‘I see they’re making Melville eat his whale'
Lawrence Ferlinghetti
On Friday 18th October, 2024 I had the lugubriously ecstatic experience that I’d long awaited – I was out to launch, out to launch me book, that is… and I was indeed fortunate to have the amazing Redwing Gallery there for the ideal launch-pad. I mean, think about it – how do you launch a book? I had visions of hurling a rotund volume through the window of my local library – ya know – make a bit of a splash. Mind you I’ve never been too happy in a cell, so thought better of my original marketing strategy. How does a garret-poet, a pallid quill-driver and feverish scrivener transform himself into a slick, well-oiled hustler, punting his product in the shark-pit of virulent capitalist competitive consumerism, hmmm? Tell me that, if ye can, sitting there in your fine city clothes, swilling your martini while the help fixes you a tray of canapes?
(And talking of canned apes, I have another book, of a very simian nature in the can, waiting to be pumped into the flabby and indifferent face of a succulent humanity.) More on that later – and moron will be the operative word, if ya knows wadd I means…
Anyway, we have to live before we die. We have to dance before the sun goes down. Putting out that book meant a lot to me and perhaps the best thing of all was that people laughed at the funny bits – that was a relief and everyone had a lot of fun. The Horned Whale (a.k.a. An Morvil Kornek) was finally freed from the beach of unfinished novels and it slithered off into An Mor Atlantek, there to fin its way out into the world-mind-ocean, bouncing its eerie cetacean song off the sea-bed of the collective unconscious mind. The mind that swells with currents of thought, that storms with unquiet emotions, that seeths and surges and swells, before settling down to a glassy mirror of perfect calm – the unborn mind, original mind, mind-heart of the universe that sees and knows and reclines replete in its original nature.
Well, there’s no point in being coy about it – we’ve all got one!
I’ve included some footage of the readings, to give you a taste of Whale-meat. Wishing to conceal the main plot from yous, I avoided reading any of the main action-scenes, so what you get is probably more of an impressionistic feel of the vibe of the book. It’s quite a chubby tome, weighing in at a healthy 1 lb, 9 3/4 oz.
Originally published as an ebook in 2016, the Whale has now surfaced and put on a considerable coat of blubber – or paper, as some people prefer to call it. The longish short-story, The Janetta Stone was started back in 2009, as an episodic serial published in The Limpet newspaper. One of the poems in the book was written in the mid 1970’s when I was but a young stream of awareness, streaming through infinite space with a planet-full of writhing, awakening beings headed for the heart of the Milky Way.
Ah, those were the days!
The Kramvil, a novel in the Gothic tradition, started in a similar fashion, but this time it appeared in The Caterpillar –A Visionary Ghetto Tabloid. After a time, I realised that The Kramvil was mutating into a book, so I let the little hatchling have its way, and thus, unknowingly and quite innocently unleashed a squirming, braying and utterly appalling thing of darkness amongst an unsuspecting and undeserving populace. May God in His mercy forgive me – and may He have mercy upon my wretched soul!
During the question and answer part of the launch-evening, I was asked about the etymology of the word eldritch. To clarify further, I quote from The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology:
eldrich (sc.) pert. to elves or fairies; weird, unnatural. xvi. poss. from attrib. use of OE. *aelf-, *elfrice ‘fairy realm; (see ELF, RICH).
Readers of H.B.Lunchcart will already be familiar with the term.
Watch the debut of Luminous and reading from The Horned Whale here...
I was also very happy to launch the new musical act 'Luminous', featuring Simon Brown on guitar and me, Jeremy Schanche on Bouzouki and Baglamas. We played 3 rebetiko tunes in 9/8 and a Greek folk tune in 7/8. If I say so myself, I think it was a hot jam.
Many thanks to Neena and Ros for helping to organize the evening and a splendid time was guaranteed for all.
The book is available from Redwing Gallery, Penzance; various other bookshops in the town, or direct from the author. Also available on Amazon
