links

https://celebratingphilochs.com/
http://sonnyochs.com/
https://philochsthing.wordpress.com/

 

‘For those not fortunate enough to recall, Phil Ochs was one of our nation’s most profound singer/songwriters in the period that bridged the Civil Rights, antiwar and feminist movements. He was born on December 19, 1940: Today he would have been a “that’s the spirit” 76 years old.

‘His topical songs called for peace and an equitable society. They called for equal rights and celebrated an egalitarian philosophy. His songs damned the establishment that accepted the murder of leaders such as Medgar Evers and allowed organized labor to abandon its true cause.

‘Ochs’ songs unashamedly pointed out our faults and tried to demonstrate the means to repair them. They were brash appeals to youthful protesters. Ochs was a presence — in song and in person — at historic events such as the 1968 Chicago Democratic Convention, where he was arrested, and which in his own words turned him into an “early revolutionary.” His music was heard at campuses and rallies as commonly as those of his contemporaries, Bob Dylan and Joan Baez.

‘Many of Ochs’ songs remain in the common vocabulary and repertoire of today’s folk singers. Yet this vital, powerful, gifted songwriter of sonorous voice and darkly handsome features is now but a fading image to the general society.

‘Ochs’s major musical influences included Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger, Buddy Holly, Elvis Presley, Bob Gibson and Merle Haggard. His best-known songs include “I Ain’t Marching Anymore,” “Changes,” “Draft Dodger Rag,” “Love Me, I’m a Liberal,” “Outside of a Small Circle of Friends,” “Power and the Glory,” “There but for Fortune,” “The War Is Over,” and “When I’m Gone.” His song “Crucifixion” compared the deaths of Jesus Christ and assassinated President John F. Kennedy.

‘From the New York Greenwich Village folk scene to the national stage, Ochs sang his protests. Albums such as All the News That’s Fit to Sing and I Ain’t Marching Anymore spoke volumes. Though the songs kept coming, he seemed unmarketable. Somehow the corporate media kept missing – or trying to dismantle – the point. Ochs’ move to California allowed him more breathing space but little solace. He signaled his progressing mental depression by titling a 1969 album Rehearsals for Retirement, a reaction to the events of 1968 — the assassinations of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy, the police riot in Chicago, and the election of Richard Nixon. The cover pictured his own gravestone: BORN: EL PASO, TEXAS, 1940, DIED: CHICAGO, ILLINOIS, 1968. In all, he produced eight albums during his lifetime.

‘Continually plagued by demons, inner and outer, Ochs’ performances often became arguments with the audience, best documented by the concert album, Gunfight at Carnegie Hall, in which he can be heard berating a taunting audience with statements like, “Don’t be like Spiro Agnew.” By then he had turned to his musical roots in country music and early rock and roll, deciding on a persona “part Elvis Presley and part Che Guevara,” and performed in a commissioned gold lamé suit.

‘Through all of the much documented pain, Ochs maintained contact with the issues that mattered most. For a while at least, he fought back against the power elite’s offensive. Into the early 1970s he organized large-scale benefit concerts that would serve as the model for the later No Nukes and Live Aid events. He traveled to South America in August 1971 and met with Chilean songwriter-activist Victor Jara, whose horrific murder in 1973 at the behest of the right-wing dictator Pinochet was a crushing blow to the already faltering Ochs. By the mid-seventies, unable to prevail in the battle on every front and by then diagnosed with bipolar disorder, he would die on April 9, 1976, by his own hand.’

-People’s World

https://www.peoplesworld.org/article/this-week-in-history-remembering-protest-singer-phil-ochs/

 

‘This lovely song was not on any of the original albums, though it was released later. He sang it on the air at WBAI radio in 1965, where he explained that this song was heavily influenced by his reading of the poetry of Yeats.’

 

Interview with Phil Ochs by Doc Stanley from May 8, 1966

‘It has been a good season recently at Ed Pearl’s Ash Grove: last week it was Doc Watson and now it is Phil Ochs, songwriter, poet, revolutionary, and all-around good egg. Phil Ochs, who has been held over this weekend to co-star with Guy Carawan, writes his own songs, thinks up his own comedy lines on the spot, and plays his old-style Gibson Jumbo guitar in a most entertaining fashion. I talked with Phil Ochs between sets and he told me:

“I played Boston on the same bill with Barry Sadler. It was frightening. I found out Barry Sadler smokes a new kind of cigarette, Green Berets. He just rolls up his hat and smokes it. It makes you want to kill.

“My ideas come from my subconscious. What I read, movies I see, whatever all goes into the mill and then—flash—there are the words and music, they come together and there’s another song.

“I’ve been playing the guitar for six years. My first guitar was an old Kay which I won for an election bet. I bet on Kennedy and he won which proves I’d be right into politics from then on.

“My first topical or political song was ‘The Ballad of the Cuban Invasion.’ People liked it. I had written a few rock and roll songs before that but they didn’t work and I’d best forget about them.

“I played sax and clarinet in high school in Columbus, Ohio and I loved popular music ever since Elvis Presley. I learned all the songs on the top forty for about ten years. That’s hundreds of melodies, and they merge, and that’s where I get my tunes. As near as I can figure out I’ve got the muscles in my mind trained to make melodies.

“I can still sing songs which were popular in 1956. The great influences were I’d guess, Elvis Presley, Buddy Holly, the Everly brothers and lots of rhythm and blues groups like the Platters.

“Poetry is concentrated language and amplified thought.

“I have only one complaint about TV—they won’t let me on except on the news programs. One night I was on Walter Cronkite’s CBS news show while Huntley-Brinkley was blacked out by a football game. I sang ‘Draft-dodger Rag’ and I don’t know how many people saw me but I’d guess it was my largest audience.

“I quit smoking and drinking on will power alone. I had to. The pace of singing for an hour-and-a-half a night tears up your throat if you complicate it with smoking or drinking.

“I spent some time in England last year. England is fine except I almost got in trouble with the Labour Party—they must have thought I was a Socialist or something.

“I have a new record out which should be in the stores this week, ‘Phil Ochs in Concert.’ It is a real political first. The liner notes are poetry by Mao TseTung in translation. We sent Mao $50 and a record and a thank you note telling him we had used his poems. Is this the enemy?

“I don’t want a revolution, just lots of record sales. Peace through copyright, that’s my motto.

“There is a revolution in song writing, however—a major revolution. The new songs say more than they used to. There is a poetry of depth and power, an expansion of scope, an approach to the problems of today with social realism unknown in the past. The old-style songs, the Rogers and Hammerstein type are nice, but they don’t say enough.

“The greatest sin is to deny the esthetic in yourself or in other people in a given situation.

“A Liberal is a guy who hangs out on the corner by the New Republic office waiting for some poverty-stricken fellow to come along so he can lay a little bread on him and find out where the action is.

“Did you ever wonder if LBJ smokes marijuana? Did you ever wonder if the whole security council turns on to incredible drugs?

“I wonder if those guys view the world as a beautiful naked woman standing before them? What would you do with a beautiful naked woman if you’re high? Did you ever wonder? I did and I wrote ‘We’re the Cops of the World’ when I wondered about that. Oh, this psychodrama we call the twentieth century.”

‘Phil Ochs is a serious young poet. He has a lot to say about the scene in which we live and he says it well. Go see him; he is something else again.’

-fifthestate.org

https://www.fifthestate.org/archive/8-may-1966/interview-with-phil-ochs/

 

 

The California Christmas sun (unpublished poem)

The California Christmas sun
burned summer warm
the white tinsel trees
gloved seasonless cold
The bay lapped the shores
of the freeway
the speeding reindeer cars
weren’t going our way
as we stood there freezing
in the frigid space
and cursed the holiday
“For Christ sakes
it’s Xmas”
The naked swordsman
leaped outside his door
and looked all ways before
he crossed
he borrowed nothing from
the passers-by
but the curious + discounted
looks of the lost
The cops came with
their drugs + chains
+ saying “shoot” before we halt,
+ Santa lay there naked
in the snowless street
with his silver gift
bleeding from his hand,
+ he spoke his last
through the salt + pepper mike
for Christ sakes
it’s Xmas
The bar was empty with
the coarse crowd
plunging up + down in their
seasaw celebration
kissing their corners
begging stimulation
from the draining shroud.
+ she went behind
the gas station
to piss + primp
she swallows the petrol
from the hanging pump
+ humped
+ stumbled back

 

Encores (The War Is Over songbook), 1968

Centuries took holidays
before these days
became desperately clear
that chariots full of Christmas cheer
could never draw the child near
but this year
one of the last remaining years
Santa Claus is a sniper
on the roof of Macy’s
picking off customers
splattering packages
and miscellaneous toes
everywhere.
missionaries built millenniums
and caravans of cucumbers were exchanged
before the sin of sharing was uncovered
and the chocolate bayonets were deranged
but this year
one of the last remaining years
the soul brother reindeer
having nothing but nothing to fear
have destroyed all possessions
as the holiest of gifts.
hymns have swallowed histories
and faded into love
before a winter full of autumns
had covered up their harmonies
but this year
though one of the last remaining years
the fading matinee idol
clutching the memories
of his almost unforgettable performance
turns sadly away
from the diminishing applause
of his most terrified believers.

 

AN INTERVIEW BY FANS IN THE UNDERGROUND OF GREENWICH VILLAGE
Unpublished

Q. How would you describe yourself?
A. Eich bien un Berliner.
Q. How did you become a protest singer?
A. It was either that or reform school.
Q. We understand that you were invited to the White House for dinner.
A. Yes. I walked up to Lyndon and said, “I’m much better than you are.” Somewhat taken aback he replied, “No, I’m much better than you are.” “See, I’ve already got you down to my level,” I said.
Q. You know Bob Dylan used to be our hero until he sold out and went commercial. Now you’re our hero. We admire your convictions and certainly hope you don’t sell out, too.
A. Why it’s the farthest thing from my mind folks. But you shouldn’t let me be your hero anyway.
Q. Why not?
A. Well, as I was gazing at a statue of myself the other day, I realized that people take themselves far too seriously.
Q. Do you have any plans for the future?
A. Well, by middle age I tentatively plan to become an alcoholic to avoid serious interviews.
Q. What is your real name.
A. Robespierre.
Q. Why did you quit school before getting your diploma?
A. I had decided that education was really the process of apology between generations. Besides, they were starting to integrate.
Q. Would you recommend that everybody quit school?
A. Only if they’re an egomaniac.
Q. Do you have any other advice for the youth of America?
A. Get it while you’re young.
Q. Doesn’t this attitude conflict with the meaning of your songs?
A. Of course.
Q. How do you spend your days?
A. Three times a week I take a course in how to be a Negro.
Q. How do you spend your nights?
A. As often as possible.
Q. What would you like to be if you weren’t a topical singer?
A. The Presidential News Secretary.
Q. Why?
A. So I could utilize a short news brief I composed once in my awake, “President Johnson passed away quietly in his sleep last night. He was giving a speech at the time.”
Q. Who is the greatest threat to America?
A. All the astronauts and Robert Goulet.
Q. Don’t you even like the astronauts?
A. You gotta make a living.
Q. Do you have any ambitions?
A. Just one, not to be a success.
Q. What are you working on now?
A. I’ve just finished my first book entitled My Seven Minutes with John F. Kennedy, His Wit, His Courage etc. and I’m halfway in to my second, Is Patriotism Camp?
Q. What’s the best thing you have ever written?
A. An apologetic fan letter to John Wayne.
Q. Did you have an unhappy childhood?
A. No, I spent it all in the movies.
Q. Do you belong to any organizations?
A. Only one, an artistic terrorist squad.
Q. Are you doing any television?
A. Yes, I’m doing a series called Protest Man where I attack essential problems by writing songs and making lots of money off them.
Q. What’s the most difficult thing you ever attempted?
A. Trying to get Elvis Presley to record “Here’s to the State of Mississippi.”
Q. What’s the most significant thing you ever did?
A. Racing into a Chamber of Commerce meeting in Wichita, Kansas, screaming, “The Chinese are coming. The yellow bastards are here. Millions of them swarming down Main Street trying to kill your mothers.”
Q. How did you get away with it?
A. I left town in a police uniform disguised as the Mafia.
Q. Do you want to be a leader of the New Left?
A. I would, but I admire William Buckley too much.
Q. Something is happening, but I don’t know what it is?
A. Well, my term for what is happening is the hip aesthetic left.
Q. What does that mean?
A. The life force of the sixties. Hip because it’s aware of reality, aesthetic because of the increased appreciation of beauty, and left because it’s the most effective and humane way of running things.
Q. Watch it, you’re getting serious.
A. Sorry.
Q. Are there any practical suggestions from this philosophy?
A. Yes, we could have a hip aesthetic left week where all opposing troops in Vietnam could meet peacefully on the battlefield, smoke the finest imported Lebanese hashish, and watch Charlie Chaplin movies projected against the sky.
Q. You have some rather strange ideas.
A. You know, I’d come out for the legalization of marijuana, but I wouldn’t want to get in to trouble.
Q. What do you do between writing songs?
A. Bite my nails.
Q. Would you burn your draft card?
A. No. But if I could find them, I’d burn my social security card and my birth certificate.
Q. Who are your favorite show business personalities?
A. Hubert Humphrey and Billy Graham.
Q. Do you ever dream?
A. Oh yes . . . the other night I dreamt America took over the entire world, officially, and turned it into a television series. On top of that, they gave it a low rating because nobody wanted to watch.
Q. Why do you go to demonstrations?
A. Because I feel guilty about being white and rich.
Q. Why have you come out against American foreign policy?
A. I think America has an ungrounded fear of progress. But in the event the U.S. mainland is attacked by Russia or China, I’m only kidding folks.
Q. What is the mood of young America?
A. Essentially anti-Protestant. You might describe these times as the revenge of the war babies.
Q. There is a theory that history is the process of compromised revolutions. Can you give us a Bartlett’s Quotation quotation on this generation?
A. On the white steed of aesthetic rebellion I will attack the decadence of my future with all the arrogance of youth.

 

‘Larry Marks told Andrew Sandoval a great story about Phil wearing Lenny Bruce’s jacket on the cover of Pleasures and never wanting to leave it off.’

 

‘Around the same time as A Toast came out this boy was lucky enough to discover Pleasures of the Harbor, by pure chance. A slightly battered secondhand copy for seven pounds? Irresistible with that cover photo of Phil in his suede coat and flat cap: such a totally cool bohemian mod look. It really was a revelation, and for a 1967 record it was so wonderfully un-rock ’n’ roll. Funnily enough this is a genuine Phil Ochs quote, from 1974, which could so easily be Subway Sect speaking to Steve Walsh a few years later: “I consider rock music basically dead, uninteresting, boring, repetitious, too loud, ego-maniacal, ludicrous and totally beside the point.”

‘There really is not anything else like Pleasures is there? Ahead of recording the LP Phil apparently was inspired by The Beatles’ lyricism and sound, particularly ‘Yesterday’, and one imagines an affinity with ‘Eleanor Rigby’, ‘She’s Leaving Home’, the baroque ballads, and definitely the Beach Boys’ Pet Sounds. Phil was giving serious thought to the idea of an LP as a work of art, not just as a convenient collection of songs, and was able to do so due to his growth as an artist. But was this really the dramatic change some make out? It always seems his social realism was infused with lyricism, and even Che sat in the forests of the night reading poetry by the light of a campfire.

‘Pre-empting detractors Phil wrote: “Ah but in such an ugly time the true protest is beauty”. And this song-cycle is a work of extraordinary beauty. Importantly, as the years have slipped-by, we have gained a better understanding of the key players on this and Phil’s two subsequent A&M LPs, Tape From California and Rehearsals for Retirement, three records which form a formidable triptych, but oh what a mess in terms of what’s available where and how in the present tense. It has been a gradual process of identifying who and what the essential personnel link to, and the connections prove these records were not flukes.’

-yrheartout.blogspot.com

https://yrheartout.blogspot.com/2020/09/bless-day-13-there-but-for-fortune.html

 

 

‘[On] Wednesday, August 28, the day that most people think about when they think about that convention in Chicago, protesters agitated along the east side of Michigan Avenue across from the Conrad Hilton Hotel where the Democratic delegates were staying. That included Ochs, who wore a flag pin on his suit jacket.

“Phil was born in El Paso, Texas, and really loves America,” Gumbo later said. “Even when he’s being gassed along with the rest of us.”

”He also tried to engage with the young National Guardsmen pointing their bayoneted rifles toward the sky, Gumbo recalled:

‘As we walk, Phil introduces himself to the impressed guardsmen and asks if they’ve ever heard his songs. Like “I Ain’t Marching Anymore.” Many nod.

“I once spent $10 to go to one of your concerts” one complains. “I’ll never do that again.”

‘In 1968, $10 was a lot of money. Phil stops and talks directly to the guy, explaining why he is opposed to the war. The Guardsman starts to smile, and even lowers his rifle a little bit, very appreciative that a celebrity like Phil is speaking to him like a real person.

‘But the smiles soon disappeared as about 3,000 protesters tried to march and the police didn’t let them and some of them started throwing rocks, sticks, sometimes feces. What ensued was a 17-minute melee in front of the hotel between the marchers and a force that included some of the 12,000 Chicago police in addition to 6,000 army troops and 5,000 National Guardsmen that had been called to protect Chicago on the orders of Mayor Daley. Officers beat activists bloody in the streets of Chicago with nightsticks—live on national TV. It was called the Battle of Michigan Avenue, a nickname used to describe a one-sided affair that a government commission later declared to be a “police riot.” In all, 100 protesters and 119 cops were treated for injuries and about 600 protesters were arrested.’

-Chicago Reader

 

 

Interview on the Chicago Convention by Izzy Young, September 4, 1968

IZZY: About how many people were on the march altogether, would you say? The papers said about 15,000.

PHIL: It’s hard to gauge. But that’s a good count. A lot of the bravest people showed up. I mean they were people from around the country who really went through a major personal dilemma. Daley’s pre-convention terror tactics were a success in keeping out large numbers of people. For instance, his threats to set up large scale concentration camps. Daley issued many statements like that, very threatening statements, and these and come succeeded in keeping a lot of people away. But the people who did show up were the toughest, really, and the most dedicated. And a lot of great things happened in the middle of the terror of the police attacks. There was a definite spirit, a good spirit, unleashed in the streets. There was more coming together with Blacks, more than on any other march I’ve seen. A joining of Blacks and whites to resist mutual oppression. Especially in Lincoln Park.

IZZY: On television they kept calling these people – – they kept calling these people outsiders. You know, they’re Americans. How can you call somebody an outsider in his own country?

PHIL: Yeah, well, the Chicagoans were unable to recognize that this was a national convention. They literally, psychologically couldn’t. They kept thinking, “This is our city, our convention. “ When it’s a national election they’re talking about. I’m really beginning to question the basic sanity of the American public. I think the public itself is just — I think more and more politicians are really becoming pathological liars, and I think many members of the public are. I think the Daily News, Tribune poisoning that comes out is literally creating – and television, all the media are creating a really mentally ill, unbalanced public. And it’s significant. I think what happened in Chicago was the final death of democracy in America as we know it: the total, final takeover of the fascist military state – in one city, at least.

IZZY: Most people have no contact with the politicians who are selecting the nominees.

PHIL: Well, in that sense, it was a major victory for the street people in terms of unmasking the facts. But still, basically, there’s been opportunities to deal with the convention system and come up with decent candidates; you know, the conventions did produce Adlai Stevenson and John Kennedy. But now, I can’t accept this election. I can’t see myself being loyal to a Nixon or a Humphrey administration. I don’t think there’s any choice. I think the final corruption has come home, the final – the ugliness and corruption of a South Vietnamese election which is a non-election has come to America, and now Americans are faced with a South Vietnamese election. (…) I might go back to Scotland.

IZZY: How can that help things in America?

PHIL: At a certain point you start losing interest in helping things in America.

IZZY: I’m also faced with the choice of leaving. I just got a letter from Africa and the writer says, “Gee, Izzy, I’m always thinking about what you’re saying, that the people who go to Canada aren’t helping people in America.” Phil, if you leave America, you’re making it harder for thousands of people that believe in you. You’re already more than an individual. You stand for an idea already, and you can’t just leave your followers behind.

PHIL: It’s not fair. (Laughs)

IZZY: Dylan doesn’t care. Judy Collins doesn’t care. Or they’d speak out openly. But you do care. And you do speak out openly.

PHIL: You can’t presume to say that Dylan and Collins don’t care. I’m sure they care.

IZZY: Well, I feel that when a person has access to mass media and they keep quiet that means they don’t give a damn what’s happening to the people. In other words, getting Judy Collins on a TV spectacular doesn’t help the cause of freedom or peace or anything.

PHIL: It’s just that at this point America is an uncontrolled death machine. And since she failed in electoral politics to check that, it has to be checked in other ways. And one way would be a mass denial of manpower to its corporations. The extension of draft resistance: keep your body out of the Army; keep your body out of the college and out of the university. That is just preparing you for the corrupt corporation. Keep pulling people away from the establishment until it collapses.

IZZY: I don’t think it would collapse. If the intelligent people pull out the corporations would be happy.

PHIL: I’m not talking about intellectuals only. I’m talking about all the people who work for corporations.

IZZY: Well, they’re not leaving.

PHIL: No. I’m only looking for a way to get them to quit.

IZZY: I don’t think there is a way. These guys are getting their $15,000, their $20,000; they’ve got a taste of the honey and they want more.

PHIL: All right, then America is the rule of the devil. The devil has won.

https://www.marxists.org/archive/ochs/1968/chicago-convention.htm

 

‘In Gunfight at Carnegie Hall, a concert album recorded at Carnegie Hall in New York on March 27, 1970, Ochs dressed in an Elvis-style flashy gold-lamé suits and sang medleys of covers of the King and Buddy Holly. He laid out his new philosophy bare in a monologue to the audience:

“As you know, I died in Chicago. I lost my life and I went to heaven because I was very good and sang very lyrical songs. And I got to talk to God and he said, ‘Well, what do you want to do? You can go back and be anyone you want.’ So I thought who do I want to be? And I thought, I wanted to be the guy who was the King of Pop, the king of show business, Elvis Presley.

“If there’s any hope for America, it lies in a revolution. If there’s any hope for a revolution in America, it lies in getting Elvis Presley into becoming Che Guevara. If you don’t do that, you’re just beating your head against the wall, or the cop down the street will beat your head against the wall. We have to discover where he is, he’s the ultimate American artist.”

-Chicago Reader

https://chicagoreader.com/blogs/how-the-1968-dnc-protests-in-chicago-killed-protest-folk-singer-phil-ochs/

 

‘This recording took place Christmas Eve 1975 at my apartment in Soho that I shared with Larry “Ratso” Sloman and Phil when he felt like it. Phil picked up a guitar and started to sing and I decided to record it. For the time being it seemed that Phil’s psychotic episodes during the dog days of the summer of ’75 had reached a zenith at Gerde’s in October and with Che, and Phil had now moved to a different and calmer place on the bipolar spectrum. He had not been drinking and had been writing obsessively. He was planning an album that would be an unflinching narrative of his psychosis over the past year and had at least ten songs in various states. Five of those songs are represented here. The working title for the album was Duel In The Sun. Soon after the New Year Phil started to come around less until he eventually moved in with his sister Sonny in Far Rockaway. We would talk on the phone but I would never see him again. This is dedicated to Abbie Hoffman, Jerry Rubin and Mike Porco; three of the best friends Phil ever had and to Sonny Ochs for keeping Phil’s music alive all these years.’

 

Phil and Me

‘This is a page where people share their stories about meeting Phil or spending special times with him. Everyone is welcome to submit a story. Please send yours to celebratingphilochs @gmail.com or use the form at the bottom of the page.’

‘………as I stepped on the loose tarp in the Orillia arena I went ass over tea kettle in a clump at the foot of center stage. Phil actually stopped playing one his songs and asked if I was OK, I waved and said alright and that was my first meeting with Mr. Ochs.’ — Kristian Bostlund

“Hi, I’m Phil Ochs.” I can still see that shy, goofy grin. We were both journalism students at Ohio State University when we met in about 1960 while working on the campus newspaper, the Lantern.

‘I never knew Phil real well, but we were friends. I remember that he was very sensitive and very funny. Phil’s Lantern career hit a roadblock after he wrote some liberal political columns about Cuba and other issues in his dormitory newspaper that drew the scorn of OSU’s very conservative Board of Trustees. So he took his talent and wit to the campus humor magazine, The Sundial, where he became managing editor. One of the writers there was R. L. “Bob” Stine, later the author of the wildly best-selling “Goosebumps” books. Another of our classmates was a young golfer named Jack Nicklaus.

‘I didn’t know that Phil was into music until one day when a bunch of us were having breakfast, and he told us that he had gone to Cleveland over the weekend to do some folk singing. In his senior year in 1962, he left OSU and went to New York City. Before long he put out his first record album called “All the News That’s Fit to Sing” and began running around with Bob Dylan.

‘The last time I saw Phil was in Detroit in about 1965. I was a reporter at the Wall Street Journal, and Phil was appearing at a local club. After his act, we sat down for a few drinks. I recall him worrying about what he would do if he got drafted, since he strongly opposed the Vietnam War. He might have to go to Canada. I don’t know if he ever got a draft notice, but I do know he later wrote his great “Draft Dodger Rag.”

‘I wound up with the Journal in Washington D.C., where Phil became the troubadour of the anti-War demonstrations with his protest anthem “I Ain’t Marching Anymore.” I only saw him on TV by this time. Then, sadly, on a trip to Africa some robbers cut his throat, damaging his vocal cords. According to the biography of him, “There But For Fortune,” Phil also was manic depressive. The upshot was his tragic suicide in 1976.

‘One can only imagine what more contributions Phil would have made had he lived longer. At least on his 75th birthday later this year we can celebrate the music that he did leave. And when that happens, somewhere Phil will be grinning from ear to ear.’ — Ron Shafer in Williamsburg, Va.

‘The summer of 1975 I worked as a lab assistant at a video learning center in Soho. This happened to be across the street from Phil’s tavern of choice at the time called “Soho Darts”. His guitar was kept behind the bar until his tab was paid off. At his suggestion the bar was renamed “Che”. A couple of times he tried to hit me up for beer money when I didn’t have any to spare. That didn’t stop him from being friendly and engaging. I did tell him I knew his records since my brothers had them and gave him a tour of the video center.’ — Don Leich

 

Tributes

Legends – Sammy Walker

I dreamed I saw Phil Ochs last night – Billy Bragg

He Was A Friend Of Mine (Live at the Phil Ochs Memorial Concert) – Dave Van Ronk

Phil – Tom Paxton

 

 

*

p.s. Hey. This weekend the mighty Lucas has put together a comprehensive post about the singer/songwriter Phil Ochs. For those who aren’t familiar with him, he had a fascinating trajectory from initially being one of the main 60s anti-war folk singers to becoming a poetic, visionary kind of songwriter and recording artist before transitioning into an idiosyncratic, confrontational figure with shades of what Andy Kaufman would later make his stamp and finally meeting a complicated, tragic end. Please spend your local weekend exploring his story and work. Thank you so, so much, Lucas. ** Laura, Hi. Oh, Carsten had a question for you yesterday if you didn’t see it. Really interesting: the parallels you saw re: Meinhof’s work. I’ll dwell on your insights. That smutty audiobook thing does sound ripe for fictionalisation. A cuppa with you in Paris, well, of course! Love back. ** Charalampos, Hi. I haven’t found your email, but I haven’t scoured my box yet. Will do. Ursule Molinaro is an interesting writer, yeah. I don’t know that book. Sounds most curious. Hi from Paris and me sitting here doing what is easy to imagine. ** _Black_Acrylic, I think I read ‘Steps’ back in the day. The book of his I best remember for some reason is ‘Cockpit’. He was quite read by cool people until he got hit with plagiarism accusations, which I think were proven, and then he became kind of pariah. Interesting figure, in other words. ** Carsten, Welcome back from your busy week. Paris has been a bit colder than the winter usual, but I still haven’t had to dress in layers. I’m such a city guy. I think if I didn’t live in a big city with constant cultural possibilities, I’d be a depressed wreck. ** Bill, Hi. Yeah, I wish ILP books were more available in stores. I’ve seen a couple of their titles at After8, but that’s pretty much it. ‘OBEX’: I’ll try to find it. I don’t know Albert Birney’s work at all. Nice. I’m going to see a Jack Smith film I’ve never seen before this afternoon. ‘Mr. President’. Should be good, duh. ** Lucas, Giant thank to you ‘in person’. ‘Justine’ is the shortest of Sade’s biggies, which is alluring. Even I, for whom ‘120 Days’ changed my life, etc., have never read it without rather heavy skimming, because, yes, it gets sloggy a lot. Congrats/fingers crossed on the test. Weekend … I’m going to see a Jack Smith film today that I don’t know then Zooming with a friend. We’re in the middle of trying to set up a few RT screenings, so I have to work on that. Not sure what else yet. Red hair, that is news. I can see that. ** kenley, Hi, k. Oh, I definitely think my writing is funny. Or I mean I intend it to be funny. It does seem like there’s a fair amount of people who don’t realise that until I read it aloud, and then they’re kind of shocked that they’re laughing or at least grinning. I think Khruangbin would count. If I find any contempo psych that isn’t just retro workouts, I’ll let you know. Where’s the new Spacemen 3? I’m down with your fave music picks, or the ones I know. I don’t know Drive Your Plow oOver the Bones of the Dead, but I’ll find out. Nice name, obviously. I’m doing one of my gig posts here next week where I post vids of stuff I’ve been listening to. Nothing has blown my mind lately. I’m just kind skimming around and listening to random tracks. ** Steeqhen. Hi. I want to see ‘Fire Walk with Me’ again because I haven’t seen it since its release, and I remember thinking the opening part with David Bowie, etc. was weak, but I think I might not feel that way now. ** Dustin, I found 9MOTHER9HORSE9EYES9 — the representation on Reddit is it, right? — but it’s a lot to investigate, and I’ve just cracked it. Looks very odd (in obviously a good way). I’m quite interested in eroguro and keep up with it on the couple of sites where the artists mostly post their stuff. I have a near lifelong interest in how the extreme and unseeable, and the intersection of gore and sex in particular, can be represented in such a way that the viewer can take it in without freaking out, and guro is very studyable in that regard. To me, I mean. ** Steve, People seem so enthusiastic about the new ’28 Years Later’. Normally I wouldn’t be interested but now I am. It seems to be exciting people sort of a la ‘Mad Max: Fury Road’? Seeing a Jack Smith film I don’t know today, ‘RT’ work, maybe seeing ‘Lady from Shanghai’ projected tomorrow, stuff like that. How was our weekend? ** darbz (⊙ _ ⊙ ), Hi. I was going to ask what the association was between Lynch and Depeche Mode, but you explained. Huh. No, I don’t think I’ve ever sewn anything. Not even a button that fell off my shirt or anything. How strange. As much as I used to like and do cocaine, I always found stopping was really easy. I’m fine, doing my usual. Oh, I’m talking with someone today partially to see if we could set up an ‘RT’ screening in your general area. Not sure if it’ll happen, but I’ll let you know if so. It sounds like you’re doing really well. Trust in the stabilising and strengthening aspect, pal. You have so much to do and give. xoxo. ** Okay. Please be with Phil Ochs via Lucas until I see you next on Monday.

 

The face of a human foetus is formed by three rotating parts – one with the right eye, one with the left eye, and one with the mouth – meeting and growing together in the philtrum, resting on the cupid’s bow. These parts represent the Trinity.

The timeless love story of a saint and a serial killer: Joan of Arc and Gilles de Rais must navigate the mechanics of genocide in a mystical apocalypse. EGREGORE or, the Trinity of the Philtrum, expands on the uniquely disturbing obsessions Hector Meinhof first revealed in Three Nails, Four Wounds: A journey into a winter landscape where mediaeval and contemporary visions of the last days combine, and horrifying rituals are played out for the gratification of a cruel divinity and mischievous child saints…

Translated from Swedish by B.J. Woodstein & John Macmillan
Photographs by Jozefien Van der Aelst and Karolina Urbaniak
Drawings by Josefin Jansson
Interview conducted by Martin Bladh

Hardbound, 164 pages, 206 x 148mm
https://www.infinitylandpress.com/product-page/egregore

 

 

***

EXTRACTS

Still drunk with sleep, Jeanne found herself in one of the royal castle’s dark vestibules, surrounded by a group of noblewomen who were taking turns holding her upright. Jeanne stood with her legs wide apart, wearing a white linen dress that reached her feet, the hem and collar of which were embroidered with lilies and coiled snakes. Between her thighs there shimmered a silvery light that penetrated the fabric and illuminated the powdered faces of the assembled women. Someone or something moved in the light under Jeanne’s skirt, the hem of the dress quivered, and blurred shadows flew about in a strange spectacle: a tear fell, a banner was raised, a book was riffled by the wind, a flap of wings, a sinking cross, a grotesque nose glimpsed in profile before a paw began to spin four swords between Jeanne’s knees. Suddenly, an elbow poked out of the fabric and a small wrinkled foot slipped from under the hem (but it was quickly withdrawn). Jeanne blushed, her pulse raced and her jaws tightened (two women gripped her firmly under her armpits) and as she threw her head back, gasping and gritting her teeth, something white sparkled between her thighs. For a moment, those present were dazzled – something struck the floor and rolled over the wooden planks – and they squinted; but suddenly it was all over. The flame between Jeanne’s thighs was smothered, and the gloom and calm returned. The noblewomen opened their eyelids: an extinguished candle stump lay on the floor, splashes of red wax led into and under Jeanne’s skirt, and three howls of a dog away a church bell rang the vigil. Jeanne lifted up her skirt, a black streak of smoke curled out and a chubby female dwarf crawled forward, stood up and said:
‘The girl is intact!’

 

The red brick church was packed and smelled of lily of the valley. Jeanne sat all the way at the front with the King on her right. On her left sat a shy young knight who tried not to look at her (for he knew he was unlovable). A girls’ choir performed an antiphon by von Bingen accompanied by a small, portable hand organ whose short sides accurately depicted the outline of the church seen, respectively, from the east and the west. The bellows, which were made of a goat’s stomach, breathed deeply: ‘O, this stream of blood, that allows its cry to be heard on high…’ As the assembled fell to their knees, Jeanne whispered to the young knight:

‘We will burn together, Gilles!’
‘Fire is our true element, Jeanne,’ replied Gilles.
‘Gilles, we will die in the same fire. I swear, it’s true!’ Jeanne handed her sword to Gilles. ‘Come, come, come, burn in me!’

Even from a distance, Jeanne could see that the city had been visited by the enemy (that caudate vermin!). Black smoke billowed from the church tower, a wall had collapsed and from an old oak tree just outside the city gates a witch was hanging upside-down. As Jeanne and her men wound their way through the city’s alleys, they could see the devastation up close: bloodied walls of houses, crushed glass, a burnt-out forge, mutilated people in the gutter. Gilles rode alongside Jeanne and said, ‘I remain close to you, the virgin, because you birth the exquisite suffering that heralds every new world order.’ Jeanne smiled and said, ‘You will wake up in darkness and realise that you yourself are the darkness – a darkness awakened by your dreams. A shadow will lead you to another darkness, the darkness that resides inside your light.’ As ever, Jeanne didn’t understand the words she said, but the voices in her head were satisfied.

 

Jeanne and Gilles sat on a stone in the blazing sun before a mass grave just outside the city gates. Containing a hundred or so bodies dumped in a shallow pit and perfunctorily covered with earth, the grave was neither still nor peaceful. As if sleeping restlessly – trembling with an irregular pulse – the earth heaved up and down as the air was forced out of the bowels of the dead. If you went close, you could hear a farting sound. The stench was revolting. The voices told Jeanne what to say to Gilles: ‘If you do not close your third eye and give consciousness to your essence, and then discern, separate, split and become your own antidote – your evil dreams will be realised in reality. Gilles, my friend, you have an important task to perform. More important than mine.’

And then one rainy day, it was all over in an instant. Jeanne was torn from her horse and thrown brutally to the ground. A boot on her back pinned her to the mud. Gilles was nowhere to be seen – had he escaped? And her warriors – she saw about fifty of them lying dead on the field, but as for the others – where had they gone? Jeanne was alone; not even the ravens wanted to witness her defeat and the voices inside her head had gone silent. Should I slit my upper lip now, she thought.

Jeanne spent hour after hour under the boot without anything happening. She dozed off and dreamt of a puppy lying on its side, sleeping on top of a martyr’s grave in the desert. Occasionally the puppy’s paws moved and made patterns in the sand. Suddenly, the puppy jerked, woke up and ran away. A little girl walked up to the grave, squatted down and studied the dream traces in the sacred sand, ran her finger along the contours – and saw a glimpse of something so horrible in the future that she went blind.

Jeanne woke up. It had stopped raining. She still felt the boot against her back, and every now and then it pressed down so that her spine cracked. Some distance away, a bald old woman was walking around picking the golden spurs from the corpses of Jeanne’s knights. Surely the King must do something, Jeanne thought. She decided to remain silent – but in any case, no questions were asked of her. Three hours later, a nobleman arrived in a carriage with the curtains drawn. A snap of the whip in the twilight and Jeanne was gone.

Jeanne was stripped and her skin was shaved (the hair was burned in the castle yard). The priests read her body, pricked her with needles in search of Satan’s (insensitive) mark, and every cavity of her body was palpated in search of teats. One of the priests put his ear to Jeanne’s anus – for Satan speaks excrement when he pollutes creation. But as soon as Jeanne was found to be intact, the investigation was stopped. She was a disappointment and was taken back to her cell.

 

In the middle of the night, two guards trudged into Jeanne’s cell. The youngsters were visibly drunk. One put a wax candle on the floor and said, ‘Because virgins have such tight urethras, it sounds like hissing snakes when they pee.’ ‘If you tear a lettuce leaf under a virgin’s nose, she’ll pee on herself!’ said the other, kicking the chamber pot, which slid to Jeanne’s bare feet. Still dull from the food poisoning, Jeanne was as if paralysed and the voices screamed unintelligibly behind the light inside her head.
‘It’s potty time, Jeanne!’

The guards pounced on Jeanne and pulled her trousers off. Jeanne tried to protect herself, but had no strength to fight back. The guards lifted her up and pushed the pot under her bottom. ‘I don’t want to, don’t want to sit on the potty, thanks, please, I’m so tired,’ Jeanne mumbled with her eyes shut. But soon there was a tinkling in the pot and the youngsters crowded around Jeanne’s thighs to catch a glimpse of the virgin’s clear spring water where three glowing grains of salt from the rain before the Fall crystallised the phosphorus-smelling membrane that darkened the morning star Jeanne was incubating.

And now something peculiar happened: Jeanne tilted her head back and held her breath as the warm vapours of urine entered through her urethra and continued up through her body; through her kidneys, liver, lungs and spleen – mixed with the black bile – and paralysed her heart and flooded her brain. The body is a reflection of the universe, and as the soul, falling through the Milky Way on its descent towards the fontanelle of the new-born child, rubs against the planets and receives a dose of their temperaments and qualities, so the rising urine vapour collected the energies of the bodily organs and became an ecstatic spirit that intoxicated Jeanne’s senses and put her in a trance-like state.
Jeanne began to speak in a strangely fragile and airy voice in two octaves at once. Strange tones wound up and down like snakes on a staff:

‘In the future – hundreds of years from now – in a time more superstitious than ours, where the world is more ridiculous than cruel, where pain is meaningless and the spirit has become a ghost: I see a man – the former exorcist – he is sitting in the backseat of a black limousine speeding through the moonlit white glitter of a shaken snow globe.’
To one guard, it sounded as if the tone of Jeanne’s voice was rising endlessly, while to the other it sounded as if it was endlessly falling. ‘Limousine?’ one of them exclaimed in confusion. ‘Snow globe?’ said the other. On the edge of the castle grounds, in a small red cabin with white eaves, a dead infant began to bleed from its nose.
Jeanne continued: ‘I see the limousine driving around the snow-covered streets of Egregore. The car slows down and begins to crawl along the barbed wire fence that surrounds the castle grounds, finally stopping in front of the iron gates. The window at the driver’s seat is cranked down and a hand, clad in black leather, reaches out and presses the brass button on the intercom.’

‘Intercom? I don’t understand what she’s talking about,’ said one guard, ‘and who’s really talking?’ ‘No clue. I think our martyr has gone mad!’ replied the other.
Jeanne continued: ‘“At least the smell of death is familiar,” mutters the exorcist in the backseat quietly to himself, letting his gaze drift up the castle façade. In the strong moonlight, I can clearly see the smoke rising from the chimney, a black and dense smoke that breathes in a steady beat into this windless and starry January night. But there’s something wrong with the smoke. This is not a normal draught, occurring when warm air rises and the cold air underneath creates pressure. The natural process has been accelerated, and the smoke seems to be forced out of the crown of the chimney, as if a celestial being has hauled its bowels down to the sublunar world, sucked itself onto the chimney, and is now greedily devouring people’s burnt offerings. I hear the exorcist’s thoughts: “This is my job: to feed heaven!”

‘A rasping signal and the gates open. Two armed guards take a step to the side and salute. The limousine drives over the stone bridge towards the gate, which is slowly rolled up like a rat trap, behind which two more armed guards are stationed. The car drives into the arcade, which is illuminated by milky white lanterns mounted on the columns supporting four stories of balustraded colonnades. The driver turns off the engine, sitting quietly for a moment, before he gets out of the car, walks around and opens the back door for the exorcist.

‘“Welcome to Castle Egregore,” says an elderly man, who introduces himself as the chief physician and hastily shakes the exorcist’s hand before turning to his colleagues with an elegant gesture and introducing the security officer, followed by the chief administrator, the chief nurse, a lawyer and the housekeeper (who curtsies when the exorcist extends his hand).

 

I am with the exorcist in the morgue. The windows face the arcade and are covered with shredded black plastic rubbish bags. In the room there are five patients on stretchers. Each prisoner is fastened with six leather straps to the frame of the stretcher: by the hands (extended above the head), feet, around the waist, and at the neck. Some wail. A nurse walks around and unties the cardboard tags that each prisoner has attached to their big toe (name, registration number, date of death). A young woman from the administration follows right behind, reading the labels and checking off the names on a list. Now the patients are ready for their injection. The exorcist is left alone in the room. He walks up to an old man who grunts uneasily, and he cups his hand around the old man’s shaved head.

The chief physician enters. He hastily greets the exorcist and gestures to an emaciated woman in her 20s lying on the bunk closest to the windows. The woman tries again and again to open her eyes, but her body is heavy with drugs. The physician unlocks the medicine cabinet and fills a syringe with 200 milligrams of Spica. He walks up to the woman and nonchalantly pushes the syringe straight into her navel. ‘Do you see the sweat breaking out on her forehead? Her skin is cooling, her eyelids are twitching. Listen to her heavy breathing. Wait… She’s gone!’ The physician pulls the woman’s eyelids apart with his thumb and forefinger: her pupils are constricted, as small as pinheads. The exorcist nods thoughtfully. The physician takes another bottle out of the medicine cabinet, fills the syringe and moves on to the next patient, a middle-aged man (asleep?): ‘Elgafar,’ says the physician, ‘they die within 10 seconds.’ He empties the syringe – quickly and with even pressure – into the patient’s jugular vein. He puts his stethoscope to the patient’s chest – shakes his head. ‘10-15 millilitres is enough. It’s cheap too!’ The physician quickly finishes off the three remaining patients. A little boy hiccoughs as the needle penetrates his heart.

A new patient transport. To get to the castle, the bus has to drive through the centre of town. The bus driver says that when he passed the school, the children ran after the bus and shouted: Murder bus! Murder bus! The exorcist doesn’t look happy.

The exorcist talks to the chief nurse. She has been employed at the castle for just over two years and admits that the work is quite stressful. The chief nurse says that she previously worked at a children’s clinic. She has fond memories of that time (it was less stressful). Spica or Syrma would be stirred into hot chocolate and given to the little ones, who almost immediately became noticeably lethargic and sluggish. After that, the nurses were able to tie the children to the bed frames without any difficulty and open the windows to the starry sky. After about an hour, a thick white foam began to flow from the children’s mouths. Well, now here she was at Egregore castle… The woman leans forward confidentially and asks if he really worked as an exorcist before the war. The exorcist nods and says that unfortunately it will be even more stressful in the future.

Friday 21 April
I recognised her immediately: Gemma, wearing a washed-out cotton jumper with a hood and – of course! – her black straw hat. Gemma seems to be around nine. How old was she when she died: twenty-five? I asked one of the nurses to put Gemma in cell number 1 in the corridor outside my flat. To my relief, the nurse didn’t question this (despite a raised eyebrow). Gemma, I’m going to tear you up like a plant out of the ground. It will be as if you never existed!

 

Monday 1 May
I was inside Cecilia’s cell for a while. She was kneeling on the bed, drawing flowers (with her fingernail) on her suede blanket. She erased the flowers with a sweeping movement of her hand and drew a penis instead (with a cross on the glans).

A new transport. And there stood Maddalena, wearing an old, worn and mouldy tunic. She took my hand and followed me obediently to cell number 4.

Wednesday 3 May
Liduina has three open wounds (as big as eyes) with black edges. One sits just above her navel and inside you can see hundreds of grey worms eating her entrails. I tied a compress made with honey and wheat flour over the wound

Friday 12 May
Cecilia was lying on her stomach in bed. About every five seconds her body jerked spasmodically as she let out a short gasping moan. She was pretending I was spanking her. I’m not going to do that, Cecilia!

A funny thing about Gemma is that she falls asleep on command. If I tell her to sleep, she takes her crucifix in her hand, turns on her side and immediately falls into a deep sleep.

The city museum in Egregore burned down last night. The head burner thinks there’s a madman on the loose…

 

Saturday 13 May
Things are looking promising. Today, we killed forty patients. Not bad for our little death factory! Soon we will be able to receive a bus load a day. The burners are working in shifts around the clock but still don’t have time for it all. Dead bodies are stacked along the walls of the antechamber to the crematorium and some of them have begun to rot.

Thursday 18 May
Liduina has recurring high fevers. Sometimes blood flows from her ears. Her right arm is withered and shrivelled and is coming loose from her shoulder. Liduina claims that she was given the arm by St Anthony.

Maddalena is ecstatic. She sits motionless with one arm outstretched in front of her. She holds a glass of water, as if she was about to drink but got stuck in the middle of the movement.

Mechthild has a nosebleed. She tells us that once the apocalyptic lamb came and sucked a song out of her mouth.

Christina says that Satan snores inside her pillow, so loudly that she can’t sleep.

Friday 2 June
What a day! I was with one of the physicians in the morgue. The lethal injections were administered, and the physician begrudgingly inspected one of the corpses. Suddenly he exclaimed: ‘Hot necrophilia or cold necrophilia?’, and then pulled down his trousers and began to masturbate in front of the dead body. I couldn’t believe my eyes! Furious, I grabbed the physician’s shoulders and threw him to the floor. The physician gasped for breath and tried to pull up his pants while laughing hysterically. I opened the door and called to the burners to gather the staff. Then I kicked the physician, a metre at a time, out into the arcade. The staff gathered in silence. Three bombers flew by at low altitude. I briefly informed the staff about what had happened, pushed the physician to his knees and executed him with a shot to the back of the neck.

 

Saturday 10 June
On the cell wall, Gioacchino has painted a red snake with seven dragon heads. His index finger is bleeding and he sucks it greedily. I gave him a box of crayons.
Christina told me that she had made a pilgrimage from church to church, completely naked, smeared with the supernatural poo of demons.
Jean talks to the Virgin Mary in his dreams. The Virgin smiles and says no. She stretches out her foot. Jean kisses it.

Monday 19 June
The burner asked: ‘Why all these papers, records, regulations and procedures? And why syringes? The patients are already so lethargic when they arrive, why not just beat them to death?’ I answered something about following the rulebook but he’s right – why all these bureaucratic rituals? Everyone knows what’s going on anyway. Besides, we could throw the patients alive into the crematorium oven, or let them freeze to death in a snowdrift in winter.

Gioacchino glares at me (on the sly). He seems very annoyed that I am changing the chronology.

Monday 26 June
Hildegard, Gemma and Mechthild sit around Maddalena’s bed and take turns writing down her revelations. Maddalena holds a dose of the holy darkness from the tomb of the Word between her clasped hands.

An elderly patient whispered in my ear: ‘When Judas hanged himself, his anus burst and his intestines fell out. For Judas’ mouth had been sealed by the last holy kiss of the Word. The soul was forced to take the back road.’

Sunday 2 July
A new transport. When the patients had been counted and were beginning to be herded across the arcade, a little girl suddenly looked out from the front doors of the bus. No one knew who she was, no one remembered at which institution she had got on, she had no medical record and she was not on any list. I don’t know how or why – but she belongs to the ten. I call her Eleven and have put her in the broom cupboard between cells 7 and 8.

Monday 10 July
The face of a human foetus is formed by three rotating parts – one with the right eye, one with the left eye, and one with the mouth – meeting and growing together in the philtrum, resting on the cupid’s bow. These parts represent the Trinity. Eleven has three faces, one of which is still sleeping.

Bruises floated around under the skin, sliding in and out of each other like thunderclouds in a rain-heavy sky. A blood vessel had ruptured and was leaking into the white of one eye. The other eye was closed but swollen, and a fly was walking back and forth across the eyelid. Next to the dying child’s manhandled body there was the crumpled letter telling of Jeanne’s death. Gilles threw the child’s clothes into the fireplace and stirred them with the poker. He now had as much blood behind him as before him.

Child after child disappeared from the city and neighbouring regions. The tailor’s son, the parchment-maker’s son, the bookbinder’s son, the shoemaker’s three sons, the sailmaker’s son, the baker’s daughter, the weaver’s two sons, the farrier’s son, the sweeper’s daughter, the cooper’s son, the tanner’s son, the mirror-maker’s son, the midwife’s two sons, the candlemaker’s son, beggar child after beggar child, the hangman’s daughter. People had their suspicions but kept quiet. A legend of ghost swings was woven at dusk by bridesmaids under the apple trees.

As Gilles roamed his castle, he could sometimes sense the presence of a young woman. He was sure that it was Jeanne, who now hated him and wanted to avenge his treachery. He expected at any second to feel Jeanne’s cold, spectral hands around his neck and to hear her hissing curses in his ear. Gilles was ashamed.

The rays of impure light both cut and stitched Gilles’ black eyes, which soon consisted only of wounds which healed and tore open every time he blinked. What he looked at was also wounded, and his gaze shed scab after scab. Gilles straddled the boy’s chest. He tightened his hands around the child’s neck, squeezed until his knuckles turned white, and shouted, ‘Look at me while you die. Turn my soul into a burning, spinning sword that cuts my thoughts so that they cannot be united with Jeanne!’

In a large room in the cellar, with hay bales stacked along the walls, thirty-six flogged children hung from meat hooks in the ceiling. Gilles ordered his servants to take down the bodies, then he left the room to bury his face in his hands undisturbed. Gilles was confused, his head full of Jeanne. He loved, but the feelings did not come from him – for his love was of divine origin. Poor foolish Gilles, he had no way to escape this terrible happiness.
The dehydrated and shrivelled bodies were dismembered and burned. Their spinal cords were placed in three little chests and loaded into a small wooden boat, which slid soundlessly into the morning mist.

 

 

***

INTERVIEW EXTRACTS
Conducted by Martin Bladh

I know that you have been working on different manuscripts since the publication of your debut novel Three Nails, Four Wounds (Infinity Land Press, 2018). In an earlier correspondence between us, you told me that the main inspiration for Egregore was ‘virginity as a mental state’.

You have absorbed an enormous amount of information – including medieval and renaissance demonology, astrology, Christian mysticism, holocaust studies, hagiographies, and writings on the cult and significance of the virgin throughout history – when researching this book. Could you shed some light on its development – I believe you worked on it for almost five years?

That’s right. I had a few other ideas for books that I worked on for a while, but none of them managed to retain my interest. Instead, I chose to continue exploring this notion of ‘virginity as a mental state’, which I had started to explore in Three Nails. I imagine the seven girls in Three Nails as self-enclosed, uncontaminated, remote, psychologically sterile and perfect in their untouchability. This mental state results – with no conscious effort or intention – in a kind of resistance to society. In Egregore I have made this state even more disciplined and militant.

Joan of Arc felt like the ultimate embodiment of this ideal. Having Gilles de Rais by her side on the battlefield also gave me a perfect counterpoint. The relationship between a saint and a serial killer is of course a rich subject for dark fantasies.

Egregore is very much the result of diligent reading, and the book is in dialogue with its source material. But the cornerstone is a prophetic dream I had in 2018, which I let Eleven announce at the end of the exorcist’s diary (my dream was much more precise and detailed, however). Several parts of the book have their origin in dreams, such as the one about the puppet master, who discovers that his hand is bloody when he takes off the glove puppet.

 

***

The most enigmatic character of the book is the former exorcist in charge of the liquidation of the patients at the castle. But his mission is far more profound and important. Is he trying to free the saintly children from what he perceives to be demonic possession, or is he helping them to fulfil a destiny: to sacrifice themselves for the good of mankind?

Gradually, the exorcist becomes increasingly frustrated with this task, as he suffers both mentally and physically from the pressures placed on him. Like Gilles, he is a troubled character who seems to be torn between the forces of light and darkness, God and the Devil. I don’t expect or even want you to solve this conundrum for me or the readers, but now when you mention that demons ‘can accelerate natural processes’, it seems like other, sinister and diabolic forces are taking part in the exorcist’s plans. Or is the Devil maybe a necessary accomplice of the Divine? Is he in fact needed to make ‘necessary’ events unfold?

Well, what’s really going on in the castle? The exorcist seems quite uninterested in the whole thing, in this task he has to perform. His attempt to erase his and the church’s history (by destroying martyrs’ skulls and setting fires) doesn’t seem to completely satisfy him. Things go better with the children. One interpretation is that the exorcist is possessed by demons, and that he has somehow managed to transfer and use demonic powers to accelerate the life cycle of the saints. In this way, he believes he is erasing their role in history, since he kills them when they’re still children (i.e. they never became the famous saints we worship today).

Floating time is a recurring theme in this book. The exorcist kills saints who lived long before his own lifetime, and they are then buried by Gilles in the past, in the 15th century. The entire exorcist/Egregore part seems to move outside of time. It is Jeanne who, like a Pythic oracle, sits on the potty in her prison cell and narrates the exorcist’s fate in Egregore. She finds the exorcist’s diary and begins to read. The usual thing when a fictional character finds a diary is that you can read a previously described event from another character’s perspective, or that the plot continues on directly after the diary entry. But in this case, something different happens: although the diary starts on ‘today’s’ date, Jeanne then continues, without interruption, to read future entries – as if the exorcist had already finished writing the book. And since I never return Jeanne to the book’s narrative, i.e. to her sitting in the castle reading, or more accurately: in her prison cell in the 15th century, it is as if her voice disappears into the story.

 

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I find your pantheon of ‘saints’ to be most fascinating. Some are well known, others are more obscure. Out of the ten reincarnations I find the case of the Cuban heretic Cecilia Rodriguez with her constant desire for abjection – an inverted salvation which can only be reached through sin and blasphemy – to be the most captivating. I have never heard about this case before and haven’t been able to find any information about it while doing research for this interview. How did you come across it?

It was Edda Manga, a Swedish historian of ideas, who accidentally came across documentation of the Inquisition’s investigation of Cecilia R while she was at the Spanish National Archives researching a completely different matter. This discovery resulted in a thesis (Divine Revelations and Demoniac Fornication – A Study of the Eccentric Intellectual Heritage in Cecilia Rodriguez’s Catholic Thought, Glänta Förlag) that was published in 2003. There also exists a compilation of the original documents in Spanish.

Cecilia was a contemporary of the Marquis de Sade, and would probably have been his muse had he known of her existence. Cecilia had sadomasochistic fantasies of being dominated all her life, but her sexual desire was exclusively connected to the urinary canal (possibly the clitoris). In her thirties, she received a revelation in which the Virgin Mary told her that she had committed 5,000 million sins. After that, Cecilia saw it as her life’s mission to confess these sins. The problem was that Cecilia became sexually aroused precisely by confessing her sins, and therefore could not confess without committing new sins. She considered this to be something unique and that it was the devil who had planted these unnatural feelings in her. Cecilia therefore tried to reverse the logic of confession to make it work for her ‘extraordinary’ sins as well. Cecilia wrote a new moral teaching and developed something she called the suede exercise, where she demonstrated how she sinned on a vagina-shaped suede blanket in front of her astonished confessors. Cecilia also wrote down her sins as carefully as she could so that they would be available to posterity. Cecilia really did crawl around among piles of excrement and imitate a pig, as a kind of penance ordered by her confessors.

 

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You stated earlier that one prophetic dream you had back in 2018 became the kernel of the book. Do you believe in prophetic dreams, and have you experienced your dreams coming true? I know that Jung’s work was a part of your research.

I almost never remember my dreams, so when I do I imagine they‘re trying to tell me something important. I‘ve acted on what I dreamt a few times, for example travelling to another country and seeking out a certain person after a dream urged me to do so – usually with positive results. The Bible is of course full of prophetic dreamers. But whether I believe in that… in that case I‘ll have dreamed up a pretty sad future for humanity.

 

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The main bulk of the text takes place in an either ‘timeless’ or future war-ravaged world: the plotline concerning Egregore castle and the extermination operation which is supervised by the exorcist.

From what I understand, this part of the book is directly inspired by the Nazis’ euthanasia program ‘Aktion T4’, and what took place at Schloss Hartheim in Austria after the Anschluss. Is this a historic period and topic which particularly fascinates you? It might not be the obvious setting or choice for a story focused on militant virginity.

A few years ago I read up on Aktion T4 for another (as yet unrealised) book project. When, while working on Egregore, I wanted to make the exorcist the director of a death factory, it became natural to include some of the administrative bureaucracy from Schloss Hartheim, as well as the castle’s architecture (though the castle also has some similarities to Marsvinsholm in Sweden). Otherwise, the book has nothing to do with the Nazis, and the plot takes place in an undefined future.

 

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Then, we come to the inevitable question of the title and the subtitle ‘The Trinity of the Philtrum’. I might be diminishing the overall complexity of the book when I try to find a direct link between the phenomenon of the egregore (as described in the beginning of the novel) and the mysterious character Eleven. I get the impression that Eleven is this timeless, collective conception of virginity who appears, disappears and reappears throughout history. But you also write about the connection between the female orifices, mouth and the vagina, as if the virginal purity – the ‘silence’ – between these organs, corresponds to each other. And in the end, these twin lips, the vertical and the horizontal, are brutally cut open as if about to speak.

This is an obscure and unorthodox liturgy indeed. Is there a specific religious or historical connection which I’m missing?

I’ve read somewhere that the face on a human embryo is formed of three rotating main sections which come together in the philtrum. If the desert fathers had known this, they would probably have seen it as proof of the Holy Trinity.

As I see it, Eleven is not connected to the egregore. The egregore is generated from mankind’s deepest desires (which are probably no longer particularly deep). However, the origin of Eleven (I agree with you when you say that she is a timeless collective conception of virginity) lies outside history, and it is not we who have created a collective conception of virginity; that’s just what we believe – Eleven has implanted it in us (for unknown reasons).

As I write about the virginal body at the very beginning of the book (when Jeanne lies down and sleeps): ‘Sacredly sealed, it is a magnetic membrane in which prophecies can ground their quivering compass needles.’ Historically, there is a connection between the mouth and the vagina. ‘The virgin of ancient times was an acceptable vehicle for divine speech… according to the age-old analogy, one closed ‘mouth’ betokened another; silence and virginity reflect each other,’ (Burnett McInerney, Maud (2015 [2003]) Eloquent Virgins: The Rhetoric of Virginity from Thecla to Joan of Arc, Palgrave Macmillan). I don’t remember exactly what my thoughts were when I wrote the ending (the text, based on a dream, was among the first things I wrote when I began work on this book), but just as Joan breaks her virginal silence when she goes into battle and says she wants to put a cross on every map to show where she is, I see this bloody cross of lips as a sign of communication. This cross is combined with the beheading of the white snake, after which the crown and the poison are separated – but that is the beginning of a completely different story…

 

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I find Egregore to be much crueller than its precursor. It’s beautiful, but cruel nonetheless: rigorous, crystalised, Apollonian and chaste.

There is no shortage of scatological allusions, but the text lacks conscious sexual elements. In the one case when a physician becomes aroused by a corpse, the transgression is immediately punished with death. Likewise, Cecilia’s masturbation is a punishment, an inverted act of asceticism to get closer to the divine. Even the crimes of Gilles don’t seem to be sexually motivated, but driven by a mystical force, as if he’s merely a tool in a cruel, metaphysical game which he doesn’t understand. Every pleasure seemed to be linked to or ‘rewarded’ by suffering. Apart from the recurring theme of the intact hymen, there aren’t any references to the genitals at all.

Am I wrong to assume that extreme forms of asceticism are an obsession of yours? I’m very curious to know what particularly attracts you to this subject.

There is something predestined in the book. The characters have tasks that they perform like actors on a stage. As though the story were a puzzle – the motif is already there, now the pieces just need to be put in place. Jeanne will fight and then be burned, Gilles will kill children, the saints will bloom and wither, Eleven will do what elevens do… The prophecy will be fulfilled. And no one seems to question this.

I have been fascinated by saints and Christian mystics for the past decade. Their striving for mental purity, their self-control and anorexic discipline, the way some of them managed to turn their whole lives into one long prayer.

Jeanne, the saints, Eleven, and even Gilles, are united with one another without mingling. It’s as if nothing leaks out of their bodies.

A book that became decisive for Egregore is Images of the Untouched: Virginity in Psyche, Myth and Community (Joanne Stroud and Gail Thomas (eds), 1982, Texas). The book consists of a number of lectures on virginity from a variety of perspectives. Let me quote a passage on how to make a unicorn trap. You place the virgin in a forest, ‘with her breast uncovered, and by its scent the unicorn perceives it; then it comes to the virgin and kisses her breast, falls asleep on her lap and so comes to its death.’ You could interpret the unicorn as ‘the spirit’, and the ‘unicorn trap’ as a way to unite the spirit with the body. ‘The virginal nourishes the spirit, while spirit makes the virginal psyche pregnant.’ So, virginity as a state of mind means to be pregnant – that is to say: creative.

 

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https://www.infinitylandpress.com/

 

 

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p.s. Hey. Today the blog rolls out its red carpet function to help welcome the new book from those maestros of exquisite, scary looking books, Infinity Land Press, and more precisely the new tome by the daring and original Swedish writer Hector Meinhof. It’s really something, as I hope you will find out for yourselves. Thanks so much, ILP. ** Montse, Hi, Montse! Well, so far. Highest hopes here too. I’m lighting a firework. Big love, me. ** Charalampos, Oh is he now? I guess it was a false alarm about Annas, from what folks here are saying, although I haven’t checked myself yet. Did I miss an email from you? Given my dreary email habits, it wouldn’t surprise me. I’ll go find it. Love from Paris and a swivel chair. ** Connie, My vibe is that fake accounts and fake reviews by proxy are the order of the day. I tried imagining that sperm thing and it quickly turned Cronenbergian in a very unsexy way. Which, as you said, made it awesome. My pleasure on the compiling. How’s your weekend looking? ** _Black_Acrylic, Times are tough and money’s tight. So it would make sense if the escorts are forced to branch out? ** kenley, Oh, I think you got the point precisely, but then I have a weird brain. I don’t really listen to contemporary psych so much, and haven’t been so excited by what I’ve heard. Suggestions would be welcome if you’re into it. Back in the day … gosh, a lot. From obvious stuff like Jefferson Airplane, Quicksilver Messenger Service, Love, Sad Barrett era Pink Floyd, and so on to I guess more currently obscure bands like Mad River, Ultimate Spinach, Clear Light, Chocolate Watch Band, Spirit, Kaleidoscope, … really a ton. Psychedelia was my ears’ bread and butter back then. What are some of your favorite bands of whatever genre past or present? ** Lucas, That was actually the first escorts post in three months because I was away from the blog traveling with the film in the middles of November and December. The upper echelon of the art world is pretty gross, even more gross than the film world’s upper echelon. Congrats on the buckled down studying of course! ** HaRpEr //, I find that really interesting too. Your description of your new book as being the first one’s aftershock makes total sense to me somehow. You should see what I wrote before I made it to ‘Closer’, or hopefully you never will. I got rid of a lot of extraneous and rather indulgent stuff before I figured my thing out. ** Alice, Hi. I’m good. I’m sorry for your yesterday’s struggle, but it’s cool you watched that Akerman. Wonderful depiction of it. I don’t know that Godard. Huh, it doesn’t ring a bell at all. Curious. I’ll go look it up. As I’ve mentioned numerous times, my dreams vanish as soon as I open my eyes. All that’s left is the lingering stress from what I can only assume were nightmares. Very nice five line encapsulation there. Warmth from here. ** Steve, Haha. I’ve never been to Locarno, but I think it would have to have practically zero in common with Cannes, atmosphere-wise. I don’t think Hollywood even bothers with it. I am going to do a gig post this month, but I haven’t made it yet. Thanks for asking. ** Dustin, Hi, Dustin. Well, they were escorts, but close enough. I remember ‘Oz’, or I remember when everyone was talking about it. I never saw it. You make it sound very interesting. Given my phobia of TV series and the time they take, I doubt I will ever watch it. But I think you’ve made me want to go look at a clip and at least get a quick sense of its outlay. Wonderful that you found something that’s so inspiring you. Nothing better. 9MOTHER9HORSE9EYES9: no, not yet, and thank you for the nudge. I just put that in the search window for a new browser page, and I will poke Return imminently. Good to see you! ** Right. Spend time with the book up there, won’t you? Time well spent, I will suggest. See you tomorrow.