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Post by Knygathin on Jan 12, 2023 13:48:37 GMT
Black Sabbath's "Behind the Wall of Sleep" was inspired by Lovecraft, and "The Wizard" by Tolkien.
They were initially a blues-inspired rock band, under different names, like Polka Tulk and Earth. The name Black Sabbath they adopted from Mario Bava's famous film.
I missed out on Black Sabbath as a kid, for they were taboo and frightening, not compatible with my social background. Music for Satanists and junkies. They were not really Satanists, that was just a horror image. Like with us, reading our horror stories, and morbidly placing shocking covers on first row of our book shelves. But all and well they were darkly socially conscious. Geezer Butler, the bassist, said: “Satan isn’t a spiritual thing, it’s warmongers. That’s who the real Satanists are, these people who are running the banks and the world and trying to get the working class to fight the wars for them.”
If there was one absolute superstar rock group of the 1970s, I think it must have been Black Sabbath - for those who socially dared approach them. All of their first six albums are classic, and I like the seventh too. Groovy music, with neat melody structures. I had to mature, to be able to cope with the sound. Still grimy, and manic, but that's terrific.
The very first LP I bought was Alice Cooper's Billion Dollar Babies. (Not nearly as scary as Black Sabbath.) Really not my kind of music, but as a kid I could not resist the green snakeskin sleeve. And it had an aura of mystery about it. I guess I was just a victim of vulgar capitalism, and decadence, when all comes around. Still, it was quite good music.
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Post by Knygathin on Jan 4, 2023 12:02:26 GMT
With a vivid imagination and a trait (gift) for drifting off from the everyday into psychotic hallucination/delusion, I think actual horror can well be experienced in reading literature.
Or else, ... It also requires both imagination and intelligence to realize the full significance of what is read. And at that moment the body starts to shiver from intellectual horror. =O
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Post by Knygathin on Jan 4, 2023 11:33:31 GMT
I don't think I have ever read a truly horrific story. It is just literature entertainment and aesthetics. It may tickle the horror bone, but that is a pleasant sensation. I have been unbearably horrified/disgusted by reading/hearing reports of cruelty from real life. I have also been unpleasantly disturbed by some movies. Movies are more in your face than literature. I agree with you totally on all three points. The second especially, having just read (and wished I hadn't) about Issei Sagawa, known as the "Kobe Cannibal" who died last month. Yech! I will be sure not to google that one.
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Post by Knygathin on Jan 4, 2023 11:29:32 GMT
I have also been unpleasantly disturbed by some movies. Movies are more in your face than literature. You are right in this. I will never forget the first time I saw Taxi Driver. I was much too young and naive for it, understood only the half of it truly and was actually shocked about the ending when Travis walked free. How could this be, why wasn't he in jail? The movie left a deep impression.
To the most unpleasant stories I read surely belong The Clinic by Alex White. You have my full sympathy with that unsettling early years experience. For me it was particularly Deliverance, The Deer Hunter, and The Exorcist. Salem's Lot also got to me (the child vampires hovering outside the windows).
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Post by Knygathin on Dec 20, 2022 7:01:20 GMT
I don't think I have ever read a truly horrific story. It is just literature entertainment and aesthetics. It may tickle the horror bone, but that is a pleasant sensation.
I have been unbearably horrified/disgusted by reading/hearing reports of cruelty from real life.
I have also been unpleasantly disturbed by some movies. Movies are more in your face than literature.
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Post by Knygathin on Dec 9, 2022 12:05:55 GMT
The saxons will be along shortly to put them right Perhaps an Aickmanesque treatment is required.
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Post by Knygathin on Dec 8, 2022 16:54:29 GMT
Yes, nightmarish. Gives new dimension to freak show. What "lovely" shoes. (I hope Mary Poppins doesn't trip over her right one.) And the little girl's salamander hands! I believe I saw something similar in a hospital once, but rejected it.
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Post by Knygathin on Dec 8, 2022 16:43:56 GMT
Thank you! Your grotesquery surprises, and shocks me. I am glad you could reuse some of the flowers for this new arrangement, along with some dubious foods mixed in, sausage and bacon, or whatever it is, grafted onto the flesh of characters. Isn't that lovely! This one seems inspired by Vance and Lovecraft. I see Pnume in the middle, and the Outsider on the right, ... or perhaps that is Walter de la Mare, judging by his hat, about to feed a liver into the hole before the Pnume's stomach.
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Post by Knygathin on Dec 7, 2022 0:52:29 GMT
You seem rather carefree, and not to take most things very seriously. But I would warn you to tread warily. I don't know what the hell you did here. What buttons you pushed, or what curious vectors you manipulated. But it is some form of evil alchemy. At the same time I am interested to see what further madness you may call forth in similar way.
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Post by Knygathin on Nov 27, 2022 21:46:27 GMT
Thanks. Over the years I have been very interested in the synchronicity aspects (not its dependence on cause and effect) of astrology. Planetary transits, progressions, grand trines etc. Incidentally, I have just this minute finished reviewing ( here) WDLM’s BAD COMPANY ghost story. I don’t fully understand it. Do you? I have not read "Bad Company" yet. In the 90's I was quite interested in astrology, primarily in grasping the basics of the birth chart, as a complement to psychology. And while it is helpful in giving an overview a person's inner energy setup, both of the harmonies and frictions, it is difficult to practically apply this knowledge to actually overcome disharmonies, because they are so deeply ingrained. Trying to shuffle around and better organize conflictingly aspected energies, they will eventually stubbornly find their way back into the same old issues. The horoscope can admittedly help find and encourage paths of living that actually favor development of one's more difficult aspects in fruitful ways, because chafing can be an asset in some situation, not least in creativity. In the end I found astrology took too much time, without giving back enough useful reward, so I lost interest in it. It is still good to have some understanding of it, when mundane affairs or social encounters get too confused and bewildering. But I find that art and literature is ultimately a more enjoyable and rewarding way to spend my time.
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Post by Knygathin on Nov 27, 2022 8:07:14 GMT
Quincunx is also a term in astrology, a position relationship between zodiacal signs and celestial bodies, an angle aspect of 150 degrees that is considered difficult, hard, or challenging.
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Post by Knygathin on Nov 26, 2022 15:05:29 GMT
... I also think my theory of the quimcunx (now seen as the sexual entry point and the place whence a baby later emerges) seems somehow to fit with your theory. I will have to re-read "The Quincunx". I remember it vaguely, but have forgotten the details in the years that have passed since.
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Post by Knygathin on Nov 25, 2022 22:02:44 GMT
"Quincunx" - What a beautifully written little story, or episode. Not terribly horrifying, but engaging. That poor old lady! This one is clearly interconnected with " A:B:O". It doesn't have to be, it could be free standing. But I believe they belong together. Am I saying the obvious? I think you may be right! ... the narrator tracks down the quincunx design on paper inside the portrait as a ‘map’ to the ‘treasure’ or, as the narrator sensed, to a secret (a word as a mutant of ‘quim’ plus a near even ruder word that may be part of the aunt’s sexual ‘secret’ with Walter’s father), yes, a secret, not a ‘treasure’, that, in the end, by usage of the fire in the candleflame that the sleepwalker or ‘ghost’ carried, the narrator chivalrously protected! I am not being chivalrous here, so ***SPOILER*** the ‘secret’ resulted in the aborted of the previous tale. Again, am I saying the obvious? By now I have read quite a few short stories by Walter de la Mare and L. P. Hartley, and still my favorite story by each author is the first I read! De la Mare's very early effort "A:B:O", and Hartley's "The Travelling Grave". My second favorite by de la Mare is definitely "The Tree". (Few writers can be as horrifying as de la Mare, at his most horrifying.) "The Connoisseur" is great too. But by Hartley I am not sure; I thought "The Killing Bottle" was really good, but the second half, after the brother became the prime murder suspect, was a linear disappointment - I had hoped for some glorious irony wrap-up related to the killing bottle. Hartley is a great writer, but generally also much more subtle and delicate than in "The Travelling Grave".
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Post by Knygathin on Nov 10, 2022 21:49:54 GMT
*Spoiler alert* At first Vera tries to protect Jimmy Rintoul, as she feels some silly immature affection towards him. But I think the ending clearly shows that Ok. Yes, it was posted before I was done writing. Odd.
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Post by Knygathin on Nov 10, 2022 21:37:35 GMT
*Spoiler alert*
At first Vera tries to protect Jimmy Rintoul, as she feels some silly immature affection towards him. But I think the ending clearly shows that the prospect of taking over Randolph's fortune together with her husband, dominates her interest the strongest. While talking to the policeman, her impatient forcefulness appears to be her downfall, as she gabbles too much and unwittingly reveals their scheming.
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