Blood is the Life part 1

"The blood is the life" is both a biblical tenet, and a fact. Without blood rushing through our veins pumping oxygen into every cell of our body, our bodies stop. Full stop. Die. Bite the big one. We need pretty much every drop of blood we have safe inside our veins. Our blood is our life. So it behooves us to keep our blood firmly inside our own veins, right?

Then donors go out and share it, donating it willy-nilly to blood-banks and vampires. Why do they do it? Well, in the case of donating to blood-banks it is quite normal and everyday. A kind effort at sharing from one human to another, and honestly, we can share some without ill effect. But donating life-blood to vampires, now that is the proverbial horse of a different color. Technicolor even. Why do it?

All the usual reasons, one suspects. A search for love and glory? A hope that quid pro quo will be in effect and one will eventually go from donor to donor-ee? The hope that sharing a bit of the good-stuff will satisfy the vampire and the donor gets to stay alive? The purely Samaritan impulse to be of help to someone in need -- even if they are no longer quite, well, living? But this is a kind impulse nonetheless. A combination of the reasons? The reasons will be different for each donor, as will the requests whispered by the vampire. The vampire will say, "save me."

It is human to attempt to save someone, anyone, who needs saving. Loosing that urge, arguably, means that one is becoming a bit less human. I believe strongly in free will, in personal choice, and the reasons to become a walking McMeal are personal. But remember, the blood is the life.

Blood Brotherhood

Blood brotherhood, or blood sisterhood, or even blood acquaintance, is an idea that is older than I am, and definitely predates AIDs or other blood born disease worries. At rock-bottom, its promise is that of two person's blood-lines merging one to another brought about by physically mixing two person's blood. You become my true-born brother when your blood enters me, and I become your true-born brother when my blood enters you. As our bloods mix, our lives merge.

In olden-times blood brotherhood was a staple of pirates and boy scouts (and girl scouts I might add.)

So "what is the relationship of blood-bothers to vampires," you might ask; and rightly so.

It seems to SweetGoth that this idea of blood merging two lives together is metaphorically similar to the idea of a vampire drinking my blood, and my life energy entering him/her/it and allowing him/her/it to "live." The relationship becomes stronger if one considers the methods most vampires use to propagate their species -- a blood exchange through which the vampire takes the life energy of the "victim" and in exchange joins the "victim" to the vampire's undead family, an eternal joining.

With his long talon-like nails he gnashed his wrist vein and then pressed it to my own which he had opened and fed from. As his blood merged with my own, I felt heat running up my arm though the large vein. I felt light-headed, and then the world went away. When I woke three days later, he was there waiting for me; his brother.

Favorite Vampire Stories -- Vintage Style

Who has time to read these days, what with victims to find or vampires to slay. Well, this wonderful audio will allow you to take care of business while educating yourself about earlier vampires and their victims.

It contains:

• "The Vampire of Croglin Grange" by Augustus Hare
• "The Vampyre" by John Polodari
• "For the Blood is the Life" by F. Marion Crawford
• "Blood Lust" by Dion Foutune
• "Alymer Vance and the Vampire" by Alice and Claude Askew
• "Wake Not the Dead" by Johann Ludwig Tieck (my own up-dated and modernized version)
  
• "The Vampire" by Jan Naruda
• "The Vampire Nemesis" by J. Dolly
• "Good Lady Ducayne" by Mary E. Braddon
• "Mrs. Amworth" by E. F. Benson
• "The Vampire Maid" by Hume Nisbit
• "Dracula's Guest" by Bram Stoker
• "The True Story of a Vampire" By Eric Count Stenbock
• "Luella Miller" by Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
• "The House of the Vampire" by George Sylvester Vierec
• "The Tomb of Sara" by F. G. Loring

At just over 12 hours, this selection would give you lots of time for hands-free entertainment. It is being sold by Jimcin Recordings over on Audible.com. (Click here if you want to go there direct.)

I have to say, it is a very different experience to listen to the stories than it is to read them. They are much more frightening and goose-bumpy.

Vampires, Coffins, and Victims: and Me

Sweet Goth, aka Leslie, has been overwhelmed with running a vampire business (Grave Images llc) while teaching four assorted composition class, while editing  Scion Press books (Lena Cameron, Dreams and Omens) and working out the logistics of teaching webinars on composition subjects. All of this is teaching me that I have a "thing" about the supernatural in all its manifestations. And I am over-extended. And audience is KING!

Since October 1, 2011, my family and I have been running a vampire photography booth at a local "haunt," (Scream at the Beach's Jantzen Beach, OR location for those who know Portland).  We entered the Biz because I thought other folks interested in vampires, Goths, Emos, and all of us supernaturally inclined folks, would be interested in having their picture taken dressed as a vampire while emerging from a coffin. I know I would have paid someone else my hard earned cash for the opportunity to do so. 

Again, I am being reminded that audience is king. It seemed like a perfect fit -- both to us and the people producing the really scary haunt. We all thought we'd be pulling people out of the coffin, willy-nilly, to let the next into the coffin. Well, it hasn't quite worked out that way.

It turns out that the social dynamics of groups is tough to beat. And they don't steer our way. If one of the group finds it too "scary," the other isn't allowed to sit in the coffin. If it isn't free, it isn't worth it to sit in the coffin. If we won't fit nine fairly beefy adults into the coffin for one $8.00 group shot, it isn't worth it to sit in the coffin. 

Don't get me wrong, those very few who have "gotten it" have been great fun. But like in all things, know your audience, and repeat after me, "Location, location, location." Our biz would be a go in at least three place which aren't Portland, OR. If you live in New Orleans, New York, or London, contact me for a great business plan.

Bad Endings Bite

Spoiler Alert and Bad Ending Warning: Forever Knight's ending, well, bites!

Sweet Goth has just spent some serious time watching the 1990's three season series Forever Knight, a television series produced in Canada. It took awhile before I adjusted to the 1990's hair and clothing (and on a side note, the producers might have varied both the hairstyles and clothing of the female mainstays), and adjusting to the glowy green vampire eyes, but the story-lines mostly were good enough that those could be shuddered at, but ignored.

What I can't ignore, and really resent, is when writers and producers are so desperate to end the series that they have the characters break character. (Oh, and the constant injections of the past clips as filler is also resented, but really.) The viewers have watched though 69 episodes, they have invested in the characters as they have behaved throughout all those episodes. So Nick, is anguished at being a vampire -- 800 years of "oh, damn, I'm eternal?" -- but he is trying really hard to not drink human. His friend Natalie, a Medical Examiner, is helping him in his search to become human. Over the course of the series, we have found he's brought several people "across." But when the time comes to split with his best bud and creator LaCroix because LaCroix declares it is time, Nick promises his non-girlfriend girlfriend Natalie to bring her "over" because he doesn't want to leave her behind. And instead of bringing her "across," he kills her? Why? Was she somehow chained to the city of Toronto and unable to leave the border? Could she not have traveled with them as a human? And then LaCroix who has been established as being a totally amoral and selfishly vicious alpha, kills his son because Nick wants him to. Again, why? Nothing in the character has established him as willing to kill his son.

Yes, I'm upset. I sat through 70 repetitions of the theme blurb "... endless, forever night." (Endless IS forever -- chose ONE and stick with it!) I deserved a more coherent ending.

Kicking Ass! Kipling's "The Vampire"

While perusing really really old material today so that you, beloved readers, wouldn't need to do it, I ran into three responses to Kipling's "The Vampire." Then I ran into several more. Then I dug deeper yet and discovered there are more than 2200 extant and readable recountings and responses to Kipling's "The Vampire." And I searched only from 1897 to 1940.

The reactions run from story to play to poem and range from vampire as economic metaphor to vampire political statements to vampiric gendered roles to vampire at work. I've rarely seen such a widespread use of vampire.

The version I'll sharing this time is by William Rex, called -- you guessed it! -- "The Vampire!"
It is from a magazine called The painter and decorator, Volume 23 -- 1909

The Vampire (Laborer’s Version.)

(With Apologies to Kipling)

A fool there was and he toiled away

(Even as you and I).
For a cage and crumb, with nothing to say --
(Some call it worse than death grim and gray) —
But the fool he called it his full day's pay—

(Even as you and I).

Oh, the life we waste and the strife we taste—
And the work of our head and hand
Belong to this world, which does not know—

(And now we know that it never can know)
And does not understand.

A fool there was and he lived a slave—

(Even as you and I.)
To a master who drove him remorseless to grave—
(And the master did not heed the wounds he gave)—

But the fool never dreamt that his life he could save

(Even as you and I).

Oh, the miseries he lived for the crumbs he received –

And the kicks which a dog would abhor:

He took from the man who cared not to know why –

(And now we know he never cared why)

And did not understand.

The fool was stripped of his bloodsucked hide –

(Even as you and I).

Which he might have saved if he only had tried –

But a fool is a fool, though wise men he may chide)

So some of him lived, but the best of him dies

(Even as you and I).

And it isn’t the blow, or the red-blood flow,

That stings like a white-hot brand –

It’s coming to know that he never did try

To conquer his lord and make him know why –

And force him to understand.

(Sweet Goth here. Doesn't a poem kick ass when it can be re-purposed so endlessly yet still have relevance in its new incarnation?)

Earth to Earth Dust to Dust

"Earth to Earth, Ashes to Ashes, Dust to Dust" the playbook disclaims, working quite nicely with the vampire universe since it blends both Christian beginning to vampires' Twentieth/Twenty-first century style.

So, in case you are not up the the Christian beginning of human from dust, I'd refer you to Genesis -- the section where God picks up a handful of "clay" or "dust," spits on it to moisten it and forms Adam, the first human. (Yes, man = dust and Holy spit.) One assumes that the Holy spit is what gives a human its immortal soul, but that is only speculation.

Then, Adam gets bit by a vampire -- and whether he looses his soul or not, his dietary tastes change. But his human family doesn't know about his new existence; he gets buried. If here were still fully human, his existence would end here and he'd return to the earth which he came from. But, Adam emerges from the earth not quite human this time, although he still wears a human shell no soul is home.

Enter the slayer such as Angel or Buffy (or Spike) in the Whedon-verse. If they are doing their job correctly, they will stick a stake through Adam's non-beating heart and what is left will now puff into dust. This is dual up-side. It nicely disposes of the corpse, and completes the Biblical circle. Earth to earth, dust to dust. The full measure of a man.