fragment

''naturally we cannot expect all weird tales to conform absolutely to any theoretical model. creative minds are uneven and the best of fabrics have their dull spots... moreover, much of the choicest weird work is unconcious; appearing in memorable fragments scattered through material whose massed effect may be of a very different cast... therefore we must judge a weird tale... by the emotional level which it attains at its least mundane point... if the proper sensations are excited, such a "high spot" must be admited on its own merits as weird literature,''

h.p.lovecraft, super natural horror in literature.


''the house in which i live is haunted by the noise of dripping water. always day and night, sunmmer and winter, something is dripping somewhere. ... lying awake at nights, i listen with a mixture of pleasure and irritation to its curious cadences ... it is an odd sort of music. one listens to it as one lies in bed, slipping gradually into sleep, with a curious uneasy emotion. ... the music of the drops is symbol and type of the whole universe; it is forever, as it were, asymptotic to sense, infinitely close to significance, but never touching it . ...

''and growing drowsier and drowsier, i listen to the ceasless tune, the hollow soliloquy in the cistern, the sharp metallic rapping of the drops that fall from the roof upon the stones below. ... it is morning, and the water is still dripping as irritatingly and persistently as ever. ...''

''sometimes the incoherence of the drop music is too much to be borne. the listener insists that the asymptote shall somehow touch the line of sense. ... the drops obey reluctantly; they play what you desire, ... but this is an extremly dangerous method of laying the haunting ghost whose voice is the drop of water. for once you have given the drops something to sing or say, they will go on singing and saying it forever.''

aldous huxley, water music.