‘The Call of Ktulu’ is one of the songs that led me to books and writing, and it means a lot to me.
From the beginning…
I read plenty in primary school – Jules Verne, Enid Blyton, Alexander Dumas etc. – but by the age of twelve I lost interest. There was other shit to do. Heavy metal, sports, alcohol, hanging out, motion pictures. No time for books.
There was a booming FM radio scene on the island, and I wrote regularly to a couple of rock shows
The few books I did finish weren’t enough to count.
But I employed music to find out more about books. The rock and metal bands I listened to opened a bunch of doors.
That’s how I found Lovecraft. He wasn’t mentioned in school. All we did there was ‘serious’ literature, like Huxley and Austen, Homer and what-have-you. Huxley was awesome, Austen not my thing. Homer was taught in older Greek, the kind I didn’t understand, so it went over my head. And the rest, like Erotokritos and Myrivillis and… who cared!
I mean, there was so much stuff to do. I was renting and trading action and comedy films. I did martial arts, played sports, and had a brand-new bicycle to tear down the streets like a maniac. There was a booming FM radio scene on the island, and I wrote regularly to a couple of rock shows, and was even a guest there, and then got a show of my own at an indie station.
There was also the underground bar scene, the arcades, and our emerald blue beaches where we spent the summers.
I’m reading about an ancient horror buried under tons of ice in darkness so thick and stale, you can slice it with a blade
The distractions were too many, so the literature had to have a hook to catch my attention – in this case a heavy metal hook.
It was an exciting discovery, like delving into a forbidden back room.
I picked up Lovecraft’s At the Mountains of Madness when I was twenty-three, years and years after hearing about his work on Metallica’s albums (Ride the Lightning and Master of Puppets).
In fact, I’d bought this particular book years earlier but had forgotten all about it.
So I finally opened the thick Omnibus (what a lame description for a book, I thought) and boom! – I was transfixed. (Can’t judge a book until you read it.)
I remember the moment to this day. I was sitting by the fireplace in Tempe, AZ, with my housemates, F. and D., giving me a hard time about how ‘intellectual’ I was acting. (It’s funny! I was reading Weird Tales material. And they called me ‘intellectual!’) It’s November, the chill of the Sonoran Desert has set in, driving needles through bone. It’s a weekday, the town is dead. No bars tonight, we’re staying in. F. is in his room, listening to Pink Floyd while D. is in the kitchen, cooking up dinner and listening to Native American chants on the CD player. The TV is blaring in the background, showing some sitcom rerun or an action film, and I’m facing the fireplace, the flames warming my face and feet while I’m reading about an ancient horror buried under tons of ice in darkness so thick and stale, you can slice it with a blade — and I’m thinking:
This is badass!
I finished the story in a few days (slow reader here). I was ecstatic, my mind caught up in the claustrophobic myth. I couldn’t believe how the author had kept the story interesting. The setting was bleak, all ice and snow, ancient ruins and blocks of stone, and yet that unspeakable horror, lurking deep in the Antarctic landscape, drove the story. Mind blown!
I told my housemates about it and they teased me about the nonsense I was reading (no wonder you have a pet snake, they said — I did, a Dumerils Boa, but that’s another story) and I teased F. about his music taste (you can’t listen to Floyd all the time, you’ll end up slow!) and then the spotlight turned on D. and his happy-go-lucky spirit (the man’s on the prowl again, settle down, dude!)… good old fashioned ball-busting from the heart.
It’s awesome when people tease each other and there’s no malice behind the jabs. A rare treat. True friendship, real connections, that’s what I loved. No bile or bitterness or any of the undercurrent poison you find in so-called friendships everywhere (where something haunts the walls, always there, never seen, breathing down your neck, feeding on your life force.) My housemates were amazing souls, still are. Good friends, making each other stronger. Those times were awesome.
Cut to many years later. I re-read At the Mountains of Madness, and it’s still great. It doesn’t have the same impact on me, but it holds up. I find it a little pulpy and over-written, but such was the nature of Lovecraft’s beast.
The best way to get people to do something is to tell them not to
What’s more, I found new wisdom in it, such as the narrator’s ironic warning. ‘Don’t to follow in my footsteps,’ he says, but the descriptions he gives are so alluring, he’s just daring us to follow him.
In other words, the best way to get people to do something is to tell them not to — that was the author’s message, delivered between the lines.
I was told many times by a number of people that reading books is for losers (go fk yourselves!). Thank goodness for their spite. It made me avoid their company, seeking out the company of books instead, plus the company of those who either love to read or have nothing bad to say about reading.
It’s a wondrous world, and I’m glad to be part of it.
And one of the songs that took me there was ‘The Call of Ktulu’, an enduring metal classic.
Back to the Source:
When I first heard Tallica’s epic, I was 13 or 14. The band was still referred to as Metallica and they played heavy metal with an edge (see Metal Up Your @ss). And this song was out of this world. It opened sonic doors of wonder, teaching me the power of narrative, all without uttering a word (it’s an instrumental song). The power of suggestion, withholding, atmosphere, pace. The whole album was a master class in ‘showing, not telling, with a bang.’
This song was out of this world. It opened sonic doors of wonder, teaching me the power of narrative
‘The Call of Ktulu’ is a track full of solid bass lines and innovative instrumentation. It’s a timeless epic, like I already mentioned.
And the canon it refers to, Lovecraft’s horrifying lore, became a steppingstone – one of many – in my reading journey.
I owe a lot to ‘TCOK’. I revisit it every once in a while, amazed at how well it holds.
And here we are, so many years later, going over the memories.
And here we go, the journey not over yet. It goes on. The narrator in the Mountains may have stepped back from the horror he encountered in the Antarctic, warning humanity away, but we’re curious, eager to see things for ourselves. That’s the nature of the beast inside us.
Paraphrasing another great author, You have to go too far to know when to step back.
And even then, there’s no retreating. Someone always picks up the trail. The journey never ends.
The writing continues, and so does the rock and metal odyssey.