The most remarkable, equally elegiac and absurd, profound and berserk inclusion in Somerset House’s Holy Pop!, an exhibition dedicated to extreme acts of fanatical devotion to filth elders, was not Dot Alma’s bedazzled “Freedom” pew and kneeler, set in front of an altar to the Holy Father (Figure) George Michael and Hampstead Heath hookup trees, … Continue reading
“In heaven’s name, why are you walking away? Hang on! To your love!” Soaked in the neon pink and blue lighting of a gay bar, a very drunk Jeffrey Dahmer jerkily dances to Sade, holding his whiskey and Coke high, the light reflecting off his glasses (the most famous killer glasses, rivaled only perhaps by … Continue reading
“Please come. Don’t abandon me. Please.” Ana de Armas as Norma Jeane Baker as becoming-Marilyn Monroe prays to a mirror; her hands clasped together in desperate supplication. She’s begging for, as Joyce Carol Oates describes in her novel Blonde, “her Friend-in-the-Mirror.” Tears stream down her face as she pleads to the bulb-ringed three-way mirror. Her … Continue reading
It probably says something that Nick Cave mused about becoming a cult leader two nights in a row at New York’s Beacon Theatre. This tip of the hand happened at the start of “Balcony Man,” the final comedown song on the hallucinatory album Carnage, released last year with his musical partner-in-crime Warren Ellis, that also … Continue reading
*Blows horn* *shoots confetti cannon* Happy New Year, dearest Filthy Dreams readers! Has it been a year or five? We can’t figure it out either. Can you believe the one year anniversary of the Capitol insurrection is only a few days away? Screw New Year’s Eve, what are you planning for that day? Storming a … Continue reading
Nick Cave’s epic poem The Sick Bag Song opens with a leap into the abyss. “A boy climbs a riverbank. He steps onto a railway bridge. He is twelve years old,” it begins. Walking on this bridge, the boy stands at the middle, gazing down at the river below with a “half-felled tree” that … Continue reading