Inspired by

Nyarlathotep
This week, I read this story by H. P. Lovecraft and repeatedly viewed the short film of "Nyarlathotep" by Christian Matzke (image above). The tale of a swarthy ancient, come out of Egypt to show us wondrous things, seems to be infusing my sensation of everyday life.

And especially of the concerts I have been attending at The Lab in the Mission as part of SoundWave's Green Sound Festival.

Here I saw alchemical performers who seemed somehow kin to Nyarlathotep.

Barn Owl, the duo of silent young men, bending sound that loosed some inner voice in each of us. "Into the lands of civilization came Nyarlathotep, swarthy, slender, and sinister ..."

Jim Haynes constructed a symphony from whispering chemical reactions within laboratory glassware projected on a screen above him. "...always buying strange instruments of glass and metal and combining them into instruments yet stranger."

Theresa Wong sat playing her cello and belting out sounds with her perfect voice, but, through some strange instrumentation of her microphone, what we heard were wholly unhuman vocalizations that haunted and inspired me. "And where Nyarlathotep went, rest vanished, for the small hours were rent with the screams of nightmare."

"And I heard it hinted abroad that those who knew Nyarlathotep looked on sights which others knew not."

Barn Owl

Jim Haynes

green sound