Thursday, December 17, 2015

Erich Wolfgang Korngold - Kings Row (1941): Suite of 1968..Vampire Jonathon's Favorite... 12/16/15



The vampire, Jonathon, speaks~~~

My first observation concerns not vampires, or night-folk, but the cinema. I see what they say. I watch television and go to the movies too. In fact, as a soul born to an elemental, simple time, movies are like magic to me. They are dreams made manifest. No, they are not 'like' magic. They ARE magic. I saw The Thief Of Baghdad... the silent Douglas Fairbanks version. And did they 'get' life in that culture right? No, not if you count every little detail. But to those not miserly in a cultural sense it beams with truth. I know. My Al-Andaluz homeland was like that. I can smell the almond trees and taste the marzipan. Even now after one thousand years as a life-eater, I can feel those things. I can hear the finger cymbals and castanets and the tinkling fountains of a hundred courtyards.

But I digress.....

I saw STAR WARS ... You can click on it if you like. I saw the first 'dream' in nineteen seventy seven. I heard the music and it took me back thirty seven years to a vast movie palace on Market Street... back to a warm, summer night... a time when artificially cooled air was only found in such places. I went in to escape the heat. And I heard a score that's been embroidered into the very fibers of my heart since then. It's my music. I listen to it all the time. It represents life and struggling and triumph. Listen to it. You'll see. It's haunting.

They say the basic plot points, not to mention the score, actually influenced STAR WARS.... three friends.... two young men and a special young woman confront evil and power in a closed 'society.'... A bit like Luke and Han and Leyah. You don't need space craft to reach the stars.

So see the new Space Opera. Absorb STAR WARS. Enjoy... But if you're just a little bit curious, look up an earlier film. Look up KINGS ROW on You Tube. Listen to the various 'takes' on the music. I think the whole film is up there too.... Black and white. Beautifully shot.... I have a copy here at the town house. I listen to it on cold, winter nights... all snug under two afghans... dim light from a small lamp... and there on the screen, the silvery perfection of long ago. Imagery means a lot to a vampire. Can you visualize the films we'd have if they could record my memories? Remember, I sat in the Globe Theater... two rows from Good Queen Bess to be exact. I heard bards sing in Old Provencal and American Indian poets in noble long houses not far from the outskirts of baby Philadelphia. How fast the city rose. Penn brought the blue print... the first planned city since Roman times... not counting the vast metropolises of MesoAmerica.  All of brick it was. London had just burned and it's New World offspring never did. I was there. They had fire eaters and sword swallowers on Head House Square... street performers of every type... faces whitened... eyes smudged with kohl... red lips .... yellow teeth.... Please forgive me. I could not resist. Vampires notice teeth and until recently, you mortals really had some specimens.

Look, I talk about all this to distract myself. Soon I'll leave here, enter a black, chauffeur driven car ( the driver a 'familiar,' naturally) go to a little street in the Northern Liberties and park 'round the corner from a small apartment house. Then I'll sublimate up to the third floor bedroom of a young man... a self-centered, more or less uncaring, evil young man, (you met him a few nights ago) scoop him up, blankets and all (vampire breath is a soporific... he'll sleep through the whole thing)... and sublimate back down to the waiting car. My 'aura' is more than adequate to carry him along with me.

We'll drive in through a little known gate. Laurel Hill Cemetery is large, a medieval fiefdom in its own right. Then wind our way to a forgotten quarter of old, moldering, family crypts. Most haven't been opened since Victoria's son was on the throne ... sealed time capsules of physical corruption and unending darkness. That's where he'll wake up. The young man, I mean. And he'll have no idea where he is, or how he got there.... alone amidst the horror of sharp, shattered bones and desiccated, splintery coffins. In former times they heaved them in like cordwood.

Imagine waking up on a razor sharp bed of ancient, broken bones. Might as well be shattered glass... wearing your underwear, wrapped in your blankets..... No, not wrapped in your blankets. I'm not going to let him keep his blankets. That would be too comforting. He'd just curl up in a cocoon and die. People do that. They just 'stop.' They curl up in one place and don't eat and don't drink. They just breath and think, or simply entertain thoughts, till they die.

Well, I don't want him to die. I'll wait till he sleeps. Maybe not the first time he drifts off. Maybe the second. Maybe the third. Sometimes I can read minds. I can feel every jot and tittle. Even when I can't, I feel the high points. I'll know. I'll wait till he sleeps. When he does sleep it'll be from pure exhaustion. I don't think he's the curl up and die type. He'll fight. He'll search. He'll feel through the darkness. He'll bleed. He'll cry. Not that it will do him any good. Then I'll sublimate in, take him out and return him to his bed. If he's picked up an infection or two, a few drops of my blood will fix that. He'll wake up with a note, written on a scrap of ancient parchment, on the side table listing his sins... the bone dust of the grave still upon him. A Scrooge for our time.

I am a ghost. Not really, but I can be. Now permit me to end this conversation. I must prepare for tonight's performance... an invisible role, but a pivotal one none the less.

Be careful what sees you while you sleep... Be careful who watches in the dark...

None are safe....

Every 'thing' is everywhere...

But you who browse the paranormal archives already know that.

<more next time>
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