An English scientist who had a nervous breakdown at the age of 50 and developed an abhorrence of language itself. “This is to declare, in the present instance, when I say I am not able to bear much talking, it means really, and without any mistake, or equivocation or oblique meaning, or implication, or subterfuge, or omission, that I am not able, being at present rather weak in the head and able to work no more.” Distrust of words is a trait often found among those who create with their eyes.
heta-uma
A Japanese underground manga movement started in the 1970s with the magazine Garo. Heta-uma can be translated as “bad but good,” designating a work which looks poorly drawn, but with an aesthetically conscious quality, opposed to the polished look of mainstream manga.
daniel dunglas home
One of the most famous mediums of the 19th century. Regularly featured levitation at his gatherings. Musical instruments would also play by themselves. In 1868, he was convicted of fraud by a judge who considered spiritualism “perverse and calculated nonsense used to deceive the vain, weak, and foolish.”
prosopography
An investigation of the common characteristics of a group of people, whose individual biographies may be largely untraceable. Research subjects are analyzed by means of a collective study of their lives, in multiple career-line analysis. The discipline is considered to be one of the auxiliary sciences of history.
anna’s monologue from possession (1981)
“It’s like there’s two sisters: faith and chance. My faith can’t exclude chance, but my chance can’t explain faith. My faith didn’t allow me to wait for chance and chance didn’t give me enough faith. And then I read that private life is only a stage and I play in many parts that are smaller than me and yet I still play them. I suffer, I believe, I am, but at the same time I know there’s a third possibility like cancer or madness. But cancer or madness contort reality. The possibility I’m talking about pierces reality. I can’t exist by myself because I’m afraid of myself. Because I’m the maker of my own evil.”