The Environment is an Agent

V

version

Well-known member
I've been rewatching bits of True Detective recently - the first season - and one of its finest features is that noxious, decaying Louisiana landscape of buckled churches, seedy motels, belching petrochemical plants and stagnant bayous. The show's third lead, as the writer said. Everything that happens can be read as downstream from the various currents running through the rotting backdrop.

Corpsey made a thread about the influence of landscape on music in particular, but with this one I'm interested in its influence more generally. What pressures does it exert on its inhabitants? I'm talking natural landscapes all the way to cities and factories here. All of it. What are these places doing to us?

 
V

version

Well-known member
There's a place in Oregon called Crater Lake that's supposedly infamous for deaths and strange energies:

Deaths - Chronological History of Crater Lake NP

Browsing the Smith Brothers' Chronological History of Crater Lake National Park by Topic from the Crater Lake Institute
web.archive.org

thatoregonlife.com

The Mysterious Deaths of Crater Lake National Park

Oregon's only national park is a surprisingly dangerous place, and a number of people have died there. Several of these left only bones behind to help us understand what caused their death.
thatoregonlife.com thatoregonlife.com

crater-lake-postcard-696x449.jpg

Came across a recent photo and the photographer responded to someone talking about it being haunted:

"Its funny you say that. After I finished shooting I discovered I could not leave (the staff gated the stretch of road I was on both back to the visitor center and the northern exit) so I had to sleep in my car at this spot. I had a horrible sleep paralysis/night terror episode that night involving a body that crawled out of the lake and was trying to get in my car. I hadn't had one of those in ten years."
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This is cool too:

en.wikipedia.org

Old Man of the Lake - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org en.wikipedia.org

The Old Man of the Lake is a 30-foot (9 m) tall tree stump, most likely a hemlock, that has been bobbing vertically in Oregon's Crater Lake since at least 1896.
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Since it can be virtually anywhere on the lake, boat captains commonly communicated its position to each other as a general matter of safety although private boating is prohibited on Crater Lake today.

In 1988, submarine explorations were conducted in the lake, and the scientists decided to tie the Old Man off the eastern side of Wizard Island to neutralize the navigational hazard until their research work was complete. Upon immobilizing the log, the weather went from clear to stormy. After it started snowing in August, they released the Old Man. Soon after, the weather cleared up, encouraging superstitions.
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V

version

Well-known member
My dad used to go round Europe on his motorbike and visit historic battlefields, concentration camps, and the like. He said there was one particular camp he visited that was in or near some patch of woodland and that the whole place seemed to be dead, not even any birds. It was as though what had been done there had left some sort of wound on the landscape that even the animals could pick up on.
 
other_life

other_life

bioconfused
"when the last lights warm the rocks and the rattlesnakes unfold mountain cats will come to drag away your bones and rise with me forever across the silent sands and the stars will be your eyes and the wind will be my hands"
 
other_life

other_life

bioconfused
"the holts are nearly always close to the sea in fallen boulders, old ruins, in cliffs or at the top of a stack, like this high above the sea: a safe place for cubs. i wait, tense... then disappointed - she leaves her spraint to notify others of her visit. the holts are evenly spaced, about five hundred yards apart, now for the use of any otter who passes by, with or without cubs . . ."

 
other_life

other_life

bioconfused
obvious but tarkovsky plays with this a lot too - more than just in stalker and solaris i'd argue. the battlefield in ivan's childhood; the monasteries in andrei rublyov; tuscany [contra russia] in nostalghia; the house in the sacrifice
 
HMGovt’s Glorious Return!

HMGovt’s Glorious Return!

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Of what did they speak? I was having a coffee in the North Laines a few weeks back and the millennial women next to me were spieling endlessly in this really low temperature way about some dispute at work, all framed in terms of safe spaces and triggering. Presumably real people not gangstalkers sent to haunt me.

There are also many euro teens in Brighton because of all the language schools. Could make it better or worse.

Anway, back to the topic. Lead absorption is a big issue for Gen-Xers. We grew up in peak atmospheric lead, the environment knitted into every bone and organ, giving many a vacant, faraway stare.
 
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