“Anatidaephobia: The fear that somewhere, somehow, a duck is watching you.”

-Gary Larson

When I was younger, I did something very out-of-character for someone like me: I entered a contest where you had to recite poetry. These days, being a disgustingly shy person, I would never be able to manage something like that. It would simply be unthinkable for the present me, but the past me was somehow able to do it. (I think that people who have social anxieties must get more and more shy as they age.) For this contest, I had to recite two poems: one by the poet Thomas Kinsella, and another of my own choice. My English teacher decided that, since the Kinsella one was pretty long, my second poem should be the shortest one we could find. The one she chose for me to do was a poem about a duck by Ogden Nash.

The poem is as follows:

Behold the duck.
It does not cluck.
A cluck it lacks.
It quacks.
It is specially fond
Of a puddle or pond.
When it dines or sups,
It bottoms ups.

When the time came for me to recite my second poem, I did so. (To this day, I have no idea how.) My audience’s reaction was shocked, to say the least. They had expected it to be a lot longer, so by the time I had finished and was walking back to my seat, their minds still had not processed the fact that it was over yet. It was the ultimate anticlimactic duck poem. My stupidity and shyness (not in an endearing way) often leaves people in this bewildered state. I can’t blame them; if I had witnessed someone reciting a stupid duck poem at a competition for teenagers, I would have been confused, too. Predictably, I did not win  anything for this, because what else can you expect from an anticlimactic duck poem story?

When the competition was over, though, somebody came over to me and said that they liked the poem I recited. I guess that will have to do as a climax to a rather anticlimactic story. The moral is that, if you recite anticlimactic duck poetry, most people will be shocked and horrified, but one person might think it’s okay.

I’m writing a short story about feeding the ducks, because, while I’m not very good at either, I much prefer writing to reciting.

Kaleidoscope was the first Siouxsie and the Banshees album I ever bought, and (possibly because of this) it’s also my favourite. It has this certain feel to it that I really love, sort of like the French Coldwave soundtrack to a fictional English TV series; a serious sitcom, perhaps.

The name Kaleidoscope is certainly appropriate. It’s very colourful, but at the same time there are many shades of grey to it. It makes me think of a group of people sitting in a strange little room on a rainy day, blowing balloons, while outside, a curious youth peers in at them through a tiny window. There’s such a sense of variety to this album that it’s difficult to get bored of listening to it, and it has this element of the fantastical about it. At the same time, though, it’s still connected to the everyday, with only two songs (Lunar Camel and Desert Kisses) really having a sort of far-away, exotic feel to them.

Actually, many of the songs could be seen as describing what’s going on inside of just one, normal-looking house. There’s Happy House, Tenant, Trophy and Clockface, for instance, while one of the bonus tracks on the copy I own is this little instrumental bit called Sitting Room. Others (such as the stylish Red Light, or the creepy Skin) may not take place inside of the house, maybe, but they do seem like they could be close enough to it.

Conjecture has become fact, and rumour has become history.

This episode alternates between the usual plot and voice-overs over stock footage, explaining how the Wired (possibly) came to be, its (possible) connections to some urban myths, and some concepts and theories that tie into a lot of the ideas that this series explores, or was inspired by. It begins with the Roswell incident, where a strange (rumoured to be alien) aircraft crash-landed in New Mexico. Whatever it was, nobody knows yet.

The rest of the documentary-style parts follow on from that. All of them, apart from the very last one, are based on real-life people and things, which is pretty interesting. Some fans of Lain have this theory that our world is an alternate version of the world in this series, and so I guess this shows their similarities/differences, and where one became divergent from the other. Also, it makes the series feel more “real”, in a way. All of the topics that are discussed are pretty heavy, and to understand them fully you’d need to both pay very close attention to the anime, and do your own research on each of them.

In short, it talks about:

• MJ-12 Document: Jaime Shandera, a TV producer, was sent a list of 12 men who were said to have had made some sort of pact with extra-terrestrials, the top name on this list being that of the head of the CIA at the time of the Roswell incident. President Roosevelt’s signature was on  it, but it was eventually found out to have been copied from another document. (According to Wikipedia, the document is a real urban myth, but it doesn’t mention anything about a treaty, or about Shandera.)
• Vannevar Bush: Said to be a member of MJ-12, and the head of MIT’s Department of Electrical Engineering.
• MEMEX: A memory expansion concept that Bush unveiled in 1945. Sort of a pre-computer that, according to the anime, “created the basis for our current multimedia”.
• John C. Lilly: Conducted experiments to explore the human subconscious. Believed they connected him to cosmic entities (ECCO) via communication networks. He also did experiments on dolphins and how they communicate.
• Xanadu: A concept that would create some sort of database. The man who came up with it studied under Bush and Lilly.
• Schumann Resonance: The name given to the electromagnetic waves around the Earth. “Earth Brain Waves”
• The amount of humans on earth is almost equal to the amount of neurons in the brain. Could this result in some sort of collective consciousness, with Earth becoming a neural network?
• Eiri Masami: the only fictional character mentioned here. Chief researcher at Tachibana. He further developed the worldwide neural network idea- a wireless network where everyone would be plugged in without need of any device. He was dismissed because of this work, and was found dead one week later.

Cutting back to the usual animated format, we see Lain sitting in her room, quiet and withdrawn after the events of Layer 08. Lain is wearing her bear onesie, which she sort of uses as a shield from the adult world. It represents her innocent side, and so I suppose that she’s become so scared of what’s happening that she wants to go back to the way she used to be. I like this scene as it’s slow-moving and builds up a calm, yet slightly unsettling atmosphere, occasionally showing other parts of the room and the equipment in it, working away quietly. Inexplicably, a  grey alien in a stripy jumper (kind of like Freddy Krueger’s) peers in at Lain, smiles and then disappears. Lain is a little surprised, but too weary to be scared. There’s this fan theory that the reason this alien appears is because stuff like these urban myths affects people in real life so much that they end up believing in them, and so they kind of become true.

In the Wired, we see more silhouettes, these ones made up almost entirely of static electricity, apart from one or two facial features. She argues with them, only for them to suddenly disappear. Then, Lain goes to Cyberia, where JJ (the guy who works there, and seems to know Lain’s other self) gives her something he says she dropped: an envelope containing some sort of device. Lain then goes over to Taro, the annoying kid, looking for information. She ends up bringing him over to her room, on a “date”. Lain accuses Taro of being one of the Knights, and claims that, whether or not there’s another Lain in  the Wired, she’s the only one in real life. Meanwhile, downstairs, Lain’s father mentions that it’s all almost over. Her mother responds that they should take the chance and kisses him. This is a surprisingly tender moment for such cold characters, suggesting that they might have more humanity than it usually appears. As they kiss, Lain’s sister sits in the hall, pretending to talk on the telephone. She somehow manages to be even creepier than the alien.

Taro claims that he isn’t one of the knights or anything, but he knew some stuff about them, and according to him, the device she received is a non-volatile memory that can overwrite existing memories. Taro also cryptically tells her that the Knights want to “make the only truth there is into reality”. Before leaving, he kisses her, with his gum ending up in  Lain’s mouth. It’s kind of a cute moment, but why did she have to receive her first kiss from that little twit?

Then, Lain gets a very strange, dreamlike vision. Like with many of the eerie or unsettling moments in the series, the lighting is almost unnaturally bright. She sees herself being led into her home by the MIB, and then brought up the stairs by her father to meet herself. They talk. This is one of the most confusing moments in Serial Experiments Lain, which is saying something. It plays with logic in a way that’s kind of similar to how an Escher illustration does. It implies a few things about Lain’s origins, who she really is, and the true nature of her family. Are they even related? Maybe Lain was made to live with them until everything started falling into place. I’m not sure what it all means, to be honest.

Standing outside, in that same oddly bright light, Lain comes to the conclusion that God is the only truth. God then reveals zirself to Lain in zir own, “true” form, to the very first time. Ze looks human, but rather weird. I’ll describe zir appearance when I write about the next episode, though, where we finally get to see their first proper encounter.

Now communicating.

I’m very interested in magic realism, a subgenre of fantasy where fantasy elements subtly become part of everyday life. Was is a realist novel, but it too explores how fantasy and reality intertwine, though in a very different way. It’s the sort of book that will appeal to someone who likes and understands both realist and speculative fiction, who is interested in what separates one from the other, and in what both genres have to offer to the reader. For this reason, it’s pretty interesting, especially since you usually don’t see a realist novel addressing something like this so well. Then again, Geoff Ryman has also written sci-fi and fantasy novels, so that might explain how and why this novel came to be, since he is capable of appreciating both the real and the fantastical.

These days, there are a lot of books and films that try to tell a “darker”, “edgier” version of a popular fairy tale/children’s story. Some succeed, but others don’t. This one kind of does this (and succeeds at doing this), but comes at it from a slightly different direction than usual, in a way that reminds me a little bit of Tideland. Rather than actually having any of the story take place in the fictional land of Oz, it follows the stories of three individuals, all of which are in some way connected to L. Frank Baum’s series of fantasy novels. There’s Jonathan, who loves Oz, and is searching for more information behind the books and the film before he dies. Then, there’s Dorothy, who lives a life of poverty and unhappiness in Kansas with her Auntie Em and Uncle Henry. (In the book, she inspires Baum to write the Oz stories, though no such Dorothy actually existed in real life.) And finally, there’s Judy Garland, the young woman who played Dorothy in the most well-known adaptation of the Oz books. Out of the three, Garland is the only non-fictional one, and so this book kind of dips into historical fiction at some points. There are fine lines between what is real and what is fictional, and this is something that the author explores very thoroughly. What makes something real and what makes something fantasy? Where does one end and the other begin, in fiction? The ending even hints a little bit more at this, though I won’t say any more about it here, because I don’t like giving spoilers.

All of the three stories told here are grim and harrowing ones. The title (which is one of my favourite book titles ever) gives you a very good idea of what it’s like; there is a strong sense of longing here, for what once was and what could have been. The land of Was is an indistinct thing, a concept rather than a physical place, and one that is only hinted at. Dorothy ends up having to face the adult world far too late, and loses everything good in her life because of it, growing up to be bitter and misunderstood. Judy Garland was mistreated and bullied by the people who made the classic film she starred in. As for Jonathan, he is dying of AIDs, and doesn’t have much time left to find out who the “real” Dorothy was. (I should just point out here that the character of Jonathan is gay, which is a reference to how The Wizard of Oz is a film beloved by many in the LGBTQ community; Dorothy has even become a sort of gay icon.) As his health declines, Jonathan starts acting more and more childlike and irrational, frustrated but unable to properly express his feelings. I think I found his story the saddest of them all, but maybe that’s because his one ends up becoming the main focus nearer to the end. He even went colour blind as a child, which means he can never see the colours of a rainbow again. Still, despite the harsh realism of the novel, it still reminds you how wonderful fantasy can be, in little ways. There’s one bit that made me smile inside, where Jonathan wants to play the Scarecrow, because he’s the character that everyone loves the most. He’s even kinder than the Tin Man.

A wonderful, yet incredibly sad book, and a great tribute to the works of L. Frank Baum, a writer of great imagination. 4/5

This episode is about love, in some ways. It doesn’t have much to do with who Lain loves, but rather with who loves her. It isn’t made clear whether anybody actually has any romantic feelings for Lain, but there’s definitely platonic and other forms of love to be found here.

In Layer 09, Lain had finally come face-to-face with the entity who refers to zirself as God. For ages, this character has been talking to Lain, and sometimes taunting her, but up until this point, the audience had no idea who ze was. Here, it is revealed that “God” is Eiri Masami, the Tachibana Labs employee mentioned in the previous layer. Eiri is the only real antagonist in the series, and even the idea of an antagonist in something like Serial Experiments Lain doesn’t sound like it would work. SEL is a cyberpunk series with many thriller elements in it, but it doesn’t focus on action or excitement; it’s far more concerned with ideas and atmosphere. As well as this, the show doesn’t always follow a conventional storytelling formula, so writing a bad guy for it would take a lot of effort to get right. For the most part, it does succeed in this. SEL isn’t really driven by conflict between Lain and Masami, and so he mostly remains an enigmatic background character who influences events behind the scenes. As well as this, the two don’t end up having some sort of big fight scene or anything, which is a relief, since that really wouldn’t suit the series’ tone at all. In other ways, though, Masami can admittedly be a little silly. He’s very clearly not a good guy (though there are fan theories that suggest otherwise) and he does look rather weird. I suppose that his strange appearance is meant to show how eldritch and inhuman he’s become, and there probably is some symbolism behind it that I don’t understand, but I feel that sometimes his look doesn’t always achieve the desired effect.

Lain and Eiri seem to swap bodies for a while. Eiri explains something similar to what Chisa had told Lain earlier on, about how he no longer needed a physical body. (Maybe this is why they switch bodies; perhaps it doesn’t matter whose mouths the words come out of anymore. Or maybe Lain and Eiri are connected, somehow, or elements of their personalities are present inside of one another.) Eiri put his own thoughts and memories into the Wired, and claims that he can rule it with information. There is some discussion over whether he counts as a God or not, and some of what he says ties in with some of the ideas presented in Layer 04. The Knights could be thought of as a kind of religion for the Wired, and in a way, they made him a God. (I think. This part was a little bit difficult to understand.) The scene- which is a really nice one, with the empty street giving it an eerie, apprehensive feel -fades out after Lain rejects his idea that she no longer needs a body.

The next day (at least, I think it’s the next day; it’s hard to keep track of time at this point), Lain attends school as usual, but nobody even notices her.  She is totally cut off and invisible. (Is Lain corporeal right now? Does this have anything to do with Eiri’s claim that she doesn’t need a body?) Lain is unhappy, blaming herself for this. She says that she never tried to do anything weird, and always avoided doing anything that could have caused this to plan it. This is one of Lain’s most vulnerable and revealing moments. It shows a lot about what she thinks and feels, which is usually only implied. It’s interesting that, while she’s shocked that this happened, she doesn’t find it out of the ordinary. It’s almost as if she was expecting it. I really like this part, because I can relate to Lain a lot here. This is the sort of thing I worry about, too. (Though without the surreal bits.) What happens in this scene has more to do with Lain’s social problems than with the Wired. Then again, everything in Lain’s universe is connected. Maybe if the Wired can influence the real world, maybe Lain’s social anxieties can warp it, too.

Everyone then turns grey, and “Alice” informs her she’s no longer needed in real life. Shocked, Lain runs away. As she runs, there is this beautiful image of Lain’s elongated shadow, while minimalist (I think) piano music plays in the background. When she arrives home, she finds the house empty, but not in a surreal way like before. The lighting and colours are muted and greyish, with a stark, realistic feel to it rather than dreamlike. It’s abandoned and cold- there’s no life in this house, though there are signs that people have lived there. Lain goes into her sister’s room (there’s this brief little flash of Mika miming a telephone call that seems to suggest that she was trying to contact something, but didn’t manage to), which is where her father, Yasuo, finds her. He’s come to say goodbye, even though he wasn’t allowed to. He explains that the family’s work there is finished, and that Lain is free to do whatever she wants. Yasuo says that he genuinely grew to love her. He looks like he wants to go over and hug her, but in  the end he doesn’t, and just leaves. Lain runs after him, but he tells her that, as long as she connects to the Wired, she’s never alone.

Lain thinks that it must be the Knights who made the fake her, and consults the Wired users about this. A while later, a list of Knights members is put up online; I’m not sure whether Lain did this, or someone else, but after that, the Men in Black find them easily, and kill them all. The two MIB agents from earlier visit Lain in her bedroom afterwards; she is kneeling on  the floor, blank-eyed with wires all over her body, including with one inserted to her mouth, as if her actual body was plugged into the Wired. (Does this connect somehow with the body thing mentioned above?) She asks them why they killed the Knights, and they explain that they can’t allow the Wired to be a special world separate from reality, but a sub-system of the real world instead. (It’s interesting that mib can physically see her, now that she’s disconnected so much from reality.) They tell her she can’t be allowed to exist in Wired either. They’re managing to get rid of Masami, but it’s proving harder to do so with Lain. Before they leave, the taller of the two agents tells Lain that he loves her. Why he loves her, or in what way is never explained.

According to Eiri, he can still be God, as long as Lain believes in him. He tells her that her real-world self was a hologram of the Wired Lain, a sort of legendary entity created by him. Lain does not believe this. He urges her to love him, because everything else except for him is fake. Lain’s reply to this is simple but effective: “Like it matters!” I love it, because Lain just decides to reject his technobabble. It’s true that she’s at the centre of everything that’s going on, but it doesn’t mean that she has to get involved. As Lain’s father told her, she has the power to do whatever she wants, and she has free will. She’s smart enough to see through Eiri’s nonsense, and has decided that, at the end of the day, all of what he says doesn’t have to matter.

“All of us have a place in history. Mine is clouds.”

Richard Brautigan is my favourite poet. He wrote many novels and short stories too, but they were all basically poems in prose form. Everything Richard Brautigan did was like a poem, short and sweet. 

Richard Brautigan was a truly unique writer. There is nobody else in the entire world who could possibly manage to write quite like he did. His use of words was beautiful, and often a little bit odd. There was a sense of innocence and simplicity to his works, but at the same time they expressed some very complex thoughts and feelings. Reading one of his works makes me experience emotions that I wish I could explain, but never fully can. 

There is something very innocent about Brautigan’s stories, maybe because of how deceptively simple they are. He often did write about adult things, but always in a slightly naive sort of way. Brautigan didn’t seem to look at the world the way most of us do.  His observations of other people and of the world around him, and how he expressed these observations, were totally idiosyncratic and unique to him. Brautigan captured the absurd beauty of everyday things with creative, musical phrases. He was the sort of person who could make wallpaper interesting.

Reading something by Brautigan always soothes me a little bit, though I’m never sure whether his works make me feel happy or sad. Often, they make me smile a little, inwardly, but they’re usually shaded in with a faint feeling of melancholy, too. I think that he suffered from depression, and in the end committed suicide. Because of this, there have been a lot of misconceptions and rumours spread about him, but most aren’t true. I strongly recommend his daughter, Ianthe Brautigan’s book You Can’t Catch Death, to anyone who wants to get a better idea of what sort of person he was like.

I love reading Richard Brautigan’s stories and poems, and I don’t think I’ll ever get tired of them. They are experimental and challenging, but also humble, modest pleasures that manage to discover beauty in unlikely places. Listening to Richard Brautigan is equally wonderful. His voice sounds like a very gentle robot’s, a sympathetic machine. 

“In March 1994, a teenager named Peter Eastman, Jr. from Carpinteria, California legally changed his name to Trout Fishing in America, and now teaches English at Waseda University in Japan. At around the same time, National Public Radio reported on a young couple who had named their baby Trout Fishing in America.” -Wikipedia (I would like to thank RibbonAroundABomb for sharing with me this wonderful story. I’d also like to wish her congratulations, as she is now a part time employee of the artist Guillermo Gómez-Peña, which is a brilliant achievement.)

Straining to fade, showing disdain under the shade. Straight shapes are mocking slate, greying at their edges.

At the edges of hedges? Hedges have not defined themselves very well; there is no distinction of their instinct, coloured pink by the thinking slates, sharpened by the fading of their slivers of strife, and climbing arrives like clockwork knives. Steel dryers respire and wait to fade some more, waiting by the washing machines. Fade in to the seams of screaming slits of steam, or smoke, choking on the fading wires placed inside your televised mouth and throat. Swallowing the faded things takes no time or effort, I think. No time until nothing. No things are to be found here now.

Fading at all of your stations and stages, turning your pacing pages. You are really, really lucky. Fade into linear strokes or indistinct, whirring blurs, the outlines drawn not so clearly. Sometimes, you are as stark as a bare bulb. Sometimes, that is a good way to be, but fading is also good. Fade in to the baseline, please, fading back around the background and around and around. There has to be a way to fade beyond the shore, but with your presence still there, a stare. Our silhuouette is getting wet. I will peep beneath the grass and find the vanishing point. I’ll learn about perspective and how to exit it. The baseline is only simple and straight, at the very bottom of the page; vanishing at allocated points is slightly more difficult. Altering prospective perspectives makes me feel uneasy and queasy. Unlike hedges, they have certain edges, and I can never find the easy way out. It is like a puzzle with no obvious solution for my salutations. The vanishing point shall anoint nervous noise from the thin, clear lines that are everywhere. There must be a way, as I cannot stay. Fearless fader, set your phasers to play inside of the grey, and hope to interpret the faint phrases thnat explain the way to stain the carpets, the ceilings and the walls with doors and windows, nudging at the curtains, gently. There’s so much more, below the floors, around the walls and the sealing of the windows to painless panes.

I am exhausted now. Exhaustion is for trains. Trains cannot yet fade. Fade and wait, until the crevices start pursing and pulsating, nursing laces of lips. They sometimes slip.

I love watching animated shows and films, but there are so many out there that I’ve still only scratched the surface, and there are plenty of great and imaginative cartoons that I still have yet to see. Here are thirteen of them.

13- Superjail! So far, I’ve only had the chance to see little bits and pieces of this show, which is a shame, because it looks fantastic. It’s a bizarre and very gory cartoon, set in a gigantic prison in another dimension. It’s run by the Warden, a character heavily inspired by Gene Wilder’s interpretation of Willy Wonka, so much so that he even wears a purple top hat and tails. (And I do love top hats.) He’s sadistic, with a very loose grip on his sanity, but also rather affable, and relatively harmless, as long as you’re not one of Superjail’s inmates. He usually causes problems thanks to his weird and/or selfish whims, which ultimately leads to almost every episode devolving into some sort of chaotic, psychedlic bloodbath, where thousands of prisoners end up slaughtered. It really uses the medium very well. Also, it may have once referenced The Residents.

12- Fantastic Planet. I’ve seen about a quarter of this one, and I think it has to be one of the most beautiful animated films ever made. Visually, it’s very creative, which is important when it comes to animation. I also want to watch the whole thing because Fantastic Planet is a sci-fi film, but one that seems to look at the genre from a different perspective than most sf films do. I’m a big fan of fantasy and sci-fi, and I’m very strongly against the idea that all speculative fiction has to be about the same tired, dull old stuff. It doesn’t look like a watered-down, unimaginative, shallow copy of Star Wars, and while it does use a lot of fairly familiar concepts and tropes found in this sort of thing (super-intelligent, giant aliens make humans their pets, only for the humans to rebel) its distinctive, surreal look and dreamlike ambiance sets it apart from your standard Space Opera.

11- Cat Soup. This is meant to be a rather weird anime film. I haven’t seen any of this yet, but I know it has cats in it. The cats look kind of cute, but I’ve read that it’s pretty creepy. You just can’t trust anime.

10- Face Like A Frog. I was watching Oingo Boingo videos on Youtube when I came across a song they did for an animated short called Face Like A Frog. It was made by Sally Cruikshank, an animator famous for her very unique, wonderfully creative style, who has also done many other weird cartoons, including some stuff for Sesame Street. (!) Her work is fluid and almost childlike, and I love how she portrays the world in her cartoons. They show how you can play with stuff like perspective and movement, and that you don’t have to approach that sort of thing in the conventional way.

9- Ergo Proxy. I’m mostly just interested in this show for its visuals and mood. About two years ago, I watched a few episodes, because I’d finished Serial Experiments Lain (my favourite series ever) and was looking for something similar. While does seem to be more of an action-oriented show (one of the things I loved about Lain was that it focused on ideas and character development, and didn’t contain any action scenes), the action bits that I have seen were done very well, in a stylised sort of way, and it came across as an adult sci-fi thriller, rather than just something with a lot of unrealistic fighting for the sake of fighting. One thing that really helped this was the animation, which just blew me away. I’ve rarely seen animation this good. It’s absolutely beautiful, and worth watching for that alone.

8- Adventure Time/Invader Zim. Everybody and their pet pigeon seems to be a fan of Adventure Time, which makes me very ashamed to admit that I have not yet seen a single episode of it. (Also, I do not have a pet pigeon either.) As for Invader Zim, it’s another very popular series at the moment, created by comic book artist Jhonen Vasquez, who is most famous for drawing Johnny the Homicidal Maniac. (I haven’t had the chance to read that either, but I’m certainly interested in doing so.)

7- The Illusionist. This is a French animation that came out in 2010, about a stage illusionist who makes friends with a girl named Alice, who believes that his magic tricks are real. The artwork looks lovely and very cosy, and the story itself sounds delightfully poignant. I was given the DVD as a very thoughtful present, and I can’t wait until I actually get the time to watch it.

6- My Dog Tulip. This was another animated film that came out recently, based on the memoirs of the late gay author JR Ackerly. Authors are almost always interesting to learn about.

5- Mary and Max. This is another of those unlikely friendship stories that I love so much. It’s a Claymation/stop-motion film about a lonely little girl named Mary, who by chance becomes penpals with Max, an obese and mentally ill middle-aged man. I feel really, really bad that I haven’t watched it yet.

4- Ghost in the Shell. As I mentioned above, Serial Experiments Lain is my absolute favourite TV show. After watching that, and after reading stuff by Jeff Noon and William Gibson, I became more interested in the cyberpunk genre, mostly because of its sense of aesthetics, and some of its themes. Ghost in the Shell (which is a brilliant title) is another pretty well-known cyberpunk anime, and a cousin recommended it to me, so I’ll have to give it a go very soon.

3- Key the Metal Idol/ Texhnolyze. These two are also on the list because of Lain. The former is supposed to be a sort of spiritual predecessor to series’ (I’m not sure if that’s correct grammar o not) like SEL, and so I’m interested in seeing something that it might have drawn inspiration from, or that simply helped pave the way for Lain to exist in the first place. As for Texhnolyze, it’s meant to be Lain’s spiritual successor, having been made by the same people. Both certainly look interesting, and hopefully they’ll also contain some cyberpunk elements, or at least have a similar tone to Lain.

2- Aeon Flux. I think that this used to be on MTV, back when it did animated shows like Daria. (Which is one of the best cartoons ever.) Like with Fantastic Planet and Face Like a Frog, the artwork looks really original and idiosyncratic, not to mention beautifully stylised. I’ve heard that it also plays with a lot of tropes and devices normally associated with action stories, which is an idea I really like.

1- Jan Svankmajer’s Alice. Svankmajer (I hope I spelled that right) is a Czech animator, famous for his surrealist stop-motion films. His adaptation of the Lewis Carroll books is definitely his most well-known creation. I’ve been fortunate enough to see a few small pieces of it, and I have to say that it seems to be one of the few films that does Alice justice. Once you get used to how creepy the characters look, you might actually start to find it rather charming. It manages to be faithful to the source material, while at the same time allowing Svankmajer to create his own version of the tale.

Angel-A is one of my favourite films. It is beautiful to look at, there are many perfectly-constructed scenes,  and its overall message and themes moved me greatly. However, it is, at the same time, a film that I have mixed feelings about (which is normal- you don’t have to agree with or enjoy all aspects of a story, even if you really, really love it; in some ways, this can even make the story better, because it makes you think and feel), mostly because of the character of Angela. I don’t mean that I dislike her or anything, because Angela is the best part of the movie, not to mention the central character. (She isn’t the main character, but there wouldn’t be any film without her.) She’s interesting, stylish, and reveals a lot to the protagonist about himself. On the other hand, there are some things about her that left me feeling a little bit uncomfortable.  I love Angela for who she is. However, I am a little bit unsure about what she is. Angela seems to be an example of the “Manic Pixie Dream Girl” character type. This is a sort of wish-fulfillment character. She’s the main character’s slightly eccentric love interest, who teaches him how to enjoy life by acting crazy. Sometimes, this type of character can be done right, such as in Harold & Maude or Going Bovine. But there are other times when the audience is too aware of the character as a device. Angela was created to serve an obvious purpose, and once you realise that, she feels less organic. She’s sometimes presented as someone to fantasise over, which is a shame, because her character deserves much more than that. At the end of the day, though, there are far more positive aspects to Angela than there are negative. To a certain extent, every character in fiction is a device created to drive the story forward, and none are completely perfect. Angela is a strong enough character to be more than just escapism.

Angela is Andre’s guardian angel. In that way, she is linked to him, and represents another side to him. In some scenes, she casually remarks that he is a woman on the  inside, or that she is his true form. (I’m not sure if that’s supposed to mean anything about Andre’s gender or not.) Gradually, he comes to fall in love with her. I think the development of their relationship is meant to show how Andre is coming to like himself, and to feel comfortable with who he is. That isn’t to say that Angela is all in his head or anything; she’s certainly real, and while supernatural, she is still a human, physical being. While in one way she’s a part of him, in another she isn’t, and is just using her human form as a way of explaining to him what she sees him as, and what he has the potential to be. They have a spiritual bond, so the are connected and similar in many ways, but it isn’t just that Andre is falling in love with himself. He is falling in love with another individual who is in some ways a reflection of him, or at least is presenting herself as one. Maybe she could have done the same in any other form, but chose to use this one because it was what she felt most comfortable in. (I think I’m rambling now, so I’ll stop.)

A while ago, I did a list of thirteen happy Goth songs. It was stupid, but I’m a stupid person. And that’s why I’m doing another list just like it. Because stupid people never learn from their mistakes. Still, at least writing this kept me busy when I could have been doing something really stupid, like falling off a cliff. (I tend to do that a lot.) And anyway, I can’t just give up now. So here’s a list of thirteen more songs that are dark, but certainly not gloomy. (By the way, I should just point out that I’m not saying that any of the songs listed here are necessarily Goth, they’re just the sort of music that I feel has a strong Goth appeal.)

Siouxsie and the Banshees- Cities in Dust: This song is like aural sherbet.

The Mood- Passion in Dark Rooms: All Goths love synthpop, except for those who don’t. It’s the law.

Bauhaus- The Three Shadows (Part III): Oh gentlemen, swallow your piss!

Sisters of Mercy/QueenAdreena- Jolene: Both bands have covered the Dolly Parton song, and both have given it their own, unique interpretation. The Sisters give it a LGBT angle, while QueenAdreena’s version is dark and edgy.

Siouxsie and the Banshees- Spellbound: This song certainly is spellbinding.

Tuxedomoon- No Tears: No tears for the creatures of the night!

Joy Division- Transmission: Joy Division’s music is often quite melancholy, but this one makes me feel like dancing. Which I guess sort of makes this the most depressing Joy Division song ever, since I’m awful at dancing.

The Residents- Paint it Black/Black Cats/I Like Black: I will admit that I just put The Residents on here because of personal preference. (The Residents are my favourite band in the whole world, and I somehow find the excuse to mention them in every other blog post.) Still, all three of these songs have the word “black” in the title. I guess that will have to do.

Throbbing Gristle- United: An upbeat song about friendship…I think, from the most cheerful band in the entire universe.

Voltaire- Graveyard Picnic: Calm your heart, there’s no need to start, it’s just me having tea with Lenore.

Bal Pare- Palais d’Amour: I love French Coldwave. I was tempted to make every song on this list Coldwave, but somehow forced myself not to.

The Cure- Let’s Go to Bed: Robert Smith’s hair is as perfect as cats.

Sisters of Mercy- Gimme Gimme Gimme: It’s the Sisters covering an Abba song. That’s just genius.

Just recently, Marcia Wallace, voice actress for the Simpsons, passed away. On Saturday the 26th, at 70 years of age, she died of breast cancer, and so her character, Edna Krabapple, is to be retired. I’m not sure whether this means that the character will die too, but judging from the show’s most recent Facebook update, they plan on giving Miss Krabapple a proper send-off, one with the dignity that she deserves. I’m really glad that they’re actually going to acknowledge the character’s absence within the series (at least, I hope that’s what they mean), as it shows proper respect to both her and to the woman she was voiced by. Edna Krapabble wasn’t a disposable character, and just pretending that she’d never existed would have left too big a gap in the world of the series.

Edna Krabapple kind of reminded me of Miss Wormwood from Calvin and Hobbes. She was pretty jaded and apathetic after years of being a teacher, especially since she’d had to deal with Bart Simpson of all people. I really loved her dry, sardonic sense of humour. Like with many Simpsons characters, the near-flawless way in which her lines were delivered means that each one had something hilarious about it. Despite her sarcasm, Edna was a basically decent human being, and had quite a few moments throughout the series that showed her softer side. A big reason for the way she acted seemed to be that she was lonely, though she finally did get married to Ned Flanders in season 23. (I haven’t actually seen any of the more recent Simpsons episodes yet, but I’m definitely looking forward to watching that one.) Edna Krabapple wasn’t one of my favourite characters on The Simpsons, but her personality was strong and well-defined, and added a lot to the show for many people.

“It’s just a phase we’re going through.”

I doubt if there’s a more fitting time to talk about Coil’s magnificent octopus magnum opus, Musick to Play in the Dark. From October to December, there’s just this brilliant atmosphere to everything, one that makes me feel like I’m in a Ray Bradbury novel. As well as this, it’s Halloween tomorrow (yay), and I can’t think of a better album to listen to than this one on such a night. (Of course, I don’t actually own a copy of this album, since it’s a super-duper limited edition, so unless you’re a billionaire or really lucky, you’re just going to have to go to Youtube in order to hear it.)

Coil describes Musick to Play in the Dark as “moon music”. I haven’t really listened to a lot of Coil’s stuff apart from this and its sequel album (Musick to Play in the Dark Volume 2), but it’s meant to be a departure from their earlier, ”solar” style of music.  ”Moon music” is certainly a fitting description; there’s only six songs on it, but each one is an atmospheric, nocturnal masterpiece. When I reviewed QueenAdreena’s album Taxidermy, Imentioned that it was perfect for listening to alone in a dark room, and the same can definitely be said of MTPITD. (Actually, it’s kind of mandatory, given the title.) Listening to it, I can actually feel the moonlight.

Musick to Play in the Dark is not about cheap scares. I always admire people who can convey darkness in such a subtle way, and for the most part, Coil does this expertly. In fact, most of the songs are really quite soothing, slow-paced and hushing, with just the hint of some unsettling element to them. Red Birds is a wonderful dark ambient piece, similar to Tumeurs by Prothese, or Mitternacht by Kraftwerk, while Red Queen and Are You Shivering are truly haunting. As for The Dreamer Is Still Asleep (which is probably the most well-known song from the album), it is an oneiric lullaby, inspired by the poet William Blake. Of course, not everything about MTPITD is perfect. I think that the title is kind of silly (spelling the word “music” with a k is just so much more mystical and mysterious, I guess), and there are times when the songs don’t quite achieve their desired mood, but for the most part it’s well worth listening to. 4/5

This post isn’t so much about Eraserhead itself as it is about how you define a genre. I’m not really that familiar with horror, but in many ways it seems almost as hard to define as fantasy or sci-fi. (Two genres I am much more familiar with.) I would consider Eraserhead to be a horror film, but I know that a lot of people probably wouldn’t see it that way at all. So why is this? What makes something a horror story? With these sorts of questions, there are far too many grey areas for there to ever be a definite answer. I feel that this is a good thing, as it allows everyone to come to their own conclusions about it. And anyway, why should books or films have to follow rigidly-designed templates, just because they fall into a certain genre?

If Eraserhead is a horror film, then it’s the only horror film I’ve ever seen. This is mostly because I am a massive wimp, and so the vast majority of horror films would leave me emotionally scarred for life. (I’m okay with scary music, but scary films are another thing entirely.) However, I do think that there is another reason for this. Even if you don’t consider Eraserhead to be part of the horror genre, it does make use of a lot of horror tropes, but not in the usual way. For example, there’s body horror, inexplicable and frightening events, creepy dream sequences, a mysterious figure who is not quite human, and a guy with weird hair.

Pictured: a guy with weird hair. From Eraserhead. (David Lynch has hair, too.)

The thing is, though, it doesn’t always feel like a horror film- or, at least, a modern horror film. Its style and mood is pretty similar to the silent classic, The Cabinet of Dr Caligari. The unnerving, horrific moments seem natural in the world of Eraserhead. The normal is so intertwined with the abnormal that it actually comes across as kind of mundane and comforting. It uses horror devices, but in a way that’s slightly different. It’s kind of like Weird Fiction, I guess, a genre I’m particularly fond of that used a mixture of fantasy, sci-fi and horror tropes, but didn’t truly belong to any of the three.

I guess a lot of this has to do with the setting. In this way, it’s kind of a reverse of the whole Magic Realist debate; some people wouldn’t see Magic Realist stories as fantasy, since they take place (for the most part) in the real world, while Eraserhead might not be seen by some as a horror film because it doesn’t take place in the real world. I guess that horror is mostly associated with something terrifying intruding into the ordinary lives of everyday people. There are exceptions, but horror usually seems to be about some scary, unexpected thing that just shouldn’t be there. Some of these things are supernatural, such as ghosts and vampires, while others are just real-life things that we prefer not to think of, like serial killers or diseases. And then there’s psychological horror, which is about internal monsters. Eraserhead is like an external version of psychological horror, in some ways. The horror is already there. It’s a natural part of Henry, the protagonist’s environment. More and more unease is slowly built up as the film goes on, but it wasn’t like Henry’s world was a cheerful place beforehand. Henry isn’t somebody who suddenly find himself in a world of horror. Instead, it’s what he’s familiar with, even if it does give him feelings of unease and anxiety. Not only that, Henry isn’t even shocked when he does encounter such things as the Lady in the Radiator, which should surprise him. Instead, he takes her appearance for granted. It is not some monstrous reveal, but rather just some surreal event which may or may not have been a dream. In fact, she seems almost beautiful in contrast with everything else in the film. Her body even seems to shine like a ray of hope as she sings her haunting song.

Everything is fine.

In the end, though, Eraserhead is simply just a really good movie. If you haven’t seen it already, please do. While I preferred Mulholland Drive, it definitely shows Lynch’s talent as a filmy-doer, and achieves something that’s pretty hard to do. Creating something strange, and in some places difficult to understand is a lot harder than it looks, and it takes a huge amount of planning and effort.

Recently, I’ve become fascinated with the inner workings of fiction, and of art in general, really. I suppose that, to a lot of people, this sort of thing would be pretty boring, and I can totally understand why. After all, wouldn’t thinking about all of this stuff just make art boring? Well, I guess it’s kind of like how some people find science really interesting. To them, learning about how the world works just makes nature all the more interesting to them. For me, though, that would take away from the enjoyment of nature. So, I guess it all depends on our perspectives of the world.

Of course, just because you can see the more mechanical side of fiction doesn’t mean that you can’t see it in any other way. It’s still perfectly possible to just take a work of fiction at face value and enjoy it for what it is, while at the same time appreciating how it came to be that way. To do those two things at the same time might seem contradictory, but fiction is full of contradictions (rhyming!) anyway- that’s one of the reasons it’s so wonderful.

Dissecting a story, poem, film or TV show and figuring out just why it works is actually pretty fun. It heightens my enjoyment of the work, because not only do I like it, but I also understand why I like it. This doesn’t mean I’m over-analysing it; there’s a huge difference between critical thinking and overthinking. A scientist can still appreciate a tree for simply being a tree, even after they know how it came to be.

(And now for the pretentious part.) Fiction is an organic machine. It’s large and sprawling, chaotic but connected by a cross between vines and wires. It’s kind of like those Cyberspace sort of places you find in science fiction novels. Everything in fiction is somehow connected. It is its own multiverse, and that multiverse is TV Tropes.

Source: http://www.darkroastedblend.com

The mechanical side of art should be recognised, just as long as it is not perverted into an unimaginative, production line sort of thing. There’s an incredibly subtle balance to all of this that needs to be maintained. Only with art could we find machinery that is so natural, so vulnerable and so human.

In my blog post on Eraserhead, I mentioned that its protagonist, Henry, has rather weird hair. Nobody can deny this fact. However, despite its weirdness, Henry’s hair is still full of groovitude. (It kind of reminds me of that guy from Subway’s, actually- the film, not the restaurant.) But what of David Lynch himself? It seems that his hair is loved by many. I think it even has its own Facebook page. But surely it can’t be that cool? I mean, it’s probably groovy and all, but I doubt if it reaches Robert Smith levels of follicular genius. I highly doubt that it’ll live up to the-

Oh my head. His hair attracts chickens.

“You’re despicable!”

I love Daffy Duck. As far as I’m concerned, he’s pretty much one of the most perfect characters in all of fiction, and he was definitely the cause of my fondness for cartoon ducks. No matter what he’s in, Daffy is guaranteed to provide some form of hilarity. The other Looney Tunes are good too, of course, but not even Bugs can compare to Daffy. Created in 1937 (though his name was only revealed in his second short, as was common for a lot of cartoons at the time), Daffy was originally what was known as a screwball character- a crazy loon who retaliated against his enemies by playing tricks on them. However, as time went on, Daffy’s personality became less unhinged (though still not quite sane), and antiheroic in a different way. While still pretty manic, Daffy evolved into, in his own words, a “greedy little coward”. More often than not, he ended up suffering for this greed, getting his comeuppance on a regular basis. He could still be a wise guy, but he was no match for Bugs.

Most of the time, Daffy’s moments of lunacy comes from his exasperation at the hands of others. A good example of this is the classic short Duck Amuck, where  an animator  gleefully warps reality around poor Daffy, driving him absolutely crazy. However, Daffy is never too sympathetic a character, mostly thanks to his impossibly inflated ego. Motivated, by his own self-interests, Daffy is constantly scheming, not to mention horribly mistreating his sidekick, Porky. (Then again, this may just be payback for the fact that Porky- who sometimes took on a sort of pre-Elmer Fudd role in the 30s -tried to hunt him back in Porky’s Duck Hunt. I’d steal all my friend’s ideas too, if he had originally wanted to kill and eat me.)

Daffy Duck has been around for a long time now, and I doubt he’ll be forgotten any time soon. I doubt his ego would stand for it, anyways. Love him or hate him, you just have to love Daffy. (Wait…)

“Woohoo, woohoo, woohoo, woohoo!”

Apart from experimental stuff, the main type of music I listen to is Goth, especially French Coldwave. I am more than a little obsessed with Coldwave at the moment (to the same levels that I am obsessed with The Residents, which is quite worrying), mostly because I’ll like anything that’s arty, minimalist and French. (I’m predictable that way.)

I don’t know an awful lot about the genre’s history (yet), but it was a sort of French version of post-punk music. So, around the 80s and stuff, Coldwave would have been the underground music in France. However, despite its subterranean nature, it’s still pretty accessible. (Though a lot of the bands in the genre were influenced by the avant-garde and industrial music.) Coldwave combines the upbeat melancholy of Gothic rock and the aloof coldness of electronic music. It’s kind of like Joy Division meets Kraftwerk meets early Siouxsie and the Banshees.

Because I love Coldwave so much, I have decided to start doing regular posts on it here, in the same way that I do ones on Strange Girls and on Residents albums. I’ll write about different Coldwave bands and albums, as well as other types of music that have links or a similar sound to the genre. I will be starting with Kas Product, because they are rather groovy.

“Carroll had no preference as far as the nonsense was concerned.”

-Martin Gardner

Lewis Carroll, along with Edward Lear, Spike Milligan and Mervyn Peake, was one of the greatest nonsense poets to ever have lived. Both Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass are full of them. Many of them (such as You Are Old, Father William) are parodies of poems that were popular at the time, though the majority are actually more famous now than the ones they were inspired by. However, there are a few that are completely original, The Walrus and the Carpenter being one of them.

Recited to Alice by Tweedledee and Tweedledum (despite her objections), The Walrus and the Carpenter tells the story of (surprise) a walrus and a carpenter. (This sounds like a good premise for a quirky “unlikely friendship” film, if you ask me.) It’s the middle of the night and the two of them are walking along a beach. They’re both pretty miserable, because there’s too much sand. (Maybe they just didn’t realise that beaches usually have lots of sand in them.) However, good fortune soon comes their way, as they encounter some anthropomorphic oysters, who they ask to come along. The eldest oyster decides not to go, because he can tell that anything involving these two weirdoes isn’t going to end too well. But the other four, being idiots, eagerly join the duo. And then the Walrus and the Carpenter horribly murder them. Yaaaaay! It’s a happy ending, if you think about it, because oysters are stupid.

Like with most of Carroll’s works, this is very fun to read. The words all fit together perfectly, like a literary jigsaw puzzle. The two main characters are so iconic that they’re referenced all the time in popular culture. There’s even this theory that the Carpenter is meant to be Jesus, while the Walrus represents Buddha. However, this isn’t actually true, as, according to Martin Gardner’s Annotated Alice, the Carpenter could easily have been a baronet instead, or even a butterfly. (Carroll didn’t really mind, so long as it sounded right. When it comes to nonsense, often the noise a word makes is just as, or even more important than what it actually means.) Gahan Wilson has also written a rather chilling short story inspired by the poem called The Sea was Wet as Wet Could Be, which really puts it into a whole new perspective. You can find it in the short story anthology The Weird, if you’re interested.

Recently, I have discovered that I rather enjoy watching French films that are made in France, where everybody speaks in French. Betty Blue is one such film. And by that, I mean it is French. It’s all about this girl called Betty, but she isn’t actually blue or anything.

In my blog post on the Luc Besson film Angel-A, I talked a little bit about a stock character known as the Manic Pixie Dream Girl. I feel that a good way to talk about Betty Blue is to compare it to Angel-A, as both make use of this character type, but in different ways. For those who aren’t familiar with the concept of the Manic Pixie Dream Girl, this is a (usually female) character whose main role in the story is to be the protagonist’s quirky love interest. When written well, a Manic Pixie Dream Girl can, just like any other standard character type, be interesting and believable. For example, there’s Maude from Harold & Maude, and Dulcie from Going Bovine, two of my favourite fictional characters ever. Unfortunately, many of them aren’t written that well, and are basically just there for wish fulfilment. And then there’s other problems, too, like how you have somebody whose entire character is based around their function. They rarely get the chance to develop their own personalities individually, because their whole job is being the love interest. Still, I can’t deny that I genuinely enjoy it when these characters do appear in fiction, so long as they’re not flat and lifeless. I don’t think it’s fair to be dismissive of this type of character, because, as Betty Blue and many other novels, films, etc show, there is potential for them to work.

But anyway, before I start discussing all of that, I guess I should give a little bit of background information on the film. Based on a novel by Philippe Dijian, it is known in France as 37°2 le matin. The main character is a man called Zorg,  which is the coolest name ever. I never realised that characters in arty French films could have names like that. He sounds like a Power Rangers villain, or a cyborg mutant alien or something. The movie stays pretty ambiguous as to whether he actually is one of those or not, but I like to think that he is. Sadly, though, he doesn’t shoot lasers or anything. Anyway, Zorg is going out with a young woman named Betty. We don’t know much about her, and neither does Zorg the Mutant Overlord. Despite this, the two are passionately in love, and express this passion rather passionately. They cuddle…with quite a lot of passion, I must say. (I have a way with words.) So passionate is their passion that Betty even kisses Zorg the Destructor’s  “sleepy, warm slug.” (What.) They live together on the beach for a while, until Betty throws pink paint all over Zorg’s employer’s car, and so they have to leave. The couple go off to the city, and for the most part, things turn out okay for them. They’re happy together, still quirky and still passionate. Unfortunately, that doesn’t really last. Throughout the film, the audience is given little hints that Betty is mentally unstable. Her quick temper, which was more humorous earlier on, now comes across as a little bit unsettling. What I really love about this is that it isn’t done in the usual sort of way this kind of thing is handled. Betty Blue has the atmosphere of a romance throughout; it doesn’t suddenly become a dark psychodrama. Still, that doesn’t mean it isn’t disturbing in places. There’s one scene in particular that really shocked me.

So, how can Betty Blue be compared to Angel-A? Well, both are offbeat, well-written love stories, and neither are completely realistic, but there are still a few things that set them apart. Angel-A plays the romance aspects straight, because it’s basically a sophisticated romantic comedy. As well as this, Angel-A is a fantasy film, one that makes more use of willing suspension of disbelief. The characters and plot have to be believable enough for the audience to accept them, but at the same time it doesn’t have to follow real life exactly. The character of Angela is a supernatural one, too, which means that being in love with her wouldn’t have the same consequences as being in love with a normal person would. Even the fact that it’s shot in black and white causes it to become more stylised, separating it from the real world. As for Betty Blue, it’s more of a semi-deconstruction of the Manic Pixie Dream Girl trope. Betty is the sort of person many of us wish that we could know, or even love, in real life, and there are many aspects of her and Zombie Lord Zorg’s story that do seem charming and idyllic. At the same time, though, Betty has some serious, real-life problems, ones that Zorg is too delusional to acknowledge. He’d much rather pretend that everything is okay than actually do something about it. This makes it all the more heart-breaking when things really do start going wrong.

Betty Blue is a fantastic film, and one of my favourites. In the beginning of the film, Zorg describes Betty as being like “a flower with translucent antennae and a mauve plastic heart”. That line just sums it all up perfectly. I’d recommend watching not only Angel-A, but also Amelie (another wonderful picture) along with it, because the three really do complement each other. 4/5