fear – Yip Abides

Help! I’m a Log!

Thank you Frank Zappa, wherever you are.

I wonder if they’re freaking out in Rogers Park?

Photo / Graphic by Roman.

I actually prefer the cover done by the West Coast Pop Art Experimental Band:

… barks at radiators and refrigerators
and anything audible that stops and starts
as it can’t hurt to be alert:
the world is so huge and overwhelming
with the universal stench of humans
and a tiny dog at home is so very alone,
even having to pee where other dogs will
never smell.

Stair Noir

No exit and no return
From these imprisoning shadows.
A rustling creak creeps above
From a dread dimly seen
Thrills a chill of loosened bowels.
You really don’t want to know…

–Yip

Photo by Roman.

The Spider’s Loophole

“The large print giveth and the small print taketh away.”

Photo by Roman

for all those foolish heroes inclined to take it.

“Six Guys”

When I encountered this video from animator Ripley Howarth, I was convinced that I had seen it before yet if so it could not have been the entire video as this left me happily fulfilled. Who could imagine this effect from something firmly within the horror genre? But Howarth squared my circle.

The other thing Six Guys reminded me of was the 1965 film by Polish Director Wojciech Has, The Saragossa Manuscript. Well… they do have in common a magically surreal journey as a central part of the storytelling, but Six Guys is very much a horror movie.

Day of the Triffids…

…was the title of a 1951 post apocalyptic novel by John Wyndham (and later a movie) that could easily be either science fiction or horror; think I Am Legend by Richard Matheson but scratch the zombies and add predatory homicidal plants that relentlessly stalk their suddenly blinded victims. The plants, in my imagination, frequently looked something like this:

. But even if I could see it, could I tell if it were dead or just waiting…?

Vapours

“Ghost Dogs”

You might think of this video from Joe Cappa as a dog’s version of the movie Get Out… or maybe not. It doesn’t try to make any larger commentary. It just takes the horror genre and plays with it:

“A rescue pup discovers its new home is haunted by the family’s deceased pets in this mind-bending horror.”

“Zeppelins”

April is National Poetry Month, and for the occasion Frank Hudson’s Parlando Project has been producing a series of “Lyric Videos” based on audio recordings of the poems done previously. The month is not even half over, but (so far) Hudson’s performance of “Zeppelins” by F.S. Flint is my favorite, though “Dunbar” is not far behind.

And of course, the poem is also so very appropriate to what is once again happening in Europe these days, not to mention elsewhere in the world none of which I’m not going to mention as I’m sure to shamefully leave somewhere or two off the list…

The term “lyric video” is also new to me though the practice is… not new. As a concept, though, it wraps up and gathers together poetry as oral interpretation and poetry as literature. As a bonus, one can throw in ancillary aspects like music, musicality, concrete poetry just to name-drop a few. Is pretty cool concept, methinks.

The Scream