The Horned Whale Paperback Out Now!

THE HORNED WHALE or An Morvil Kornek

This new anthology by Jeremy Schanche features the Gothic novel The Kramvil. Set in Newlyn, or rather ‘New Lynnsmouth’ in 1911. It features such characters as Jack Lane, Florence Place and Old Paul Hill... The tale explores the themes of pioneer aviation, romance, mystery and a scientific experiment that goes horribly wrong when the young scholar, Elias Gillpington, gets involved with the eccentric inventor Lazarus Taxon.

The short story The Janetta Stone recalls my days underground at Wheal Roots, near Wendron in the mid-seventies, as well as drawing inspiration from the time I ‘bounded’ Battery Rocks in a mineral-claim that was registered according to the ancient Stannary law-code which still survives in Cornwall.

Ghost-Hulk of a Phantom is a comic tale of a struggling writer and his misadventures in trying to get published. A collection of poems is included in The Horned Whale.

The style blends humour, mysticism and a splash of surrealism. The locations, mainly occurring around West Penwith, will be familiar to many local readers, as will the wit and wisdom of the Cornish people.

The anthology also contains nineteen poems.

Illustrated with the author’s pen and ink drawings, The Horned Whale – or An Morvil Kornek – is out now.

Buy it here!

Listen to this wonderful music by Erik Satie. I listened to this constantly as I was writing The Kramvil, and it helped inspire the atmosphere of the book.

BOOK LAUNCH

Friday 18^th October, 2024 – Redwing Gallery, 32 Alverton Street, 

Penzance, Kernow - 7:30pm

Book Details:

Title: The Horned Whale or An Morvil Kornek

Author & illustrator: Jeremy Schanche

Pages: 522

Publisher: The Invertebrate Press

Distributor: Amazon

ISBN: 978-0-9934909-0-3

Price: £15

Dimensions:  5 by 8 inches  (12.7 x 20.3cm)

Weight: 1 lb, 9 3/4 oz  (.73kg)

Publication date: 30/9/2024

Genre:  Idiosyncratic...

Down Wheal Roots - looking for Old Janner...

An average day at The Invertebrate Press Office

Outside the house of Lazarus Taxon (left, guano-spattered)

https://www.cornwalllive.com/news/cornwall-news/gallery/jeremy-schanches-global-awareness-month-1257151 

Yellow Shamanism and the Cargo Cults of Polynesia - A critical overview of polytheistic syncretism across the eastern hemisphere

The Caterpillar drools with relish contemplating the cultural exchange of expressions of human spirituality amongst the tribal peoples of central Asia and the Pacific Ocean -  Stridulating with the iron-rigor of the crystal carapace the luminous lepidopteral lavae looms large afore me like a quilin come to roam the land in times of great auspicious happenings and mass luminary visionings -  With quick and flicking movements of crisp rattling antennae the Primordial Lavae transmits suchforth lore and knowledge to the teeming world - ever-hungry for Mystery - 
Such is the fish that breams are made of and eye for one nose it -
Myriad many-faceted jewel-like eyes of lepidopteral-wonderment shine bliss and bubbling humour through crystaline antennae via the quivering wavelength of psychic-Chi - 
The countless hands of the Carapaced-One hold quixotic angular and eliptical parchments - tablets and scrolls that hold more juice than all the rantings of the Babylon-media many-tentacled squid-monster - Subduing the babble of deluded dwarves from the City of the Somnambulists the Caterpillar calmly goes about his way - rippling with delight - blissful in reverie and resplendent in iridescent molecular regalia -

or so they say anyway - - - 
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellow_shamanism

The Caterpillar Laughs

For some years now the elder eldritch lepidopteral lava had been crepuscular-flitting and transmitting the pieces of the Minoan Mosaic Culture to me via mystic meet-ups at the midnight phone-box in Pendoze – Behind the Hump-Me Dump-Me statue - In the heart of the old Jewish Market District – near the wharves where whalers rot unsung at rusty anchor and doubloons rattle in the silt and bilge underfoot – Katapliktikos was the Great Antennaed One as he quixotically and osmotically beamed soft luminous neon blue-white rays from his ancient centres of knowledge and shone them my way – Such was the power of the rays I was frequently stunned and on occasion rendered totally unconscious – only to come to some time later – slumped in the midnight phone-box – some time after midnight now of course and rain rattling on the carapace shell of the tiny glass hut -  Never without the glow of celestial knowing do he leave me before going back to the myriad unravelling ways of the night and the mystic business of his thread-spinning and weaving kind -   In tubular glass vials and philes of philtres he left chemicular imprints of significant finds in the realms of organic-structure and the nature of all things -  On waxen cylinders he left strands of music in many forms and styles for a vast range of instrumental forces -  Jars and pots and chests and boxes of scrolls and parchments he passed on and also glass slides and photographic images in many forms – Keys – cyphers – clues – lexicons and harbingers were left loaded – pointing the way to yet more doors to kick open and unleash the collected forces of many cultures and powers – many magical traditions and shamanic studies were included in the ken of the Caterpillar-s whirling feelers – his sentient all-embracing mind flowed over with cultural knowledge and inside nature knowledge like a mighty fountain that sprayed the pigeons that played at its splashing feet -   Shedding the hasps and masks of identity and mortal conformity he re-emerged and re-appeared constantly in ever-slightly-changed forms – ever aetherial and elusive – ephemeral and insubstantial – more idea than flesh-body – more thought-form than sinew – this beast was composed of the very threads of mind-stuff and knew no such limits as ye or I do know – So to learn of lute and lyre and kindle Olympos-s fire in company with this great ephemeral creature was joy untold and over aeons did he the tale unfold – Ever holding in the folds of his robe a book – a telescope and a globe – therewith to scan the scene and scour the worldly-realme and surf upon the billows of the foamy deeps and bustle free and high among the puffy clouds of cumulus nimbus blue and aether and jazz on in the sunset-s gorgeous dripping scarlet purple honey of a sunset howldrehevel evening on old Kernouac Cornish cliff most high and gritty grained bulwark of Atlantek-s roaring shore -   Zeibekiko he scratched with peculiar charm on the many-stringed lyre he clutched with several of his iridescent exoskeletal arms as he spun the melody in slow sedate largo nine eight shuffle – A noble rhythm for an eagle with wings outstretched or circling vulture high above the mountain-valleys looking for carcass with bead of an avine all-spying eye – Thus did he vouchsafe:

Melting myself constantly –

I dissolve into cocoon silk -

Then I spin again –

Afresh the tale unwinds –

You won-t unravel me by grasping at the thread -

This tale starts at the centre –

                                                                                                        *

Winding country road – Many years ago – Leaves blowing from the trees – Yellow the light of the sun – Rain had been driving in sheets – Mellow the smell of the earth – Birds were returning to song – Scatter the light of the sun – Raindrops on dewdrops on grass – Bush-crickets running for shelter – ants sliding skilfully down their holes – Rabbits are running for cover – Thunder breaks dark clouds in two – dark covers over the sky – coolness fills into the air – breeze softly mumbles around – leaves stirs about on the ground – windy and starting to rain – drops big as coins hit the ground – Ears of the forest look round – eyes that have listened to the ground – Skin that has smelt all the ground – whiskers that twitch with the sound – listening the forest around – creatures are stirring in sound – breath coming out of the ground – badgers are mulling and brooding – snorting and snuffles and grunts – badger-breath sticky and hot – Fly hiding under the leaf – glistening radiant eye – shiny the carapace glows – thorax and feelers as one – Well the moving of the morning was unfolding and the waters of the ocean were all seething with scintillating light the waters dancing and all around the winds were softly singing and the hearts of countless people lifted upwards and the rain of light fell gently on the people and the laughter of the throngs was like an ocean and the dancing in the streets was like a heatwave and the singing went right through the flowing morning and the fires still burnt on by nightfall-s darkling and the sparrow and the starling were rejoicing and the ivy was entwining with the elder - 

Print - Cut centre-slit - fold into your eight-page miniature edition of The Caterpillar Dub (This month-s edition features The Luminous Three - Sakyamuni Buddha - Quan Yin and Lao Tsu) 

melting from the edges - the surface dissolves to leave only the radiant centre - 

Out Of The Cocoon

Street scenes of the everyday night – Phone-boxes of the street-corner hook-up – Phones off the hook and hangs dangling by the wire – Carriages rattle past oblivious to the pathos of the scene – Here-s where – tendrils whirling – I have had the melting experiences of meeting the Caterpillar – encountering the entity face to decapodic face – Katapliktkos and simultaneously cataleptic this beast flowed with a natural rhythm that defied artifice and nullified the bourgeois mind in one fell swoop -  This Caterpillar was the repository of myriad untold dreams from many creatures of many aeons and epochs of singular collective popular and universal flow and human surge through time-s tapestried halls and space-s unfathomable caverns – the lucky beast!  
Well luck was with the humans too as the gifts of caterpillactic knowledge culture and science would soon be spread amongst – disseminated among and generally bestowed upon a seething and pullulating species of monstrous dream-primate sometimes known as Homo sapiens sapiens – the thinking man-s ape –

Dreading that forces unfavourable to the transmission of these cultural treasures were at work – pitting their unwholesome strength into an attempt to thwart the Caterpillar-s work – he reacted by spinning a cocoon of activity – changing form and occilatory-rate – seeming to become more aethereal yet palpably sentient and present – almost human – no – much more than human – and so capable of seeing into the human heart – the human body and blood – the endocrines and adrenalin – the biological underlay that has such influence on the constitution and thus on the typical thought-process – He could observe all these things with his sweeping – scanning antennae and drink in the essence of any activity to which he was exposed –

Plankton-papyri and ambergris archives were opened and revealed by the hundred feet and the swirling papillae – namely the psychic-antennae but fundamentally he would work by direct-communique – he could talk straight into your mind – thus eliminating the need for the crude semaphore of flapping lips and tongues – the monotonous music of the human voice was obsolete and seemed unutterably primitive once he had established the direct method and cut out the middle-man of verbal verbosity -  Such things as happen in red public phone-boxes at midnight in the main streets of Kernouac towns – namely in Pendoze – a quiet little place by the sea where nothing much ever happens – a cobbled hobgoblin hovel huddling high on ramparts of steel-slate pewter skies -  

                                                                                    *

{For your mini Caterpillar chapbook simply print - fold and cut as previously instructed - a video will appear on this one day - meantime - if you-re stuck - ask your kids!}

                                                                         *

Feel like I-m under water – like I-m in a trance and I can-t wake up – My mind is blunt and I can-t wake up -  Handel bludgeons me unconscious with his ancient formal-garden layouts - lead-lethargy is aemic and osseous - invading the body with its insidious weight - puling as gravity pulls and wrapping bladder-wrack around me ankles as I stumble and tumble in slumber I wander and seek and search and wonder still with head aloft unto the sky and to the stars my eye doth shine a twinkling reflection of all this - of all this -

All twinkled in the eye of a reflective movement like the birth - life and explosive death of a vast Universal System - a Tri-Chilocosm - a Maha-Loka - Births coming and going and exploding and popping like thoughts - The thoughts of an ant - The thoughts that fill the head that fills the aunt-s hat - The ant-s heart and the hart-s panting breath - Breathess entranced - the Arhat has no thoughts -

                                                                                       *

Inexhaustible realms of consciousness - States of mind - programmes - mental-worlds - mind-sets - beliefs - feelings - feelings - feelings - feel - 

                                                                                        *

Death-s Little Imps come and tap you on the shoulder - Mini-deaths - deaths miniaturized and minisculed - death-hints delivered by the Imp Servants of the Skeleton Lord - A bony finger taps you on the clavicle - "You haven-t got forever you know - 
What do you think you-re doing ~  
What do you think you-re doing~" 

Phenomenal flow radiating through the tangible part of the universe - atomic poetry unravelling into molecular chemistry and cellular biological entity - Hallo human - please step forward - you-re on -     It-s your show - You are the star - it-s yours - all yours - your world - take it - take it easy but take it - take it back to the source and shake it - take it to the shiny void - to the misty cloud - to the starry sky - take it away and sing it to life - offer it life and reflect on it -
Ravens and crows have plenty to say -

The last thing you need is more words in your head - but have some anyway - just in case you do - Anything is better than serious media - a squawking crow is a refreshing sound after you-ve enjoyed the sound of ten thousand fiddles steeped overnight in maple-syrup by demented goatherds  - punctuated by the percussion of krogens - carapaces - cocoanuts - goat-skulls - tongueless bells and drums that don-t stick - The sound of falling earth is sweeter than any radio and the sea has more to say than ten million monkeys all chanting the words of Shakespeare - Chaucer and Dickens - So in the light of these revelations you can follow this trail back to the realm of the Caterpillar!