Airy Persiflage: Recent Episodes
None
Ubu Roi is one of the great theatrical works of French Absurdism and satire. Written by Alfred Jarry in the waning years of the 19th century, it was performed in 1896at the Théâtre de l'Œuvre, causing such a controversial response in the audience it opened and closed on December 10, 1896. Ubu Roi is a hard play to characterize-- at some points childish and other points sardonic, with a reliance on shock value to force his point. Jarry made use of an overabundance of swearing in this piece so appropriate trigger warnings for over the top vulgarity apply. I do all the voices here so I'm relying on the somewhat artificial instrument of narrating the characters, action and scenes before each scene. I know it's clunky but I've never read a play out loud before, and it will have to do!
This is a very short story by the Polish science fiction writer Stanslaw Lem. Lem was a great writer that was capable of creating humorous short stories with noticeable themes. This story was collected in he Cyberiad, a collection of stories about the robot "constructors" Trurl and Klapaucius. When they're not constructing machines for various marvelous purposes, they travel to other worlds in their universe, all inhabited by robots,many of which have medieval-like societies with kings, knights, and princesses, and which sometimes need rescuing from tyrants. Some of the stories parody traditional fairy tales and knightly romances, while some parody other aspects of traditional and contemporary science and culture. Lem is a treat to read and easy to narrate out loud, although the rhythm of his sentences can get a little challenging. I hope you enjoy this.
This is a version of a very old song that probably dates to the 1740s in England (or so). It is sung A cappella by your humble narrator. If it sounds kind of chanty and familiar, there is some evidence that this song, "the Unfortunate Lad" or the Unfortunate Rake, or the Unfortunate Soldier or the Dying Cowboy.. or perhaps its most famous incarnation the Streets of Laredo, has been repeated for more than a hundred years, transmogrified to different settings and situations to fit the current year and popularized over and over again. At the heart of it, it's a mournful little ditty about a man clearly dying of syphilis giving practical instructions for his burial to bury him quickly and bring flowers to distract from his corpse putrefying. Cheerful stuff! There are many versions of the lyrics. I decided to give the version sang by Brendan Gleason in the recent movie The Ballad of Buster Scruggs a go, for their brevity and feeling. With your kind forbearance, here we go:
Two friends keep a weird rendezvous
Published in Weird Tales, January 1939. A nice twisty ending story with some broad hints. Trying out my new microphone mount. Still getting a tinny sound, I have to work on that.
Nov 31 issue of Weird Tales. Read it here
This is not read by Walter O'Hara, but by a Youtube channel called HorrorBabble. I subscribe to them because their production values are very good and their narrator, Ian Gordon, has a voice that could make an angry wolverine purr. I encourage you to subscribe. I don't normally promote another channel but I really enjoy their work.
The story, the Tale of Satampra Zeiros, is by another favorite of mine, Clark Ashton Smith, whom I judge to be Lovecraft's superior (albeit a near run thing). I like reading CAS's literary output but he rarely wrote short short stories like this one. This short story is the memoir of two thieves that break into the ancient capital of Hyperborea, and what horrors awaited them there. Scary Tentacle-y goodness, that's what. Enjoy, and subscribe to Horrobabble.
This is a memorable short story from Ray Bradbury, most notable as an influential science fiction writer from the 1940s through the 1980s. I was reading "Choke! Gasp! The Best of 75 years of EC Comics" today and the story illustrated above, "Touch and Go" seemed incredibly familiar. It took a little digging to jog my memory but I remembered the story and the source, a short story by Bradbury published in Detective Magazine in 1948 (as "Touch and Go", then renamed for Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine as "the Fruit at the Bottom of the Bowl"). Bradbury isn't credited in the EC Comics anthology, so I hope he got paid. It's a great short story about paranoia and obsession.
Read by Walter O'Hara, written by Ray Bradbury, 1948
And thus we come to the end of Lovecraft's epic poem, the Fungi from Yuggoth, which has ranged all over the place. I've enjoyed this project, it's been ambitious. Thirty Six Stanzas!!
I apologize for some of the audio spikes here and there.. my older snowball microphone may be giving up the ghost. Fortunately, I have a replacement.
XXXI. The Dweller The narrator enters a dream city version of Babylon where he saw a series on unearthed tombs opening to release walked out and into a 'gate of eternal night'.
XXXII. Alienation The narrator then describes a man whose body has passed across space and saw many planets including Yaddith and then came back unable to perceive the world the same way again.
XXXIII. Harbour Whistles The narrator describes harbor whistles in a night-lit town to meet a shipping line of mysterious forces manifesting into cosmic drones, and left with little sign they were there after that.
XXXIV. Recapture The narrator entered the gate and was lead down to enter a lava-covered monstrous mound that had stairs not fit for a man, shrieking at him.
XXXV. Evening Star An evening star shined on the narrator from the shades of a meadow, grown bigger, showing him pictures that he depicts as calling from home.
XXXVI. Continuity The narrator then enters an aether linked to all the laws of time and space, locking dimensions, and one beam of light sent him back home on old farm building set against a hill.
Previous Reads:
First Reading Parts 1 & 2: The Book and Pursuit Second Reading Parts 3 & 4: The Key and Recognition Third Reading Parts 5 & 6: Homecoming and The Lamp Fourth Reading Parts 7-9: Zaman's Hill, The Port & The Courtyard Fifth Reading Parts 10-14: The Pigeon Flyers, The Well, Hesperia & The Star Winds Sixth Reading Parts 15-18: Antartakos, The Window, A Memory & Gardens of Yin Seventh Reading Parts 19-22: The Bells, Night Gaunts, Nyarlathotep & Azathoth Eighth Reading Parts 23-26: The Mirage, The Canal, St. Toad's & The Familiars Ninth Reading Parts 27-30: The Elder Pharos, Expentency, Nostalgia & Background Tenth (Final) Reading Parts 31-36: The Dweller, Alienation, Harbour Whistles, Recapture, Evening Star & Continuity Thank you for your patience thus far. This ends the reading.
PLAGUE READINGS
I haven't recorded in a while and wanted to catch up with the Yuggoth Project. The Great Plague reading of THE FUNGI FROM YUGGOTH is nearing an end. In this 9th reading, I read parts 27, 28, 29 and 30. Only one more reading to go, I think.
XXVII. The Elder Pharos In the sight of Leng, the narrator sees a ray of blue light that is said to come from a pharos in a stone tower where the last Elder One lives and talks to a figure with a yellow mask.
XXVIII. Expectancy The narrator views an alluring light in the horizon where a 'breathless vague expectancy' shines across city spires and forests, that he claims makes life worth living.
XXIX. Nostalgia The narrator enters a shore where he describes birds flying off and looking for an old shore that was their home in an endless horizon of ocean, and the shore has actually been sunken by alien polyps.
XXX. Background The narrator goes to a village after seeing a light there, and finds that it's familiar to him from an old dream, inhabited by wraiths, who all respectfully give him space 'for eternity', seemingly recognizing him.
Previous Reads:
First Reading Parts 1 & 2: The Book and Pursuit Second Reading Parts 3 & 4: The Key and Recognition Third Reading Parts 5 & 6: Homecoming and The Lamp Fourth Reading Parts 7-9: Zaman's Hill, The Port & The Courtyard Fifth Reading Parts 10-14: The Pigeon Flyers, The Well, Hesperia & The Star Winds Sixth Reading Parts 15-18: Antartakos, The Window, A Memory & Gardens of Yin Seventh Reading Parts 19-22: The Bells, Night Gaunts, Nyarlathotep & Azathoth Eighth Reading Parts 23-26: The Mirage, The Canal, St. Toad's & The Familiars Thank you for your patience thus far.
PLAGUE READINGS
Robert Bloch wrote hundreds of short stories and over 30 novels. He was one of the youngest members of the Lovecraft Circle and began his professional writing career immediately after graduation, aged 17. He was a protégé of Lovecraft who was the first to seriously encourage his talent. However, while Bloch started his career by emulating Lovecraft and his brand of Cosmic Horror, he later specialized in crime and horror stories dealing with a more psychological approach.
Bloch was a contributor to pulp magazines such as Weird Tales in his early career, and was also a prolific screenwriter and a major contributor to fanzines and fandom in general. Of course he is most easily identified as the author PSYCHO, the novel and screenplay, and sequels. ORACLE is a short story published in Penthouse, in 1971.
I remain resolved to continue to add more Clark Ashton Smith material to Airy Persiflage. Smith's wordplay has always delighted me; where his contemporary (and friend) Lovecraft could wax prolix page after page, Smith was both more economical in his word choice and more grandiloquent. Both writers remind us of the potential and choices available in the English language, yet Smith, alone, always makes me scratch my head in wonder. It's not every day I use fulvous, or hoary genii, or caparisoned. In any event, here is Abominations, written in (probably) 1930 and often published in collections. Forgive my sound quality. I'm not using my favorite Microphone tonight.
XXIII. Mirage The narrator flows across a timestream and encounters an unknown land that he cannot tell is real or not.
XXIV. The Canal The narrator enters an abandoned city with an endless river of black oily water.
XXV. St. Toad's As the narrator walked the abandoned city, people whispered "Beware St. Toad's cracked chimes" which urged the narrator to run as he saw a ragged shadowy figure.
XXVI. The Familiars In Aylesbury, the narrator witnesses a man named John Whateley, an occultist who lives on a rundown farm, who has become disfigured and is taken by night-gaunts before he could be put in an insane asylum.
Previous Posts in this Series
First Reading was retconned to be put on Podbean (contains "The Book" and "Pursuit")
Second Reading was on Audio (see post, below, containing "The Key" and "Recognition")
Third Reading was on Audio (see post, below, containing "Homecoming" and "The Lamp")
Fourth Reading was on Audio, (See post, below, containing parts 7 "Zaman's Hill", 8 "The Port" and 9 "The Courtyard")
Fifth Reading was on Audio (see post, below, containing parts 10 "the Pigeon Flyers" 11 "the Well" 12 "The Howler" 13 "Hesperia" and 14 "The Star Winds"
Sixth Reading was on Podbean (see post, below) containing Parts 15:. Antarktokos, 16: The Window, 17: A memory and 18: the Gardens of Yin
Seventh Reading was on Podbean (see post, below), containing parts 19: The Bells, 20: Night-Gaunts, 21: Nyarlathotep, and 22: Azathoth
"What will Danehower see?"
My favorite American person of letters is, by far and away, Mr. Ambrose Bierce. He has eluded presentation on this series before today. We'll have to rectify this. Bierce was an amazing talent, far ahead of his time, a writer, journalist, poet, and one of the finest cynical minds ever created by an indifferent deity. Here he is at the height of his powers, reporting on a young naval lieutenant who arrived home after being trapped on a Russian ice flow for two years.
Seventh Reading
XIX. The Bells The narrator searched his memories to find the source of the chiming of bells on a steeple that he had recognized until, on March, he was called back to the black gulf by a cold rainfall.
XX. Night-Gaunts From the distance of the black gulf the narrator spots Night-gaunts coming from the jagged peaks of Thok, and take him into the Nether Pits of the Underworld.
XXI. Nyarlathotep The narrator was met by the true identity of his guider: Nyarlathotep, as he bared witness to him executing some people in an Egyptian tomb.
XXII. Azathoth The narrator entered a spatial void where he meets Azathoth, in the presence of shapeless bat creatures dancing to music played by servitors, in which Nyarlathotep reveals that he is Azathoth's messenger.
Previous Posts in this Series
First Reading was retconned to be put on Podbean (contains "The Book" and "Pursuit")
Second Reading was on Audio (see post, below, containing "The Key" and "Recognition")
Third Reading was on Audio (see post, below, containing "Homecoming" and "The Lamp")
Fourth Reading was on Audio, (See post, below, containing parts 7 "Zaman's Hill", 8 "The Port" and 9 "The Courtyard")
Fifth Reading was on Audio (see post, below, containing parts 10 "the Pigeon Flyers" 11 "the Well" 12 "The Howler" 13 "Hesperia" and 14 "The Star Winds"
Sixth Reading was on Podbean (see post, below) containing Parts 15:. Antarktokos, 16: The Window, 17: A memory and 18: the Gardens of Yin
THE PLAGUE SERIES
I'm retconning reality here. I published the first two stanzas of the Fungi from Yuggoth on April 8th on Instagram. It was clumsy to refer to a separate media channel on Instagram when most of the files are here on Podbean, so today I extracted the audio, which isn't that bad, actually. So here it is, the original recording of Parts 1 and 2 of the Fungi from Yuggoth, H.P. Lovecraft.
Part 1. The Book The protagonist of the entire sequence obtains a book of forgotten mysteries in an old book store.
Part 2: Pursuit The protagonist hurries home with his treasure but can't escape the sensation that he is being followed.
This is the Sixth Reading in the Fungi from Yuggoth Project, and it contains Sonnets 15, 16, 17 and 18.
The Fungi from Yuggoth is a sonnet sequence by supernatural horror writer H.P. Lovecraft that constitute a continuous first-person narrative. It concerns a person who obtains an ancient book of esoteric knowledge that allows one to travel to other planets and strange parts of the universe. The title is a term for the Mi-Go, an alien race the narrator encounters, which are First Reading was retconned to be put on Podbean (contains "The Book" and "Pursuit")
Second Reading was on Audio (see post, below, containing "The Key" and "Recognition")
Third Reading was on Audio (see post, below, containing "Homecoming" and "The Lamp")
Fourth Reading was on Audio, (See post, below, containing parts 7 "Zaman's Hill", 8 "The Port" and 9 "The Courtyard")
Fifth Reading was on Audio (see post, below, containing parts 10 "the Pigeon Flyers" 11 "the Well" 12 "The Howler" 13 "Hesperia" and 14 "The Star Winds"
THE PLAGUE SERIES
We've fallen behind our recording and this is my attempt to catch up with THE FUNGI FROM YUGGOTH. It's a long series of stanzas. Last time we ended with part 9, this time we will cover these parts in the fifth reading:
Part Ten: The Pigeon Flyers
The narrator was taken by these undead figures to a ritual in which birds would bring in offerings from Thog with one of them displaying an evil look.
Part Eleven: The Well
The narrator ends up helping a farmer named Seth Atwood remove a cursed well that drove his friend Eb into insanity, forcing Seth to kill him, only to find that the hole beneath the well was too deep to remove all the bricks from.
Part Twelve: The Howler
Despite warnings, the narrator went through the Briggs' Hill path which was once the highroad through to Zoar, which was destroyed by a man named Goody Watkins before he was hanged. After watching the sunset, he immediately runs upon hearing the sounds of a howling monster from a nearby house.
Part Thirteen: Hesperia
The narrator enters the land of Hesperia, which he describes as a paradise 'where beauty's meaning flowers' and a river of time brings in dreams through a starlit stream.
Part Fourteen: Star-Winds
The narrator watches the star-winds of Hesperia breeze along the cities, bringing bizarre sights and the view of the star Fomalhaut. These star-winds bring dreams and fertilize Yuggothian fungi and flowers.
That should get us back on track. Thanks for following along everyone!
First Reading was retconned and put on Podbean (contains "The Book" and "Pursuit")
Second Reading was on Audio (see post, below, containing "The Key" and "Recognition")
Third Reading was on Audio (see post, below, containing "Homecoming" and "The Lamp")
Fourth Reading was on Audio, (See post, below, containing parts 7 "Zaman's Hill", 8 "The Port" and 9 "The Courtyard")
THE PLAGUE SERIES
This is a continuation of my multipart reading of THE FUNGI FROM YUGGOTH by H.P. Lovecraft
This is the Fourth reading, parts 7 "Zaman's Hill", 8 "The Port" and 9 "The Courtyard" of the Poem. Nine Stanzas down, Twenty-Seven left. I think I will bump up production to four stanzas a post, or we'll never get done!
VII. Zaman's Hill The narrator approached a hill with stories that it was alive and killed deer, birds, lost children, and a mailman from Aylesbury who had been ridiculed for saying that it was alive and ate people.
VIII. The Port The narrator reaches a seaside port ten miles off of Arkham as the sun set, as a sailboat from his destination of Innsmouth sailed by, which the narrator did not wave to when he feels that Innsmouth was a very oddly-gray and unsettling town.
IX. The Courtyard The narrator enters Innsmouth uncomfortable when seeing it's inhabitants, and sees them worshipping gods near the shore. He enters a courtyard which traps him with undead dancing men with no hands or heads.
First Reading was retconned from Instagram to Podbean (contains "The Book" and "Pursuit")
Second Reading was on Audio (see post, below, containing "The Key" and "Recognition")
Third Reading was on Audio (see post, below, containing "Homecoming" and "The Lamp")
THE PLAGUE SERIES
To kill time during the COVID epidemic, I've been doing regular audio readings on Instagram and other places. Here is the second reading of a multi part reading of H.P. Lovecraft's FUNGI FROM YUGGOTH, which I'm breaking up into sections of two parts.
Fungi from Yuggoth is a sonnet sequence by supernatural horror writer H. P. Lovecraft that constitute a continuous first-person narrative. It concerns a person who obtains an ancient book of esoteric knowledge that allows one to travel to other planets and strange parts of the universe. The title is a term for the Mi-go, an alien race the narrator encounters, which are fungoid beings resembling crustaceans which hail from the planet Yuggoth, to which the narrator has unwittingly traveled.
Here are Parts 5 and 6. "Homecoming" and "The Lamp".
V. Homecoming The figure tells the narrator that he was going to take him 'home', and escorts him through a seaside city and into the sunset-lit sky, taking him to a black gulf he said 'was his home when he had sight'.
VI. The Lamp The narrator lights a lamp to see in the black gulf, and went into his tent to light it with some unknown oil, which flashed with some mysterious shapes that intrigued the narrator.
Parts 1 and 2, "The Book" and "Pursuit" were retconned from Instagram and converted into audio MP3 to post on Podbean.
Parts 3 and 4, "The Key" and "Recognition" were featured in the post previous to this one. I suggest listening to them in order.
THE PLAGUE SERIES
To kill time during the COVID epidemic, I've been doing regular audio readings on Instagram and other places. Here is the second reading of a multi part reading of H.P. Lovecraft's FUNGI FROM YUGGOTH, which I'm breaking up into sections of two parts.
Fungi from Yuggoth is a sonnet sequence by supernatural horror writer H. P. Lovecraft that constitute a continuous first-person narrative. It concerns a person who obtains an ancient book of esoteric knowledge that allows one to travel to other planets and strange parts of the universe. The title is a term for the Mi-go, an alien race the narrator encounters, which are fungoid beings resembling crustaceans which hail from the planet Yuggoth, to which the narrator has unwittingly traveled.
Here are Parts 3 and 4. "The Key" and "Recognition".
III. The Key Making it home and bolting the door the narrator reveals their intention to use the book to bridge dimensions in order to explain their unusual visions of sunset spires and twilight woods.
IV. Recognition The narrator enters a vision of the world of Yuggoth and sees a Nameless Figure sitting on an altar being feasted on by inhuman creatures and is spooked by the figure's shrieking cry.
Parts 1 and 2, "The Book" and "Pursuit" were retconned from Instagram to Podbean by converting the video file to MP3. Listen to First Reading here. Listen to those first.
I. The Book In the tangled alleys of a seaside town the narrator searches a bookshop for tomes and grimoires finds a strange book they want to buy but can't see the shopkeeper, hearing only a disembodied laugh.
II. Pursuit The narrator flees the shop hiding the book under their coat. Despite not being seen stealing it they can't shake the laugh from the shop and the sound of approaching footsteps as the path ahead grows more and more unusual.
THE PLAGUE SERIES