Re: Cones in Art & Literature
 

"His ruminations were interrupted by the outlandish sound of a mechanical roaring from above. All those boys not caught up in the periphery of the fight’s repercussions had their faces already level with the cloudless sky, volcano-cone noses pointing upwards."

Re: Cones in Art & Literature
 

"Thus, I was leaving home, not before time, to go to Teachers' Training College, and I was walking, rather than trusting to the train. It was not long before the ancient view of Whofage was left several crossed brows behind and, as I crested yet another untrodden sky-line, I saw the sharp icicle-like pinnacle of a pylon, poking from what was no doubt the midst of a forgotten city. Nobody had warned me that I might have to dodge around such communities, on the way to the Parismony."

Re: Cones in Art & Literature
 

"Greg then heard a key go. This was someone, he assumed, who had more right to be in Susan's house than a complete stranger: her husband Mike, fresh from hospital-visiting, doffing his over-things in the hall so as to enter the chintzy parlour with a petal-based cone of forgiving flowers – or, perhaps, wanting-to-be-forgiven flowers. Only to find that Susan wasn't there. She was in the kitchen, consigning the unspeakably jagged-mouthed baked bean can back into the flip-top waste-bin – wherein Greg heard the residue of muck resettle around its restored constituent: heard it as if it was inside his head."

Re: Cones in Art & Literature
 

The blue books were piled with methodical randomness under the trite ornament. They were perfectly unread, perfectly staged, perfectly stylised props. The moment was perfect unto itself.

Perfect - until I showed them to the thingie.

The thingie was not a thing as such.

Things existed. Things could be measured, felt, seen, smelt (even to the point of gauging no smell at all), heard (even to the point of gauging no sound at all); things could be described, interpreted, evaluated. Things possessed features, extent, personality (even to the point of gauging no personality), point (even to the point of gauging no point at all). A thing was a thing. A thing of and in itself. A thing had a first cause or creator, an ongoing preserver or potential destroyer. A thing could even have self-spontaneous existence or combustion. A thing you could hang a hat on.

Thingies, in comparison, were fictional things, things-in-disguise. A thingie was a drogulus, an unthing in thing’s hat. A thingie was, by power of suspension of disbelief, a reality in the shape of story, or a story in the shape of reality. A thingie, by paradox, was also a logician’s box with make-believe inside that promises to be a thing if you open it or one with a thing inside that promises to be make-believe if you don’t open it. A magicking of imagination towards the form of true perception. A prestidigitation of an unthingable thing making eyes at you from under its hat.

“What do you think of the blue books?” I asked, upon first becoming aware of the thingie’s presence.

For obvious reasons, I knew that the thingie saw me as the thing that had created it, so I was rather pleased to find it quite independently humouring me by promising to answer me at all: “Before I answer, do you really think I am capable of having views about anything?”

“Of course. You are a friend of mine of several years’ standing, are you not? Would you like a drink, by the way?”

“Yes, please. I’ll have a scotch on the rocks. But these blue books, I can’t see what is on the cover or if they have a cover at all. Are they meant to be nothing but spine. And the cone-thing on top – is that simply to pretend they have depth as well?”

"Not exactly a cone, more a blunt pyramid, I’d say.”

The thingie was taking me into areas which I had hoped to avoid. I poured out its drink and handed it the glass with a great feeling of suspense to see whether it was able to drink it. I did not like to stare so I continued the conversation as I returned the bottle to the drinks cabinet: “There is a cover bearing the silhouette of a statue on it amid a cloudy sky.”

"I only have your word for that, haven’t I? Can I have some ice?”

I looked up with the growing realisation that I was suffering from the worst case of not-being-able-to-end-something that it was possible for any writer to suffer from. A metafiction with no possible meaningful clincher to put it to bed.

Except I was still there. And the thingie was still there. It had the glass extended for the ice! If it had all been a story, I could have ended it there with a writerly whimper and an unscripted shrug. You win some, you lose some. But I could not end it at all.

The story was real. I was real. The thingie was real. I and the thingie are still there. Count yourselves lucky because you can treat this whole thing as a proper story and simply leave with your own snigger and shrug. Leave us there with the pile of blue books, leave us tussling for the truth of things, thinking-out things, thinging-out thoughts.

We two things or thingies in hats ... in aspic ... or iced in ice.

Praying to be stoned so as to blunt the edge of our existence.

Re: Cones in Art & Literature
 

A vast area of land in the centre of England known as Cone Zero was given over to memorials marking all those one-hit wonders of mankind's music. We always need to remember in this way that everything in life (or in what seems to be reality as we know it) defaults to music at the end of the day. And music can be intended as joyful, life-affirming as well as sad, death-embracing. The particular music-memorial I fear I may always remember from my brief visit to Cone Zero was one that 'celebrated' probably the darkest dirge that ever had the fortune to become a one-hit wonder. For the music 'personally' it was counted a fortune to be thus commemorated, but for the many who heard the music it was a misfortune, no doubt.

I was accompanied, that day, by Mitchell Much. He knew all about Cone Zero. Although he was a friend whom I had known for many years, I assumed that he was also to be an official guide for the steep tapering invert of a mountain or pyramid I envisaged the place to be. It was simply lucky (coincidental) that I already knew him. He said Cone Zero was almost impossible to negotiate on foot. I nodded knowingly. My dream of the place had been one of pumping my legs against the slope just to stand still. We needed a lop-sided 'golf buggy' of sorts to make any progress towards the stone memorials crammed in the bottom corner of the empty cone. After shuddering with delight as well as awe at my first sight of Cone Zero, he motioned me to step into the official 'buggy'. We travelled for days, and my spinning head thought it was back in the earlier dream. I wouldn't call it dizziness. A better expression would be disorientation between dream and reality, but, for this disorientation not to be counterproductive, I needed a convinced undercurrent of knowledge (knowledge rather than belief or faith) that there was nothing being dreamed about this at all. Mitchell had instilled this conviction of knowledge by a whole series of training sessions prior to our visit. I had watched screenings of Cone Zero being built from the remains of Birmingham's spaghetti junction, slowly being carved into the welcoming 'arms' of the earth, as if such a down-towering slot of slants was simply, inevitably natural. Like, in a rather trite comparison, a classic sculpture had always lived within the primeval stone from which it was eventually released by the sculptor. Or, more relevantly perhaps, a piece of music that already crouched within our ears waiting to be sprung by the composer into ordered sound from the random surroundings of noise.

"Are we there?" I had to ask. It was never certain where you truly had reached when within Cone Zero. It was as if my question was an announcement that I knew we were there. I didn't expect Mitchell to answer. His grey beard was so certain about unspoken matters that he didn't even need to nod. I could hear the cacophony of the combined music of the memorials. It had already been rising towards me for several hours above the engine noise of the buggy. It was possible (I knew from my training) to use one's sight to focus on a chosen memorial which then served to focus its music alone towards one's ears. I had already wanted to concentrate on the celebrated hit of darkest despair from the menu of memorials Mitchell had shown me during training. I believed that any despair was the most efficient path towards hope. Mitchell had not tried to dissuade me. The music was a pretty silly British cover version of an American hit novelty record of the sixties. It was sung by a group that was once famous but now completely unknown (unknown either by having been straightforwardly forgotten or by entering a mental blockage that was stronger than simply forgetting). As I speak now, it's just not there. I just can't hope to remember the name of the group. It is possibly irrelevant, anyway. Mitchell does nothing to help. He probably suffers the same blockage, but he would never admit this fact, I guess. However, by this time, he was nodding. Nodding not to indicate communication with me but nodding to the beat of the music. I feared he might soon start whistling along! God forbid that he should suddenly stand up in the buggy in some wild unspeakable outburst of karaoke! Mitchell was in danger of losing all dignity. I put my face in my hands and wept. The music was so utterly utterly wrong.

Having once focused, I now instinctively knew that I couldn't pluck my ears from the memorial's music in favour of another choice. I was aghast as it dawned on me that Mitchell's training had not warned me about any of this. I cursed him under ... my breath? No, it was under my own humming-along! As we both joined in the music's chorus in some unholy unison, I pounced upon him, eager to punish my friend-turned-enemy. But it did not stop our harmonising. Even planting my teeth in his neck could not interrupt the flow of mutual sing-along. Incredibly, the bubbling blood seemed in tune with the arcane rhythms to which Cone Zero had brought us closer. A novelty sound-effect that was both laughable and tragic: the ultimate despair. And Death gradually shrouded my bodily senses one by one as I yearned lovingly for Death's silence while remaining utterly terrified by the selfsame silence.

Mitchell Much shrugged as he drove the buggy back up the open slants of Cone Zero. He pulled the plugs from his ears with a smile. Never trust anyone when it's either you or them about to face the ultimate despair. He knew that fact as well as me, I guess. He looked down at the diminishing tunes studded like tombs on a stave. He knew that a sixties novelty record could not justly commemorate the many Fallen of life's ultimate war. The Horror was ever in the mix. Bad taste smothering one's awareness even beyond the toe-tapping of Death. In shame, he poured himself blood-tepidly into the cup of his own open mouth. Meanwhile, I am, finally, at peace, thanks to Mitchell Much, because, gratefully, I feel I no longer exist.

Re: Cones in Art & Literature
 

"Hello, I don't think I'm the same Dora as the one before. As I was holding a fir cone in the air - oops, sorry, as I was holding on to come on the air, I was listening to the previous caller."

Re: Cones in Art & Literature
 

"My strobe-induced floaters were a different kettle of fish, however. They were not in the mind nor in some unreachable epoch. They really did live in my eyes. Now. Feeding off the optic juices, no doubt. Playing Tag with the odd corrosions that come off the retina. A game of Hide-and-Seek amid the rods and cones. Pinning-a-tail-on-the-donkey's-beady-eye. A Scaletrix of squint-eyed toboggans. And I could watch them. Watch the floaters play all sorts of games. Until I stopped. Because, as I bathed in the strobes, a floater bore an actual human face. A speck wading through the glaucomal ooze came into full view, sporting a moustache, a full head of hair and a double-chin that concealed where the neck ended. I could not believe my eyes. Felt like having an Internet’s dream of itself. The face was microscopic, but the curve of my eyeball seemed to magnify it sufficiently to discern features. It spoke. Or appeared to do so. My ears were, of course, not acute enough to catch what was going on in the eye-sockets. But I tried to lip-read the mouth, with my own mouth beating time with it. The face seemed to be asking for help - or was it offering help? I did not recognise the face. Probably a anthropomorphisation of the single currency. The moustache caused me to assume the male gender. It was definitely nobody I knew. Perhaps not a moustache at all, but a blindfold that had slipped down leaving its eyes about to sag out like breasts."

Re: Cones in Art & Literature
 

Here is yet another variant of a previous post. Cones in Art Literature - Page 9 - THOMAS LIGOTTI ONLINE


"Doone then heard a key go. This was someone, he assumed, who had more right to be in Tessa's house than a complete stranger: her husband, fresh from hospital-visiting, doffing his over-things in the hall so as to enter the chintzy parlour with a petal-based cone of forgiving flowers – or, perhaps, wanting-to-be-forgiven flowers. Only to find that Tessa wasn't there. She was in the kitchen, consigning the unspeakably jagged-mouthed baked bean can back into the flip-top waste-bin – wherein Doone heard the residue of muck resettle around its restored constituent: heard it as if it was inside his head."

Re: Cones in Art & Literature
 

'The Angel Megazanthus' appears to be an accretive / mutant novel at least partly based on some previous stories. Thanks for continuing to quote from my work, GSC, (a great honour to me) and for becoming a bigger expert on them than I am! :)
I've collected the links here:
http://weirdmonger.blog-city.com/the...e_from_dfl.htm

Yours, df lewis

Re: Cones in Art & Literature
 

"There were perhaps a dozen of those beings within sight. No one with earthly biologic prepossessions could even have imagined them very readily. Each of them possessed a roughly globular body with the upper hemisphere swelling mid-way between pole and equator to form two neckless, conical heads. The lower hemisphere terminated in many limbs and appendages, some of which were used for walking and others solely for prehension."