If H. P. Lovecraft were alive today, sixteen years old and a Goth, this is the song he would have written. The only things missing are the word "eldritch" and some tentacles.
Reach the ancient heart of the stygian obscurity
Wherein all the names of mine are written
In pits profound,where festered dreams sigh
And longings scorched seek reason to return.
Admire the flame flowered mansions arcane
The sulfurous secrets gowned in rapture profane
Fear not the fire of all-knowing wisdom
Furiously burning with such ravishing splendour.
On the wings of my most fervent passion
Which the fools dare name blasfemia
To thee I have returned from the heart-dead sunworms domain
A coffin-shaped lair they have woven around me
For I've pledged no allegiance
To their fabulous sacred theories
Those spurious servants of a crownless king
Who holds their cross in vain.
No Phoenix phenomenon shall their fall contain!
Leave their carcasses scattered and slain!
And now I'm visualised
To blind-faithed eyes
Lofty and proud, to be recognized.
As the mourning-scented bloodstorm winds
Of their final downfall blow
Like a nightclad werewolf upon the moonlit glade
I shall hunt them down in the snow.
...and the frostbitten ground
now consumes their wretched gore
My victorious hiss fulfills the oceans ethereal
And the stars gleam nameless above
As shadows call forth the seas of Cthulhu
Be wide awake my dearest
Of my fiery necromantic kiss!
Thine arms soothing around me enfold
To cease my yearning cursed
The sweetest witchcraft thy lips do hold
Can only quench my thirst.
'Neath the enchantingly blazing corona of night
drown thy desire into mine!
With all the senses cast to a feverous grandeur
In the sins of the flesh we entwine.
In the early 1950s, German photographer Leif Geiges created a series of abstract images in order to try to portray "exactly what the mescaline subject sees and hears during the course of his artificial psychosis" — as Newsweek put it, which ran his images in its Feb 23, 1953 issue. This was before mescaline was made illegal, back when psychiatrists still believed that the experience of taking mescaline approximated the mental state of a schizophrenic and therefore could be of great experimental value.
As for the mescaline imagery itself, Newsweek explained:
On taking mescaline, first there is nausea, but this is soon followed by a derangement of the brain centers of sight and sound, which causes a constant stream of scenes of incredible beauty, color, grandeur, and variety. The contents of the hallucinations always jibe with past experiences; they are wish-fulfilling fantasies (an air pilot sees mechanical dream cities; an ex-archeologist, mythological people and monsters). The form most frequently perceived is a tapestry, such as a wall-paper pattern that breaks into grotesque shapes. Other familiar forms are (1) lattice work of checkerboards, (2) spirals, (3) tunnels, funnels, alleys, and cones. The mescaline action begins 30 minutes after taking and lasts from ten to twelve hours.
"Wallpaper patterns come to life, change to demoniac caricatures, threaten immediate destruction"
Until recently, I was not aware that the famous surrealist collage artist Joseph Cornell also made films. Here's one delightfully weird sample. Many more on YouTube.
According to this LIFE magazine article, art collector Henry Clews had a taste for the bizzare, as seen in the statue above. His French Mediterranean home is now a museum, and you can visit, or even apply for an arts residency there!
Category: Dreams and Nightmares, Technology