Sweet Dreams are Made of This

 


“Coffins. Coffins, unfortunately, are a necessity” ~ Louis

“I can see you in white satin” ~ Lestat

Interview with the Vampire

So, if Necessity is the Mother of Invention, then perhaps it only makes sense to invent or envision the most luxurious of necessities. Humans have ideal homes, ideal mates, ideal cars. As a vampire, what is your ideal coffin? Where would you slumber sweetest? 

My own little nest is tucked beneath the shady Hemlocks of Pere Lachaise, the necropolis that cradles Abelard and Heloise, Oscar Wilde, Balzac, Apollinaire and Jim Morrison. I can’t help it. I’ve always been a bit elitist. 

Don’t ask me precisely where, of course. Such knowledge is privileged information; I’m sure you understand. I do not receive mail or visitors at this particular address. I entertain in the catacombs and the opera house. My guests feast off the ruined innocence of street urchins. And as for my correspondence, the Montmartre post mistress forwards all items to Sacre Coeur, where a renegade priest faithfully intercepts my missives. The softest of promises and the vilest of threats keep him most reliable in his charge.

I digress. My resting place.

A casket of ebony, richly inlaid with a riot of roses, tumbled together and pierced by wrought iron thorns. The metaphor amuses me. Gustav Moreau executed the original drawings, but Hector Guimard brought the design to life. Unbeknownst to his craftsmen, while they labored on those glorious portals marking the entrance into the bowels of the Paris Underground, they forged and carved another exquisite portal. A threshold and a destination combined, marking a rather different transition. 

The exterior is obdurate, an unyielding exoskeleton, polished and smooth with no discernible joint or seam. But like Aladdin's Cave, it opens to one who has mastered its secrets. The mechanism is flawless, a flick of a finger, and like the oyster its treasures are revealed. But only Hector and myself have known that mystery and he took it with him to his grave, from which he does not rise. 

But the sharp facade is a deception, the heart is all tenderness and yielding, lined in lush rose silk velvet and filled with the snowiest of swan’s down. In the moments before dawn I immerse myself, the ivory of my skin sinks into the camouflage of the feathers, a trace of red at the corners of my mouth, the darkness of my hair threading through the softness. A predatory and feral Snow White, locked in slumber until the cool kiss of twilight releases me and I rise to seek my own particular poison.

A Rose By Any Other Name

The right combination of vowels and consonants, the felicitous collusion of sound and sense, will take you far. Who would have delicious shivers of fright or anticipation over a vampire named Morton? Or, let's say, Prudence? If Dracula had gone by the sobriquet of Steve, Custodian of Terror, would he have struck anything but mild derision in the hearts of readers and moviegoers everywhere? I don't think so.

Juliet was most mistaken. A rose by any other name would NOT smell as sweet, nor would a misnamed thorn prick so sharply. A proper vampire needs an appropriately unsettling name. If you're having trouble choosing between Spike, Lord of Coagulation and Terrence of the Bloody Torrents, there is aid in your hour of need. Some macabre soul with too much time on their hands has created a website dedicated to providing appropriate vampire names.

In the spirit of inquiry and iniquity, I have pioneered the enterprise. Never say I'll send my acolytes where I have not ventured myself. My fiendish epithet is below:

The Great Archives determine you to have gone by the identity:

Magdalene Beau Pre

Known in some parts of the world as:

Haunt of The Beltane Feasts

The Great Archives Record:

One of ritual and pleasure - presiding over the gluttonous feasts of the wickedest night of the year.

Of course, the devil is in the details, and presentation is everything. Words are always open to interpretation, and the ability to spin, when necessary, will take you far in life (look what it's done for the tobacco companies).

So, if my mother were to ask, I've decided that MY vampire name means that I'm a generous, gracious host who loves to entertain.

Followers, find your vampire name here, post it in the comments below, and give your spin.

In Honor of Janus

Janus, the two-faced Roman god of doorways and gates, presided over beginnings and endings. Able to see into the past and the future, he lent his name to the first month of our year, a time of transition when we contemplate where we have been and where we are going.

Curiously enough, he also presided over the fundamental transitions and dualities of human existence, over that which is natural and that which is cultured, over the primitive and the civilized. Over, one might say, the dilemma of following one’s instincts and following one’s ethics. Should we strive to perfect or to accept our natures? Which is more authentic? Can they be the same? And so, in this context, as we begin our studies, let us contemplate these two Edwards, Weyland and Cullen. In the case of a vampire, is it noble or foolish to adopt the perspective of a species seemingly designed as one's sustenance?

For Edward Weyland, his human appearance and anatomy is biological camouflage, the mimicry of a predator perfectly adapted to stalk and lure his prey. He contemplates humans as a tiger might regard a gazelle or wild pig by the stream. They are food. He is true to his nature, comfortable in his position at the top of the food chain. But there is a cost. The humans he hunts are the creatures nearest in nature to himself, and, to the best of his knowledge, he is the only one of his kind. Psychologically speaking, Weyland has perfect integrity. And yet he is subject to a degree of isolation and ennui incalculable to the humans he encounters.

Edward Cullen, on the other hand, is one of a new breed of vampire. Human once himself, in love with a mortal maid, he sympathizes with his natural quarry. He has subjugated his thirst for human blood and subsists instead on animal blood, rejecting the aspect of his nature that is monstrous by human standards. In a way, he both resists and represents change, clinging to his past nature while striving to shape his new.

In short, Edward Cullen's concept of “playing with his food” is diametrically opposed to Edward Weyland's, who once remarked in a theoretical discussion of vampirism,“You are mixing up dinner with sex, and not, I gather, for the first time.”