When I am gone, I want you to do this:

When I am gone, I want you to do this:
Hold a memorial where all the words are mine
The epitaph a thing I wrote myself
And demand that all the guests wear black
And weep, and bow their heads,
And miss me, and miss me, for I am gone.

When I am gone, I want you to do this:
Tape an inexpensive white bouquet
To a lamp post by a dual carriageway
And leave it until the flowers have wilted
And replace it only then, and when you pass
Think of me, for I am gone.

When I am gone, I want you to do this :
Erect a statue of me in a public place
And write upon the pedestal the ways I changed the world
So that in a thousand years they'll find it in the ruins
And add me as a footnote in their history,
Make me part of history, for I am gone.

When I am gone, I want you to do this :
Carry a cold, hard weight beneath your chest
And feel a terrible affront, a deep offence
When the people that you meet might not
Be grieving for me also, and regret
You never got to say the things you meant to say
And you will never get to say you're sorry.
For I am gone forever. I am gone.

On a Thousand Walls – Guest Post: Quatermass and the Pit (1958/9)

OK, this is epic, this. It's the single most extended piece of criticism yet to appear on this blog, and it's not by me, it comes from my friend and frequent co-conspirator Jon Dear. You may know Jon from the credits of Perplexed Music, the wall of the BFI and the fine cultural criticism he writes at Views From a Hill. Jon also very kindly contributed four entries to my book We Don't Go Back: A Watcher's Guide to Folk Horror, which you can totally buy now for Kindle and which, if the Universal Forces (and also Amazon) are kind, should be available in inch-thick print by the end of August. 

Jon's piece on Quatermass and the Pit fortuitously comes at a time when for reasons I don't fully understand, the BBC have seen fit to put the whole thing up on iPlayer so if you're in this United Kingdom that we still (Brexit willing) have here, you can watch along. Jon worked like a demon on this piece, and it shows. Jon's done me proud here. Over to Jon.

We Don't Go Back: A Watcher's Guide to Folk Horror – out this weekend

So I finally managed to get the digital files for We Don't Go Back: A Watcher's Guide to Folk Horror to the Kickstarter backers, which is only the first stage of fulfilment, because there's the print files to sort out, and the sequel books, On a Thousand Walls and Cult Cinema, in both digital and print, so this is only stage one of six. But it means that We Don't Go Back will go to Amazon Kindle this weekend. But for the time being, here are some pages from this 440 page, 150,000 word, inch thick monster to whet your appetite. Click to zoom in.

Edit: it's live. Buy it here. 

We Don't Go Back #86: Bagpuss (1974)

I had to eventually.

The Question in Bodies #16: The Cell (2000)

I went to see The Cell in the cinema on its initial release. At the time, I really wanted to see what a horror film directed by the bloke who directed the video for “Losing My Religion” looked like.

As it turns out, it looks a lot like the video for “Losing My Religion”, only much longer and with a somewhat higher number of dismembered horses.

Deities and Demigods

You might catch your breath at the idea,
Grasp the boat’s side, knuckles not as hard nor as pale as this
Wall of sea-borne scales
Glimmering in this cold, crystalline mist.
Your stomach might harden
At the premonition of hell
In the smell of sulphur and charred meat,
In the sight of bobbing, half-finished meals:
Lost men, brave men, men like you.
The dawn might darken
In the opening of this single slitted eye,
Wider than your height
And you might rise to your feet,
Barely trusting the creaking unsteady wood,
Raise your ancestral spear,
Fear that the moon-bright blade
Will not be good
Enough
To end the serpent that girdles the earth:

But since you know its hit point total,
You kill it instead and steal its stuff.

The Question in Bodies #15: Upstream Colour (2013)

(Edit August 2020: This piece was obviously written long before the allegations of horrendous abuses perpetrated by Shane Carruth against his co-star and former romantic partner Amy Seimetz came out, and indeed long before Carruth posted a picture on Twitter of an Upstream Color soundtrack album next to the restraining order Seimetz served on him, which, however you frame that, can be in no way excused. Eventually I'll revise this post. But for the time being, just hold the thought that you don't treat the people who make things you love like saints.)  

As you get older (and I mean, as you get to my age), your favourites often become static. Your lists of things that you love, whether conscious or not, cease to allow new entries, and fewer things fall away. I suppose this isn't really as dangerous or depressing as it seems. It's part of aging. It's part of who we are.

Still, sometimes we surprise ourselves. I think it was the third time, or maybe the fourth, that I watched Upstream Colour that I realised that I was rewatching it for more than simply thinking it interesting or worth writing about, and that it had moved me deeply.

Spoiler warnings are for wimps, but you nonetheless have been warned.