By Mr. VI
'I am the police, and I say, "Don't move" Snow White. You move, you're dead. Eric'
'And I say, "I'm dead," and I move.' - The Crow
(This is the third of a series of linked posts - one and two.)
A necropolis is a city of the dead; it is a settlement and home for those who have undergone a shift from the processes of life into the processes of unlife. Make no mistake, just as the living have their movements, their currents, so do the dead. They shift from the movements of life to the apparent stillness of death.
In truth that stillness is a lie, and we know that deep down in our hind-brain. That stillness is a counterfeit thing, wearing the face of someone we once knew. Bacterial replication and liquefaction, putrescence and decay – all these occur under the guise of the still, until we are forced to acknowledge the alien nature moving under the skin of familiar features.
Is any wonder we transport the dead, either literally or figuratively? If they remain amongst us, they become possessed, animated by a kind of inhumanity. But if we send them on their way, they settle with their new kind, joining with the rank upon rank of serried ancestors.
Or so we hope.
The necropolis is a place where they can move how they like, doing their dead-things. They're not possessed there, they're in the right place, slowly descending downward, settling out. Maybe, just maybe, if they want another chance at life, they mix into the underground flows of the Deep Below and emerge as part of the welling stream that gives us new life.
It's the same with a graveyard – a bounded space that is the place of the grave. The dead exist; it's only modern Western culture that says you cease post-mortem. I'm not even talking about some metaphysical afterlife – quite simply, in Western culture, the dead as a conceptual idea and/or space have become something to be ignored and deliberately avoided because of the implication that you *will* become one of them; your life and all its important constructions, shall pass away, all your investment is hence more than a little foolish.
Ashes to ashes, dust to dust – if you don't take it out and use it, it's going to rust.
And that is what has happened to the dead as a concept. As a mythological space, they have atrophied, and I believe our culture is poorer for it. Sure we have vampires, the walking dead and shambling zombies – but the zombie is purely a shambling unstoppable thing, an expression of unending consumption and the vampire now a glamorised sexual predator.
Our culture is obsessed with the notion of remaining vital; with husbanding the resources that make us prime physical specimens, and yet because of this, the population of the elderly is steadily increasing. More humans are thinking about their impending doom than ever before, and yet it is a blank wall. What could be a creative space enabling society to evaluate and learn from its experiences is, in essence, a no-go zone.
But for those in crisis conditions, the veneration of the dead and death itself provides a grounding which allows a re-apprehension of life – for example the cult of Santa Muerte in Mexico, supposedly a fusion of Mesoamerican and Catholic belief.
This of course makes sense because for those under relatively affluent conditions, the status quo perpetuates the myth that it it is unceasing, and that change and transition are threatening.
In actuality, this produces a climate of denial – the dead are denied because they illustrate transitions and enable the thought that everything is precarious. Indeed, our bodies are filled with the furious replication of bacteria when we are alive; the flesh is a veritable ecosystem of strange organisms – just see James' post on the strange world of the Puppet Masters for examples.
The dead are not seized by an alien external unlife - they merely reveal what was already present within us all along; the skull as momento mori, the caput mortuum or death's head.
Strip away the pretty flesh, the rouge, the make-up; the muscle, the manicure and the moisturiser and you have the slick grin that never shifts in its mirth, the shining glory that is your essence.
And here's where we bring in the incunabula again. I bet you were waiting for them, no?
Because the incunabula use myth like ordinary humans use food – it is broken down and rearranged to incorporate it into their bodies, cut into their texts. So the dead actually provide them with sustenance; they make them stronger and more vital.
“More Human Than Human.” to quote White Zombie!
After all, the larger one's hunting ground, the more chance of gaining the necessary resources for existence – this is the essence of hunter-gathering; to move on before things are depleted. What then stops you from arriving at the necropolis and feasting with the dead?
Imagine this:
