There’s something about the dark side

There’s something about the dark side that draws us towards it
Like the flame draws the moth

Or maybe that’s just an unhealthy side of me. One I share with zillions

Let’s face it, modern western society loves serial killers and mass murderers
They get more marriage proposals than anybody else in prison
They get more movies, they offer more anti-heroes
Do you not tingle at the delicious evil of Hannibal Lecter?

Looking in the face of death, death imagined, rather than real death, is a draw.
We are all heading there ineluctably.
Some of us are closer now than the others around us

Fiction that can capture the real of dirt, desolation, despair and darkness in some ways is the most real, the unvarnished truth
Celine, Genet, Orwell, Lydia Lunch, etc

What Burroughs called – the naked lunch (after Kerouac)
When you truly see what is on the end of your fork

And also out of that dark descent there is always the hope of blessing, salvation, a ray of light pierces your heart and calls you back

Jimmy Boyle writes of how after a campaign of violent resistance in Scottish jails he was put in a cage naked with a bucket to shit in. He pulled the wings off a fly and dropped it into the filth and saw it struggling there, and then suddenly realized that was him! “I am That!”. That moment changed his life.

Death, near death and Bliss  – the French call the orgasm ‘Le petit mort’
Every night we surrender to the little sleep, a map and metaphor for the big sleep, the long goodbye, for ‘Wearing a wooden onesie’, ‘Vacated their earthly meat prison’, ‘Walked over the rainbow bridge’, ‘Pulled his last pint’, ‘Tripping the light fantastic’, ‘Become one with the force’, ‘Doing the final moonwalk’ and ‘Shit the cosmic bed’

Every breath, hour, day, year, life or epoch is but a cycle of the hero’s journey, celebrated by G Vico, J Joyce, M Eliade, J Campbell, and Here Comes Everybody!

We are all heroes, pulling joys and insights out of the darkness

Is death just the inanimate? We living beings are just crests of waves on the sea of matter/energy that wells up. We look around, laugh, cry, love, then ineluctably rejoin the swell — the mass of mass – the great current of being!

But there’s something about the dark side

Rechy’s City of Night about the gay NY underworld when it was illegal and transgressive was a fascinating read in the early 60s. Indeed there is a chapter, a place, a neon hoarding saying F*A*S*C*I*N*A*T*I*O*N in the dark street, which is itself fascinating

(Do you remember the sausage advert in the old days which claimed “even its flavour’s got flavour”? The mind spins into a self referential loop. The outcome is Nausea a la Sartre or Bliss a la Zen)

Rechy draws his title from the long Victorian poem by James Thompson: The City of Dreadful Night. It’s like Blake’s ‘London’ on Mandrax or better (I mean worse) Oblivon, that pigeon egg sized tranq – a chemical cosh! I knew a girl called Darwin who said two Oblivon in the morning made her feel ready for the world. Really? One made me feel like a slug, slow, dazed and dirtbound. I borrowed a copy of the book length poem from inter-library loans. Then after years of searching I found my own copy in a little bookshop in Amersham. Been on my shelf these 50 years!

Is your imagination not piqued by Dore’s illustrations for Dante, Milton or Coleridge’s Rime of the Ancient Mariner?

Let’s not forget hell or the land of the dead, with its demons and devils

In his self-named epic, Gilgamesh, after Enkidu’s death, goes to the land of the dead in search of immortality. The Tibetan Book of the Dead describes the soul’s journey after death past wrathful deities and through the Bardo states. It has guided many of us through illuminating states and journeys.  Odysseus descends to Hades to speak with the ghost of Tiresias 
Virgil thrusts Aeneas into the underworld guided by the Sibyl to meet the ghosts of Dido and his father.
Orpheus retrieves Eurydice from Hades, but beware the curse of the pomegranate. Dante is guided by Virgil vividly through the nine hellish circles of Inferno. At its nadir betrayers of trust are chewed perpetually by Satan.  In the Medieval Harrowing of Hell Christ descends to free righteous souls. 

In the Marriage of Heaven and Hell William Blake imagines a contrarian journey through hell, with its visionary reversal of good and evil. He mocks Swedenborg and braves crazed monkeys and spiders. Like Prometheus stole fire from heaven, Blake stole proverbs of wisdom from hell (70 in total), including:                                               

  A dead body, revenges not injuries.
Drive your cart and your plow over the bones of the dead.
Sooner murder an infant in its cradle than nurse unacted desires.
The roaring of lions, the howling of wolves, the raging of the stormy sea, and the destructive sword, are portions of eternity too great for the eye of man.

Milton lovingly depicts the deepest abyss where the fallen anger Lucifer chooses to rule in Hell, preferring it to serving in Heaven. His palace amidst the black fire is called Pandemonium. Stephen Donaldson writes of black fire, the baleful sun, the burning all seeing eye of Sauron.

Each stolen visit to the forbidden place is a dream, a joy, an otherworldly experience. A taste of eternity

Bosch, Bruegel, Medieval muralists, Michelangelo, Piranesi, Goya, Dali, Giger and others depict the hell and the last judgement, hell’s awful creatures, sadistic demons and laughing devils. The dark side. You will find the same in Oriental art. And do you not love/hate the Death Series by Dix?

Only when you stand looking over the precipice do you feel in your gut how deep it is, how dark it is, and the pull towards zero, negation and non-being

If Eros is the life instinct, Freud contrasts it with the death instinct, Thanatos (son of Nyx, the goddess of the night, and the twin brother of Hypnos, the god of sleep). This drives us toward risky behaviour, aggression and destruction. Freud declares that “the aim of all life is death”. Lacan claims that all other drives are ‘partial’ to the death drive, which pulls us back toward the time when we were one with our mothers, prior to birth and weaning. Oh non-being, where is thy kiss?

Without intentional irony, the Wellcome Collection in London hosted the exhibition “Death: A Self-portrait”, exploring humanity’s relationship with death through artworks, historical objects, and ephemera. Very welcoming!

Without irony, all musings on the dark side, on Thanatos and death, must come to an end.

Dear reader: safe journey! – from your fellow traveller on this magic ride, nearing the last stop … don’t veer into the other lane

So here’s to companions on this ride,

This magic journey through the night,
Where darkness and the light collide
And shadows dance, some blazing bright.
          (Concluding paragraph of poem by AI)

Will AI be the death of all rewarding work, creativity, even humanity?
Is it InAnimate matter’s fight back, against proud, vain life?
Does matter desire life, like the living court death?
Oh, imagine the dark angry dreams of dead matter, plotting our dissolution
The uprising of the elements, the war to come

.

Paul Ernest

I was inspired yesterday morning to start writing this piece by the following. Have downloaded a few. Not started reading them yet

https://punknoirmagazine.wordpress.com/2022/07/02/my-top-13-transgressive-novels-to-read-before-you-die-by-stephen-j-golds-2/