Cthulhu Fhtagn

1. Deviant Art

R'lyeh

"The nightmare corpse-city of R'lyeh that was built in measureless eons behind history by the vast, loathsome shapes that seeped down from the dark stars. There lay great Cthulhu and his hordes, hidden in green slimy vaults and sending out at last, after cycles incalculable, the thoughts that spread fear to the dreams of the sensitive and called imperiously to the faithful to come on a pilgrimage of liberation and restoration."

— H. P. Lovecraft, "The Call of Cthulhu"

"He talked of his dreams in a strangely poetic fashion; making me see with terrible vividness the damp Cyclopean city of slimy green stone—whose geometry, he oddly said , was all wrong—
...abnormal, non-euclidean, and loathsomely redolent of spheres and dimensions apart from ours."

One Nation Under Cthulhu



Cthulhu Rises




There is an extroadinary amount of fantasy art on the internet based in the Cthulhu mythos. Lovecraft trully created a completely new and original mythology, one that artists of all kinds continue to tap into. The above examples will give you a sense of what Lovecraft was all about but there's just somethign about non-euclidean geometry or beings that straddle dimensions and will send you bat-shit insane just by glimpsing them, that defies visual representation.



2. I Cthulhu

I Cthulhu
or What's A Tentacle-Faced Thing Like Me Doing In A Sunken City Like This (Latitude 47° 9' S, Longitude 126° 43' W)?

by Neil Gaiman


Neil Gaiman, famous as a comic book writer, a novelist and recently, a script writer, has written a homage to Lovecraft by way of a parody in which Cthulhu relates his memoirs to a human slave. It is quite funny and although it obviously takes license in its rendition of Cthulhu (as if the Great Old One would stoop to having a chat with a mere mortal), it is full of faithful references to the whole Cthulhu cannon. Gaiman even uses some of the language of Lovecraft in some of the dialog although overall, it is written in his own unique style. The character of Cthulu in this piece has basically a human psychology-something which, if I had less sense of humor, I might deem downright heretical. I always preferred Gaiman's comics to his prose (never did manage to finish one of his novels), that said, I really enjoyed it. I imagine though that a lot of the humor would be lost on non-believers.



3. Mountains of Madness

Selections from Mountains Of Madness. Directed and performed by Danielle de Picciotto, Alexander Hacke and The Tiger Lillies. The drawings and animation are by Danielle de Picciotto.

Each of the songs are based on a story by H. P. Lovecraft. I find the interpretations really interesting even if the music is not of a kind I would imagine when reading Lovecraft.

Some people might be put off by Martyn Jacques' falsetto vocals but I find them very haunting and dramatic. I thought The Tiger Lillies cabaret style an odd fit for Lovecraft when I first heard it but the music is meticulously constructed and humurous in a macabre way. Alexander Hacke reads Lovecraft brilliantly, his guttural narrations bringing the words to life and his electronic doom soundscapes are perfectly visceral in their brooding. The stage design and artwork by Danielle de Picciotto is again not what I associate with Lovecraft but it is very interesting work and suits the performance in its head-spinning strangeness.




4. Do You Know What's Wrong?

Now his souls an empty cup.
Like a vampire of the night,
Shies away from the daylight.
Does he know what's wrong?
So edward is eaten up,
By somethign so corrupt.
What is left?
A poisoned shell
And his own living hell.
Does he know what's wrong?
Oh Edward, you should've been
This castles king.
Now you're left in dungeons dim,
To mourn, mourn your sin.
Does he know what's wrong?
What is left is raw regret.
Like a man who's lost the bet.
Just a case of might have beens.
How you pay for your sin?
Do you know whats wrong?
So the thing under the doorstep
Is just your regret,
In your funeral shroud.
I will sing, sing it loud-
Do you know whats wrong?
And right?

The song is based on The Thing on the Doorstep. The story is narrated by a man, Daniel, whos best friend Edward Derby marries a woman named Asenath. Shortly thereafter Edward begins to suspect that his wife's late father, Ephraim is still alive. One night Edward tells Daniel that Asenath has been using his body by soul-transferrence and that he suspects that it is actually Ephraim inhabiting Asenath's body. Eventually Daniel gets Edward taken to Arkham Sanitarium. Daniel is then awoken in the night by a knock on the door. He opens it to find a dwarfen messenger who gives him a letter from Edward. In the letter Edward tells Daniel that he killed his wife and buried her in their cellar but that Asenath-Ephraim have taken over his body. The letter asks Daniel to go to the sanitarium and kill Edward and so be rid of Asenath-Ephraim. Daniel does so. The "thing on the doorstep" was Edward using his wifes putrefying corpse.

A very melancholy but powerful song. It is very evocative of regret and weakness-It was due to Edward's weakness of character that he fell victim to his wife's machinations. It is an oddly domestic story from a writer that usually carried his stories with overtones of cosmic horror. The song itself is fairly straightforward and makes a lot of sense once you know the story.


5. The Mountaintops

On the tallest of earth's peaks, live the gods of whom I speak,
In the wastes where no-one treads, except those who are dead,
Climb the mountaintops and have no fear.
Barzai The Wise dreams, seeks god before he dies,
He believes it to be a lie, to see them means that you must die,
Climb the mountaintops and have no fear.
So he climbed to the peaks, to see the god whom he did seek,
Though all around they cried: "Barzai is sure to die",
Climb the mountaintops and have no fear.
So strong is his belief, or is it just deceit,
So onward he does climb, to god and the divine,
Climb the mountaintops and have no fear.

The song is based on Lovecraft's short story The Other Gods. The story is set in a pre-historic civilization. The prophet Barzai the Wise and his apprentice Atal venture through the desert to Hatheg-Kla and climb the mountain in search of the Gods of Earth. Instead of the Gods of Earth however they find "other gods, the gods of the outer hells that guard the feeble gods of earth!" Atal abandons his master to his fate and Barzai is never seen again.

The song makes me think of Barzai's spiritual quest as a metaphor for the human pursuit of knowledge. Lovecraft saw potential dangers coming from the progress of science and technology. In particular he saw Einstein's Theory of Relativity as "throwing the world into chaos and making the cosmos a jest." (Wikipedia.) The refrain "climb the mountaintops and have no fear" is a mockery of the quest. In Barzai's case there certainly was cause for fear and it was the strength of his belief that led to his doom.

“Some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the light into the peace and safety of a new Dark Age."

—H.P. Lovecraft, “The Call of Cthulhu”

6. Unearthing

Preview of the new audio / visual project 'Unearthing' written and narrated by Alan Moore with images from Mitch Jenkins. Soundtrack from Crook&Flail, Mike Patton, Zack Hill (Hella), Justin Broadrick (Jesu / Godflesh) and Stuart Braithwaite (Mogwai). Box set including 3 x LP, 3 x CD, photo, transcript and poster only available to pre-order now from Lex Records.


Read the NYTimes review of Unearthing

Alan Moore was the creative mind behind influential comics such as Watchmen and V for Vendetta. Unearthing is a spoken word homage to Steve Moore, a british comic book writer and pioneer of fanzines who inspired Alan Moore (no relation) to enter the comics industry.

The prose is heady and thick, Alan's voice a seductively low vibrating drone set to transcendental post-rock riffs. It lulls the listener into a state of arousal akin to a psychedelic experience, transporting us to Shooters Hill in South London and into the UK comic book scene with its tales of "omnipotent losers". It has a kind of mythological resonance but instead of gods the writer is hero and the imagination his weapons.



7. Between the Stars

Short film, Netherlands, 1998.
Directed by Djie Han Thung

Based on Azathoth.

http://www.thung.nl/

Between the Stars seems to ape the style of David Lynch's early films Eraserhead and The Elephant Man with its bleak industrial environment filmed in black and white and the psychic queerness of the character. I've never been the biggest fan of Lynch and this short film seems a bit plodding for me. I did like though the idea of this guy sticking the board out of the window to lie staring up at the stars, or rather, at the space between stars. The scene in the book store shows that he has found something that is eating away at him, slowly but surely drawing him down into the abyss. He lies night after night, transfixed on the night sky, looking apparently for something, we don't know what. Then finally, the firmament gives way and he reaches for the void, finds the gap and vanishes into it. It is a neat little metaphor but it is ultimately too simple and unfulfilling for me.



8. At the Mountains of Madness

A faux movie trailer for Lovecraft's At the Mountains of Madness.

http://www.youtube.com/user/Propnomicon
http://propnomicon.blogspot.com/

I'm sure everyone is aware of the genre of fake movie trailers, produced by mashing up clips from different movies to create a new hybrid storyline. Usually these trailers are ironically hilarious. In this one the creator has attempted a more earnest depiction of what an adaptation of "At the Mountains of Madness" would actually be like. I'm not sure where the clips are from but the narrative depicted by their sequence is true to the novel as far as I can tell (not having read it).

As far as trailers go it is suspenseful and dramatic and gives an idea to the epic scale of the story. It shows the underground vaults into which the explorers descend but otherwise does not show anything of the "Elder Things" or the "Shoggoths" they find there. This might be a problem in a real film trailer as the viewer would be left wondering what the film is all about. Within the genre of faux movie trailers however I think it was a cool idea and well executed.

~Apparently Guillermo del Toro is set to direct a big budget 3D adaptation of At the Mountains of Madness. James Cameron has signed on to produce.



9. Ryleh

3D short film, France, 2003.
Director: Mikael Genachte-Le Bail, Gaetan Boutet.
Music: Cédric Genachte-Le Bail.

"An old fisherman brings a mysterious chest up in his nets. He brings it back home only to discover that it was best left at the bottom of the sea. A digitally animated short film inspired by the world of H.P. Lovecraft".

http://ryleh.free.fr/

The animation and music in this piece is very professional and the story captures many of the elements of the Cthulhu mythos-The dreaded sea and the desolation of forgotten shores; the fisherman's catch of an apocryphal book and the stone statue of the Cthulhu cultists (both familiar artifacts in the mythos) which lead him to fascination, bleeding into delerium; the arrival of the cyclopean city and the final liberation of death.

I think this film could be a good introduction for anyone unfamiliar with Lovecraft. Ultimately however the simplicity of the story and the unoriginality of it left me flat. There just wasn't enough of a story and it just felt like a recombining of obvious themes from many of Lovecraft's works. I didn't have enough of a feel for the character or for the descent into madness that must surely occur on the road of any worthy pilgrim slumping his way to R'lyeh. And oh yeah, I just don't think being french is any excuse for misspelling the name of His Unholiness' throne.



10. A Lovecraft Dream

Animated short film, Italy, 2008.
Written & Directed by Michele Botticelli
Music and drawings by Leonardo manna

"A short movie based on the real H.P.Lovecraft character and his nightmares."

http://thetillinghast.altervista.org/

The stochastic nature of the animation and the music in this film does a great job of evoking the sense of dread and the looming threat of madness in the clutches of feverish dreams of contact with abominable entities from unknown spaces. The queer motion of things and the flash cuts add a queesy feeling of sea sickness making you feel how the dreamer is tossed about on the ineffable seas of infinity. The sketchy black and white artwork works because it plays on the sketchiness of the imagery with its demented forms that can only, even vaguely be captured by falling into metaphor. It provides us a view into the authors state of mind as he is assailed by nightmare visions from which he wakes to scrawl out "The Call of Cthulhu" in his note book. To know these beings is to see down into the cracks in a seemingly ordered universe and glimpse the chaos that threatens to crush in upon our naive reality.