SLIT WRISTS & AMBER WAVES

Part I: The Slit Wrists

I am a writer, principally and with few principles. On occasions, such as now, I enjoy dabbling in music, as well as in the visual arts. ("And isn’t writing a visual art?" I now ask myself.) This solo project was especially enjoyable and easy to create, because I had only myself to contend with – other than the evil Numina who provided the art for this creation (but she was a delight to work with also). The hard part was rejecting tracks I considered too catchy and retaining tracks that I personally liked even though I knew they would have an extremely limited commercial appeal – maybe nearly none. I expect this music will be ignored. Those critics who do not ignore it will write things such as "inane drivel" or "a ponderous, artsy waste of time" or "Ken Gage’s song Revenge of the Tortured Angels should have been called Revenge of the Tortured Eardrums." (And those critics are free, by the way, to lift some of these suggestions of mine.) Anyway, my point is that a lot of these songs are slow pieces of ambience that have surprises for the patient or careful listener; they were meant that way. This is the type of music I’ve been toying around with since 1987, when I escaped that popular institution of social conditioning and behavior modification called high school. This is an inner self, my Terebinth and Sacred Grove. It’s music by which to betray lovers. Music for worshipping false idols. Secret music. Are you one of those individuals who are suspicious about social restraints, who are too aware of the agents of authority and control that seem invisible to other people? On this Compact Disc is a world that has forgotten themes about faith, divine intervention, miraculous births and the struggles for true love. Instead, here are their oblique angles and often hideous counterparts – ochroid, perhaps, but real and obtainable. I am offering themes of dissonant time, outer spatial isolation, false love, inner hells, sadomasochism, the tragedy of being and the suicidal tragedy of not being – in short, the things that entertain me. And who (or what) should entertain an entertainer?

Let us pray:

One devil, two pentagrams, three F’s, four P’s…

Suicide for the masses, please.

Marked, unmarked and absent graves;

Slit wrists and amber waves.

When christ and satan are finally merged,

When the hyperconscious creature leads,

Let me be damned to Hell for my words

And damned to Heaven for my deeds.

As some of you already know, I sing ("Oh, that was singing?" a disembodied voice asked) in the gothic industrial-metal band C9C (Church of the 9 Candles) when I am not writing surreal novels or rendering pictures of scantily-clad vixens threatened by unearthly fiends. It is strange to report that this CD and my first one, Psychic Awakenings, have been released before C9C’s debut full-length album. I chalk it up to working with non-workers. This music has been released at sm/all costs because I’ve entrusted it to myself – and, of course, if you can’t trust yourself….

The artist Amanda Langston – best known for her ghoulish gallery of wide-awake nightmares – provided not only visual inspiration for this recording, but nearly all of the art you see adorning this CD, inside and out. Her images are appropriate reminders that the next time we sleep may be forever.

Along with lyrics, I am providing in these notes a narration for every song so that you may follow along on this suicide ride. The narration might detail facts about a particular recording – or it might just be an imaginative addition. Keep your wrists within view and inside the car at all times while we are moving – whizzing past dangerous notions that can only get you if you reach out to them. You might actually hear the hiss of demons on the journey – or is that only the limitation of an inferior source tape? One thing is certain: this music is absurdist – funny as a funeral! It is not normal music for normal people. You do, by the way, have a sharp razor now, don’t you?

We are rolling. Here come the explanatory dilations – a midrash of shit, like the Book of Matthew to the Book of Mark or the Book of Lucifer to the Book of Satan – expansions of earlier tales, replete with their temptations of greed, fame and earthly power. The great heteroglossal, homocentric monomyth: the hero must leave, experience a battering from life and achieve some objective before returning. Myth is the archetypal structure. Come Pazuza!

Part II: The Amber Waves

DESPERATE WOMEN: I am certain there are occupational hazards to being a woman that only women can properly and dolefully recount. The lyrics to this one were inspired by a friend who always seemed to find herself in desultory vagrancy by her own hand and general misdirections. She never wants what she has and, then, trades it all in for something less that she is soon willing to exchange for nearly nothing; rinse, repeat. From her, I generalized my Desperate Women as the type who do what they must to get by in their own way – or else do what they can to end it all! A relaxing hot bath and a quick, warm slice of the razor – let the world go black. They are the personification of pure want – and want everything without consequence. In fact, their wants change like the wind. But want alone is a fleeting substance, and it makes a poor foundation for any meaningful life. It must be anchored to plan and purpose.

This song has a frail structure, a life of chaos sprinkled with the semblance of order. It appears first on the CD because it was the first time I played the guitar as a non-percussion instrument; I am not a guitarist.

And here we follow the dreams and hopes of desperate women past black cats and dark alleys…to a man.

Listen, listen. This is a crazy story

About a desperate woman.

Desperate women do desperate things –

THE STAR CALL: A somewhat catchy piece of keyboarding I originally did free hand. But, as you can hear here, I have altered it with digitally mixed effects. (For digitally mixed results, I suppose.) I added some echo (always adding echo!) and fuzzy pink satan distortion. The title comes from a short story I wrote (under the influence of H.P. Lovecraft) – my first horror story. No, my first was called "The Pit." So "The Star Call" must be my second story, or maybe third. Anyway, it’s the oldest one I still have.

I’ll eventually add a link to that story, when I find the damn thing.

I SUPPOSE (DARK SUBCONSCIOUS): This track was rejected twice (by me) from the final cuts of my other CDs – once from Psychic Awakenings and once from Church of the 9 Candles. But I liked its noisy weirdness too much to keep it confined to obscurity evermore. Vincent Price likes it also, or so the Devil tells me.

He’s reading a book now. I can see the title clearly: Fright Effects Induced by Injection of Lysergic Acid LSD25: A Preliminary Report. The clock tolls. One o’clock in the morning, and beautiful people stand about in the dark…on sidewalks, love in bloom and awash in the green-white glare of street lights.

He gets his gun from a drawer, turns out the light, awaits. She enters. And the psychological games begin. The sole object? To capture fear in its pure form – at least 15 micromilligrams of it. Let the terror begin. Even I sometimes feel that I am impersonating the dark subconscious of the whole human race.

(*Vincent Price appears courtesy of The Tingler and Masque of the Red Death.)

REVENGE OF THE TORTURED ANGELS: Here we descend for a glimpse of eternal damnation. Hot stuff, too. And isn’t everybody always talking about it?! But is it really Hell or just a bad acid trip? I find myself crooning through the vaporous, burning lake and bubbling, cavernous muck: "Revenge of the Tortured Angels! Revenge of the Tortured Mind!"

Should you speak of the Devil and His kind, merely remember to "listen to what you say," because they "holed the time away" – a thousand years at least. And when they are ready, they shall have their revenge and unleash Hell’s Greatest Fury.

(* This track appeared in a slightly different form on C9C’s ultra-limited CD, Brain Candy for the Social Sophisticate. My vocals are quadrupled.)

SUBMERGED 48 HOURS: While I still had magic coursing through my blood, I wanted to create a strange musical track that combined the frenetic modern world beat with a harmonic loop of slowness – like a water-logged corpse rushing through grand, foaming rapids. (I also think it’d be fun to see rain on the sun!) When I listen to this track, I swear I can almost hear the ghost of Anton Szandor LaVey speaking infernal wisdom from beyond….

IN THE CHAMBERS OF DE SADE (The Tormented Techno-Discordian Mix): This "song" proves that Marilyn Chambers, sound effects and a little loopy keyboarding can go a very long way. And why not? Marilyn Chambers was promoting sadomasochism in popular porno films of the 1970s, such as her screen classic Insatiable and its not-too-classic sequel, Insatiable II. While making this music I watched plenty of porno. I also watched the Angel of Darkness cartoons from Japan, along with other hentai. I don’t think there are enough songs inspired by DeSade, either, so this is a small remedy and tribute. This track was mixed completely in a digital format – and loudly as well. I also like the discordant beating drums that come in throughout this piece. So if you’re a big dance freak, well…you probable won’t appreciate the chaos casually infused here and there.

ULALUME 1989: This one had to be released, now – 150 years after the Master of Horror Literature wrote it; Edgar Allan Poe’s "Ulalume" ought to be as well known as "The Raven," but the poem is sadly neglected. I recorded this in Biloxi, Mississippi, with guitarist Roy Ballard back in October of 1989. (In 1989, the "song" was only 140 years old; we had to wait!) The nice thing about Mr. Poe’s work is that there is very little to adapt or interpret – his poems seem like songs from the start. Mr. Poe would probably be pleased with this depressing rendition of his melancholia.

The skies they were ashen and sober;

The leaves they were crisped and sere -

The leaves they were withering and sere;

It was night in the lonesome October

Of my most immemorial year;

It was hard by the dim lake of Auber,

In the misty mid region of Weir -

It was down by the dank tarn of Auber,

In the ghoul-haunted woodland of Weir.

Here once, through an alley Titanic,

Of cypress, I roamed with my Soul -

Of cypress, with Psyche, my Soul.

There were days when my heart was volcanic

As the scoriac rivers that roll -

As the lavas that restlessly roll

Their sulphurous currents down Yaanek

In the ultimate climes of the pole -

That groan as they roll down Mount Yaanek

In the realms of the boreal pole.

Our talk had been serious and sober,

But our thoughts they were palsied and sere -

Our memories were treacherous and sere -

For we knew not the month was October,

And we marked not the night of the year -

(Ah, night of all nights in the year!)

We noted not the dim lake of Auber -

(Though once we had journeyed down here) -

Remembered not the dank tarn of Auber,

Nor the ghoul-haunted woodland of Weir.

And now, as the night was senescent,

And star-dials pointed to morn -

As the star-dials hinted of morn -

At the end of our path a liquescent

And nebulous lustre was born,

Out of which a miraculous crescent

Arose with a duplicate horn -

Astarte's bediamonded crescent

Distinct with its duplicate horn.

And I said - 'She is warmer than Dian:

She rolls through an ether of sighs -

She revels in a region of sighs:

She has seen that the tears are not dry on

These cheeks, where the worm never dies,

And has come past the stars of the Lion,

To point us the path to the skies -

To the Lethean peace of the skies -

Come up, in despite of the Lion,

To shine on us with her bright eyes -

Come up through the lair of the Lion,

With love in her luminous eyes."'

But Psyche, uplifting her finger,

Said - 'adly this star I mistrust -

Her pallor I strangely mistrust:-

Oh, hasten! - oh, let us not linger!

Oh, fly! - let us fly! - for we must.'

In terror she spoke, letting sink her

Wings until they trailed in the dust -

In agony sobbed, letting sink her

Plumes till they trailed in the dust -

Till they sorrowfully trailed in the dust.

I replied - 'This is nothing but dreaming:

Let us on by this tremulous light!

Let us bathe in this crystalline light!

Its Sybilic splendor is beaming

With Hope and in Beauty to-night:-

See! - it flickers up the sky through the night!

Ah, we safely may trust to its gleaming,

And be sure it will lead us aright -

We safely may trust to a gleaming

That cannot but guide us aright,

Since it flickers up to Heaven through the night.'

Thus I pacified Psyche and kissed her,

And tempted her out of her gloom -

And conquered her scruples and gloom;

And we passed to the end of the vista,

But were stopped by the door of a tomb -

By the door of a legended tomb;

And I said - 'What is written, sweet sister,

On the door of this legended tomb?'

She replied - 'Ulalume - Ulalume -

'Tis the vault of thy lost Ulalume!'

Then my heart it grew ashen and sober

As the leaves that were crisped and sere -

As the leaves that were withering and sere,

And I cried - 'It was surely October

On this very night of last year

That I journeyed - I journeyed down here -

That I brought a dread burden down here -

On this night of all nights in the year,

Ah, what demon has tempted me here?

Well I know, now, this dim lake of Auber -

This misty mid region of Weir -

Well I know, now, this dank tarn of Auber,

This ghoul-haunted woodland of Weir.'

(* "Ulalume" reprinted with Poe’s Ghost’s permission.)

ORBITTING STAR CALL REPEATER: Sometimes I make music that reminds me so much of outer space (or science fiction) that I can’t help but give the piece a proper Space Opera name. Or this song could be the real deal: a simple psychosonic mind control pattern broadcast subliminally to earthlings to weaken their resistance to the domination of an alien master race.

MYSTERIES OF THE SERPENT PRINCE: This track was inspired by the secret order of Turkish occultism; it was also influenced by my six-month stay near Adana, Turkey. The riff-raff say, "Hello. Hello. Hello." At this moment you are awake. A female mortician says, "Go to your room and finish your dream; I didn’t mean to interrupt your dream…."

The Serpent Prince intones, "Oo-oo-ah, oo-oo-ah…."

The Mysterious Woman – a lover perhaps – says in desperation, "I loved you, I loved you! Even when you lost money…I saved some…for us…I loved you…I needed to marry someone."

And the Poet, still haunted by Ordokra, orates:

I have no paper, have no lead,

So I write letters in my head.

I write myself what I should do;

I think these letters through and through.

I sit in darkness, on a chair,

And watch a mirror watch me stare.

The grinning mask is unaware

How deep I peep to see who’s there.

I’m writing letters all the time

And corresponding in my mind.

I’m writing letters in my head –

The Poet concludes, "Tahn-tahn-tahn-sate, tahn-sate-tahn…."

(* The poem "Letters" was originally published in Treasured Poems of America: Fall 1993. ISBN 0-923242-27-9)

PATH OF THE SPIRITUAL SUICIDE DANCE: Mystics employ the word "spiritual" whenever they don’t want to solidly nail down a reality concept or look too closely at their empty moral codes/religions. This track is not only for them, but everyone who says, "Ken, why don’t you use drums?" I do use drums – sparingly. But this piece is drum-heavy hypnosis. Sleep, my pretties….

WOLTHAM THEATRE/WAYWARD WIZARD: Ladies and Gentlemen, slaves and masters, children of the Beast, welcome to the Woltham Theatre! I’m Ken Gage. Tonight I want to say how odd it is – some might say pathetic! – that a man who is so very tired of being alive can instantly find himself clinging to that same life that he so earlier detested. All it takes is the proper circumstance to demonstrate the truth of it. One bitter black moment he has renounced his humanity and all earthly existence. And the next…. But the next? What would it take to make your life worth living? I ask you. Thank you and good night."

The Wizards exit to music.

A DIRT NAP: The kind you take when you plant a coffin and grow a tombstone.

DREAM-LANDS: If Edgar Allan Poe and Vinnie P are a touch out of sorts over my rendition of this 1844 poem, I completely understand and apologize in advance. I blame it on drugs and sleep deprivation.

By a route obscure and lonely,

Haunted by ill angels only,

Where an Eidolon, named NIGHT,

On a black throne reigns upright,

I have reached these lands but newly

From an ultimate dim Thule-

From a wild clime that lieth, sublime,

Out of SPACE- out of TIME.

Bottomless vales and boundless floods,

And chasms, and caves, and Titan woods,

With forms that no man can discover

For the tears that drip all over;

Mountains toppling evermore

Into seas without a shore;

Seas that restlessly aspire,

Surging, unto skies of fire;

Lakes that endlessly outspread

Their lone waters- lone and dead,-

Their still waters- still and chilly

With the snows of the lolling lily.

By the lakes that thus outspread

Their lone waters, lone and dead,-

Their sad waters, sad and chilly

With the snows of the lolling lily,-

By the mountains- near the river

Murmuring lowly, murmuring ever,-

By the grey woods,- by the swamp

Where the toad and the newt encamp-

By the dismal tarns and pools

Where dwell the Ghouls,-

By each spot the most unholy-

In each nook most melancholy-

There the traveller meets aghast

Sheeted Memories of the Past-

Shrouded forms that start and sigh

As they pass the wanderer by-

White-robed forms of friends long given,

In agony, to the Earth- and Heaven.

For the heart whose woes are legion

'Tis a peaceful, soothing region-

For the spirit that walks in shadow

'Tis- oh, 'tis an Eldorado!

But the traveller, travelling through it,

May not- dare not openly view it!

Never its mysteries are exposed

To the weak human eye unclosed;

So wills its King, who hath forbid

The uplifting of the fringed lid;

And thus the sad Soul that here passes

Beholds it but through darkened glasses.

By a route obscure and lonely,

Haunted by ill angels only,

Where an Eidolon, named NIGHT,

On a black throne reigns upright,

I have wandered home but newly

From this ultimate dim Thule.

(* "Dream-Lands" reprinted, of course, with Poe’s Ghost’s permission.)

RETURN TO THE STARS: Probably resultant of more drugs and sleep deprivation.

SHORT TIME/ECHOES OF THE PAST

There comes a time when time shall carry you no further

On your way, when you must travel not;

You must stay.

For must come your stop when the horsemen slow,

Although you signal the coach to go and carry onward.

None would deny the pleasure of the ride.

Even so, the stride shall slow

No matter where your trip began.

(No doubt your route was green and grand!)

And no matter where you come,

Earth remains so sweet and ready

To embrace you whole, always.

Regardless of the choosing,

Some destiny must unavoidably arrive,

If just to mark your departure --

It survives that all who embark on this venture

Shall meet the journey's end and, sadly, must.

Yes, your stop has come; the horsemen slow.

"Step out!" said they and let you know:

"When true will must be rejected,

When, too, a plot must be selected

And when you the coldest hour comes to court,

Well recount the gracious past, so grand, so swift;

And hope dear Death does bear to you a black and joyful gift.

But no matter what is its sort, well recount

How grand and sure was life! -- albeit short."

(*"Short Time" originally appeared in Ken Gage’s RED; this is the unrevised version – a.k.a. version #1.)

Details about ECHOES OF THE PAST can be obtained by writing or e-mailing.

that inspired or supported this effort

including:

and anyone I forgot to mention….