The Call of Cthulhu

Reading Eliot's "Four Quartets" this afternoon I was delighted to discover (among many) a word I had never seen before - that experience that causes, literally, an outward gasp of breath (katharsis) relieving air out of stifled breath clinging forcefully inward (akatharsia). The word is chthonic - from the classic Greek - meaning 'dwelling in or beneath the surface of the earth' - like the Furies, or, as I thought, making the aural connection with my own reading of Lovecraft - 'Cthulhu', Priest of the Old Ones who happens also to dwell beneath the earth. The 'cthu' prefix makes sense, while the 'lhu' is perhaps the maddening, screeching eldritch noise associated with these creatures in Lovecraft's many tales.

Just a minor thought. Back to Eliot. And lunch.

Gasolina Remix

After a haze of creative inspiration amok these past few late nights I managed to chortle out something like an essay entitled: "The Art of Knockabout Comedy: Discovering Vaudeville in Samuel Beckett's Waiting For Godot." As usual I've made it available for anyone who wants to read it: here.

The next thing in line is re-writing my speech for an upcoming debate being taped for the McLuhan archives - debating who is more relevant today: Frye or McLuhan.

Some other things I want to do this week: (1) Read Eliot's "Four Quartets" for class, and (2) Read Robert Charles Wilson's Darwinia, which I picked up for free all the way back in December. (3) Begin to review (re-read) the Shakespeare plays I studied this year: Julius Caesar, Coriolanus, Measure for Measure, Troilus and Cressida, All's Well That Ends Well, Henry VI Pt 1, Othello and King Lear. (4) Read the chapters in my Anthropology textbook on the major world religions (especially Buddhism: our professor's over-stressed bias). (5) Write a 8-10 page essay using Frye's books to examine Lovecraft's masterpiece-story "At The Mountains of Madness" and narratives of alien succession or inheritance.

Grumble, Grumble, Grumble

I haven't felt up to posting anything lately, drearily counting down the days, until I have to cut loose (wake up) from my fantastic dreamland of university and go on waiting, living the unlived life--but at the behest of Dr. J earlier today, I agreed to repeat some of my blog posts for Professor Kuin's Writer / Critic class for readers of this blog. Everything I've ever written for this course has been rambling madness somehow turned into intelligible, coherant thoughts. I have decided for this first post to replicate one of my more recent posts on T.S. Eliot's "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock," Ecclesiastes and the eldritch experience of hearing it playing in my imagination (yes I sound wacko!):

"He Hath Made Everything Beautiful In His Time" (Mar. 10 2006 @ 12:39 AM)

Reading Eliot’s “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” again tonight, I was struck by how much it sounded remarkably (and perhaps also, ironically) like the cryptic wisdom of Ecclesiastes, or the Preacher from the Bible. The first time I came to recognize this was, however, also, simultaneously, when I first began to experience and hear the poem emanating from the page (in my own head) like an old radio broadcast—an eldritch experience while reading, hearing human speech warbling out of the pages like old radio speakers, saturating every word, as well as our own acoustic, audile experience, with an impressive gritty metallic twang, white noise and howling feedback. Always the poem reads and drones like a song, more than likely jazz, with that snazzy choral hook, “In the room the women come and go / Talking of Michaelangelo.” The polyphonic resonances of the words hums in my ear, and I listen, enthralled as Eliot’s poem reverberates like a radio tune broadcasted from the page into the living rooms of our hearts and minds.

Eliot’s waxing poetic with biblical language from Ecclesiastes that I believe I recognize in “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,” came to me in that same way we have heard sometime in the past a tune we knowingly hum to, but which we do not consciously realize. The lyrical, almost hypnotic, syncopations of Eliot’s “There will be time, there will be time,” drone in my head with that same melodic, singsong tune like a broken, biblical record playing Chapter 3 of Ecclesiastes. Take the most recognizable lyrical passage of this book:

1 To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven:
2 A time to be born, and a time to die; A time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted;
3 A time to kill, and a time to heal; A time to break down, and a time to build up;
4 A time to weep, and a time to laugh; A time to mourn, and a time to dance;
5 A time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together;
A time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing;
6 A time to get, and a time to lose; A time to keep, and a time to cast away;
7 A time to rent, and a time to sew;
8 A time to keep silence, and a time to speak;
9 A time to love, and a time to hate; A time of war, and a time of peace.
(Eccl 3:1-9)

At times the language is more cryptic, disguised and harder to place when I continue listening to this beautiful, lyrical poem. Sometimes Eliot seems very aware of this, purposely playing with his reader and provoking them like those old Anglo-Saxon (Old English) riddles: inanimate, personified objects teasing their readers to figure them out with puns and double entendres. He waxes poetic with the pages of Ecclesiastes while putting on his reader at the same time:

And I have known the eyes already, know them all –

The eyes that fix you in a formulated phrase,

And when I am formulated, sprawling on a pin,

When I am pinned and wriggling on the wall,

Then how should I begin

To spit out all the butt-ends of my days and ways?

And how should I presume?

Sometimes the language isn’t exactly word-for-word adaptations of phrases, per se, but shows to the reader Eliot imitating the versatile spirit and / or thumping beat of Solomon’s speaking words of wisdom. He lives, writes and speaks distinctly in the poem for us through the voice of the writer of Ecclesiastes: reviving Solomon or the Preacher, employing his very style of writing. Compare:

The wise man’s eyes are in his head; but the fool walketh in darkness; and I myself perceived also that one event happeneth to them all. Then said I in my heart, As it happeneth to the fool, so it happeneth even to me; and why was I then more wise? Then I said in my heart, that this also is vanity. (Eccl. 2:13-15)

With Eliot’s:

No! I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be;

Am an attendant lord, one that will do

To swell a progress, start a scene or two,

Advise the prince; no doubt, an easy tool,

Deferential, glad to be of use,

Politic, cautious, and meticulous;

Full of high sentence, but a bit obtuse;

At times, indeed, almost ridiculous –

Almost, at times, the Fool.

Like our first encounter with the wisdom of Solomon, “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” plays for us like a tune (on the radio or gramophone) first with that abrupt, ripping crackle of words, but then the music of Ecclesiastes recedes into the background softly guiding and amplifying Eliot’s beautiful, loving hymns of praise.

Divine Encounters

It was the quirkiest of weeks, it was ... no, it was just that. The only excitement during school this week happened yesterday when I discovered the book sale at Vanier--I managed to pick up Frye's Fables of Identity and The Modern Century: The Whidden Lectures 1967 for a sum of $5. That, and my professor in my Thursday morning class, Anthropology of Relgion--whose presence is meek as a secret mouse--threw a full-blown hissy fit because one-fifth of the class showed up, and most of the class was chattering. Then, ironically, being an ethnographer of rural Thailand Buddhism, when he was telling the class anger creates bad karma in Buddhism, well, he got the joke and laughed it off. My Thursday Shakespeare class was cancelled, too. Otherwise we're starting to prepare for our McLuhan / Frye debate (I, aligning myself with McLuhan), as well as my final two papers--one on Waiting For Godot and the second, hopefully, using Frye to examine the twentieth century development of cosmic evolution in either Lovecraft and/or Rudolf Steiner / Zecharia Sitchin.

Of course, I have been keeping up posting on my other blog for the Writer / Critic class--we're now discussing T.S. Eliot. I can't imagine a course better than this one. Everything we do in class related to our readings depends solely on our ability, not on what the professor or university wants us to get out of it--so I can get away with writing entries, like this week, suggesting how T.S. Eliot's "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" plays as though it were a radio or gramophone tune off the pages, but with the voice or melody of Ecclesiastes.

UPDATE: Saw The Libertine last night. What a bold and decadent movie. Fun-filled, I have say. It was great especially watching Rochester's play for Charles II, replete with women performing a choral dance with dildos, his servant 'Moorcock' refusing to play the part of 'Little Clitoris' and a gigantic, oversized replica of a penis complete with a midget atop being rolled across the stage towards an equally giant ... well, you get the point. Yet it was still great, serious, literary drama. Opens with Rochester addressing the audience telling them how much they won't like (read: pity) him, and once again at the end he provokes the audience to think whether they still like him because he was converted on his deathbed.

The Devil in Massachusetts

For whatever reason I stayed up all night writing another paper well in advance--probably because I came home last night after working a shift from 10:45 AM to 6:00 PM tired, and had a late nap, just as my fiancée prophesied earlier in the afternoon. My paper for Anthropology of Religion is a critical review entitled: "Trauma and Witchcraft in the Popular and Religious Imagination" based on Ronald C. Johnson's "Parallels between Recollections of Repressed Childhood Sex Abuse, Kidnappings by Space Aliens, and the 1692 Salem Witch Trials."

The article I based my essay on is available here.

My flawed, albeit completed essay is available here.

Luckily I have the afternoon today to rest since I don't start work today until 4:30 PM. I'll probably take a few days to relax, perhaps read Zecharia Sitchin's Divine Encounters. My subject is tentative but I think I want to write my 10-12 page paper for Tragedy and Meta-tragedy class on Beckett's Waiting For Godot, specifically the performance of wit, that is, verbal and physical momentum if that makes any sense. Probably not. I haven't slept much lately, and, apparently, so I'm told, am rather incoherant, too.

Observations of a Bookstore Cashier

Sitting around earlier, just after getting off the phone with my fiancée, who was heading to bed, I was mulling over my thoughts, concerns and anxieties, which countless people ranging my own parents to co-workers have aroused because they keep asking me to account for what I will do after I finish my degree. They keep demanding results, and unreal expectations for me to exceed, and I am left feeling stupid because all I ever say in response is "I don't know ... I just want to get out of the house," that is, my temporary defraying, impotent answer that will stave off, or bemuse, as I realize, further unanswerable questions. It's not to say it's not true that I want out of this place, but I can't produce something tangible that will allay their anxieties, or at least re-assure them that I'm going places, or prove I escaped the nightmare they keep dreaming in waking life, which I only ever read about in good literature. Why does it seem like everywhere in life vicarious people want others around them to do the struggling for them, but reap the benefits of another person's sowing?

"Observations of a Bookstore Cashier"

Every day I see the line-ups down
the aisle, hang-ups brought to the counter
with no receipt but they want refunds now
for things they never wanted, or purchased.

They cry, they threaten, they just keep coming
back, buying up more tales of misery,
cheap thrills, purchasing ink and paper dreams,
in debt to books, our cabin getaways.

But they just keep coming, an endless line
of telephone calls without a quarter
to dial, or an answering machine
to pick up what I’m trying to tell you.

No one notices I watch the line-up
or thanks me for giving them the right change.