Loren Rhoads's Blog, page 69

In Memoriam

I saw Stanley Burns’s Sleeping Beauties at the counter of Dark Carnival many, many years ago.  The collection of postmortem photographs shocked and startled me.  Who would collect pictures of dead people?  Who would buy a book of them?  Fascinated, horrified, I closed the book cover and walked away with a shudder.

I couldn’t get the photographs out of mind, though.  I understood that these after-death photos were often the only pictures families would have of their loved ones, because cameras were rare and professional photographers were expensive.  I understood how a picture could be treasured, how it might be handed down in a family.  What was harder to understand was how these photographs turned up in antique shops — and people actually collected them.

Eventually, I bought this one on eBay.  It’s a postcard, made so the family could share the news of their loss.  This copy was never addressed, but it’s labeled on the back in even penmanship.  It lists 10 names, even though only 5 people surround the young girl’s corpse.  Most of them share the last name Duolok.  Their first names range from Stefan to Lajos, from Marjena to Ameriki.

I suspect that Ameriki is the young woman, dressed in the bridal gown she would never get to wear in life.  She’s flanked by her parents, Hungarian immigrants to America who named their youngest in a passion of gratitude for their new lives.  I’m guessing that the other people in the picture are siblings.  No bridegroom is evident.

I own several postmortem photos now, but this is my favorite.  I used it as the cover image for Morbid Curiosity #10, the final issue.  I meant the usage to symbolize dreams that die.  I hoped to make the people lost in the past live again, to give Morbid Curiosity‘s readers a point of contact.

I will never know anything more about the people in this photograph than I know now.  Even so, the Duolok family has my sympathy.  I understand their grief and appreciate the pain of their loss, because I’ve felt similar things in my own life.  Their photograph ensures that they will not be forgotten.  They have not been erased from history.

Death Salon Soiree

Nourishing Death’s treats

After the end of programming on Day 2 of the Death Salon, the paid attendees and performers retreated to a lovely house with a breathtaking deck to decompress.

Sarah of Nourishing Death baked a feast of treats from Pan de Muerto to Mormon funeral potatoes to Johnny Cake Cookies to Ossa Dei Morti.  There was cinnamon-laced Mexican Funeral Coffee with skull-shaped sugar cubes and Balinese rice pudding with corpse water.  There were Victorian Funeral Biscuits and filled cupcakes with candy tombstones and skull-shaped lollipops.  Everything looked amazing and tasted even better.  I wish I’d taken more pictures.

To wash it down, there was locally brewed mandarin orange ginger ale and craft beers and all the wine a girl could want.

Best of all were the conversations.  I learned about the variety of hospice traditions in LA and the green cemetery movement in Austin and independent publishing in Washington and surviving the hurricane in Brooklyn. I don’t think I’ve ever been to a party with so many fascinating people.

Next year’s Death Salon is planned for London.  I’m not sure what I’m going to have to sell to be able to afford to go, but I really do not want to miss it. Hope to see you there, too.

Death Salon, Day 2

The opening of the Death Salon, day 2

My day started with walking with Jill Tracy out for coffee, so I knew it was going to be good. Then I settled in next to Lindsey Fitzharris and Jennifer of The Dead Bell for another day of morbid food for thought at the first Death Salon.

Day 2′s subject mater was all over the map.  Joanna Eberstein of the Morbid Anatomy Library gave a lovely history of one of my favorite subjects: Anatomical Venuses. She read her chapter from the upcoming Morbid Anatomy book, which I cannot wait to come out!

Caitlin Dougherty of Ask a Mortician stepped away from her usual topics to ask why weren’t there devil babies during the witch purges of the middle ages.  She was followed by selected Midnight Archive videos, my favorite of which was seeing Stanley Burns in front of his amazing photographic collection. Mel Gordon spoke briefly about the Grand Guignol. Paul Koudounaris showed photos of a festival in Bolivia where people bring the exhumed skulls of strangers to have them blessed. Then Richard Falk explored the history of the Mutter Museum’s Soap Lady.

Blurry photo of Evan Michelson and a denizen of the Palermo Catacombs

The highlight of the day for me was Evan Michelson‘s surprisingly lovely recount of her visit to the Capuchin Catacombs of Palermo.  She addressed the disappointment one feels after studying a historic destination for years (decades) and then finding it doesn’t resemble one’s expectations. She came around to the realization that if you’re open and still, you can often find it is better than you imagined.

After a break — during which I ran down to Wacko and bought books, the afternoon resumed with Elizabeth Harper of All the Saints You Should Know presenting her essay about mortification amongst female saints as a perfectly logical response to enormous pressure. I liked it as much as when I read it on her blog.

She was followed by Colin Dickey, who talked about poor flayed St. Bartholomew, Vesalius, and Michelangelo.  His talk also came to some unexpected conclusions.

Then Allison de Fren presented some of Gunther von Haagens’ Anatomy for Beginners, a British TV show that featured live human dissection.  The video was fascinating in how it revealed and shied from its subject.

Finally, Mel Gordon showed slides of the Cabarets of Death, accompanied by spontaneous compositions by Jill Tracy.  It was wonderful to see those images all put together and Jill was fabulous, appropriate, spooky, and funny.  At the end, we were offered drinks from the Cabaret de Neant:  cholera or cancer.  I went with cholera, which tasted like mouthwash.

In the end, I was amazed, delighted, and exhausted.

The inaugural Death Salon

Megan Rosenbloom starting off the first Death Salon.

I was invited to the first Death Salon by Megan Rosenbloom, who teaches a history of medical literature to med students among other wonderful things. I had no idea what to expect. Of course, I stalk The Order of the Good Death, of which Megan is a member, across their blogs and twitter, but the only person I’d actually met was Bess Lovejoy, author of the entertaining Rest in Pieces. If I went, I’d be surrounded by death-obsessed strangers.

How could I say no?

Yesterday was an extremely full day of presentations, from Annetta Black talking about explorers who failed and why their deaths were inspiring to a panel discussion of Death & the Feminine, which spanned from obstetrical machines to images of Death and the Maiden or Death as a Maiden to women in the modern funeral industry. Over all, there was a huge amount of food for thought.

The highlight of the day’s presentations was a short film about Pia Interlandi’s work creating clothing for the dead that will decay as naturally as the body does.  Pretty much everyone in the theater teared up as the husband and children of a woman who commissions her own shroud see the burial gown for the first time.

After a dinner break, the Death Salon reconvened at the Bootleg Theater for a night of death-oriented cabaret. Paul Koudounaris’ discussion of the jeweled saints he photographed for his new book ended up in a highly unexpected place. Sarah Troop talked about necrophilia and true love. Lindsey Fitzharris and Bess Lovejoy both introduced people abducted into medical collections, although Fitzharris argued for the value those specimens had and Lovejoy argued for their return and reburial.

Jill Tracy at the Death Salon Cabaret

Jill Tracy played the beautiful lullaby she wrote for the mermaid baby in the Mutter Museum.  I can hardly wait for her album of Mutter-inspired music to be finished.

I wanted to stay to hear Christine Colby talk about necrophilia and snuff porn, but I was done.  It was 11 (past my bedtime) and my head was as full as it could get.

Today is another full day.  Lectures reach from 11-6 without a meal break, so I’m off to breakfast to fortify myself for another day full of death.

As to being surrounded by death-obsessed strangers? Today I’ll be surrounded by death-obsessed friends.  What could be better than that?

Mobbed!

From my collection.

It’s funny, looking back, at how much I worried about the live Morbid Curiosity events.  This is my recap of the release reading for Morbid Curiosity #9, at Borderlands.  The piece was originally written 5/15/05 and published on my LiveJournal at 6:40 a.m.

Last night was the first time I’ve hosted a reading that I didn’t feel sick with worry beforehand. I was pretty sure that there wouldn’t be anyone there, maybe 40 people including the 10 readers, and it would be a cozy little evening. We could all draw our chairs up into a circle.

Since I didn’t have the magazines in time to send them out to the local calendars, MC didn’t get any features in the weekly papers. (Maybe there’s not a direction connection here, but there feels like one.) We didn’t get any mentions on the radio (that I caught anyway) or in any of the daily papers. I didn’t get a chance to flyer Valencia Street. The only promotion at all was done through Squidlist, Craigslist, the Borderlands newsletter, and my panicked last-minute mailing on Friday. Oh, and LJ.

And we still had more than 100 people turn up.

Damn. Where did they all come from?

The readers rocked. Will Walker warmed everyone up with his funny story about his failed attempts to kill small animals. Jude Gibson riveted everyone’s attention by telling about the aftermath of her brother’s suicide. RuthAnn Spike read her sobering story about corresponding with a murderer. Beth Touchette-Laughlin told her sweet, funny adventure in the medical system. Then David Booth admitted he’d been scammed by an online personal ad. As they were reading, I realized that four of the five of them were people I’d met through the Writing Salon.

We took a break and people pitched me some ideas I hope to see for Morbid Curiosity 10. I always love that part of the experience.

Dorian Katz started the second half off with her account of the night when her face was slashed. Inspired by Rozz Williams’ niche at Hollywood Forever, Lilah Wild contemplated what she would leave behind. As Allegra Lundyworf recounted her “Grandmarama,” I had to fight tears so as not to smear my makeup. I’ve heard her read that story twice — and read it half a dozen times myself — and it’s still powerful. John Dohmeier combined Catholic school, rotten fruit, young love, and growing up without parts of three limbs. And people laughed liked they needed to. Then M. Parfitt brought us all back to normal in the end.

It was a great night, maybe the first when I didn’t lie awake for hours agonizing over some stupid thing I’d inadvertently babbled or some element that didn’t go as planned. Maybe, after doing this for 8 years, I’m beginning to relax about it. Maybe in another year or two, if the magazine keeps going, speaking in public will even begin to be fun.

Thanks to all the readers, who made this night special.

Morbid Curiosity Live

In trying to get the word out about my little magazine, I held all kinds of readings.  There was the annual release party at Borderlands, which showcased the new contributions.  I’ve written before about the Open Mics at the World Horror Conventions.  I also hosted a couple of evenings at the Canvas Cafe, which used to stand at 9th Avenue and Lincoln.

Morbid Curiosity #9 was directly shaped by the live events.  Lorelei Shannon told her hilarious “Hellraiser Gopher” story off-the-cuff at the Open Mic in Seattle.  It took me a while to track her down to ask if I could publish it.  Sherilyn Connelly came with one of the other contributors to the Canvas, then rocked “The Bloody Organ” to a full house.  Shauna Rogan read “How Cocaine Saved a Fragile Life” there, too.

Chris West read “Kissing Girls in the Dark” for me, too.  It was such a sweet, self-assured piece — vulnerable, but so very polished — that it was hard for me to believe he was new at writing and performance.

I didn’t hear Katrina James’s “Folie a Deux” until the release party, but it was worth waiting for it.  Even though I was familiar with the text, hearing the ghost story still gave me goose bumps.

I don’t really miss editing the magazine, but I do miss going to the readings.

The Editor’s Children, part 2

Maybe I should explain the title.  There are some memoirs I published in Morbid Curiosity magazine that I still feel really close to, stories that changed me as I read them, edited them, proofread them, and ushered them into print.  The Editor’s Children are my favorites.

I’m gonna skip ahead to Morbid Curiosity#9, since I still have copies of that one for sale.

#9 has one of my favorite covers.  It’s really, really black and shiny, with the perfect violet color in the name.  Hugues Leblanc’s lovely infrared photo of Marie Laveau’s tomb in New Orleans didn’t really have anything to do with the text inside — the cemetery Joe Donohoe explores is Lafayette, not St. Louis #1 — but the picture was too pretty to pass up.

The issue also has some of my favorite stories.  Opening the issue is T.M. Gray’s “Slippery Little Devil,” which is about waking up under anesthesia while her appendix is being removed.  It’s grueling to read.

Also in the issue is “This is a Very Old Scar,” which Dorian Katz wrote about recovering from having her face slashed at a bus stop in her neighborhood.  I didn’t know Dorian before the attack, but I was privileged to attend her scar’s 10th birthday party, where we played “Pin the Tail on the Scar.”  I love stories where people are able to reclaim what hurt them.

Another of my favorites in the issue is “Charley Don’t Surf” by Timothy Blasza.  In 2004, Tim ran through Category 4 Hurricane Charley, dodging grapefruit projectiles.  Luckily, he lived to tell the tale.

The most intense story in MC#9 is Jude Gibson’s “Grace in Gravity.”  She was called home to clean up the aftermath of her stepbrother’s shotgun suicide.  The story is harrowing, disgusting, and deeply humanizing.  I wanted to reprint the story in Morbid Curiosity Cures the Blues, but I’d lost track of Jude.  The only place you can read it is Morbid Curiosity #9.

Where it all began

I was 10 the year my parents drove from Michigan to the Rocky Mountains for summer vacation.  The trip meant six weeks in the back of a truck camper: no TV, no radio. No parental supervision, since they rode in the cab of the truck. These were the days before handheld video games or home computers or smart phones.

Mostly, my brother stared out the window and slept.  Mostly, I read.  I had a stack of books checked out the public library.  I’d just recently started reading novels.  One of these was Dracula.

There’s a photograph of me sitting on a boulder outside the campground at Rocky Mountain National Park.  It was beautiful there and I was excited about seeing mountains, but my dad and the camper were queued up in a very long line of campers and cars, waiting to see if there would be any campsites for the night.  We weren’t going anywhere for hours.

In the picture, I’m sitting on a boulder with a book on my lap.  There might be a slight flush to my cheeks that has nothing to do with the fresh air and sunshine.

My mom, who was a librarian, had a theory: everything I was too young for, I would misunderstand anyway.  Even if I didn’t grasp the subtext, my world was rocked when Dracula drinks Mina’s blood, then slices open a vein in his chest and feeds her blood back.  And she likes it.

Every horror story I write descends from that moment:  when submission turns to pleasure, then to glee, then to hunger.

Wish You Were Here

My publisher made me a trailer for my book of cemetery essays. How many of these cemeteries have you been to?

Death & Dying at the Litquake

Yesterday I attended my first Litquake event of the season.  Lapham’s Quarterly convened a panel to read from their new issue on subjects close to my heart: Death & Dying.

The description of the event listed John Crowley first in the lineup.  I’ve been a fan of his since Little, Big won all the awards 30 years ago. I packed my underlined and dog-eared copy of Aegypt to humbly present for his signature. I’ve read Little, Big to pieces.

I don’t know what happened to Crowley. The moderator apologized that Lewis Lapham, the magazine’s founder, couldn’t attend, but no one explained why Crowley had been replaced by Sandra M. Gilbert. I gave her book Death’s Door: Modern Dying and the Ways We Grieve one star because it veered away from what was interesting about grieving into literary theory. To say I was disappointed might be understatement.

Her talk was more interesting than I expected, though it still danced around the truly fascinating stuff. She began by reading Philip Larkin’s poem “Aubade”:

The mind blanks at the glare. Not in remorse
—The good not done, the love not given, time
Torn off unused—nor wretchedly because
An only life can take so long to climb
Clear of its wrong beginnings, and may never;
But at the total emptiness for ever,
The sure extinction that we travel to
And shall be lost in always.

 

Then she spoke briefly about the premature child she lost, the husband killed on the operating table by a surgeon’s incompetence. As in her book, she mentioned her grief but shied from sharing it, hiding instead behind definitions of expire and termination: valid and to the point, but not meaty.

Timothy Don read a really illuminating essay by Montaigne, “To Philosophize is to Learn to Die.”  That piece is probably worth the price of the Lapham’s issue. I suspect that Montaigne is the author of many of the quotes in the Paris Catacombs, but I’ll have to examine the text to be sure.

Finally, Jeff Sharlet read an excerpt from C.S. Lewis’s “A Grief Observed.” The fury recorded by a man who’d lost his faith in the face of his grief was breath-taking. “Why should the separation (if nothing else) which so agonizes the lover who is left behind be painless to the lover who departs?” he asks. I’d always considered the dead to be beyond pain, beyond grief. How horrible if that isn’t true.

The hour was over too quickly and left me much food for thought.  I look forward to diving into the new Lapham’s Quarterly.

I’m still disappointed to miss John Crowley in person, though.