haunting » Random Says...

W is for What?

Apr 262012

Which word would warrant writing, er, about?

Who cares? What does it matter? When will I choose? Where am I? Why is W so key in questions?

Since I’ve already written about questions, I guess I ought to go with something else this time.

When I was a kid, I accidentally made a wind harp out of a fishing pole. I forgot about it until I heard Garrison Keillor tell a story on Prairie Home Companion where a young harpist put an electric harp on an outdoor stage and let the wind play it.

That prompted me to do some research and I found that wind harps (or aeolian harps) have been around for a long time. They come in all shapes and sizes and for whatever reason, the sound they make fascinates me.

So, W is for Wind Harps. I’ll write more about them another day. For now I’ll leave you with a short recording of a wind harp, and a video shot at A Sound Garden* in Seattle.

* A Sound Garden does not use wind harps for the sounds, but rather pipes. There’s a similar quality to the sound, though. And yes, A Sound Garden was the inspiration for the name of the band, Soundgarden.

Views of my favorite grave marker (so far)

Cemeteries No Responses »

Oct 292011

Don’t tell me you didn’t see a cemetery post coming from a mile away!

Bayview Cemetery in Bellingham is one of my favorite places. It’s a pleasure to stroll through and large enough to offer plenty of opportunities for exploration.

It’s also home to a grave marker I revisited many times over the years I lived there.

Bayview statue, black & white

I have many photos of this beauty, including a number taken with an infrared filter*. Such photos come out of the camera looking something like this:

Bayview Cemetery, infrared sample

In other words, the image comes out in monochrome. The red tint is easily changed, however.

Bayview statue, infrared

In this picture, you can see another cool grave-marker in the background.

Bayview statue, sepia IR

Finally, here’s an infrared photo layered with a color photo taken from the same spot.

Bayview statue, IR & color

Look for more images from Bayview in the coming weeks.

* The Nikon D50 has the ability to detect infrared wavelengths. I use a Hoya Infrared (R72) filter on my standard lens. Infrared images have the quality of grass and foliage coming out very bright, while sky and water come out dark.

The IR filter blocks out most visible light, so it’s impossible to see through the viewfinder of an SLR camera. That means any framing should be done without the filter first. Because so much light is filtered out, the shutter speeds are very low, so a tripod is practically required.

A look around the web will show you some amazing infrared images — far more beautiful than my pedestrian examples.

Haunting music, zombie crypts and cats

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Oct 282011

Have you ever listened to a song that made you shiver? Or that made you feel something you couldn’t quite put your finger on, but that was both compelling and uncomfortable at the same time?

Here are some songs that I find haunting. Now, for me, the hauntingness comes from the music itself. If the lyrics contribute, that’s great, but music has rarely (if ever) been about the lyrics.

I doubt I’ll post music often because I know how subjective music can be. I have no reason to believe you’ll like any of these songs. Then again, I’ve discovered some awesome music by stumbling upon someone else’s selection, so…

These videos are all on YouTube. Most of them are just recordings of the track with some image for the “video” part. In other words, they’re for listening not watching.

I’ll list these in chronological order, not of the recording date, but of when it was current in my playlists. This first one is Under Ice by Kate Bush. In this case, the lyrics are part of the hauntingness, so I’m already violating my earlier point. Sheesh!

Next up, Sandman by This Ascension. This band was one of my favorites for a long time. There’s something deliciously creepy about their music.

This one may be a little obvious given the title is Ghost (by Lunasect), but the title of a song doesn’t necessarily say what the music itself evokes. I don’t know if this song makes me think “ghost” but I do find it haunting.

This next one, Buried Alive by Unwoman, features the cello, one of the most beautiful and haunting instruments ever created.

If you like dark, moody music, Katatonia might be up your alley. This is Soil’s Song.

Another group that serves up some consistently dark music is Trance to the Sun. I really wanted to post their song, Reach for the Throat, but I couldn’t find an online source, so here instead is Homewrecker.

Finally, Red Water by Type O Negative.

Do you have any songs that haunt you?

Other Tidbits — zombie crypts and cats

Awhile back, I posted about a zombie crypt in the Mt. View Cemetery. Well, I’ve been informed that the crypt has since been removed! That means two things:

I may have taken the very last photo ever of that monstrous structure.
The city clearly removed the crypt in response to my previous post. You’re welcome, Ashland.

I have reason to believe our cats are possessed. I’m not sure why I think that.

Possessed cats

Photo manipulation — Haunted houses

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Oct 262011

A few posts ago, I mused on the word haunt. In keeping with that theme, here are some photo manipulations* of houses in Bellingham that were meant to convey a haunting mood. Of course, whether they succeed or not is up to you to decide!

Forest Street Castle This first image is of a house very near where I used to live. Though I didn’t know it when I lived there, the house is the Alfred L. Black house and was built in 1903. The house is huge and looks like one of those old homes that have lots of cool nooks and crannies.

Another, even larger house not far away is called Wardner’s Castle. When I first moved to Bellingham, the place was a Bed & Breakfast, but later it was put up for sale.

Walden Castle from below

Bellingham Daily Photo has some pictures along with links to more information on this interesting house. The house is supposedly haunted. If you follow the link, you can read about the third floor mural that, from the pictures, looks rather spooky, but has since been painted over.

I found a sort of tribute to the mural artist posted by a fellow artist who loved her. And here’s another site about the mural and the artist. (Note: My firewall warned me that the site had been reported as malicious, but I opened it and — so far at least — my computer hasn’t exploded.)

Here is another picture taken from a slightly different spot and, of course, edited differently.
Walden Castle with sky

Finally, we have the Gamwell House. I used to walk by this house often and it is one of my favorites. I was lucky enough to tour the inside and see some of the ornate woodwork. It’s just a really cool-looking house.
Gamwell House b&w

Here’s another version. (Have I mentioned I can be indecisive? That’s a trick question — I know I have!) In this picture, I added the sky and lightning backdrop.

Gamwell House with lightning backdrop

If you have any photos you find haunting, I’d like to see them!

* I talked about photo manipulation in an early post. All of these photos were taken by me, except for the lightning in the last Gamwell photo, which came from mjw on stock.xchng. In case you’re interested, I use a Nikon D50 digital SLR camera, and Photoshop CS4.

Again! Improv and letting go

Improv No Responses »

Oct 252011

One of the improv games I’ve played is called Again! Three improvisers line up facing the rest of the class. One begins a story by saying a single word. The next person adds the next word and so on, rotating one word at a time.

The rules are simple. Go as fast as you can. If at any time, any of the players is not having fun with the story, they stop it by jubilantly throwing up their hands and shouting “Again!” The other two join the first in an “Again!” Then one of them begins a new story.

As with most improv games, the deceptively simple can illustrate many key improv principles. For example, Again! requires:

Listening to your partners
Accepting your partners’ offers
Being spontaneous

When I first played Again! I was reluctant to stop a story. My mind played a monologue that went something like:

We’re bogged down. Should I stop it? But what if the others aren’t ready to throw in the towel? And isn’t stopping a story without giving it a chance a sort of copout? Plus, if I throw up my hands, I’ll be drawing attention to myself. That’s bad. On the other hand…

But, once I played Again! enough times, I realized that all that internal chatter was pretty much the point of the game. The little monologue above illustrates some of the hobgoblins of improv:

Self-consciousness — What if I mess up? What if people notice (and judge) me?
Driving – I have an idea of where this story should go, even if my partners try to derail it with their own ideas.
Attachment — We’ve already invested in this story, so we should try to make it work somehow.
Taking things too seriously — What if this story ends up being the best story ever! Isn’t quitting wrong?

The beauty of the game lies in seeing the flip side of those:

Be generous with your partners (Make your partner look good.) — If I’m feeling bogged down, they probably are too. Maybe they’re afraid to throw up their hands too, so I’ll step up and put this story out of our misery.
Accept your partners’ offers (Say “Yes!”) — Okay, I’ll bite. Let’s go with that and see what happens.
Let go — This story hasn’t really panned out the way I had hoped. Let’s just start a new one.
Play and have fun — This is only one of a bazillion stories. Why continue if it isn’t fun anymore?

Getting to the point where I actually loved shouting “Again!” was so freeing that the game became one of my favorites — both to play and to watch. I found myself cheering when one of the players on stage stopped the story.

One reason I’m thinking of this game now is because Nanowrimo is rapidly approaching and I feel that an Again! attitude may make the whole endeavor more enjoyable — and more doable. I’ve got 50,000 words to work with, or 50,000 words to play with.

I could look at it like: “I have 50,000 words to write a good story,” or I could look at it like “I have 50,000 words to discover a story.” It may not happen until I’m at word 35,072, but that story may not have come to me without the 35,071 words that came before it.

One thing I know, if I insisted on slogging through a story I hate, the chance of getting to 50,000 words in 30 days is nearly zero.

So, that’s the game I’m playing during Nanowrimo. What games are you going to play?

Today’s Haunting Tidbit

Ghost Story book cover Occasionally I’ll read a book that I find haunting. One of my favorite such books is Ghost Story by Peter Straub. I think one aspect of the story that I like is how it takes place over a span of 70 or 80 years, with the historical pieces being interwoven with the story’s present. I also found the characters interesting.

Do you have any books you’ve found haunting?

Haunted musings of a haunted head

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Oct 202011

I’ve been musing on the word haunt lately and, given that we are approaching Halloween, it seems like a good time to write about it.

A few weeks ago, I told a friend that the Bear Creek Greenway haunts me. My friend naturally asked, “What do you mean?” to which I tried to answer in words that seemed inadequate, but went something like:

Whenever I ride on the trail, I feel like I’m in an alien place; alien, but familiar. Something about the smells or the landscape evokes feelings or memories that are oddly eerie — oddly because I can’t put my finger on why the feelings and memories would affect me that way.

Haunted trail

Well, I decided I had to look up the word I had chosen. According to my copy of The American Heritage Dictionary, haunt is defined as:

To inhabit, visit, or appear to in the form of a ghost or other supernatural being.
To visit often; frequent.
To come to mind continually; obsess.
To be continually present in; pervade.

My first reading of the entry left me feeling that the definition was inadequate. There’s a flavor to the word as it is often used that is missed here. Can’t something be haunting without being supernatural?

I found some of the nuance I was looking for online (at dictionary.reference.com), which had these, more satisfying entries:

to disturb or distress; cause to have anxiety; trouble; worry.
(for haunting) poignantly sentimental; enchantingly or eerily evocative [my emphasis]

Now we’re getting somewhere. The last entry even repeats forms of my earlier description’s “evoke” and “eerie.” Why, it’s almost as if someone were inside my head stealing my thoughts!

As an aside, I should confess that, left to my own devices, I’d very likely list the definitions of eerie, evoke, poignant, ghost and supernatural here as well, but part of me recognizes that might be overkill, so let me instead leave you with these questions:

If I haunt a place, does it cause anxiety or distress to the place?
Can a place be haunted for one person, but not for another?
If a tree falls in the forest, and no one is there to hear, are the birds and other critters haunted by the silence?

I’ve decided I’m going to include a little something haunting with every post for the coming week or two. Today’s offering is this video of the song “Rawhead and Bloody Bones” by Siouxsie & the Banshees:

What haunts you?