Friday, March 18, 2016

Lovecraftian Thing A Day No.78: Ligotti and the X Files - Crampton



As discussed in a previous post, I was an early adopter of the whole Thomas Ligotti thing - largely thanks to Carl Ford's Dagon. Whilst I missed out on some very early Ligotti choice cuts - specifically the Silver Scarab Press first edition of Songs of A Dead Dreamer - I've also managed to acquire a fairly substantial collection of Ligotti rarities. In light of the recently resurrected X Files, today I present the (sadly) unfilmed script of Crampton: an X Files episode written by Thomas Ligotti and Brandon Trenz. Given that this is Ligotti, any meaningful attempt to describe or outline here the narrative of the script would be pointless (or at least beyond the art of the present writer). However, some idea of the theme and content of this speculative episode is helpfully provided by The Unholy City - an accompanying CD soundtrack which you can listen to freely on YouTube, and which is performed by Ligotti himself. Here I include a link to one of the tracks (and what may be my favourite Ligotti piece of all time): Nobody is Anybody.

Nobody is Anybody has a calmingly nihilistic beauty which has, frankly, carried me through some of the bleakest hours of my life - abetted by the revelation that, despite the pretense of the prosaic, coherent selfhood I present daily to the equally well-crafted doll-like visages of those around me (who despite an implicit awareness of the dramaturgical rigmarole in which they participate, nonetheless seem intent on maintaining the muddled illusion - to paraphrase Thomas Metzinger - that anyone is or ever has been a self), the thing which I call myself can never be anything more than an epiphenomenon - a hollow and anonymous shadow dwelling forever and always within the desolate and decrepit limits of the Unholy City.


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