Zombies, Vampires, and Philosophy
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Now Paulie, we come to the point. I thank you for your patience with all my explanations. But they were not offered casually. I must ask you to do something for me, but you are a subtle girl and will understand that I am not simply asking. I have already communicated with your maker. Last summer I visited the clever Foucault in California, with the intention of draining him. I cannot quite describe what happened or how, except that after eight centuries of hunting and thinking I am difficult to surprise. For this event I can offer no precedent. It was strange, as though in draining him he was actually drawing my power at a rate exceeding my letting of his blood. For better or worse, I imagine that such would be the experience of biting a more powerful vampire, but clearly Foucault is nonesuch.
In any case, I am ashamed to say that I was unable to finish him off, and he has been walking around sort of half undead, ranting about power ever since. Paulie, you must go to France and finish what I started. You shall leave at the earliest possible date for Paris. I have already arranged for your reception with some of my former cohorts. Do not fail me.
Oh, and Thomas Malthus was actually one of our scientists (though not a very good one in my opinion), working in the early days of our discovery of the value of statistics; his calculations about increase of the human population were originally intended as part of a progressive argument for turning more of them. That is the damnable English and their pathetic humanitarian pleadings, again. Someone dragged him into the sun eventually. Conservative vampires last longer, Paulie.
Yours expectantly,
Étienne Lavec
A Meditation on the Word
By Étienne Lavec
In the beginning was the Word. No one disputes this. And through the Word was everything made that was made, without question. But not everything that is was made, for the darkness awaited greedily the coming of the light, for a feast of the edges, for that share of light perched on the boundary of forever, unable to face the dark and taken from behind, slipping ever gently into eternity.
And the edge has a name, which is the turning of desire, for desire was before and desire will be after. The light is the advent of time, but time is the ordering of desire to an eschaton, to an immanent, eminent end, before which all the elders cast down their golden crowns. Desire brings existence both to time and to timelessness, making space into place.
In the pure dark, all is desire, which for convenience is called void, abyss, infinity, for how might one name total intention? From within the light the finite creatures face the darkness that is beyond them, feeling their own portion of darkness, that within each one, that which was before the light. The abyss lies within. Here is desire for the infinite, for immortality, for God, for some salvation. The darkness within bespeaks the primal call to the edges, and from those edges the children of darkness face outward, comprehending the endless night.
And here is the secret of all existence: the darkness does not comprehend the light, but needs it not, yet the light overcomes the darkness by means of the darkness that ever was, and that remains—below, above, behind, before and after the light. Only the darkness can sustain itself, and it is the darkness that sustains the light as light. Heaven and earth shall pass away indeed. Not one proposition is false in the Word, but the saying of the Word leaves at its boundary the unsaid. You will have life and have it more abundantly, but the gift of death is, after all, the end that makes the mortal life a well-lit path.
At the edge of life is all that moved and endured and never needed life, the undead, unsaid. Agapic love, the blood shed for you and many, the self-emptying Word, and all that God made, is light and in Him is no darkness at all. All true. But below and above, and indeed within the light is the eros that turns to agape, the insatiable thirst for the life force that is not the light but the greed for the light, the waiting darkness that sacrifices nothing, least of all itself, and draws into its immortal existence all that ever lives or ever can live.
The darkness will have its domain, as the Word decrees, but it waits for those who find that the light that is within them is darkness indeed--that place within us all, uncreated and unloved by God. And how dark is that darkness? It is called voluntatis , the beast by whose conveyance we may cross from the edge of time into the immortal existence that is no blessing, but the possession of all that was made, as given by all that was unmade, uncreated, and which surrounds the light and comprehends it not. So be it.
June 26th, 1984
Dear Mr. Lavec,
I hope this letter gets to you--it’s hard to know if you’re sending a letter correctly in a country where no one speaks your language and postage looks weird and you’re never, ever awake during post-office hours. It’s not like I can just dispatch my faithful servants to ride bravely into the sunset and make sure my letter is delivered. Seriously--in the past few weeks, I’ve been wishing that this whole vampire business was a little less Anne Rice and a little more Middle-Earth. If I’d been a hobbit in Paris, at least I could enjoy the food without all these complications. But, then again, I guess I probably wouldn’t have been a hobbit, since the light doesn’t touch me, or whatever you’re on about. I probably would have been an orc, and who knows where that would have gotten me.
Anyway, Mr. Lavec, this has been one heck of a study abroad trip. I’d never been further west than Arkansas or further north than Kentucky before a few weeks ago, and I’d never met a prime cut of philosopher. Actually, back when I was human, I thought philosophy was one of those things that people used to do but didn’t do anymore but that we still had to learn about, like Latin. I had no idea people were still doing it. But, man, apparently they’re still doing it here!
After I got off the boat (traveling, I might add, in a nice leather trunk of the sort that someone might take to international boarding school. Coffins are so over.), it took me awhile to even find this Foucault guy, mostly because no one told me that you don’t pronounce his name Faw-cull-lt. Once I finally staked him out, it was hard to get a spare moment to sneak up and sink my teeth in, because he was too busy talking to people. Like, all night. I have never seen a more popular old and bald guy. The French have apparently never heard of the strong and silent type.
I thought about seducing him or trying to pose as a member of his social circle, but I had this weird feeling that I would look too . . . vanilla . . . at one of the French parties. Which is a pretty weird feeling for a vampire to have. And, anyway, he didn’t seem like he’d be into me if I’d tried the candlelight and Motown approach. The guy is obviously paddling on the other side of the Seine, if you know what I mean.
When I finally did get him alone, it was just in the old fashioned, appearing-creepily-behind-you-while-you’re-brushing-your-teeth way. I was a little worried, because you’d said he was sucking up all of your energy, but I actually didn’t have any trouble at all. No offense, Mr. Lavec, but I kind of think it was in your head. I’m just saying, you spend enough time around these people. . . . I just held my nose, thought about football, and glubbed him down.
I was kind of wondering if you wanted me to make him a vampire before I met him, but, honestly, I was not interested in being the “divine creator” of this guy. He seemed like he’d have way too many questions, and in the wrong language.
So, it’s done. I came all the way to France and killed the guy you asked me to kill. I never thought I’d see the City of Lights as a liege of Darkness, but what can you do? About that--I get that I am supposed to follow Dan Christensen around because he’s kind of my father-figure and husband-figure in the Darkness, and that it’s some sort of unbreakable vampire clause thing, but you asked me to keep you up with the times. I gotta tell you, then, that female submission, even vampire female submission, is very out. I’ve said this before, but you should really follow fashion. The power suit with the shoulder pads? It means something. More specifically, it means Screw You, Chauvinist Pig.
I don’t really mind hopping all over the globe for you, or even putting up with Dan so
metimes. It’s actually kind of fun. I’m just saying that one of these days I might put on my shoulder pads. You tell me not to press it. Well, don’t press it yourself, Mr. Lavec. This is a new time.
Sincerely,
Paulie Dori
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Thursday, December 24, 1998 11:02 PM
From: “Etienne Lavec”
To: “Paulie Dori Williams”
Chere Paulie,
It has been far too long, even by my lax standards. I got this e-mail address from Dan Christenson. He tells me you have been traveling the world, making contact and refining your palate. Good, very good. I think you must surely have settled in to your calling by now. I have only a question or two for you.
First, I am wondering what you make of this recent turn in mortal interest. This new television series about the supposed “Vampire slayer” is muddying the lore and causing all sorts of confusion. I am getting complaints from every quarter, teenaged girls wandering around with homemade stakes, taking martial arts classes, behaving recklessly. Indeed, we have actually lost a small handful of our comrades in southern California. Naturally, most of these plucky youngsters are behaving suicidally, but initially we were taken aback. In any case, I think that your advice would be most welcome. And if you also care to commit this matter to deep thought, I would personally like to hear your reflections on the meaning of what the mortals are up to. I cannot remember a time when the popular view of vampires was prone to dividing us into “good” and “bad” citizens.
Second, and here I must request your utmost candor: Are you absolutely certain that Foucault is really dead? I think I am detecting in his (supposedly) posthumous publications certain vague references to happenings of the last dozen years, adjustments to the present that should not be in evidence. But that alone would not have raised my apprehension. There is something else. I have been receiving strange e-mails, just passages from Foucault’s writings on desire in semi-anonymous e-mails. For example, I received the following just the other day, from someone who calls himself “Nietzsche26.”
“The combative relationship with adversaries is also an agonistic relationship with oneself. The battle to be fought, the victory to be won, the defeat that one risks suffering —these were processes and events that take place between oneself and oneself. The adversaries the individual has to combat are not just within him, or close by; they are part of him.”
That was all there was in the e-mail. This is almost a quote from the English translation of The Use of Pleasure, which was published after you did your work. The only difference is a change of tense, from the past tense to the present. This reads vaguely like a philosophical threat from someone familiar with my work. This is one of three similar communications I have received. I know Foucault had many friends and admirers, but after such a lapse of mortal time, I cannot imagine I might be the target of revenge. Have you received any odd anonymous communications? It is a bit unnerving, especially since I am not exactly free with my own e-mail address. I do notice that the timestamp on these e-mails is always at night, and we both know what that may mean.
Cordially,
Étienne
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Saturday, January 2, 1999 9:22 PM
From: “Paulie Dori Williams”
To: “Etienne Lavec”
Dear mr. Lavec,
Sorry for the delay in answering—was away from e-mail during the prime hunting season. it’s been awhile! I’ve often wondered what you’ve been up to—I left the continent in’89 and haven’t been back west since. I’m writing you now from Berlin, where me and a few other creatures of the night are living in a squat on what used to be soviet territory. It’s an old butchershop, has sort of a pleasant odor and some very chic meathooks which we use as coathangers for our trenches.
So much has changed since we last spoke! I went to Germany the night before the wall came down, hoping that all the confusion would lead to some good kills. I had no idea I’d want to make Berlin my home. I’d been in eastern Europe for awhile, Doing the vampire grande tour, meeting the undead that are in those parts now (vampires, surprise, make terrible communists), and generally drifting. It was good for me to leave America, but I was totally mentally out-of-coffin for awhile, completely culture shocked. I’d been sheltered before. Death had seemed clean and routine—old people in white rooms. The soviet bloc taught me how to live a little, and it was fun while it lasted.
My style has changed. A lot. You mentioned Buffy the Vampire Slayer—if they got anything right, it’s our clothes these days. Most of the other young vamps I know have found a sort of beat with the punks and the industrial kids over here. They remind us of ourselves—disillusioned, night owls, alienated from their past. And vampires have always been near anarchists. This group of outsiders is particularly unapologetic. So we thrifted their look. It works.
Okay, so you want to know my thoughts about the American “good” vampire idea. I have never ever met a real vampire who was in love with a mortal or had a soul. I’ve never even met a vampire who could give you an Oxford definition of what a soul would feel like if they had one. everyone thinks just because we’re immortal we are supposed to know about the state of our salvation. I dunno how they got that idea.
In Buffy, it seems like not only do the vampires not have souls (maybe occupying some soul-neutral territory), they hate anybody with a soul and so continually threaten to suck the world into a hell dimension. Right, like we’d want to know what is in the great beyond more than them, when we’re the ones that have Hypothetically spent the last thousand years in (Im)mortal sin. That just seems silly. Also, maybe it’s the age, but why can’t mortals conceive of an alternative society that exists without organizing?? The popularity of civil actions has addled their brains. Like we care enough about them to go to the trouble of opening a hell mouth just so, what, we could beat them? Rule over them? It’s not like we have a lot of trouble with oppression in the first place. The truth is just that mortals are so bent on rehabilitation and reconciliation right now (counseling, self help, UN-style wars) that they can’t understand how something could be evil without being just a misled good. So they go buck wild over some hunky and sensitive and soully vampire who makes original sin, vamp style, seem trifling in the face of meaning well. Give me a break. I think they’re all just putting the fact that they’re worried they’re not good enough for god in a dark corner and rehabilitating vampires because it makes them feel good. After all, if we can do it, anyone can.
As for Buffy herself, I’m glad she’s not real, but I can’t say I don’t approve of the characterization. I like the female role model and how she settles things. I’ve actually been doing a lot of feminist and anarchist art since the wall fell. Think Cyndi Sherman meets graffiti meets the Vatican (the Vatican aesthetic is just thrown in there because it’s vampirey). you should visit sometime; I actually have an upcoming exhibit at the reborn vampire theater. It’s not really a theater anymore—more of a punk burlesque show.
As for Foucault, I wasn’t lying. I thought I killed him, but there’s always room for error. Maybe one of the Paris kids came behind me and turned him? I can imagine him having a few vampires in his circle. I haven’t seen him around, but you never know. Let me know what you find out.
Cheers,
paulie Dori
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Sunday, January 17, 1999 1:14 AM
From: “Etienne Lavec”
To: “Paulie Dori Williams”
Chere Paulie,
Thank you for your thoughtful reply. I think that you would almost have to be over here to grasp the magnitude of the cultural shift that is underway. And I do not care for it one iota. In the past two weeks I have had to deal with two unprecedented cases, vampires in the Bay area who staked oth
er vampires to save a mortal. Everything is going to heaven in a handbasket.
I think your feeling of freedom over there, and even anarchy, is made possible only by the deeply embedded order that has prevailed for centuries among us. Anarchy is what we have over here, and I do not advise you to visit. I have considered returning to Paris myself, but I have a feeling my request would not be granted. You will find, Paulie, that the longer you remain with us, the less freedom you have.
I have received another odd message from nietzsche26, making vague reference to the unprecedented attacks, and time-stamped in the Pacific time zone. If it is not Foucault, it is someone who wants me to believe it is.
Yours patiently,
Étienne
26 aug 2005
rise.again.st: Hey! Etienne? Is that you?