The winter has definitely turned the corner here in the English Midlands, and another February is over. The land is not yet in the sunny season of “sportive lambkins”, as Lovecraft once put it. But after four pounding and bitter northerly wind-storms, it’s now all calmed down again. During the final wind-storm it got so cold that I had to put the heater on for the first time this winter, for a few hours. But now our birds and plants are definitely saying that a sustained spring is just around the corner. The pandemic measures are also removed here in the UK, and a relative freedom also appears to be around the corner. One thing not being removed is costs, which are soaring everywhere and likely to go higher. As always, Tentaclii readers can help me to to enjoy the spring a bit more please, by giving a few $’s a month via Patreon or by boosting their donation. Or by buying my books and other fundraiser items.
In Lovecraft scholarship this month, I noted that the Polish Litteraria Copernicana journal was a Lovecraft special-issued titled “Lovecraftiana”. I linked the forthcoming ‘Symposium from the Untold Depths: Lovecraft and the Popular’ in the UK. S.T. Joshi will be in the UK in May, and giving at least one museum lecture here. This month I also completed a substantial piece for his Lovecraft Annual 2022 and submitted it.
On forthcoming books, there was news in The Fossil that the book Adventurous Liberation: H.P. Lovecraft in Florida is moving forward and the author stated it has “gone to the editor for final review”. Ken Faig, Jr.’s forthcoming book Lovecraftian People and Places has listed at Hippocampus.
In small historical context posts at Tentaclii, I was pleased to find a picture of leading New York educator Angelo Patri, who helped Lovecraft’s friend Everett McNeil at a crucial time. I stumbled on “Desultory Notes on Cats” (1844) by Edgar Allen Poe and it proved to be an obvious (if regrettably short) precursor to Lovecraft’s own essay. I was pleased to find a clear overhead photo of a favourite Lovecraft letter-writing spot on the Seekonk river, albeit from 1972 rather than 1932.
I noted a Ladd Observatory Event in Providence that appears to be an annual ‘open observing night’. I’m uncertain if a visitor can obtain access at other times, still less ease themselves into the observing chair. Most probably not the one Lovecraft would have used, but still.
In my ‘Picture Postals’ posts I took a visual look at Lovecraft’s visit to New Orleans; with maps and pictures I tested to destruction the possibility that the High Bridge was the site at which Lovecraft observed the 1925 eclipse; I looked at Lovecraft’s final attendances of public lectures at Brown, and found a glimpse of an inner lounge; and I also looked at the Yale quadrangles he enjoyed.
Over in Europe, Lovecraftian theatre seems to be still alive despite the pandemic. There was an announcement of a Lovecraft opener for the Kreuzgangspiele in May, and “Lovecraft, Mon Amour” will have another staging in April. The acclaimed Portuguese director Edgar Pera has also produced a new Lovecraft movie. There was also a touch of theatre activity in New York, where the Write Act Repertory called for Lovecraft plays.
Here in the UK the ITV TV station is apparently making a Lovecraft documentary of some sort, which will be interesting if there’s some costume drama added. In the USA a TV-movie adaptation of “Dreams in the Witch House” is said to be due in 2022.
In fiction I noted the new Dreamlands anthology New Maps of Dream (2021). I also noted a couple of Tolkien related items, which may have interested some readers.
In art the new ‘Dream by Wombo’ art-AI has interesting possibilities for weird art and illustration. Though the results are sadly ‘non-commercial use’ according to the two guys who are Wombo. The newspaper El Pais gave the world a very simple and pleasing Lovecraft caricature via a comic-strip. Chaosium offered a new video profile of their key artist Loic Muzy, titled ‘Illustrating Cthulhu’.
I didn’t look for anything game-related this month, but there’s likely to have been activity there both in videogames and RPGs.
In audio, the Voluminous podcast this month featured Lovecraft’s letters to fellow amateur journalist Edward Cole. Librovox popped out an unexpected public-domain reading of of Henry S. Whitehead’s “Editorial Prejudice Against the Occult” (1922), which gives a snapshot of magazine editor prejudice against the sort of stories that his friend Lovecraft was beginning to write. I also looked at Eno as weirdist and worked out an initial-listening set of albums for the instrumentals, from which one might pick out a refined playlist. I found the unusual archive of historic ‘Rhode Island Fish Sounds’ in audio, though sadly not under Creative Commons.
Audio software was also a focus this month, which may have been of interest to readers who are also into podcasting and spoken-word production. As part of getting a historic interview into text, after a little research I was able to upgrade my tools. I found the desktop Nuance Dragon Professional 15 does pretty good offline AI auto-transcription from a podcast .MP3 file. I finally got rid of Audacity as an editor, and now have the equally freeware replacement Ocenaudio. And I discovered that Izotope RX is a great AI repair kit for various common glitches in spoken-word audio. Those faced with an old interview, which has echo and other problems, may find things like Izotope RX’s ‘Dialogue De-reverb’ module especially useful.
I’ve completed the next issue of Digital Art Live which will be on ‘Plants’, especially 3D-model alien plants. As a side-post I noted here on Tentaclii that Dark Worlds Quarterly has been doing a fine ongoing series on plant monsters in the pulps and golden age comics.
Ok, that’s it for the short and cold month of February. Onward into March…
