Dungeons of Lust – Macroblank (2022)
It is so easy to forget, such a struggle to recall. How often do we set aside a moment, of an afternoon or in the early, light-deprived hours of the deep morning, to sit down and take stock of the shadows that emerge between the dimensions of our setting? What has been discarded, stored in those crevices, all but forgotten in our waking hours? Is it incurable horror, dust and thick confusion? A suffocating mess? A sense of breathlessness? And why should we seek to go there at all when instead we could rest easy and walk the path of the shining sun? At times we may find our feet guiding us back into shadow, no matter how we might resist.
It is said by some that the eye acts as a symbol for the power of intuition. The investigative act transforms the body, from passive subject to mediator. The way we sit in the world can enable or challenge the predatory instinct. Even monsters, when they see the shapes of our eyes, take heed. Let’s take a moment to soften our eyes and see what gazes back at us.
At first we glide, inexorably, towards the transfixing pull of the blood-drinker. Between the cracks of endless scaffolding, amidst the trance of repeated forward momentums, the heartbeat quickens in a state of progress. We run in torrents, thousands of cells spiralling towards a splatter on the cold wall. Perhaps it's enough that we detect the eerie, floating viewpoint that moves through the house of our temples, levitating in an otherworldly, almost artificial manner, pulling us toward the axis of the cross.
Soon we are in the presence of the spellcaster, that ineffable weaver of dreams. In spectral form we float across the evening sky in slow motion, purveying the infinite jewels of the desert sands below, beyond forgotten crypts and obscure monuments. In those moments when we are closest to sleep, the spellcaster sings, her voice traversing the dry dunes of the mind revealing a longing for the ocean, a cry in the night to warn the deeper djinns and calmer demons of her coming.
In time one comes to remember that there are figures that continue to exist between moments, at the edges of our spatio-temporal planes, never quite alive, never certifiably dead. A murmuring susurration is all that it takes to break down those barriers, an unconscious sound that reaches for you, offering you the chance to embrace what might have been. You could get lost in this recollection, a body unsure of its flesh, its form in a state of dissipation; a failing sense of grip.
Undead transmission on repeat. The plodding pulse of midnight drive buried in the symbol of the necromancer, straddled between morning light and the ocean. Thousands of millions of tiny, insidious cutting motions. A black sludge that emerges from the pores of skin. Disconnected impulses with ravenous intent. Electricity bills, reports of ongoing imperial war. A power grab.
Eyes of pure stone transfix, a face buried in the deep rock, the nightmare of the body paralysed and deprived of sight. The gravity of the cavernous underground empires falling deep, the vast mountains, expulsions of the earth, reaching for heaven, swarms of wriggling creatures coalescing over your form. Even if only for an instant (though one that stretches beyond understanding), the gorgon has you fixed in place.
A gargantuan organ from the deepest conclave of the ocean pulls you, swallowing with impossible strength. Its force aligned with the spirit of the great whale, the kraken, a chthonic grandfather in the depths of Gaia. There emerges here an octopodian, alien perspective, one which views the surface of the body from such depths. This falling away, this confused consumption.
Dancing legs, the walls are made of fabric: a web spun with premeditation. A tapestry in every direction. The poison of the fang. A multitude of eyes waiting to wrap the fly in a bundle for safekeeping. They have noticed your twitchings, your sudden vibrations. One quick breath sends a signal through one million dimensions, simultaneously.
Over time the dust of us dissolves into the other. We have been consumed and digested in resonance. The sound of a gentle sigh as the sun repositions over us, a floating pot of molten gold. A yellow warmth creeps through the bone, the air deep in lungs, breath shapeless, a land remembering itself in primal, prehistoric colour. The eye too has the power to transform the shapes around us, from monster to enigma, from searing lust to long yearning. To see is not only to yield to an outside impetus, through the fevered dungeons of lust, but to make relation with the thing seen.