“I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration.”
That’s from Frank Herbert’s Dune. The Bene Gesserit recite this litany as a calming technique in times of great distress. Does Yves Malone recite it from the wastes of the Southwest American desert? Perhaps he doesn’t need to — you don’t have to fear the dark in the desert. The sun is there — the sun is always there.
The fear of the dark dissipates. The fear moves on to other things.
Fear is the mind-killer.
Cicuta maculata, spotted cowbane, or “suicide root” (according to the Iroquois), is North America’s most toxic plant (thanks for all this, Wikipedia, old friend!). You eat it, you die. It’s sort of like the Water of Life, the narcotic distilled from the bile of a young sandworm, except that it doesn’t cause you to become a superbeing who is able to affect time and all that, like our pal Paul Atreides. Instead, let me repeat: you eat it, you die. So.
Unless of course Yves Malone has eaten it, transcended, and is now riding sandworms across the dunes of Arizona, or wherever. He might just be doing that.
Cicuta Maculata (ERR REC) plays like one of Yves Malone’s soundtracks, a synthwave delight of 1980s video-game-ery, a fleeting shadow world of dangerous entities, dangerous activities, and straight-up old-fashioned danger. It creeps, it crawls, it effervesces and retracts as it overcomes your senses. You’re caught up in its dread. You’re caught up in its power.
The power to see and be seen, the power to bend reality to your will. If only, of course, you’re willing to make the sacrifice.
[Visit full site to view media]Cicuta Maculata by Yves Malone