I have been enamored of petals and blossoms and flowering things far longer than my love of ghost stories and scary things. It goes further back even than my obsession with magic and fairy tales, or pretty dresses, perfumes, and glittering gems and jewelry. Before I could turn the pages of the books that I love, before I could slice or stir or simmer or in the kitchen, before I even learned how to lose myself in daydreams…there were flowers.
(These are all of the things that make up my heart, both the shadowed corners and the illuminated spaces. But flowers were there first.)
When I first saw the lustrous blooms and kindred glooms of Alyssa Thorne’s midnight floriography, my heart skipped a strange beat and breathed a soft, fluttery sigh, recognizing pieces of itself in this photographer’s exquisite arrangements. Evocative of tenebrous twilights and somber echoes of the past, as well brimming with lavish, luxuriant regeneration and reawakenings, it encompasses all of the beautiful, terrible contradictions and certainties and even the liminal gateways between life and death. Lensed through Alyssa’s dreamy, thoughtful eye, flowers are all of these things. As my own heart always instinctively knew.
I am so thrilled that Alyssa agreed to an interview and you will find our chat below, wherein we discuss the secrets and storytelling of the still life photograph, art as a powerful, jeweled sword of rebellion, and working with what you’ve got, where you are, to create things of indescribable beauty and connection.
To keep this 31 Days of Horror-related, I pressed Alyssa for a few favorite horror movies. Her response? Though she confesses she does not especially care for Rob Zombie (ha! sometimes I don’t, either!) she shares that she is a huge Wes Craven fan, with her favorite of his films being Scream. A “real sucker for good cinematography and a haunting score,” she loves The Vvitch and It Follows. But she also loves Sam Raimi’s silliness!
What is it about the still-life as a realm of artistic expression that appeals to you?
I recently spent a lot of time writing an artist statement for my current body of work, and thinking about my “why” – I don’t think I can say it any better than I did in the statement, so I will put it below:
“Still life – Meanings hidden, shown, and yet to be discovered. I want to show that an entire world can lie in a bowl of fruit, or even a vase of flowers. I hold still life sacred. It serves as a means to truly shape an image, rather than simply take a picture of what already exists. I do not just document, I conduct. I orchestrate small universes, existing among the petals and juice of spilled fruits. I find the cosmos in a single flower. I heal my wounds with dirt-caked hands, using tiny symbols as small as an apple seed. Melding parts into a whole, I create an ephemeral waypoint before the items depart to my dinner table, shelves, or back to the earth. Classical vanitas, memento mori, floral still lives – all within the dark world of my table.
With simple tools and familiar objects, I spin tales of how death has touched my life, share stories of where I come from, echo songs taught to me by the forests and hills of the land. I create from myths, folktales, and literature. I create beauty for beauty’s sake – to escape out of reality into a lush and vibrant place, bursting with life, possibility, and love. Birthing art into a cold and hard world, with no other motivation than to show beauty and connection to lost souls, is an act of rebellion. Women have been historically scorned for lack of substance when creating conventionally beautiful work. I reject this notion and weaponize it. Beauty is power. It can cut through monotony like a jeweled sword – and I intend to wield it as long as I can.”
Some of your arrangements and creations recall classical vanitas paintings, works of memento mori–can you speak to these influences in your practice?
Yes! These are all incredibly important influences in my work. A little background – I have been photographing since I was 15, so about 18 years now. I began making still life work in college, where I was a photography major and art history minor. I went to The School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, as well as Massachusetts College of Art and Design. I was incredibly lucky as a student to be at these schools, especially as I was a poor kid on grants and loans. Both were on the fenway in Boston, and being a student, I was allowed free entry into all the museums. My first school was actually next door to the Boston MFA itself, and I was a short walk away from the magical, irreplaceable Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum. I spent lunch breaks and days off wandering the halls of museums, staring at statues, Vermeers, and Van Eycks.
I soon specialized my art history classes and research on the Dutch masters and other great still-life artists. The sheer amount of history and the volume of work to look at drew me in and held me there. Still lives seemed magical to me, and still do. The symbolism, the luxurious colors, the dreamy, liminal qualities they all seem to share. Every still life has secrets and layers to uncover. I especially felt drawn to memento mori and vanitas. Both serve as reminders or allegories of death. My life has been colored by death and grief in so many ways from a very young age, so it’s important to me to represent this in my work. I hope history echoes a little in my pieces. I only started showing my still life about 2 years ago. For the longest time, I thought no one would like them, or even care about such traditional work, when the landscape of current popular photography is so portrait-focused. But I was wrong! I didn’t gain any type of audience online until I started posting my still life and writing.
What other influences and inspiration do you draw from in your daily art practice?
Film. Cinematography and lighting, color grading. I took a lot of elective film studies in college and I will never be able to get enough. I think my work is as reflective of this as it is of traditional painting. I learned how to use color from film. I have seen In the Mood for Love about 80 times just to study the lighting. I also really draw on seasons and the local landscape. I live in the Pacific Northwest, so the ability to forage for my work is not something I take for granted. Of course, I am heavily influenced by painting, so I look at some form of painting daily. My favorite book I have is a hefty tome, with every painting in The Vatican. It’s a lovely thing to flip through while I have my morning coffee. It might surprise you to know I avoid looking at photography altogether, and almost all the photographers I follow online are friends. I think there is enough to inform my work out there that is not related to photography at all.
When I look at your art, brimming with petals and blooms in varying stages of blossom and decay, I think of the symbolism and language of flowers, of how, for example, in the Victorian era, flowers were primarily used to deliver messages that couldn’t be spoken aloud. I also find myself contemplating the various magical properties of the various buds and leaves within your compositions and wonder if you’re not gathering the ingredients to do a bit of spellwork. I am curious as to whether there are elements of either floriography or flowerwitchery in your creations or is my imagination running away with me?
I love floriography and in most cases, my choice of flower is deliberate. I have a small collection of books on Victorian Floriography and I refer to them often. Choices are always made, whether for a traditional meaning, a color-coded to a feeling, or a secret meaning I have devised. Almost all of my work is posted alongside a lengthy artist statement where I detail my choices for the viewer to demystify the work a tiny bit, and I often talk about the flowers, or other symbols, and their meanings to me. I think this is an essential part of the work for me, imbuing these objects and blooms with new meaning.
As for spellwork, I am not the least bit involved in actual witchcraft! I am terribly sensible and not very magical at all. I am deeply fascinated by various occult practices, but unfortunately, I am just a plain old atheist and the magical properties of any of the pieces I use is quite lost on me. For me, the magic is in the storytelling I do with these materials.
Ok after that monstrously long question, a far simpler one (maybe?) What is your favorite flower, and why?
Roses! Which sounds so mundane, but I grew up outside Portland, Oregon – the City of Roses. The famous rose gardens there are one of my favorite places to be. They remind me of home, of the gardens, of my grandmother’s face powder – it was called Ombre Rose, and I used to sneak into her bathroom to smell it as a child. There are seemingly infinite variations of rose, which fascinates me to no end. The smell, the thorns, the velvet petals. Easily my favorite to look at and to work with. My daughter’s middle name is Rose for this very reason. Beauty, nostalgia, and a cure for my homesickness.
Do you keep a flower garden as part of your artistry? Do you grow any of the gorgeous posies that find their way in front of your lens?
I have not a single plant in my home, nor a garden, just a revolving collection of cut florals. I live in a tiny 895 sq ft apartment with my partner, child, and rabbit, so there is a bit of a space issue. In the future, when we find our forever house, I would absolutely love to (and plan to) have a garden to work out of. My love affair with flowers began way before my beginning with still life. I grew up gardening with my grandmother and kept my own flowers as a small child. I spent a lot of time outside and in the forest, so I have held onto a deep attachment to trees, flowers, and plants of all kinds. Much of my very early, awkward teenage photography consisted of black and whites of the neighborhood gardens, printed in the void of my high school darkroom. For now, I source flowers from local farms and markets, as well as responsible foraging in our area.
What is your space like where you compose and shoot these lovely arrangements? And with regard to space in general, I’m wondering if we peeked in your home, would we find a house-sized version of one of your photos, or is your interior decor style totally different from your work? I’m sorry if that’s an obnoxious question, I’m really nosy!
This answer is for some reason, very astounding to most people. I guess most expect me to have some kind of gigantic studio or fancy lighting setup. As I mentioned above, my apartment is miniscule, so I actually shoot all my still life on a very small end table with a backdrop, next to my living room sliding glass door. I do not use studio lighting by choice, but there is plenty of sun there and I can shape the light however I want using many pieces of $2 black poster board from Staples. It is very utilitarian and not romantic at all as far as space goes. It’s next to my couch and my rabbit is always lurking under the table, hoping I will drop a rose petal for him to eat.
I am actually really proud of this weird little space in my apartment, and that I can churn out my best work from my living room end table with nothing but my subject, a camera, and some poster board. I post a lot of reels of my process with this decidedly boring area on full display, because I really want the young photographers or people just starting to know that you can create ANYWHERE, and with anything. You do not need expensive equipment or an aesthetically pleasing studio to make high-quality work. Art is for everyone, not just people with money. It’s really a mission of mine to spread that message because of the recent influx of aesthetic obsession on social media. It’s easy to think everyone has it better or easier than you, you know?
As for my decor, it’s not too nosy! I love decor. I am very proud of my work, but I am just not compelled to hang my own art. 98% of the work in my house is in my bedroom/office space, and it is almost all prints of classical work. I have a lot of still life paintings, transportive landscapes from the Hudson River School, any painting of rabbits I can find, and my all-time favorite portrait – Sargent’s Madame X. All my modern art, and pieces from friends and other independent contemporaries, is in the kitchen.
Do you have any rituals or practices that accompany the act of creation? And conversely, I suppose, what inspires you when you find yourself blocked or in a rut?
I do a lot of planning, so pieces may be conceived months before they appear on my page. With all pieces, I spend a really long time getting to know the flowers or food before I use them. I need to know how something will bend, flow, move. Will it snap or break? Does it need supports? Can I pin it? This is ritualistic in nature I suppose, as I go into deep, almost meditative thinking when I spend time with my subjects. It can become trancelike, and my partner has to shout at me if he needs something! haha.
When I am in a rut, that only signals to me I need a break. I simply take time off making work if I can allow it with commitments and such. I work two jobs and have a small child running around, so it’s easy to get burnt out. Taking a small break from creation allows my brain and heart a rest. It offers a slow-down, and lets the stream of ideas begin to flow again.
This final photo, as you can tell from the change in quality and arrangement, and well, everything, was one that I took last night. Of a cocktail that I created in celebration of this interview and inspired by Alyssa’s work, “Flowers from the Underworld.” We both agree that despite some contemporary reframing by poets and writers, the myth of Persephone’s captivity in the underworld is very much not a love story. It’s gross and it’s terribly, profoundly sad. In “Flowers from the Underworld” Alyssa does not discount or dismiss the tragedy, but instead, imbues it with a sense of hope, and of healing. Capturing and conveying the sentiment of how even in the midst of hell, roses may grow. I love that.
And I will admit, “Flowers from the Underworld” is a better name for this cocktail than my original name, which was “Poisoning that fucker, Hades!” I don’t have measurements, just use your pre-booze eyeballs and good sense.
Ingredients and loose recipe
-gin (1 oz? 2?)
-unsweetened pomegranate juice, fresh or bottled (2 tbsp?)
-half a lime, juiced (but lemon is okay in a pinch)
-a bit of orgeat (2 tsp? a drizzle?)
-spicy ginger beer
Shake pomegranate juice, citrus, gin, and orgeat with ice in a shaker until well chilled. Strain into coupe glass (or whatever you want). Top with the spicy fizzes of your favorite ginger beer. Heal your wounds, love yourself, and grow some roses.
You may recall that I mentioned early in the month that this year’s version of 31 Days of Horror may be a cheat. So far, I think I’ve done pretty well, but I think I’m calling in a cheat day today because I don’t think I have anything I am quite ready to talk about just yet.
So instead, here is a list of the horror movies I have watched this year. Some of them might be horror-ish, or horror-adjacent, but I’ve kept them all on the list. This is actually from an ongoing Google doc that I continually update throughout the year. Does anyone else do this? I’ve marked the ones that I’d actually recommend to people with asterisks and yes, I did like the really dumb Disturbing Behavior. There’s something about stories that take place on isolated island communities that are just an immediate win for me.
Some definite standouts for me this year were the ghostly eerieness of Lake Mungo, the batshit insanity of Queen of Black Magic, and the quiet, freaky dread of The Wind. And the final .02 seconds of Saint Maude was the most horrifying thing I have ever seen. Noroiand Pulse are two Japanese horror film staples of the early-mid 2000s and I can’t believe it’s taken me so long to watch them. They are both so very deeply unsettling.
Old or new, or new-to-you, what are some of your favorite horror films that you’ve watched this year?
1/27 Perfect Blue (rewatch) *** 2/12 Vivarium 2/14 His House*** (?) Interview with the Vampire (rewatch) (?) Impetigore 3/18 Queen of Black Magic*** 4/2 Noroi*** 4/14 Pulse*** (?) Seance on a Wet Afternoon***
4/19 Unfriended 4/26 Lake Mungo*** (?)Saint Maud 6/24 Sator 7/4 Fear Street *** 7/5 La Llorona (not the Linda Cardellini one)*** 7/10 Fear Street II *** 7/17 Fear Street III*** 7/28 Pandorum 7/29 Slice 7/30 Disturbing Behavior*** (?) When a Stranger Calls 8/8 Scream 3 (rewatch) 8/10 The Binding*** 8/12 Werewolves Within *** (?) Brand New Cherry Flavor***
(?) Los Espookys*** 9/5 The Old Ways*** 9/6 The Wind *** 9/12 Malignant 9/13 Halloween (rewatch) 9/14 Halloween 2 (rewatch) 9/15 Halloween 3 9/18 Halloween 4 (rewatch) 9/24 The Abyss 10/2 Candyman (the new one) *** 10/4-10/7 Midnight Mass *** 10/7 Things Heard and Seen 10/08 Halloween 5 (rewatch) 10/9 Nightmare on Elm Street 3&4 (rewatch) 10/10 Blood Red Sky*** 10/12 Dolls***
10/13 Halloween VI: The Curse of Michael Myers (rewatch)
If I am being honest, I have been fixated on DOLLS ever since I first passed by its lurid half doll/half skull cover art on the shelf in a Blockbuster Video seventy kajillion moons ago. But that was back in the days where between you and your sisters you could only pick ONE movie to take home on a Friday night, and no one could ever agree on anything and certainly, no one else but me wanted to watch this one.
But I am an adult now and I can do whatever I want and no one even has to agree with it!
Six travelers stranded in a sudden thunderstorm– a trio consisting of a shitty father, a wretched stepmother and an imaginative young girl, and another group of two awful (but awesomely attired) hitchhiking punkettes and the well-intentioned but derpy guy who picked them up– seek shelter in a nearby mansion. An elegant old doll-maker and his wife live in this creepy, wonderfully atmospheric place full of gorgeous old dolls, and they offer to put the group up for the evening. The charming elderly couple is very welcoming and hospitable to this group of very rude assholes. Too welcoming, one might say.
Over the course of the evening, all the baddies get what’s coming to them and by the closing credits, the doll-maker’s collection has mysteriously grown. I LOVED THIS MOVIE.
Most of all, I loved this doll in the right-hand corner in its little pig costume! Rabbit costume? I don’t actually know what’s going on there, but I love it more than anything in the world! But I’m fairly certain that no matter what happened over the course of this film, I was going to adore it. I love old dolls. I love any kind of doll. If I had more space and more money, I would totally be an unhinged doll collector, filling every room in my house with their ruffles and lace little staring eyeballs. Here’s a controversial thing: I even love clown dolls! (Heck, I also love clowns!)
The creature effects in this film were a lot of fun (Teddy in an early scene was fantastic!) and the menacing, mischievous stop-motion movements of the dolls, their frowning expressions, and devious grins with those tiny demonic teeth, were wonderful. I would have liked to have seen more of that, but I think it was probably *just* enough.
This is maybe the only time in my life where, upon finishing a movie, I immediately wanted to watch it again. Is it a “good” movie? I don’t know about that. But it was extremely satisfying on a visually appealing level, and its messages of both appreciating the imagination and the stuff that keeps you young at heart really spoke to me. Plus…I loved Ralph. I know he was awkward and weird, but I really want to be friends with that character! So…again. A good movie? Probably not by the standards that a lot of people might measure such things. But I think it is! And even more than that, it’s a “feel good” movie. I never really had a feel good movie in my arsenal, but I think DOLLS has become my go-to.
What other creepy doll movies do I need to watch? I don’t really care about Chucky or Annabelle, I’ll just go ahead and put that out there. I’ve seen Pin and maybe Dead Silence, but I might be getting that mixed up with something else.And I just learned that there’s an Amityville Dollhouse movie! It’s probably awful, right? But…I should watch it anyway, right?
Speaking of dollhouses, one of my favorite books when I was a little girl was The Dollhouse Murders by Betty Ren Wright. I wonder how that holds up? Author of the weird and eerie, Robert Aickman wrote a story about a dollhouse if I recall. Ah, here it is: The Inner Room.
I guess I understand why people are freaked out by their little uncanny, almost-human faces, their imagined movements from the periphery of your vision, and why the creepy doll is a long-standing horror trope. Here’s an interesting article that goes into more of an explanation, with a bit of history as well. But me, well. I’m scared of lots of stuff. I mean…A LOT. But dolls just aren’t one of them.
[EDIT: A GIVEAWAY WINNER HAS BEEN CHOSEN AND CONTACTED! THANKS, EVERYONE!]
Happy birthday, The Art of the Occult! You, my first published book, are now officially a year old!
Is there anything horror-related within its pages? Well…not really. Not in a spooky, Halloween season way. We could argue that esoteric knowledge and arcane philosophies form the backbone of quite a few horror stories. Ceremonial magics gone wrong, demons conjured and gone amuck. That sort of thing. And of course witches and witchcraft–you can’t have 31 Days of Halloween with at least one witchy film, right? I mean, as far as I am concerned, you can barely have a story of any sort without a witchy character moving things along.
Here’s what I write in the Potions, Persecution, and Power portion of The Art of the Occult, wherein I begin by quoting another favorite and famous witch that you may know….
‘Witches have always walked among us, populating societies and storyscapes across the globe for thousands of years,’ writes Pam Grossman in Waking the Witch, a reflection on women, magic, and power. And it’s true – can you conjure forth a single folk or fairytale, myth or legend worth its salt circle that doesn’t contain a witch or some witchy archetype stirring up trouble and sowing supersensory seeds of discontent? The witch provides the element that surprises, startles, and scares, provides struggle and strife, a snag in the story, a shift in the narrative.
This fascination for witches has long gripped artists, both of the classical and contemporary ilk– the witchly archetype being an evocative canvas onto which some of the greatest artists have projected their most intensely bizarre imaginings. Many continue to draw inspiration from the dark and cruel origins of the classic image of the witch, and the tragic history of the witch continues to instill fear and provoke anxieties in contemporary creators today.
Here’s a handful of my favorite witches on canvas, inspiring and powerful artworks steeped in magic and superstition. What are some of your favorite visual representations of the witch?
And sneaking this in here, which means you had to read this whole post in order get to this point: wouldst thou like to win a delicious, signed copy of The Art of the Occult in celebration of its one-year anniversary inhabiting our earthly realm? If so, leave a comment! Tell me about your favorite witches! Artful, literary, cinematic or otherwise. A winner will be chosen and contact one week from today!
The Witch Barry Windsor-Smith, 1978.
Circe Invidiosa John William Waterhouse 1892
Les Sorcières Leonor Fini, 1959
La Sorcière, Lucien Lévy-Dhurmer, 1897
Morgan-le-Fay Frederick Sandys, 1863
Witches Sabbath Rik Garrett, from Earth Magic (Fulgur Press, 2014).
From Songs For The Witch Woman, Marjorie Cameron, undated
I was doing a Google search just now to find something striking to use as the feature image for this blog post and apparently one of the most frequently asked questions about this film is “is Blood Red Sky a horror movie?”
Well, if you can’t tell from the trailer, or from this German version of the movie poster, yes, yes–Blood Red Sky is very much a horror movie. If you’re one of the horror fans constantly griping and moaning about how there are no scary vampires anymore, and it’s all sparkles and romance and you’re looking at these befanged, velvet-clad dandies wondering “what kind of interview is this, anyway?” Well, first off, quit your bitching, there’s room in the world for all kinds of vampires. But secondly, the monsters in Blood Red Sky are on par, fright-and-terror-wise, with those in 30 Days of Night. They might even be scarier! I am still trying to decide.
Blood Red Sky is an intense and emotional, dark and savage horror-action spectacle, and follows a woman with a mysterious illness and her son, on board an overnight transatlantic flight that gets highjacked by terrorists. You can look at the poster and figure out the woman’s illness and its terrifying nature, but what you don’t see there is her struggle to reign it in, how her concern for her son’s safety overrides the brutal, vicious nature of her vampirism. And the bad guy that she faces off with in one portion of the film? Hoo boy. That guy is gonna give me nightmares.
Vampires have been scaring me since I first saw a Dracula in Scooby-Doo so many years ago, and it was awesome to stumble upon a vampire film that was still able to freak me out. Typically, my own bloodthirsty tastes for celluloid creatures of the night, run to the strange and surreal, like the dreamy gothic poetry of Jean Rollin’s films. Or…stories of people who are suffering delusions that they are vampires, when in fact, they’re just lonely and confused (or are they??) Good examples of this would be George Romero’s Martin, or the more recent Transfiguration. And certainly, the slick, stylish glamourous vampiric gems like The Hunger or Only Lovers Left Alive. And of course the thoroughly weird and difficult to classify, like Let’s Scare Jessica To Death and Lair of the White Worm!
I’m leaving quite a few off of those lists. The 1992 Bram Stoker’s Dracula is a favorite. I enjoyed the vampire-noir of A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night. And you know…oddly, Let The Right One In didn’t really do anything for me, both the book and the film left me a little unenthused.
I think what I probably need more of is classic vampires or Hammer vampires. There are quite a few of these movies that I haven’t seen. Also, I just learned of a Larry Fessenden film called Habit, which sounds interesting, and even if it’s not, well, I will get to see that beautiful weirdo, Larry Fessenden!
What am I missing? What are some of your favorite cinematic vampires?
For some reason, I started thinking about the “soul pizza” moment in A Nightmare On Elm Street, Part Four: The Dream Master. Alice is sitting in a diner and Freddy sidles up to her and begins his gimmicky schtick–I actually love this surreal, schlocky music video of a film but Freddy has become an insufferable cartoon at this point– and there’s this whole thing with a meatball pizza. The meatballs are the screaming faces of Alice’s dead friends, and Freddy spears one of the little shrieking heads with his razor finger, pops it in his mouth, begins to chew, and just goes to town on it while Alice watches in horror.
My sister and I rewatched it last night, but I am afraid that by the time this scene rolls around I might have had a few too many margaritas and I don’t even remember watching it. Which is really dumb, because this 20 seconds was the whole reason I talked her into watching this film with me!
I’m always filing away food and meals from books and movies in my mental recipe folder, and I suppose because I have been thinking about attempting to make a sourdough pizza dough, this particular scene was on my mind. I didn’t want to recreate it, exactly. I mean…it’s pretty gross. And the details of those tiny faces would be complicated to execute.
…Pun intended, always!
So instead, we’ll just say that this very normal pizza that I made is, at best, loosely inspired by that scene? I used Joshua Weissman’s sourdough pizza recipe for the dough and the sauce, and it’s lightly topped with a blend of fresh parmesan and mozzarella, and tiny “meat” balls made from Impossible meat. I seasoned them with onion, garlic, and soy sauce, which is what seasoned the filling in one of Maangchi’s recipes, and I liked it so much, I just use it every time I have to add flavoring to a ground beef-like thing.
It turned out pretty well! We don’t have a pizza stone, so we baked a few versions of this in a large cast-iron skillet. It’s not perfect, but it gets the job done.
So, I found out that they made a sort of novelty toy version of this pizza, with its own take-out box! I can’t imagine who would have wanted one of these things, but who am I to judge. I also see where, if one was so inclined, one could buy what I believe is the actual pizza prop used in the movie. Again…who would want this? I cannot guess as to those reasons, but suppose I do think it’s an awfully cool thing that it exists.
Ok, so maybe this is less 31 Days of Horror and more 31 Days of Halloween or 31 Days of October People Shit, but I thought it might be fun to share a handful of my favorite autumnal fragrances. For surrealist witches and bog witches, goblincore mushroom queens, and midnight bonfire revelries!
For the most part, all of the scents that I reference in the above TikTok video are perfumes that I have already reviewed, and the video is really just a quickie run-through of those thoughts. I’ve copied those past reviews below, if you want to know more!
I love that Etat Libre d’Orange’s Like This, which was inspired by the unearthly and surreal Tilda Swinton and her idea of a magic potion that smelled like the familiar grace of home. Greenhouses and kitchens and gardens and intriguing notes like yellow mandarin, pumpkin accord, Moroccan neroli, and heliotrope. I don’t know if I was influenced by the copy, but: the connection of magic potions and kitchens, along with the initial hit of citrusy-ginger, fizzing and spiced as if glowing in cauldron, summoned for me the transcendent, transgressive art of Leonora Carrington’s paintings of kitchens as magically charged spaces, as conjured through her singular and visionary filter. Floral, honeyed tobacco, an earthy spring greenness, and gentle musks bubble and brew alongside those first bright and zingy notes and the end result is a joyous creation that feels both celebratory and sacred.
November in the Temperate Deciduous Forest from For Strange Women is a scent I have worn for years and years and I am only just now attempting to review it. This is the aroma of a mushroom queen surveying their loamy domain on a cool, rainy morning. A soft green fern tickles your gills as your mycelial threads in turn wave at the worms moving through the rich earth beneath you; the ground mist rises through the dense forest canopy as cool trickles of rainwater drip off the oak and beech and fir trees to dampen the velvet, verdant moss carpeting a cropping of stones nearby. Your reverie is interrupted by the scent of expensive leather hiking boots on the breeze, crunching leaf detritus and tiny woodland creatures beneath its self-important tread. You smell the smoke and steam and artisanal resins and tannins of a gourmet flask of tea, and before you can let out a little spore-filled, mushroomy warning, you hear a shrill, nasally human female voice chirp HEY Y’ALL WELCOME BACK TO MY YOUTUBE CHANNEL. Oh no, you despair, it’s the slow-living mushroom forager YouTube influencers. You sincerely hope they pass you over for your poisonous cousins.
Wild In the Woods from Lvnea is a devastatingly simple scent of sweet swampy, loamy earth and spicy cypress. For all the bog witches out there. I picked this up from Altar PDX on a trip to Portland a few years ago and I don’t think it is sold anymore.
Ambre Narguile from the Hermès Hermessence line gets a lot of apple pie references from reviewers, but I don’t get that myself. A spiced compote, perhaps. Dried fruits–raisins and plums, stewed in honey and rum and cinnamon, and left on the stove very nearly too long. It’s been cooked down to a syrupy essence of its former self, and if you hadn’t pulled it from the flame, the caramelized sugars might have started to smoke and burn. I don’t love sweet fragrances, but come October I crave this one; it calls to mind a reading firelight a book you’ve experienced a million times (like the Secret History by Donna Tartt which I only just read but I loved it so much I’m ready to go at it again) while wearing a cozy oversized cardigan with thick cables and toggle buttons and that you probably inherited from your grandpa. Not to be confused with that awful cardigan in Taylor Swift’s video. ugh, Don’t get me started on that. That’s another conversation for another midnight.
Chanel Les Exclusifs Sycomore is a fragrant chorus of cool autumn foliage, rich, mossy soil; soft smoke, and damp greenery. All the best smells of a forest ramble in late October with the promise of winter heard in the whispering flutter of a straggling sparrow migration. But! The hiker on this path is garbed in expensive elegance, a leather Prada bag, a silk Hermès scarf, that iconic Burberry checked coat. This is the scent of a woodland elf turned posh socialite; Galadriel who quit the forest, and is now living in a penthouse on the Upper East Side.
Ambre Noir from Sonoma Scent Studio is dense and intense and the darkest amber you could ever hope to meet. Both somber and smoldering, with notes of labdanum, rose, incense, moss, leather, and woods, it is a blackened forest fireside frolic when the veil between worlds is thinnest. See also: the final moments in the film The VVitch. If you like outrageously dark, spellbindingly smoky amber fragrances, I believe you’ll enjoy this one.
Thanatopsis from Black Phoneix Alchemy Lab is a meditation upon death inspired by William Cullen Bryant’s poem, and a deep, solemn earthen scent containing pine, juniper and musk. A green-ness so lush and concentrated that it is nearly a syrup, growing in mysterious realms alongside venerable woods and breathless darkness.Thanatopsis is a meditation upon death inspired by William Cullen Bryant’s poem, and a deep, solemn earthen scent containing pine, juniper and musk. A green-ness so lush and concentrated that it is nearly a syrup, growing in mysterious realms alongside venerable woods and breathless darkness.
I’ve found interpretations of hinoki varies from perfumer to perfumer, ranging from lemony and coniferous, to tarry and peppery. In this version, Sumi Hinoki from Buly1803 is a deeply unpleasant boy scout campfire burning with bandaids and liniment and makes me feel the way I do when I’m dreaming and I walk into a darkened room and flip a light switch for illumination…and then nothing happens. At that point, the dream invariably descends into a nightmare, but I have learned to wake myself up at that moment, my brain boiling, electrified and panic-stricken. As a writer, at times I crave this scent when I need a freaky, feverish jolt of agitation. It’s also great for layering to add a touch of artful anxiety to a scent that’s pretty, but perhaps placid.
For something truly gruesome? Today I am wearing ALL OF THESE AT ONCE. I think I must smell like Yasushi Nirasawa’s unhinged-looking witch, NIGHT OF NOCTILA. Just an…unholy mashup of everything autumnal and October and Halloween and you just don’t know whether to be horrified or horny or BOTH.
I remember seeing this line of collectibles maybe fifteen years or so ago and I was practically salivating over them–they are so freaking cool. Finding them again today, I am still drooling and pining for them and just someone just buy me all of these slutty monstergirls already, please!
Here’s a bit of Noctila’s bonkers backstory, if you are interested:
“In the North Soup Village there is a rumor lately: “There is something going on in the woods…… strange sightings Noctilcaof the psychedelic light covering the forest haunts enery night!” Another rumor people said it’s a UFO! Ah ha! Maybe not! That’s me, Noctilca!”
Anyhow, getting back to fragrance…I am thinking that today I should FINALLY commit to either reading or watching (or both) Patrick Suskind’s Perfume: The Story of a Murderer. This is one of those things that people are always asking my thoughts on, because they assume that I have already read/watched it. And …I have not. It is getting to be a little embarrassing!
I did…not…enjoy Things Heard and Seen on Netflix. I will admit, the trailer captivated me, with its teasing of Catherine and George, a young couple and their child moving from the city to a ~quite possibly~ haunted old house in a small Hudson Valley college town. I already want to run away to an isolated farmhouse in upstate New York and bake bread and feed chickens all day (okay, Yvan can feed the chickens, I don’t really care about that part) so this appealed to me on a very base level.
But. With the exception of one character, I did not care for a single person in this film. As it turns out, and I’m not really spoiling anything here, George is not a great guy. You get a sense right off the bat that he’s a bit of a dick and he’s kind of sneaky, and he only gets worse. I don’t think the house would have gotten to him to such a degree if it wasn’t already a bad apple. And by the end of the film, you start to wonder about some things you learn at the beginning of the film and wonder if he wasn’t already rotten to the core.
I didn’t really love Catherine’s character, either. And maybe that’s not fair because I don’t know that we ever got a chance to know her, other than she gave up her art restoration career for her husband’s teaching opportunity, which is why they made the move to the country. And that she’s “the believer” in the family, as George asserts to a colleague who is trying to talk with him about Swedenborgian philosophies and spirituality. But other than his referencing of it, and the fact that she begins seeing and hearing strange, ghostly things, we don’t get much in the way of an explanation or examples of that, or any back story for her at all.
Oh, and a big-time TW here: We also know that Catherine suffers from an eating disorder. We know this has been going on for a while, because George references doctor visits, and weight gain shakes she is supposed to be drinking for meals. An excellent example of this guy’s assholery is how he’s always harping on her for not eating, almost as if he’s actually concerned. And yet. In a car ride home, after they have joined Justine, a fellow professor (Rhea Seehorn, who plays Kim Wexler in Better Call Saul!) and her husband in their home for dinner, George remarks that Justine “can really put away some lasagna.” With commentary like that, it’s not surprising that Catherine has some issues with food and with her body. “That was a really nasty thing to say,” she remarks about his casual cruelty. And it was. Fuck off, George!
Justine Solokof, professor of weaving (?!?!) is a QUEEN and I would love to eat some lasagna with her. She is the very best thing about Things Seen And Heard.
If I am being honest, I utterly tuned out about 20 minutes into the film as I began daydreaming about life in my lovingly restored and gently haunted murder farmhouse. Crisp, clear nights with no light pollution or humidity and you can count every star in the sky and it’s so quiet you can hear the flights of bats and owls. Slow, chilly mornings warmed by endless cups of coffee and something cozy and autumnal to eat.
Like sourdough pumpkin pancakes! It’s 85 degrees in Florida this week, and the pancakes were the only part of this fantasy that I could recreate. I am not a huge fan of maple syrup, so I ate these with cream cheese and honey and they were delightful.
Of course, my haunted country home fantasy needs a rustic autumnal ensemble! Details on all of the items used can be found here; I’m feeling too lazy to list them all at the moment, but if you check back later, I may have done so.
And oh my lord people, you people with comments like “$12K for a bag, I would never!”Of course, you would never! That just goes without saying! We don’t have that kind of money! But what’s the point of daydreaming on a budget? No thanks, friends. If I’m gonna fantasize, even if it’s just a dream of making pies and knitting on a front porch rocking chair with no one in 50 miles in any direction to bother me, it’s gonna be dripping in luxury. You want a cheap murder farmhouse outfit, make it yourself.
An interesting take on possession and exorcism, The Old Ways follows Cristina, a reporter who returns to her ancestral homelands to investigate the stories of sorcery and healing which take place there, some of which she witnessed herself as a small child. Kidnapped, chained up, and secreted away in a shack by locals who believe that she has become possessed by a local demon, she is understandably terrified, incensed, and intensely skeptical– but after experiencing several grueling days of inexplicable weirdness, she soon begins to believe.
I thoroughly enjoyed this film (I had a feeling I would, just from Felipe Flores’ marvelously lurid festival poster art alone!) It’s a tightly paced, wild trip with snakes, spirit surgeries, Brujeria, visions, lots of blood and pus, and a refreshing and fun take on this kind of story. An aesthetic observation–Cristina’s cousin has a beautiful wardrobe–nothing showy or fancy–but if you pay attention to such things, she wears some really pretty tops and sweaters.
Things take off pretty swiftly in Queen of Filth by V Castro, as something terrifying and unexpected happens to Lourdes and her best friends, after a boozy seance staged on a summer evening before they get on with the business of adulthood and going their separate ways. Because, of course…someone gets possessed. Don’t they always!
This too, is an interesting spin on a possession story, as it’s not a demon inhabiting the body of shy, smart Fernanda, but instead something significantly older, and perhaps not as evil as they would have thought. The bonds of friendship and female empowerment, contemporary realities, religion, and ancient beings weave together in this short novel to create a story that though I read it in the course of an evening, I won’t soon forget these characters or their ordeal.
For the past two weeks, I have been obsessed by the hypnotic, Luciferian splendor of “Angel of Light” from dark folk project Me And That Man, featuring the chilling vocals of Myrkur’s Amalie Braun. The devil in all their guises always counts as horror, right?
Well, if you disagree with that (rude) the Complex Distractions blog has put together a three-parter listing of Songs To Summon The Darkness, so surely you’ll find some amount of seasonally appropriate sonic horror over there! Part I // Part II // Part Three
A few additional horror/Halloween-related tidbits today…
-I am testing out a few Halloween scents from Arcana Wildcraft. Today is Cottage Witch, which of course, OF COURSE, because it’s the one I wanted to share today, it’s sold out! With notes of gingerbread, apple cider doughnuts, honey, pumpkin, fig, this is an autumn dessert cart in full glory– caramel, crust, crumb, and custard, all.
– I recently finished watching Mike Flanagan’s current offering on Netflix, Midnight Mass. I waffle about his stuff. Depending on what day and how I’m feeling, I either love it or find it awful and maudlin. I guess it’s both. I love stories that dive deep into grief and loss and trauma and his works definitely do that. What I have a problem with, and I’ve mentioned it before and perhaps it makes me a little problematic…is that I have a very hard time watching characters deal with addiction or severe mental illness. This is from my own past and what I grew up with in my home and what shaped me, for good or worse. I guess it’s probably in my DNA at some level. And that’s often painful to watch and I don’t always feel up to putting myself through that.
When I was writing for Haute Macabre a few years ago, in another version of 31 Days of Horror, I said something along the lines that I felt “traumatized” by The Haunting of Hill House, another Flanagan creation in which a character struggled with addiction. Someone commented, calling me out on it. I don’t recall what they said exactly, and I don’t want to look it up, because my cheeks are flaming and my heart rate is elevated just thinking about it, but in my memory, they said that I was throwing this word, “traumatized,” around lightly. Like I didn’t know what it meant. Like I had no right to evoke its connotations. I don’t like being called out, which is why I am still embarrassed and hurt now, but of course, if whatever I am being called out for makes sense to me, I can learn from it and do better. But in this case, it just didn’t. I’m not sure I understand why I, an adult child of an alcoholic, an alcoholic who also struggled with bipolar/manic depressive disorder, whose children lived through and dealt with their mother’s multiple suicide attempts and her rages and disappearances and all of her terrifying behavior…why do you feel I don’t have the right to feel deeply traumatized when I encounter some aspect of any of these experiences in the media I consume? Am I using the word “traumatized” incorrectly? Is there some other way I should be couching my feelings to make them less offensive or more palatable? Am I just not up on the vernacular? I still don’t know what this person’s problem with me was unless it’s that I didn’t trot out a list of my trauma credentials ahead of time, before making my observation. Reading over that whole paragraph it sounds really defensive. Maybe it’s because I just still don’t get what I did wrong. And I hate feeling that I have done something wrong, even three years later.
Wow, ok. Anyway. Midnight Mass. If you, like me, are triggered by depictions of alcoholism, you may find this a hard watch (and now that I think about it, maybe “triggered” was the word that this person had an issue with, not “traumatized.” Whatever. Get over it, Sarah!) Also, animal violence. Also LOTS of religion. And lots of monologues. I actually enjoy both…as someone who grew up with a lot of booze-problems in our house, there was no time for religion problems, and also we weren’t religious at all. And so as an adult, I really enjoy watching and reading about all manner of religious beliefs and rituals to see how other people live with and practice their spirituality. And yes, I also enjoy monologues. I don’t spend a lot of time talking to people, maybe that’s why.
I realize I have mentioned nothing regarding what this series is about. An isolated island community starts experiencing strange miracles with the arrival of a new priest. Where’s the former priest? What’s causing these strange and wondrous things to happen? What’s that thing thumping around in Father Paul’s olde-timey travel trunk? I won’t spoil anything!
-Ok, these were supposed to be little tidbit nuggets of things, and in that previous bullet point, I initially only mentioned because I was going to compare to James Wan’s ridiculously stupid Malignant, which I HATED, but I think I am in the minority because everyone else seems to love it. And I don’t even know why I am comparing these two, they have absolutely zero similarities except they both start with an “M”. My only point is, instead of watching Malignant, read Stephen King’s The Dark Half. I don’t want to say why, but you’ll figure it out.
-And finally, I had an excellent conversation with a friend. About horror and why we love it and what it meant to us… and they had all sorts of wonderful insights and thoughts and suggestions regarding these things. It arose from something I had posted on social media wherein I mentioned the following incident. I should note that the questions I am referring to were not directed at me, but rather about me, in a speakerphone conversation that I overheard.
“I have been agonizing for the past 3 days about how to respond to someone’s derisive, dismissive questions about why I watch horror movies. But I think ultimately my takeaway is this: tell me why your first reaction to learning about what someone loves is to make them feel weird and bad about it?”
And getting back to a previous point, I wish now that I had asked my friend in today’s lovely chat for their thoughts about my use of the word “traumatized” (or “triggered.”) as mentioned in the Mike Flanagan conversation above, but I wasn’t thinking of it at the time. Ah well, another chat for another time!
Of course, all of your thoughts are welcome, as well. And please don’t coddle me. If I was wrong, I want to know. And if you are the person who made that comment about my Hill House review so long ago, I am not mad at you. I hope you are not mad at me! If we can have a conversation about it, I would welcome that.
