GILDED DIRT ANGEL/E/S ∴ HAUNT MANUAL
A solo sojourn into LA's Philosophical Research Society, Hollywood Forever Cemetery & The 20-Year Self-Spectre Reunion.
A roundup of my recent Southern California Sojourn, separated into day-spent vignettes and their respective soundtracks:
DAY 1 ∴ The 20 Year Nostalgia Traffic Loop
(Los Feliz with Fun Boy 3)
I arrived in Los Angeles a bit earlier than I was expecting, and, by hook or by crook, I was going to allow the aimless two hours before receiving my rental car to be filled with whim & ponder! I had planned to seize these probable trip tussles with a disarming courtesy as my trip MO had loosely foretold:
Do not overestimate my own energy within visitations. Keep expectations minimal and personal.
Allow chaos, intuition and whim to take the wheel.
This solo excursion is a sort-of epilogue to the first volume of Haunt Manual, so document!
This last one was a bit messy…
The intended aimless wanders became a Hauntomantic analogy of sorts—I spent the better part of my teenage years wandering this very city of Angles & Angels—Hauntomantic because although the past-self-spectre walked parallel decades ago, now I am afforded to saunter again with the praxis largely conscious within this current self-spectre. Both then/now forever tethered by the constant: the hunt to sniff out story and meaning within the sepia night gaze of the past/current Angelino cement cage—the city of angels where the glittered and ragged angels are forever on the lurk.
My rental car was a relatively cheap affair, so I allowed "dealer's choice" as far as vehicle. And what I got could be described as the complete antitheses of my personal fancies: A 2023 “Turbo Red” Dodge Charger. I laughed as I picked it up, and thought how hilarious it was to be zipping around town in such a ridiculous car! My teenage self would scoff! But the current self giggled at the silly archetypal ill-fitting suit, and found the irony of my ramshackle self fronting in this tinsel-tasseled town.
As I corroded the asphalt with this ridiculous heat-sinking-missile of a modern automobile, I immediately regressed to my teenage driving habits: windows went immediately down (I like to hear the road) with wind billowing amidst gusts of foreign rhythms brought by the Hauntomantic song talismans from my youth: The B-52’s self-titled (the Yellow album) & Wild Planet albums, as well as Fun Boy 3 revelatory singles like “Lunatics Have Taken Over The Asylum” & “More I See”—the latter of which I found myself in those teenage traps of traffic induced bewilderment at how Terry Hall and gang could achieve such a timeless dissertation about the low-hum implosion of modern life. “Has nothing changed?” I thought to myself, while smirking, “Have I changed?” I was firmly aware of my teenage self-spectre taking the wheel; for a moment it didn’t feel as though the past few misled and horrorshow decade dalliances ever took me from this/that moment—the aimless motoring amidst southwestern deserts, always on the way to something with the Other singing through compact discs and cassettes as audible windows to the true Outside. I mourned my teenage self-spectre’s stasis in what was static—no matter how many miles I clocked, no matter how far I sauntered, it always felt like an inch of dirt. Now, this present spectre, this Aspectre, can see that inch was always far enough.
I had made tentative plans with friend, author and artist, Derek Hunter, to visit the Philosophical Research Society—the campus conjured by modern esotericism paragon, Manly P. Hall. The campus and its correlative society needs very little introduction in esoteric-ally inclined circles, yet, I had not visited the site in my corroborated memory. I say “corroborated” in relation to recent memory because through the Haunt Manual / Hauntomancy workings, a sundry of forgotten experiences have resurfaced, and after visiting the campus I am now acutely aware of attending a Marilyn Ferguson engagement with my father in my early youth! Something that begs corroboration before adding this elusive memory into the current annals of my somatic experiences. I suppose I should ask the pops.
Their magnanimous library is only open to the public Thursday and Friday for short hours so it was imperative that I visit PRS after touching LA that Friday. The campus itself is brilliant in its somewhat hidden Art Deco-cum-beach-ified-old-Hollywood stucco nestled in the historically whimsical Los Feliz area. Derek showed me around while I perused their bookstore, auditorium and array of Manly P. Hall artifacts.
But the library itself is one for the books—the best way I can describe the aura of such a tome chamber is how it resembles the inner-image of a mind palace—the inner-study of one’s own memories. You can view images from the visit via instagram:
They allow a few books to peruse from their locked cabinets; Derek studied some historic Bard texts, and I did a few readings with his Austin Osman Spare tarot deck. After Derek left due to other obligations, I grabbed my notebooks from the Turbo Charger and stayed for another few hours manically scribbling notes from various texts concerning Angels, Symbols & the Sefirot.
I did observe some fascinating correspondences between past/current esotericism—though the campus is littered in the 1930’s ephemera it was created in, contemporary occult sciences and theory was given its day as well, espeically within the book store. Namely, the contemporary magic-minded scribe Mitch Horowitz’s animism run rampant within the PRS halls—his books littered the bookstore among modern, the Wild Unknown-like Tarot & Oracle decks—an extremely common sight within contemporary occult shoppes.
Though, the modernity not only lay in Horowitz’s current and ever growing bibliography, or within his artfully drinkable prose, but also with in his visage. I noticed the Horowitz-cum-Brooklyn-Punk aesthetic has been ubiquitous within the American occult factions, and it was ever present in Los Angeles since noticing its interesting juxtaposition among the archaic halls of PRS.
This aesthetic is that of a hauntological hepcat: the leather clad, dark pomp (or blonde-bobbed) cuffed jean-Punk visage akin to the PsychoBilly, 60’s LaVey-ean, Tippie Hedron-dressed celluloid technicolor types of yesteryear, or, to use a comparison: An academic clad in Brando’s Black Rebel Motorcycle Club garb (of which I own the hat, so, guilty on that one!) at a Psychic TV performance. An aestheticism that is ensconced in counter-culture mod/rocker fashion fluidity. This was further evidenced by the PRS library’s white collar’d, black tunic laden, bleache-blonde-bombshell Librarian that tapped on her phone in between unlocking cabinets for us looky-loos. And after seeing Mitch’s echoes within PRS’s walls, her dress felt like a perfect tether to that hauntological aesthetic— a fashion forward in both style and methodology through esotericism itself. An aesthetic I’ll call lovingly refer to “Hepcat Occult.”
It’s actually a breath of fresh air to share Cramps records with Steiner enthusiasts, or the ability to discuss Ricky Nelson in the same breath of Thee Psychick Bible. The darkheart of rocknroll is forever entombed in the Pluto-brained darkstars of yesteryear; the dead-serious fae that scream “teenage shutdown” at the standards and expectations of authority figures across all aspects of American modernity! We are not so different!
I am always happy to see the confluence of RocknRoll within metaphysics, although it comes off as a transitory personality prosthetic to a lot purveyors, the beat prevails; pretty-people-secretly-into-cheeky-dark-affairs sort of thing has persisted since old Hollywood thought Beatniks named Mooney were just drug-addled diddlers and murderers, only to discover that some of them were great writers and thinkers too! The “Hepcat Occult” has some great minds at work within their nail polished pompadours, and it is a patchwork culture I hope unifies with the ethos of RocknRoll rather than its uniform, but I understand the calling card to “find the others.”
I stood in awe, as an anthropologist to my own machinations within a west coast culture, and my genesis from my Los Angeles gallery-performance teenage years to now. I suppose we all have experientially informed uniforms. I enjoy the visual semiotics of a stranger’s dress—and the ability to qualify their passions with thread and lace. I suppose I always have been deeply intentional about attire and its meaning; I suppose it’s par for the course to think about these seemingly trivial things among the Los Angeles streets.
Day 2 ∴ Ruminations On A Gilded Dirt Nap
(Hollywood Forever Cemetery with The Shadow Project)
Speaking of Pluto-brained DarkStars; Derek Hunter joined me for a romp within Hollywood Forever Cemetery the next day. I had spent many a time on its lawns for events when I was in my latter teenage years—spending most of my time haunting Los Angeles guitar shops and record stores instead of finishing my senior year of high school. This entire trip felt as though I was baton death marching through the streets of my misled youth, slowly regressing into the crux-birth of my kin-less, dastardly 20’s bright-eyed and bushy-tailed wilderness years. The werewolf of regression loomed large.
I had a few visitations as an objective, such as wanting to visit the urn of Rozz Williams, the queer occultnik darkstar and progenitor of Death Rock. The Angeles based artist is respectfully regarded as a cult Revolutionary / New Romantic / Undersung Poet Laureate that laid the goth roots of the West Coast. Rozz was a luminary to my young desert-riddled brain, and he always usurped the already tried & tired uniform of whatever “Goth” was as it was beginning its dark bustle in the late 70’s.
I also made effort to view Judy Garland’s mausoleum—the beautiful queer-heaven for mustachioed Hollywood couples’ memento moris still burns bright in my mind; the many urns ordained by photos of jovial gay-men-in-arms surrounding Garland’s crypt-stone made me tear up quite a bit; truly a heartstring-plucking-palace for human beings that largely spent their love in hidden breaths and quiet honesty everywhere but Hollywood’s open arms. This is a blistering reminder of Hollywood’s love legacy, a legacy still thought of as “too progressive” in most parts of this backwards-ass earth no-less...but love will out.
After more perusing of the typical gilded bone and ash altars that adorn Republican Ramones, Russian tycoon families and the ill-fated off-spring of Stage & Screen Stars, we set our focus towards Rozz. After cemetery Peacock jukes and yodels we realized that Rozz lay within the Golden Peacock adorned dome that was walled off and secured behind the chapel. We had the cemetery security guard allow us in with a quick-crypt unlock and a pointed direction. He left us to wade through the dark, back halls of the chapel towards the Peacock dome. And when we arrived, not evening the blinding sun shown through the top of the dome allowed much visibility. I had the pleasure of find the light panel and ceremoniously flicking each one and watching as random lights, the central fountain and unknown electrical currents delayed their activation.
The bottom level, we ascertained, were 19th-20th century Order of the Easter Star ash cubbies—an Order of the Eastern Star specific level for what would become a modern art gallery-cum-mausoleum above. A dark urn-window crypt for the O.E.S. first level, with a sunlight littered upper level adorned with Kenneth Anger-esque photographic prints strewn between holding plots and minor celebrity urn windows.
When we discovered Rozz’s, it was the only one with chicken-scratch etchings and spoiled wine aromas from Rozz admirers who poured their alcoholic offerings in his flower holders. The numbers 1334 scratched into the gold paint from admirers, as the number wraps his blue & white urn in gothic font, and is the subtitle to the hallowed lyric sheet (December 1334) that marry his collage art with a solemn photo in his small window plot.
We spent a while discussing 1334’s significance as I had always known it to litter Rozz’s works and held a secretive, personal significance rather than something spooky about the year 1334 being the “deadliest year of the black plague” or some such fallacy, but never thought too much of it and looked at it more as a signature to mean nothing to us and everything to him. However, due to my recent works with Listening Post Alpha and the ALW Cipher (or gematria-writ-large), I am excited to discover some eerie parallels with Rozz’s 1334 within Crowley’s Liber Al (a text I’m certain graced Rozz’s well endowed intellect): 13 = Ra, and 34 = Fool; The Eye of RA is adorned underneath the number on his urn, and April Fool’s day is the anniversary of Rozz’s suicide at 34 years old. I wouldn’t put it past Rozz to have been mired in such gematria for us to uncover long past his death.
I am currently trying to find my previous stasis with espresso-riddled typing fingers at the local cafe. I hope to draft a piece about the oeuvre of this "Death Trip"—one that resounds within a post-trip conversation I had with Derek Hunter concerning our Cemetery visit’s aftershocks within my solo trip’s haunt-walking the next day:
"I also went down a Rozz Williams rabbit hole the next day [after visiting his ashes at Hollywood Forever], but had some nuclear hauntological fallout due to my past, growing up [in LA for a time], my 'other'ness and suicidal tendrils & tethers that really stained me Sunday, the penultimate day. It’s funny, I'm calling it the LA Death Trip because so much of [the trip] surrounded itself in a mausoleum of the past (literally & figuratively), an alien view of the past and the "good death" being one of transcending the imprisonment of trauma and a celebration of the "other side" of memory - or Time's pillowtalk and humor of how "heavy" life is for such spurts of itself that it doesn't need to continue - and Rozz, wherever he was at during his April Fool’s of 1998, had succumbed to the need to never-leaving by forever-leaving. I want to 'leave' hurt, not just marry it with resonance or temporal ideas of the self, but live in it and feel the bittersweet goodbye of an 'adios, muchacho' too - I want both but neither, either, or."
I suppose that is exactly what a memory is: A never-goodbye and a long-dead hello!
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