GHOSTS REWIND DOWN EMPTY HALLWAYS

Photo :Michelle Normoyle

THE RAVEN

Deep into that darkness peering, 

long I stood there wondering, fearing, doubting, 

dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared to dream before;
But the silence was unbroken, 

and the darkness gave no token,
And the only word there spoken was 

the whispered word, `Lenore!'
This I whispered, and an echo murmured back the word, `Lenore!'
Merely this and nothing more.  

Edgar Allan Poe

The Human Remains

somewhere inside of us

A shell that contains

somewhere that part of us

The bodily crust

Submerging lust

Love- are you kidding?- you must

the Human remains inside of us

dense milt 1979.

MISS GREY

The world of right is black or white

So says the blonde known as Miss Grey

Remembering a rendezvous she had that day a deja vu-

What a way to live

dense milt 1982

THE CRANK

She wants she wants but only haunts

Innocuous taunting and innuendo

Dense Milt 1989

Some people never leave. Their presence so strong that we need only to pause, 

and they are beside us, inside us, all around us, because now they reside deep within us.  And so it is with Lenore. I can hear you laughing, your unmistakeable cackle, the chortle and glint in your wink. Still breathing, still fighting for what is right In a world of wrongs,You were the trailblazer, the visionary outsider, enfant troublemaker, supreme shitdisturber, libel loving Lenore, uncensored when provoked, your mission to seek out new forms of life, art, love, new words, new visions, this spirit mother, mushroom shaman witch doctor, Conjuror of video visions, Queen of Punk Rock Royalty, never fading to black, Only to Grey…

Miss you, Miss Grey

Lenore Herb took on the identity of Doreen Grey for a multitude of reasons. Like many aspects of her life, there were always many layers to even the most private of jokes.  First, adopting a new identity was a punk rock thing to do.  Second,  the moniker Doreen Grey exists on a level as a self-deprecating private joke for her seeming agelessness.

Last and most important,  the name “Doreen Grey” was chosen as a feminist appropriation of,  and a play on words of,  Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray. It works as a reminder that her creations, her video images, were timeless documentations of a time of youth and rebellious, hedonistic energy.  As such, the images remain trapped in time, not growing old as we all age around them.  

In the Wilde novel,The Picture of Dorian Gray, we find recurring themes of aestheticism, hedonism, influence, duality and duplicity of nature.   

Lord Henry remarks, “I should fancy that crime was to them what art is to us, simply a method of procuring extraordinary sensations".

Interesting footnote, in her final days, Lenore and I watched the original Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, which was another gothic story with similar themes. The irony was not lost upon either one of us.

This post is cobbled together from a number of posts, over the years. Today is the thirteenth anniversary of Lenore Herb’s fade to black.

It is also the day that I go in for a PET scan to hopefully confirm that my cancer is gone, that they got it. Friends always say,”You got this.” Meaning you will beat this, you will survive this. The words that come to my mind when I hear those three words is the rejoinder ,” Now what you going to do with it?”

At a certain point, it becomes history, part of your personal history. As a test of will, it is a doozy. I take heart that so many friends have survived this test, just as I hope I will. But on days like today, and last Monday’s celebration of life for Brent Kane, I am reminded that sometimes the outlook is not so rosy. Sometimes it is bleak, cruel, and final. We have to take the good with the bad, or is it the bad with the good?

Either way, there are the two faces of Janus, one that looks forward to the future and one that rewinds to the past. “Ghosts rewind down empty hallways “, so I wrote in the Rhythm Mission song HIP ALONE. As they used to say in the video stores- Be Kind and Rewind.

Perhaps we should give this direction a slight modification.

Be Kind When You Rewind.