TLO Member Interview: Yellowish Haze

INTRODUCTION

And here we have the interview with YELLOWISH HAZE, aka Slawek. He is an enormously likeable fellow, and I, for one, am happy to know him. He takes amazing photographs, and shares my interest of abandoned, disquieting buildings. He also appears to be a William Hope Hodgson fan, which I did NOT know, and shall soon have interesting discussions with him concerning WHH, a favorite of mine! See, these interviews are a great way to learn new things! Everyone prepare to enjoy Slawek's answers, please.

1. Obviously, you are an admirer of Thomas Ligotti's works. So, how did you first come across his writing?

I first came across the name in 2002 while looking for horror book titles from the list of all Bram Stoker Award nominees and winners. I even remember trying to order The Nightmare Factory (without actually knowing much about the author) with 10 other books I wanted to purchase, but the local bookstore later informed me that they had to cancel my order.

I probably would have never discovered Thomas Ligotti’s genius if I hadn’t bought the polish translation of Al Sarrantonio’s 999 back in 2004. I found The Shadow, The Darkness to be the best from the entire anthology and it represented the very kind of horror fiction I’ve been hoping to find for many years.


2. How long have you been a fan of weird fiction? Also, how were you first introduced to this genre?

The first ever horror novel I bought was Misery by Stephen King at the age of 13 (I think). I wasn’t a good reader at the time and I remember reading it in a very disorderly manner. As far as I remember it didn’t impress me that much, but having had a poor choice of horror novels in Poland at the time I somehow became a King fan for a few years anyway.

I think the book which impressed me most in my early teens was Bram Stoker’s Dracula. My stepfather was on a contract in Bucharest, Romania in 1997 so I had the chance of visiting Transylvania and the famous Bran Castle. A year later, my parents and I moved to London for 8 months and I used this opportunity to read Stoker’s book in it's original language with help of the dictionary.
I first read Lovecraft in 2002 – and was instantly impressed with his cosmic horror stories and novellas. I think this was when I really started exploring the core of weird fiction.


3. If you were to choose, which Ligotti story is your absolute favorite, and why?

The Bungalow House for the incredibly bleak world-view presented therein as well as the fact that it channels so well the feeling of utter loneliness and hopelessness. It was the second story by TL I read and I remember that it soon occurred to me that Ligotti might be that other person sharing “my love for the icy bleakness of things.”


4. Ligotti aside, what are some of your other favorite authors in this genre?

In random order:
Horror Classics: H.P. Lovecraft, Clark Ashton Smith, Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu, Vernon Lee, Stefan Grabinski, William Hope Hodgson, Robert Aickman, L. P. Harley, Ramsey Campbell, Walter de la Mare, Gustav Meyrink
Poetry: Georg Trakl
Contemporary writers: D.F. Lewis, Mark Samuels, Matt Cardin, Richard Gavin, Jonathan Aycliffe, Steve Rasnic Tem, Conrad Williams, Joel Lane, Thomas Wiloch, Kathe Koja, Mark Z. Danielewski


5. And which stories most influenced you? At a young age (dependent on your answer to question two), and as your tastes changed with age?

Young age:
I started to massively read short stories when I turned 18 after having read HPL’s Supernatural Horror in Literature.
Besides Lovecraft I enjoyed Le Fanu’s Green Tea, The Room in Dragon Volant, Carmilla.
At the time I also thought highly of some of Clive Barker’s stories from Books of Blood, mainly Midnight Meat Train, The Life of Death.
Later:
Voice in the Night by William Hope Hodgson, Oke of Okehurst by Vernon Lee, countless stories by D. F. Lewis, The City of the Singing Flame by Clark Ashton Smith,
Podolo by L. P. Hartley, Wood by Robert Aickman
These are random titles of major importance which now spring to my mind. Of course there are many more.


6. As far as horror television shows over the years go, do you have any favorites? Any that had a lasting influence on you?

Not really, I don’t watch TV. Last month I checked the first few episodes of Twilight Zone on my computer and I found them very good, but it’s still early to say if I’m a fan of the series. In general I think I have the same problem with watching TV series as TL does with reading long novels.


7. And what about movies?

Favourite directors include: Andrei Tarkovsky, Alfred Hitchcock, Christopher Nolan, Brothers Quay, Roman Polanski.

Some films which I enjoyed in recent few years:
- Touching the Void (2003)
- The Abandoned (2006)
- The Prestige (2006)
- Pan's Labyrinth (2006)


8. Okay, departing from this genre, what else do you like to read? Favorite literary piece from other genres, and why is it so?

If I don’t feel like reading a book which is labelled strictly as horror, then I would pick up a book which is either horror fiction in disguise or something which is somehow related to this type of fiction. Unfortunately I tend to be very monothematic when it comes to my readings and I mainly focus on books about fear or strangeness. I think the term coined by our fellow member D. F. Lewis Ominous Imagination is what my tastes in fiction are all about.


9. And aside from reading, what sort of activities do you enjoy?

Creating anaglyphs (images providing a stereoscopic 3D effect), long walks in the forest, book collecting and last year it also used to be lucid dreaming.


10. Do you have a personal philosophy, an outlook on life, as it were?

These days my personal philosophy is very incoherent - just as if there was a big struggle in my mind between optimism and pessimism. Some words describing a world-view that keep making sense to me are: indifferentialism, agnosticism, nonanthropocentrism.

If you asked me this question several years ago (when I discovered Ligotti) I would successfully prove that I’m a hardcore pessimist. Well, apparently this is no longer the case.


11. Would you describe yourself as a believer in the possibility of the supernatural, or a skeptic?

I prefer to remain a sKeptic, but I do experience moments of supernatural horror. Perhaps it would be better described as suspension of disbelief?

I remember that in my childhood and very early teens I sometimes did believe that my house was haunted by a ghost.

The last time I was considering the possibility of existence of paranormal phenomena was two years ago when I experimented with consciousness and trained myself to have lucid dreams. In the very beginning I was quite skeptical towards the entire idea of lucid dreaming, but when, thanks to some useful trainings and courses, I suddenly started to experience lucid dreams and out of body experiences plus some other similar states, I really had a very hard time trying to figure out what was going on and how I could explain all of this. There are so many paranormal theories regarding this subject and people who keep speaking of Near Death Experiences, mutual dreaming, ESP that I found the entire fuss around it very confusing and misleading. I really had some difficulty reading about all of these subjects. Moreover, I found my experiences differ thoroughly from the reports by persons who defended those paranormal interpretations. Dreams are like puppet-masters and wish-makers. No matter if lucid or not they fulfil your desires and make you explore your own fears. Hence it is very difficult to prove that whatever you experience while in them isn’t just a product of your expectations and alarms.

In my OBEs (which imho, are simply lucid dreams) I never saw any silver cord connecting my dream body to the one I could observe in my dream lying in my bed, but I think if I were convinced that it should be there, it would be there. Of course, those who like to regard OBEs as astral projection would simply tell me: oh, you weren’t looking hard enough… or… nah, those weren’t OBEs!

Regardless of what I said I do like to question things especially at times when life can't get any weirder.


12. What is your greatest fear? Your greatest wish or inspiration?

Pain and death. From time to time I suffer from insomnia so I consequently also suffer from the fear of not being able to fall asleep.
Wishing to stop the time - no other wishes these days that I can think of.
Inspiration: music, dreams, fiction.


13. Judging by my knowledge of the area near your home, which seems to be a mixture of forest and abandoned industrial sites, contrast the fear or wonder found in one versus the other.

That forest is a wonderful place. In general, it doesn't inspire as much horror as wonder but it all depends on where you choose to go. The discovery of that abandoned military base, about which I wrote in another thread was something absolutely stunning. I later discovered that none of my neighbours actually knew it was there. One day I simply decided to take my dog for a walk longer then my usual trips and at one point I found myself facing a huge concrete wall in the middle of nowhere. When I found an entrance and inside the fenced-off perimeter a system of underground corridors I was instantly thrilled at the prospect of exploring. I remember being so terrified by that discovery and by the aura of strangeness that prevailed throughout that abandoned site that - being such an obsessive horror fiction fan - I was simply compelled to start inspecting those black gaping entrances on the spot.

To discover such a place within walking distance from my home and suddenly end up searching through some cold abandoned concrete passages in the middle of an autumn forest was an experience I wouldn't be unable to describe. I still wonder if I am the same person who went into one of those corridor.

Read Mark Z. Danielewski's "The House of Leaves" if you want some details of what it feels like.


14. Writers aside, any other heroes/idols, so to speak, be they fictional (Tarzan, for instance) or actual?

No heroes, I’m afraid.


15. Do you have any interesting folks hiding in your family tree? If so, what did they do, what are they known for?

Wielhorski is a very small family, so anyone with that surname is related to me in a more or less direct way. Strangely enough, the spelling of the surname, due to the fact that it was transcribed phonetically from Cyrillic many times may differ slightly (also Viyel'gorsky, Wielhorski, Vielhorski, Vielgorski, Vielgorsky, Vyelgorski).
Here are some of the most interesting persons from the tree:

Brothers Count Mateusz and Count Jozef Wiehorski (my great -…- great uncles) were famous Russian cellists and composers (now utterly forgotten) and good friends of Beethoven and Pushkin. Here is a grim detail from the last days Pushkin’s life, as reported by Alexandre Dumas in his essay “The Poet Poushkin”:

“At this moment Vielgorsky, the famous cellist and master of the ceremonies at court, entered, desiring once more to press the hand of Poushkin. Poushkin gave him his hand silently, and with a smile, but his eyes had a far-away look as if they were gazing into eternity. And indeed, the next instant he laid his fingers on his pulse, and said, "Death is near." (…)

On the day following his death, Dahl, Joukoffsky, Vielgorsky, and Tourgenieff placed him in his coffin, and, till he was removed, the house never emptied.”

The musical salons held by Count Mateusz and Jozef at their house in St. Petersburg use to be by far the most renowned gathering-place for the nobility as well as for artists, litterateurs and other prominent figures in XIX c. Russia.

Count Michal Wielhorski (my great - … - great grandfather) was “Le grand maitre de cuisine du royaume” or Kuchmistrz of the polish king – I couldn’t find the English equivalent of that apparently prestigious title but it is some kind of King’s kitchen servant of the highest order! :-)
Michal Wielhorski was a good friend of Jean Jacques Rousseau and inspired him to write Considerations sur le gouvernament de Pologne.

Jozef Wielhorski was a famous polish general in the polish legions established by Bonaparte. Apparently, Bonaparte was terribly envious of Jozef’s good relations with Bonaparte’s wife.

Some Countess Wielhorska (I still haven’t identified her name) was married to Leonid Andreyev, a Russian writer (also horror writer). I discovered this detail thanks to TLO when I noticed that Matt Cardin’s writing was compared to Andreyev’s and decided to google the latter’s surname.

Some of the members of my family inspired some controversy:

One Jozef Wielhorski, listed among Poland’s most distinguished free-masons, betrayed Poland in Targovica Confederation - they opposed the Polish Constitution and precipitated the second partition of Poland.

Another Jozef Wielhorski was Nikolai Gogol’s secret lover. Oh no, I haven’t made that up.


16. I have admired your eerie photographs. Do you consider yourself a reasonably accomplished photographer?

Thanks! I have to confess I’ve never been interested in photography from the technical point of view. I’m mainly into stereoscopic photography and in a very amateurish way. My gallery on deviantART contains over 500 anaglyphs which can be viewed through those funny cyan/red glasses.

Accomplished photographer? Even when taking regular pictures I frequently realize I’m more concerned with depth and eye-trickery than with actual photography, so I would have to leave it to others to judge my skills as a photographer. It’s pure fun – for me that’s the most important thing.


17. Are you a fan of the arts, aside from writing? Discuss, if you will, a few of your favorite styles and artists.

I think to some extend I can consider myself a fan of arts, but my mind always fails me when it comes to names. My main interests when it comes to paintings fall between Romanticism and Impressionism. Favourite painter: Caspar David Friedrich.


18. Musically speaking, what are your tastes? A few of your favorite bands?

I usually don’t enjoy listening to music with lyrics. I think the only exception to this rule is Current 93 and a few other random songs.
Most of the time I prefer pure silence but when I decide to fill it with some music I listen to dark ambient, isolationism and sometimes classical music.
Favourite band: Troum
Favourite artist: Thomas Köner
Favourite movie soundtrack composers: Clint Mansell, Phillip Glass, Cliff Martinez


19. Do you have a vivid recall of your dreams? Are your dreams astounding, or pedestrian?

I’m afraid my dream recall this year is terrible but for a long period of time preceding this it was almost perfect – I tended to remember up to 4 dreams a night. This was of course the result of my experiments with lucid dreaming, which I mentioned before. The most important step in the training is to learn how to remember your dreams. Thanks to some useful tips and lots of practice over the period of two years I could have remembered over 1200 from around 200 from which were lucid.

I think my usual dreams are quite pedestrian but the closer I get to lucidity the more colorful and strange they become. In the latter case my dreams can get quite astounding: I can experiment with dimensions (by stretching, transforming landscapes or deforming my own body), the laws of physics (increasing, decreasing, shifting gravitation; telekinesis) and colour; I can interview dream characters, increase the length of such dreams by re-visualizing the scenery at the point when I feel that I’m waking up and everything goes blank. But there are three things about which I’m absolutely crazy: flying, moving the sun and moon (this can create nice shadows and change the lighting in a wonderfully surreal way) and exploring the feeling of loneliness and deadness in some labyrinthine dreamscapes.

Sounds absolutely crazy?
Oh, imagine how crazy it is when you are there.

If not lucid, my usual, pedestrian dreams can be absolutely boring.


20. Anything you would like to add, perhaps something I didn't think to ask that you feel I should have? (Boy, talk about lazy journalism!)

Yes there is one such question, with no answer:

"A question that sometimes drives me hazy: am I or are the others crazy?"
-- Albert Einstein