Remapping the Writer’s Muse with Edgar Allan Poe and Killing Eve

Image via Spoiler TV

“Yet I am not more sure that my soul lives, than I am that perverseness is one of the primitive impulses of the human heart – one of the indivisible primary faculties, or sentiments, which give direction to the character of Man” The Black Cat, Edgar Allan Poe

It’s one of those days with a slight chill in the air. One of those lazy days that are perfect for bran rusks and a cup of tea, far away from the madness that is marking second year university Wordsworth/ Blake scripts.

One of those perfect days to catch up on what is fast becoming a personal fave TV show, Killing Eve. For those of you that have been living in a Hobbit hole somewhere and have yet to come across this gem : watch it now. I’m currently on Episode 5 and it has me deeply questioning everything I thought I knew about life, about my life, about the lives of others.

In a nutshell, Killing Eve is a British drama series based on the Villanelle novels by Luke Jennings. It follows an MI5 officer as she tracks down a sociopath leaving a trail of destruction and blood behind her.

The TV series, produced by Sid Gentle Films, is utterly fascinating. It digs down deep into the kernel of our inner desires, all the things that lay repressed and haunt our lives, and the nature of obsession as liberation. Thus, it questions that age-old debate that I’ve been ruminating over : the female muse. What if the ‘muse’ need not be an object to be attained or sexualized according to standard forms? What if the muse was a spectral figure like the women in Edgar Allan Poe’s texts? You needn’t have to see or hear her but she stalks your dreams and inner recesses nonetheless…slicing and mutilating your inner corridors till the genius that exists inside is set free. A perpetual psychological fever, that only you know about, that lies hidden. Clawing through maggots and graveyard soil. Constantly on the verge of your understanding and tangibility…but barely ever there. A murderess…or a corpse…instead of ‘girlfriend’ ,’lover’, ‘mistress’, ‘one night stand’ or ‘wife’. This muse then, defies all categories, and is a special type of energy that requires an almost spiritual, psychical channeling. What is the cost for such creative impulses?

 

Art by Abigail Larson

This brings me to Edgar Allan Poe. We’ve been dissecting his two short stories, The Black Cat and The Tell-Tale Heart, in class recently and it had reverberations as I watched Killing Eve. Yes, I can’t just watch a series/movie or read a book without overthinking. I call it the Gilmore curse…

Image via HelloGiggles

Granted, Poe’s short stories aren’t for everyone. But those that find joy in-between the frenzied lines, usually find that it resonates – not with an appeal for evil or ‘perverseness’ as may be read on a surface level- but with things we wish we could say or do…things not necessarily socially acceptable, things that will end most likely with judgement and vilification. Poe himself was a deeply troubled soul, plagued by alcoholism and a life of grief and abandonment…which makes one wonder…how troubled does the mind need to be in order to achieve brilliance? Or, can it be achieved without total disintegration? Perhaps, all one needs is the mere push of a tentacle of things that rear their heads from murky depths…

Photography by Stefan Gesell

 

…or the character of a deadly assassin smiling at you, blade in hand…to nudge you in the right direction? The character of Villanelle or Oksana in Killing Eve is a psychotic playground of trauma, desire and the ability to switch off one’s emotions. Yet the TV series manages to bring out  the humane aspects of the antagonist through her curiosity and ‘affection’ for Eve, the protagonist of the story. In turn, Eve starts to realize important, enlightening, things about herself. She comes face to face with aspects of her Jungian shadow that dispel the normality of her mundane job, her easy marriage and herself as plain or unappealing; intimating that sometimes, you just need a psychopath or foe to remind you that you are indeed special.

You see…you could feel like the colorless podium upon which more tantalizing pieces of art sit. You could feel like everyone else around you are thriving with imagination and life as if they just stepped out of a television show. But if Killing Eve has taught me anything, it has taught me that sometimes the most fascinating people are keeping it all in. And all they need is an outlet.

So, if you are a writer and lack the ‘colorful’ or ‘traumatically-induced’ life that people often say makes a good writer…fear not. You just need to turn inwards, take a trip down the darkest corridor that you never even knew was there…and find your spectral lady muse. She may be devoid of blood, she may require a limb or three…but it’s a small sacrifice to pay to reach one’s creative spirit.

 “It is impossible to say how first the idea entered my brain; but once conceived, it haunted me day and night.” The Tell-Tale Heart, Edgar Allan Poe

Video via JoBlo TV Show Trailers

Sacrifices and the Other Side: Book Quotes and Tiny Poems.

Art via Pinterest.

“Real magic can never be made by offering someone else’s liver. You must tear out your own, and not expect to get it back.”  The Last Unicorn, Peter S. Beagle

 

On the other side

there is no clinking of glasses

only voices with no faces.

Time extends herself like a whore.

But somewhere

a little girl will laugh

and someone will hold her tightly in his arms.

Safe.

The witch’s headstone remains intact.

 

Vampire Diaries FanVideo via KristinaOrtutova on YouTube.

Books, Coffee Musings and Kitty Pouts

My Catwoman pout FAIL but I’m still a crazy cat woman with my ‘too cool for school’ coffee mug.

My day was completely book crazy! I’m sitting amongst a heap of books I must (in my over-achiever sort of way) get through for my master’s dissertation. We’ve got Freud, Lacan, Kristeva and some exciting literary exploration with Louise Rosenblatt this week. If you had to meet me in real life, you’d probably think I stepped out of a cartoon- that’s how excited I get when talking about my thesis. #majornerd

However, somewhere between the delish sips of coffee in my crazy cool black cat coffee mug (I mean serioso how CUTE is it!?) and meandering through my local bookstore, I decided I needed to make time for some recreational reading as well. Yoga has been helping me immensely in the de-stressing department but I love getting lost in bookish worlds…it’s the greatest way for me to unwind. So today I started reading…

Post-Easter bunny coffee art by So Whipped Coffeeshop, Durban.

The Watchmaker of Filigree Street by Natasha Pulley. I hadn’t heard anything much about this novel to be honest…it just sorta fell off the shelf and stared at me, so I said okie doke I’ll take you home little book. Yes, I speak to books. Don’t judge me. I’ve only read a few pages so far but I’m already interested to see where this tale takes me. The male character seems familiarly cynical and it’s set in dreary England. According to the interweb, it’s steampunk, historical, witty…yes yes you’ve spun your webs, I shall read you till the very last page. Despite the fact that I have a thesis deadline looming this week. Must keep sanity intact. I’ll keep you guys updated on whether the book is a hit or miss with Of Tales & Dreams.

In other news, I was excited to befriend April Mullen on Instagram. She’s a Canadian director that has filmed a few episodes of one of my FAVORITE SHOWS EVER –Killjoys. And she recently gave us a sneak peek of the filming for Season 3. Check out our girl Dutch on the instavid here : April Mullen

I don’t think I have the proper words in English (or any of the languages I speak including Meow) to tell you how excited I am for Killjoys Season 3! Anyhoo, I should get back to my thesis and how I plan on saving the world through Neil Gaiman texts 😉

Stay inspired…lock and serve your warrants Killjoys-style and remember to look out for the small things in life. And do let me know what you are reading!

Via heartfeltquotes blog.

A Bookworm’s Life Through the Amélie Lens.

 Time hasn't changed anything. Amélie still shelters in solitude 

          and asks herself silly questions about the world or about this town.

One of the problems with being a natural born bookworm is the delicious snare of introvertism.

I wonder sometimes if I would ever trade my elaborate imagination (that more often than not gets me into trouble) for a sociable, rational mien. But I was never one to walk the dusty brown road rather than hop onto the crocodile-shaped glitter bus that spews out marshmallow treats.

  Amélie's only refuge is the world she makes up.

        In that world, vinyls are made the same way as pancakes, 

         and the neighbour's wife, who has been in a coma for months, 

         just decided to do all her sleeping at once.

So here I find myself, at the dawn of 2017 battling monsters (most of my own making) and preparing for an impossible quest that would put even poor Frodo to shame. But mostly, just trying to keep myself from falling down the rabbit hole. When you have an overactive imagination or FPP (Fantasy Prone Personality), life can be très hard.

It can cause you to lose friends, lose love and most often than not, lose yourself. Most things just never match up to the yumminess you’re capable of manifesting in your head.

And even when things do look promising, you never trust that it’s real or going to last…so you run faster than the gingerbread man (hoping you’ll be able to convince yourself those really were coffee-stealing ninjas that needed to be slayed.) You keep yourself on the other side of a looking glass, waiting for imaginary friends that never see you. Or have their own friends…people that unlike you have both feet stably rooted in reality.

Here is where books come in to save the day.  Books (as vehicles of the fantastical) allow you to create a world from scratch. It lets you be in charge (not of the words written but the images, sounds and interpretations your mind can conjure)…without any nasty reality checks. It gives you power where reality can often render you powerless.

The outside world seems so dull 

          That Amélie prefers to dream her life until she's old enough to leave

Good books can satisfy your creative impulses and provide you with the equality of eccentric that your heart craves. It can soften the loneliness one can feel when you’re the only one wearing rainbow-hued sunglasses sprinkled with magic dust.

So like young Amélie Poulain in Le Fabuleux Destin d’Amélie Poulain, we dig through the mundane and cruel to find a land full of possibilities. A world of wonders. Where things are marvelous and people are kind: where ambiguity makes perfect sense and we need not be godmothers of the outcast or Madonnas of the unloved.

As we let our minds build alternative worlds we find fantastical versions of ourselves that can’t be trapped or broken. Lies lose their sting and life gains a music box heartbeat.

Perhaps we find a tasty jar of hope.

Imagination is the introverts drug. It keeps us alive when our bodies and minds feel the pull of institutions that threaten to turn us into societal corpses. It doesn’t have to be a curse. It’s our freedom.

 

Sunday Book Quotes with Bridget Jones.

“It struck me as pretty ridiculous to be called Mr. Darcy and to stand on your own looking snooty at a party. It’s like being called Heathcliff and insisting on spending the entire evening in the garden, shouting “Cathy” and banging your head against a tree.”
― Helen Fielding, Bridget Jones’s Diary

And a little snippet from the movie, or how not to win over a lady:

Do you have any Bridget lines that make your day that much better? Let me know in the comments! 🙂

 

Featured image via Amazon.com

The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe.

A little bookish inspiration for the day from a children’s classic. Because sometimes life seems very much like falling out of a wardrobe into a magical land.

“And don’t mention it to anyone else unless you find that they’ve had adventures of the same sort themselves. What’s that? How will you know? Oh, you’ll know all right. Odd things they say — even their looks — will let the secret out.”
― C.S. Lewis, The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe

The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe art.

Feature images via Pinterest.

The Magic of Reading & Writing.

Artwork by Goro Fujita

Just a little reminder (in case the world is proving too chaotic right now for you) how powerful words can be. I’ve always believed that books make the greatest gifts because they are so much more than just pages with words. They are the gift of imagination, creativity and adventure. Writing tip for today: write from the heart. No filter. The heart and the imagination are closely linked. When a person uses their mind to imagine gorging on turkish delight, winning a golden ticket or climbing a tree to a new land, they are freeing themselves of physical restraints and impediments. They are traveling. They are learning about friendship or what it means to be a better person. Or sometimes they are given slices of a life that makes them appreciate the one they have in reality. No matter what comes out, you’re letting someone slip into pools of magic.Alternate realities.And you are giving them possibility. Possibility is the older, more reserved sister of hope after all. And hope is never a bad thing…

Existential Moments with Alice.

The following excerpt is from the chapter entitled Pig and Pepper in Alice’s Adventure’s in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll (1865). Don’t be fooled by its Children’s Literature genre. The Alice books are sources of psychoanalytic marvel and are constantly being debated over by academics. I thought we’d take a little existential trip this morning into Wonderland…

Alice was just beginning to think to herself, `Now, what am I to do with this creature when I get it home?’ when it grunted again, so violently, that she looked down into its face in some alarm. This time there could be NO mistake about it: it was neither more nor less than a pig, and she felt that it would be quite absurd for her to carry it further.

So she set the little creature down, and felt quite relieved to see it trot away quietly into the wood. `If it had grown up,’ she said to herself, `it would have made a dreadfully ugly child: but it makes rather a handsome pig, I think.’ And she began thinking over other children she knew, who might do very well as pigs, and was just saying to herself, `if one only knew the right way to change them–‘ when she was a little startled by seeing the Cheshire Cat sitting on a bough of a tree a few yards off.

The Cat only grinned when it saw Alice. It looked good- natured, she thought: still it had VERY long claws and a great many teeth, so she felt that it ought to be treated with respect.

`Cheshire Puss,’ she began, rather timidly, as she did not at all know whether it would like the name: however, it only grinned a little wider. `Come, it’s pleased so far,’ thought Alice, and she went on. `Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?’

`That depends a good deal on where you want to get to,’ said the Cat.

`I don’t much care where–‘ said Alice.

`Then it doesn’t matter which way you go,’ said the Cat.

`–so long as I get SOMEWHERE,’ Alice added as an explanation.

`Oh, you’re sure to do that,’ said the Cat, `if you only walk long enough.’

Alice felt that this could not be denied, so she tried another question. `What sort of people live about here?’

`In THAT direction,’ the Cat said, waving its right paw round, `lives a Hatter: and in THAT direction,’ waving the other paw, `lives a March Hare. Visit either you like: they’re both mad.’

`But I don’t want to go among mad people,’ Alice remarked.

`Oh, you can’t help that,’ said the Cat: `we’re all mad here. I’m mad. You’re mad.’

`How do you know I’m mad?’ said Alice.

`You must be,’ said the Cat, `or you wouldn’t have come here.’

 

Text from Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll as found on Alice-in-wonderland.net

Featured art by Nicole West Fantasy Art and Dan Beltran.

Me Every Day of My Life.

When you have to deal with the ignorant.

Seven Things All Bookworms Are Guilty Of

You know that moment when you make a realization that completely sets you apart from the majority of people living in the sane portion of the world? That moment when you step back and say to yourself “I’m super glad it’s only my stuffed unicorn that’s here to witness my absurdity”. Bookworms get these moments ALL the time. We’re mentally incapable of restructuring ourselves to act in any other way. Because the allure of a book, the seductiveness involved in reading one…these things keep us perpetually floating on our oddball cloud. I’ve put together seven undeniable things we bookworms are guilty of. Let’s not pretend you don’t know what I’m talking about. *insert raised eyebrow

1. That social feeling other people get when they walk into a crowded club full of hot men and women, is the same feeling of potential you get when you walk into a bookstore. All those books…all those words…I’ll buy myself my own drink thank you and sit in a corner with my new friend, I mean book.
2. You smell your books. It’s totally ok! Smelling is an ancient tradition in the animal kingdom and it’s how you categorize friend from foe, who you’ll play with and who you’ll eat. So smelling a book is a totally legit way to welcome your book into your safe space.
3. Buying books when you have no money in your bank account, in no way indicates problematic behavior. It means you have a  healthy optimism that money will soon magically appear to keep the credit card hounds at bay. That’s faith right there! Right?
4. When you see those little book worms on the pages of your old books, you say “hello there old friend!” instead of running for the hills like your non book-loving mates.
5. When someone eventually twists your arm to lend them one of your prized possessions (that can be said for all your books by the way), you imagine all sorts of creative serial killer ways to end them if they spill anything on it or ,god forbid, lose it.
6. You have more books than friends. And I’m talking about real life friends, not your imaginary ones. Because if we had to include Elizabeth Bennet and Michael Valentine Smith (among others), things could start getting out of hand.
7. Your understanding of time borders on science fictional remarkable. Ten hours in a bookstore can seem like a mere five minutes. One minute of someone interrupting your reading time can stretch for lives. I’m talking Koopa Troopa cheat bouncing lives. And I’m pretty sure studies are being done on the bookworm’s ability to extend their natural lives through reading too. We are indeed a special breed.

Seven ways… doesn’t even seem enough to list our endless quirks but that’s still seven points you can bring up in conversation with humans to prove how advantageous you are to planet earth. Although…human conversation, what’s that?