The Problem With Music

by Steve Albini

Whenever I talk to a band who are about to sign with a major label, I always end up thinking of them in a particular context. I imagine a trench, about four feet wide and five feet deep, maybe sixty yards long, filled with runny, decaying shit. I imagine these people, some of them good friends, some of them barely acquaintances, at one end of this trench. I also imagine a faceless industry lackey at the other end holding a fountain pen and a contract waiting to be signed. Nobody can see what's printed on the contract. It's too far away, and besides, the shit stench is making everybody's eyes water. The lackey shouts to everybody that the first one to swim the trench gets to sign the contract. Everybody dives in the trench and they struggle furiously to get to the other end. Two people arrive simultaneously and begin wrestling furiously, clawing each other and dunking each other under the shit. Eventually, one of them capitulates, and there's only one contestant left. He reaches for the pen, but the Lackey says "Actually, I think you need a little more development. Swim again, please. Backstroke". And he does of course.

Every major label involved in the hunt for new bands now has on staff a high-profile point man, an "A & R" rep who can present a comfortable face to any prospective band. The initials stand for "Artist and Repertoire." because historically, the A & R staff would select artists to record music that they had also selected, out of an available pool of each. This is still the case, though not openly. These guys are universally young [about the same age as the bands being wooed], and nowadays they always have some obvious underground rock credibility flag they can wave.

Lyle Preslar, former guitarist for Minor Threat, is one of them. Terry Tolkin, former NY independent booking agent and assistant manager at Touch and Go is one of them. Al Smith, former soundman at CBGB is one of them. Mike Gitter, former editor of XXX fanzine and contributor to Rip, Kerrang and other lowbrow rags is one of them. Many of the annoying turds who used to staff college radio stations are in their ranks as well. There are several reasons A & R scouts are always young. The explanation usually copped-to is that the scout will be "hip to the current musical "scene." A more important reason is that the bands will intuitively trust someone they think is a peer, and who speaks fondly of the same formative rock and roll experiences. The A & R person is the first person to make contact with the band, and as such is the first person to promise them the moon. Who better to promise them the moon than an idealistic young turk who expects to be calling the shots in a few years, and who has had no previous experience with a big record company. Hell, he's as naive as the band he's duping. When he tells them no one will interfere in their creative process, he probably even believes it. When he sits down with the band for the first time, over a plate of angel hair pasta, he can tell them with all sincerity that when they sign with company X, they're really signing with him and he's on their side. Remember that great gig I saw you at in '85? Didn't we have a blast. By now all rock bands are wise enough to be suspicious of music industry scum. There is a pervasive caricature in popular culture of a portly, middle aged ex-hipster talking a mile-a-minute, using outdated jargon and calling everybody "baby." After meeting "their" A & R guy, the band will say to themselves and everyone else, "He's not like a record company guy at all! He's like one of us." And they will be right. That's one of the reasons he was hired.

These A & R guys are not allowed to write contracts. What they do is present the band with a letter of intent, or "deal memo," which loosely states some terms, and affirms that the band will sign with the label once a contract has been agreed on. The spookiest thing about this harmless sounding little memo, is that it is, for all legal purposes, a binding document. That is, once the band signs it, they are under obligation to conclude a deal with the label. If the label presents them with a contract that the band don't want to sign, all the label has to do is wait. There are a hundred other bands willing to sign the exact same contract, so the label is in a position of strength. These letters never have any terms of expiration, so the band remain bound by the deal memo until a contract is signed, no matter how long that takes. The band cannot sign to another label or even put out its own material unless they are released from their agreement, which never happens. Make no mistake about it: once a band has signed a letter of intent, they will either eventually sign a contract that suits the label or they will be destroyed.

One of my favorite bands was held hostage for the better part of two years by a slick young "He's not like a label guy at all," A & R rep, on the basis of such a deal memo. He had failed to come through on any of his promises [something he did with similar effect to another well-known band], and so the band wanted out. Another label expressed interest, but when the A & R man was asked to release the band, he said he would need money or points, or possibly both, before he would consider it. The new label was afraid the price would be too dear, and they said no thanks. On the cusp of making their signature album, an excellent band, humiliated, broke up from the stress and the many months of inactivity. There's this band. They're pretty ordinary, but they're also pretty good, so they've attracted some attention. They're signed to a moderate-sized "independent" label owned by a distribution company, and they have another two albums owed to the label. They're a little ambitious. They'd like to get signed by a major label so they can have some security you know, get some good equipment, tour in a proper tour bus -- nothing fancy, just a little reward for all the hard work. To that end, they got a manager. He knows some of the label guys, and he can shop their next project to all the right people. He takes his cut, sure, but it's only 15%, and if he can get them signed then it's money well spent. Anyways, it doesn't cost them anything if it doesn't work. 15% of nothing isn't much! One day an A & R scout calls them, says he's 'been following them for a while now, and when their manager mentioned them to him, it just "clicked." Would they like to meet with him about the possibility of working out a deal with his label? Wow. Big Break time. They meet the guy, and y'know what -- he's not what they expected from a label guy. He's young and dresses pretty much like the band does. He knows all their favorite bands. He's like one of them. He tells them he wants to go to bat for them, to try to get them everything they want. He says anything is possible with the right attitude.

They conclude the evening by taking home a copy of a deal memo they wrote out and signed on the spot. The A & R guy was full of great ideas, even talked about using a name producer. Butch Vig is out of the question-he wants 100 g's and three points, but they can get Don Fleming for $30,000 plus three points. Even that's a little steep, so maybe they'll go with that guy who used to be in David Letterman's band. He only wants three points. Or they can have just anybody record it (like Warton Tiers, maybe-- cost you 5 or 7 grand] and have Andy Wallace remix it for 4 grand a track plus 2 points. It was a lot to think about. Well, they like this guy and they trust him. Besides, they already signed the deal memo. He must have been serious about wanting them to sign. They break the news to their current label, and the label manager says he wants them to succeed, so they have his blessing. He will need to be compensated, of course, for the remaining albums left on their contract, but he'll work it out with the label himself.

Sub Pop made millions from selling off Nirvana, and Twin Tone hasn't done bad either: 50 grand for the Babes and 60 grand for the Poster Children-- without having to sell a single additional record. It'll be something modest. The new label doesn't mind, so long as it's recoupable out of royalties. Well, they get the final contract, and it's not quite what they expected. They figure it's better to be safe than sorry and they turn it over to a lawyer--one who says he's experienced in entertainment law and he hammers out a few bugs. They're still not sure about it, but the lawyer says he's seen a lot of contracts, and theirs is pretty good. They'll be great royalty: 13% [less a 1O% packaging deduction]. Wasn't it Buffalo Tom that were only getting 12% less 10? Whatever. The old label only wants 50 grand, and no points. Hell, Sub Pop got 3 points when they let Nirvana go. They're signed for four years, with options on each year, for a total of over a million dollars! That's a lot of money in any man's English. The first year's advance alone is $250,000. Just think about it, a quarter million, just for being in a rock band! Their manager thinks it's a great deal, especially the large advance. Besides, he knows a publishing company that will take the band on if they get signed, and even give them an advance of 20 grand, so they'll be making that money too. The manager says publishing is pretty mysterious, and nobody really knows where all the money comes from, but the lawyer can look that contract over too. Hell, it's free money. Their booking agent is excited about the band signing to a major. He says they can maybe average $1,000 or $2,000 a night from now on. That's enough to justify a five week tour, and with tour support, they can use a proper crew, buy some good equipment and even get a tour bus! Buses are pretty expensive, but if you figure in the price of a hotel room for everybody In the band and crew, they're actually about the same cost. Some bands like Therapy? and Sloan and Stereolab use buses on their tours even when they're getting paid only a couple hundred bucks a night, and this tour should earn at least a grand or two every night. It'll be worth it. The band will be more comfortable and will play better.

The agent says a band on a major label can get a merchandising company to pay them an advance on T-shirt sales! ridiculous! There's a gold mine here! The lawyer should look over the merchandising contract, just to be safe. They get drunk at the signing party. Polaroids are taken and everybody looks thrilled. The label picked them up in a limo. They decided to go with the producer who used to be in Letterman's band. He had these technicians come in and tune the drums for them and tweak their amps and guitars. He had a guy bring in a slew of expensive old "vintage" microphones. Boy, were they "warm." He even had a guy come in and check the phase of all the equipment in the control room! Boy, was he professional. He used a bunch of equipment on them and by the end of it, they all agreed that it sounded very "punchy," yet "warm." All that hard work paid off. With the help of a video, the album went like hotcakes! They sold a quarter million copies! Here is the math that will explain just how fucked they are: These figures are representative of amounts that appear in record contracts daily. There's no need to skew the figures to make the scenario look bad, since real-life examples more than abound. income is bold and underlined, expenses are not.

Advance: $ 250,000
Manager's cut: $ 37,500
Legal fees: $ 10,000
Recording Budget: $ 150,000
Producer's advance: $ 50,000
Studio fee: $ 52,500
Drum Amp, Mic and Phase "Doctors": $ 3,000
Recording tape: $ 8,000
Equipment rental: $ 5,000
Cartage and Transportation: $ 5,000
Lodgings while in studio: $ 10,000
Catering: $ 3,000
Mastering: $ 10,000
Tape copies, reference CDs, shipping tapes, misc. expenses: $ 2,000
Video budget: $ 30,000
Cameras: $ 8,000
Crew: $ 5,000
Processing and transfers: $ 3,000
Off-line: $ 2,000
On-line editing: $ 3,000
Catering: $ 1,000
Stage and construction: $ 3,000
Copies, couriers, transportation: $ 2,000
Director's fee: $ 3,000
Album Artwork: $ 5,000
Promotional photo shoot and duplication: $ 2,000
Band fund: $ 15,000
New fancy professional drum kit: $ 5,000
New fancy professional guitars [2]: $ 3,000
New fancy professional guitar amp rigs [2]: $ 4,000
New fancy potato-shaped bass guitar: $ 1,000
New fancy rack of lights bass amp: $ 1,000
Rehearsal space rental: $ 500
Big blowout party for their friends: $ 500
Tour expense [5 weeks]: $ 50,875
Bus: $ 25,000
Crew [3]: $ 7,500
Food and per diems: $ 7,875
Fuel: $ 3,000
Consumable supplies: $ 3,500
Wardrobe: $ 1,000
Promotion: $ 3,000
Tour gross income: $ 50,000
Agent's cut: $ 7,500
Manager's cut: $ 7,500
Merchandising advance: $ 20,000
Manager's cut: $ 3,000
Lawyer's fee: $ 1,000
Publishing advance: $ 20,000
Manager's cut: $ 3,000
Lawyer's fee: $ 1,000
Record sales: 250,000 @ $12 =
$3,000,000
Gross retail revenue Royalty: [13% of 90% of retail]:
$ 351,000
Less advance: $ 250,000
Producer's points: [3% less $50,000 advance]:
$ 40,000
Promotional budget: $ 25,000
Recoupable buyout from previous label: $ 50,000
Net royalty: $ -14,000
Record company income:
Record wholesale price: $6.50 x 250,000 =
$1,625,000 gross income
Artist Royalties: $ 351,000
Deficit from royalties: $ 14,000
Manufacturing, packaging and distribution: @ $2.20 per record: $ 550,000
Gross profit: $ 7l0,000
The Balance Sheet: This is how much each player got paid at the end of the game.
Record company: $ 710,000
Producer: $ 90,000
Manager: $ 51,000
Studio: $ 52,500
Previous label: $ 50,000
Agent: $ 7,500
Lawyer: $ 12,000
Band member net income each: $ 4,031.25

The band is now 1/4 of the way through its contract, has made the music industry more than 3 million dollars richer, but is in the hole $14,000 on royalties. The band members have each earned about 1/3 as much as they would working at a 7-11, but they got to ride in a tour bus for a month. The next album will be about the same, except that the record company will insist they spend more time and money on it. Since the previous one never "recouped," the band will have no leverage, and will oblige. The next tour will be about the same, except the merchandising advance will have already been paid, and the band, strangely enough, won't have earned any royalties from their T-shirts yet. Maybe the T-shirt guys have figured out how to count money like record company guys. Some of your friends are probably already this fucked.

[Steve Albini is an independent and corporate rock record producer most widely known for having produced Nirvana's In Utero.]

The Genesis Factor

by Stephan A. Hoeller

The following article was published in Quest, September 1997. It is presented here with permission of the author.

SOME YEARS AGO, Elaine H. Pagels, the noted religious historian, had the importance of the Book of Genesis brought to her attention in a most unusual manner. She was in Khartoum, in the African Sudan, holding a discussion with the then foreign minister of that country, who had written a book on the myths of his people. A prominent member of the Dinka tribe, her host told her how the creation myth of his people relates to the whole social, political, and religious culture in that part of the Sudan. 

Shortly after this conversation, Pagels was reading a Time magazine in which several letters to the editor took issue with a particular article on changing social mores in America. To her surprise, four of the six letters mentioned the story of Adam and Eve--how God created the first human pair "in the beginning," and what kind of behavior was therefore right or wrong for men and women today. Stimulated by her conversation in Africa, she quickly recognized that many people, even those who do not literally believe it, still return to the archaic story of creation as a frame of reference when faced with challenges to their traditional values. 

Pagels realized that, like creation stories of other cultures, the Genesis story addresses profound and basic questions. Americans and Dinka tribesmen are not so different after all; both look to their creation stories when attempting to answer such questions as, what is the purpose of human beings on earth? How do we differ from each other and from animals? Why do we suffer? Why do we die? 

Recent events on the intellectual scene have served to affirm these insights. Autumn of 1996 brought a considerable revival of interest in Genesis. Foreshadowed by a series of semi-informal conversations at Manhattan's Jewish Theological Seminary, led by Rabbi Burton Visotzky, the major event of this revival became a much publicized television series entitled "A Living Conversation," devoted entirely to the Book of Genesis. Hosted by Bill Moyers, himself an ordained Southern Baptist minister who had later shifted his allegiance to the more liberal United Church of Christ, the series raised high expectations in many quarters. A number of recent books have also dealt with the Genesis story. 

Robert Alter, one of the most recent translators of Genesis, said: "Moyers has hit upon an idea whose time has come. At this moment of post-cold war confusion about where we're going as a civilization, with all kinds of murky religious ferment, it makes sense to do some stocktaking.  Let's go back to the book that started the whole shebang." 

Moyers's panelists included Catholics, Protestants, Jews, Muslims, a Hindu, a Buddhist, and several agnostics. Not included, however, were persons who could represent Gnostic Christianity, one of the most ancient and at the same time most timely and creative approaches to the interpretation of the Bible. Nor was there any appreciable mention of Gnostic views in the cover story of Time magazine (October 28,1996), which followed upon the television series, or in several books published in the ensuing months. 

Had the recent revival of interest in Genesis occurred fifty or sixty years ago, this omission might have been understandable. Sources offering alternative interpretations of the Book of Genesis then were few and far between. All this changed, however, after 1945, when a veritable treasure trove of Gnostic scriptures was discovered in the Nag Hammadi valley in upper Egypt. This discovery would transform the character of biblical studies forever. The Nag Hammadi scriptures contain numerous creative variants of biblical teachings. 

A Different View of Adam and Eve

 

William Blake, the Gnostic poet of the early nineteenth century, wrote of the differences between his view and the mainstream view of holy writ: 'Both read the Bible day and night; but you read black where I read white." The same words could have been uttered by Gnostic Christians and their orthodox opponents in the first three or four centuries A.D. 

The orthodox view then regarded most of the Bible, particularly Genesis, as history with a moral. Adam and Eve were considered to be historical figures, the literal ancestors of our species. From the story of their transgression, orthodox teachers deduced specific moral consequences, chiefly the "fall" of the human race due to original sin. Another consequence was the lowly and morally ambivalent status of women, who were regarded as Eve's co-conspirators in the fateful deed of disobedience in paradise. Tertullian, a sworn enemy of the Gnostics, wrote to the female members of the Christian community thusly:

. . . you are the devil's gateway. . . you are she who persuaded him whom the devil did not dare attack. . . . Do you not know that you are each an Eve?  The sentence of God on your sex lives on in this age; the guilt, necessarily, lives on too.

The Gnostic Christians who authored the Nag Hammadi scriptures did not read Genesis as history with a moral, but as a myth with a meaning. To them, Adam and Eve were not actual historical figures, but representatives of two intrapsychic principles within every human being. Adam was the dramatic embodiment of psyche, or soul, while Eve stood for the pneuma, or spirit. Soul, to the Gnostics, meant the embodiment of the emotional and thinking functions of the personality, while spirit represented the human capacity for spiritual consciousness. The former was the lesser self (the ego of depth psychology), the latter the transcendental function, or the "higher self," as it is sometimes known. Obviously, Eve, then, is by nature superior to Adam, rather than his inferior as implied by orthodoxy. 

Nowhere is Eve's superiority and numinous power more evident than in her role as Adam's awakener. Adam is in a deep sleep, from which Eve's liberating call arouses him. While the orthodox version has Eve physically emerge from Adam's body, the Gnostic rendering has the spiritual principle known as Eve emerging from the unconscious depths of the somnolent Adam. Before she thus emerges into liberating consciousness, Eve calls forth to the sleeping Adam in the following manner, as stated by the Gnostic Apocryphon of John:

I entered into the midst of the dungeon which is the prison of the body. And I spoke thus: "He who hears, let him arise from the deep sleep." And then he (Adam) wept and shed tears. After he wiped away his bitter tears he spoke, asking: "Who is it that calls my name, and whence has this hope come unto me, while I am in the chains of this prison?" And I spoke thus: "I am the Pronoia of the pure light; I am the thought of the undefiled spirit. . . .  Arise and remember . . . and follow your root, which is I . . . and beware of the deep sleep."

In another scripture from the same collection, entitled On the Origin of the World, we find further amplification of this theme. Here Eve whose mystical name is Zoe, meaning life, is shown as the daughter and messenger of the Divine Sophia, the feminine hypostasis of the supreme Godhead:

Sophia sent Zoe, her daughter, who is called "Eve," as an instructor in order that she might raise up Adam, in whom there is no spiritual soul so that those whom he could beget might also become vessels of light. When Eve saw her companion, who was so much like her, in his cast down condition she pitied him, and she exclaimed: "Adam, live! Rise up upon the earth!" Immediately her words produced a result for when Adam rose up, right away he opened his eyes. When he saw her, he said:  "You will be called 'mother of the living', because you are the one who gave me life."

In the same scripture, the creator and his companions whisper to each other while Adam sleeps: "Let us teach him in his sleep as though she (Eve) came to be from his rib so that the woman will serve and he will be lord over her." The demeaning tale of Adam's rib is thus revealed as a propagandistic device intended to advance an attitude of male superiority. It goes without saying that such an attitude would have been more difficult among the Gnostics, who held that man was indebted to woman for bringing him to life and to consciousness.

The Western theologian Paul Tillich interpreted this scripture as the Gnostics did, declaring that "the Fall" was a symbol for the human situation, not a story of an event that happened "once upon a time." Tillich said that the Fall represented "a fall from the state of dreaming innocence" in psychological terms, an awakening from potentiality to actuality. Tillich's view was that this "fall" was necessary to the development of humankind. 

The Serpent of Wisdom

 

The sin of Eve, so the orthodox tell us, was that she listened to the serpent, who persuaded her that the fruit of the tree would make her and Adam wise, without any deleterious side-effects. It was Eve who then seduced the righteously reluctant Adam to join her in this act of disobedience, and thus together they brought about the fall of humanity. 

A Gnostic treatise, The Testimony of Truth, tells a different story. While repeating the words of the orthodox version of Genesis, the Gnostic source states that "the serpent was wiser than all the animals that were in Paradise." After extolling the wisdom of the serpent, the treatise casts serious aspersions on the creator: "What sort is he then, this God?" Then come some of the answers to the rhetorical question. The motive of the creator in punishing Adam was envy, for the creator envied Adam, who by eating the fruit would acquire knowledge (gnosis). Neither did the creator seem quite omniscient when he asked of Adam: "Where are you?" The creator has shown himself repeatedly to be "an envious slanderer," a jealous God, who inflicts cruel punishments on those who transgress his capricious orders and commandments. The treatise comments: "But these are the things he said (and did) to those who believe in him and serve him." The implication clearly presents itself that with a God like this, one needs no enemies. 

Another treatise, The Hypostasis of the Archons, informs us that not only was Eve the emissary of the divine Sophia, but the serpent was similarly inspired by the same supernal wisdom. Sophia mystically entered the serpent, who thereby acquired the title of instructor. The instructor then taught Adam and Eve about their source, informing them that they were of high and holy origin and not mere slaves of the creator deity. 

What, one may ask, motivated the Gnostic interpreters of Genesis to make these unusual statements? Were they purely motivated by bitter criticism directed against the God of Israel, as the Church Fathers would have us believe? Many contemporary scholars do not think so. These contemporary scholars suggest that the unfavorable image of the creator contrasted with the favorable one of Adam, Eve, and even of the serpent alludes to an important issue not frequently recognized. 

The orthodox interpreters, both Jewish and Christian, tend to emphasize the distinction between the infinite creator and his finite creatures. Humans and animals are on earth, while God is in heaven, and never the two will meet. The orthodox have held, with Martin Buber, that the human's relationship to God is always "I and Thou." In the Gnostic position one can discern a keynote that is reminiscent of the attitude of certain other religions, notably Hinduism, which rather declares: "I am Thou." 

The Gnostics share with the Hindus and with certain Christian mystics the notion that the divine essence is present deep within human nature in addition to being present outside of it. At one time humans were part of the divine, although later, in their manifest condition, they more and more tended to project divinity onto beings external to themselves. Alienation from God brings an increase in the worship of deities wholly external to the human. The Gospel of Philip, another scripture from Nag Hammadi, expresses it well:

In the beginning God created humans. Now, however, humans are creating God. Such is the way of this world-humans invent gods and worship their creations. It would be better for such gods to worship humans.

True God, False God

 

When discussing the story of Noah and the flood, author Karen Armstrong (A History of God, 1993), as a panelist on Moyers's program, asserted that God is "not some nice, cozy daddy in the sky," but rather a being who decidedly behaves frequently "in an evil way." With his actions in connection with the flood, Armstrong said, God originated the idea of justifiable genocide. Hitler and Stalin, one might deduce, acted on the instruction of such stories as that of the flood and of Sodom and Gomorrah when instituting the holocaust and the camps of the Gulag. Had the panelists called on Gnostic scriptures, they could have quoted many precedents for Armstrong's criticism of the vengeful God of the Old Testament. 

The Gnostic Hypostasis of the Archons, for example, states that the cause of the flood was not the turning of humans to wickedness, causing God to repent of his creation, as the "official" version of Genesis declared. Quite the contrary, people were becoming wiser and better, so an envious and spiteful creator decided to wipe them out in the flood. Noah was told by the creator to build an ark and place it atop Mount Seir-a name that does not occur in Genesis, but in one of the psalms referring to the flood. Noah's wife, unnamed in Genesis but called Norea by the Gnostics, is a special person, possessing more wisdom than her husband. Norea is the daughter of Eve and a knower of hidden things. She tries to dissuade her husband from collaborating with the schemes of the creator, and ends up burning down the ark which Noah had built. 

 The creator and his dark angels then surround Norea and intend to punish Norea by raping her. Norea defends herself by refuting various false claims they make. Ultimately she cries out for help to the true God, who sends the golden Angel Eleleth (Sagacity), who not only saves her from the attack of the creator's dark servants, but also teaches her regarding her origins and promises her that her descendants will continue to possess the true gnosis. 

There are other scriptures of the Nag Hammadi collection that repeat or refer to the story of Norea, including the Apocryphon of John and The Thought of Norea. The former does not mention her by name, but states that Noah's descendants were wise ones who were hidden in a luminous cloud, adding significantly, "[This was not] as Moses said, 'They were hidden in the ark."' In the latter it is not only one angel but "three holy helpers" who intercede on her behalf. 

It is quite apparent that the creator god who visits humanity with the disaster of the flood is not identical with the "true God" to whom Norea calls out for help. Viewing the character of the deity of Genesis with a sober, critical eye, the Gnostics concluded that this God was neither good nor wise. He was envious, genocidal, unjust, and, moreover, had created a world full of bizarre and unpleasant things and conditions. In their visionary explorations of secret mysteries, the Gnostics felt that they had discovered that this deity was not the only God, as had been claimed, and that certainly there was a God above him. 

This true God above was the real father of humanity, and, moreover, there was a true mother as well, Sophia, the emanation of the true God. Somewhere in the course of the lengthy process of pre-creational manifestation, Sophia mistakenly gave life to a spiritual being, whose wisdom was greatly exceeded by his size and power. This being, whose true names are Yaldabaoth (child of the chaos), Samael (blind god), and also Saclas (foolish one), then proceeded to create a world, and eventually also a human being called Adam. Neither the world nor the man thus created was very serviceable as created, so Sophia and other high spiritual agencies contributed their light and power to them. The creator thus came to deserve the name "demiurge" (half maker), a Greek term employed in a slightly different sense by philosophers, including Plato. 

To what extent various Gnostics took these mythologies literally is difficult to discern. What is certain is that behind the myths there are important metaphysical postulates which have not lost their relevance. The personal creator who appears in Genesis does not possess the characteristics of the ultimate, transcendental "ground of being" of which mystics of many religions speak. If the God of Genesis has any reality at all, it must be a severely limited reality, one characterized by at least some measure of foolishness and blindness. While the concept of two Gods is horrifying to the monotheistically conditioned mind, it is not illogical or improbable. Modem theologians, particularly Paul Tillich, have boldly referred to "the God above God." Tillich introduced the term "ground of being" as alternative language to express the divine. The ideas of the old Gnostics seem not so outdated after all. 

The Mysteries of Seth

 

Almost anyone today could declare that Adam and Eve had two sons, Cain and Abel. The third son is more difficult to name; he is Seth. The third son was provided by God as a replacement for the slain Abel, according to Genesis. He was sired rather late in life by Adam, for Adam is said to have been 130 years old at the time. The historian Josephus wrote that Seth was a very great man and that his descendants were the discoverers of many mysterious arts, including astrology. The descendants of Seth then inscribed the records of their occult discoveries, according to Josephus, on two pillars, one brick, the other stone, so that they might be preserved in times of future disasters. 

In the treatise The Apocalypse of Adam, the Gnostics presented us with a scripture that tells not only of Seth (and his father) but of the future of the esoteric tradition of gnosis in ages to come. It begins:

The disclosure given by Adam to his son Seth in his seven hundredth year. And he said: "Listen to my words, my son Seth. When God created me out of the earth, along with Eve your mother, I went along with her in a glory which she had seen in the aeon from which she came forth. She taught me the word of Gnosis of the eternal God. And we resembled the great eternal angels, for we were higher than the God who created us."

After thus informing us once again of the spiritually superior status of Eve, the scripture goes on to recount how the creator turned against Adam and Eve, robbing them of their glory and their knowledge. Humans now served the creator "in fear and in slavery," so Adam stated. While previously immortal, Adam now knew that his days were numbered. Therefore, he said he now wanted to pass on what he knew to Seth and his descendants. 

In the prediction it becomes apparent that "Seth and his seed" would continue to experience gnosis, but that they would be subject to many grave tribulations. The first of these would be the flood, during which angels would rescue the Gnostic race of Seth and hide them in a secret place. Noah, on the other hand, would advise his sons to serve the creator God "in fear and slavery all the days of your life." After the return of the illumined people of Seth's kind, the creator would once again wrathfully turn against them and try to destroy them by raining fire, sulfur, and asphalt down on them-an allusion, perhaps, to the story of Sodom and Gomorrah. Once again many of the Gnostics would be saved by being taken by great angels to a place above the domain of the evil powers. 

Much later there would be a new era with the coming of the man of light ("Phoster"), who would teach gnosis to all. The Apocalypse of Adam concludes with this passage:

This is the hidden knowledge of Adam which he gave to Seth, which is the holy baptism of those who know the imperishable Gnosis through those who are born of the Logos, through the imperishable Illuminator, who himself came from the holy seed (of Seth) Jesseus, Mazareus, Jessedekeus.

These names, which are obviously versions of the name of Jesus (they are found in other scriptures also), identify the culmination of the Gnostic tradition in the figure of Jesus. The "Race of Seth" is thus a biblical metaphor for those following this tradition. In the Gnostic book Pistis Sophia, Jesus identifies himself as coming from the "Great Race of Seth". 

Old Answers to New Controversies

 

The current interest in Genesis raises many serious questions. Not a few of these have been illuminated by the neglected light shed by the scriptures quoted earlier. Not unlike the old Gnostics, today's questioning scholars and laypersons are provoked by Genesis to critiques and even to inventions of new variations on the ancient theme. Consider how deeply the social conditions of many countries have been influenced by the picture the orthodox version of Genesis presents concerning Eve and, by implication, women in general. Any of the several scriptures of the Nag Hammadi collection would shed an entirely different and more benign light on these issues. 

Secondly, consider the political implications of the story of Genesis. Elaine Pagels, in her fascinating book Adam, Eve, and the Serpent (1988), pointed out that the long-held attitude of the Christian church of submitting to greatly flawed systems of secular government was usually justified by the "fallen condition" of humanity as first described in Genesis. Following largely the interpretations of Saint Augustine, most Christians felt that even bad governments were to be preferred to liberty because humans are so corrupted by Adam and Eve's original sin that they are in capable of governing themselves. The libertarian fervor of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries that gave rise to the American and French revolutions was clearly not motivated by the spirit of Genesis. The statement that "all men are created equal" does not occur in that scripture, but sprang from the inspiration of the American revolutionaries, who drew from Hermetic, Gnostic, and similar non-mainstream sources. 

Thirdly, there remains the terrifying problem of the character of the God of Genesis. Agreeing with Karen Armstrong, we find Jack Miles, in his provocative book God: A Biography writing: "Much that the Bible says about him is rarely preached from the pulpit because, examined too closely, it becomes a scandal." Perhaps we may need to take a second look at the Gnostic proposition that the creator mentioned in Genesis is not the true and ultimate God. The unfavorable potential present in the Book of Genesis did not go unnoticed throughout history. Rabbi Johanan ben Zakkai, a religious teacher prominent in the years after A.D. 70, warned that the Genesis story of creation should not be taught before even as many as two people. Saint Jerome, who translated the Bible into Latin, wrote that many of the narratives in the Old Testament were "rude and repellent." He certainly included those in Genesis. 

The Dinka tribesmen of the Sudan have a point. The creation myth of any culture has a profound effect on the attitudes, social mores, and political systems that prevail. So long as the Book of Genesis remains a basic text for Jews, Christians, and Muslims we can expect the societies within which these religions flourish to be influenced by this book. Still, there is some hope on the horizon. Although the Gnostic alternatives to the content of Genesis are still usually neglected, as indeed they were on television and in the press last year, some prominent figures of our culture are beginning to take notice. To mention but one such figure, Harold Bloom has become one of the most prominent voices calling attention to the creative character of the Gnostic alternative to mainstream religion. His books American Religion (1992) and Omens of Millennium (1996) have made a powerful case for the timeliness and perennial value of the positions taken by Christian Gnostics, Jewish Kabbalists, and Sufi mystics, all of whom are inspired by a common gnosis. It may be useful to conclude with an incisive and in our view definitive statement from the pen of this scholar:

If you can accept a God who coexists with death camps, schizophrenia, and AIDS, yet remains all-powerful and somehow benign, then you have faith, and you have accepted the covenant with Yahweh.... If you know yourself as having an affinity with the alien or stranger God, cut off from this world, then you are a Gnostic, and perhaps the best and strongest moments still come to what is best and oldest in you, to a breath or spark that long precedes this Creation.

On The Magic Island

By W.B. Seabrook with illustrations by Alexander King.

In 1929 a travelogue was released that would, through the chain reaction it set off, have a profound effect on American popular culture and by extension the American collective consciousness. It was written by a fellow with a questionable resume of personal traits said to include alcoholism, occultism, sensory deprivation, and sadism, who would ultimately commit suicide by pill-overdose. His is not a household name, and is rarely spoken, yet it is through the continued fascinated invocation of another name altogether that we unknowingly evoke his legacy: Zombie! Zombie!! Zombie!!!

He was William Buehler Seabrook, a reporter and Lost Generation writer (claiming the minor distinction of having written the first celebrity rehab tell-all) and it was his book, The Magic Island, a sensationalized account of his voodoo-mad travels throughout Haiti, that first ushered our beloved un-dead bugaboo, the zombie, onto American shores.

Though The Magic Island did not represent the first usage in English print of the word zombie (it appeared as a term connected to a Voodoo snake god much earlier) as the author later claimed in his autobiography, Seabrook’s book was the first popular English language text to confront the phenomena of the Haitian “living dead” head-on. The book referred to these shambling, dead-eyed, unfortunates as “Zombies” + and they have moved, at varying speeds, among us ever since.

The popularity of his book, with its sensational but not altogether unsympathetic characterizations, dovetailed perfectly with a zeitgeist that would also yield the nearly concurrent release of Hollywood’s iconic monster features. The result of which was an immediate pop-cultural embrace, bringing this new terror into our stable of more veteran ghouls like Dracula and Frankenstein without so much as a second interview. Seabrook’s book was all it took.

The giddy excitement entertainers felt at having a new abomination to play with resulted, almost immediately, in a broadway play—Kenneth Webb’s 1932 flop Zombie—and a film—the infamous 1932 indie, and granddaddy of all zombie flicks, White Zombie—not to mention multiple lawsuits. A scant 3 years after America first saw the word in print courts were obliged to rule “zombies” as being in the public domain. And are they ever. After 1932 it is a truly rare thing for a year to pass by completely undisturbed by the walking dead. 

Zombie! Zombie!! Zombie!!!

Though it is most notable for this popularization The Magic Island, a 336p book, in actuality only devoted 12 scant pages, a single chapter titled “...Dead Men Working in the Cane Fields” to le culte des morts’ handiwork. The rest of the book is full of sensational tales of ritual, magic, sacrifice, potions, feverish midnight sex-dances, and all of the objective reportage one might expect from an alcoholic, occult-dabbling, middle-aged white man traveling through Haiti in the 1920’s.

A search for more info on Mr. King does not offer much.
AskArt offers us this: “Described as a thief, morphine addict, failing playwright and painter, Alexander King was a man of iconoclastic observations and caustic humor who began his career as a painter of human figures, focused primarily on the face. Then he became an art thief, stealing fifty prints from the Metropolitan Museum. He was jailed twice, and married four times.”

While the IMDb says only: “Alexander King, by his own admission, had a very checkered career before becoming racontuer on residence during the Jack Parr years of “The Tonight Show”. A veteran newspaperman turned press agent, he published his various anecdotes in a series of off-beat books that were very popular at the time. Nearly forgotten today, King, who claimed to have been married five times, was a fixture on the TV talk show circuit from roughly the mid-1950s until his death in 1965.”

Various searches do reveal, without a doubt, that he illustrated many books throughout the 30’s and 40’s however, and with the pedigree outlined above, he was a perfect match for Seabrook and his Magic Island.
Below I’ve reproduced 9 of King’s illustrations from The magic Island including, for a few, some corresponding text by Seabrook. Have a look…

Quote: “Louis, son of Catherine Ozias of Orblanche, paternity unknown—and thus without a surname was he inscribed in the Haitian civil register—reminded me always of that proverb out of hell in which Blake said, “He whose face gives no light shall never become a star.” It was not because Louis’ black face, frequently perspiring, shone like patent leather; it glowed also with a mystic light that was not always heavenly. For Louis belonged to the chimeric company of saints, monsters, poets, and divine idiots. He used to get besotted drunk in a corner, and then would hold long converse with seraphim and demons, also from time to time with his dead grandmother who had been a sorceress.”

Quote: “The celebrants approached, processionally, singing, from the mystery house. At the head came the papaloi, an old man, blue-overalled, bare-footed, but with a surplice over his shoulders and a red turban on his head, waving before him the açon, a gourd-rattle wound round with snake-vertebrae. At his right and left, keeping pace with him, two young women held aloft, crossed above his head, two flags on which were serpentine and cabalistic symbols, sewn on with metallic, glittering beads. Behind him marched a young man bearing aloft, horizontally on his upstretched palms, a sword, and next the mamaloi, a woman in a scarlet robe and feathered headdress, who revolved as she progressed in a sort of dervish dance; next came marching, two and two, a chorus of twenty or more women robed in white, with white cloths wound bandana-wise on their heads, and as they slowly marched they chanted:

Damballa Oueddo,
Nous p’ vim
 
It would be best translated, I think, Oh, Serpent God, we come.”

Quote: “In the red light of torches which made the moon turn pale, leaping, screaming, writhing black bodies, blood-maddened, sex-maddened, god-maddened, drunken, whirled and danced their dark saturnalia, heads thrown weirdly back as if their necks were broken, white teeth and eyeballs gleaming, while couples seizing one another from time to time fled from the circle, as if pursued by furies, into the forest to share and slake their ecstasy.”

Quote: “One of the most dreaded forms of Haitian-African magic includes the dressing of a corpse in a garment of the person marked for vengeance and then exposing it to rot away in some secret place in the jungle. Men have gone stark mad seeking that jungle-hidden horror, and others have died hopelessly, searching. Fear, hunger, thirst, jungle-terror, one may say. Names again, tags, labels. But marked for death by the Voodoo curse, they died.”

Quote: “It seemed that while the zombie came from the grave, it was neither a ghost, nor yet a person who had been raised like Lazarus from the dead. The zombie, they say, is a soulless human corpse, still dead, but taken from the grave and endowed by sorcery with a mechanical semblance of life—it is a dead body which is made to walk and act and move as if it were alive. People who have the power to do this go to a fresh grave, dig up the body before it has had time to rot, galvanize it into movement, and then make of it a servant or slave, occasionally for the commission of some crime, more often simply as a drudge around the habitation or the farm, setting it dull heavy tasks, and beating it like a dumb beast if it slackens.”

So while this text offers the first English language popularization of the word “zombie” those last 3 Illustrations, interestingly, represent the first images anyone associated the word. All in all fascinating bit of pop-cultural, if not exactly ethnographic or anthropological, history.

Jay A. Graybeal says in his terrific summation of Seabrook’s story: “Big lusty, restless, red-haired William Buehler Seabrook spent more than 20 years seeking fantastic adventure, then putting what he found into books which thrilled some, shocked many.  But he never will write the story of his greatest adventure. Secretly and alone he embarked upon it not long ago by way of an overdose of sedative. The coroner says Bill Seabrook committed suicide. But his friends have a different explanation for what happened.  They say he only was making another more drastic attempt to accomplish what he had tried, vainly, all his life to do—to get away from himself.”

Aleister Crowley, an acquaintance of Seabrook’s, put it rather more bluntly in a diary entry: “The swine-dog W. B. Seabrook has killed himself at last.”

In 1966, a year after his death, a critic writing a review for a Seabrook biography said: “his principal literary contribution, it would seem, is the word zombie.” That may in fact be the truth. But how very impressive, built as it was on 12 short pages of reportage, that contribution turned out to be.

Zombie! Zombie!! Zombie!!!

Harry Crosby

"Live fast, die young and leave a good looking corpse."  It's been the promise of many would-be rebels down the years, but just how many of them have stuck to their guns?  Enter, in a burst of light, Harry Crosby - poet, pilot, sun-worshipper, self-tyled genius and the best looking corpse of 1929.

           Crosby was born on 4 June 1898 into a wealthy and ultra- respectable Boston family (his uncle was J.P. Morgan the millionaire).  In 1917 he joined the Ambulance corps and saw action at the Somme and Verdun, witnessing (by his own description) terrible carnage.  On the 22 November a shell exploded next to his ambulance 'vaporising it'.  One person died and one of Crosby's friends, driving an ambulance ten yeards behind, was badly injured.  Crosby however landed on the ground completely unhurt and it was from the this experience that he lost all fear of death.  Instead he became obssessed with the idea of choosing the time of his own death, of dying at exactly the right moment.  And he was someone who believed it was better to be too soon than too late.

           On his return from the war Cosby took to painting his fingernails black and insulting guests at the best social finctions, and -worst of all- he fell in love with a married woman.  This was Polly Peabody, the inventor of the wireless bra.  When things got too hot for them in Boston they moved to Paris where Polly changed her name to Caress, both decided they wanted to be poets.

           Crosby immersed himself in the work of decadents like Rimbaud and Baudelaire, and came to the conclusion, not unreasonable, that the only way he could transform himself from ordinary to genius was via the shortcut of madness.  He therefore embarked on a rigorous corriculum of smoking opium, taking heroin, gambling recklessly and flying planes dangerously. "PLEASE SELL $100,000 WORTH OF STOCK," read one of his cables to his increasingly despairing father, "WE HAVE DECIDED TO LIVE A MAD AND EXTRAVAGENT LIFE."  And extravangent it was, their parties attracted such notables as Salvador Dali, Douglas Fairbanks and Prince George of England.

           Crosby also found time to churn out a steady stream of poetry which he published under his own label Black Sun Press, the same press that later went on to publish works by friends like D.H. Lawrence and James Joyce.  Most of Crosby's poems reflect the religion which had devised for himself - an ecstatic worship of the sun.  He took his praying to the sun seriously and, like any good magician, made up his own elaborate rituals.

           In his poems Crosby often refers to his death wish.  Of course, whether poetry like this is crap or not depends on how serious the poet is, and Crosby was serious.  Ideally he wanted to die with Caresse, and was in the habit of asking her to jump off the tops of tall buildings with him, but she kept putting him off.  So did his various mistresses when he brought the subject up.  It wasn't until Josephine Rotch came along that Crosby met his match in obsessiveness.

           She was another Boston girl with a reputation for being 'fast'.  He met her in January of 1929 while she was on holiday in Venice.  "She was mad and madness is very appealing especially to me who is mad," he wrote excitedly to his mother, who must have been thrilled.

           On 10 December Crosby had arranged to have tea with Caresse, his mother and J.P. Morgan.  He failed to appear and a friend was sent to check on him.  Receiving no response to his knocking, he had the door broken down with an axe.  Inside, Harry and Josephine lay on the bed, holding hands, a bullet hole in his right temple and one in her left.  In his pocket was a one-word telegram from Josephine - "YES".  He was 31 years old, she was 21.

Fragment of an Etude for a Sun-Dial

let the Sun shine
(and the Sun shone)

on a wooden dial
in the garden of an old castle
(dumb when the Sun is dark)

on a pillar dial
in the Cimetière de l’Abbaye de Longchamp
(Blessed be the name of the Sun for all ages)

on the wall of an imaginary house
Rue du Soleil Paris
(the initials of the makers H.C. and C. C. and
date October Seventh 1927 are on the face)
(true as the dial to the Sun)

on a small stone dial
over the door of a farm
(Sole oriente orior
Sole ponente cubo)

on the exterior of a ring dial
worn on the finger of the Princess Jacqueline
(“Es-tu donc le Soleil pour vouloir que je me
tourney vers toi!?)

on the dial on the south wall
of a tower
(the Sun is the end of the journey)

and thee is a second dial
on the north tower
(I tarry not for the slow)

on a dial
over an archway in a stableyard
(norma del tempo infallibile io sono)
(I am the infallible measure of the time)

on a dial
in a garden in Malta

on a dial at Versailles

on an old Spanish dial
(the dial has now, 1928, disappeared a
railroald line having been taken through the
garden where it stood)

on the wall of the
Bar de la Tempete at
Breast facilng the sea
(c’êst l’heure de boire)

on a small brass dial in
the British Museum
on a silver dial in the
Musuem at Copenhagen
on a gold dial on the
soul of a Girl
(“mais à mon âme la nécessité de ton âme”)

let the Sun shine
(and the sun shone)

on a dial placed upon the
deck of the Aeolus
in the harbor of New London
on a dial placed upon the
deck of the Aphrodisiac
in the harbor of Brest
on a dial placed upon
the deck of the Aurora
in the harbor of my Heart
(“et quelques-uns en eurent connaissance”)

let the Sun shine
(and the Sun shone)

on pyramids of stones
on upright stones in
ancient graveyards
on upright solitary stones
on bones white-scattered on the plain
the white bones of lions in the sun
the white lion is the phallus of the Sun
“I am the Lions I am the Sun”

on the dial of Ahaz who
reigned over Judah

on a rude horologe in Egypt
(“as a servant earnestly)
desireth the shadow”)

on the eight dials of
the Tower of the Winds at Athens

on old Roman coins
unburied from the ground

on the twin sundials on
the ramparts of Carcassone

on the pier at Sunderland
(and where is the sound
of the pendulum?)

on the sun-dials on the mosques
of Saint Sophia
of Muhammed
and of Sulimania

on the imeense circular
block of carved porphyry
in the Great Square of
the City of Mexico

on Aztec dials
on Inca dials
(Femme offer ton Soleil en adoration aux Incas)

on Teutonic dials built
into the walls of
old churches

on the dial of the Durer Melancholia
(above the hour-glass and near the bell)

on the white marble slab
which projects from the
façade of Santa Maria Della Salute
on the Grand Canal Venice

on the dial of the Cathedral at Chartres
(“the strong wind and the snows”)

on a bedstead made of bronze
(and Heliogabalus had one of solid silver)

on a marriage bed
(lectus genialis)
in a death bed
(leactus funebrius)

on a bid
style à la marquise
(“ayant peur de mourir lorsque je couche seul”)

on a bed
lit d’ange

on a flower bed
on a bed of mother-of-pearl
on a bordel bed
on a bed of iniquity
on a virgin bed
on a bed or rock

To God the Sun Unconquerable
to the peerless Sun, we only

let the Sun shine
(and the Sun shone)

Soli Soli Soli