by John Shirley
I have an old friend who's very neurotic, very sick. This guy is intelligent, talented, well-read--and will, when he slips and falls in the oil slick of his own psychic misery, begin ranting about "killin' ni**ers" and "shootin' bitches with a high powered rifle from a tall tower" and worse. It sounds, I know, like some odd form of Tourette's Syndrome, but that's not it. It's misdirected rage--something terrible happened to him when he was a boy. When I tell him that he knows perfectly well that blacks and women are not low-down killable vermin, he admits I'm right, he knows he's full of shit. But it relieves him so to pick someone to rant about, to envisage killing, butchering in colorful ways and in large numbers. I think I've talked him into taking up meditation and therapy.
But what's our therapy--for our own flailing, misdirected anger? When I was really young I wrote a book called Transmaniacon--main premise was: a guy wore the transmaniacon device, which enabled him to release hidden well-springs of "suppressed anger" in those he met. It was assumed those hidden well-springs of fury could be found in anyone, somewhere hidden. This gave him the power to psychically manipulate crowds of people in certain ways--which is a hint about twentieth century history.
My assumption about hidden well-springs of suppressed anger might've come partly from Primal Scream therapy being trendy at the time--but I think more of it came out of the fact that I assumed everyone was like me: a locked-down steaming bubbling, shaking boiler of suppressed rage. I'm listening to the new Monster Magnet album as I write this, and nothing could be more appropriate…and it's one kind of catharsis.
The Crow is another kind. The Crow is an archetype--it's a perfect synthesis of revenge-catharsis and the poetry of gothic-romance. Poppy Brite's version is no exception, though she brings us a wonderful new story and new stained-glass-tinted coloration
Picture an ancient medallion unearthed in some black magician's tomb. On one side is embossed the image of a crow, talons upraised to strike; on the other the symbol of the planet Venus--dripping blood.
The revenge side of that cryptic coin is catharsis, is release for its fans' own suppressed rage--the rage, not of EveryMan, but of EveryGeek, EveryNerd, EveryMisfit: me! You, maybe. That is, those of us whose power, as Ms Brite says in The Lazarus Heart, arises from our being different. I was so moved when I read that. It's such a beautiful sentiment, and for some of us, at least, it's true. I think, indeed, of drag queens and transsexuals I've known, some gorgeous shemales who almost epitomized (or at least symbolized) the Gnostic Christ's adjuration, in the Gnostic Gospel of Thomas, that the male consume the female, the female consume the male, that the two combine in His apostles. Some of those kids are inherently tragic; are always running one step ahead of depression, of self hatred, caught up in the methedrine culture and prostitution; others, though, have created something alchemically in their gender-fusing: thesis, antithesis: synthesis. Male, female, shemale. I see this in the ones who're happy to keep their male reproductive equipment along with their new breasts, their hormone-softened curves--who don't succumb to hard drugs, who find some kind of alternate lifestyle celebrating their differences with humor and defiance and joy (and condoms!) And with that self acceptance, that celebration, comes power. Somehow, mysteriously--some kind of power. A sorceress' power, almost shamanistic; or maybe a "transpersonal" power, arisen from a kind of homegrown gestalt therapy. And that power is intimately connected with freedom…A freedom secretly envied by the clods who persecute people who are sexually, esthetically different…Like those mindless thugs in Wyoming who beat a lovable, gentlehearted young man to death, recently: a victim of misdirected rage.
Ah, where is The Crow when you need him?
Unfortunately he cannot manifest in the real world--but we do have our own rituals of power, valuable and potent: mass marches, demonstration, votes, perhaps even riots if it comes to that.
James O'Barr's creation, The Crow, is descended of the films High Plains Drifterand Darkman to some extent; but also from the poetry of Rimbaud, Baudelaire, Verlaine; and the lyrics of bands like Joy Division and Iggy and the Stooges and Velvet Underground; from Batman and from underground comics and from album covers and from Japanese samurai films…
But ultimately The Crow is an expression of both the frustration and the sheer longing of people who are beautifully different, the archetypal "goth": any artistically inclined, sensitive misfit who longs for completion in the Other. Just because you're sensitive--doesn't mean you don't get REALLY FUCKING MAD sometimes. And you want to strike out. But you want to do it with shadowy eloquence, with dark elegance, and you want your personal revenge to emerge from the heart of Justice Itself, and, strangely, from the secret sanctuary of Love. It must be ineluctably right. You don't want to shoot people from a high tower. You want to confront the deserving, the Monster Itself, the real villain. In real life, he can almost never be found--not as The Crow finds him.
The Crow takes revenge for us not only against anyone who takes away the love that we know we deserve, that anyone deserves no matter how different--but also against the mindless rules, the rusty-iron laws, against redneck mentality translated into lawyerese. And it pits a kind of dark chivalry--violent yet somehow refined--against brutality itself…
In The Lazarus Heart, the fluorescently talented Ms Brite provides a serial killer who personifies all sick prejudice against gays and the transgendered. She finds, for us, in these fictional realms, a cleverly wrought, believable villain in whom we can symbolically act out the rituals of justice. A gay Crow is a brave innovation, a fine idea, and the limpid, sweetly eccentric twins are another resonant personification: they personify all young "artists of melancholy", all painfully intelligent aliens.
I saw a show in Los Angeles of "voodoo altars", very artfully done constructs, sort of like oversized Cornell boxes overflowing with objects arranged in mandalaesque dark-magic imagery--but made of things found in the trash, bits of dolls and broken glass and dog collars, combined with silk flowers and fine fabrics and lace and pretty ribbons, resulting in one intricate deftly crafted whole--and that's what The Lazarus Heartreminds me of: the grit, the brutal broken-ends of on the street, worked seamlessly in with fineness, with lace, with the feminine. And it's set against the two faces of New Orleans itself: the exquisitely constructed, the exquisitely decayed.
There's more. It may be that ultimately The Crow is vengeance, is anger expressed against Death Itself. The comic, the film, and now the books appeal in large part to people who are of an age where disillusionment, frustration, disappointment, and the realization of mortality all come together--everyone, no matter how much they profess to embrace the imagery of death, also fears Death, fears its human faces: decay and entropy and despair and inexorable illness. Fear makes us angry; anger must be expressed. At age forty-five I still have an angry adolescent in me.
It should be noted that the Crow defies Death. Using the power of the insistent, eternally-devoted heart, the power of Love, The Crow rebuilds his body a painful layer at a time, in Lazarus Heart, defiantly asserting life again and again, pounding repeatedly at each of Death's doors, one after the other. It hurts to come back to life--it hurts to fight for love: we see that in the movie The Crow and in the books, both novels and comics. The resurrection always hurts. There's a price. Suffer the price of the defiance of death--and regain life.
The other side of that time-hoary medallion, Venus, lifts The Crow, especially The Lazarus Heart, above the pure revenge tale, and into the realm of Love, where the real power is, and where, at last, once the ritual is done, all anger is laid to rest; where rage allowed to die a gentle death...
This limited edition of Poppy Z. Brite's original Crow novel, THE LAZARUS HEART with Afterword by John Shirley can be ordered from Gauntlet Press.
