Epiphenomena Of Chaos

It is more than likely that the world we know, and the way that we know it, is an interpretative projection, the outcome of anthropocentric perspectivism. Some experts utilise the Anthropic Principle as an ‘explanatory’ device in Cosmology, encouraging – perhaps inadvertently – the view that there is no objective reality, simply interpretations of experience. To assert that the world or the universe is the way it is because if it were otherwise we would not exist is precisely that – it is an assertion, not an explanation. Assertions of this kind seem credible because they are both abstruse and coherent, features that promote an illusion of profundity. But the truth of an assertion guarantees nothing beyond logical coherence, because falsity, the opposite is truth, is simply incoherence – an intrusion of chaos. Epistemological relativism is of little help or value because hard facts are obviously obdurate – yes, two plus two equals four, even for the Vogon Captain or the hypothetical inhabitant of a planet orbiting the remotest star. A true proposition is a universal truth independent of cultures and societies but, and this is the tricky bit, it is still an epiphenomenon of chaos, and chaos encompasses both order and disorder.

Illustration: Echoes Of Ambiguity, 2009

Words From Nowhere

INTERVIEW WITH A C EVANS

Susan A. Duxbury-Hibbert

August-November 1996


You are known as both a writer and an artist. What is the starting point for a project, the drawings or writing?
This is quite a difficult question actually…ignoring external reasons for starting something (like being asked specifically for a poem, or specifically for a drawing) and concentrating purely on the creative viewpoint, one has to recognize the different ‘dynamics’ of different forms. Prose-versus-poetry, collage-versus-drawing. What is meant by a ‘starting point’? In the final analysis a starting point may not be a conscious thing - it’s an inspirational thing. Nevertheless there is sometimes a deliberate, definite, intention to work with visual rather than verbal methods/materials or vice versa, but the origins of the intention are non-rational. A starting point may be generated by idea-level interconnections between verbal and visual output, or continuous immersion in art-literature may prepare the ground for a ‘next step’.

When did you start drawing/writing?
I have childhood memories of drawing from sometime in the mid-1950s. My father had some artistic abilities and tended to encourage me - this was real juvenilia: pictures of soldiers and airplanes or whatever. Later on, about the age of 17 (in 1966) I suddenly started to get more serious about it. The trigger was finding the work of Aubrey Beardsley - the style and general tone of his work was quite an eye-opener...then I discovered Surrealism and started making collages.
Even as a kid I was quite a bibliomaniac, so any crossovers between art and literature interested me. The fact that Surrealism was not just to do with painting was very important. As the first Surrealists were poets, not artists, the whole movement plugged into, and extended, that nineteenth century avant-garde tradition of experimental writing (Baudelaire-Rimbaud-Mallarme-Jarry). This became more and more significant to me. So I got a typewriter for my 21st birthday and started writing: initially fiction (the obligatory, abortive novel and ‘decadent’ short stories) but eventually poetry, after doing some translations of Max Ernst and Messiaen lyrics.

What inspires you to start a new project?
Perhaps inspiration is the unforeseen consequence of immersion - immersion in materials, researches, Myths, influences, precursors. Perhaps, at a deeper level, it is some sort of psychosomatic urge, the result of unfocussed psychic pressure from the unconscious, a surge of neuronal energy, a perturbation of the psychic atmosphere, which finally crystallizes in words and images.
The titles of pictures are a sort of poetry. The collage process is internalized (psycho-montage/ psycho-cut-up) as well as externalized in the traditional Surrealist Ducassian Encounter of disparate material elements. Art emerges from the (al)chemistry of the creative process, through interaction with the prime materia, the massa confusa, of unrefined unconscious matter. Works feed on each other - collages and drawings can inspire poems and poems can inspire drawings. Drawings can evolve from the collage procedure. Works emerge in cycles and spates - groups of poems are somehow related to each other, sets of drawings share the same motifs and techniques.
Sometimes, of course, an external requirement will be the pretext for a project - but the non-rational, chance aleatoric factor must always be there. If a project is to ‘work’ it must be an active element in the transformation process. All art is transformation, the perpetual, unstoppable transformation of the day-to-day in which the mundane becomes the bizarre.

What part, in your opinion, does illustration play in adding to a text?
‘In The Beginning Was The Word’ someone said. Well, don’t believe it. Pictures are primal. The image in the mind’s eye precedes utterance, or, to quote Duke Ellington: ‘There’s always a mental picture’. I think there has to be a kind of synergy - a deep affinity - between any image and the words it is used with. This affinity may not be obvious or concrete. Chance encounters between poems and pictures in the editorial process can often give rise to effective associations.
In a different context one may think of texts illustrating images rather than vice versa. For example The Cascades was a set of poems written to ‘accompany’ some pictures by Rupert Loydell and, more recently, both Martin Duxbury-Hibbert and Norman Jope have collaborated by providing texts (Between Alien Worlds and Zones of Impulse) for sets of images provided in advance of literary composition. In these cases successful!
Illustration depends upon a feeling of ‘rightness’ or integration into the finished product. Equal value resides in both text and illustrations. Textual content can be derived from the images. Literal illustration is ok for factual and instructional situations but I am more interested in these more oblique relationships between words and images.

When did you start publishing your work?
I first started publishing drawings in about 1968 as greeting cards. Then I managed to get drawings
Into various occult magazines during the mid-1970s and also a few lit. crit. articles and reviews from
1980 onwards. My first poetry publication was in Stride Magazine, and Stride published the first
collection of poetry and drawings, Exosphere, in 1984

What artists have influenced you?
The earliest artistic influences I can remember were illustrators - Mervyn Peake (The Hunting of the Snark and other books), Tenniel’s Alice illustrations, Eric Fraser and Joan Kiddell-Monroe - again, this was when I was kid. I really liked fantastic things and, in the case of Frazer and Kiddell-Monroe, hard-edged linearist things. When you’re that young you don’t think about ideas like Abstraction, you react to the imagistic qualities of what you see because that’s the way the imagination is.
Another key influence was Japanese Art. We had some volumes of drawings by Hokusai, which I was always looking at. His work is very naturalistic but it can also be very macabre and grotesque and ultra-stylish. Remembering the period 1966-1970, when I was trying to find my way is very confusing - there were so many ‘influences’.
The closest I got to contemporary fine art or gallery art was Richard Hamilton’s reconstruction of Duchamp’s Bride which he did for a big Tate retrospective around July ‘66. The irony of Duchamp’s stance and the iconoclasm of Dada were very important - an antidote to the Peace ‘n’ Luv culture! But then again I was undoubtedly sympathetic to Psychedelia and Op as well.
I still like Sixties design and art movies like Performance - the influences were an intermedia hotchpotch: Art Nouveau Symbolists like Klimt, Jan Toorop and Khnopff. I like Odilon Redon, Hieronymous Bosch, Grunewald, Durer, William Blake and Goya…Aubrey Beardsley…Alfred Kubin. Also the assemblage sculptures of Louise Nevelson. There was a piece of hers in the Tate called ‘Gold Wall’ which was a stylized structure of abstract, rectilinear box-shapes and compartments encrusted with commonplace, ‘found’ objects such as old chair legs and wooden slats. The whole thing was painted a uniform all-over gold colour. There was a clash of materials in Nevelson’s work, which greatly appealed to me at the time.
It’s necessary to identify different types of influence. There are precursors who influence by style, there are those who influence content and there are those who influence by example. There are some whose influence is a combination of all these factors. This is partly why it is difficult to discuss influences. There is also the problem of ‘originality’. I think everyone is influenced by someone, although lots of artists and writers (in this country at least) think that admitting to influences is like some sort of confession of inadequacy. This is just as complicated with literary influences as it is with artistic ones.

So what about literary influences?
So far as literature is concerned I would have to mention the French tradition: Baudelaire, Mallarme and Antonin Artaud as a major influence in various ways, also Huysmans and Andre Breton. My Pre-formative reading was Science Fiction (mainly British), Fantasy, Horror (particularly Poe and Lovecraft) and all sorts of myths and legends. This established a continuing involvement with ‘popular’ genres that continues to the present.
As I said I’m a compulsive bibliomaniac and read all the time. It all goes into the creative process. The American Beats had quite an impact. Beat style was so un-English, so un-literary, or so it seamed at the time. I remember reading Ginsberg’s ‘Howl’ and Burroughs’ Nova Express and being instantly converted to a more ‘modern’ attitude to writing.
Thinking back to the same period I would name the following ‘literary’ influences: Arthur Machen, Lermontov, Thomas Pynchon (especially), De Quincey, Alfred Jarry (Faustrol), Robert Graves (The White Goddess), De Sade, Gerard de Nerval, Boris Vian, Angela Carter, J.G Ballard, Nabokov (Ada), Barth (The Sotweed Factor), Borges, and Jean Genet.
There were various non-fiction/critical works that were significant I think. For example, Jung’s writing on Alchemy, The Romantic Agony, Marie Bonaparte’s psychoanalytic study of Poe, Masters and Houston’s Psychedelic Art, Robert Greer Cohn’s book on Mallarme, Hans Bellmer’s Anatomie de L‘Image, Colin Wilson’s The Outsider, The Tibetan Book of the Dead, and Opium and the Romantic Imagination by Althea Hayter. A later influence was Samuel Beckett. His work, particularly the short prose and the novels (the Trilogy and How It Is) is a landmark in the imagination. Absolutely no one can afford to ignore Beckett. A combination of factors (including the influence of Austin Spare) induced me to read a lot of occult literature - but that’s another story....

Do you exhibit/ sell your artwork?
I participated in an exhibition called Cross Section in Chelmsford 1968 - but that was a one-off. I’ve never seen myself as a gallery artist or involved in the art market - it just isn’t my scene really. I see ‘originals’ as ‘masters’ for reproduction rather than traditional fine art artifacts. I’m not really geared up to do commissions and things like that. As I said - not really my scene.

What is your method of working?
Steve Sneyd has observed that the poetic act is like trying to snapshot the fragmentary immediacy of the brain’s workings and compared his methodology to ‘a trapped animal’s gnawing of it’s own leg....’. In a sense he is right about this. It is difficult to cultivate the self-awareness and objectivity needed to comment on the methodology of the creative process beyond surface characteristics.
In writing I was influenced by the minimalism of Poe who criticized the viability of the long poem - I don’t write long poems in the sense that Spenser’s Faerie Queene, or Paradise Lost are long poems. So minimalism, even miniaturism, is intrinsic to my method in many respects. Also the Postmodernist blurring of boundaries, perhaps inspired by Borges idea of 'ficciones' - cerebral, laconic, hermetic, labyrinthine, enigmatic - these are often some of the qualities I look for in a sphere where the essential differences between poetry and prose are unclear.
The poetic methodology is most elusive, Often I find myself working with a surreal psycho-montage of wordflow, sometimes incorporating ‘found words’ or cut-ups or phrases that simply emerge from the unconscious (Words from Nowhere). I regard many of my ‘poems’ as borderland texts, neither prose nor poetry. There is a narcissistic ‘working up’ of drafts and an element of faction where quasi-autobiographical or historical research material merges with pure fantasy. I reject traditional prosody as the technique of a dead era.

What about drawing methods? How do you go about obtaining the final image? Do you have a clear idea at the outset, or do you do many variations?
Drawing methods are varied. Often I will work from a store of sketches and notes for visual ideas, which I keep. These are usually pencil sketches but can be ink drawings and doodles as well. Sometimes a drawing can be spontaneous and committed to paper right away. Sketches may be quite expressionistic and unformed to begin with but then go through a number of different of versions and stylisations.
Areas of detail in Rapidograph drawings are done directly onto the final drawing in most cases. These are usually detailed areas of stippling and fine-point decoration, a sort of amalgam of Moreau’s encrustation, Beardsley’s stipple technique, Seurat-like textures and Ernstian decalcomania-like textures. This sort of work can be very time consuming. In many cases compositions are derived from pre-existing collages. Sometimes I use ‘found images’ derived from, say, newspaper photographs or magazines. Sometimes there is a pre-existing mental image and it’s like taking a snapshot. In many drawings there is a deliberate use of ‘negative space’ in the composition - space derived from the chance lines of the pen or pencil.

How necessary is it to you that you are published & ‘known’? Would you continue to write/draw if you had no public outlet?
I am reminded of a section in Colin Wilson’s The Outsider - he was quoting T. E. Lawrence (Wilson saw Lawrence as an archetypal ‘outsider’ figure) who said that a craving for the power of self-expression was the most decisive driving force in his life. This craving is the only antidote to the nihilism of our age. Without this craving for self-expression there is nothing, literally, Nothing.
Artistic creativity is the way to achieve maximum self-expression. This is an end in itself but the craving is capable of transformation – self-expression becomes individuation, individuation becomes self-initiation. An infinite process of self-initiation, a sort of Aesthetic Gnosticism perhaps. In this context publication is irrelevant. On the other hand creative editorializing can become part of The Work. Working with Stride and Memes and other magazines has lead to unforeseen creative activity through interaction, publication itself becoming part of a wider transformation process.

Do you conceive of a contemporary context, or do you feel you are working in isolation?
Well, I do conceive of a contemporary context - I also feel I’m quite isolated in what I do as well! I’ve always been interested in what you might call cultural history - the evolution of aesthetic and religious ideas, so this sense of history helps me to try to define my own contemporary context.
On the other hand my interaction with immediate contemporaries is rather limited these days and I find a lot of SP type poetry and stuff rather alienating. It’s always difficult to name names but, if pressed, I might cite Steve Sneyd, Robert Shepherd, lain Sinclair, Norman Jope, Rupert Loydell and Martin Duxbury-Hibbert as current writers who may overlap with some of my own concerns.
My original sense of contemporary context was shaped by a sort of ‘post-everything’ feeling. It seemed to me that the transition from Surrealism to Postmodernism via Pop, Situationism, Psychedelia, Neo-Dada and Op from 1966-1971 was the beginning of some sort of end - an End with a capital ‘E’, in fact. As Hassan said about Postmodernism: it ‘dramatizes its lack of faith in art even as it produces new works.’
The truth is that, in this era of ‘post-everything’ and loss of faith, one didn’t really look among one’s own generation for a contemporary context. Except, perhaps, in semi-commercial fantasy art, Psychedelia and satire (Roger Dean, Bruce Pennington, Wes Wilson, Michael English, Scarfe, Steadman), one looked to the survivors of the avant garde who were still with us. In the visual arts this meant Duchamp, Chirico, Ernst, Bellmer, Leonor Fini, Matta, Burra and Francis Bacon. I think my graphic style was very influenced by Bellmer - he must be one of the greatest draughtsmen of the twentieth century. In literature there was Andre Breton, Borges, Ballard, Angela Carter, David Gascoyne, Beckett and William Burroughs. One was conscious that they were all still around producing new works. They were the contemporary context for me.
Yet, throughout the period the sense of an ending was exacerbated by the deaths of nearly all these major figures. Breton died in 1966 around the same time as the last major International Surrealist Exhibition (‘Absolute Divergence’). He was followed by Duchamp in 1968, Bellmer in 1975, Ernst and Burra in 1976, Chirico in 1978 and, finally, J. L. Borges in 1986. By the time you got to 1976 we were into the ‘break up of Britain’, The Winter of Discontent and the New Dark Age of the ‘Enterprise Culture’…one tried to build on the previous era.


Illustration: One Gothic Night, 2000

A Walk On The Beach

A Walk On The Beach

We’re in remarkable company (festival chic
Luxurious mascara, tight white jeans)
Turn on tune in fall off the edge of the fairground
Summer beauty limited edition lost highway
Variation on a modern classic theme:
Got the looks? Got the moves?
Come for a walk on the beach
With me…

They don’t
– they can’t
– have everything
Your opinions are superfluous
Lose yourself (in one or two takes or
A glass house with resident beautician)
Feel the heat remove unwanted hair
All over the place, kill your pet rat or
Smash a pink ceramic piggy bank;
With oodles of vintage bubbly we
Rehabilitate ‘the sport of fashion’.
Just waiting for a response –
Rollicking in Santa Cruz or somewhere
In London, dream streets away from
All those ghastly types in denim jackets

Turn on tune in fall off the edge of the fairground

Undercover and/or over ground at some arty show
Where they all hang out, finding just the right beat
Discussing the latest debauchery, taking it
All to a new level on a gorgeous isle far from here
Where there are just too many reasons,
Just too many corridors – and far too many stories.

Turn on tune in fall off the edge of the fairground

Waiting in the wings for another new friend
To seduce with something truly precious and

We don’t mind the not-so-distant future…

Suddenly the dining-room doors opened…

Turn on tune in fall off the edge… where
The horizon meets the sea.

Published in Inclement Vol 11 Issue 1 Spring 2011

Illustration: Neutral Enlightenment, 2000

Poetry Booklets Publications 1984-2017

Poetry Collections and Booklets 1984-2017

Exosphere (Step 24) Stride Publications 1984
Decaying Orbits (Step 84) Stride Publications 1985
Chimaera Obscura The Phlebas Press 1992
The Xantras The Trombone Press 1993
Neon Aeon The Trombone Press 1994
Not Deade But Chaynged The Trombone Press 1996
Space Opera Stride Publications 1997
Dream Vortex Tabor Press 1997
The Mutation Show Underscore (Glasshouse Electric Presents) Silver Gull Publishing 1999
Colour Of Dust Poems and/or Texts Stride Publications 1999
Omega Lightning (Reverse Geometry II) The Trombone Press 1999
This Sepulchre Springbeach Press 2000
Fractured Muse Atlantean Publishing 2003
Vespula Vanishes & Other Poems Inclement Publishing 2007

Fractured Moods Vol 1 Haunted Astral, Atlantean Publishing, 2012
Fractured Moods Vol 2 Beautiful Chaos, Atlantean Publishing, 2012
From Outside, Argotist Ebooks, 2012
Such As This, Smallmided Books, 2012
Open Moments, Argotist Ebooks, 2017

Illustration: Vampfires (The Three Graces), 1973

Artwork Publications 1967-1999

Artwork Publications 1967-1999

The Imagination Machine print [self-published] CygnusXPress 1967
Sir Modred Courtier Fine Arts [greetings card] Courtier Fine Arts 1968
The Man Who Built The Pyramids I Courtier Fine Arts [greetings card] Courtier Fine Arts 1968
The Man Who Built The Pyramids II Courtier Fine Arts [greetings card] Courtier Fine Arts 1968
The Priestess Courtier Fine Arts [greetings card] Courtier Fine Arts 1968
The Sorcerer Courtier Fine Arts [greetings card] Courtier Fine Arts 1968
Sun And Moon Cross Section An Exhibition Of Painting [catalogue] cover art (CTHS version) CTHS 1968
Concerto For Cootie Books On Jazz [booklet] cover art (CPL final version) CPL 1972
Nocturne Boogie Woogie Books On Jazz [booklet] cover art (CPL final version) CPL 1972
And There Fell A Great Star Sothis A Magazine Of The New Aeon Vol II No II AN LXXIII Sothis 1977
La Destruction II Sothis A Magazine Of The New Aeon Vol II No II AN LXXIII Sothis 1977
Crystal Memoire (Wings Of Midnight) The New Equinox Vol 4 No 1 May 1979 Morton Press 1979
Rictus Sardonicus VI Le Pendu The New Equinox Vol 4 No 1 May 1979 Morton Press 1979
The Great Forest The Daath Papers No 2 Autumn 1980 The Order Of The Serpent 1980
Orthogenesis I Hermetic Art 1/2 [cream] CygnusXPress 1981
Orthogenesis I Hermetic Art 2/2 [grey] CygnusXPress 1981
Bride I The New Equinox Vol 5 Part 3 February 1981 Kaaba Publications 1981
Le Pendu Stride 6 Nov 1982 Stride Publications 1982
Orthogenesis I Stride 6 Nov 1982 Stride Publications 1982
Silence Stride 6 Nov 1982 Stride Publications 1982
The Tower Stride 6 Nov 1982 Stride Publications 1982
Rictus Sardonicus (Proto-Sardonicus) CJCM Vol 1 Issue 5 (Rites Of The Feather) 1983 Conquering Child Publishing 1983
Rictus Sardonicus VIII Deams CJCM Vol 1 Issue 5 (Rites Of The Feather) 1983 Conquering Child Publishing 1983
Rictus Sardonicus XIII Rex (Rictus Sarcasmus) CJCM Vol 1 Issue 5 (Rites Of The Feather) 1983 Conquering Child Publishing 1983
Deadly Nightshards Stride 10 July 1983 Stride Publications 1983
Occultation Stride 10 July 1983 Stride Publications 1983
The Angel Of The Exosphere Stride 10 July 1983 Stride Publications 1983
Transept Stride 10 July 1983 Stride Publications 1983
A Way Of Looking (Une Etoile) II Stride 12 Nov 1983 Stride Publications 1983
Bacchanalia (Beastial Virgin) Stride 12 Nov 1983 Stride Publications 1983
Bride II Stride 12 Nov 1983 Stride Publications 1983
Horus II Stride 12 Nov 1983 Stride Publications 1983
Eironeia Fantastica Stride 9 May 1983 Stride Publications 1983
Rebirth Control I Stride 9 May 1983 Stride Publications 1983
The Dancer Stride 9 May 1983 Stride Publications 1983
Stigma II Velocities A Magazine Of Speculative Poetry 3 Fall/Winter 1983 1983
Alien City Velocities A Magazine Of Speculative Poetry 3 Fall-Winter 1983 1983
Double Meaning Blink (Step 23) Stride Publications 1984
Mist Soul Blink (Step 23) Stride Publications 1984
Resident Aliens Blink (Step 23) Stride Publications 1984
The Way Of All Flesh II Body And Soul Blink (Step 23) cover art Stride Publications 1984
Le Grand Grimoire I Dark Horizons No 27 Summer 1984 British Fantasy Society 1984
The Astral Widow Dark Horizons No 27 Summer 1984 British Fantasy Society 1984
Crystal Memoire (Wings Of Midnight) Exosphere (Step 24) Stride Publications 1984
Destruction II (The Extraordinary Question) Exosphere (Step 24) Stride Publications 1984
Eironeia Fantastica Exosphere (Step 24) Stride Publications 1984
Horus Exosphere (Step 24) Stride Publications 1984
In The Cathedral (Xezbeth) Exosphere (Step 24) Stride Publications 1984
Mercurius (Grotesque Head) Exosphere (Step 24) Stride Publications 1984
Night-Lights Exosphere (Step 24) Stride Publications 1984
Orthogenesis I Exosphere (Step 24) Stride Publications 1984
Perihelion (The Next Absolute Horizon) Exosphere (Step 24) Stride Publications 1984
Rebirth Control I Exosphere (Step 24) Stride Publications 1984
Rictus Sardonicus VI Le Pendu Exosphere (Step 24) Stride Publications 1984
Silence I Exosphere (Step 24) Stride Publications 1984
Silence III (The Venus Trap) Exosphere (Step 24) Stride Publications 1984
Sphinx Exosphere (Step 24) Stride Publications 1984
Stigma II Exosphere (Step 24) Stride Publications 1984
The Abstainers (The Tapestry Of Life) Exosphere (Step 24) Stride Publications 1984
The Anatomy Lesson Of Dr Crow Exosphere (Step 24) Stride Publications 1984
The Angel Of The Exosphere Exosphere (Step 24) Stride Publications 1984
The Astral Widow Exosphere (Step 24) Stride Publications 1984
The Glare Grows Alarming (Vampfires) Exosphere (Step 24) Stride Publications 1984
The Vectors Of Hate Exosphere (Step 24) Stride Publications 1984
Tower (The Churches Of The Earth) Exosphere (Step 24) Stride Publications 1984
Tower Of Silence (Prying Eyes) Exosphere (Step 24) Stride Publications 1984
Orthogenesis I Exosphere (Step 24) [booklet] cover art (Stride final version I) [col] Stride Publications 1984
The Angel Of The Exosphere Exosphere (Step 24) [booklet] cover art (Stride final version I) [col] Stride Publications 1984
Orthogenesis I Exosphere (Step 24) [booklet] cover art (Stride final version II) [b/w] Stride Publications 1984
The Angel Of The Exosphere Exosphere (Step 24) [booklet] cover art (Stride final version II) [b/w] Stride Publications 1984
Nuigh Exosphere (Step 24) [leaflet] Stride Publications 1984
The Angel Of The Exosphere Exosphere (Step 24) [leaflet] Stride Publications 1984
Orthogenesis I Exosphere (Step 24) [postcard] Stride Publications 1984
The Angel Of The Exosphere Exosphere (Step 24) [postcard] Stride Publications 1984
From Another Star (The Glare Grows Alarming) Formaos Vol 1 No 2 July 1984 Sothis Publishing 1984
Mercurius (Grotesque Head) Formaos Vol 1 No 2 July 1984 Sothis Publishing 1984
The Abstainers (The Tapestry Of Life) Formaos Vol 1 No 2 July 1984 Sothis Publishing 1984
Double Meaning Formaos Vol 1 No 3 Dec 1984 Sothis Publishing 1984
Horus I Formaos Vol 1 No 3 Dec 1984 Sothis Publishing 1984
The First Day (Aratron) Illuminatus Monthly Vol 1 No 1 Feb 1984 The Illuminati Press 1984
Azimuth I Stride 13 January 1984 Stride Publications 1984
Le Grand Grimoire I Stride 13 January 1984 Stride Publications 1984
The Anatomy Lesson Of Dr Crow Stride 13 January 1984 Stride Publications 1984
The Cathedral Of The Future Stride 13 January 1984 Stride Publications 1984
Familiar Spirits Stride 15 May 1684 Stride Publications 1984
Venus And Mars Stride 15 May 1684 Stride Publications 1984
Alien Necropolis (Await Developments) Stride 15 May 1984 Stride Publications 1984
Melpomene I Stride 17/18 Autumn 1984 Stride Publications 1984
Metacropolis Stride 17/18 Autumn 1984 Stride Publications 1984
Saint (Head Of A Saint) Stride 17/18 Autumn 1984 Stride Publications 1984
Satanic Planets Stride 17/18 Autumn 1984 Stride Publications 1984
The Fall Stride 17/18 Autumn 1984 Stride Publications 1984
And There Fell A Great Star Stride 19 Winter 1984/1985 Stride Publications 1984
Death Stride 19 Winter 1984/1985 Stride Publications 1984
Nuigh Stride 19 Winter 1984/1985 Stride Publications 1984
Stigma III Stride 19 Winter 1984/1985 Stride Publications 1984
Tzeth Stride 19 Winter 1984/1985 Stride Publications 1984
Vectors Of Love Stride 19 Winter 1984/1985 Stride Publications 1984
Tzeth Stride 19 Winter 1984/1985 [postcard] Stride Publications 1984
And There Fell A Great Star Stride 19 Winter 1984/1985 cover art Stride Publications 1984
Tzeth Stride 19 Winter 1984/1985 cover art Stride Publications 1984
The First Day (Aratron) The Fellowship Of The Illuminati [notepaper] The Illuminati Press 1984
The Angel Of The Exosphere Centre Of Gravity C60 (Step 50) [booklet] Stride Publications 1985
Centre Of Gravity Centre Of Gravity C60 (Step 50) [booklet] cover art 1/2 Stride Publications 1985
Centre Of Gravity Centre Of Gravity C60 (Step 50) [booklet] cover art 2/2 Stride Publications 1985
The Way Of All Flesh I The Crypt Centre Of Gravity C60 (Step 50) [inlay card] Stride Publications 1985
Centre Of Gravity Centre Of Gravity C60 (Step 50) [postcard] Stride Publications 1985
Alien City Decaying Orbits (Step 84) Stride Publications 1985
Apastron Decaying Orbits (Step 84) Stride Publications 1985
Artaud, 1946 Decaying Orbits (Step 84) Stride Publications 1985
Decaying Orbits Decaying Orbits (Step 84) Stride Publications 1985
Eros Klastos Decaying Orbits (Step 84) Stride Publications 1985
Leonardo’s Wall I Decaying Orbits (Step 84) Stride Publications 1985
Neogenesis Decaying Orbits (Step 84) Stride Publications 1985
Occultation Decaying Orbits (Step 84) Stride Publications 1985
Orthogenesis II Decaying Orbits (Step 84) Stride Publications 1985
Poet (Fixation) Decaying Orbits (Step 84) Stride Publications 1985
Rictus Sardonicus XIV Death (Ghosts) Decaying Orbits (Step 84) Stride Publications 1985
Stigma I Decaying Orbits (Step 84) Stride Publications 1985
Stigma III Decaying Orbits (Step 84) Stride Publications 1985
The Circuits Of Nox Decaying Orbits (Step 84) Stride Publications 1985
The City As I Saw It Decaying Orbits (Step 84) Stride Publications 1985
The Fall Decaying Orbits (Step 84) Stride Publications 1985
The Question Decaying Orbits (Step 84) Stride Publications 1985
The Vectors Of Love Decaying Orbits (Step 84) Stride Publications 1985
We Do Not Speak Decaying Orbits (Step 84) Stride Publications 1985
Zenith Decaying Orbits (Step 84) Stride Publications 1985
Crypt Variations I Decaying Orbits (Step 84) [booklet] cover art (Stride final version) Stride Publications 1985
Atavism I Stride 20 Spring 1985 Stride Publications 1985
Calligraphic Automata Stride 20 Spring 1985 Stride Publications 1985
Orphic Narcissus Stride 20 Spring 1985 Stride Publications 1985
The First Day (Aratron) Stride 20 Spring 1985 Stride Publications 1985
The Heavenly Host Stride 20 Spring 1985 Stride Publications 1985
The Question Of Identity Stride 20 Spring 1985 Stride Publications 1985
Contact Zero 04 Flesh Eating Beasts Stride 21 Summer 1985 Stride Publications 1985
Contact Zero 05 The Rattlesnake Pit Organ Stride 21 Summer 1985 Stride Publications 1985
Life On Neogaea Stride 21 Summer 1985 Stride Publications 1985
Outcast Stride 21 Summer 1985 Stride Publications 1985
Styx Insect III (Social Symbioses On Neogaea) Stride 21 Summer 1985 Stride Publications 1985
Unidentified Sources (Inspiration is Sweeter Than Death I) Stride 21 Summer 1985 Stride Publications 1985
Life On Neogaea Stride Postcards [bronze] Stride Publications 1985
Orphic Narcissus Stride Postcards [bronze] Stride Publications 1985
Styx Insect III (Social Symbioses On Neogaea) Stride Postcards [bronze] Stride Publications 1985
The First Day (Aratron) Stride Postcards [bronze] Stride Publications 1985
Metacropolis Stride Postcards [grey] Stride Publications 1985
Outcast Stride Postcards [grey] Stride Publications 1985
Satanic Planets Stride Postcards [grey] Stride Publications 1985
The Fall Stride Postcards [grey] Stride Publications 1985
Atavism I Fisheye No 5 Winter 1986 1986
Eyes Fisheye No 5 Winter 1986 1986
Leonardo’s Wall I Fisheye No 5 Winter 1986 1986
Narthex (The Reliquary) Fisheye No 5 Winter 1986 1986
Saint (Head Of A Saint) Fisheye No 5 Winter 1986 1986
The Cathedral Of Silence (Eros Klastos) Fisheye No 5 Winter 1986 1986
The Cathedral Of The Past Fisheye No 5 Winter 1986 1986
The Hanged Man (Le Pendu) II Fisheye No 5 Winter 1986 1986
Atavism I Nox The Magazine Of The Abyss Vol 1 No 1 Issue 1 Apr 1986 Disrupters Press 1986
The Hanged Man (Le Pendu) II Nox The Magazine Of The Abyss Vol 1 No 2 Issue 2 Apr 1986 cover art Disrupters Press 1986
His Shadow Lives On II (But His Spirit Lives On) Nox The Magazine Of The Abyss Vol 1 No 2 Issue 2 Aug 1986 Disrupters Press 1986
Le Grand Grimoire I Nox The Magazine Of The Abyss Vol 1 No 2 Issue 2 Aug 1986 Disrupters Press 1986
Melpomene I Nox The Magazine Of The Abyss Vol 1 No 2 Issue 2 Aug 1986 Disrupters Press 1986
Anorexia Nirvana Nox The Magazine Of The Abyss Vol 1 No 3 Issue 3 Nov 1986 Disrupters Press 1986
Melpomene I Nox The Magazine Of The Abyss Vol 1 No 3 Issue 3 Nov 1986 Disrupters Press 1986
Aethyr XVII Les Oiseaux de Nox The Magazine Of The Abyss Nox The Magazine Of The Abyss Vol 1 No 3 Issue 3 Nov 1986 cover art Disrupters Press 1986
Angel With Raiding Party Stride 23 Spring 1986 Stride Publications 1986
Splintered Avatar Stride 23 Spring 1986 Stride Publications 1986
The Cathedral Of The Damned Stride 23 Spring 1986 Stride Publications 1986
The Question Stride 23 Spring 1986 Stride Publications 1986
Unknown Superior Stride 23 Spring 1986 Stride Publications 1986
Contact Zero 01 Contact Zero (title) Stride 24/25 The Serendipity Caper Summer 1986 Stride Publications 1986
Contact Zero 02 Random 1/Random 2 1/2 Stride 24/25 The Serendipity Caper Summer 1986 Stride Publications 1986
Contact Zero 03 Random 1/Random 2 2/2 Stride 24/25 The Serendipity Caper Summer 1986 Stride Publications 1986
Contact Zero 04 Flesh Eating Beasts Stride 24/25 The Serendipity Caper Summer 1986 Stride Publications 1986
Contact Zero 05 The Rattlesnake Pit Organ Stride 24/25 The Serendipity Caper Summer 1986 Stride Publications 1986
Contact Zero 06 Target Envisaged Image Stride 24/25 The Serendipity Caper Summer 1986 Stride Publications 1986
Contact Zero 07 Inside The Pit Membrane Stride 24/25 The Serendipity Caper Summer 1986 Stride Publications 1986
Contact Zero 08 Reading Writing And What? Stride 24/25 The Serendipity Caper Summer 1986 Stride Publications 1986
Contact Zero 09 Realism Theory And Practice Stride 24/25 The Serendipity Caper Summer 1986 Stride Publications 1986
Contact Zero 10 Chimaera Obscura Stride 24/25 The Serendipity Caper Summer 1986 Stride Publications 1986
Contact Zero 11 Not So Far Stride 24/25 The Serendipity Caper Summer 1986 Stride Publications 1986
Contact Zero 12 The Membrane Intercepts Stride 24/25 The Serendipity Caper Summer 1986 Stride Publications 1986
The Neo Nova Stride 24/25 The Serendipity Caper Summer 1986 Stride Publications 1986
Satanic Planets Formaos Vol 1 No 5 Mar 1987 Sothis Publishing 1987
Aethyr VII Aethyr Of Purity Nox The Magazine Of The Abyss Vol 1 No 4 Issue 4 Mar 1987 Disrupters Press 1987
Styx Insect III (Social Symbioses On Neogaea) Nox The Magazine Of The Abyss Vol 1 No 4 Issue 4 Mar 1987 Disrupters Press 1987
Visions Nox The Magazine Of The Abyss Vol 1 No 4 Issue 4 Mar 1987 Disrupters Press 1987
Orphic Narcissus II Nox The Magazine Of The Abyss Vol 2 No 1 Issue 5 July 1987 Disrupters Press 1987
Enclosed Stride 27 July 1987 Stride Publications 1987
Fear Of Silence Stride 27 July 1987 Stride Publications 1987
Illusion Of Death I Stride 27 July 1987 Stride Publications 1987
Illusion Of Death II Stride 27 July 1987 Stride Publications 1987
Melpomene II Stride 27 July 1987 Stride Publications 1987
Night And Day Stride 27 July 1987 Stride Publications 1987
Temptation Of St Sebastian Stride 27 July 1987 Stride Publications 1987
The Eye Of The Storm Stride 27 July 1987 Stride Publications 1987
The Pylons Of Nox Stride 27 July 1987 Stride Publications 1987
Unidentified Sources (Inspiration is Sweeter Than Death I) Chaos International 4 Mar 1988 BM Sorcery 1988
Zenith Nox The Magazine Of The Abyss Vol 2 No 2 Issue 6 Aug 1988 Longship Warrior 1988
Stargate Vision IV (Mortal Coil) Chain Lightning Apparitions Press 1989
Stargate Vision V (Sea Eyes Of The Starfish) Chain Lightning Apparitions Press 1989
Stargate Wavelength II (No Man's Land) Chain Lightning Apparitions Press 1989
Temporal Implosion III (Star War Level) Chain Lightning Apparitions Press 1989
Temporal Implosion IV (Another Stargate/Another Room) Chain Lightning Apparitions Press 1989
The Eye Of Time IV (Some Other Star) Chain Lightning Apparitions Press 1989
The Stargate Question I (The Last Dimension) Chain Lightning Apparitions Press 1989
The Stargate Question IX (Hide These Commandments) Chain Lightning Apparitions Press 1989
The Stargate Question VIII (Life Is So Cheap On Mars) Chain Lightning Apparitions Press 1989
The Stargate Question X (The Grave Of Space) Chain Lightning Apparitions Press 1989
Double Meaning Memes Issue 1 August 1989 1989
Horus II Memes Issue 1 August 1989 1989
Venus And Mars Memes Issue 1 August 1989 1989
Beyond The Exosphere Memes Issue 2 December 1989 1989
The Cathedral Of The Past Memes Issue 2 December 1989 1989
Atavism II Stride 32 Spring/Summer 1989 Stride Publications 1989
Hypnos II Stride 32 Spring/Summer 1989 Stride Publications 1989
Isotope Of Mirror Stride 32 Spring/Summer 1989 Stride Publications 1989
Loss Of Faith Stride 32 Spring/Summer 1989 Stride Publications 1989
Now Is The Time Stride 32 Spring/Summer 1989 Stride Publications 1989
The City As I Saw It Stride 32 Spring/Summer 1989 Stride Publications 1989
The Impossible Stride 32 Spring/Summer 1989 Stride Publications 1989
The Power Of Thought Stride 32 Spring/Summer 1989 Stride Publications 1989
In The Cathedral (Xezbeth) Fractured Issue No 1 Winter 1990 1990
The Anatomy Lesson Of Dr Crow Fractured Issue No 1 Winter 1990 1990
Orpheus I Memes Issue 3 Mar 1990 1990
Decaying Orbits Nox The Magazine Of The Abyss Vol 2 No 3 Issue 7 Jan 1990 Longship Warrior 1990
Inspiration Is Sweeter Than Death Nox The Magazine Of The Abyss Vol 2 No 3 Issue 7 Jan 1990 Longship Warrior 1990
Unidentified Sources (Inspiration is Sweeter Than Death I) Zeitgeist cover art Dragonheart Press 1990
Resident Aliens Fractured Issue No 2 Spriing 1991 1991
Outcast Fractured Issue No 3 Summer 1991 1991
Triptych (The Abyss) 2 Abyss Of The City Fractured Issue No 3 Summer 1991 1991
Rictus Sardonicus XVIII The Cathedral Memes Issue 5 May 1991 1991
Triptych (The Abyss) 2 Abyss Of The City Memes Issue 5 May 1991 1991
Triptych (The Abyss) 3 Islands Of Time Memes Issue 5 May 1991 1991
The Heart Is The Eye Beyond Self Sad Isn't The Colour Of The Dream cover art Stride Publications 1991
Angel With Raiding Party Chimaera Obscura The Phlebas Press 1992
Atavism II Chimaera Obscura The Phlebas Press 1992
Azimuth Chimaera Obscura The Phlebas Press 1992
Enclosed Chimaera Obscura The Phlebas Press 1992
Hermetic Symbols I Chimaera Obscura The Phlebas Press 1992
Hermetic Symbols III Chimaera Obscura The Phlebas Press 1992
Illusion Of Life Chimaera Obscura The Phlebas Press 1992
Impulse VII (Within the Glass) Chimaera Obscura The Phlebas Press 1992
Impulse X Impulse Y Chimaera Obscura The Phlebas Press 1992
In The Madhouse Chimaera Obscura The Phlebas Press 1992
Message From Entity X Chimaera Obscura The Phlebas Press 1992
Misnomer Chimaera Obscura The Phlebas Press 1992
Parallel Icon Chimaera Obscura The Phlebas Press 1992
Spectral Waves Chimaera Obscura The Phlebas Press 1992
Splintered Avatar Chimaera Obscura The Phlebas Press 1992
Starry Night Chimaera Obscura The Phlebas Press 1992
The Cathedral Of The Damned Chimaera Obscura The Phlebas Press 1992
The Sceptre Chimaera Obscura The Phlebas Press 1992
The Way Of All Flesh II Body And Soul Chimaera Obscura The Phlebas Press 1992
Triptych (The Abyss) 1 Mystic Flower (Inflorescence) Chimaera Obscura The Phlebas Press 1992
Triptych (The Abyss) 2 Abyss Of The City Chimaera Obscura The Phlebas Press 1992
Tzeth Chimaera Obscura The Phlebas Press 1992
Apocynthion Memes Issue 7 June 1992 1992
Tinguely Cathedral Memes Issue 7 June 1992 cover art 1992
Atavism I 10th Muse No 4 Oct 1993 1993
Azimuth I 10th Muse No 4 Oct 1993 1993
Bride II 10th Muse No 4 Oct 1993 1993
Eyes 10th Muse No 4 Oct 1993 1993
Leonardo’s Wall I 10th Muse No 4 Oct 1993 1993
The Hanged Man (Le Pendu) II 10th Muse No 4 Oct 1993 1993
Triptych (The Abyss) 1 Mystic Flower (Inflorescence) 10th Muse No 4 Oct 1993 1993
Between Alien Worlds Between Alien Worlds The Trombone Press 1993
Ruins In Time Between Alien Worlds The Trombone Press 1993
The Mask Between Alien Worlds The Trombone Press 1993
The Sky Belongs To Us Between Alien Worlds The Trombone Press 1993
The Wrong World Between Alien Worlds The Trombone Press 1993
This Alien World Between Alien Worlds The Trombone Press 1993
The Astral Night The Xantras [booklet] cover art The Trombone Press 1993
Le Grand Grimoire II Memes Issue 9 Apr 1994 1994
Totem II Terrible Work [leaflet] 1/3 Spineless Press 1994
Totem II Terrible Work [leaflet] 2/3 Spineless Press 1994
Totem II Terrible Work [leaflet] 3/3 Spineless Press 1994
Anorexia Nirvana Terrible Work 3 Spring 1994 Spineless Press 1994
Nykticorax (detail) Terrible Work 3 Spring 1994 Spineless Press 1994
Rebirth Control II Terrible Work 3 Spring 1994 Spineless Press 1994
Dream Of Stone The Inscrutable World The Trombone Press 1995
Haunted Landscape The Inscrutable World The Trombone Press 1995
Inscrutable World The Inscrutable World The Trombone Press 1995
Leonardo’s Wall I The Inscrutable World The Trombone Press 1995
Mystic Landscape The Inscrutable World The Trombone Press 1995
Another Great Wave I Zones Of Impulse The Trombone Press 1995
Dangerous Skies III (Luna Corona) Zones Of Impulse The Trombone Press 1995
Flaming World Zones Of Impulse The Trombone Press 1995
Guardian Of The Sun Zones Of Impulse The Trombone Press 1995
Hermetic Space I (This Very Night) Zones Of Impulse The Trombone Press 1995
Impulse Zone Zones Of Impulse The Trombone Press 1995
Seismic Domain Zones Of Impulse The Trombone Press 1995
The Citadel Of Doubt Zones Of Impulse The Trombone Press 1995
The Citadel Of Solitude Zones Of Impulse The Trombone Press 1995
The Inner Eye Zones Of Impulse The Trombone Press 1995
The View From Planet X Zones Of Impulse The Trombone Press 1995
Externity Forver Process Angles Of Incidence 19th Phase Lung Gom Press 1996
Internal Reality Trespasses cover art The Trombone Press 1996
Winter World II Desire cover art Stride Publications 1997
Angel With Raiding Party Space Opera Stride Publications 1997
Centre Of Gravity Space Opera Stride Publications 1997
Life On Neogaea Space Opera Stride Publications 1997
The Neo Nova Space Opera Stride Publications 1997
The Question Space Opera Stride Publications 1997
The Scene Of The Crime Space Opera Stride Publications 1997
Worker Display Arena Space Opera Stride Publications 1997
Life On Neogaea Space Opera cover art Stride Publications 1997
Le Grand Grimoire II Dark Fantasy Newsletter No 4 Apr 1999 cover art Springbeach Press 1999
Demon Inversus Death's Door Springbeach Press 1999
Luminous Shadow IV Damned In Three Worlds Death's Door Springbeach Press 1999
The Elastic Mirror Death's Door Springbeach Press 1999
Vortex Creature II Sci-Fright No 1 Feb/Mar 1999 Springbeach Press 1999
Dangerous Skies I Sci-Fright No 5 Nov 1999 Springbeach Press 1999

Illustration: Veronica Lurk III, 1975

Non Fiction Publications 1974-1999

Non Fiction Publications 1974-1999

Olivier Messiaen In The Surrealist Context Part One Brio Vol 11 No 1 Spring 1974 IAML UK
Olivier Messiaen In The Surrealist Context Part Two Brio Vol 11 No 2 Autumn 1974 IAML UK
Huysmans Decadence And Dissociation Part 1 The Lamp Of Thoth Vol II No 2 Dec 1981 The Sorcerer's Apprentice
The Paranoia Magic Of Salvador Dali The New Equinox Vol. 5 Part 3 February 1981 Kaaba Publications
Huysmans Decadence And Dissociation Part 2 The Lamp Of Thoth Vol II No 3 Apr 1982 The Sorcerer's Apprentice
Symbolic Art And Sigilization Part 1 The Lamp Of Thoth Vol II No 3 Apr 1982 The Sorcerer's Apprentice
Symbolic Art And Sigilization Part 2 The Lamp Of Thoth Vol II No 4 July 1982 The Sorcerer's Apprentice
Initiation And Illusion The Nightmare Of Rejection Part 1 The Lamp Of Thoth Vol II No 6 June 1983 The Sorcerer's Apprentice
Bond Street Snatches Stride 16 July 1984 Stride Publications
Initiation And Illusion The Nightmare Of Rejection Part 2 The Lamp Of Thoth Vol III No 1 Feb 1984 The Sorcerer's Apprentice
Long Corridors And Stained Sheets Stride 20 Spring 1985 Stride Publications
Fantasies Of Displacement Stride 22 Autumn 1985 Stride Publications
Hermetic Art Gnostic Alchemy Of The Imagination The Hermetic Journal Vol 28 1985
Beyond The Reality Principle Part 1 The Lamp Of Thoth Vol III No 5 Aug 1985 The Sorcerer's Apprentice
Hermetic Art Gnostic Alchemy Of The Imagination Nox The Magazine Of The Abyss Vol 1 No 1 Issue 1 Apr 1986 Disrupters Press
Gwen John As Icon Stride 26 The Baden-Powell Shuffle 1986 Stride Publications
The Mysteries Of Ellipsis Stride 26 The Baden-Powell Shuffle 1986 Stride Publications
The Red Switch Stride 26 The Baden-Powell Shuffle 1986 Stride Publications
Only False Keys Stride 26 The Baden-Powell Shuffle 1986 Stride Publications
Beyond The Reality Principle Part 2 The Lamp Of Thoth Vol III No 6 Feb 1986 The Sorcerer's Apprentice
Poetry Of Terra Stride 27 July 1987 Stride Publications
Aftermath Of Enlightenment From The Gothic to The Hermetic Nox The Magazine Of The Abyss Vol 1 No 2 Issue 2 Aug 1986 Disrupters Press
Flyin’ Woodle Stride 29 1987 Stride Publications
Fortean Times The Journal Of Strange Phenomena Stride 29 1987 Stride Publications
Objects Displaced By Darkness Stride 29 1987 Stride Publications
Ponsanooth Surrealists In The Service Of The Revolution Stride 29 1987 Stride Publications
Punch Lines Stride 29 1987 Stride Publications
Rhetoric Of Significance Stride 29 1987 Stride Publications
The Rorcharsch Test Stride 29 1987 Stride Publications
Visionaries Against The Clever Club Stride 30 A Show Of Hands 1988 Stride Publications
Occult Connections Part 1 Memes 3 Mar 1990
Occult Connections Part 2 Memes 4 Sept 1990
Occult Connections Part 3 Memes 5 May 1991
Alfred Jarry Or Death is Only for Common People The Nox Anthology Dark Doctrines (Nox Vol 3 No 1 June 1991) New World Publishing
Angels Of Rancid Glamour Notes On Neo-Decadence Part 1 Chaos International Issue No 13 Sept 1992 BM Sorcery
Angels Of Rancid Glamour Notes On Neo-Decadence Part 2 Chaos International Issue No 14 Dec 1992 BM Sorcery
The Aesthetic Transformation Of Perception Chaos International Issue No 15 Mar 1993 BM Sorcery
Genteel Outsiders Notes On Character In London Clay Emotional Geology Stride Publications 1993
Karstic Landscape With Added Weirdness Memes 8 Nov 1993
Post-Modern Prometheus Memes 8 Nov 1993
Requiem For Dismembered Plastic Memes 8 Nov 1993
Soundings From Futurity’s Icy Radar Memes 8 Nov 1993
How Few Words Timbers Across The Sun (Introduction) University Of Salzburg 1993
Cloud Assail Memes 10 1994
Intimacy Magazine Memes 10 1994
Ostinato Magazine Memes 10 1994
Subliminal Investigator Memes 10 1994
The Visible And The Invisible Stride 36 Closed Volumes 1994 Stride Publications
Voices Or The Memory The Sensation The Sonata Stride 36 Closed Volumes 1994 Stride Publications
Worlds Known And Not (Rupert Loydell Interview) Trajectories Phlebas 1994
Angels Of Rancid Glamour Notes On Neo-Decadence Angels Of Rancid Glamour (Stride Research Document No 8) Stride Publications 1998
Phantoms Dissolving In Time Colour Of Dust (Preface) Stride Publications 1999
An Offbeat Phenomenon Zest 6 Spring 1999 IDR

Illustration: Veronica Lurk II, 1974

Always Bizarre

THE AESTHETIC TRANSFORMATION OF PERCEPTION

The aesthetic transformation of perception is closely linked to the purification and transmutation of language: the alchimie du verbe of which Rimbaud and the Surrealists spoke.

The transformation of perception arises from the disclosure of the Essential, the revelation of the Quintessence, and from the elimination of all inessentials, all deadly serious prosaic elements.

Cautionary tales? Not today, thank you. Weighty Issues? Oh yeah? Huge Challenges? You must be joking. The revolution? Oh, I say! The People? Oh ha ha. Devotional tracts? Give us a break.

It is this ‘alchemical’ or Hermetic theory of poetic language and aesthetic image, to which Mallarme was alluding when he referred to the task of giving ‘a purer meaning to the words of the tribe’ and which lay behind Baju’s desire to re-designate the Decadents as the ‘Quintessents’. In this sense the poet can become a shamanistic custodian of the modern – or the traditions which comprise the modern, for traditions enshrine ways of seeing the world and, contrary to popular belief, are never static, mutating in response to deep-running, impersonal, evolutionary currents. In this sense the ‘visionary’ role of the poet, uniquely attuned to these mutations, is not metaphorical – he, or she, may become the instrument of change – change, through transformation of perception.

In his seminal Lettres du Voyant Rimbaud defined the visionary role of the poet of the future as ‘the supreme savant’, the initiator of universal transmutation, the harbinger of a new era in human evolution, un multiplicateur de progres.

 

The poet would define the amount of the unknown awakening in the universal soul in his own time. He would produce more than the formulation of his thought or the measurement of his march towards progress.

 

Poetry, like all art, should be founded on a special vision of the world, a different way of seeing, even a new reality principle. To a degree any artist will transgress accepted ideas of normality, if only by presenting familiar objects and situations in an unusual way. Poetry is bound to conflict with consensus opinion because the special vision will incorporate the negative as well as the positive; it will be an indictment as well as an affirmation. As Sartre once said ‘literature is, in essence, heresy’. When an artist – a poet, a novelist, a composer, or an artist in any medium – adopts a different way of seeing the world he or she has taken the first step towards total idiosyncratic vision attained through various stages of initiation. This ‘initiation’ or rite of passage will involve a state known as ‘the dark night of the soul’ in which enhanced awareness of ‘supernal’ perfection, the Ideal, or, to use Mallarme’s phrase, ‘the dream in its ideal nakedness’, leads to a similarly enhanced awareness of human, existential imperfection and a breakdown of the mystified and petrified realities of the everyday social world. For Baudelaire awareness of human or worldly imperfection was called spleen, for the alchemists it was the Nigredo or ‘blackening’. Celine used the term noircissement to identify the same state of mind – a night-world of horror, viciousness, pain and dread. It is this ‘core of horror’ which, since the eighteenth century, has given rise to a current of militant pessimism in modern art and literature, represented by the works of Sade , Baudelaire, Lautréamont, Nietzsche, Jarry, Artaud, Genet, Burroughs and Beckett, among others. Here one may think of that ‘nocturnal language’ of which Anais Nin once spoke regarding the writings of Anna Kavan – that lexicon of dreams and alienation.

It is of some historical significance that this nihilistic vision is closely linked to the emergence of new stylistic trends. Most of the authors and poets in this current of development contributed to a revolution in syntax and to the deconstruction of traditional conventions. Barriers between fact and fiction, between spoken and written language, between poetry and prose, have been dismantled in order to express a vision of transmutation – in order to effect a transmutation. This disruption of syntax, literary form, musical tonality and pictorial representation is symptomatic of the dissociation and psychic dislocation brought about by the first stage of initiation. For many it has become a metaphor of cultural collapse, of the rejection of the telos, of the atomization of the world – a break-down, not a break-through.

In addition to the ultra-nhilist vision there is a second way of seeing which, like the first, was derived mainly from Baudelaire: modernity.

Many of Baudelaire’s followers regarded themselves as more modern than their contemporaries, despite their frequent denunciations of modern beliefs. Although they loathed modern society, they admired modern technol­ogy because they regarded the artificial as superior to the natural. This was reinforced by an adherence to Naturalism, a concentration on the depiction of ‘slices’ of modern (urban) life, a challenge to the taboo of ‘morality’. This Naturalism complemented a need to cultivate intensity despite all social limitations: indulgence in perversity could be masked as Naturalistic research or ‘field work’. For Huysmans, the most powerful of the Naturalist writers, such methods offered some way of coming to terms with the otherwise banal exigencies of everyday life. His transition from Naturalism to Decadence, from Downstream to Against Nature, represented a need to augment dry Naturalistic description with some ‘deeper’ more acute vision, even though his subsequent transition from Decadence to Catholicism, from Against Nature to La Cathedrale, represented a retreat into a comfort zone of ‘faith’. The traumatic identity crisis caused by the arrival of modernity; the erosion of hitherto established cultural norms, the feelings of isolation, of powerlessness and meaningless self-estrangement, can often lead to a resurgence of, or relapse into, religion (the ‘flight into faith’). This is a circumstance which can apply to both the individual (such as Huysmans in this case) and to the collectivity as a whole.

In most of his critical writings from 1845 Baudelaire, inspired by Poe and Gautier, advocated the theory of ‘the heroism of modern life’. He argued that the artist must oppose the false charm of nostalgia by extracting the essence of beauty from the everyday world – to look for the ‘classic’ in the remote was an error. In her discussion of his aesthetics in her biography of Baudelaire Enid Starkie wrote: ‘Thus all forms of modernity were capable and worthy of becoming classic, and if they did not do so the fault lay with the artist and not with his age.’ The implication of this view, its implicit relativism, and the doubt it casts on orthodox definitions of the real, renders ‘the heroism of modern life’ a disruptive, perhaps magical, idea.

From the alchemical perspective, if the essent­ial beauty of the everyday is equated with the philosopher’s stone, Baudelaire’s theory corresponds to the ancient Hermetic doctrine that the ultimate substance must be distilled from a despised and neglected prima materia. Thus, Rimbaud and Verlaine, in London in 1873, sought the marvelous and the fantastic in immediate urban images, in ‘modern-Babylonian’ architecture, in The City, in station hotels, in the docks and great iron railway bridges.

This potent urban psycho-geography prefigures the Surrealist poet Aragon, who in 1924, wrote of those other places, ‘sites... not yet inhabited by a divinity’, but where a ‘profound religion is very gradually taking shape’ as though surreality precipitates ‘like acid-gnawed metal at the bottom of a glass’. For the Surrealists these privileged locations were in Paris: the Pont des Suicides at the Buttes-Chaumont, the Porte Saint-Denis, the Tour Saint-Jacques, or the vanished Passage de l’Opera. For us London may take the aspect of a modern Babylon, of a ‘concrete jungle’, redolent with psychic portents and hermetic symbols. Like St Giles High Street, Hungerford Bridge has always possessed features associated with Gateways to Otherness, where – to use Questing jargon – the ‘veil between this world and the next is particularly thin’.

As the filmmaker Georges Franju once remarked ‘Doesn’t this mean that poetry is in reality… and that it is less a question of expressing it than of not preventing it from showing itself?’ And so the poet becomes a shaman of multiple dimensions, creating the classic from the mundane, distilling the essential from the inessential, revealing ‘heroic’, interpenetrating parallel realities, or, to use Franju’s terminology, to allow the insolite (unusual) to emerge beside or in-between the interstices of the accepted Real.

But, in order to experience, or even portray the ‘heroism’ of modernity the poet must unlearn preconditioned responses and engage in a critical, initiatory process of dissociation. August Weidmann has shown how this process of ‘dissociation of sensibility’ was a key tenet of Romanticism and fundamental to modern conceptions of art. The Romantics however, tried to gain access to a ‘primordial vision’, whereas it can now be understood that deviation from conventional perceptual norms is, in fact, a way of transmuting the world around us.

In his struggle to apprehend Poe’s ‘supernal beauty’ filtering fitfully through profane sensory mechanisms, the poet uses his or her art to deconstruct, or dismantle, a preconditioned worldview.  Under­standing of ecstasy, or The Ideal, generates a blackening, or noircissement, as the horror of existence overwhelms the subject with disgust, inducing a hellish night-world experience. However, this dissociation brings a more fantastic, if not more positive, vision – the everyday world loses its narrow, constricted frame of limitation and becomes, thankfully, bizarre.

The artist-poet, through an aloofness or detachment, fleetingly attained in reaction to the disgust provoked by the Nigredo or unregenerate night-world state, perceives that, divorced from everyday functions or assoc­iations, ordinary situations, objects, even people, may take on a surreal perspective as words and images function as ‘so many springboards for the mind’ (Andre Breton). They acquire an ephemeral, but nevertheless quintessential, glamour, or enchant­ment of absolute Beauty. But, it will be seen that this ‘absolute’ Beauty, this ‘threshold aestheticism’, is a coniunctio oppositorum, a union of opposites in the Hermetic sense. It contains not only the essential ‘gold’ of supernal beauty, but also a fearful purity of supernal horror – it is not only Naturalistic, but anti-Naturalistic – it is not only soothing but a force which consumes with a unique intensity: it is ‘subversive of perception and understanding’. It is not only sublime; it is also of The Abyss. It is not some transcendental enlightenment, but more a much sought-for diversion from the banality of the mundane or even ‘the appearance of the image of liberation’ to cite Marcuse.

It partakes of both elegance and the grotesque. “If I am not grotesque,” said Aubrey Beardsley, that most perfect example of the aesthetic sensibility, “I am nothing”.

Beauty, said Baudelaire, is always bizarre.

A revised version of an article first published in Chaos International No 15 March 1993

Hermetic Art Gnostic Alchemy of The Imagination (1985) on The Alchemy Website

Illustration: Aethyr of Le Voyant, 1979