A Dream Within a Dream

The Dark Season is upon us and now reveals itself. The air chills and sharpens, and our senses quicken and tremble.

It is the perfect time to share these beautifully eerie portraits I created for this poetic season, a season where everything is heightened, and where those happy few who are in touch with the strangeness of our existence, and who are more in tune to what lies beyond the veil of night, come to the fore and experience our mysterious world on a deeper, more sensuous level.

All of these pictures were taken before the end of 2019, before the world changed forever.
I have an extra appreciation for them now; their cinematic mystery and enchanting diaphanous quality evoke a feeling we desperately need to inhabit again. A portal, a magical realm, an escape from our perceived and binding "reality." After all, isn't our reality only what we choose to experience at any given moment? Perhaps it's time again to believe in something more. Such as they did in those times long... long ago... when people still believed in witches?

And with that, my dear Creatures of the Night, 

I hereby present...

A Dream Within a Dream
(Atmospheres and Apparitions)

"Is all that we see or seem,
But a dream within a dream?"

- Poe, The Raven

Part 1: 

Hauntology

Seul au clair de lune... au clair de lune serioux

"Let the moon shine on thee in thy solitary walk;
And let the misty sea-winds be free
To blow against thee."
- Wordsworth, 'Tintern Abbey'

A Different Kind of Blue

"From here, So high,

We drift, We fly,

With twilight breakthrough...

A different kind of blue."

- Passengers, 'A Different Kind of Blue'

AlwaysForeverNow

"The distinction between the past, present and

future, is only a stubbornly persistent illusion."

- Albert Einstein

 Sofie the Fortune-Teller

"You know, the people in these towns,

they're asleep. All day, at work, at home.

They're sleepwalkers. We wake them up."
- Sofie, 'Carnivale,' HBO

Rose Quartz

"The Divine is everywhere, all you have to do is look."

- Casper David Friedrich

The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari

"Everywhere there are spirits.
They are all around us."

- The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari

Forever... and ever... and ever...

"I'm sorry to differ with you Sir, 

but YOU are the Caretaker.
You've always been the caretaker.
I should know, Sir, I've always been here."

- The Shining

The Science of Ghosts

"You know that Freud had to deal all
his life with ghosts? It's simply the art of letting the 
Ghosts come back. And it's the ghosts

who will answer you. Perhaps they already have. 

Ghosts are part of the future."
- Jacques Derrida, 'Hauntology'



Strange Neighbourhood

"But this place is too cold for Hell.

I'll Devil porter it no further."
- William Shakespeare, 'Macbeth'

Part II: 

Witchcraft, Wicked Witchcraft

Lilith

"Witches are always women who dare to be:

groovy, courageous, aggressive, intelligent, nonconformist,

explorative, curious, sensually liberated, revolutionary."

Kristen. J Sollee, 'Witches, Sensualists, Feminists'

The Hunter

"She is the Hunter,

You are the Hunted..."
- Brett Anderson, 'The Hunter'

The Ghosts in the Machine

"The modern technology of images and 

communication, the strange aliveness of the 

electric current,

all these energetic pathways have surely

enhanced the power of ghosts and 

their ability to haunt us. It is up to

us whether we have the courage to

allow their magic to illuminate

our lives that can lift us periodically

 from the dreariness of the everyday."

- Kafka

Only After Dark

"I feel my spirit fly,

Only After Dark...
Why don't you fly, fly
Fly with me,
Sweet elusive fate will
Be our company...
Only After Dark."
- Mick Ronson, 'Only After Dark'

Coffee & Poe

"For the rare and radiant maiden,

Whom the angels name Leonore,

Nameless here forevermore."
Poe, 'The Raven'

After Dark

"In her eyes, 

a distant fire light burns bright,

And I'm wondering why
It's only After Dark?"

- Tito & Tarantula, 'After Dark'

Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This)

"You are so vulnerably haunting.
Your eeriness is terrifyingly irresistible.

You appear to be in touch with something

we mere mortals shall never know."
- Franz Kafka

The Double

"Mirrors on the ceiling,
Pink champagne on ice...

Living it up at the Hotel California,

What a nice surprise...

Bring your alibis."

- The Eagles, Hotel California

'Lebensfreude (Joy of Life)

"Real art must always involve

some witchcraft."
- Isak Dinesen

 Sternenaugen (Starlike Eyes)

"A Witch is a person who has honestly

explored their light, and has evolved

 to celebrate their darkness."

- Dacha Avelin

The Haunted Dancehall (of Paradise)

"Midnight, and the Stars & You,

Midnight... and a rendezvous.
Your eyes held a message tender
Saying, "I surrender all my love to you."
Midnight... brought us sweet romance,
I know all my whole life through,
I'll be remembering you,

Whatever else I do...

Midnight, and the stars and you."

- Irving King, 'Midnight and the Stars and You'

Happy Halloween, my Devilish Darlings.

Bites & Kisses!

xxx

"There are, in our times, many people on a low,

material plane of existence, quite incapable of appreciating

the symbolic value of sensuous phenomena.

How eternally thankful we must be if we are not one of them."

- Oscar Wilde.

The Twilight Hour

"Whether I believe in ghosts or not,

I say...
Long live the ghosts!"

"But They're not Martians, They're Tories!"

Through a recent long and sleepless night, caused principally by a combination of CF and CF-related diabetes symptoms, as well as the high dose of steroids I am currently on, I spent two of those early hours listening to The War of the Worlds album on my headphones, and what a strange and wonderful experience it was. It seemed eerily prescient, and I was also struck by just how bloody good it is. Richard Burton is, of course, sensational as the narrator. His voice just gets me every time. The depth, the richness, the faintest trace of a Welsh accent, and, of course, the melancholy. 'Forever Autumn' is a wonderful song, and hearing it in those ghostly hours on my headphones reminded me of another uncanny experience I had back in October 2019. For one morning, as the autumn sun shone a dazzling white through our window, I heard Lydia suddenly "shooshing!" me to turn the music down as it was too early to have it that loud. It wasn't me that was the cause on this occasion, however, it was the bin collectors outside. For they were playing 'Forever Autumn' at full blast from out of the cab of their lorry, and that was what we could hear reverberating around our flat. Words can't really do it justice but it was a strange, haunting sensation, almost as if the aliens had arrived and The War of the Worlds had suddenly become reality. The other thing that struck me was the piece that is called 'The Red Weed' actually sounds remarkably similar to Bowie's "Berlin-era" track with Eno, 'Art Decade', and even some Krautrock from a similar period. As The War of the Worlds could be seen as a prog rock nightmare to the punks and cooler types, this appeared to me as being a connection they perhaps wouldn't have anticipated (or desired).

But the main thing that has struck me is just how eerily The War of the Worlds tapped into my current fears of impending doom and disaster for our world and society. There is such an ominous atmosphere to the music and the storyline, from the very first moment when missiles start departing Mars, on their long journey across "a million of miles of void," and which then proceed to cause so much calamity to Earth, despite the astronomer, Oglebee, trying to reassure humanity that there's nothing to fear, as the chances of anything coming from Mars are a million to one. But... still... They Come...

But, of course, it's not Martians that are responsible for the nightmare we are facing today and who are threatening to destroy our entire social fabric, which was so painstakingly built up from post-war gains, such as the National Health Service, a nationalised railway and utilities, and a fully functioning safety net for our country's citizens known as the welfare system. Oh no, it's full throttle, cut-throat, extremist neoliberal capitalism that is on the verge of sending our culture and world up in flames. And this situation made me recall the scene where the Parson (a brilliant performance from Phil Lynott, incidentally) wrongly believes, in his delirium, that the Martians are actually devils, and that he must cast them out to save mankind. His wife, Beth, tries to make him see sense: 

"But they're not devils, they're Martians!"

- Picture of Nathaniel the Parson 

with the Martians on the

 War of the Worlds LP artwork

And that's when I remembered another, quite terrifying picture, also from the artwork on the LP, (see below) that I poured over for hours on end as a boy, but I would imagine that what Beth would be saying to the Parson now, and this picture could surely represent the naked truth, made visible, behind every decision that our government (and the right-wing think tanks behind the scenes that influence everything) is currently making around public services, public expenditure, and its insistence on torching any institution that represents the community or the poor, under the hateful, extremist ideology of free-market capitalism...

"But they're not Martians, they're Tories (neoliberals!")

 

Such is the feeling in my mind as we enter the beautiful season of autumn, with class war being waged and a palpable sense of dread and fear in the air. Of course, it doesn't have to be this way, despite Margaret Thatcher trying to convince everyone that there is "no alternative" to neoliberal capitalism. But H.G. Wells defeated the Martians in his story, and who knows, perhaps capitalism will be dumped in the bin, and one day historians will look back in horror at the mayhem and inequality it ravaged on the human and non-human world alike. Hope has to Spring Eternal. We shall see what unfolds during yet another winter of discontent.

"And the endless parade of old Etonian scum,

Line the front benches, "So what is to be done?"
All part of the same establishment,

So, I ask you again, "What is to be done?"

I ask you again, "What is to be done?"

I ask you again, "What is to be done?"

- Manic Street Preachers, '30-Year War'

"Till now myself and such
As slept within the shadow
of your power
Have wandered with our traversed
arms, and breathed 
Our sufferance vainly. Now the
time is flush,
When crouching marrow in
the bearer strong
Cries of itself 'no more'."
- William Shakespeare,
Timon of Athens