Paragenesis: Stories of the Dawn of Wraeththu (53 page)

This is an edited version of
the article that appears in the printed book, since it includes
photos and illustrations that have been removed from the ebook
edition.

I’ve written often about how
the Goth scene of the 80s greatly influenced the development of
Wraeththu, and this is true insofar as the novels drew upon that
scene, but seeing as the concept has been with me since my early
teens, its initial influences go much farther back.

I’ve recently been pondering
what first spark set it all off and have been reinvestigating
things I was into as a teenager and before – what I can remember.
Music has always played a big part in my life and I often think how
lucky I was to be young through the tail end of Hippydom, on to the
Glam scene of the 70s, later Punk, New Romantics and then Goth. In
comparison to what’s around nowadays, which seems a bit dreary to
me, that was a heady ride! But despite how those flamboyant scenes
inspired and directed me, there was one perhaps more intrinsic
influence that I have recently remembered. (Some delving into the
hard drive of the mind was required!)

I don’t know exactly how young
I was, but it was between 7 and 10 years old. Every weekend, my
parents used to farm me out to grandparents so they could indulge
in a hedonistic lifestyle, a propensity for which I inherited from
them! My father’s parents lived in a detached house with a big
garden, and after my uncle left home, (he was a lot younger than my
Dad), I used to sleep in his old bedroom, which was larger than the
one I’d been allocated since a baby. I remember one summer day
sitting on the floor in that room, poring through my uncle’s book
shelves, which contained all the books he’d been given as a child.
It was a sunny day, and that quiet time in the afternoon, when all
you used to be able to hear was the sounds of kids playing in the
distance and bird song. I pulled out a copy of The Second Jungle
Book by Rudyard Kipling and began to leaf through it. It wasn’t an
illustrated volume as such, but had large chapter headings, which
were like wood cuts. In a couple of these illustrations, the jungle
boy Mowgli was depicted, but this was a far cry from how he was
portrayed in the later Disney movie. He was shown as androgynously
naked, with streaming hair. I just stared at these images in
absolute fascination. They excited me, which I suppose was in some
pre-sexual kind of sense, but as well as making me want to read the
book, it inspired me to make up my own stories about this gorgeous
being. So began my fantasies of the long-haired androgyne. I really
think this must have been a defining moment in the creation of
Wraeththu.

Thus, with my interest in the
androgynous dramatically established, when the Glam Rock scene
exploded in a maelstrom of glitter and feather boas in the 70s I
was naturally drawn to it. But my introduction to it as an
ingenuous school girl was another image that brought me up short.
It was either in the girl’s magazine
Jackie
(how many UK
40-50 somethings remember
Jackie
?), or
Fab 208
,
another required periodical of the fashionable teen.
Fab 208
was connected with Radio Luxembourg, the then cool pirate station
to listen to at night. Anyway, to that image. It was of the band, T
Rex, one of their first promotional pictures following the success
of their first and second singles in the charts. When I first saw
it, I remember actually being surprised, because it so echoed the
kind of fantasies I had. For a moment, I experienced a kind of
territorial annoyance that other people were tapping into my
private dreams. Marc Bolan and Mickey Finn were shown as
white-faced and long-haired, with a dreamy expression in their eyes
that spoke of mystical secrets. These were the creatures of my
fantasies made flesh. I didn’t have a name for them then; they just
existed as shadowy entities in my head. But somehow, here they
were, externalised and in print, and soon to be drooled and swooned
over by a battalion of pubescent females. I can remember vividly
the disgust I felt at seeing T Rex gig footage on TV, where
thousands of sweaty, hysterical teenage girls were screaming at
their idols. I was too repulsed even to consider being part of
that. Even at that young age, I felt my interest was more
aesthetic. I shunned the reaction of the masses, downright
infuriated they misunderstood and belittled the allure of these
on-stage personae. It can hardly be contested that T Rex was the
first ‘slashable’ band, if you understand my meaning. Right from
the start there were rumours about their sexuality and the
whispered suggestion that Bolan and Finn might actually enjoy
rather more than a musical relationship. How true these rumours
were I have no idea, because it’s feasible an outrageously
bi-sexual slant might have been deliberately introduced to increase
sales and provoke publicity. You only have to rewatch the movie
Velvet Goldmine (an accurate portrayal of those times, I think), to
see how everyone in the alternative scene of the day suddenly
thought it was fashionable to be bi. But I knew nothing of any of
that, because I was young, naïve, still at school and my social
life revolved around friends who had ponies. (Yes, it’s true, even
though it changed rather swiftly after that.)

I began to write stories
inspired by the fantastical public image of T Rex. Bolan and Finn,
as the band, were as fictional no doubt as the things I wrote, but
I didn’t care about that. What is most annoying is that I destroyed
a lot of what I wrote, because I went through a phase of being
terrified of my parents reading my writing. Even then, I wrote mild
‘slash’, and I often felt guilty about it. Why, I don’t know,
because now I don’t think my parents would have minded one bit, if
in fact they’d ever bothered to read my exercise books full of
stories, but schoolgirls can have rather strange ideas about the
older generation. What I feared most was that they would laugh. My
stories were set in a fantasy world and I really regret now that
they didn’t survive. I still have a few of them, but so many were
lost. In fact, these early stories were set in the world that
eventually turned up in my novel ‘Sign for the Sacred’, so it’s as
‘old’ as Wraeththu, which is quite bizarre to realise. I began a
novel called ‘Sun Incarnate’, which I still have, even though I
never finished it. Mickey Finn was the physical inspiration for the
character Micythus, who was the original prototype for Resenence
Jeopardy. When I finally got round to writing ‘Sign for the Sacred’
though, it was not with all those early influences in mind.

Of course, I can’t leave David
Bowie out of the equation either. In particular, his album ‘Diamond
Dogs’ was a soundtrack for me to write to, and I think that album
was also somewhat inspired by William Burroughs’ work. Bowie came
prominently onto the scene after T Rex and was another seminal
artist of the Glam movement. It’s hardly a secret that the film
‘Velvet Goldmine’ fictionalised (and perhaps fantasised) his
relationship with wild child of rock, Iggy Pop. Bowie’s on stage
antics with his guitarist, Mick Ronson, made headlines and
naturally he became another of my muses. I see in Bowie’s (then)
on-stage personae the roots of Thiede: the trickster, the magician,
the manipulator, a creature of many colours.

But long before Wraeththu came
into being, I began a sequel to ‘Sun Incarnate’, called ‘Child of
the Morning’, even though I’d never finished the first one. I just
had a different story to tell, influenced by new inspirations,
although set in the same world. Micythus was still in it, although
this time as a secondary character to the main protagonist,
Phrynis. ‘Child of the Morning’ was greatly influenced by such
writers as Mary Renault and Jane Gaskell. It was the story of a
beautiful boy taken into captivity and having to cope with life in
a royal harem, beset by bitchery and betrayal. By this time, I’d
read ‘The Persian Boy’ by Mary Renault, (but for the fact ‘Child’
had completely different characters, it was a kind of homage to
‘The Persian Boy’), and my interests in beautiful, androgynous
creatures had truly coalesced. Also, my musical and aesthetical
inspirations had moved on. I’d left school and had gone to the
local art college. Round about this time, The New York Dolls – the
epitome of proto Punk/Glam sleaze – released their first album. The
minute I saw photographs of them in the music press, I knew they
were my kind of band. And when I bought the album, I wasn’t
disappointed. ‘Personality Crisis’ and ‘Jet Boy’ are still
classics, and I don’t think anyone can deny that The Dolls were a
huge influence on alternative music, especially early Punk. They
were like something out of a science fiction movie. They belonged
in a post holocaust world of sexbots and ravaged cities. There were
reports in the music press of guys making out at the back of venues
at their shows. The Dolls were another influence on my writing and
their weird, almost comic book decadence went into the pot to help
create Wraeththu. Round about this time I also discovered William
Burroughs’ novel, ‘The Wild Boys’ (later to be immortalised by
Duran Duran, though in rather censored form!). Blatantly
homo-erotic, bizarrely magical, this book I think gave me the
courage to write more honestly, and more confidently. Its narrative
is hardly linear, and neither can you really engage with any of the
characters, but the ideas, and some of the imagery, (especially the
tribal stuff), totally captivated me.

Shortly after discovering The
Dolls, it was time for The Ramones to make an appearance, and
although this band were hardly beings of ambivalent sexuality and
glam, the music was great. If anything, it was an extension of the
Dolls’ dementia. ‘I Don’t Wanna Go Down to the Basement’ and ‘Beat
on the Brat’, were two especial favourites of mine. I also
developed a huge crush on Joey Ramone (sadly now dead), and he made
it as physical inspiration into several of my stories in various
guises.

It was during these years, from
the last year of school and the short time I spent at art college
that I wrote the first Wraeththu stories and poems, but I didn’t
actually come up with the term ‘Wraeththu’ until a couple of years
after that. This was when I had a dreary receptionist’s job at a
building company, situated out in the middle of nowhere, far from
the edge of town on an early industrial estate. We didn’t get many
visitors. I used to spend my time, when my work for the day was
done, writing stories and poems, drawing pictures and reading
ancient dictionaries, full of antiquated words. I remember I used
to draw pictures of my co-workers as cartoon animals, which for
some reason were very popular, even if they weren’t always very
flattering! When the company finally went into liquidation, I wrote
a fantasy tale about the whole sad demise – really should try and
dig that out, it had its amusing moments – and gave it to all my
colleagues as a keepsake. But during that time, I found the word
Wraeththu in an etymological dictionary and for some odd reason
fell in love with it. It meant ‘wrath’ but also ‘rake’ as in the
gardening or farming implement. However, it wasn’t the meaning of
the word that snared me, just its shape and sound.

For a long while, I left the
world of Wraeththu behind, as ‘real life’ concerns of a more
demanding full time job, and a partner who actually resented me
writing, came to the fore. But the siren call of that world was not
to be denied. In the very early 80s I discovered my independence,
ditched the controlling boyfriend and bought a house, several rooms
of which I rented out to friends, including members of the band
‘The Closets of Emily Child’ whose guitarist became my new partner.
This band had a cameo part in ‘The Enchantments of Flesh and
Spirit’, although none of the real people involved actually
inspired any of the characters. They just wanted the band to be in
the book! These were the days of early Goth, when New Romanticism
metabolised into something darker yet in many ways more camp. I
began writing my Wraeththu stories again, determined now to finish
a novel, egged on and encouraged by the manager of the The Closets,
who was there to be Mr Pushy for me when I was too shy and
embarrassed to let people see my work. And happily, there was a new
generation of musician pretty boys to inspire me. Bands like Gene
Loves Jezebel, Getting the Fear/Into a Circle and Christian Death
all had members who physically inspired the characters of
‘Enchantments’ and its sequels. Jay and Mike Aston from Gene Loves
Jezebel certainly helped shape the characters of Cobweb and Terzian
respectively. And looking at old pictures of them, it’s easy to see
why.

Pellaz’s earliest physical
inspiration was undoubtedly a strange meld of Mowgli of the Jungle
Books and Johnny Thunders from the New York Dolls, but strangely, I
never had a real life person who inspired the look of Cal. He was –
and remains – an archetype, almost impossible to capture in a
picture. The idea and shape of Vaysh came from Getting the Fear’s
vocalist, Bee (later that band became Into a Circle). If you can
find any pictures online of the later band’s EP covers, you will
see why they were an influence for Wraeththu material. Seel was
inspired partly by Christian Death’s David Glass, who in his youth
was positively unearthly in appearance.

It’s interesting for me to
wander back down the memories and recall how the ideas for my
fictional characters came together. The living people whose public
personae inspired many of the Wraeththu are now twenty or thirty
years older, and the enigmatic beauty they once possessed has no
doubt long gone. Most of the wild boys of those days have probably
now settled down to a humdrum life with wives and children, have
become drug burnouts, or are - at worst – dead (quite a few are,
come to think of it). Happily, I discovered while researching some
of these people online that several, such as Bee, David Glass and
the Aston Brothers are still working in the music industry and
thriving. I hope others are also continuing to be creative and
successful. But whatever those shining boys might be doing now, or
not, they are immortalised as they once were within the pages of
the Wraeththu novels.