#ligotti

[andreabonazzi]

Thomas Ligotti (July 9, 1953). The paradox to celebrate the birthday of a convinced antinatalist.

[nicklloydnow]

“"Never written?" I inquired. "Why was it never written?"

"Why?" he said, pausing for a moment and grimacing in pain. "The answer to that is exactly what Grossvogel has been preaching in both his pamphlets and in his public appearances. His entire doctrine, if it can even be called that, if there could ever be such a thing in any sense whatever, is based on the non-existence, the imaginary nature of everything we believe ourselves to be. Despite his efforts to express what has happened to him, he must know very well that there are no words that are able to explain such a thing. Words are a total obfuscation of the most basic fact of existence, the very conspiracy against the human race that my treatise might have illuminated. Grossvogel has experienced the essence of this conspiracy first hand, or at least has claimed to have experienced it. Words are simply a cover-up of this conspiracy. They are the ultimate means for the cover-up, the ultimate artwork of the shadow, the darkness - its ultimate artistic cover-up. Because of the existence of words, we think that there exists a mind, that some kind of soul or self exists. This is just another of the infinite layers of the cover-up. There is no mind that could have written An Investigation into the Conspiracy against the Human Race - no mind that could write such a book and no mind that could read such a book. There is no one at all who can say anything about this most basic fact of existence, no one who can betray this reality. And there is no one to whom it could ever be conveyed."

"That all seems impossible to comprehend," I objected.

"It just might be, if only there actually were anything to comprehend, or anyone to comprehend it. But there are no such beings."

"If that's the case," I said, wincing with abdominal discomfort, "then who is having this conversation?"

"Who indeed?" he answered. "Nevertheless, I would like to continue speaking. Even if this is only nonsense and dreams, I feel the need to perpetuate it all. Especially at this moment, when this pain is taking over my mind and my self. Pretty soon none of this will make any difference. No," he said in a dead voice. "It doesn't matter now."

(…)

But this strictly monetary inheritance was only the beginning of the success that all of us from that abolished circle of artists and intellectuals began to experience, the seed from which we began to grow out of our existence as failed minds and selves into our new lives as highly successful organisms, each in our own field of endeavor. Of course we could not have failed, even if we tried, in attaining whatever end we pursued, since everything we have experienced and created was a phenomenon of the shadow, the darkness which reached outwards and reached upwards from inside us to claw and poke its way to the heights of a mountainous pile of human and non-human bodies. These are all we have and all we are; these are what is used and thrived upon. I can feel my own body being used and cultivated, the desires and impulses that are pulling it to succeed, that are tugging it toward every kind of success. There is no means by which I could ever oppose these desires and impulses, now that I exist solely as a body which seeks only its efficient perpetuation so that it may be thrived upon by what needs it. There is no possibility of my resisting what needs to thrive upon us, no possibility of betraying it in any way. Even if this little account of mine, this little chronicle seems to disclose secrets that might undermine the nightmarish order of things, it does nothing but supports and promulgates that order. Nothing can resist or betray this nightmare because nothing exists that might do anything, that might be anything that could realize a success in that way. The very idea of such a thing is only nonsense and dreams.

There could never be anything written about the "conspiracy against the human race" because the phenomenon of a conspiracy requires a multiplicity of agents, a division of sides, one of which is undermining the other in some way and the other having an existence that is able to be undermined. But there is no such multiplicity or division, no undermining or resistance or betrayal on either side. What exists is only this pulling, this tugging upon all of the bodies of this world. At the same time, these bodies in no way attain a collective identity, an order of being or a species that might be the object of a conspiracy. A collective entity called the human race cannot exist where there is only a collection of non-entities, of bodies which are themselves only provisional and will be lost one by one, the whole collection of them always approaching nonsense, always dissolving into dreams. There can be no conspiracy in a void, or rather in a black abyss. There can only be this tugging of all these bodies toward that ultimate success which it seems my large-bodied friend realized when he was finally used to the fullest extent, and his body used up, entirely consumed by what needed it to thrive.

"There is only one true and final success for the shadow that makes things what they would not be," Grossvogel proclaimed in the very last of his pamphlets. "There is only one true and final success for the all-moving blackness that makes things do what they would not do," he wrote. And these were the very last lines of that last pamphlet. Grossvogel could not explain himself or anything else beyond these unconcluded statements. He had run out of the words that (to quote someone who shall remain as nameless as only a nominal member of the human race can be) are the ultimate artwork of the shadow, the darkness - its ultimate artistic cover-up. Just as he could not resist it as his body was pulled toward that ultimate success, he could not betray it with his words.” - ‘The Shadow, the Darkness’

[feedergoldfish]

Hello, Miss. Why, yes, as a matter of fact I am looking for some company this evening. My name is Simon, and you are... Rosemary. Funny, I was just daydreaming in the key of Rosicrucianism.

The Nyctalops Trilogy I: The Chymist. Published in Songs of a Dead Dreamer by Thomas Ligotti.

[labibliotecadescorzo]

Noctuario, de Thomas Ligotti (1994)

[the-infinite-corridor]

== THE NULL SET LIST == . "In the recumbence of depression, your information-gathering system collates its intelligence and reports to you these facts: (1) there is nothing to do; (2) there is nowhere to go; (3) there is nothing to be; (4) there is no one to know. Without meaning-charged emotions keeping your brain on the straight and narrow, you would lose your balance and fall into an abyss of lucidity." . -- Thomas Ligotti    'The Conspiracy Against the Human Race' . . ... --- ... #beauty #art #photography #travel #Ligotti #backrooms #explore #GameTheoryMedia #haunted #writing #WritingLife #drinking #LiminalSpaces #Kenophobia #travelphotography #氷Kōri-9 #acting #asia #modeling #alone  (at Krung Thep Maha Nakhon) https://www.instagram.com/p/CpyWAYGS1zv/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

[quantumstateofdenial]

“I know in a way I never knew before that there is nowhere for me to go, nothing for me to do, and no one for me to know. The voice in my head keeps reciting these old principles of mine. The voice is his voice, and the voice is also my voice. And there are other voices, voices I have never heard before, voices that seem to be either dead or dying in a great moonlit darkness. More than ever, some sort of new arrangement seems in order, some dramatic and unknown arrangement--anything to find release from this heartbreaking sadness I suffer every minute of the day (and night), this killing sadness that feels as if it will never leave me no matter where I go or what I do or whom I may ever know.”

Thomas Ligotti, The Bungalow House

[funeral]

This is the great lesson the depressive learns: Nothing in the world is inherently compelling. Whatever may be really “out there” cannot project itself as an affective experience. It is all a vacuous affair with only a chemical prestige. Nothing is either good or bad, desirable or undesirable, or anything else except that it is made so by laboratories inside us producing the emotions on which we live. And to live on our emotions is to live arbitrarily, inaccurately—imparting meaning to what has none of its own. Yet what other way is there to live? Without the ever-clanking machinery of emotion, everything would come to a standstill. There would be nothing to do, nowhere to go, nothing to be, and no one to know. The alternatives are clear: to live falsely as pawns of affect, or to live factually as depressives, or as individuals who know what is known to the depressive. How advantageous that we are not coerced into choosing one or the other, neither choice being excellent. One look at human existence is proof enough that our species will not be released from the stranglehold of emotionalism that anchors it to hallucinations. That may be no way to live, but to opt for depression would be to opt out of existence as we consciously know it.

Thomas Ligotti, Conspiracy Against the Human Race

[figcatlists]

Contemporary weird fiction reading list

A chart of New Weird books and other bizarre, unsettling, and uncanny literature published in the last 30 years or so. This is a follow-up to my previous chart of classic weird fiction and another selection from my list of over 200 works of weird literature.

[morszipan]

[nicklloydnow]

“For good or ill, all things must end. And the peculiar modalities of this end, both for each of us as individuals and for the motley aggregate of our species, are quite literally incalculable. All the same, a few foreglimpses are not impossible to offer the curious. These are hypothetical imaginings for those who have been too lax or craven to conjure them on their own. By putting one's mind to the task, however, it seems that certain rules and conventions relating to the cataclysmic as a general proposition do reveal themselves without excessive strain or harm. Traditionally, some depictions of apocalypse are more predominant than others in histories, revelations, and intuited expectations of the end. For example, there is likely an element of the unheard-of in each one, a quality of the unearthly in phases ranging from the subtly dreadful to the outrageously sensationalistic. Yet, while bizarrerie may be amusing and a relief from boredom, when it comes to an ultimate termination the usual predilection is for a total blowup, an explosion or vaporization fully and forever. And, for the most part, apocalyptic promises tend to take this form. A good encyclopedia or a repository of relevant scriptures are helpful in this regard, providing illustrations of conclusive tempests of butchery and havoc leaving naught but vacant wastelands behind them.

But there are other renditions of apocalypse that are at odds with those delineated above. These involve scenarios wherein groups of stragglers hang about in a setting of inanity with a bit of décor, either survivors of or latecomers to oblivion. Consequently, the entire business is left unfinished, because some have been overlooked, actors who for a time play out a prelude to the Great Going. Since no wholesale apocalypse has ever been visited on this world, predictions that everything will be torn to pieces are but conjecture, however devoutly wished for. Thus, we must question whether any purported "end" is ever complete, except perhaps in whispered fables and fabrications swindling us with apocalypses by halves and quarters, even ones that involve a single ill-fortuned loner. Therefore, we may be disappointed by a given picture of apocalypse, pained that it leaves anything at all in its wake, so that each presents an all-consuming shockwave smashing the whole thing to bits that drift into the primal blackness a genuine finality. Then again, they are in no way restrained from going to the limit with something that by deftnition is fatality itself, producing a gruesome ta-da for those who like that sort of thing.

In the end, so to speak, it might be asked: Should we fabricate representations of apocalypse, as we have done so often over the centuries? This question is, of course, infinitely debatable. Perhaps more to the point: Should we wallow in such fantasies, as we unquestionably have done over the centuries? One reason we should—not the only one, but the only one pertaining to the pages that follow—is that all is not right with the world . . . and when all is not right in every detail imaginable, then some will find solace (bitter as it may be) in a lusty imagining of the end. They may not deserve this solace, as many would hoot, but opinions vary on who deserves what in any world conceivable. Why someone would believe that all is not right with the world is anyone's guess, or their self-arrogated judgment concerning what is right or not right with anything at all. Still, there are these pictures of apocalypse on offer, and even though these pictures are only inventions, we might argue that by virtue of their being invented, because a consciousness exists sufficiently educated in endings, which, it should be divulged, will involve anguish, all is not right. It is—to put it kindly—deficient, defective, blemished to its core. It is faulty to such a degree that it would be no more than just and honest to exclaim that nothing is right, properly speaking. Thus, what is the point in equivocating? The pictures are there, one apocalypse followed by another great or small, indefinite or definitive. They have already been inserted into existence, as built-in as breath and the end of breath.

Given the succession of horrors with which we have been intimate for so long, we may infer that no endpoint will be a beatific release from the pain we have always known. No apocalypse will be anything but awful. And nothing more need be said. It only remains to pass around the pictures.”

[bitterkarella]

Midnight Pals: Roast

Laird Barron: Submitted for the approval of the midnight society, i call this the tale of more dark Barron: it's about this reclusive horror writer called Tom L Barron: no wait that's too obvious Barron: let's just call him T Ligotti

Barron: anyway, this horror writer, Tom L, everyone thinks he's so great Barron: but actually he's a totally dorkwad poser Barker: ah ha ha ha! Barker: oh man i love a good roast! Barker: he's really got your number, tom! Thomas Ligotti: hm

King: how do you know it's about tom? Barker: how do i know... Barker: laird, tell us more about Tom L Barron: he's a reclusive horror writer who loves to write about puppets King: i just don't see it

Barker: hey tom how do you like getting roasted? Ligotti: i neither like nor dislike it Ligotti: events transpire regardless of human desire Barker: Barker: that sound exactly like something that Tom L would say

Barron: so i was at this horror event with my good friend John L Barron: who was wearing his "women want me, fish fear me hat" and his rubber waders John Langan: [wearing "women want me, fish fear me" hat and rubber waders] that's nothing like me

Barron: hold on john i didn't say it was you Barron: it could be any John L Barron: just cuz i happened to describe you with uncanny accuracy doesn't mean the character is actually intended to be you Langan: Langan: ok then Barron: anyway then John L went on this real boring lecture about fishing

Barron: you know who else was at this event? that clueless boomer dad Steve K King: haha this steve k sounds like a real loser! Koontz: Lovecraft: Poe: Barker: Barker: steve- Poe: no no let him figure it out for himself Poe: he'll get there in the end

King: hey wait a second!! are these characters based on us? Barron: i didn't say that Barron: if you recognize asshole Clive B or lovable dog-obsessed doofus Dean K as eerily reminiscent of people in your life, well, that's just an amazing coincidence King: that is a pretty amazing coincidence

King: laird, you can't just do that! King: you can't just make up fictional characters based on famous horror writers and then just put silly words in their mouths to make fun of them! Barron: Barker: Poe: Lovecraft: Koontz: Barron: damn how meta can you get

[notbecauseofvictories]

So I watched Office Space (1999) tonight and honestly? Twenty-five years later, its take on what makes corporate drone life so horrible is sort of quaint. As though the height of corporate fuckery is uniforms, vacuous repetitive tasks, depriving you of a view, and subjecting you to the absurd, arbitrary whims of middle managers.

Quite frankly, that’s just a random Monday.

Comedy Central’s Corporate (2018-2020) is much more accurate---it taps into the sense that, in exchange for a steady paycheck, you buy into an enormous churning machine that grinds you down even as it takes huge bites out of the rest of the world. You can do nothing to stop this machine, just hope that you  wring some sense of meaning from it before it swallows you whole. Or even Apple’s Severance---which is about what someone else, someone you don’t know and will never know, agreed to on your behalf. There is no escaping from it or winning at it, no matter how many squeeze-balls or cozies they offer you. (What would “winning” even look like? You can’t even formulate an answer to that question, when your whole life is labyrinthine corridors and inexplicable mythology about the company’s founder.)

But really, I think of Mark Fisher’s Capitalist Realism---the idea that what we want, desperately, is someone to step up and take responsibility. Someone we can point to, blame, and till under with the new corn, etc. etc. But the center cannot hold and there is no falconer, there is no one. We orbit a gaping maw and it just won’t shut its jaws, let us go, and even if we murder the people shoving us towards the teeth it won’t help.

It’s not about company-mandated “flare.” Jennifer Aniston can pick another restaurant with a less prickish boss, of course she can---but she won’t escape. Neither will her manager. Neither will her manager’s manager, or the cattlefarmer, or the workers slaving to pick tomatoes, the workers at the factory that manufactures the buns, or the copywriting intern who gets coffee for the asshole who writes a flimsy knockoff of WHERE’S THE BEEF. The maw is hungry forever, it will demand to be sated forever, it will never die. There is no escape.

[cleave-and-plough]

october reads 🎃🍂🌑

[exhaled-spirals]

— Thomas Ligotti, My Work is Not Yet Done

[the-infinite-corridor]

== THIS WORLD HAS A SPECIAL PLAN FOR ME == . "More than ever, some sort of new arrangement seems in order, some dramatic and unknown arrangement—anything, to find release from this heartbreaking sadness I suffer every minute of the day (and night), this killing sadness, that feels as if it will never leave me--no matter where I go, or what I do, or whom I may ever know." . --Thomas Ligotti, 'The Bungalow <House>' . #travel #art #sorrow #determinism #horror #explore #Ligotti #GameTheoryMedia #modeling #travelphotography #worldtravel #photography #Asia #Bangkok #BTS #drinking #writing #WritingLife  (at Lost Somewhere) https://www.instagram.com/p/Cm1VC80P813/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

[nousrose]

This is the great lesson the depressive learns: Nothing in the world is inherently compelling. Whatever may be really “out there”cannot project itself as an affective experience. It is all a vacuous affair with only a chemical prestige. Nothing is either good or bad, desirable or undesirable, or anything else except that it is made so by laboratories inside us producing the emotions on which we live. And to live on our emotions is to live arbitrarily, inaccurately—imparting meaning to what has none of its own. Yet what other way is there to live? Without the ever-clanking machinery of emotion, everything would come to a standstill. There would be nothing to do, nowhere to go, nothing to be, and no one to know. The alternatives are clear: to live falsely as pawns of affect, or to live factually as depressives, or as individuals who know what is known to the depressive. How advantageous that we are not coerced into choosing one or the other, neither choice being excellent. One look at human existence is proof enough that our species will not be released from the stranglehold of emotionalism that anchors it to hallucinations. That may be no way to live, but to opt for depression would be to opt out of existence as we consciously know it.

The Conspiracy Against the Human Race

Thomas Ligotti