does the beef salute the butcher?
breathe in
the other day i re-read the midnight meat train by clive barker. every time i read clive barker i get inspired myself, his style and themes reminding me of some of my own writing. i write this with a sort of assumption that you, my one or two intelligent readers, have had the pleasure of reading the story itself, which is effectively a treatise on secret worlds, secret identities, on the craziness that pervades our everyday lives given form. i wish i could be kaufman, indoctrinated in a baptism of blood into the world that lives beneath ours yet affects ours so much. then a thought came to me.
the city fathers are in fact a direct metaphor for the gay community.
a society of cannibals that lives just below the surface, that have been there since time immeasurable, feeding on those that they give life to not out of hunger, but out of need. the first father that talks to kaufman says that he despises the taste, but then only a moment later smiles wickedly as the gore of that nights feast trickles down his breast. presented as grotesque caricatures, but definitely human, the fathers sustain society, represented by the hulking other that lurks in the shadows just out of sight, through a grotesque ritual unspeakable by those that it benefits.
every night, just on the fringes, queers run amok just under the surface of popular culture, interacting beneath the gaze of the straight majority yet right in front of their eyes. we pull their strings, our music evolving into their music, our trends becoming their trends. in modern times it can be traced back to the dot-com boom, the gays being at the forefront with catchy ideas and a broader technical knowledge than others at the time. and the concept goes beyond culture, the gay community being outcast and frowned upon and therefore always striving for acceptance through financial and professional success. that success, although translating to a mediocre level of acceptance, always seems to be miscredited, or, to warp the old adage, it seemed behind every good man was a good fag.
to go back to the similarities, the most baffling part is that the surface world denies, even criminalizes, the very machine which keeps it going. and it may not be homosexuality in particular, but sexuality in general. the taboos of bondage, rough trade, group sex, fetishism (in all its forms, too numerous to mention), looked at as anathaema yet always lurking. and maybe it is homosexuality because many homosexuals embrace these things as a part of life, sometimes as part of their everyday routine. and that scares the majority. in effect, they may as well be hanging from a hook in a slaughterhouse subway car, fresh for consumption by the very things they fear, the very things that keep them alive.
breathe out
enough with the book report babble. i did find that the film for the story is in production, slated for a 2008 release with clive barkers full consent. not really much info yet, but hopefully it will be a triumphant reminder to all the saw and japanese ripoff fanboys out there that there really aren't any new stories, just new ways of telling them.
and just a side note. in the story in the hills, the cities clive barker originated the line stolen by trent reznor in sin: "i told you, i don't want to see another church; the smell of the places makes me sick. stale incense, old sweat and lies...."
if you listen, mr 'i'm clean like jesus now' reznor has stolen a lot from mr. barker, but he still makes good music.
nebulize
nin - help me i am in hell
