication date is late March or early April, so I will keep everyone updated!
Ergotism and the Salem Witch Trials
Some scholars assert that the mass hysteria in Massachusetts in the 17th century could have been triggered by a common fungus.
The events are familiar to most Americans and have been dramatized dozens of times on stage, page and film. The tragic episode was set into motion in 1692 by the strange behavior of two young girls, and snowballed into a panic of almost unbelievable proportions. The Salem Witch Trials, as they came to be known, lacked the staggering body count of many of the European witch hunts; nonetheless the series of events was sufficiently dire to cause many people then and now to question how such a thing could have happened.
An Overview of the Salem Witch Panic
It was February 1692. Nine-year-old Betty Parris and her eleven-year-old cousin Abigail Williams suddenly began displaying bizarre behavior akin to epileptic fits. They screamed and raved, twisted their bodies into strange positions, and complained that an unseen assailant was pinching and pricking them. Doctors were called to examine the girls, but no physical cause could be found for their distress, and what was worse, when word of the girls’ mysterious ailment spread through Salem village, other girls began behaving in a similar fashion.
At this point, authorities had raised suspicions of witchcraft, and Betty and Abigail obligingly pointed accusing fingers at a slave girl named Tituba, who they claimed had taught them spells for seeing into the future. Other accusations followed, and more “victims” came forward, accusing still others. When all was said and done, the hysteria had spread across three counties and resulted in the arrest of more than 150 people, twenty of whom were eventually executed for witchcraft. What possible reason could there have been for such a terrible tragedy to unfold? Many theories have been put forth, but Professor Linda Caporael, in 1976, suggested we need look no further than the Salem villagers’ breadboxes.
Ergot a Poisonous Fungus, Catalyst for Accusations
In a 1976 article inScience, Caporael theorized that the initial catalyst for the witch craze — the seemingly “possessed” behavior of Betty, Abigail, and the other girls — could have been caused by a reaction to ergot. There are about fifty known species of the ergot fungus, but the one Caporael implicated in the witch panic was Claviceps pupurea, which grows on rye plants and can cause poisoning when consumed by humans or other mammals. If indeed the girls had eaten bread contaminated with ergot, they could have experienced symptoms that were perceived as possession: Seizures, a sensation of itching or crawling on the skin, muscular contractions, nausea, and even hallucinations, triggered by an alkaloid called ergotamine, which is similar in structure to LSD.
Caporael argued that not only were the symptoms of ergotism consistent with those noted in the victims of the “bewitchment,” but that the area around Salem grew a great deal of rye, and that climatic conditions were favorable to the growth of the ergot fungus. It would not even have been necessary for all of the “victims” to have been afflicted with ergotism; a few cases might have started the ball rolling, and psychological and sociological factors could have accomplished the rest.
Arguments Against the Ergot Theory
Many scholars have disputed the claims that ergotism played a major role in the witch panic. Historians Jack Gottlieb and Nicholas Spanos, for example, contend that had ergotism been responsible for the accusers’ symptoms, we should have expected to see members of entire households afflicted, rather than just a few individuals here and there. They also argue that ergotism has other symptoms that do not correspond with the recorded behavior of the “bewitched” persons. Finally, they and other scholars have pointed out that ergotism had been a recognized malady at least since the Middle Ages; it even had a name, St. Anthony’s Fire. Anthropologist H. Sidley in particular doubted whether authorities in Salem in the 17th century would have mistaken the supposedly familiar symptoms of ergot poisoning with signs of supernatural possession.
Despite the voluminous research on the subject, the exact causes of the Salem witch panic are still murky. It is not controversial to speculate that the episode was probably triggered by an unfortunate cascade of converging factors—social, political, psychological, and perhaps pharmacological.
Additional Source:
Macinnis, Peter (2004). Poisons: A History From Hemlock To Botox. MJF Books. ISBN 1-56731-814-2.
Lady Mary Montagu and the Discovery of the Smallpox Vaccine
Though Edward Jenner is credited with developing the first smallpox vaccine, inoculation had long been practiced in other parts of the world.
Smallpox had for many years been a scourge in the West, sweeping through the densely populated cities of Europe in periodic epidemics, killing as many as 35% of the people it infected and often leaving the survivors scarred for life. From the wealthiest noble to the humblest peasant, residents of London and Paris lived in abject fear of the next wave of infection. There was no known way to prevent the spread of the disease, and no known cure. But while the populace of the West cowered under smallpox’s shadow, they had no idea that the cultures of China, the Middle East, and Africa had known how to prevent the disease for centuries, and that their method would soon be introduced into England by one very brave and determined woman.
Lady Mary Montagu and the First Inoculations
Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, a member of the British nobility and the wife of an ambassador, was living in Turkey while her husband was posted there. She had firsthand experience with the horrors of smallpox—she had contracted the disease in 1715, and though her prognosis had been grim, she had managed to survive. Before her illness, she had been widely lauded as one of the most beautiful women in Britain; afterward, her face was so misshapen and scarred that she always wore a veil in public. Though she no longer had to fear smallpox for herself, she lived in mortal terror of her two children contracting it. So when she heard the Turks had a method for preventing smallpox, she wanted to hear all about it.
The method had been practiced for centuries, though Westerners knew little to nothing of it. It is possible that inoculation against smallpox was known in India as early as 1000 BC, though the first definitive mention of the treatment was made in 1549, by Chinese author Wan Quan. The inoculation (or variolation, as it was called in the early days) worked on a similar principle to modern vaccines—small particles of diseased matter from an infected person, either in the form of pus or powdered scabs, was blown up the inoculee’s nose or inserted through a tiny cut in the skin. The patient would then develop a mild case of smallpox, after which he or she would be forever immune. There was a small chance the inoculation would be fatal, but it was an infinitesimal risk compared to the mortality rate of full-blown smallpox. Lady Mary, hearing of the method described by doctors Emmanuel Timoni and Jacob Pylarini, became determined to introduce the knowledge to England; to show her commitment to the cause, she vowed to have her own children inoculated.
The Smallpox Vaccine Comes to England
The British public were wary when Lady Mary returned home in 1721 and began making her campaign for variolation. Smallpox was horrible and often fatal; why give yourself a dose of it on purpose? But Lady Mary was relentless, and despite widespread condemnation of her and of Dr. Charles Maitland, who she persuaded to perform the inoculations, she gave the treatment to her children (aged 4 and 5), both of whom survived their ordeals with no lingering effects. Soon others were bringing their children to Lady Mary to have them variolated, and though one or two of the inoculated patients did die of smallpox, on the whole the experiment was a rousing success, so much so that the British Royal Family conceded to having their own children inoculated; still leery of the procedure’s safety, however, they insisted that the inoculations first be performed on six prisoners, who would earn a pardon if they survived. All did, and the royal children were variolated.
Cotton Mather and the American Inoculations
During this time, Lady Mary Montagu had also been corresponding with American minister Cotton Mather, who had noticed that his family’s African slaves seemed immune to smallpox. When Mather asked one of the slaves, Onesimus, about this, the man answered that a similar method of variolation as that practiced in Asia and the Middle East was also common in Africa. Mather convinced Dr. Zabdiel Boylston to inoculate Boylston’s son and two slaves, all of whom recovered, and was instrumental in sowing acceptance for the vaccine in the young United States.
Edward Jenner and the Modern Vaccine
Early studies of the use of the cowpox virus to prevent smallpox had been done in 1727 and 1766, but it is British physician Edward Jenner who is generally credited with developing the first smallpox vaccine; the word vaccine was taken from the Latin “vaca,” for cow. The cowpox virus is similar to smallpox, and so conveys immunity to the more deadly disease, but is mainly prevalent in cows and not fatal to humans, making the vaccine much safer. Jenner experimented with his cowpox vaccine in 1796, and presented his findings to the Royal Society, after which he went on to experiment on 23 other people. The vaccine was hugely successful, bringing the death rate from smallpox down to essentially zero.
Over the years, Jenner’s work was published around the world, and widespread vaccination became the norm. In the late 1970s, the disease of smallpox was officially eradicated, though two samples of the deadly variola virus that causes it still remain—one at the CDC in Atlanta, Georgia, and one at the State Research Center of Virology and Biotechnology in Koltsovo, Russia. These are kept for research purposes in the event of a new outbreak, due either to natural causes or bioterrorism.
Source:
Carrell, Jennifer (2003). The Speckled Monster: A Historical Tale of Battling Smallpox. The Penguin Group. ISBN: 0452285070.
Mary Shelley, Frankenstein & the Summer of 1816
A strange gathering of intellectual luminaries during one “haunted summer” produced one of literature’s most enduring creations.
Frankenstein’s monster is one of the most ubiquitous characters in popular culture, appearing everywhere from movies and novels to children’s toys and cereal boxes. Though the image we have of the lumbering creature today—greenish skin, square head, beetling brow, ropy scars and neck bolts—has been largely formed by Boris Karloff’s stunning portrayal in the Universal horror films of the 1930s, in the beginning, the monster was literally dreamed into existence under rather eerie circumstances by an eighteen-year-old girl.
Summer in Switzerland
It was May 14, 1816. Romantic poet Percy Bysshe Shelley and his “wife” Mary (the couple only married later that year, though Mary already used his last name) had been invited by friend and fellow poet Lord Byron to visit him at a rented chateau, Villa Deodati, on Lake Geneva in Switzerland. Also joining the festivities were Mary’s stepsister Claire Clairemont—who was pregnant with Byron’s child and was trying to get back into his good graces—and Byron’s personal physician John Polidori.
The gathering apparently started out quite idyllic—the friends spent long hours writing, discussing weighty ideas, and boating in the lake. But a short time after the group arrived, the weather took a bizarre turn, and it seemed the streaks of lightning and the torrents of rain would never cease. Mary and the others were confined to the house for many days.
Ghost Stories
More reading and discussion ensued. Particular topics of conversation included the early evolution theories of Erasmus Darwin, as well as the new science of galvanism. Also contributing to the entertainment of the group was a book of German ghost stories called Fantasmagoria, which the friends took turns reading aloud.
The combination of the macabre tales and the isolating weather seemed to have strange effects on everyone present; Percy Shelley, at one point, succumbed to visions that sent him screaming from the room. Later, Shelley claimed that Byron’s reading of the Samuel Taylor Coleridge poem “Cristabel” had brought to mind the image of a woman with eyes instead of nipples, which horrified him.
Setting to Work
Some time after this incident, the group decided that they would each try to write their own ghost story. Most set to work immediately and produced tales of varying quality. Byron wrote a story fragment titled “The Burial,” which was later published as a postscript to his narrative poem Mazeppa. Shelley wrote a tale called “The Assassins,” which apparently never saw the light of day (though his poem Mont Blanc, written around the same time, was published later that year). Dr. Polidori wrote “The Vampyre,” later expanded to novel length, which was the first vampire story published in English and which some speculate might have been an inspiration for Bram Stoker’s Dracula, written 78 years later.
The Monster Is Born
Mary Shelley, however, couldn’t think of an idea for a story, and had to respond with a frustrated “No” when asked by the others if she had begun work on it. But then, one night, she had a terrible nightmare. She woke violently amid the sounds of the storm howling outside. The dream had been so vivid that she had a difficult time believing it hadn’t been real. Since she was too shaken to sleep, she began writing down her dream, in which “a pale student of the unhallowed arts” used bits of corpses to create a man. “By the glimmer of the half-extinguished light,” she wrote, “I saw the dull yellow eye of the creature open; it breathed hard, and a convulsive motion agitated its limbs.”
Mary’s terrifying dream was described verbatim in the story she presented to the others. Though the first draft was only about 100 pages long, Percy loved the story and encouraged Mary to flesh it out. She did, and two years after the strange events at Lake Geneva, the story was published as Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus, thus introducing one of literature’s most frightening figures to the world at large.
The Goddess’s Favorite Creepy Movie Scenes, or Down in the Mines with Mina
One of the main underlying themes of a lot of these blog posts is an examination of why particular moments in horror film, literature or music made a lasting impression on me while others did not. Why, for example, was I terrified by the bubbling cauldron sound at the beginning of “The Monster Mash”? Or the schlocky scene in My Bloody Valentine where the homicidal miner pops out of the closet with the pickaxe? Or the part in Fright Night where Amy reveals her horribly wide terror-mouth? I still have no idea, but it’s been fun reliving all this stuff from my wayward youth and trying to find some kind of perspective on it, or contemplating the threads that might tie all these disparate things together.
The next scene I want to discuss is another one of those that, for whatever reason, has stuck with me for 35 years, even though I don’t remember much about the rest of the film. The scene itself was only a couple of minutes long, but I can still vividly remember the heart-stopping shudder that traveled through my body the first time I saw it, and further recall how I studiously covered my eyes during the scene on subsequent re-watches of the movie.
Before I get to the main feature, allow me another short commercial break. I still have a Patreon campaign going to fund my writing work, and there are lots of neat rewards just for pledging a few bucks a month, so check it out, won’t you? Thank you. And now back to our regularly scheduled programming.
Seems to me I live my undeath like a candle in the wind.
John Badham’s version of the classic Dracula (1979), starring Frank Langella as the titular Count, came out around the same time as a few other vampire films, notably Werner Herzog’s elegant remake of Nosferatu. Badham’s adaptation wasn’t horribly reviewed, but apparently audiences were experiencing some vampire fatigue, and it only did so-so business at the box office. I was only seven when it was released in theaters, so I didn’t catch it until it ran on television a year or two later; in fact, I’m fairly sure it was the first of the major Dracula film adaptations I ever saw, even before the more-famous Bela Lugosi and Hammer versions.
Like the 1931 Bela Lugosi film, Badham’s Dracula was based on the stage play rather than the novel, and followed a lot of the tropes of the Universal version. For example, Dracula is portrayed as a seductive, romantic figure rather than a ratlike monster as in the book, and the entire first part of the novel (where Harker is kept prisoner in Dracula’s Transylvanian castle) is scuttled, allowing the movie to start with the Count’s arrival on English shores. Something the Badham film does that I thought was odd, though, is that it reverses the characters of Lucy and Mina; Mina is the first one attacked and vampified by Dracula, for example, while Lucy is Harker’s fiancée, and is attacked later but ultimately saved when the vampire is staked. The film also portrays Mina as the daughter of Van Helsing and Lucy as the daughter of Dr. Seward. These changes don’t ruin the story or anything, but they also don’t really add to it, so I’m not sure why they were made. Perhaps because some characters were eliminated for brevity (like poor old Quincey Morris, who hardly ever gets a part in these adaptations), the screenwriter thought it would increase the drama and emotional coherence of the characters to make them all related somehow, but I’m just speculating about that. Still doesn’t explain why Lucy and Mina were reversed, but whatever.
Pictured: Identity crisis.
As I said, I don’t remember a great deal about the film as a whole; I remember enjoying it, and being quite taken with Langella’s graceful performance as the Count, but even though I saw the movie several times when I was about nine years old, very little of it made a lasting impression. Except for that one, very brief scene.
If my quick Google search is any indication, I’m not the only one that has had this scene burned into my memory for more than three decades. I’m not entirely sure why the scene is so memorable; it could be simply because in the context of the film, it is so shockingly unexpected. This version of Dracula, after all, was marketed more as a supernatural romance than a horror film, and played rather like a staid English parlor drama (with fangs). There was little to no gore that I remember, and nothing that was outright frightening. But then this happens:
The lovely Mina (Jan Francis) has been exsanguinated by the foxy Count one night while her friend Lucy (Kate Nelligan) is out tramping it up with Jonathan (Trevor Eve). It makes me feel weird to even type that, you guys. It’s like they were cheating or something, what with the character reversal and all. Though now that I think about it, how great would a Mina/Lucy catfight scene have been? Anyway. The next morning, Mina is pale and gasping for breath, and dies as a horrified (and guilty) Lucy looks on. Dr. Seward (Donald Pleasance) has no idea what could have killed Mina, and summons Dad Van Helsing (Laurence Olivier) to help solve the mystery.
It’s clearly lupus.
No slouch, Van Helsing immediately jumps to the most obvious conclusion, that eine nosferatu is running loose in the vicinity. As an aside, though, this is Van Helsing we’re talking about. He probably blames a vampire every time one of his socks disappears from the washing machine. Sure, he was correct in this case, but even a stopped clock, yadda yadda.
I’m not saying it was vampires. But it was vampires.
Anyhoo, Seward and Van Helsing visit Mina’s new grave in the cemetery, and find that her coffin is not only empty, but contains a ragged hole where she presumably dug herself out. The hole leads underground into some old mining tunnels, and they crawl down there to investigate, pretty sure of what they’re going to find. As they peer into the darkness, visions of the beautiful Mina probably uppermost in their minds…
Like so.
…they begin to hear a shuffling sound coming toward them. They raise their lamps or candles (I can’t exactly remember which, and can’t find the scene on YouTube to check), and there, emerging from the darkness, is this horror, reaching for them and begging for a kiss:
At least she has a good personality. Well, aside from the bloodsucking.
This shit scared me SO BAD, you guys. And in this sense maybe it was a sound storytelling idea to make Mina Van Helsing’s daughter, because the tragedy of the scene is very apparent here, and underscores the horror with great effectiveness. The figure of the undead Mina is terrifying but also heartbreakingly pitiful, and the viewer really feels it when Van Helsing has to put down the monster his daughter has become. The rest of the film isn’t nearly as powerful, but that one scene is a stunner.
Keep watching this space for more of my horror-related wanderings, and news on my upcoming poltergeist book! Until then, Goddess out.
A Heart Full of Love and Devotion, a Mind Full of Tyranny and Terror: The Goddess Does an Extended Nick Cave Fangirl Squee
It occurs to me that I have been somewhat neglectful in this blog series, which I admit I first started with the intention of focusing on horror movie scenes that had made an impact on me and influenced my own work in some way. As readers may have noticed, however, the series sort of got away from that narrow focus pretty quickly, as I delved into literature as well, and after a while I figured that my horror influences were far too broad to confine to just film. Matter of fact, I feel as though books and other things have ultimately had more impact on my writing than movies have. And in my desire to keep to a theme, I feel like I’ve been giving short shrift to what is probably my main influence in this area: namely, music.
As befits a horror writer, I delved into the gothic subculture at a fairly young age, when it was still something of an underground phenomenon in the early to mid 1980s. So well did its musical and aesthetic parameters fit my personality that I stayed with it far past the point when many abandoned it, and even now, at the ripe old age of 42, I find myself still continually entranced with the scene, and very active in my little central Florida pocket of it. I’m not going to lie and say that the fashion wasn’t a large draw for me, because it always has been, but then as now, my primary love is for the music, which has been a constant and steadfast companion of mine for more than three decades.
I’m an admirer of many dark sounds, from the bleakness of post-punk to the syncopated angst of synthpop, but I’d like to expound at length, if I may, about a singular figure in music who has had more influence on my work than probably anyone else, whose music and words have filtered so far into my psyche that they now seem an integral component of my very cells. He speaks to me and for me, and has conjured more extreme emotions in me than almost anyone else in my life, even though I have never met him. This near-mythical figure is none other than Nick Cave.
I have briefly mentioned him on this blog before (when I insisted that someone adapt his insane novel And the Ass Saw the Angel to film), but so intense is my admiration, so insidious is his influence, and so steeped in horror is much of his work, that I felt he deserved his own blog entry. I was inspired to write it now because this past weekend, I was finally able to view the outstanding quasi-documentary about the legendary artist, 20,000 Days On Earth. I watched that spectacular thing twice straight through, fascinated anew by the man’s keen insight into his own creative process and aghast at his staggering, prolific genius. At one point in the documentary, he says that everyone has an innate desire to be someone else, to be transported and transformed into something greater than oneself. He achieves this through performance, his father achieved it through his intense love of literature, and in turn, I achieve it through listening to his music. Nick Cave is not simply a singer, songwriter, novelist, screenwriter, and actor; he is a goddamn force of nature, one that is terrible and beautiful and all-encompassing.
I first stumbled across Cave’s work in 1987 or thereabouts, after seeing the video for “The Mercy Seat” on MTV’s sadly defunct alternative music show, “120 Minutes.” The song, an epic, terrifying slab of gorgeous noise told from the point of view of a convicted murderer contemplating God’s judgment as he waits to die in the electric chair, made an instant impression, as did Cave himself: a tall, gaunt, crowlike figure with a shock of black hair and an intensity that blazed out through the television screen like a demon supernova. Who the fuck WAS this? I had sort of heard of him, I suppose, though at the time I was wrapped up more in the glam/deathrock end of the musical spectrum (Bauhaus, Alien Sex Fiend) and had largely neglected the more noisy/no wave/experimental corners of the alt landscape. Nick changed all that in seven minutes of enthralling hell.
Over the next couple of years, I used whatever money I could scrape together and purchased his entire back catalog, including all the albums by his previous band, The Birthday Party, whose feral lunacy served as a seductive counterpoint to the more introspective direction of his later work. As I burrowed further into the world Nick had created — lurid, profane, and ugly, yet strangely transcendental for all of that — his vision began to spill over into my own. My first published short story, a runner-up in my local newspaper’s Halloween story contest, was based on his 1986 song “Jack’s Shadow,” and the first novella I ever completed, Bully Bones, was named after the Birthday Party song, and contained a few strategic Cave name-checks.
As the years went on, my relationship to his music grew ever more complex. While I was initially disappointed by the more subdued Cave who emerged on 1997’s The Boatman’s Call, as I aged and matured I began to realize that the intensity of his early days was still very much present; only the method of attack had changed. Whereas before he wore his passion and ferocity on his sleeve, shrieking to the heavens like a possessed madman, he had now found a quieter outlet to exorcise his devils, and the resulting songs were indescribably beautiful, as every nuance of his extraordinary voice conveyed oceans of sadness, anger, loss, and yes, even redemption.
And his words. Oh god, his beautiful words. His phrases are like a form of magic, by turns profound and ridiculous, lofty and vulgar, sly and forthright, astonishingly heartfelt and blackly comic. He is a poet in the very truest sense of the word, a master not only on par with musical stalwarts like Dylan, Cohen, and Reed, but also with literary giants like Faulkner, Joyce, and Yeats. His words are passion and perfection.
I feel as though Nick Cave occupies a unique place in musical history, a true “rock star” in an industry that doesn’t really produce them anymore. He somehow manages to bare his soul for everyone to see, but still maintains a sort of godlike mystique, as though the truth of him can be better approached through the construction of his own artifice. His arrogant, too-cool swagger is delightfully undercut by his arch self-mockery, making him nearly immune to accusations of excessive self-regard. His universally recognized brilliance allows him to get away with things that no other musician I can imagine would get away with, and he does it with a characteristic, unerring aura of giving-no-fucks. Yet he clearly gives ALL the fucks, about his work, about his legacy, about how he is perceived. It’s a tremendous balancing act, and Cave accomplishes it with seemingly no effort at all, with a suave flick of his be-ringed hand and an unflappable smooth-down of his sharp black suit. He is like an alchemist of old, a hellfire preacher and a broken supplicant, a silver-tongued angel and a gutter-mouthed devil, all in one chimerical package.
I’ve written so many words here to try to convey my feelings about the man and his music (“Prolix! Prolix! Nothing a pair of scissors can’t fix!”), but I fear that I have still fallen far short, and for that I apologize, not only to him, but to the entire universe that conspired to create him. In sum, if there can be such a thing as a creative muse, suffice it to say that I consider him mine, and for that I will be eternally grateful. Thank you, Nick, and long may you wave. Goddess out.
Goddess of Hellfire 