Matt Cardin's Blog, page 13

Late Night Thoughts on Longing and Dread

Longing and dread. Yearning and horror. These have always, since birth, been the contraposed energies that have driven my life, the motivating forces that have determined how I instinctively feel, think, speak, and act. They are the dual perspectives that have shaped my outlook, reactions, and relationships. Not always on the surface. Not always acutely. But always in the background, residing at the root of things. Breathing. Calling. Infusing everything.

Perhaps you share this state of soul, too...

On Thomas Ligotti and the Hypnotic Power of Authors Who Share Their Deepest Selves

Today I found myself riding a wave of unexpected energetic motivation as I participated in a number of rewarding conversations on Facebook and Substack involving Thomas Ligotti, philosophical pessimism, cosmic or ontological horror, the nature of the Infinite or Absolute, and the strange communicative power of writing that comes from an author’s most private and personal interiority. My participation in such things comes in bursts. Periods of engagement alternate with periods of withdrawal.

Thoug...

Blood for Dracula (or Andy Warhol's Dracula): My personal piano arrangement

For your listening pleasure, here is my own original piano setting of the classic music from the title sequence of director Paul Morrisey’s 1974 movie Blood for Dracula, also widely known as Andy Warhol’s Dracula:

And here is the story behind it:

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Bradbury's Book People and Eisenhower's Military-Industrial Complex: Dystopia Now

Ahead of the substantive text of today’s newsletter transmission, here are two pieces of book news:

First, I have signed a contract with Dilatando Mentes Editorial, the Spanish publisher of beautifully designed and illustrated books of weird and cosmic horror fiction, for a Spanish translation of my What the Daemon Said. In 2021 they published a translation of To Rouse Leviathan under the title Hizo de las tinieblas su escondite (“He Made Darkness His Hiding Place”). It proved to be a stunningly ...

Notes to No One (Part 3): The Haunting Presence of an Infinite Self

This is the third installment in a four-part series. Also see the previous two installments:

Notes to No One (Part 1): The World is a Fiction and So Are You

Notes to No One (Part 2): Your Life Is a Labyrinth You Build as You Go

For an explanation of where the philosophical and spiritual fragments organized below first originated, see the introduction to Part 1. The first installment contains fragments I wrote in 2019, 2020, and 2021. The second contains the first set of them from 2022. This install...

Revamped and Ready: Relaunch of My Author Website

Just a brief announcement that my author website at MattCardin.com has just been relaunched with a fresh new look. As you can see from the screen grab above, the new design includes a blog in the middle of the main page. I will, in effect, play tag team between that blog and this newsletter, publishing short updates at the blog about my writing projects, media appearances, and so on, while publishing longer-form writings over here.

And speaking of over here, note the new menu link for MattCardin....

The Endgame of Creative Pursuits: Reaching the Flashpoint of Stillness

Fair warning: The following considerations from Art Ticknor, who studied self-realization under Richard Rose and Douglas Harding, may short-circuit your most cherished activities and attitudes if they really catch hold. They’re drawn from several pages of Ticknor’s book Solid Ground of Being, about his own spiritual quest and what he found. Writers and other creative-intellectual types especially beware.

In the interest of making this assemblage of thematically linked snippets more smoothly reada...

The Self as Infinite Reservoir, Archetypal Abyss, and Eternally Self-Undermining Text

Over the next few weeks here at LITD, it’s likely that I will share several entries and excerpts from my personal journal between 2002 and 2022. That’s because I’m presently transcribing my notebooks, both handwritten and electronic, from that period as I create a second volume of my selected journal entries to complete the project that began with the publication of the first volume last fall.

As you know, the title and theme of this Substack, which I explain and explore in detail in the first t...

Podcast interview with me: 'Writing into the Dark'

I recently made a second appearance on Therapy for Guys, a podcast in which host Quique Autrey, a psychotherapist, “explores men's issues relating to mental health, science, philosophy and spirituality.”

Here’s the episode:

Dr. Matt Cardin: Writing into the Dark

Also access it at Quique’s website.

Thank you for reading Living into the Dark. This post is public so feel free to share it.

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The starting topic for our conversation was my published private journal, whose first volume (of two) came out ...

Gleanings: The Glory of Maximalist Prose, the Shadow of Creative Calling, and Ray Bradbury on the Mystery of Space Travel

Here are some new reading and viewing recommendations, with accompanying commentary, that I’ve brought back from my recent foragings. Items this time include:

David Bentley Hart on the scourge of modern English prose minimalism and the glory of exuberantly flouting its precepts

podcaster and novelist Rachel Schwartzmann on the sanctity of private writing—journals, diaries, and the like—in our age of always-on public sharing

novelist Ellen Pall on rediscovering authorial drive and direction by bliss...