Alone at Sam’s – An Evening With… + The Colours (album review)

The abstraction of the lyrics are poetic.

So is their non-abstraction. Just like Island Of The Dead and Death and Flamingos, the writing is more conversational and direct than in a lot of older Sopor Aeternus material. In the opening track ‘Evening’, the only lyrics are “Hello children, we are Anna-Varney…and you are not!”

One similarity to older Sopor lyrics comes through, though. On my vinyl copy of Ehjeh Ascher Ehjeh, the lyrics of ‘Watch your Step’ look a lot like something you would see on a sign in a national park: “Please, don’t take anything with you, except for maybe some photographs, and please don’t leave anything behind, save your own footprints in the sand.”

Alone at Sam’s uses similar double entendres with official-sounding language. On this album though, the models for inspiration are board game instruction booklets from Anna’s childhood. Lots of pieces with rules for moving in this or that direction and what their roles are in regard to one another and dice rolls. Since this is a longer body of work than Ehjeh Ascher Ehjeh, a little more author’s presence comes through than on ‘Watch your Step’. In the middle of all the pieces and boards and rules, there are also souls and bodies with all the dice numbers and space numbers and instructions. The use of Roman numerals on the four sides of the LP lead me to wonder about the song ‘Column’, in particlar, which deals with a game where no two pieces can occupy the same space.

A few months before this album dropped in October 2023, Anna-Varney posted a blog entry about rediscovering a rare collection of surviving toys and games from childhood. These survived, to hear Anna tell it, because of their obscurity. This means that the survivors were toys that they specifically did not care for as a child. Only the least appreciated and most mistaken gift ideas continued to represent what toys were to them as a child. They ended the post with a small phonograph which they would use, mostly, to listen to records of spoken-word stories with (at least with the Disney records) background music. Their mother threw away their childhood record collection. Last sentence of the post: “Well, I make my OWN records now. :)”

This emotional journey is present on the album.

As for the music- this is not a specific genre exploration like Death and Flamingos or a discrete palette of genres like Island of the Dead. If I had to look for a basis of comparison from the Sopor Aeternus discography, I find myself seeing similarities with Children of the Corn, The Spiral Sacrifice and- suprisingly for me –Mitternacht.

Mitternacht is a beautiful album but it is painfully intense for me, which is ironic. Anna said in an interview that the prior album, POETICA: All Beauty Sleeps ended on too dark a note for them to be at peace with. I found the opposite to be true for me. POETICA has been my favorite Sopor Aeternus album for awhile now. It’s like a well of imagination. It’s my favorite Sopor album to write to. To me this makes sense, given the role that the work of Edgar Allen Poe has played in their life. The energy exchange between their music and the poetry of Edgar Allen Poe would likely not permit it to resemble anything else in their discography. It has a sense of place and size that is unlike anything else by Sopor Aeternus.

Other Sopor albums have a sense of place and size, obviously; just nothing like POETICA. Mitternacht has those things to. Anna has described POETICA as an exploration of dreams while Mitternacht was that dream-realm transitioning into the waking world. Maybe Mitternacht hit me too emotionally for me to think about it clearly or critically…but I believe Anna intended to portray a shift to waking wisdom or maturity. To value someone else’s happiness over your own pain. It’s a tall order and it’s worth doing but the ending feels masochistically fair. The point of view, at the end, endeavors to be equitable and forgiving to all involved. Yet the pain of the loneliness, rejection and self-loathing still come through in that ending, in their voice, even while their words are reaching further.

Yes I’ve been in comparable situations and yes it can be every bit as bad as that. It can be worth doing, under the right circumstances. Yet I find my experiences have made me less forgiving to the prospect rather than more.

Perhaps a similar realization unleashed the venom of Island of the Dead and its staunch reclamation of personal agency.

The sense of place and size of Alone at Sam’s– the emotive world-building -can be most readily compared with Children of the Corn. Children of the Corn is- obviously -filled with allusions to horror tropes, in multiple lyrics and song titles. The alternation between the songs with Anna’s voice and the instrumental songs introduces something like an AB pattern. Like with Bowie’s Blackstar, the alternating gives Children of the Corn a sense of intimate, procedural immersion. Almost as if each sung piece is a character-encounter or monologue and the instrumental pieces are connective action.

This comes through most powerfully in the ending. ‘To walk behind the Rows’ is like a moment of spoken audio-drama. Anna’s voice is quiet, earnest and determined and they are clearly embodying a character, in a place, doing things. The subject matter evokes, for me, lots of very specific references to transfeminine dysphoria and its potential to wall you into a pit of futility…and what release from that futility can feel like. ‘Harvest Moon (Cornflowers II)’ conveys that release. To date, it is my favorite instrumental Sopor Aeternus song. Children of the Corn is set in an inhumane and inhospitable world. The unrequited desire, horror allusions and overall tone give the ending the release of fully submitting to destruction and coming out the other side. The sweet ineffibility of the ‘other side’ is expressed far more beautifully as an instrumental than it could have been with lyrics. Part of me softens when I hear ‘Harvest Moon (Cornflowers II)’. It evokes the ghost of a sob…but it is a relieved, joyous sob: the weight of permanent misery falling away.

There is an emotional nuance in Alone at Sam’s that hits me as hard as Mitternacht yet contains some of the bottomless peace of ‘Harvest Moon (Cornflowers II)’.

The first time I tried to listen to Alone at Sam’s, I stopped after the first two songs. Track one, ‘Evening’, is our moment of induction. I don’t know which specific Disney audio drama records they listened to as a child…but the musical cues, here, somehow feel like the background music for such a record. ‘Come and Play With Us’ can be thought of as the “post-intro” beginning. Perfectly strong, perfectly good point-of-view / character introduction. Then, at the end, there is a line that is sung repeatedly: “You don’t have to be alone”. Simple lyric. Yet something about the poetic language of games and rules beforehand invests it with…something. I tend to remember this line as “you don’t have to play alone”.

I recently heard of an alien abduction account, in which an old woman sees a younger man, on a couch, lying asleep, who then appears to rotate as if the couch and the wall were now a one-dimensional background and he was magically rotating in three dimensions. The woman was so shocked by what she saw that she began banging her head on the floor.

That line, “you don’t have to be / play alone” triggers a similar response in me.

At present, I am in no way ‘alone’. Whatever feelings ‘Come and Play With Us’ addresses in me are likely decades in the past. But the implied pain is so deep and the potential relief so acute that it feels cruel to bring it up. To mention it is to do so in vain…but what if it wasn’t? What if such a thing could be said with confidence?

So much sweeter and so much worse, at the same time. That is why I listened to this album once, three years ago when it came out, then never again until today.

Now that I have, I wish I hadn’t waited so long.

Like Children of the Corn, there is an alternating / procedural format but it is less of an AB pattern. ‘Evening’ through ‘Column’ can be classified as the first half, in which Anna’s narration is front-and-center and most songs contain their voice. Anna is both a narrator and an ever-present arbiter. In the second half, the centralization budges. The narration still speaks largely in double-entendres that sound like outdated board game rules but instrumental digressions become more common and more vivid. ‘The House of Poe’ has sparse lyrics that merge the narrated perspective with the non-verbal, procedural one, which is followed by ‘Squares of HA!’- an instrumental that seems to echo ‘Tanz der Grausamkeit’. After this comes ‘The Beast’: a vocal song describing gaming rules which are similar to ‘Column’. While ‘Column’ and ‘The Beast’ are on different sides on the vinyl version, their lyrics are beside one another in the gatefold. Correction: ‘Column’ is above ‘The Beast’ (no overlapping, remember?).

These lyrical themes continue in the final act. ‘The Spell’ reurns to the recurring sixes of the die-rolls. If you show up having already rolled a six, the spell loses its hold on you- yet no bonus roll for you.

Showing up without one and continuing to roll a six will maintain the hold of the spell. “Moobs” seem to be non-player pieces that can be deployed to take the hit of a bad roll for you. Each player only has so many and they tend to come in groups of two (lol).

“When you are under a spell,

and you come to a square of HA!,

you must follow the sign,

no matter what colour you are”

(It may be appropriate here to remember the resemblance shared between ‘Squares of HA!’ and ‘Tanz der Grausamkeit’, which in English means ‘the dance of cruelty’)

The ‘Colours’ represent four different players: purple, black, white and orange. The accompanying EP, The Colours, is instrumental except for one song: ‘Orange’, which builds on the last line of the song called ‘The Colours’ on the LP:

“Purple: queer and fabulous.

White: mostly insane.

Black: alone and a little sad.

Orange: the spirit of the game.“

The sole lyrics on the Colours EP describe ineffible blank spaces between ceremonial associations (“the cult of pumpkins / is what you might call / The true spirit of / Halloween”). ‘Orange’ also shares motifs with ‘Squares of HA!’, creating another association in addition to ‘Tanz der Grausamkeit’.

The thematic references of Alone at Sam’s are as ever-present as those on Children of the Corn but are less on-the-nose. The narrated album is the gameboard and the narration is the rules. Players do not speak on this level; they are spoken to. The Colours is more action-driven and therefore less verbal.

Since the centralizing voice on the LP backs up a little in the second act, I wonder if the “player perspective” is more relevant in the second act. The last words spoken by the narrator of Alone at Sam’s are in the song ‘Counter: Spell’. If, while moving backwards, you encounter another spell square “then the spell you’re under is reversed / by the magic of a counter-spell.” You roll your die again “but now you move forward, / like you used to do. / Roll your die again, / but if you roll a six, / there’ll be no gift for you!”

The sparse appearances of the narrator in the second act, combined with the less-verbal player perspective in The Colours, create an association between references that shines brighter than the associative references on Children of the Corn. Both of them contain references with easy resonance for many Western listeners yet with enough semantic drift to make you wonder if this is really the same mythic landscape you remember. If so, it is a remote and wild corner of it, bordering a completely different country.

Reading Requiem: Vampire Knight (part 2)

Content warning: R and Nazism

Four volumes in, we know that realms analogous to different planets in a solar system exist in Resurrection. Yet going from planet to planet does not necessarily entail regional departure. At a glance, each named location in Resurrection potentially has its own version of interstellar space. This also seems to be the medium through which different vessels pass. To travel from Necropolis to Lemuria may be equivelant to entering a different galaxy.

As Rebecca intimated in volume one, different transmigrants end up in different places in Resurrection. Rebecca herself went to Lemuria, where we see both variable weather and daylight. Unlike the vampires of Necropolis, who see Resurrection as a shot at eternal life, a vampire hunter in Lemuria looks forward to ending their stint and transmigrating elsewhere. Often, they are assigned a specific vampire or group of them, whose deaths will allow them to trasmigrate beyond Resurrection. Because they look forward to a next step, they have no interest in establishing permanent settlements like the vampires or establishing new, Resurrection-based identities. Lemurians frequently discuss their human lives and bond with other dead people over their shared humanity, which raises questions about the ghouls.

Like vampires, ghouls have settled territory in Resurrection and intend to hold on to it, perhaps explaining in part why the ghoul pirates are historical enemies of Necropolis. Ghouls intend to settle down as permanently as vampires, without the crafting of a secondary identity. They swap stories of their human lives and bond over them, like the Lemurians, but ghouls mostly dwell on how injustices suffered in life made them what they are. Constantly refreshing their anger and bitterness from their human lives seems to give them a parallel edge to the vampires. If combat, to Necropolitan vampires, represents a carnal indulgence- a battlefield packed with victims with new Resurrection bodies circulating perfectly edible blood -then for ghouls it is a cathartic indulgence. Vampires simply enjoy drinking blood and holding on to their territory. Combat has the easy mental access of pleasure-seeking. For ghouls, it has the easy mental access of releasing long-suppressed rage.

When extra-dimensional rifts open in Resurrection, many are happy comb through the Earthling wreckage for technology and then destroy the remaining evidence. Necropolis has a whole professional caste dedicated to this called Archeologists, who understand this as both a duty and a natural law: Resurrection has a backward time flow. There is probably some truth to this, since vampires appear to age backward (unless they die in battle or suffer intrigues at home, in which case their soul may be either annihilated or go back to Earth, potentially to arrive in Resurrection again, like our main character). Cryptos, after all, is a creepy little ancient baby that reminds me of Garlic Jr. from Dragon Ball Z. Vampires worry about suffering the “senility” of becoming a teenager, child or infant again. Another sign that Resurrection stands beside the Earthly time flow is the spectrum of weapons which Necropolis has hoarded and reverse engineered: everything from far-future lasers to firearms to swords and maces.

Despite the ubiquitous fear of growing young and the visibility and power of Cryptos…it’s hard not to wonder about the whole truth. Early in volume one, Otto tells Heinrich that the fragments of Earth that show up through the dimensional rifts are “uncreated” by the backward time flow. That, at least, appears to be a lie, since the duties of the Archeologists include burying all traces of the fragments of Earth from different eras and timelines after looting them. If not a strict lie, than a cultural / institutional construct, since the disappearance of the Earth fragments is enforced.

Then…in the company of a recently transmigrated vampire, Otto says that the same cosmic tide that causes these rifts will also attract demons and dragons all over Resurrection. These cosmic tide / wave events require everyone to barricade themselves and wait it out.

Just like vampires, vampire hunters and ghouls…this usage of ‘demons’ and ‘dragons’ has specific in-world meaning. They are manifestations of negative emotions from sentient beings. Demons and dragons serve beings we’ve heard about a few times but have heard nothing specific about until now: the gods of Limbo. Otto explains further than the gods of Limbo are extra-dimensional beings that cannot be perceived from the third dimension. From the dimensional vantage point of Resurrection, they are some of the most deadly beings in that universe.

Parallels with the collective subconscious emerge and an insinuation that Resurrection is directly adjacent. Close enough for the puncture of one to two barriers to make all the difference. We’ve encountered other claims about the cosmology, though, such as the backward time flow. One wonders how much of the apparent ‘collective subconscious’ is organic and how much may be either misunderstood or institutionally enforced. There seem to be ordinary gaps between perception and understanding, as in real science.

The possibility of a timeline of these discoveries is intriguing: on one hand, Resurrection clearly exists outside of the time flow that contains the three-dimensional point of view. The diversity of the relics taken by the Archeologists indicate that Resurrection is, in fact, independent of any timeline or era. Yet institutional behavior and the intrigues and vendettas of the Necropolitan court tell us that Resurrection must have its own, subjective time line. Once upon a time, when the soul called Thurim had only just transmigrated from a lifetime as Heinrich Barbarossa, the vampire Nero annoyed him with his music. Nero took offense, challenged him to a duel and got his right arm chopped off. Since Nero ranked higher in the court, Barbarossa Thurim was tortured to the point of apparent obliteration by Nero. When the soul of Barbarossa returns as Heinrich Requiem, who became an SS officer and died on the Eastern Front during an attempted rape…memories start returning. Heinrich Requiem realizes it is essential that neither Nero nor Dracula ever learn that he carries the soul of Thurim.

Like the relative differences in progress between institutions in Resurrection, the existence of these vendettas also prove that Resurrection has its own hermetically-sealed time flow (whichever direction it goes in).

During the second half of volume four, Heinrich Requiem experiences his first conflict between duty and conviction. When Requiem was a living Nazi, he hid a Jewish lover in his personal estate. This woman was Rebecca. Eventually, Requiem himself is the one who rats her out to the Gestapo: he simply became a Nazi of conviction after a while.

Yet he is still dwelling on Rebecca’s memory and punishing himself for it just before dying on the Eastern Front. He mourns for the death and destruction he caused but cannot resist renewing his damnation when he encounters a Russian woman who happens to resemble Rebecca. As his soul descends to Hell for the second time, all illusions flee from him: all he ever did was take victims for his own benefit. He is a soul-deep predator and he refuses to look his after-death destiny in the face without accepting that fact. That acceptance made him a vampire in Resurrection (reminder: vampires are souls who were aware of their evil and are unrepentant).

Rebecca, having been dead for some time, is now a Lemurian vampire hunter. She tells him, telepathically, that if he kills his first vampire companion (Otto), then he can leave Resurrection with her when her time comes. He cannot bring himself to do this and once again they are separated by his inequity. All done already, in the past, never to be negotiated with.

Otto informs him that this is the healthy path for a vampire: the destruction of human identity and the establishment of an infernal one. The destruction of one’s mortal self is equated with the authenticity and credibility of their vampiric self. Part of this is black opium, harvested from a world in Resurrection called Atlantis. Black opium is used, by every vampire, to keep memories and feelings from their human lifetimes permenantly suppressed.

After Atlantis is surrounded by anti-Necropolis partisans, Dracula is forced to consider other options. As a temporary stop gap measure, he launches a victim raid on Lemuria to soften the blow with more blood to go around. We are soon in the company of Rebecca and a new Lemurian flame: Sean, who lived and died in a different era. Rebecca and Sean get the jump on a company of vampires and- as Sean is running a massive sword through one of them -says “Let’s see how well his (Dracula’s) vampires fight without opium to help them forget their crimes.”

The regular use of the black opium is a genuine preference for most vampires and maybe most of them do it for the reason Otto said. Yet like the time flow, one wonders if there are other factors beyond the obvious. That early instance of Sean butchering a vampire implies that the black opium has another role that is more functional and less indulgent. I wonder if the whole taboo around suppressing and replacing human identity was engineered specifically to control vampires in the best way possible: leashing them with their own desire.

Throughout all this: Heinrich and Otto are two peas in a pod. Neither one seems to have a closer friend in Necropolis than each other. They even knew each other as humans: both were SS officers. Otto seems to be taking Heinrich in hand as simply a “younger vampire”…yet if their identities are meant to be wholly separate from your human self…maintaining human relationships (even ones that pushed you further toward evil) sounds iffy.

I’m doing my usual thing where I go through a comic / book / video game / whatever at my own pace and post as things occur to me. I like figuring things out and even the twists and turns of misunderstanding have their charm. I get that there’s online lore sources I could easily check this against. From where things stand now, though…it would not surprise me if Otto recognized Thurim for who he was, immediately. In that event, all he would have to do to ingratiate himself to the Necropolitan court would be to hand the soul of Thurim over to Nero and Dracula. What Otto may be doing is maintaining a private confidence between himself and Heinrich, in which one can express disloyal thoughts under the guise of one not knowing any better and the other correcting him. Otto is, by his own standards, undermining Heinrich’s vampire identity while creating a personal channel through which Heinrich may “leak” revealing information to him.

At the end of book four, Heinrich flees Necropolis with Rebecca, who was taken captive after the Lemurian raid. If Otto was surveiling and undermining Heinrich, his success or failure may soon be apparent.

Another Bowie/Uematsu playlist experiment

I ended up making this playlist while trying to figure out what a fictional album “feels” like. For a story I’m writing. Obviously this isn’t meant to be literally representative. More like an associative-emotive vibe-print. My musician character is someone whose imaginative and expressive range equals (if not surpasses) Bowie and Uematsu.

The first track derives from Bowie’s 1.Outside demos. The Final Fantasy music consists mostly of covers from ocremix.com. Like the last playlist with ocremix stuff, the original basis for the song is in parenetheses. Only two tracks come directly from an Uematsu soundtrack (Final Fantasy IX). ‘Journey Through the Lifestream’ incorporates a number of musical quotes and ideas from Uematsu.

Concerning the ocremix songs- ‘Enchanted Espers’ dates back to the late oughtties. ‘Now is the Winter’ and ‘Courage, Failure, Rosebud’ are from the ocremix compilation album Final Fantasy VI: Balance and Ruin and ‘Deliverance of the Heart’ comes from the ocremix album Final Fantasy VII: Voices of the Lifestream.

I Am With Name/Hide Me/Creep Together- David Bowie (fan edit)

Now is the Winter (The Mines of Narshe)- Mustin

Strangers When We Meet (1.Outside version)- David Bowie

Another Nightmare (FFIX soundtrack)- Nobuo Uematsu

Breaking Glass- David Bowie

Courage, Failure, Rosebud (Under Martial Law)- DragonAvenger, OA

Loving the Alien (2003 live version from A Reality Tour)- David Bowie

Enchanted Espers (Another World of Beasts)- Protricity

Always Crashing in the Same Car- David Bowie

Not Alone (FFIX soundtrack)- Nobuo Uematsu

As the World Falls Down (Labyrinth soundtrack)- David Bowie

Moss Garden- David Bowie

Deliverance of the Heart (Heart of Anxiety)- pixietricks, zircon

Neukoln- David Bowie

Journey Through the Lifestream (VII Rebirth soundtrack)

“Heroes”- David Bowie

Playing Baroque part 3 (mostly theorizing)

Content warning: mention of SI

Here’s the opening post if you want to get caught up with my passes through the Nerve Tower and blind analysis

The Nerve Tower is visible in the opening cut scene, with three Sense Spheres visible on the top.

The view of the Nerve Tower upon spawning into existence likewise appears bracketed by two structures, like the alley in the opening cut scene. Even the same three Sense Spheres in evidence (I think…?).

In light of subsequent passes through the Tower, the symbiosis and separation of the main character from another half (potentially Alice) is referred to in the opening cut scene as well. The opening cut scene ends with a look at what appears to be a white Distorted One or grotesque resembling a pair of conjoined twins, bleeding from their mouths. The Distorted One is cut down by the apparent viewpoint character. A bloody feather see-saws to the ground. The camera pans up toward the Nerve Tower, seen at roughly the same angle as the earlier alley perspective and the perspective of the player character once the game starts.

Also concerning symbiosis and entanglement: if you attack Alice, she says “I shouldn’t have been born. There are times when I think that. (…) I want to remember the times before I met you, when we were melded with each other.”

When you fire the Angelic Rifle at the God of Preservation and Creation on the seveneteenth basement floor, she says she wanted to be “one with you” again before she dies.

Alice only “met you” once she was separated from “you”. Under your onslought, she seeks a comforting memory: the time when “you” were both “melded with each other.” It sounds like a yearning for a time before the separation but what to make of the use of “melded”? Were they somehow combined from separate entities to begin with?

From the way Alice and others talk about this event, you would think it was a trauma inflicted from without, as if they were the same being and always had been. It could have been an externally imposed trauma simultaneously with the initial “melding” not being original. There’s that glimpse of the naked man and woman embracing- perhaps they joined together as a kind of corporeal marriage? If so, the pain of the separation leads us to think that this existence was harmonious. Whatever was done to them was done against their will.

Some of the Distorted Ones (like the Sack Thing) talk about your experience, in particular. According to them, you suffered horribly.

The Sack Thing also attributes the following quote to the Archangel: “If the Creator and Preserver has a core, then the world can be remade as many times as one pleases. The next world will be created and preserved by me. I will return the world to normality in an instant.”

Some of Sack Thing’s earlier dialogue: “The Pretend angels are speaking. They’re saying ‘Go to the Nerve Tower’.”

Eliza wants to give birth to a Sense Sphere to heal her mother’s insanity. She also makes cryptic mention of an “insane Sense Sphere”. Where else have we heard discussions of insanity? The God of Preservation and Creation has gone mad. This is the player character’s “sin”, according to the Archangel.

How did the God of Creation and Preservation go mad? Getting torn in half. Kinda like the player character. Oh yeah, and Eliza and the Archangel resemble each other as closely as the player character and Alice. Maybe they were similarly torn in half. Beside Eliza are multiple non-funcitoning Sense Spheres.

Alice, who appears in a room with a single functioning green Sense Sphere, says that the Archangel is the one who tore you apart. “In order to drive the Creater and Preserver mad. In order to become the Creator and Preserver himself.”

Alice, on the fifteenth basement floor: “You’ve been torn apart twice now.”

The Mind Reading Thing, on the sixth basement floor during either my fifth or sixth pass, says “(t)he image of another can sometimes be seen within master. Nearly identical, and yet quite an entirely different person, it seems.” Evocative of both the player character and the Archangel.

On a different occasion, the Mind Reading Thing says “(m)aster’s mind is quite like a landscape, painted with layer upon layer of grief. (…) There is a scar on master’s waist, yes, a large scar under your clothes which was not caused by the Great Heat Wave. Master is haunted by that large scar from so long ago…alas, pitiful.”

On the early basement floors, a ghostly, feminine face appears and says “(d)o you remember our wounds? Have we forgotten the origin of that scar?” (…) “I recall that pain, even now. My final day with you, when I was murdered!” (…) “We used to play chess, didn’t we? We’d take a turn as we awoke one by one.”

In our simulation paradigm, our obvious representatives of the simulation’s function appear to be the Archangel and the Nerve Tower. What do nerves do? Connect brains to bodies. Some of the Horned Woman’s dialogue after the fourth pass: “Regret. Distortion. Archangel. Dabar Fusion.”

In Baroque, there are characters that have other beings or worlds inside of themselves. This includes the player, the angels, Distorted Ones and the Koriel. They have things inside of themselves or a receptacle that they wish to suppress, manage or embody. The Box Thing describes this exactly, the Mind Reading Thing describes someone called “the master” experiencing this. Eliza wants to “give birth” to a Sense Sphere and the confined, metal-plated angel in the lower basement levels (held before an off-limits Sense Sphere by a black and a white bird) says that the memory of their “SINS” are in the “SENSE SPHERE”.

They say they cannot be “PURIFIED”. I wonder if to “purify” is to separate something from yourself. It gets kicked down the ladder of nesting-doll worlds (becomes an Idea Sefirot) and you regenerate healthy tissue like a starfish and remain intact on your own level. Should you die on your level, you will go up the ladder and emerge from a Sense Sphere. The spheres from space (Idea Sefirot and Sense Sphere) are the ladder.

In the world of Baroque, Sense Spheres are treated like objects that can send and receive matter between two different points. If I’m right about the design of the Nerve Tower, then Sense Spheres and their matter transmission were incorporated into engineering and technological infrastructure. Just before the Great Heat Wave.

This may have occurred “historically” but this is also clearly reflected on the first level of nested Nerve-circuits, within what may be a biomechanical simulation, hosted by a dreaming mind.

The Sense Spheres could have been employed for total control over matter: move it, store it in an information state or wipe it from existence. Thing Thing’s behavior implies that Sense Spheres can be a bottomless source of stuff…but Thing Thing appears to just wait outside of them and see what randomly pops out. Maybe this was done with more intention, once upon a time.

And what was our theorized eliminative use of Sense Spheres, again? It appears to be dividing things from oneself; a scalpel of the soul. On your plane, the excised information-matter is reduced to an Idea Sefirot. Its existence goes down a level. Does it then become possible for you to emerge from a Sense Sphere, one level above? Are your hands now on the ladder?

If the God of Preservation and Creation is the outermost layer, then the dreamer in the suspension chamber may be that very woman. Her subconscious channeling of the simulation embodies half of the world and she herself embodies the other half.

The Queen of the Damned comic reaction

Spoiler warning

While the absence of Lestat as the narrator makes things less immersive than the Vampire Lestat comic…the original Queen of the Damned easily translates into pictures and word balloons, what with the number and diversity of characters, events connected by vast distances and vampires breaking cover. Anyone looking for a straight-laced adaptation would have little to complain about. To the best of my memory of the book…I think every single scene made it into the comic with varying (but admissible) degrees of faithfullness.

The art is neat to. A few scenes, like Maharet visiting Jesse in the hospital, almost remind me of Dave McKean, who would have been a rising star in comics at the time. The scene below reminds me of McKean’s art in Neil Gaiman’s Black Orchid, which felt equidistant between genre-savvy comic art and photo-realism. And, of course, a ton of shadows and pale lighting (most of Black Orchid happened at night to).

The degree of realism also roots us in the present of the book- 1984. I was a little surprised by Armand’s twentieth century presentation, here. My impression of Armand (as depicted in the books) was of someone who is recognizably non-binary, erring slightly toward femininity.

This is where the diminished immersion became a bit more clear to me. When I first read The Queen of the Damned, the relationship between Armand and Daniel was one of the sweetest and most engaging parts of the whole book. That was probably when he started to become one of my favorite characters.

Armand, on the lower right, in the white shirt. Admissible but I don’t think I ever imagined him with hair like that

One thing they could have done was spend more time in the early stages of the rapport, when it was at its most chaotic. The restaurant encounter- when Armand orders literally everything on the menu because he wanted to order for Daniel but didn’t know what he liked -should be its own scene. It’s depicted here but I would have liked to have spent more time in that moment. It also would have been nice to see more of the early, late-night visitations, when Armand surprises him at one in the morning because he wants to talk about the book he saw on Daniel’s nightstand. Or shaking Daniel awake because he wants to talk history and philosophy. Spending more time in the early, uncomfortable stages would have made the tender moments hit harder. To be fair; all of those moments are depicted in the comic but only briefly.

Not endemic to the comic but Anne Rice in general: a lot of her vampire-human relationships are more interesting for not having the moral framing of recent stories. There’s a huge market out there for people who love morally inoffensive vampires. Anne Rice never made any bones, whatsoever, about vampires being non-human beings with non-human perspectives. If Armand and Daniel are an example of the encounter ending (relatively) well then The Tale of the Body Thief shows us both the delicious and horrific possibilities. A happy ending is possible but it can end a million other ways to.

I wonder if Stephanie Meyer would have triggered the backlash she did if she was less eager to make Edward Cullen morally white. I never read Twilight but I saw parts of the movie and it seemed so determined to make Edward cuddly that his predatory, vampiric behavior was just…a bald inconsistency. So when he started doing predatory things to Bella, it smacked of hypocrisy and Meyer’s determination not to acknowledge that darkness raises the spectre of actual, sublimated misogyny.

This was also neat. I really liked the Stan Rice poetry that Anne used as epigraphs so often. The Cannibal poem is the only Stan Rice epigraph here but its usage establishes a nice, solitary and emotional beat before we see Lestat in the arms of Akasha for the first time.

Only eleven of these comics were commercially released before Innovation Comics went under but the twelfth surfaced online last summer.

As of this writing, the portrayal of the final confrontation is the most faithful out of any adaptation (fingers crossed for some later season of the AMC show?).

The Queen of the Damned film didn’t even make an effort. Just a giant vampire brawl.

See…the confrontation in the novel was a debate. Not a single vampire can resist Akasha on their own so they spend most of their energy trying to talk her out of reducing the male population by ninety-percent and assuming autocratic control over the globe. No film studio at the time was going to portray a supervillain that specifically targets men.

What gets lost in translation are the moral stakes. When Lestat wakes up in the twentieth century, he is delighted by the rise of secular humanism and at least some progress being made in gender equality. Those were things he never would have anticipated happening during his human lifetime. He saw humanity begin- however awkwardly -to graduate from the world he once took for granted. This theme reappears when he finds Marius, who believes that the Enlightenment was the greastest step forward the west had taken thus far.

Confronting Akasha was the first time that we got to see this optimism challenged. Marius had some of his most glorious lines in that battle. To paraphrase: humanity has fucked up a lot in both the ancient and modern world. But look at the new ground that was broken in the twentieth century. Do we really want to take humanity’s destiny from them just as they’re starting to peck out of the shell?

The dignity of humanity versus the belief that humans are stupid and helpless and need a stern parent to keep them in line. Yes it’s a debate. Yes a debate is people talking. But it was one of the best scenes Anne Rice ever wrote. No it is not Helm’s Deep but it is a climactic fantasy battle.

The comic keeps it concise: most of the lines are spoken by Akasha, Maharet and Marius. Objectively, you can’t complain. I missed Louis’s appearance, though. In the book he is silent for most of the debate and then butts in assertively. Louis was the weakest vampire present and Lestat was shitting bricks because he thought Akasha was going to incinerate him on principle. Akasha herself appreciates his bravery even if she’s not convinced by him.

That’s my one note for the ending and I guess its more of a nitpick. Otherwise: wonderful comic

Among the portrayals of the Children of the Millennia, Pandora matched my mental image the closest

On issue 12:

https://www.comicartfans.com/galleryroom.asp?gsub=241532

Waking Hours: The Dreaming, volume 4

Spoiler warning

Judging from where things went with Nightmare Country, I wonder if G. Willow Wilson was working on a related concept in ‘Waking Hours’. Volume four of The Dreaming came out roughly at the same time as the first two Sandman Universe Hellblazer arcs and I think all of those were out by the time Nightmare Country ramped up. As Nightmare Country has Madison Flynn and the Corinthian, the fourth book of The Dreaming has Heather After and Ruin. Also like Nightmare Country, the main human and the main nightmare have a dynamic that ropes in other more short-lived events.

A Shakespeare scholar called Lindy Morris dreams something at the wrong place at the wrong time.

Ruin is a nightmare who escaped from Dream’s quarantine/prison chest with the help of Dora (remember her? The Night-Hag from the first three arcs? She’s now something of a mover-&-shaker at the World’s End inn). Why? Because he fell in love with the first human he tried to hunt on the astral plane. So after escaping, he breaks into the waking world using Lindy’s recurring Shakespeare dreams as an entry point.

Thing is, crossing dimensional boundaries in both a tangible and autonomous state requires serious magical investment. Ruin pulls it off because he accidently shifted Lindy’s tangible body into the world of her recurring dream.

Our main human character, Heather After, is a magician with the mind of puissant gambler; undaunted by the need to put some skin in the game to get things going. She was mentored by John Constantine though, so maybe that’s to be expected (Constantine’s quite the magical educator, isn’t he? First Timothy Hunter then Heather After).

I love the ‘Promethea’ vibes in this picture. ‘Intermezzo, Part Two’ cover art by Nick Robles

What’s more: she’s handled the transactional nature of sacrifice well in the past. Arguably.

She once attempted a summoning for what she described as a “nice, chill little fire spirit with the intelligence of a goldfish”. Instead she snagged the cherub Jophiel who promptly threatens her in his flaming, lion-headed, multi-winged form. She lets him go when asked and earns a tiny bit of good will.

Around that same time, Jophiel was attempting an astral dialogue with a young Catholic seminarian called Benedict, who had the potential to become the next Pope. Jophiel is channeling various visions and whatnot which- due to Benedict’s human nature -must occur in the theater of dreams. That means that it’s occuring within the Dreaming. Because of this, other dream-kind have enviornomental access which is how Ruin found him and well…you know how Ruin fell in love with his first human victim?

Once Ruin got involved, Jophiel’s intended visions got derailed and Benedict dropped out of seminary. Jophiel is subsequently punished for his failure with temperory banishment to Earth.

The overlooked nail that catches on the sweater is a recurring plot device in this story. Once Ruin makes it to the waking world, he looks for the only person he knows there: Jophiel, who hates him and immediately tries to drop him off on Heather’s doorstep.

Heather hopes to rescue Lindy through an indirect, adjacent entrance to the Dreaming: Faerie. She combs through the ether for a being that’s closer to Faerie than they are and hooks Robin Goodfellow. Being rather less of a negotiator than Jophiel, the Puck swears vengeance for the temporary abduction. Heather, Ruin and Jophiel dodge his immediate wrath but he keeps his word anyway.

In the meantime, we are alternating with Lindy’s advantures in her dream construct. The Lindy arc succeeds as its own story but Sandman readers will wonder about the role of William Shakespeare. Especially since the SU Lucifer also riffed on the in-uinverse relevance of Shakespeare. It essentially depicts the in-universe events that shaped the idea that Dream imparted to Shakespeare, later to become The Tempest.

While we don’t get the kind of detailed flashbacks that SU Lucifer had, Shakespeare’s prior Sandman involvement comes through. Lindy becomes convinced that her dream will end if she solves an ongoing argument in her inescapable dream-house: she’s trapped with a bunch of different Shakespeares who are all convinced they’re the one that derived from the real, historical author. Details from the ‘Midsummer Night’s Dream’ vignette within Dream Country provide a random memory that one of the Shakespeares lets slip. This blurt gives Lindy an early, vital hint.

Like I said, it works fine as its own story. There is another possible association, though: Shakespeare is, potentially, the only one who spoke with Morpheus about the angst that drove him to suicide.

Daniel, the current incarnation of Dream, feels the stirrings of Morpheus-era memories.

Speaking of those: Heather After is the granddaughter of Roderick Burgess- the guy who trapped Dream for eighty years during the early twentieth century. In fact- unless I’m missing something -it seriously looks like Heather is John Dee’s bio-daughter. Like, Doctor Destiny, from ‘Preludes & Nocturnes’; the Justice League villain who tried to claim Morpheus’s Ruby.

We aren’t given the exact details of her origin; save that she grew up in the lap of the Cripps family, whose magical heritage is at least as potent as the Burgesses, considering how a lawyered-up meeting goes between them during the reading of Ethel Cripps’ will.

On her deathbed, Ethel told Heather that she has no reason to be dependant on the Burgess family. Judging how Heather takes this information, I wonder about the kind of relationship the two of them had. Heather is a transwoman and it looks as if Ethel was the only one in the family who accepted her when she first came out. The chosen family dynamic is not spelled out in so many words but Heather’s reaction to Ethel’s death is telling. Ethel appears to have been the only adult that defaulted to her chosen name. She barefaces her way into the will reading, claiming to just want some of her grandmother’s personal effects to remember her by. Heather swipes a grimoire and casts a barrier spell behind her on the way out, leaving the Burgess and Cripps lawyers panicking and slinging spells at each other.

I did say she had a history of successfully managing risk.

Coulda did better with the Puck, though. If you piss off one fairy then it pays to have either fairy allies or negotiation leverage with other fairies. She manages to persuade Auberon to help her out but only in exchange for a favor.

Nuala has deposed Auberon and Titania and they want their throne back. Auberon does, anyway. Titania would like it back but spends most of her time as one of Nuala’s cringing courtiers.

It’s tempting to wonder about the tension that was growing between Nuala and Titania during ‘The Kindly Ones’; buried romantic or sexual jealousy over Morpheus. The Netflix miniseries brought some of that closer to the surface but it was evident in the original comic as well.

I also couldn’t help wondering about Cluracan’s nemesis: the being he created by bumping into some raw creative energy in Dream’s castle. Off the top of my head, I think he eventually refers to himself as either the White Stag, the Wild Hunt or possibly both at different times. I wonder how relevant the second moniker is, since other beings use that name in the third SU Lucifer book. I’d be surprised if Cluracan’s nemesis was the same Wild Hunt that Lucifer crossed paths with. The Wild Hunt in SU Lucifer is an ancient and ineffible cohort, almost reminiscent of the Kindly Ones themselves…whereas Cluracan’s nemesis is relatively young. To say nothing of the possibility that the shape-shifter filled the void of the Hunted God, which Lucifer previously believed to be annihilated.

(I hear that the first run of The Dreaming snipped that loose end but I can’t help being attached to the theory that Cluracan’s nemesis somehow went on to become the Hunted God in SU Lucifer. In ‘The Wild Hunt’, Odin says that Lucifer’s doom was set in motion by one of the Endless)

Anyway, Cluracan’s shape-shifting nemesis gives Nuala almost as much shit as Titania does in ‘The Kindly Ones’. He appears in the shape of Cluracan to threaten Nuala and gloat over her during ‘The Wake’.

We do get Nuala’s version of things eventually but it’s rather short and not very specific. She makes no mention of any party external to herself, Auberon and Titania except the Unseelie. From the context offered here, the Unseelie were always present in Faerie but never rose to the level of visibility as the Seelie characters.

As for the ‘Waking Hours’ characters, everything that has happened so far either dates back to Heather accidentally summoning Jophiel or accidentally summoning Robin Goodfellow. I don’t recall any specific reason to think that Heather’s summoning of Jophiel played a part in Jophiel’s failure to guide Benedict but it feels plausible. In any event, Jophiel blames Ruin exclusively.

I mean, she seemed to accidentally summon Jophiel shortly before Ruin showed up? And Jophiel being who he is, I don’t think he’d be civil and friendly with Heather if he thought she had anything to do with it.

Even if that one is open and shut, though…none of the second half of ‘Waking Hours’ would have happened if Heather had not snagged Robin Goodfellow at the beginning.

There is nothing to be immediately deduced from this just now…except for Dream’s belief that a nightmare (Ruin) wandering different planes “has brought old evils to the waking world.” When he examines the hospital room where the curse from Puck’s blade grew out of control, he says “(t)here is a coalescing in this place…the spiral of time doubling back upon itself…warning us that that which has happened before will happen again”.

We have also known, since the beginning of ‘Waking Hours’, that a descendant of Roderick Burgess is involved. Dream has only lately figured that out which he probably took for confirmation. Since Dream attributes all this to a nightmare outside of the Dreaming, his suspicions probably run closer to Jophiel’s.

It is also evident when Dream decides to take Ruin back to the Dreaming. He sees the localized effects of a localized cause. This part is also interesting because Dream shifts from distant observer to direct participant. His position- relative to the other characters -becomes antagonistic. Possible foreshadowing of later developments in Hellblazer and Nightmare Country (perhaps going as far back as House of Whispers)?

In all fairness…Dream’s role in the later Sandman Universe comics has been closer to strict neutrality rather than antagonism but- considering how ‘The Glass House’ ended -that shade of gray is going darker. His behavior in ‘Dead in America’ also stands out in contrast to Morpheus. Morpheus was a stickler for the rules and had zero compassion for those on the losing side of them…but he didn’t exactly relish flexing on his enemies like Daniel does.

I wonder if ‘Waking Hours’ was the early turning of this corner. I wouldn’t be surprised if the third volume of Nightmare Country sees Dream getting even more cozy on the dark side.

The Vampire Lestat (comic review)

Kudos to my friend Tibbie X for letting me take these off her hands

This is a straight-laced, faithful adaptation. Which does not guarantee success. Worst case scenario (with comics, anyway) is a kind of paraphrasing or summary that is accompanied by pictures rather than taking place within them.

This comic prioritizes the novel’s first person narration and therefore takes heavily from the actual text of the book. To their credit, it looks like Perozich and Gross only wanted to draw the book. Allowances for context between mediums were made but, whenever possible, the text will consist mostly of Anne Rice herself, as Lestat’s internal voice or the various characters.

At the same time, it is not a complete reprint of the book. The first person narration is therefore scaled back whenever the immersion is served better by a purely visual sequence. This is a small thing but it’s a good sign. It says that Perozich and Gross don’t feel like the comic medium is an awkward obstacle that they have to work around rather than with. As good as it is here, though, it wasn’t the visual pacing that won me over.

This is one of the pages that convinced me that Faye Perozich and Daerick Gross were capable of adapting Anne Rice. Or, at least, of conveying one of her vital nuances.

Spoilers ahead, fyi.

There are a few different reasons why The Vampire Lestat is an important lynch pin in The Vampire Chronicles. One of them is that many of the metaphysical basics are established. This includes all the vampiric cryptobiology details as well as other world-building precedents.

The turning of Lestat’s mother is one of these moments. It states explicitly what the relationship dynamics in Interview With The Vampire said implicitly. Transforming into a vampire divests one of the incidentals of human society and makes them relatable as pure individuals.

Or starkly unrelatable and hostile to each other. But when two vampires connect, they connect simply as one soul to another. As he transforms his mother, Lestat feels the baggage of a lifetime of mother-son dynamics fall away and sees Gabrielle for who she truly is, irrespective of her role as a mother or a wife. Ironically, this spiritual nakedness causes new relational roles- that of lovers.

The turning of Nicolas was particularly well done. Earlier, with Gabrielle, the divestment of all human societal roles caused the formation of new roles. For Nicolas, that was exactly what he couldn’t bear.

For comparison, consider how different things were even a short time ago. The panels above depict Lestat’s first reunion with Nicolas after he was transformed by Magnus. Yes, Lestat is a young vampire internally-narrating how living, non-prey humans look. But in the panel with the hug, Lestat feels “a little convulsion of terror”. He’s not hungry because he just fed; he just gorged himself to look more human. One wonders if he was afraid of revealing his otherworldly nature, “and then there was only Nicolas, and I didn’t care.”

The ineffability of such a moment lends credence to the post-vampire awakening, as if there really is a divine spark that shines brightest without the trappings of mortal life.

Once Nicolas is turned, though, he discovers the opposite.

The ineffable sweetness of that reunion only happened because of the love between Nicolas and Lestat as young mortal men. Without that context, the abstraction slowly becomes too much for Nicolas. Gabrielle, meanwhile, luxuriates in the freedom.

None of this is spelled out in as many words; it just unfolds. This, like so much, benefits from the structure of the story.

First, Lestat addresses the reader. In this address, Lestat is in a sustained flashback dialogue with both Gabrielle and Nicolas. Later, the narrative conversation happens between Lestat and Armand who is later replaced with Marius. It ends with a more open and chaotic vignette in the present, like the source material.

The episodic nature of comic releases also worked out for the best. It enables the book to directly foreground things like the tales of Armand and Marius. The usage of color is more stark and contrasting in these stories than in the events set in the narrative “present” of Lestat’s early years in France and Egypt. Armand’s story regularly contrasts bright and dark colors. Marius’s nested stories have eras of vivid colors not typically seen elsewhere. A long, dark blue section is succeeded by purple and black. Both are eventually replaced with vibrant white, orange and yellow. Obviously this is playing on the dramatic immersion in someone’s internal world, with whole chunks of time recalled with distinct and sequential meaning, colored by emotion.

It feels thematically relevant that Marius’s tale in Egypt was- for many vampires -the most eye-catching part of Lestat’s book, music and music videos. With half-formed thoughts of Nicki in the back of his mind, Lestat acts on an impulse to play the violin for Akasha. Akasha offers her blood and Enkil attacks him, yet neither of Those Who Must Be Kept shift out of their white, statue-like torpor. Lestat is now a direct participant in Marius’s tale of the vampiric parents.

The stories of Armand and Marius are colored by the emotions of their narrators yet- because of the meta-narrative in the year 1984 -these stark contrasts add credibility to the reactions of the modern vampires.

When I first read The Vampire Lestat, all of these moments were equally foregrounded for me. Those parts of the story shaped my belief that- no matter what genre people put Anne Rice into -she is fundamentally a fantasy novelist. What is the tale of Akasha and Enkil but a fantasy plot point, framed by world history?

There is a certain kind of reader, though, that will never stop thinking of a digression from the narrative present as non-story material. A visual, episodic medium is an ideal way of making these digressions take up their own space. Lestat’s meta-narrative conversations with Nicolas and Gabrielle happened on a similar basis; it’s just less obvious because those three characters knew each other as both humans and vampires.

What is exemplified in those two earlier pages with Gabrielle (“During all this misery…” & “Hunters of the Savage Garden”) is Lestat’s mental narration contrasted with brief visual digressions. Both of them contain panel arrangements that suggest different events are being referenced. They look like they contain samples of a longer chunk of time but they’re just extremely stark perspectives within the same moment. The “Hunters of the Savage Garden” page shows Lestat and Gabrielle (post-vampire) talking as they leave Magnus’s castle for the night. They are briefly talking on two sides of a metal grate in alternating panels. The starkest contrast with the overall color scheme is the starscape behind Gabrielle when she says “I want to feed.” Nuances like that are tiny but- in a story that’s mostly framed by dialogue -they go a long way toward establishing a balance between the visual nature of comics and the whole ‘neverending interview’ structure.

The Sandman Universe: Locke & Key

Spoiler warning

The SU Locke & Key only lasted for three issues…but they tell a neat little one-shot. It would make a good animated short film about the twins John and Mary Locke and their brother Ian.

It’s interesting to see the post-WWI Roderick Burgess again, with Morpheus in his basement.

One thing a longtime Sandman reader will recognize: metaphysical timelessness. Dream-kind like Fiddler’s Green and Corinthian were not made in the three-dimensional world. The angels of the Silver City and Lucifer are even further from the third dimension.

Another thing that stands out to OG Sandman readers: the third act explains where Lucifer’s key to Hell came from.

Basically, Mary Locke made it with her cousin Chamberlain’s locksmithing kit and forge. She made it specifically to rescue her twin, who lied about his age so he could enlist as a teenager, later to die in WWI and end up in Hell (sounds like a ‘Sleep of the Just’ subplot).

It was made in the forge of universal keys to break the permanence of Hell. In both the Silver City and Hell, all time is simultaneous and an angel manages to place it around the neck of Lucifer before his fall.

Mary Locke, meanwhile, only made her own key to Hell because she heard the gates of Hell were locked. And why wouldn’t she? Lucifer had it when he fell, after all.

Yes it’s paradoxical. I don’t know if this is meant to tie in to the Overture world-building, with the Gemworld and multiple timelines interacting with each other but it would fit in with it.

Unless the “first draft” of the universe had time loops written in from the beginning. That nuance could also leave room for the Gemworld. It also reminds me of some themes from the SU Lucifer (he’s in this as well, looking like nineties Bowie at the turn of the century, roughly eighty years before he looked like late-sixties Bowie in ‘A Hope in Hell’). Lucifer is always himself and nothing else: perhaps because God made him before discovering time loop editing.

I don’t think the ending would have the same pathos if it wasn’t for the first act, though (marked ‘issue 0’ on the cover).

That vignette concerns Ian, who died in childhood. The Locke family patriarch decided to house his soul in a pocket dimension, with other recently deceased family members, inside the moon. Without any broader context from Locke & Key, this could be an ephemeral state, the Locke family ghosts could be “squatting” between worlds or both.

In any event, the shelter seems to depend on its obscurity. The only reason the moon-door held against Lucifer was probably because Mary still had her key. Shortly after seeing Jack home, Mary hears that a pair of angels named Duma and Remiel would like a word. She journeys to the Silver City, followed by Fiddler’s Green, and hands over the key to Hell when asked; just in time for a certain moment in a certain timeless, recurring war of the angels (speaking of SU Lucifer).

Lucifer was only thwarted at the moon-door by a technicality. A technicality that disappeared as soon as Remiel and Duma asked for it. The rescue of Jack is all the sweeter for it being a series of gambles which could easily have failed. The winches and ropes and pulleys behind the moon add a bit of turn of the century romance. A vague association with the silent film A Trip to the Moon, perhaps.

More on House of Whispers

Warning of sweeping spoilers for both the original Sandman and the newer Sandman Universe comics

Morpheus had black word balloons and wavy white letters. Daniel has white word balloons and wavy black letters. Ananse also has white word balloons with wavy black letters. Morpheus had a unique, subjective avatar for each person who interacts with him. Have all the avatars of Dream shifted from Morpheus to Daniel…? Considering Daniel’s role in the fourth Dreaming volume and ‘Dead in America’, there may be some relevance to his overall character arc.

Granted, Daniel/Dream is absent from the Dreaming at that point in the SU chronology. We know, for sure, that Dream takes whatever shape is best depending on who he’s talking to. But what if a bunch of people see the same shape and compare notes? How many myths could spring up in world history, from that? Perhaps Ananse and other storytelling tricksters like him?

If dream-kind deities could spring from this, then maybe a few of Dream’s personal avatars have become less personal and more cultural. Maybe some of them- in their current state -would not necessarily disappear with Dream but continue to reflect and channel him.

The legacy of Morpheus’s psychic infrastructure under Daniel (to say nothing of third parties) is a major plot point in ‘Dead in America’.

Morpheus may not have been a humanitarian but his intensity and seriousness seemed to grow with his closeness to humanity. In ‘Three Septembers and a January’, Morpheus initially looks down on Despair, Desire and Delirium over their wager on Joshua Norton’s soul. It is beneath their dignity, beside their duties and affects innocent people. Despair browbeats Morpheus/Dream into joining them by comparing him to Destruction. Morpheus/Dream wins the game in the end, simply by using Joshua’s dreams to empower him against the others.

I don’t think Daniel/Dream would have the same reactions. Perhaps not even the same strategy.

I was nervous about Daniel when the first volumes of the reboot of The Dreaming came out. It looked as if Daniel was just stepping into the same romantic and emotional rut as his predeccesor. But what if it was more of a recapitulation period? Daniel has a brief and stormy love affair with Ivy Walker which causes him to leave the Dreaming and the whole drama with Judge Gallows and Wan unfolds in his absence.

Then Daniel returns. We still don’t know everything that happened between him and Ivy. What if the relationship had a firm, decisive ending, with no looking back? Perhaps Daniel completely “shook off” his Morpheus baggage after that.

Morpheus grew more stern as he drew closer to humanity. Daniel does not seem stern. Daniel smiles and his smile troubles John Constantine. Both Nightmare Country and the fourth volume of the rebooted Dreaming show Daniel in a more mercurial light. In ‘Dead in America’, Constantine barely manages to talk Daniel down from completely wiping the Kindly Ones from existence (Constantine, as usual, had his own reasons).

If Ananse started out as an aspect of Dream, which then changed when Dream himself did…then maybe Ananse’s eagerness to claim and devour could tell us something about Daniel.

The Sandman Universe: House of Whispers

*From House of Whispers – Watching the Watchers*

(Spoiler warning, obvs)

I’ve taken forever to review this part of the Sandman Universe run for two reasons. The first is that I wanted to reread them all, from beginning to end, before doing so, rather than the truncated reaction posts I sometimes do. The second reason is that the story told in the House of Whispers trilogy feels extremely personal to me. While I have no African heritage, I did grow up practicing an ethnically-inherited spirituality. I still do.

This personal resonance also drew my attention to how Neil Gaiman has handled concepts common in both The Sandman and American Gods. I remember, when American Gods the novel was published, the curious lack of dream-kind avatars of currently-practiced religions. Like, where are all the Yawehs and Jesuses and Satans and angels (distinct from Lucifer and the Silver City) that are dream-kind, animated by belief? Emanations of celebrity worship were mentioned in the novel, like Marilyn Monroe and Micky Mouse. Then there’s the modern-day abstractions like Technology and Media and World.

To illustrate this point a bit: The Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie could easily exist in the world of American Gods…except, you know, occuring mostly in Bombay and Britain, with dream-kind expressions of Arabic and Islamic concepts. Which was enough for a nation-state to sic a million theocratic would-be assassins on him.

The TV adaptation (of American Gods) addressed a few of these oversights. Still, though: you wonder just how busy a fictional universe with these rules would be if every prevalent belief you can think of was accounted for, with zero threats aimed at the author?

Survivors from antique pantheons are where the action is at in a lot of these stories, yet the internal consistency requires that there be dream-kind that are currently worshipped. House of Whispers not only pulls this off but beings like Erzulie Freda and Ananse feel natural alongside other familiar faces like the Corinthian, Mazikeen and Papa Midnite.

There is also an intersting timelessness in the perspective of the loa characters that reminds me a lot of how Mike Carey characterized Lucifer (speaking of- House of Whispers is co-authored between Nalo Hopkinson and Dan Watters, the latter of whom authored the Sandman Universe Lucifer). Erzulie Freda, her relatives and her husbands hit rock bottom fast, lash out fast and move on fast. Erzulie Freda is also the only character in the world of The Sandman whom we are allowed to follow into annhilation other than Morpheus himself. In Overture, non-existence is a torpor that Morpheus gets shaken out of by Destiny (which may have been possible simply because the multiverse was deteriorating). In House of Whispers, Erzulie Freda experiences personal annhilation as an infuriating, painful problem that needs to be solved.

Both of them get out of it in similar ways. Morpheus gets summoned back into existence by Destiny, who points out a ship, made of dreams, offering escape to those whose worlds are crumbling.

Remember that boat from *Sandman: Overture*? Made of dream-substance, created by Despair’s twin? This is from *Watching the Watchers*, btw

Erzulie, meanwhile, relies on the faith of a small handful of believers. Even after her subjective point of view is wiped out and all knowledge of her vanishes from the waking world, there is still at least one worshipper left: Alter Boi. Alter Bois workings enables Erzulie to manifest once more as Marinette of the Dry Bones.

This happens in book two, ‘Ananse’, which was when I realized this was one of the best stories in the Sandman Universe run. The appearance of Marinette got me right in the pathos but there’s just as much awesome craft bells and whistles. The Sandman Universe comics haven’t really been big on the anthology books (such as ‘Dream Country’, ‘Fables and Reflections’ and ‘World’s End’ from the original Sandman). Out of the few anthologies that have appeared in the Sandman Universe run, ‘Ananse’ is easily the best. I put it on the same level as ‘World’s End’ or ‘The Wake’.

‘Ananse’ begins with Shakpana (the loa that presides over disease) in the waking world, following up on plot threads from ‘The Power Divided’. These chapters alternate with a nightmare that the Corinthian is torturing a dreamer witih. For awhile, it’s not altogether clear that this person is dreaming and it is way too tempting to think that Shakpana’s psychic disease from ‘The Power Divided’ has gone completely ape shit and unstoppable.

Specifically: bloodshot, terrified, bulging human eyes have spontaineously appeared on animals. There is a wave of veganism, which rebounds when people realize that the eyes, with their concentrated agony, are delicious. This dreamer, who is likely an environmentalist in her waking life, is horrified to see that vegetarianism is now redefined as those who eat normal animal meat minus the eyeballs. Later, everyone realizes that eyes taken from humans taste better than any others. Restaurateurs come to the conclusion that the people have spoken: if society in general loves to eat human eyeballs, who are they to say no? The ethical Overton window shifts a little more and vegetarianism now includes people who eat animal eyes but abstain from human eyes.

The Shakpana chapters are so blinkered that you can’t help wondering if the eyeball restaurants are literally springing up everywhere. We only know that this is a dream when the Swan Prince, at the behest of Erzulie, tracks down the Corinthian.

In ‘The Power Divided’, the loa Agwe (one of Erzulie’s husbands) becomes trapped in the House of Whispers, slowly but surely blending with the vessel itself. Ananse may be able to extract Agwe but he is famously mercurial. In the absence of any other options, though, she rolls the dice. The Swan Prince happens to know that the Corinthian has something of a friendship with Ananse and catches the mouth-eyed gent mid-nightmare.

The Swan Prince sheepishly approaches the Corinthian and informs him that “Mistress Erzulie would like a word.”

Corinthian: “What? I’m nothing but a humble nightmare– and a GOD seeks my help? This I have to –ahem– see.”

Swan Prince: “I must say, that was an amazing nightmare you were pestering that woman with.”

Corinthian: *cheekily grins* “Lord Dream destroyed the last Corinthian for his lack of imagination. I’ve been working on my own.”

I love that exchange. The Swan Prince seems intimidated but also earnestly appreciative. Come to think of it, I don’t know if the Swan Prince had any speaking roles in the original Sandman. Off the top of my head, I can only remember one or two background appearances, usually in the company of the white rabbit from Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. I think, in ‘The Kindly Ones’, they’re briefly visible sneaking around a staircase. The white rabbit also showed up in ‘Empty Shells’, book two of the Dreaming reboot.

Once the Corinthian brings the House of Whispers to Ananse, negotiations develop into a storytelling contest between Ananse and Erzulie.

Like ‘World’s End’, there are a succession of self-contained stories until the final chapter of the wider frame story becomes the final vignette. A disagreement about the rules of the contest pushes Ananse over the edge and he moves in for the kill. Erzulie disappears from the minds of humanity except for the devout Alter Boi, whom had previously served Erzule as her willing horse (one who consents to carry a loa in their body- from what I could find online, such a person is typically called a chwal).

Alter Boi, in hir grief, recreates the sacrificial working from January first, 1804 in Haiti, that preceded the Battle of Vertières: the slave revolt that won Haiti her independence. The only slave revolt in recorded history known to have led to the founding of a nation.

First, there is only Alter Boi. Then a few of Alter Boi’s house mates. Not unlike the bones of a religion…and bones are more than enough.

*The Power Divided*. Uncle Monday is both an alligator and a crocodile, which I find evocative of the location of Cécile Fatiman’s 1804 working: Bwa Kayiman, meaning alligator forest.

So. What is left of Erzulie, in Ananse’s web, after her flesh and her spirit are picked clean? Her bones, newly infused with a burnt offering. Her bones begin to stir with the fury of the vanquished and the hapless.

It’s powerful poetry but it also ties back into the timeless simplicity of the loas- and perhaps all beings whose existence does not occur on mortal terms. It even reminds me of a fundamental reality of the Endless, spelled out in ‘Brief Lives’: an Endless embodies both their purpose and its reflection. Even the Corinthian, musing on the prospect of claiming the House of Whispers for himself, echoes this.

In all the decades I’ve been reading and rereading Sandman comics, it never occurred to me to look into the linguistic roots of the Corinthian’s name. I figured there was probably something to find there but dream-kind exist according to dream-logic: an explicable cause is not necessarily called for. I finally got around to it, though: one meaning derives from the New Testament epistles, in which the people of Corinth are described as sinful and impulsive. Another possible meaning of corinthian is athletic rigor. The Corinthian does what he wants, whenever he wants and he’s a perfectionist about it. This even sheds some light on the function Morpheus originally envisioned for him: a dark mirror of humanity. Did he not recently craft a nightmare in which ordinary appetites drive people to devour each other’s eyes?

Like all Sandman stories- both original and post-2019 -subjectivity is central. Alienation, of course, puts one directly in touch with subjectivity. Not unlike how Despair crafted the House of Whispers from dreams or Desire used dreams to craft hir own ship in hir brother’s absence. Book one, ‘The Power Divided’, begins with Shakpana’s journal of imaginary diseases going missing in Lucien’s library and ending up in the hands of children, playing a game of telephone. A game of telephone changes a little with each repetition yet this one leaves a uniform mark on each participant: the removal of their soul.

Just so you know, I’m going to get a little personal here.

In my experience, spiritual events can be perceived on a level close to mental and emotional ones. Getting swept up in something like pain can deafen you to the music you are dancing to. The kind of personal inventory that can reveal these things can also reveal spiritual events within yourself.

While Shakpana is walking around in an escaped convict, he encounters a coat-rack supporting a bunch of bottles. Each one contains a soul killed by Madame LaLaurie- a real, historical serial killer who tortured and murdered her slaves. The convict, having been spiritually aroused by Shakpana, hears their wailing and is unaffected. Like a lot of people, he caught the soul-removal plague. He says he hears the ugly but can’t feel the ugly. This is the kind of personal inventory I was talking about. Simply asking yourself what you are feeling and why. Discrepencies point straight toward things that bear investigating.

Before wrapping this up, I have to mention Papa Midnite, who gets roped into the story by Aesop. In D&D terms, a sorcerer is someone who is born with supernatural powers. A wizard or a witch is someone who acquired them through study and application. John Constantine is a wizard. He relies purely on deduction and prior experience and the patterns he recognizes. This means that he is also usually one push away from total disaster.

Papa Midnite- born Linton, with the difference sometimes split with Linton Minuit -is also a wizard. he exists on the same precarious basis as Constantine but he has also been doing it longer than him. Hundreds of years longer. Also like Constantine, Linton Minuit is dogged by the wrath of those he has wronged in the past. I don’t know if the story of his sister was ever fully told in Hellblazer but it is absolutely central to what happens to him in ‘Watching the Watchers’.

Linton Minuit brings a mercurial counterpoint to the timeless simplicity of the loa characters. There was a time when he was tortured by his immortality and wanted to lift the curse that caused it…until Ananse got him burned at the stake.

See, he cheated some early American anti-slavery guerillas with a fake immortality concoction, leaving them to die in battle. At the moment of their demise, they cursed Linton: he would never be free to die so long as “whites…own(ed) the Earth”.

He of course can’t die but he can burn and regenerate. This is never spelled out in so many words but the insinuation is that this experience- in addition to creating a vendetta with Ananse -cured him of his yearning for death. Remaining corporeal is then both a game and a motivator, which causes a succession of different attitudes toward the curse that made him immortal and the debt on his soul. His debt could be a purpose but his grudge against Ananse has a way of making the idea of purpose a little academic. Immediately after the curse, he wanted to end white supremacy. A plan along those lines was what brought him into contact with Kwaku Ananse. After suffering Ananse’s treachery, he cracks a little more.

His sister Luna, meanwhile, plans to avenge her own murder. Papa Midnite says that he killed his sister to spare her the same fate as him. I detected a vague implication that the curse of the dying freedom fighters was somehow on Linton Minuit’s bloodline…but Nalo Hopkinson used a third person omniscient voice during the prior narration. She referred to Linton in the third person singular “him”. In that omniscient moment, the narration limits the curse to him alone.

Could Linton Minuit (while smoking weed with Aesop with a bong made from his sister’s skull) have been referring to something else? The ambiguity begs questions. I haven’t read any Hellblazer that wasn’t part of the Sandman Universe run but- from what I’ve gathered -his sister’s skull usually represents a magical focus, offering (as she does in ‘Watching the Watchers’) access to other planes. So Linton had a definite functional role for her, after her death. Self-interest muddies the waters even more. To say nothing, of course, of the fact that Luna was affianced to one of the freedom fighters.

Nalo Hopkinson on creating Papa Midnite’s backstory:

https://www.nalohopkinson.com/house-of-whispers-vol-three

Aand here’s some stuff that occurred to me, regarding both Ananse and Daniel