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There are mysteries that are so eerie and strange that they boggle the mind for days on end. The case of Elisa Lam is one of them. In February 2013, this 21-year-old student from Vancouver, Canada, was found dead inside the Cecil Hotel’s rooftop water tank in Los Angeles. The L.A. County Department of Coroner ruled the death “accidental due to drowning” and said no traces of drugs or alcohol were found during the autopsy. However, there is much more to the story than what is implied by police reports. The first piece of evidence that needs to be considered is an elevator surveillance tape that recorded Elisa’s behavior only a few moments before she lost her life.
The four-minute video posted on YouTube shows Elisa pressing all of the elevator buttons and waiting for it to move. Seeing that the elevator doors are not closing, starts behaving extremely bizarrely. Here’s the video.
At first, Elisa enters the elevator and apparently presses all of its buttons. She then waits for something to happen but, for some reason, the elevator door doesn’t shut. She starts to look around, as if she is expecting (or hiding from) someone. At 1:57, her arms and hands start moving in a very strange matter (almost not human) as she appears to be talking to someone, something … or nothing at all. She then walks away. The elevator door then shuts and appears to start working again.
Right after the events of the video, Elisa apparently gained access to the rooftop of the hotel, climbed to its water tank and, somehow, ended up drowning in it. Her body was found two weeks after her death, after hotel guests complained about the water’s taste and color. Incredible.
Seeing the surveillance footage, most people would conclude that she was under the influence of drugs. However, Elisa did not have a history of drug use and her autopsy concluded that no drugs were involved. When one looks at the context and the circumstances of this death, things become even more mysterious.
Built in the 1920s to cater to “businessmen to come into town and spend a night or two”, Cecil Hotel was quickly upstaged by more glamorous hotels. Located near the infamous Skid Row area, the hotel began renting rooms on a long-term basis for cheap prices, a policy that attracted a shiftier crowd. The hotel’s reputation quickly went from “shifty” to “morbid” when it became notorious for numerous suicides and murders, as well as lodging famous serial killers.
Now on death row, Richard Ramirez, labeled “the Nightstalker”, was living at the Cecil Hotel in 1985, in a top floor room. He was charged 14 dollars a night. In a building filled with transients, he remained unnoticed as he stalked and killed his 13 female victims. Richard Schave, said “He was dumping his bloody clothes in the Dumpster, at the end of his evening and returned via the back entrance.”
Jack Unterweger, was a journalist covering crime in Los Angeles for an Austrian magazine in 1991. “We believe he was living at the Cecil Hotel in homage to Ramirez,” Schave said. He is blamed with killing three prostitutes in Los Angeles, while being a guest at the Cecil.
In the 50’s and 60’s the Cecil was known as a place that people would go to jump out of one of the hotel’s windows to commit suicide.
Helen Gurnee, in her 50s, leaped from a seventh floor window, landing on the Cecil Hotel marquee, on October 22, 1954.
Julia Moore jumped from her eighth floor room window, on February 11, 1962.
Pauline Otton, 27, jumped from a ninth floor window after an argument with her estranged husband, on October 12, 1962. Otton landed on George Gianinni, 65, who was walking on the side walk, 90 feet below. Both were killed instantly.
There was also a murder of one of the residents. “Pigeon Goldie” Osgood, a retired telephone operator, known for protecting and feeding pigeons in a nearby park, was found dead in his ransacked room on June 4, 1964. He had been stabbed, strangled, and raped. The crime still remains unsolved.
Elisa Lam’s case is yet another sordid addition to the hotel’s history and can lead us to ask: “What the hell is wrong with that place”?
The story of Elisa Lam is eerily similar to the 2005 horror movie Dark Water. Dahlia, the main protagonist of the movie moves into an apartment building with her young daughter Cecilia. Both of these names are relevant. Black Dahlia is the nickname given to Elizabeth Short, a woman who was the victim of a gruesome murder in 1947 – one that appeared to be particularly ritualistic. The case was never solved. According to LA Observed, it is rumored that Black Dahlia was at Cecil Hotel right before she lost her life.
In the movie, the daughter’s name, Cecilia, is, obviously, quite similar to the name Cecil Hotel. After moving into her apartment, Dahlia notices dark water leaking from the ceiling in her bathroom. She ultimately discovers that a young girl named Natasha Rimsky drowned in the building’s rooftop water tank, which caused the water to turn black. The owner of the apartment building knew about this fact but refused to take action. Elisa Lam’s body was in the water tank for over two weeks, causing hotel guests to complain about foul tasting “black water”.
The ending of the movie is also eerily relevant: The apartment buildings elevator malfunctions and the ghost of Cecilia’s mother braids her hair. Is Elisa Lam’s death one of those ritualistic murders that are synchronistically mirrored in a Hollywood movie?
Shortly after the discovery of Elisa Lam’s body, a deadly outbreak of tuberculosis occurred in Skid Row, near Cecil Hotel. You probably won’t believe the name of the test kit used in these kinds of situations: LAM-ELISA. That is hardcore synchronicity.
In one theory making the rounds on the internet, Elisa Lam never existed. According to the website Godlike Productions, known for its championing of lunatic fringe theories, “The LAPD put out the video, because her Facebook pictures didn’t look like her. It wasn’t her. Look up whoiselisalam.org. Look at the Illuminati card Eliza. Her FB page was started by military.”
LA authorities ruled in June 2013 that Elisa Lam’s death was accidental and that she was “probably bi-polar”. That being said, some questions remain unanswered. How did Elisa, who was obviously not in her right mind, end up in the hotel’s water tank, an area that is difficult to access? Here’s a video showing the water tank area.
As the reporter states in the video, the rooftop area is protected by an alarm system and the water tank is difficult to reach. How did Elisa reach that area? Also, how did she close the water tank lid?
As is usually the case for strange deaths, authorities have been incredibly secretive and non-transparent during this investigation. What truly happened here? Why are there so many strange coincidences? Why was Elisa Lam acting so strange in the elevator? Was there a ritualistic aspect to this death? Why is the Cecil Hotel a hotbed for these kinds of stories? Is there some paranormal stuff going on there involving dark entities? The mystery appears to be whole and authorities do not seem to be wanting to probe further.
A YouTube user recently claimed that the Elisa Lam CCTV footage had been slowed down and possibly edited. He makes a case that the tape was tampered with and that we have not yet seen the full extent of Elisa Lam’s final video appearance.
Obviously, more investigation would have to be conducted to confirm whether or not the video was actually slowed down and edited. The timestamp jump certainly does seem suspicious. But then again, everything in a conspiracy theory must, by definition, seem suspicious.
Comments
Netti · 3 weeks ago
its clearly ritual murder. God save us all from this evil.
Kathleen · 3 weeks ago
Habitual, grave sin opens one to the influence of the demonic.
The influence of the demonic is not limited to green pea soup spitting full possession. There are various degrees and types of diabolical influence.
Influence or infestation of these various types can impact entire families, over multiple generations, or buildings.
Lafite · 3 weeks ago
First of all, she pushed all floor buttons for the ghosts. As to the elevator door remaining open, it’s because there were too many ghosts in the elevator leading to the door not closing because it was overloaded, and her being squeezed to a corner of the elevator proves this point. Hopping and gesticulating by the door was her discussing the situation with the ghosts, asking some of the ghosts to get out of the elevator to reduce the weight. From this we can see, there will always be things that man’s science is unable to explain, or there really is another dimension. This is purely one’s point of view, if you don’t like it, don’t read it.
Patricia · 3 weeks ago
I don’t know as I saw the elevator and the I sworn I saw the devil.if you look well and if you could see his horns inside the elevator its so weird that girl .something somebody possessed that girl’s body.
Skegeeace · 3 weeks ago
Totally unnerving. Perhaps she was a ritual sacrifice infected with TB and dumped into the water tanks to contaminate others. Surely, it would spread all over the place- especially among the poor with their low-immunity from malnutrition and lack of access to health care/vaccination. (Skid Row is traditionally home to the poor, right?) And her NAME…being the reverse of the name of the TB testing kits?! If that’s true, I definitely smell satan worshipers. They do lots of things in reverse for their black magick rituals.
People, your only defense is Christ Jesus and the Holy Spirit. If you’re not under their protection, then you’re susceptible to evil attacks. Some aren’t that extreme, but this one clearly was.
Kim · 3 weeks ago
The way she moved her hands reminded me of the way my bearded dragon “waves” her arms. Same wrist-down, flat palm, fingers-up shape. That was the first thing I thought of. I don’t think that is relevant at all, but it startled me how much she resembled a reptile with those movements.
Jordan · 3 weeks ago
When she pressed all the buttons, she obviously hit the “Door Hold” button as well. She doesn’t have her glasses on. Come on people…
Dylan Barrett · 3 weeks ago
I wonder if the hotel staff are in on it, the fact that it seems as if the person doing security could see her on camera and probably hear her and held the doors for staff to get there…. the staff knew not to walk in front of the cameras….. there is no mention of why she was there or who she was with….. or why no one mentioned the taste or colour of the water on the news report….. if her clothes were off were they piled on the ground, thrown about the roof, missing entirely…. I wonder if some of the other deaths were of people who found out that staff might be running some secret underground stuff to keep them in business…. I woman staying there hears a lady scream finds out staff are helping elitist people commit ritualistic murders…. lady gets thrown out the window……. the whole thing is written up by crooked cops and payed off coroners as a suicide….. Elisa Lam was probably drugged and prepped for a ritualistic murder till she escaped and staff needed to keep things under control without getting caught……..
Syrus · 3 weeks ago
Last time a lightning bolt struck one of the Illuminati’s messengers while he was en route with their world domination plans, which were immediately found by the local authorities and that directly led to the group’s official dissolution. I wonder what more it could take this time to really shut the Cabal down. I don’t like these people.
aggelos · 3 weeks ago
Drowning is also used in ritual sacrifices, ie whitney houston…
Yaz · 3 weeks ago
I’m surprised that everyone has failed to see the most creepy part of the entire video!!!
2:57: the elevator door closes (and seems to work fine)
3:13: the elevator opens on a DIFFERENT FLOOR!!!, the wallpaper is different!
It seems like perhaps “something” in the elevator perhaps went UP a few floors, to possibly complete the sacrifice!!
Notice that it took almost 20 seconds, which means that the elevator either went far down or far up. It most probably is far up. I bet that if the elevator had gone down it would be at the reception floor – not likely after an incident like that. It was going UP!
And also, no one had pressed the elevator button, since no person was present on the other floor. That means that something inside the elevator pressed on something, perhaps what floor “something” wanted to get to.
Is it just me or is there a dark entity in the center of the entire video??
max · 3 weeks ago
I’m sorry but I am far more disturbed that people were drinking cadaver juice for weeks than the actually mystery of her death. That is vile.
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p.s. RIP Bela Tarr. Also, just to say that I have no idea why the blog had a black background yesterday for those who saw it that way. Nothing seemed amiss on my end, and it looked totally normal to me and to others whom I asked to check. Hopefully it was a weird fluke, and the blog will have its usual white background today. If not, I’ll look into it more fully. ** Uday, How are they today? (Your legs.) I’ll look into Eva Švankmajerová’s writing. I had no idea. Favorite Švankmajer? I guess ‘Little Otik’, ‘Alice’, and I like ‘Conspirators of Pleasure’ although his biggest fans seem not to? ** Lucas, When I was a kid, there were so many puppet-based children’s TV shows. And they were so weird sometimes. I guess it’s obvious why they faded out with the birth of CGI and stuff, but they were almost psychedelically melancholy at times. Last summer actually wasn’t bad at all. Just three or four days of misery, and the rest was fairly and spookily mild-ish. Using the nic patch helps a bit with the brain fog. A bit. ** jay, Hi. The Quays’ stuff has always kind of irked me, I don’t know why. As impressive as it obviously is. I do love their live action film ‘Institute Benjamenta’, and I wish they’d made more of those. I fully believe that Proust is incredible and singular and mind-blowing and everything. And I don’t know why I have a punk resistance to him, or why I’m proud of that. It’s snowing here right now, and super cold. And my Adidas are like sponges. Stay cozy. ** Laura, Did I recommend ‘A Boy’s Own Story’? How strange of me. Glad you liked it in any case. Oh gosh, I wouldn’t know how to begin to point you at the Verlaine scholars. I started voraciously studying Rimbaud and Verlaine by proxy when I was fifteen and did so for years, and I don’t have records. If your gut leads you to make that Rimbaud association, then go for it. As someone who in my small way has been the subject of many essays and three academic books about my work and me, the majority of them taking vague tidbits from my life and jumping to completely false conclusions that are presented as facts because the authors want their take to pop and draw attention, I’m immensely suspicious of academics’ exploitation of that material for their own means, much less when a writer is long dead and their life is full of pre-internet, manipulatable mysteriousness, and when they and the people who actually knew them are not alive to present the actual facts. I prefer ‘we’ll never know’. I hope your meds are ambient now. ** _Black_Acrylic, Yep, yep. ** Bill, The shorts are pretty spicy at their best. Yeah, as I was saying up above, no clue as to why the blog went dark for some people yesterday. There’s no visible code to explain it. Strange. Yes, excellence about the New Juche reprints! ** Steeqhen, Ace: your newfangled hair. I don’t know, maybe ‘Little Otik’, ‘The Fall of the House of Usher’ is fun, … What VPN do you use? I need to get a new one, and I’m kind of lost. I predict your pre-trip anxiety will dissipate as soon as you’re sitting in the transportation vehicle’s chair. But you tell me. ** Carsten, Hey. One of the great things about being an anarchist is that ownership = power is automatically debunked. Thanks for the pdf. Everyone, You can read a new poem by Carsten entitled ’42: To an Old Ford Bought at Auction’ if you click this and check out the new issue of the lit zine Turtle Island Poetry. ** Dev, Hi! If you liked ‘Alice’ you’ll probably be at least charmed by his other stuff. Is that how Kanopy works? Strange and impractical. King cake = Galette de Roi, right? Are they exactly the same thing, do you know? I’m scouting out the best GdRs in Paris right now. ** Vincent, Hi. Happy you’re good. Happy I’m good too. Take care. ** HaRpEr //, That sounds kind of pleasant. I think the young actress did another thing or two, but not much. I remember and loved that dialogue exchange too. No, the weird new look of the blog yesterday was some kind of strange accident. Hopefully gone now. I think it would get gimmicky rather quickly. ** Steve, Okay, projectr.tv is something at least. Again, yeah, no clue as to why the blog decided to look gloomy to some of y’all yesterday. ** nat, Hey. Yeah, complete accident on the ‘new’ look. Once was enough, I think. ‘The blurry cusp of either being bullshit or genius’: exciting enough for me. ‘Tokyo Xtreme Racer’: Huh, okay. I’m fairly shit at racing games, but minimalist is a lure, for sure. I’ll see if I can test it or something. My apartment its just barely warm enough to not have to wear a coat while doing anything. Grateful. Prayers re: your heater. ** Right. Today you have another opportunity to wrap your mind around the eternal mystery that is Elisa Lam if you feel like it. See you tomorrow.
Now available in North America 
ciao dennis,
beautiful posts these days! i love Jan Švankmajer, truly incredible. and the elisa lam case, was one of my great obsessions when i was a teenager, so strange and terryfing. used to show it to my little brother, now he loves horror too.
we already rebooked tickets for paris in february, will keep you posted with the days and hopefully this time we can make it!
see you soon!
Hey Dennis,
Everything about the trip has been smooth sailing — I’m on the train from Gatwick to London Bridge now. For a fun little fact, the flight from Cork to Gatwick is basically the exact length or the Boards of Canada album ‘Geogaddi’…
Eliza Lam, her case has always stuck with me. The similarities between Dark Water and Lam are eerie, though definitely just a case of coincidental circumstances aligning; the names in Dark Water (Cecelia and Dahlia) had me almost convinced that they were a reference to Silent Hill, though I was mistaken as the two cult characters were Claudia and Dahlia, not Cecilia…
My own conclusion to the Lam case is ultimately that she had some sort of psychotic episode due to her mental health history and her Tumblr posts leading up to the event, which were very suicidal and concerning. She was an avid reader of Palahniuk, with a quote from Diary on her Tumblr/Blogspot: “ You’re always haunted by the idea you’re wasting your life”. I remember I misconstrued that that quote was actually from his novel/short story collection Haunted (which I was reading around the time we met up in Paris)… Obviously I may be mistaken, but I’m like 90% sure from either a podcast or post I read about it, that a worker at the hotel had closed the lid at one point without looking in (this could have just been made up or a theory of the poster, but I remember however it was said really read to me as truth instead of a theory), and considering the time and water it would make sense that he wouldn’t be able to see much, even if he had looked in.
At the moment I use Nord VPN. I get it as a part of this other subscription, but I used to use it even before then. I have no complaints really about it, it works well.
Hoping to visit that Doctor Who shop today, gonna drag my friend along and maybe get her lunch as retribution.
Also I read the PS and I wanted to gauge how you felt about my dissertation. I will take no offense to any criticisms or disputes with it as I’m so far removed from it and can understand all that you mentioned about academic writing trying to mould the complexities of reality into an easy to digest point that removed nuance or the actual truth.
Anyway, train is at London Bridge, see you tomorrow!
Agreed with “max” here, I think the fact people were drinking water which had a corpse in it is more sinister than anything else here. “Dark Water” was such a good movie, I love Hideo Nakata movies so much haha. I think my cultural diet could consist entirely of J-Horror ghost stories and I’d be satisfied.
I get it about the Quay’s stuff, I think a lot of their work is just creepy without a huge amount underneath it. Nothing wrong with having a resistance to Proust, I think going against the dogma of what’s “important” to read/watch is always good. Anyway, it’s much warmer near me now, hopefully it’s the same for you!
Hi
Now I want to see the blog with black background out of curiosity 😂
Did you like this look of it at all?
Thank you for sharing the incredible Chantal film. I always say that two of her last films La captive and Almayer’s folly are just as strong as the early
RIP Bela Tarr
I loved his film A Turin Horse
hi hi! first time commenting, nice to meet(?) you and everyone.
elisa lam fascinated me some 10 years ago—in part because she looks eerily like my mother when she was in her 20s, but mostly because…y’know…the everything else. i don’t know, i’ve always chalked it up to crazy shit happening when you’re young and in a different city and having some sort of mental health episode. it happens to the best of us—i crashed out in beijing when i was 20 and i’m just grateful nothing happened to me besides making a fool of myself.
personally, it feels like some small comfort to imagine what she got up to on her last day on earth. i hope she was lucid enough through her troubles to have eaten a good hot dog or have seen the watts towers or any other fun la thing.
speaking of j-horror (or at least j-horror remakes)—curious to hear if you’ve ever read lafcadio hearn’s stories? i think it’s funny and interesting how the folktales he ostensibly heard while travelling and then recollected for a western audience themselves became founts of inspiration for japanese artists. kind of reminds me of round trip songs in flamenco? idk, do you have thoughts?
hi Dennis!
oof Elisa Lam, i remember that… if you strip the story down to its less titillating basics, it makes most sense to think she had a psychotic episode and received no help, alas. then again, we’ll probably never know 100%. a lot went wrong on that trip for sure.
Rimbaud! so you fell at 15 too! seems like the right age tbh. ^_^ man, i read him so hard i feel like the guy was permanently punched into my chest or whatever. i was like i think i get you. i actually believed he’s been p thoughtfully biographised, other than older accounts taking his and Mathilde’s shit talking way too serious, my main gripe would def be Enid Starkie’s thing that he was straight bc she wanted him to be. like, you know, he’d be telling random acquaintances ‘oh he fucked me all night last night’ and then she’d cope like ‘friends back then were just more emotional’, uh, girl…
actually his friends gossiped about him so much way back then, he seemed a fav topic of conversation but they generally weren’t, like, mean? so i tend to find their pov’s interesting at the v least. like we sort of owe the generally accepted take on Le Coeur Volé to Izambard, ofc Rimbaud himself was all “ça ne veut pas rien dire” but also “répondez moi!!!!!” so the poem at face value + the proposed backstory just track. Delhaye clearly knew him and Verlaine and was very trusted so i tend to trust him too. on that note, it’s a bit weird we know what Rimbaud’s eyes looked like in such rapt detail thanks to him and not even Verlaine.
what’s one thing about you you think the press or whatever has notoriously got super wrong? i remember someone refering to you as ‘the satanic author’ or similar probably ages ago and i was like come on now lol. but at least in the anglosphere they stayed attached to that take for a long time, right? incl everything that comes with it, too, which is lazy and actually a bit satanic maybe. Frisk was obvi boringly misunderstood forever, in spite of the opening quote which almost literally tells you everything you need to know to proceed smh. and then, uh… idk, i feel like reading and failing to get it until it’s too late should probably culminate in self-deprecating humour and relief, not rage? you def haven’t always had it easy public perception-wise and i get where you’re coming from. sorry to hurt you in advance, but i think a year or two ago i listened to a podcast (?) you did w some jerk who was sort of merrily chatting at you that your George here probably just lacked psychological fortitude or smth, i was like let it burn. wtf. sorry again ya 3ami.
on a related note i’m off the problem med alhamdulillah! srsly who allows shit to be marketed which may cause sniffles, slight dizziness and a pretty common, sudden but overwhelming urge to end it all 😡 like i just want to be able to sleep, i’m not being euphemistic. it’s all quite back to normal today, just feel sort of hungover. phew. my doctor was so sorry, poor guy.
it’s super cold here! hope you’re staying cosy over there! can’t wait to hear smth about what you’re working on now, obvi not before it’s time tho.
<3
Hi Dennis,
The Eliza Lam case is one of those things I can’t think about before bed or I’ll have nightmares. I have a moderate take on it. I don’t believe in ghosts but I do believe in bad vibes and that hotel had them. Like the belief that the place is haunted creates the phenomenon, or at least the confirmation of the phenomenon. And I do think her suicide in that space is in some way related to that. The synchronicities are scary too.
My dad owned a building where the previous owner had killed himself in the upstairs portion. He’d hear footsteps from up there and come back to find furniture rearranged. I never experienced anything like that but I could definitely feel the bad vibes. Also one time I slept with a girl who said her room was cursed cause the previous tenants were in an abusive relationship. I didn’t believe her but that night I had a dream that my ex’s roommate was watching me and the girl and that somehow I was cheating even though we were broken up. And those are relatively minor bad vibes, I can’t imagine what a serial killer in the building would make.
I managed to convince my mom to pay for my ticket to Europe this summer! My schemes are progressing well. I’ll keep you posted on when I’m trying to be in Paris.
I hope you have a wonderful day!
The Elisa Lam case is an interesting one alright. In recent nights I have found myself falling down a Netflix true crime rabbit hole, spending hours of my time on inconsequential slop that I know will do me no good. At least the EL disappearance has a kind of spooky edge to it. Definitely feel as though I am getting something more out of her disappearance.
RIP Tarr indeed! Werckmeister Harmonies was so good. Re today’s post: I’m generally not very taken in with conspiratorial thinking. My legs are much better. I cried a bit at the theatre, which was nice given that my eyes have not produced tears since August. And yes, I’d say I’m a big fan and I thought Conspirators of Pleasure was ok, although I didn’t dislike it, and I can see why you would like it, or at least I think I can see why. Re your reply to Laura, a half-remembered quotation comes to mind: ‘I resent the glossary, the concordance of truth, many have about my real life, like an extra pair of spectacles.’ Recently I’ve been getting really into texting in an ejaculatory rhythm, in little bursts trying to follow up on each other and then some dribbles at the end to empty out the thought, but this does not work well with my recent push to return to some brevity of speech. We’ll see what wins out.
I believe king cake evolved from galette de rois, but it’s become a pretty distinct thing of its own. The standard ones are filled with cinnamon, but you can get all kinds of fillings around the city. I’m gonna try to pick up a slice soon from one of my favorite coffee shops where they allegedly flavor it like one of their signature drinks.
Funnily enough we actually interviewed at a French immersion school here yesterday that we’re hoping to put our daughter in next year, and they offered us some GDR, but only Adam tried some because I wasn’t hungry enough. He said it was great though. Does France have Mardi Gras parades or is that just a New Orleans thing?
About that black-backgrounded blog-post: It’s still black for me so I investigated.
You have set the post-format to “quote”, hence the black background and no title. At least when viewed on the index page or in the archive of this blog. If you change it to “standard”, it will have the correct background-color and display the title again. Your preferred search engine will have details on how to change it, if needed.
So sad about Bela Tarr. A giant. I watched Werckmeister Harmonies again last night.
I live just a few blocks from the Cecil Hotel. It always seems to loom large. RIP sweet Elisa Lam.
Thanks for the Turtle Island Poetry shout-out. 42 is not actually part of my poem’s title, that’s just the entry (rather than page) number.
I hear you on the anarchist approach to ownership. In my 20s I always described my leanings as “socialist on good days, anarchist on bad ones.” Deliberately jokey & oversimplified as that is, it still sort of applies. On the subject of property I always think of this praise-line for the god Ogun: “the day they laid his cornerstone he told his children he’d stay homeless”
The problem is holding such convictions within a system that dismisses them. How do we square that?
Today’s post takes me back to a youthful obsession with seedy old LA. I mean this specific incident is fascinating, sure. I saw the Netflix doc on the Cecil Hotel & yes, that elevator footage is genuinely eerie. Again (as with the disappeared boys post) I don’t even want to hear any theories or explanations for her behavior: the surrealist in me is perfectly content mainlining the pure uncanny.
But beyond this one particular case: for a while there I was a hobby historian of subterranean LA. Went by the Cecil many times though I never checked in. I did stay a couple of nights in the very comparable Olympic (by MacArthur Park), a real flea-pit with malevolent vibes & heavy hooker & john traffic. Plus all the old dive bars that are now closed or were bought up by bourgie gentrifiers. King Eddy’s Saloon was the standout there. It wasn’t all about getting an aesthetic whiff though. A friend of mine did practically live on Skid Row for a while & I had my brush with it too. It’s a strange mix of feelings that’s hard to explain to “normal” folks: on the one hand the conditions are awful & your heart breaks for those who can’t escape them, on the other hand I distinctly remember the fucked-up thrill of standing in my Olympic room thinking “I could disappear here”…
“psychedelically melancholy” i like that. thats a very fitting description for some of ur work.
ive thought about trying a nicotine patch but whenever i look them up it reads like its supposed to be for people who smoke a pack a day, and i only smoke like 3 a day by now, which is actually okay for my standards, but i guess it cant hurt.
the elisa lam case makes me really sad. i dont know. it makes me feel like what most missing peoples cases evokes in me except shes just dead – its like, serial killers or kidnappings or something just have this finality to them, so as disturbing as it is, its over so it doesnt have much of a punch. although its absurd to talk like that about real events, like theyre just stories. anyway this case and most missing peoples cases it just haunts me a lot. theres something youll never know about it and knowing probably wouldnt significantly change anything about your life but the helplessness of not knowing is just really scary to me. like imagine you’re just waiting for a train or something and a person that you know everyone has been looking for for decades just shows up next to you. that would make me feel very out of place.
I’ve read a lot about this story over the years. It seems strange that there are so many hotels in LA with not only ominous but notorious histories, notorious in ways that legendary hotels in other cities maybe aren’t.
I felt totally terrible today due to the meds. When I woke up I was so tired that I could barely stand and felt nauseous and disorientated for the first half of my day. This has been the second day in a row that this has happened and I just know that it will happen tomorrow as well. I contacted the doctor about it and he said that I needed to tough it out for a while until my body gets used to the meds which felt sort of sadistic. When I go to sleep tonight it feels like I’ll be involuntarily plunging myself into some abyss it’ll be difficult to emerge from.
I listened to Syd Barrett all day and then realized that it would have been his 80th birthday which was a weird coincidence. I’ve always had such a personal connection with his music. His solo stuff in particular always makes me very emotional.
And RIP Bela Tarr too. I may possibly finally watch ‘Satantango’ across this weekend but I don’t know yet if I’ll be up for it. Maybe ‘The Turin Horse’ or one of the shorter ones I haven’t seen.
I’ll honor your wish to keep this a politics-free zone, but fucking hell, today is horrible!
I just returned from seeing William Tyler perform, followed by the video album for TIME INDEFINITE. He played solo American primitive-cum-free improv acoustic guitar, but the album is much noisier and thicker. The film, which was co-directed by his sister, treats their family’s home movies with blurs and superimpositions.
Lam’s death seems even sadder when probable mental illness becomes fodder for “Illuminati ritual confirmed” videos.
Hey Dennis! Are you feeling better since getting the flu? I’m sick with something else now, a cold I think. My voice is totally gone! Gonna wait a bit longer to send you mail so my germs don’t ship to you with the card & goodies.
Do you have any guilty pleasures Dennis? I haven’t been able to pull myself away from short form videos & debate slop recently. Hoping to kick this habit this year, it’s been increasingly difficult with social media platforms all trying to compete with TikTok. I put YouTube on my “outs” list this year, but there’s something so soothing about listening to people argue while doing my chores… maybe I should switch to recorded lectures haha.
Very sad to hear about Bela Tarr, Werckmeister Harmonies was one of the best films I had to watch for school. Interesting subject for today’s post as well- if I recall correctly, Elisa had a tumblr blog that continued to run its queue after she passed on. There’s kind of a bitter sweet nature to the way the internet enables haunting I think. I know at some darker points in my life, I considered scheduling things to post days/months/years after dying. These days I’m mostly better though.
Hope all is well Dennis!
Hey friend!
Oh yes how exciting and capricious of a post!
Yes, ELisa Lamb what a sasd story. She was bipolar and some other stuff was going on.
Hmmm.. Oh im going to copy/paste a bio I whipped up below, thoughts? Critique? No worri
Darby Vasquez is a young writer from Wilmington NC
His writing explores the gritty path of the maladjusted, from themes of human suffering, taboo thoughts, and alienated voices from the inferior and abused.
On the other hand, his spiritual journey bridges a path of light, entwining beauty with degradation, giving power to the defeated, as he explores naturalistic themes, mysticism, and spiritual entities littered in his writing. There is a balance to his creations. From darkness, there is always a light to emerge.
Darby is currently working on his first novel while studying visual arts at Cape Fear Community College in NC.]
I really dont like writing about myself, but I think it wasnt that bad
Yesterday I started crying over the thought of a cover letter but I started a draft today and its bearable. Kind of fun.
I want fallafals, gasp, I have falafell mix in my cabinet! Do you have a pic of the exact kind you get? Like on the internet. How much comes in the box? Yum.