Memories, Dreams and Reflections. Marianne Faithfull

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       looking back at anger

      In early 1970 I was in bad shape. Not long after I’d left Mick I found myself on a slippery slope – I’d become a heroin addict and spent my days seeking oblivion, sitting on the wall of a demolished building in Soho. As if things weren’t dire enough, I agreed to play Lilith, a cemetery-haunting female demon, in Kenneth Anger’s occult allegory Lucifer Rising. Needless to say, the film didn’t improve my situation, either karmically or financially. And that was that – or so I thought, but karma has an awkward habit of bouncing back at you. It reminded me, yet again, that dabbling in the occult – even if you don’t entirely believe in its coiled powers – has a nasty way of casting its baleful influence long after you have left the scene – and accumulating vengeful force along the way.

      Through William Burroughs I’d met the writer and painter Brion Gysin – inventor of the cut-up and Burroughs’s sometime collaborator. Brion was a really kind soul. When I was living on the street in London, I would occasionally go and see him. He was one of those rare people who genuinely did care about you; he was different, especially in those dark troubled times in London, Brion stood out like a beacon when everyone else seemed so self-centred and horrible – there was little sympathy for someone in my state in those days.

      One day Brion took me round to where the occult filmmaker Kenneth Anger, whom I’d met through Robert Fraser, was staying. Kenneth was notorious for his film Scorpio Rising, a montage of Hell’s Angels, Hitler, fellatio, sodomy, Jesus, and assorted satanic imagery. Anger has made some two dozen movies, almost all dealing with satanic subject matter; aside from Scorpio Rising, the best known are Invocation of My Demon Brother, and Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome. I should have run as fast as I could from a self-styled conjurer of dark powers – however silly his dilettantish Satanism seemed to me – but I was very susceptible to the influence of others just then and easily led. As my father would have reminded me, in the words of Virgil, facilis descensus Averno – easy is the descent to Hell.

      But love and light to Kenneth – only thing to do with Kenneth – love and light I send. Really. Can’t do anything else. I’ve gone through so much recently. All the anger, bitterness, upsetness, paranoia, grief has gone away. Hopefully, for good.

      At the time I met him, Kenneth was living in Robert Fraser’s flat – Robert was in India. Kenneth saw that I was very vulnerable, obviously anorexic, on drugs, nowhere to live, and wanted to help me by putting me in his film. He didn’t understand my reasons for being on the wall, but saw that I could definitely be used, and that, in a nutshell, was how I came to be in Lucifer Rising. Kenneth really believed that he was setting me on my feet again as an actress. He thought I was on his side, which in a sense I was – as an artist. But basically he didn’t have a clue what I was up to – or how fragile I was. On junk, at the end of my tether and in no shape to do anything – let alone play a graveyard-haunting Mesopotamian night demon with a penchant for destroying children. Actually, since the advent of ‘cosmic feminism’, Lilith has become something of a heroine of women’s rights. In the Talmud she was the first wife of Adam, but refused to accept her subservient role. Adam rejected her, after which God created Eve as a more obedient mate. Because she refused to accept the inferior relationship in the primal marriage, she has been interpreted as a strong-minded woman reacting to male oppression. In Hebrew folklore she is said to have slept with Lucifer, giving birth to hundreds of lilin, female demons who would become the succubi of medieval and Jewish legend.

      Whew! Kenneth got me at a very weak moment – I was completely dependent on the kindness of strangers, and, in fact, met a lot of very kind strangers. My friends the meths drinkers, for example, and the people in the Chinese laundry and my drug dealer – well! – and all sorts of funny, generous people I ran into. Even the police looked after me.

      Strangely, Kenneth thought he could take me, a heroin addict, off the street, transport me to Egypt, and get me to play Lilith. It was great to go to Egypt – don’t get me wrong – but to have to crawl around an Arab graveyard dressed as a nun covered in Max Factor blood with skulls all around me was insane! It’s amazing they didn’t stone me to death, actually. The scene was shot very early in the morning when nobody was around, thank God. Of course today I’d probably be on some list of infidel dogs for desecrating a Muslim graveyard in a movie. Anyway, lightning didn’t strike – but, of course, it did eventually.

      Naturally it was a huge mistake. Karmically a seriously wrong turn for me and something that took me a long time to overcome. I never should have done it, and had I been in my right mind I wouldn’t have considered it for a minute. That was one of the problems of being as high as I was at that moment, that somebody like Kenneth Anger – who is definitely on the dark side – could come along and get me to do mad, satanic things. What did I think I was doing? Well, I thought it was art, I suppose. I never got paid, which I always think is a sure sign it’s art. It was art, wasn’t it? It was the Devil’s art, and it’s very hard to get paid by the Devil, as you may know. There’s a few other people we could put in that category – mainly from the music business.

      But before I get any further into the less charming aspects of Kenneth’s character I want to bang on a bit about the good things he did, because so far I’ve only given you his ruthless side.

      One memorable evening Kenneth took me to see Christopher Marlowe’s Tamburlaine at the National Theatre. Kenneth was naturally a huge fan of Marlowe, that Elizabethan ‘student of the School of Night’ whose death – a blow to the head by his own knife – is often seen as being foretold in his bloody and demon-haunted plays. ‘Black is the beauty of the brightest day,’ he has the ruthless tyrant Tamburlaine boast. Tamburlaine – parts I and II – is awe-inspiring and grotesque in an epic sort of way that only Elizabethans and Jacobeans could manage. I am grateful to Kenneth for that, even though it was three or four hours of disembowellings and upside-down crucifixions and tits being cut off and children being slashed. ‘Blood is the god of war’s rich livery.’ Endless horrors, but still fantastic. Kenneth was drooling throughout, and so was I, Christopher Marlowe being one of my heroes, too. Marlowe had his profligate vision, his wayward, possessed intent and conception of himself as the doomed, ‘brain-sick’ artist (‘What is beauty, saith my sufferings, then?’). I’m always impressed when I see monstrous happenings turn into art before my eyes. When you see Tamburlaine, orany Christopher Marlowe play, you are confronted with actual genius, with a metamorphosis of horror into art. The great Elizabethan ‘blank-verse beast’ whirls words like a conjurer juggling sapphires, swords, stars, and the axle-tree of heaven as if they were so many balls:

      I hold the Fates bound fast in iron chains, And with my hand turn Fortune’s wheel about; And sooner shall the sun fall from his sphere Than Tamburlaine be slain or overcome.

      Heavens! You truly believe some word-mad god tunes this music to our souls.

      On the other hand, I’m afraid I’ve never really felt that Lucifer Rising was art. To be kind, let’s say the jury is still out on it. The thing is, СКАЧАТЬ