Tag Archives: eldritch

December 12, 2013 · 5:59 pm

Weekly Eldritch: O Superman

I’m a Laurie Anderson fan from a way back when, and I was just listening to some old CDs when, as usual, O Superman gave me chills down the spine.

Laurie Anderson was a New York performance artist not well known outside art circles when this song became an unexpected #2 hit on the UK charts in 1981. Her live concerts were truly performance art pieces, using multi-media and plenty of (at the time) cutting edge electronic gadgetry. (I seem to recall she had a keyboard necktie that she could actually play…)

The song makes me think of dystopian science fiction, with the robot voice and cold, dispassionate lyrics. I just wanted to give you the audio file, but couldn’t figure out how to do that, so here it is via Youtube video. Enjoy!

P.S. A few months back I was surprised to hear this song coming over the PA system in my local grocery store. How perfect is that?

Laurie Anderson’s Official Website

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December 5, 2013 · 9:26 pm

Weekly Eldritch: Solemn Child on Wall

DSC03823Thursday means time for the Weekly Eldritch, your weekly uneasily creepy thing. This comes from my photo archives… from a secret location in Toronto…

Imagine you are walking down a street somewhere, a street of abandoned industrial buildings, warehouses with broken windows, concrete rubble and scrappy weeds. There’s nobody around, but you feel like someone’s watching you…

DSC03833I love graffiti! Especially detailed, dead solemn children graffiti. With big eyes and weirdly jointed arms. In a party frock.

Writing Prompt: Tell me about this curious person. Name? Age? History?

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October 17, 2013 · 8:11 pm

Weekly Eldritch: Cave Creatures

salamanderagogo

texas blind salamander

This is my weekly offering of something eldritch, or creepy… Recently we watched an old episode of Planet Earth about caves, and I spent the entire time cringing. Naturally the massive pile of bat guano swarming with cockroaches was a highlight, but all of the inhabitants of caves are a little on the creepy side. Above is the texas blind salamander, click here to see the video clip on the BBC site.

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glow worms trapping their prey with strands of spit

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sightless cave fish

And of course we can’t forget…

gollum

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October 10, 2013 · 7:20 pm

Weekly Eldritch: Trees with Eyes

Was on a hike last week in the lovely, serene woods when I spotted this:

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Eyes watching me! Suspicious character. At least he wasn’t throwing apples. Continue reading →

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October 3, 2013 · 2:49 pm

Weekly Eldritch: Faces 2

Further to a previous post, I keep seeing faces everywhere…

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And when you find a face unexpectedly, it’s like suddenly noticing someone hiding. This one in particular was so detailed it just made me jump when I spotted it (Hope, BC):

Continue reading →

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September 26, 2013 · 7:04 pm

Weekly Eldritch: This Girl

Girl with a Kitten 1947 by Lucian Freud 1922-2011

For those of you who are new here, eldritch means eerie or creepy, and every Thursday I post something oddly weird as my “Weekly Eldritch”. Today it’s… this girl.

Continue reading →

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September 12, 2013 · 8:00 pm

Weekly Eldritch: Teeth

I’m not just talking about any old teeth, but teeth bared.

As a sign of anger or threat, it’s one of the most obvious cues that animals can give us about their current disposition. Compare…

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As encountered on a summer road trip to the prairies (Elk Island Park in Alberta), these bison wandered across the road all around our car. As huge as they are, I wasn’t alarmed until I saw the bared teeth. Yikes!

(It turns out that a minivan was totalled by these behemoths the week before, so I’m glad I didn’t get them too angry. NB, tip from park staff: Never honk at bison!)

The bared teeth effect is even more dramatic in cutesy animals:

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Aren’t they sweet…

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Ye gods! Someone call an exorcist!

Related:

Courtesy of Scientific American, some thoughts on bared teeth vs. smiles.

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June 6, 2013 · 6:33 pm

Weekly Eldritch: Foreheads!

Here we are again with your weekly dose of eldritch – something rather vaguely creepy. I say vaguely creepy because I’m not so interested in gross-out, over-the-top stuff, which can easily be found all over the internet. (Oorg.) I’m more interested in those little things that are just unsettling, that geek you out and you don’t even know why.

Today… it’s foreheads.

Elizabeth_I_in_coronation_robes

Continue reading →

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May 23, 2013 · 2:24 pm

Weekly Eldritch: Dolls are Talking to Me!

Bwa ha ha!

For newcomers to this site, every Thursday I post a Weekly Eldritch, or something I find creepy.

(eldritch = unearthly, alien, supernatural, weird, spooky, eerie)

Last week I mentioned an art installation I saw many years ago and Jan came to the rescue and identified the artist so I could look him up. The artist in question is Tony Oursler and this is what I saw that made my skin crawl…

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Basically you walk into a darkened, quiet gallery room and there’s this limp doll lying on a chair with a face projected on it… and the face is talking, or rather whispering to you. Something about having a secret, I don’t remember exactly, but it was spooky!

Here is Tony Oursler’s home site, with tons of photos of his work, much of which is decidedly eldritch.

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May 10, 2013 · 7:34 am

Weekly Eldritch: Dolls and Doll Parts!

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Here’s a spooky doll I had as a child, though when I was a kid I didn’t think she was spooky. What makes her so creepish? The bulbous forehead? The tiny body? The Stepford Wives dress? The big eyes? The eye colour??

There’s something about old toys, and especially dolls, that can be particularly eerie. The most serious case of chills I ever got in an art gallery was over a rag doll lying on a chair with a real person’s moving face projected onto its blank head… and you could hear it whispering. Made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up, that’s for sure. I will try to find out who the artist was on that one – I know I wrote it down in a notebook somewhere…

Finally, here’s a link to some seriously creepy sculptures made entirely of doll parts. Yoiks.

p.s. Here’s what happens when you pull the string on my doll…

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