the journal

Edgar Allan Poe’s A Dream Within a Dream: You are not wrong, who deem, That my days have been a dream

Analyzing Poe’s A Dream Within A Dream is an exercise in futility. Poe’s intentions can’t be known, but it doesn’t stop people from trying.

Read straightforward you get a sense that Poe is on the verge of loss, he’s kissing his loved one goodbye, and if there’s a sense that he’s accepted it, it’s because accepted the reality, or unreality of life. You can’t live a dream for long, because it’s simply a dream within the dream that is life.

In A Dream Within A Dream, everything slips away, like sand through the fingertips, you can’t hold onto anything, particularly something that is fluid. A dream within a dream is fluid by nature, for dreams aren’t bound by nature’s law. Instead they build upon the imagination, where there are no laws.

Life, like sand held in the fingertips beneath the waves is always being sucked into the deep, washed away by nature’s tides. Man has the ability to imagine anything he wants, and in the imagination those dreams can live. But in life, we are bound by nature’s laws, which deem in the end, all is lost.

https://youtu.be/zFe8zhpuOXE

Download Edgar Allan Poe’s Spirits of the Dead on Bandcamp

Learn more about The Conqueror Worm, the album by Folkswitch

A Dream Within A Dream

Take this kiss upon the brow!
And, in parting from you now,
Thus much let me avow —
You are not wrong, who deem
That my days have been a dream;

Yet if hope has flown away
In a night, or in a day,
In a vision, or in none,
Is it therefore the less gone?
All that we see or seem
Is but a dream within a dream.

I stand amid the roar
Of a surf-tormented shore,
And I hold within my hand
Grains of the golden sand —

How few! yet how they creep
Through my fingers to the deep,
While I weep — while I weep!
O God! Can I not grasp
Them with a tighter clasp?
O God! can I not save
One from the pitiless wave?
Is all that we see or seem
But a dream within a dream?

Edgar Allan Poe’s Annabel Lee: But we loved with a love that was more than love

Annabel Lee was Poe’s last poem. Legends abound that it’s based on a story from Charleston, South Carolina, but that’s unlikely. In reality he wrote it about his wife, recently deceased.

It’s the story of a man haunted by love, and follows love into the grave. It’s an exploration of obsessive love, doomed love that keep the mind busy for some time, working it out for ourselves.

Holding onto your love after the death, literal or metaphoric of the one you love, is a romantic notion. It’s one we hold true in the beginning of relationships, and perhaps we never really think of the lessons of Annabel Lee till we’re forced to. Annabel Lee suffered physical death, but any permanent separation to the one left behind is a kind of death as well. One doesn’t have to be a widow or widower to identify with the longing and loss found in Annabel Lee.

Nor does one have to experience or even long to experience the implied necrophilia of Poe’s Annabel Lee. But who amongst haven’t longed to hold in our arms one long and forever lost to us, and remember a time when we believed that even death could never break our love.

Poe did return to the pursuit, for he did love beautiful women, but perhaps his last poem shone a light into his heart, which said his heart really wasn’t into it. But instead lie at night with his bride, in that sepulcher by the sea.

https://youtu.be/Vnjk0yWfyNw

Download Edgar Allan Poe’s Deep In Earth on Bandcamp

Learn more about The Conqueror Worm, the album by Folkswitch

Annabel Lee

It was many and many a year ago,

In a kingdom by the sea,

That a maiden there lived whom you may know

By the name of Annabel Lee;

And this maiden she lived with no other thought

Than to love and be loved by me.

I was a child and she was a child,

In this kingdom by the sea,

But we loved with a love that was more than love—

I and my Annabel Lee—

With a love that the wingèd seraphs of Heaven

Coveted her and me.

And this was the reason that, long ago,

In this kingdom by the sea,

A wind blew out of a cloud, chilling

My beautiful Annabel Lee;

So that her highborn kinsmen came

And bore her away from me,

To shut her up in a sepulchre

In this kingdom by the sea.

The angels, not half so happy in Heaven,

Went envying her and me—

Yes!—that was the reason (as all men know,

In this kingdom by the sea)

That the wind came out of the cloud by night,

Chilling and killing my Annabel Lee.

But our love it was stronger by far than the love

Of those who were older than we—

Of many far wiser than we—

And neither the angels in Heaven above

Nor the demons down under the sea

Can ever dissever my soul from the soul

Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;

For the moon never beams, without bringing me dreams

Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;

And the stars never rise, but I feel the bright eyes

Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;

And so, all the night-tide, I lie down by the side

Of my darling—my darling—my life and my bride,

In her sepulchre there by the sea—

In her tomb by the sounding sea.

Interlude: The Hearse Song, a.k.a. The Worms Crawl In The Worms Crawl Out

The Hearse Song is one of the first songs I ever learned, albeit in a shortened version”

The worms crawl in,
The worms crawl out.
The worms play pinochle on your snout.
You spread it on a piece of bread,
And that’s what you eat when you are dead.

Now a keen eye will instantly recognize that there’s something missing. What the hell are you eating on a piece of bread? I learned The Hearse Song from my sister, but it was a popular song in Jefferson grade school, and we all sang it the same way. It turns out there are regional variations.

It was some decades later, during the recording of this piece that I noticed the omission. We were laying down the base tracks for The Conqueror Worm which at that point was three sections. But I ran out of lyrics on the second, and needed something to fill the space while we played. I opened my mouth and The Hearse Song fell out.

There wasn’t a lot of time to figure this out. Teelin’s time is valuable, and we only had a weekend to record three drum parts. Being a considerate neighbor we like to quit drum related activity somewhat early. We had the riff and no idea what Teelin would play, but when he did that, we knew we had to record it. And it was little more than an excuse to let him unleash everything he’d built up sowing restraint throughout recording The Raven.

This is maybe half of his performance, because I eventually ran out of alternate lines for the Hearse Song. Teelin can, and will fill every available space with drums given the opportunity. To be young and hyperactive again …

https://youtu.be/0gwdoH8u0bk

Download Edgar Allan Poe’s Spirits of the Dead on Bandcamp

Learn more about The Conqueror Worm, the album by Folkswitch

Edgar Allan Poe’s Deep In Earth: And I must weep alone

Poe’s Deep in Earth is a curious couplet. It was found pencilled in on a copy of the manuscript to Eulalie, which speaks of the joy of his marriage.

Perhaps that scribbling is Poe thinking out loud, taking a note to remind himself of a couplet which he might use later. Perhaps he was adding a postscript to Eulalie, what happens after the ending.

His wife had died earlier that year and Poe had fallen apart. It was in this stasis that he found madness, and Poe’s Deep In Earth comes from that period , unable to leave his wife’s memory and begin life anew. Till he could throw over her ghost which haunted him, he was condemned, like one of protagonists to walk in that grey twilight, to wander amongst the graves. Poe looked at death unflinchingly, the conqueror worm dissolves all of us, the gruesome details we inevitably ponder when our loved ones are placed in the ground.

And Poe had a better imagination than most. Poe’s Deep In Earth is more than a metaphysical thought, but also speaks to the reality of the moment.

Deep in earth is where we console ourselves that our loved one’s body is safe. But in reality, deep in earth is simply a way to take the waste of life from our sight. Bodies aren’t buried deep for the benefit of nature, unless by number they become a health hazard. Nature disposes of the dead if given a chance, quite gleefully. We bury our dead to avoid nature’s blight on our consciousness.

But the grave to Poe, as it is to us is a barrier, between ourselves and those we once loved. It’s a closed gate to the physical manifestation of the person we loved. We can cross through that gate only by going deep in earth, to our own grave. Where we must lie, and weep alone.

https://youtu.be/WLN29P01FSs

Download Edgar Allan Poe’s Deep In Earth on Bandcamp

Learn more about The Conqueror Worm, the album by Folkswitch

Edgar Allan Poe’s Deep In Earth

Deep in earth my love is lying

And I must weep alone.

Edgar Allan Poe’s Spirits of the Dead: Thy soul shall find itself alone, ’Mid dark thoughts of the gray tombstone …

Poe’s Spirits of the Dead is a walk through the graveyard, a treatise on death by one in mourning.

The spirits of the dead live on in Poe’s poem, and surround you as you walk the alleys of tombstones. The feeling of loneliness one gets as you wander the graves, Poe reasons is without merit, for the dead all around you.

The time for spirits of the dead to walk again is the night, but night means something different to the dead. Whereas the stars that shine above fill the living with hope, to the dead are but faint red glows, devoid of the hope of escaping.

For the dead take their sorrows and concerns with them to the grave. There is no solace from the thought or memory which haunts you in life, in the afterlife. Instead you’re trapped in endless night with those thoughts, and eternity to carry the burden.

https://youtu.be/_PZri6W3UTE

Download Edgar Allan Poe’s Spirits of the Dead on Bandcamp

Learn more about The Conqueror Worm, the album by Folkswitch

Edgar Allan Poe’s Spirits of the Dead

Thy soul shall find itself alone

’Mid dark thoughts of the gray tombstone—

Not one, of all the crowd, to pry

Into thine hour of secrecy.

Be silent in that solitude,

Which is not loneliness—for then

The spirits of the dead who stood

In life before thee are again

In death around thee—and their will

Shall overshadow thee: be still.

III

The night, tho’ clear, shall frown—

And the stars shall look not down

From their high thrones in the heaven,

With light like Hope to mortals given—

But their red orbs, without beam,

To thy weariness shall seem

As a burning and a fever

Which would cling to thee for ever.

Now are thoughts thou shalt not banish,

Now are visions ne’er to vanish;

From thy spirit shall they pass

No more—like dew-drop from the grass.

The breeze—the breath of God—is still—

And the mist upon the hill,

Shadowy—shadowy—yet unbroken,

Is a symbol and a token—

How it hangs upon the trees,

A mystery of mysteries!

Edgar Allan Poe’s A City In The Sea: Hell, rising from a thousand thrones, Shall do it reverence.

Poe’s A City In The Sea is an apocalyptic vision, a conspiracy of evil set to rise up and usher in Hell on Earth.

The city in question lies unnamed and without location, somewhere in the west. It’s a peaceful city, not unlike the Atlantis legend, but it would be more apt to describe a progressive Sodom and Gomorrah. Poe describes towers, shrines, turrets, domes and spires, yet the light of heaven never reaches there. Instead the perpetual night is only lit by a glow emanating from the lurid sea.

The locations of Poe’s City in the Sea, the west has long been associated with death and the afterlife, and here it is ruled by Death personified, or rather deified. Death as person is common, coming for the living robed and with his scythe. Poe takes it a step further and rather than a messenger, Death wields more power here than previously given credit.

In Poe’s city in the sea, the population is dressed in their finery, dressed for the grave. That’s where they lie, devoid of life, movement and even the flowers are lifeless, stone carvings.

Perhaps the city in the sea is an offering to figure greater than Death itself, Satan. For the climax of the poem, Hell rises up and takes sovereign over the city and beyond, and the city sinks into the red sea. It is the coming of Satan and apocalypse is unleashed up on the land.

https://youtu.be/dEbtqw12Ffo

Download Edgar Allan Poe’s Deep In Earth on Bandcamp

Learn more about The Conqueror Worm, the album by Folkswitch

Edgar Allan Poe’s A City In The Sea

LO! Death has reared himself a throne
In a strange city lying alone
Far down within the dim West,
Where the good and the bad and the worst and the best
Have gone to their eternal rest.
There shrines and palaces and towers
(Time-eaten towers that tremble not!)
Resemble nothing that is ours.
Around, by lifting winds forgot,
Resignedly beneath the sky
The melancholy waters lie.

No rays from the holy heaven come down
On the long night-time of that town;
But light from out the lurid sea
Streams up the turrets silently —
Gleams up the pinnacles far and free —
Up domes — up spires — up kingly halls —
Up fanes — up Babylon-like walls —
Up shadowy long-forgotten bowers
Of sculptured ivy and stone flowers —
Up many and many a marvellous shrine
Whose wreathed friezes intertwine
The viol, the violet, and the vine. [page 22:]

Resignedly beneath the sky
The melancholy waters lie.
So blend the turrets and shadows there
That all seem pendulous in air,
While from a proud tower in the town
Death looks gigantically down.

There open fanes and gaping graves
Yawn level with the luminous waves;
But not the riches there that lie
In each idol’s diamond eye —
Not the gaily-jewelled dead
Tempt the waters from their bed;
For no ripples curl, alas!
Along that wilderness of glass —
No swellings tell that winds may be
Upon some far-off happier sea —
No heavings hint that winds have been
On seas less hideously serene.

But lo, a stir is in the air!
The wave — there is a movement there!
As if the towers had thrown aside,
In slightly sinking, the dull tide —
As if their tops had feebly given
A void within the filmy Heaven.
The waves have now a redder glow —
The hours are breathing faint and low —
And when, amid no earthly moans,
Down, down that town shall settle hence. [[,]]
Hell, rising from a thousand thrones,
Shall do it reverence.

Edgar Allan Poe’s The Raven: Get thee back into the tempest and the Night’s Plutonian shore!

Edgar Allan Poe’s The Raven represented the pinnacle of the author’s success. Though most of his fame was brought on by his macabre tales and stories, Poe’s The Raven took off and brought him national, as well as world-wide acclaim.

Unfortunately it didn’t bring him much in the way of income, when he desperately needed as he tried to make a life in New York City, accompanied by his wife ill wife and her mother. A year and a day after the publication of Poe’s The Raven, his wife Virginia died, and Poe slipped into madness.

In that the poem could be considered prophetic, or perhaps the author simply knew what the future had in store for him.

In Poe’s The Raven, the poem begins with the narrator searching through ancient books of magic for a way to bring back his lost love. It’s never clearly spelled out if she is merely gone from his life, or gone from this Earth, but one can assume the latter thanks to the imagery that Poe includes.

Distracted by a tapping which doesn’t go away, we are greeted with the appearance of Poe’s raven who perches on a bust of the goddess Athena, over the door. There it stays, repeating only the one word the narrator dreads most, nevermore.

In Poe’s The Raven, the narrator tries talking to the bird, asking questions, quizzing it on its knowledge, reaching for any thread of hope that he might find. In the end, Poe’s The Raven is devoid of hope and finally, devoid of sanity as not only does the raven refuse to offer solace, the narrator realizes it will never leave, instead blocking the door with its presence and its reminder of nevermore.

Recording Edgar Allan Poe’s The Raven

This was a tricky song to record. From the beginning I saw it as the equivalent of a high school musical presentation, a direct descendent of the age of burlesque or cabaret. Breaking it into three or four discreet sections I hoped would alleviate the monotony. It’s hard to follow along with lyrics for nine minutes without a change or break. Luckily Poe’s The Raven already contains the breaks we needed.

The narrator’s voice in Poe’s The Raven I quickly realized could be broken into three voices. One is simply that of a narrator, watching the action as though it wasn’t even a part of it for the first half or more. I thought of that as a Greek Chorus. The second is the actor, expressing more emotion, the lead if you will. And finally came a disembodied voice, almost the voice of Poe’s The Raven itself.

Then came actually singing the bastard, It went through countless iterations before I felt I had nailed it to the best of my abilities. Unfortunately I realized a day or so later that the microphone was on the verge of going out, and some of the settings during recording has been configured wrong. I tried to sing it again, but never could pull it off. So in the end, I was stuck with voices that sounded far from natural, and dictated the sound of the overall song.

All in all, recording Poe’s The Raven took place over a period of eighteen months, with far too much of that time actually going into that song alone. Was it worth it? I believe so. But I can’t help but wish I could start it over from scratch.

That will happen … never more.

https://youtu.be/ZepdoNoMSxE

Download Edgar Allan Poe’s Deep In Earth on Bandcamp

Learn more about The Conqueror Worm, the album by Folkswitch

Edgar Allan Poe’s The Raven

Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary,

Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore—

While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,

As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.

“’Tis some visitor,” I muttered, “tapping at my chamber door—

Only this and nothing more.”

Ah, distinctly I remember it was in the bleak December;

And each separate dying ember wrought its ghost upon the floor.

Eagerly I wished the morrow;—vainly I had sought to borrow

From my books surcease of sorrow—sorrow for the lost Lenore—

For the rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name Lenore—

Nameless here for evermore.

And the silken, sad, uncertain rustling of each purple curtain

Thrilled me—filled me with fantastic terrors never felt before;

So that now, to still the beating of my heart, I stood repeating

“’Tis some visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door—

Some late visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door;—

This it is and nothing more.”

Presently my soul grew stronger; hesitating then no longer,

“Sir,” said I, “or Madam, truly your forgiveness I implore;

But the fact is I was napping, and so gently you came rapping,

And so faintly you came tapping, tapping at my chamber door,

That I scarce was sure I heard you”—here I opened wide the door;—

Darkness there and nothing more.

Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there wondering, fearing,

Doubting, dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared to dream before;

But the silence was unbroken, and the stillness gave no token,

And the only word there spoken was the whispered word, “Lenore?”

This I whispered, and an echo murmured back the word, “Lenore!”—

Merely this and nothing more.

Back into the chamber turning, all my soul within me burning,

Soon again I heard a tapping somewhat louder than before.

“Surely,” said I, “surely that is something at my window lattice;

Let me see, then, what thereat is, and this mystery explore—

Let my heart be still a moment and this mystery explore;—

’Tis the wind and nothing more!”

Open here I flung the shutter, when, with many a flirt and flutter,

In there stepped a stately Raven of the saintly days of yore;

Not the least obeisance made he; not a minute stopped or stayed he;

But, with mien of lord or lady, perched above my chamber door—

Perched upon a bust of Pallas just above my chamber door—

Perched, and sat, and nothing more.

Then this ebony bird beguiling my sad fancy into smiling,

By the grave and stern decorum of the countenance it wore,

“Though thy crest be shorn and shaven, thou,” I said, “art sure no craven,

Ghastly grim and ancient Raven wandering from the Nightly shore—

Tell me what thy lordly name is on the Night’s Plutonian shore!”

Quoth the Raven “Nevermore.”

Much I marvelled this ungainly fowl to hear discourse so plainly,

Though its answer little meaning—little relevancy bore;

For we cannot help agreeing that no living human being

Ever yet was blessed with seeing bird above his chamber door—

Bird or beast upon the sculptured bust above his chamber door,

With such name as “Nevermore.”

But the Raven, sitting lonely on the placid bust, spoke only

That one word, as if his soul in that one word he did outpour.

Nothing farther then he uttered—not a feather then he fluttered—

Till I scarcely more than muttered “Other friends have flown before—

On the morrow he will leave me, as my Hopes have flown before.”

Then the bird said “Nevermore.”

Startled at the stillness broken by reply so aptly spoken,

“Doubtless,” said I, “what it utters is its only stock and store

Caught from some unhappy master whom unmerciful Disaster

Followed fast and followed faster till his songs one burden bore—

Till the dirges of his Hope that melancholy burden bore

Of ‘Never—nevermore’.”

But the Raven still beguiling all my fancy into smiling,

Straight I wheeled a cushioned seat in front of bird, and bust and door;

Then, upon the velvet sinking, I betook myself to linking

Fancy unto fancy, thinking what this ominous bird of yore—

What this grim, ungainly, ghastly, gaunt, and ominous bird of yore

Meant in croaking “Nevermore.”

This I sat engaged in guessing, but no syllable expressing

To the fowl whose fiery eyes now burned into my bosom’s core;

This and more I sat divining, with my head at ease reclining

On the cushion’s velvet lining that the lamp-light gloated o’er,

But whose velvet-violet lining with the lamp-light gloating o’er,

She shall press, ah, nevermore!

Then, methought, the air grew denser, perfumed from an unseen censer

Swung by Seraphim whose foot-falls tinkled on the tufted floor.

“Wretch,” I cried, “thy God hath lent thee—by these angels he hath sent thee

Respite—respite and nepenthe from thy memories of Lenore;

Quaff, oh quaff this kind nepenthe and forget this lost Lenore!”

Quoth the Raven “Nevermore.”

“Prophet!” said I, “thing of evil!—prophet still, if bird or devil!—

Whether Tempter sent, or whether tempest tossed thee here ashore,

Desolate yet all undaunted, on this desert land enchanted—

On this home by Horror haunted—tell me truly, I implore—

Is there—is there balm in Gilead?—tell me—tell me, I implore!”

Quoth the Raven “Nevermore.”

“Prophet!” said I, “thing of evil!—prophet still, if bird or devil!

By that Heaven that bends above us—by that God we both adore—

Tell this soul with sorrow laden if, within the distant Aidenn,

It shall clasp a sainted maiden whom the angels name Lenore—

Clasp a rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name Lenore.”

Quoth the Raven “Nevermore.”

“Be that word our sign of parting, bird or fiend!” I shrieked, upstarting—

“Get thee back into the tempest and the Night’s Plutonian shore!

Leave no black plume as a token of that lie thy soul hath spoken!

Leave my loneliness unbroken!—quit the bust above my door!

Take thy beak from out my heart, and take thy form from off my door!”

Quoth the Raven “Nevermore.”

And the Raven, never flitting, still is sitting, still is sitting

On the pallid bust of Pallas just above my chamber door;

And his eyes have all the seeming of a demon’s that is dreaming,

And the lamp-light o’er him streaming throws his shadow on the floor;

And my soul from out that shadow that lies floating on the floor

Shall be lifted—nevermore!

On the Poe videos that accompany The Conqueror Worm, The Poetry of Edgar Allan Poe

We’ve played with video for a while, and all along we hoped to make Poe videos for each of the songs on The Conqueror Worm.

Since most people find our music typically find it through YouTube, and YouTube is a video platform, why not make the most of it? The original guidelines for the Poe videos were simple, shoot it on a phone or iPad, and use iMovie to edit. I wanted these videos to be something any band could do, and to find out what the limits of the technology, and our creativity would be.

Towards the end I moved to editing with Adobe Premier, but otherwise we stuck to the rules.

Still from the film of Poe's To One In Paradise — To One in Paradise was the first of the Poe videos we recorded, late last year.

After doing a few previous Poe videos I realized having repeating characters made the acting easier, and held the songs together. It makes acting easier because as is well known, when you put on a mask you can stop being yourself. In my case it’s makeup, and it’s not that I stop being myself, but rather I find ways of expressing what I feel wordlessly.

It helps that these songs convey misery, and filming in a house without air conditioning with a heat index of nearly a hundred degrees, makes having your face painted utterly miserable. I didn’t have to act.

Poe’s poetry is filled with pain and loss. I’ve had a lot of experience with that of late, so it was particularly cathartic to let some of that shit go. Poe didn’t keep his loss bottled up behind a stiff upper lip and staid exterior. He let it out, publicly falling apart around New York City, privately going to pieces at home and pouring his pain out on paper. I’m at a point in my life where holding it together is important. But I could still pour out my pain into my art.

After looking over a few of the videos I’d done, I came to realize where my influences lie. I’d love to say it was all intentional, but it was unconscious. It all can be traced back to The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, which I’d seen quite some time ago. The Cabinet of Dr Caligari is one of the prime examples of German Expressionist cinema. I was an art major in college and ditched school before I got to the Expressionists in art history, but I knew enough to understand what they were up to.

My musical partner Todd Lane is credited as the actor in these films. The idea was for him to give a bit of story to the songs, and I played the role of narrator in most cases. Or perhaps his character is merely a figment of my own imagination, a dream within a dream?

Expressionism found its flower in Berlin of the twenties, a period which has long inspired artists such as Bowie, Lou Reed and lately Marilyn Manson. As such, it fit with some of the music quite well, particularly To One in Paradise and Spirits of the Dead.

The idea behind Expressionism was a rejection of realism. It’s a purposeful distortion of reality to express underlying emotions, how a moment felt from the inside rather than how things appear on the surface. It’s an idea I quite like. After all, isn’t that the idea behind poetry?

The last piece to be filmed was The Raven. It’s the story of a man coming to grips with the loss of his love, realizing that the loss is permanent and his descent into madness. As luck would have it, I filmed my parts the day I realized the love of my life wasn’t coming back, and so it became autobiographical.

As with all these videos, there were no scripts or storyboards. It was all made up on the spot, improvised, the opposite of how the music was recorded, and the reverse of how most bands do these kind of things.

But this is a new era and perhaps it’s time to turn the status quo upside down.

Notes on The Conqueror Worm sixty minute version of the Poe videos

https://youtu.be/4gtMn-MrXtA

I always wanted to stitch the Poe videos together into a one long film. The earliest ones had a somewhat silent film vibe, and I began to think of the project as a silent musical.

It takes a certain kind of person to sit through an hour of this. Drugs help, alcohol likely does as well. Perhaps having an affinity for pain and loss could make the whole experience cathartic, but I’m not daft enough to think that viewing this is particularly a pleasant experience.

Poe videos are typically in the realm of horror, and these are no exception. Even though the subject matter veers from the macabre nature of his tales, the horror is just as real and perhaps more so. It’s my guess Poe saw his poetry as an expression of himself, and as his art as opposed to being merely craft, a way of making a living.

While the craftsmanship might not up to Poe’s standards, I think he’d approve of how it turned out. Those feelings of loss, alienation and the hopelessness of it all have only grown over the past couple hundred years, and each new generation finds new acolytes of the poet. We’re all just links in the rattling chain.

Download Edgar Allan Poe’s Deep In Earth on Bandcamp

Learn more about The Conqueror Worm, the album by Folkswitch

The Individual Videos

https://youtu.be/JSojK9fOBo0

https://youtu.be/zwek_53ZR9I

https://youtu.be/zFe8zhpuOXE

https://youtu.be/Vnjk0yWfyNw

https://youtu.be/0_nLpcvE6Xg

https://youtu.be/WLN29P01FSs

https://youtu.be/_PZri6W3UTE

https://youtu.be/dEbtqw12Ffo

https://youtu.be/ZepdoNoMSxE