“…too frightened…to watch would be to understand the play isn’t being staged for us. To learn we simply do not matter to the players at all.” – Mr. Suydam, ‘The Ballad of Black Tom’
A lot is made of whether you can separate art and artist. This is supposed to be like a three-sentence opening paragraph, so I’m not going to weigh in on the debate except to say I can’t separate H.P. Lovecraft and his racism. Which is why one of my favorite mini-genres is “Lovecraftian Horror That Is Actively Anti-Racist.” See, for example: Country, Lovecraft.
What I’ve Been Reading This Week:
If you love cosmic horror and hate cops, do I have a novel for you! Recommended to me by my dear friend Chloe N. Clark, The Ballad of Black Tom by Victor LaValle is a zippy short novel set in 1920s Harlem and what the novel calls “rural Brooklyn,” which is incredible to consider. Charles Thomas Tester is a young Black man trying to hustle a dollar and take care of his ailing father when he’s approached by a older white man who calls guitars “git-fiddles” to show he’s down and also has knowledge of some ancient powerful being he refers to as “The Sleeping King,” who lives at the bottom of the ocean. Charles Thomas Tester knows better than to trust an old white man, but life isn’t always as simple as not doing things when you know better.
Some CW: there’s a police murder in this book. This blog is on the record for enjoying the feeling of cosmic insignificance, but there’s another side of that coin. Being cosmically insignificant does not mean life has no meaning; being cosmically insignificant does not mean we abdicate our social responsibility to each other. Having humanity demands struggle for a better world. We all have chores to do to when it comes to harm reduction and making sure the time we spend alive on this rock is less misery-filled than it could be. The universe doesn’t care about us, so we have to care about each other. If I can indulge a long pull quote, as Charles Thomas Tester surveys the scene after police have murdered a Black man in his sleep:
The breathless terror with which the old man spoke of the Sleeping King. A fear of cosmic indifference suddenly seemed comical, or downright naive. Tester looked back to Malone and Mr. Howard. Beyond them he saw the police forces at the barricades as they muscled the crowd of Negroes back; he saw the decaying facade of his tenement with new eyes; he saw the patrol cars parked in the middle of the road like three great black hounds waiting to pounce on all these gathered sheep. What was indifference compared to malice?
I have to imagine LaValle’s writing at least a bit to Lovecraft here (the book is dedicated to Lovecraft, “with all my conflicted feelings”). My own reading of ol’ H.P. is limited to a few stories here and there and scrolling the wiki because who doesn’t love an intricate mythos based mostly on squid-like sea monsters. What that pasty ancient creep does well is describe the brain-breaking that happens around seeing something so foreign and terrifying that the subject is immediately, intimately aware of their own powerlessness. This could be a squid monster in the south pole, or existing in the present tense of a police cover-up. Let’s pivot and talk a little about the former.
LINKS!
Sabrina Imbler at Defector on a big ol’ hole in the ocean absolutely chalk-full of Viperfishes, who are failing to cannibalize each other and potentially adapting to climate change.
Here’s how to feed a Giant Pacific Octopus. My four-year-old and I were playing with a stuffed octopus the other day (octopi are notorious tickle monsters) and he asked how the octopus eats. I pulled up this video, and he made it one minute—totally fine with tentacles creeping up out of the water and tugging the crab out of the guy’s hands, not fine with charts and diagrams. I for one am jealous of the octopus’s ability to pick crabs clean.
Sloths used to swim in the sea, which is fitting, given that the sea is sometimes described as “life in slow motion.”
It’s pretty well-known that Jaws author Peter Benchley became a major advocate for shark conservation after the film’s release, but it’s one of those things that’s worth repeating every now and again. Kind of a cautionary tale about what happens to you work when it’s out in the world? Idk, I don’t think Benchley should regret Jaws, especially since he’s been doing penance for it since. Here’s shark scientist David Ebert on how Jaws inspired him to do shark science.
I love kayaking. I love the ocean. I would really love it if wherever I was planning on kayaking was not a known whale hangout before I paddle into the unforgiving and hostile arms of Poseidon.
Don’t forget to pre-order Chloe’s new book of short stories, Patterns of Orbit.
Finally, Sabrina Imbler again, with a plea I think we can all understand and relate to: “Let Me Stick My Hand Inside The Mysterious Holes On The Seafloor”
Sorry you got an email,
Chris