Dark & Twisty

Here we go again.  Can I say that about Lovecraft?  Yeah, I can.  The Music of Erich Zann again brings us the first person narrator haunted by some horror beyond measure.  Something that lives the color out of space and the twisted weird angles of Lovecraft’s world drives another man to near madness.

It’s easy to pick on H.P.  There is a lot of time between now and then and when he wrote his works, he was really creating the new thing, but I have to wonder did people start to think that this is the same song and dance (no pun intended).  I think that today Lovecraft would have a serious issue getting published because of his almost lack of skill to come up with a story that doesn’t sound the same.

The Music of Erich Zann does take an original turn on the same of Lovecraft softshoe.  This story doesn’t involve seeing creatures so hideous it drives the narrator to madness.   This deals with sound.  Lovecraft did have a great talent of using visual stimuli to make his stories creepy.  In this particular tale, the way the houses are built on the street shows his talent for this.  Unfortunately, even his great talent for the foreboding and terrifying landscape is trite today.  This story uses music and sound to give the reader the creeps. 

The music of Zann is not really described very well, but the madness of his song comes through.  In real life, there is not much more unnerving (or annoying) than music that is arrhythmic or out of sorts. Dissonance is always bothersome.  The music in this story doesn’t seem to fall into this category.  Lovecraft, again never gives a good description of the music, but get that it is music.

Zann’s crazy melodies are just him running a bow randomly on the frets of his viola. He wasn’t beating on the back of the instrument like he was in a Philip Glass symphony.  The music followed its own scale.  It had its own rules that didn’t match the rules of music of our own world. That is creepy.

When it comes to favorite Lovecraft stories, this isn't one.  I can see his trying something different.  It worked.  He chose to use sound and music to haunt us with the uneasiness of his world.  Lovecraft definitely had his own world and it was filled with crooked little houses and crooked little men.  Fish people lived by the coast waiting for Elder Gods to ascend from the depth, and long dead Philistine gods still had worshipers, but with Erich Zann, he added a sound track.

Lastly, the story reminds me of an Elton John song.  It’s called “I’ve Seen That Movie Too.”  In this song, there is a guitar solo.  Nothing unusual about guitar solos in rock music; even though Elton is a piano player.  The unusual thing about this solo is that the guitar was recorded forward but is played backwards on the song. It sounds like music but follows its own rules like the music Zann played.

(For those who know me well, yes, I did work an Elton John song into this blog.)

By the way “I’ve Seen That Movie Too” is available on Goodbye Yellow Brick Road.