Whilst doing a search for an obscure Tim Roth performance on a British show called 'The South Bank Show,' I came across a five-part doco about Clive Barker from the same show. Funny, that, considering Barker and Roth could have been separated at birth. But that got me to thinking about how much Clive Barker has infiltrated my life.
In the 80s, of course, along with a host of others from my generation, I went to see the horror movie
Hellraiser, and was utterly transformed into this soul who could no longer see the world in exactly the same way. Clive Barker had shown me that, for lack of a better phrase I'm going to steal from Shriekback's 'Exquisite,' "beauty can be terrifying, and there is nothing straightforward about pleasure." I had always been a diehard Stephen King acolyte, but that was no longer enough for me. It was heartening to hear Stephen King give his blessing to Barker, as it seemed to give me permission to wholly love this man.
But it was years before I actually read any of Barker's work. The reason for this was, his books were not available in our local libraries (that has since changed), and I could not afford to buy any of them. That changed when I began working and I soon began buying as many Barker books as I could find in the bookshop. The first book I read by Clive Barker,
The Damnation Game, I read in 1990, at almost exactly the same time I began voraciously listening to Shriekback. The following books were all read to an almost exclusive Shriekback soundtrack:
- The Damnation Game
- The Hellbound Heart
- Weaveworld
- Cabal
- Imajica
A decade later, that connection was made quite apparent when the group that helped bring to life the Shriekback Digital Conspiracy decided we needed a collective name by which Shriekback fans who came across the site could call us. We wanted a more obscure name for the word 'group,' and we wanted something that would align us with reptiles. It fell to me to create the title and, drawing from Clive Barker and our collective sense of conspiracies and how they connected to Shriekback, I suggested the name of Cabal Iguana. The others dug it and Derk, who was my partner in crime in all this, us being the two founding members, well...he adored it. So it stuck.
Imagine my sense of hilarity being twisted almost to breaking point when
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booraven22 and
morriganwind dubbed our writers' group The Writers' Cabal, of which we three comprised the Vampire Division. I still have our tee-shirt, which I often wear with pride. The fact that my place in the Cabal was assured simply because of my stories, which found themselves insanely driven by Shriekback's music, made me cackle with a sense of absurdity. And one of Barry's friends, who is a writer in his own right, is a member of our Writers' Cabal on Facebook. My, how things do cycle 'round in an endless sort of madness. At least in my little world.
Then, there's the Illuminati's music, which I'm trying to finally bring to the world almost 24 years after it was all recorded. One song, "Gods in Exile," brought visions of Clive's worlds to my mind. So I began a search for his artwork online and began to collect pictures. This was the result.
The picture that's shown when Adrienne Loehry screams out 'GODS IN EXILE!' is Clive Barker's own vision of Pinhead, who was never called Pinhead in
The Hellbound Heart and was actually envisioned to be more female than male when first written by Clive. Of course, once his childhood friend Doug Bradley took on the role in
Hellraiser, everything was changed forever, but most satisfyingly so, IMHO.
I just find that particular Illuminati video to be a marker of sorts in the continuing cycle that links Shriekback, and particularly Barry Andrews, to Clive Barker and his work. It all melded so perfectly, especially for anyone who may have read
Imajica and knows the myths about the Dominions and how the fifth one was banished in a way from the other four, and how the gods were all scattered by Hapexamendios.
And, ooooh, I could go on and on about
Imajica, but I won't here.
Anyway, I sent Clive the link to the video, so he would know how his art had been used. If he was not okay with it, I wanted to know so I could redo the video with something other than his work. He made no indication of being displeased, so the video remains. Woo hoo! Oh, and I don't know Clive Barker personally. It was sent via Twitter, the medium by which he communicates with his Darklings (that is what he calls his friends and family, which he includes those of us on Twitter as being). I wrote to him several years ago about his usage of Darkling, because I'd never seen it used anywhere
ever except in relation to my Vampires. So that was deeply strange and familiar to me. Another moment of WTF in my life.
Another bizarre connection between Shriekback and Clive Barker is this:
When I read
Cabal, I did so whilst listening to Shriekback's
Go Bang!, probably their only reviled album. But there were some gems on this album, like (most wondrously) "Dust and a Shadow," and "Nighttown." "Nighttown" became a kind of theme song for
Cabal, which was made into a movie called
Nightbreed. Now, this movie was, and is, deeply loved by
falkenna, whom I had met through association with The Darth Maul Estrogen Brigade. Besides our abiding love for Maul, we discovered that we also loved this movie. Years later, after becoming very close friends, I would spend more than a week at her house in Brighton, where I would meet Barry Andrews, who had written "Nighttown." These are the moments that demand my disbelief in coincidence. These are the moments that haunt my mind and call out for stories to be told.
And, if Clive Barker doesn't beat me to them, telling the stories better than I ever could, then I will someday commit them all to paper, and can then die, knowing that my mission has been accomplished.
In the meantime, I continue to read Clive Barker, and I continue to listen to Shriekback/Barry Andrews.
Oh, and I never did find that blasted footage of Tim Roth from 'The South Bank Show.' Dammit.
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