Transformation, Horror, Eros, Phyrexia
There is another shore, you know, upon the other side.
- Lewis Carroll, āThe Lobster Quadrille,ā
There is a moment early in H.P. Lovecraftās 1931 novella The Shadow over Innsmouth where the nameless narrator looks out from the rotting seaside hamlet where he has lucklessly ventured, to the so-called Devil Reef some ways out in the harbor, darkened by a cloud of evil rumorāand something curious happens: the narrator experiences two opposed sensations simultaneously. The ālong, black lineā of the reef conveys āa suggestion of odd latent malignancy,ā but also, āa subtle, curious sense of beckoning seemed superadded to the grim repulsion.ā This bit of foreshadowingāthe reef both calling and repelling the narratorāonly finds its denouement at the very end of the story, after our narrator has narrowly escaped Innsmouth, the fish-like monsters who swarm in off of Devil Reef and their part-human descendants who inhabit the town in an unconvincing and repellent simulacrum of humanity. After his escape, the narrator does some genealogical research into his own troubled family history, full of disappearances and suicides, and concludes that he himself is one such abyssal hybrid. As he ages, he finds himself changing to resemble them, and in his dreams he swims among them in undersea palaces and gardens. The call of the deep becomes impossible to ignore:
areudirty
origamiaround
stormborns
tangentwithtanner
yousharknotpass
discoholicmusic
