Ye Aesthetic Ache

 

I can't believe what I just did.  I just spent over an hour writing a new blog here, and then I absentmindedly went offline before saving it!  It's all gone!  Arrrrrgh!!!  But that is perhaps a significant representation of my current mental chaos.  My mind is mush.  I cannot concentrate on work, and I am getting desperate.  I did so much writing last year, and I began this year so cocksure that I wou'd continue writing, writing, writing.  I've not completed anything of length this year.  Moving my writing from ye solitary and silent basement to this upstairs dining room, so that I can keep a closer watch on my invalid mother, who requires constant care, has absolutely killed my ability to concentrate on writing.  It's driving me bonkers, because writing is the air I breathe.  I grasp, in desperation, into the air of aesthetic inspiration, for those mad & lunatic & oh-so zany aspects of inspiration that will get me to me keyboard and revive my writing.  I had this insane idea that I am going to write my own version of Lovecraft's "The Lurking Fear." but I forgot to write down my ideas for it as notes and nigh I cannot remember my plot!  Curses on my mental chaos & inspidity!  (And I cannot even spell insipidty, and it ain't even a real word anyway . . . . . . )

I've been reading over my copy of my new book and finding all of the stupid errors that have crept in despite brave proofreading.  Bah.  In one place I use the words "transformed" twice in the same sentence.  Then at one place of mass stupidity I typed "personae" (plural) when I meant to type ye singular "persona."  Oy, too hopeless.  But I've been making corrections in my Word doc, and someday when I have another omnibus of my work publish'd the truly Corrected Text of Some Unknown Gulf on Night will be included.  But reading over my book, such a lovely book and so beautifully design'd by the brilliant Larry Roberts, has me reading again my wee paperback of Fungi from Yuggoth & Other Poems, the copy that I held with me as I stood next to S. T. in front of 10 Barnes Street, the house where Lovecraft lived when he penned his sonnets, that charming paperback with its yellow'd pages and those charming illustrations by Frank Utpatel.

And ye Fungi are casting their bewitchment over me once again, instilling within me that ache to write my own weird stuff.  So it was rather magickal, this morning, when Paul of yog-sothoth.com sent me a wee message providing a link to his audio work in progress -- a superb reading of Fungi from Yuggoth.  My gawd, it is such a fun, a fine, reading.  I am a devoted Anglophile, and to me ye sweetest music of all Time is a British voice speaking the works of Shakespeare or reciting poetry.  Nigh, this is a rough first recording by Paul, and he will refine it before unleashing it onto an Innocent Publick -- but he does more than merely read the sonnets -- he performs them with vocal inflections, subtle yet entirely effective.  It's dead good and I ache to hear ye final version.  But here's the thing:  just as listening to Will Hart's wonderful reading of the sonnets inspir'd ye writing of Some Unknown Gulf of Night, listening to-day to Paul's readings fill'd me with this overwhelming desire to return to Fungi from Yuggoth and write a second book inspir'd by these sonnets!  It's a crazy idea--and I think an irresistible one.  I cannot bloody write, I am so unhappy in this wretched state of writer's block.  I've had to tell two mates that I cannot contribute stories to their anthologies, and that makes me so angry with myself for so lacking professional discipline as a writer.  

So, this new idea is something I can work on slowly, with no writer's deadline hanging over me, something I can work on for the rest of this year and much of next.  A new book of short-shorts or tales up to 3,000 words, each inspir'd by Fungi from Yuggoth.  I think I like this idea a lot.  I grasp at it as a lifeline for my writing in this dreary period of block through which I stagger, moaning in misery.  And if I can then write such a new book, I can offer it to Tom Lynch as my second book for Miskatonic River Press -- and the amazing SANTIAGO CARUSO can illustrate it!  Oh, Shub-Niggurath!!  Ngai!!!!

Great Yuggoth -- look whut ye poftman just brought me:

 

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!  It is a facsimile printing of "The Lurking Fear" as it originally appear'd in Home Brew, complete with Clark Ashton Smith's slyly erotic illustrations!

My gawd!  If this doesn't put me in ye mood for writing new Lovecraftian weird fiction, nuthin' will.  Come on, Grandpa -- work yr Eldritch Magick!!!!!!!!   Ia!!!!!  Shub-Niggurath!!!!!!!!!!!!