Bonus: How to wear your own Death Cafe (or, as I like to think of it “How To Wear An Article About Holding Your Own Death Cafe”). As always, click on the image to be linked to the item details.
A gathering of death related links that I have encountered in the past month or so. From somber to hilarious, from informative to creepy, here’s a snippet of things that have been reported on or journaled about related to matters of death & dying & mortality.
Currently: enjoying the brief window of opportunity we have to open the house up to cool breezes and fresh air (during which time I start burning all the incense and candles, stinking up all of our newly acquired fresh air); hand-writing letters to far flung friends, drinking up all the tea in my cupboards and queuing up all the Hildegard Von Bingen and Loreena McKennit that I can find, for I am a creature of habit, and that’s what I like to listen to when the weather frosts my fingers and numbs my lungs. It was 45 degrees this morning when I woke up! In November! In Florida! Wow.
Creepy doll jumble at Uncommon ObjectsRamen and bride of the fox sake at Tatsu-yaHolly Bobisuthi creations at Blackmail BoutiquePrecious mouse friend at Uncommon Objects
Currently: recovering from our yearly trip. This time around, instead of visiting Portland, we visited Austin…which I guess is sort of like “the other Portland”. Well, that’s what everyone says, anyway, but I don’t quite get that. I like both places very much, but I will say that folks seem a lot chattier in Austin, more willing to engage (as someone who is not keen on chatting, I am not sure if that’s a plus, but I’d sound like such a grinch if I indicated a city of friendly people is somehow negative, right?)
In Austin I:
ate all of the tacos on Torchy’s menu (I liked the Baja shrimp taco best!)
waited in lines for three hours at Franklin’s for barbecue on our first day and walked right in to Terry Black’s barbecue on the last day (I found Terry Black’s to be superior)
visited all of the beautiful antiques and old creepy things at Uncommon Objects
bought new perfumes and gorgeous new baubles at Blackmail Boutique, where I also finally got to meet the fabulous Chad Merritt, whose gorgeous paper cut art I have been collecting forever
saw some art at one location of the East Austin Studio Tour
finally met my darling Lau and her husband; we dined on caviar and pirozhki at The Russian House and afterwards, sipped on secret speakeasy cocktails at a clandestine location nearby
Stopped by Austin Books and Comics, which now rivals Powells (in my opinion) for best bookstore on earth. Also stepped into The Dragon’s Lair, which was pretty groovy, too, with an amazing selection of comics and graphic novels. And games, if you are into that.
Enjoyed delicious ramen at Tatsu-ya; amazing pizza at Home Slice; several breakfasts at June’s, more cocktails at Gordoughs, and marveled at the TARDIS of yarnshops–Hill Country Weavers–which is totally bigger on the inside than it appears from the outside, and is stuffed wall-to-wall with fantastically beautiful yarns.
Over the course of our week in Austin, I had a surprising amount of downtime. While the lads were adventuring (in the next room with dice and character sheets), I curled up on the sofa and read the following:
My Sweet Audrina: Prompted by last month’s Bad Books For Bad People podcast, I thought I’d re-read this gem from my childhood. At 11 years of age, I don’t think I fully appreciated the scope of how truly fucked up this book was–it is beautifully bonkers.
The Girl On The Train: For me, this is a read that falls into the “good for what it is” category… something I would probably not pick up unless I was traveling…something with a little mystery, very little depth, and a moderate to high trashy-factor. If you liked Gone Girl, you will probably also like The Girl On The Train (I actually liked it better than Gone Girl.)
The Singing Bones: The brief synopsis is, “a convicted killer’s imminent parole forces a woman to confront the nightmarish past she’s spent twenty years escaping”, but it’s a richly layered story with a wonderfully creepy atmosphere, and fascinating folkloric elements that elevates it to something beyond a typical thriller. Highly recommended– and thanks a million for the suggestion, Leslie.
The Ritual: This book about four friends and their nightmare hike into dark, primal Scandinavian wilderness has been on my to-read list forever, but of the books I read while away last week, it is probably my least favorite. The first half reminded me of Algernon Blackwood’s “The Wendigo”, or “The Willows”, the former which always freaks me out a little but more than the latter, but they are both hauntingly intense and give me shudders whenever I ponder them overlong. The second half of the book seems silly in comparison, but I found that after the acute anxiety caused by the first half, I was okay with some ridiculousness.
The Other Side, An Anthology Of Queer Paranormal Romance: “Featuring 19 comics by 23 different creators, THE OTHER SIDE is a celebration of queer romance and the paranormal… featuring a wide variety of queer and trans protagonists – as well as poltergeists, shadow monsters, guitar-playing hypnotists, lost angels, genderfluid vampires, trickster ghosts, and many more!” There were definitely hits and misses here; a few left me wanting much more, one or two left me scratching my head, and a handful of them were just perfect. On the whole though, I thought it was a wonderful collection and a highly satisfying reading/visual experience.
And lastly, what have I been watching? Here are some one(ish) word reviews for you…
Time to revisit ye olde Friday Fripperies! See below for the deets on the things that I currently have on my grabby want list: blood-thirsty scents, gold accessories (I must be going through a phase), tote bags expressing my contrarian agenda, and black clothes, always.
I had just barely arrived in Austin, TX for our vacation, when I woke up to the news that we were to have a President Trump. Lying in bed, I felt that one-two gut punch of shock and disbelief, followed up by a greasy, queasy dread that has wrapped its way around my spine, and where it still resides today, every second. Even though I was traveling with a group of people who I know would perfectly, completely understand my feelings…at 8am on November 9th, I locked myself in the bathroom and sobbed for 10 minutes straight.
I’m not one for political discourse. I never have been. I hold my beliefs closely and I don’t talk about them. I don’t engage with people or debate them. I don’t know if that’s just because I am a quiet person and I don’t talk with anyone about much of anything, or if it’s more to do with me keeping my mouth shut about things I don’t know very much about. It’s hard to say something stupid if you don’t say anything at all, right?
I’ve been thinking about this all week long as we traversed the streets of Austin agonizing over an indigestion caused more, I think, by the current state of events than all the tacos and barbecue that I was somehow still managing to eat. I don’t think this “keep your mouth shut” policy has served me well in the past and I fear that that it is not going to do much for me going forward either. On the evening before we returned home, my youngest sister asked me if I was going to be writing about any of this mess on my blog; “I don’t know”, I dithered hesitantly, “I mean, I don’t even know what I’d say?”
She told me that, in the blogs she reads, no one is saying anything about any of this -the election, the candidates, their personal fears or hopes regarding the results–no one, she says, brings it up at all. Now, I don’t know whether these blogs are beauty or food or fashion or craft-related, and who are we to dictate what someone else writes on their own blog, anyway, right? And that maybe by veering from their normal content, or sharing feelings on strong subject matter, these bloggers fear they might lose readers and followers. I thought about it, and asked her, as a frequent reader of these blogs, what is it that she would like to read, what is it that she wants these bloggers and writers and content producers to say?
“Something,” she replied. “Anything.”
And with that in mind, I am telling you–you, as someone who reads this blog and who may be interested in my thoughts–that I am feeling heartbroken, disillusioned (and terribly, stupidly naive for it), and desperately frightened. Though I do mostly write about fashion and fripperies and light-hearted nonsense here on my blog, perhaps it helps you to know that I think about other things as well, even if I do not give them voice here. To be perfectly honest, I have a great fear of talking/writing about why I am so distressed and alarmed right now. That maybe I am not saying these things properly, that I am not using the right words. That what I am trying to say is less valid, because I don’t have as much experience articulating them.
I am frightened and angry. This horrid man, this vulgar, racist, misogynist, corrupt candidate, was not the president I wanted. And if I feel that way, if I can hardly see through the tears in my eyes or speak through the now permanent lump in my throat–what about my friends who do not have access to the same privileges that I do, as a mostly middle-class, cis white woman? What about my non-binary friends or my POC friends or otherwise-marginalized friends? You’re no doubt terrified and furious and I’m not so blind that I don’t know that you always have been and this is nothing different. Except now I am starting to feel it, more, too. (Even now my pulse rate is quickening with anxiety talking about this. Am I saying any of this right? I love my friends and don’t want to think that I’m hurting them on top of everything else they are already going through, with my guilty white lady talk.)
Honestly, I don’t think about this blog as something with “followers”. You guys are friends. I am not writing for countless random eyeballs; I am writing mostly for me; either to amuse myself or to get something nebulous out of my head and into tangible words, to try to make sense of it. Either exercises or an exorcism, I guess. Otherwise, I write for folks who already know me on some level, or for someone out in the ether to stumble across, and say “oh, yes, yes, I relate to that, and now I know there is someone who feels like this, too!”
I am not worried about losing readers and followers, much in the same sense that I am not concerned with gaining any. That’s not why this space is here.
One reason it is here, though, is that I know you folks–my friends and loved ones–are reading. And listening. And thinking. And I’d love to know your thoughts on this. I don’t want to be a nuisance person who worries and frets without making a move to do something positive. What do you do, when you don’t know what to do? What are you folks doing to contribute, to help, to move forward? If you are comfortable doing so, please share and talk to me/us here about it. I have to believe I am not the only one who is looking for some suggestions here.
Where to start? There is so much I don’t know. I don’t even know how much it is that I don’t know. I know I have a lot of work to do, and I have to start somewhere. Why not with education? First and foremost of myself. I’m tired of feeling afraid that I am too clueless to contribute, and if there is one thing I know I can do, and do it well, is read and learn. I’m also not too bad at collecting, organizing and disseminating information; here are some links I have found, though, post-election.
I hope to check back in and revisit this soon. I have a lot to learn, and even more to do.
Look, I’ll be honest with you. I started doing these How To Wear posts for two reasons: one, because I think the majority How To Wear blog posts and magazine articles are pretty dumb. I mean, most competent people with a little bit of imagination can figure out how to wear a pair of jeans or a bomber jacket, right? So, I thought, hey, why not how to wear something ridiculous or obscure or okay, for the most part, how to wear something related to one of my weird interests. How to wear tarot decks, how to wear your favorite poem, what to wear upon greeting death, that sort of thing.
But there was also another reason. A way dumber reason: I have spent, like 2/3 of the last 8 years over on polyvore (edited to add: RIP Polyvore) and no way, no how, is all that time going to waste. I created a lot of stuff! Well, “created”. You know what I mean. So these silly How To Wear posts on Unquiet Things are a way to both showcase those creations and make me feel better about my minor obsession with a major internet time suck.
In this How To Wear installment, we are looking to your (my) favorite artists and their gorgeous creations, for wardrobe inspiration. One could explore this in a very literal sense: for example intricate swirled pen and ink line work echoed in an elaborately embellished art deco frock paired with laser-cut filigree leather shoes. Or perhaps more figuratively… the slinky folds of an artfully constructed little black dress evoking the sensual thrill of an erotic three-panel black and white comic.
See below for several ensembles inspired by paintings, photographs, illustrations and woodcuts, artists both contemporary and from bygone eras. And because Polyvore, sadly, no longer exists, I’m afraid I can no longer link to all of the items pictured. Use your imagination and substitute where necessary!
I know I shared this song last year, but I love it more and more every time I hear it, especially today. Maybe even more tomorrow, 11/8, when there are important choices to make and history to be made. So this song is especially on my mind right now.
Nasty women and Hildabeasts with your vagendas, I think you’ll love this folk-punk from Vaginapocalypse song, too.
It’s been a good, long while since I’ve put together a For Your Ears post–which isn’t to say I am not listening to music, of course. When the day comes that I am not hunting out new sonic gratification, well, you’ll know it’s because I am dead or something.
See below for 10+ (it’s actually more like 13) fantastic bandcamp picks that are currently in heavy rotation ’round these parts. What are you listening to right now? Anything you think I should add to the list? Link me in the comments!
2016 Halloween-themed offering from VHS Glitch, full of ambient dark synth and reminiscent of such gems as Ghoulies or Night of the Demons.
Kristine Barrett’s intimate collection of experimental traditional folk music, sea shanties, & hymns from Ireland, Scotland, America, & Iceland.
Golden Garden’s particular blend of mystical, luminescent dream pop, an “invocation to the warrior queens and the enchantresses, the mystics and the misunderstood.”
Ethereal, evocative, and entrancing new offering from Ayla Nereo, an artist who makes music with a love for the earth, a devotion to our planet.
On Gramarye, Lotus Thief’s atmospheric post-black metal, space rock and ambient sound is inspired by and brings life to ancient texts, secret grimoires and forbidden rituals
Mournful balladry, pure and furious, revelatory and unsettling, from Emma Ruth Rundle (whose earlier work, Some Heavy Ocean, was also excellent)
What do we call this guy? Neo-folk? Post-punk? I find King Dude’s stuff simultaneously starkly morose and strangely catchy, and I couldn’t agree more with the reviewer who notes that this is probably what “rock and roll sounds like in hell”.
I can’t have a list like this without some melancholy piano tinklings. This offering from Murcof x Vanessa Wagner is moody and minimal, dreamy and delicate.
A singular and entirely heartbreaking concept: this album features the sounds from the journey The Caretaker will make after being diagnosed as having early onset dementia. Each stage will reveal new points of progression, loss and disintegration. Progressively falling further and further towards the abyss of complete memory loss and nothingness.
Immensely beautiful and intensely dark; I initially found her through Katie Metcalfe of Wyrd Words & Effigies recommendation
Blackgaze darlings Alcest’s Kodama is heavy stuff, both ecstatic and sorrowful.
Still Corner’s broody, swoony, shimmering synth pop is an aural treat and Dead Blue is probably my favorite entry on this list.
Bonus
Meredith Yayanos released this new Parlour Trick track on Halloween, a 33 minute, terrifying sonic hellscape, a piece called “Wandering Room”, about which she says: “It’s… not cute. Sometimes, you have to go back to some dark and nasty places to rescue your inner child.”
(If you receive email updates from my blog, and this one shows up for you today in 2022, and you’re like, “what the heck? this is from 2016?” Yes, it is, and I am sorry. So much of my content was lost when Haute Macabre closed the blog portion of the site. I am slooooowly trying to retrieve a lot of it. This is one of those things.)
There’s something strange and lovely wafting in the wind, and it’s not just the rustle of the dying leaves or the murmurs of the restless dead in their unquiet graves. Can you feel it, too? Can you smell it?
Can you smell the boozy swoon of ripe harvest fruits and the smoky crackling bonfires to light the cold nights? The acrid tang of animal musks, those small beasts gathering stores for the upcoming winter, while other, less fuzzy wee creatures forage for sweet-smelling chocolate and candies? The aroma of freshly baked pumpkin pie, redolent of warm spices? The mournful reek of the tomb, damp with rot and tears of the bereaved?
Something wicked, weird, and whimsical this way comes and ’tis the season to anoint oneself in all of these fantastical fall fragrances! Who better to assist in achieving our October olfactory goals than Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab, with their much anticipated annual Halloween collection?
Since at least 2004, beloved perfumer Elizabeth Barrial and The Lab have been celebrating the most wonderful time of the year (“goth Christmas”, as it is known in some circles) with their splendid presentation of the strangest and most beautiful scents the season has to offer. Inspired by world mythology and history, autumnal poetry, ghostly art, and playful, sugar-laden treats, previous years have reveled in variations on such hallowed themes as the haunted house, pumpkin patches, and bobbing for apples, along with their “single notes”– cheeky interpretations of iconic seasonal sniffs.
To those for whom Halloween remains an anchor point for the entire calendar year, Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab in 2016, has once again presented their fans with collection that will keep even the most die-hard enthusiast in awash Halloweenie sights, smells, and visitations for the foreseeable future.
In the years that I have been obsessing over BPAL, I have tried a great number of the Halloweenie offerings: Samhain is truly the scent of autumn, bottled, with notes of damp fir and needle, warm pumpkin and spices, sweet apple and mullein. Witch-Bride is pale and lovely, cool and floral, with nightshade kisses, wound in hemlock blossoms, draped in wisteria veils. Sugar Skull (not available this year), a blend of five sugars, lightly dusted with candied fruits was vibrant with the joy and sweetness of life in death and redolent of musky brown sugar and rummy jellies.
For review purposes, today I am mainly focusing on their Spirit of Halloween scents which are part of the ongoing Black Phoenix Salon Series wherein classical works of art are masterfully rendered in fragrance form.
The Ghost of a Woman Confronts Her Murderer on a Stormy Night (blackened cypress tar, bleached white cedar, asphodel, patchouli, and night-black musk). Caustic, like acid erosion on metal–straight from the bottle this does smell very much like a bloody curse, an enraged accusation. It shortly becomes pungent and tarry with a chilly bite, and then, inexplicably, a sweetly earthy, heartbreakingly delicate scent.
The Drowned Man’s Ghost Tries to Claim a New Victim for the Sea (black kelp and opoponax, silt, and dark things dredged up from the depths of a seabed). Admittedly, I am all a-swoon for anything that lists notes of opoponax, and it lends a honeyed, balsamic quality to this lightly oceanic fragrance. As the scent lingers on the skin, it smells less and less of salt spray against gull-flecked skies and more like sun-warmed resins, a chunk of myrrh sunning itself on a splintered piece of driftwood.
The Ghost of Clytemnestra Awakening the Furies (opoponax steeped in black wine, spindle tree sap, nightshade accord, yew needles, and a drop of blood). Opoponax plays a different role in this aromatic summons to the Erinyes; a bitter brew, a toxic temptation, this ghost lures us with a syrupy sweetness under which lurks a poisoned bile. This is a fragrance that attracts and repels in turn.
Four Grave Robbers Awaken a Ghost (dragon’s blood resin, olibanum, galangal, bdellium, and myrrh). To be honest, I don’t know the difference between olibanum and frankincense and I haven’t the slightest as to what galangal or bdellium are, (they’re related to ginger and myrrh, respectively–thanks Google), but this bone dry scent conjures visions of shadowy mounds of dusty dark chocolate shavings with slivers of sandalwood tucked between the sheaves, and the once you’ve fallen under it’s spell, the more arcane details just don’t seem to matter.
The Gambols of Ghosts (Rivulets of beeswax and amber flame illuminating a pale blue midnight, eddying with phantom violets, olive blossom, and moss) is all tangy dairy and cool, green florals, as if a compound butter were made with fresh cream, the lightly bruised petals of spring flowers and slightly sweetened with their verdant nectar. As the scent dries on one’s skin you can smell hints of the wax paper it is wrapped in, and the viscous violet essence that has been drizzled atop in dulcet presentation. If this were an actual food, I would desire to spread it on crumbling oatcakes, served alongside afternoon tea in a fairy ring.
Have you tried any of the 2016 ‘weenies from Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab? This year’s Pile of Leaves scents and the series based on Edith Wharton’s poem, “All Souls”, sound particularly enticing! Tell us your thoughts about this year’s offerings in the comments!
