Memories, Dreams and Reflections. Marianne Faithfull

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СКАЧАТЬ the alchemical films of Harry Smith I realised where Kenneth must’ve got many of his images from. The idea of drawing flying saucers coming into the screen – that was Harry’s idea. You could say Kenneth nicked it or you could say he was influenced by Harry, depending on how generous we want to be. Or we could say they influenced each other – which may well be the case. Harry started out as a fan of Kenneth’s work.

      Harry, in any case, was at the other end of the spectrum. He was cool and relaxed – he didn’t have to promote himself. Kenneth tries too hard. Harry wouldn’t have minded whatever I said about him. He could take a joke, but Ken can’t – which is something I learned when I wrote my last book.

      I suppose I was a bit unfair to Kenneth in my autobiography. The way I described my experiences was honest – the whole fiasco was so disturbing I still flinch when I think about it – but at the same time, I understand why Kenneth was so upset.

      Obviously he was expecting a delightful, charming portrait of himself instead of what he got. I suppose I was pretty harsh, even a wee bit nasty, and now I’m trying to see it from his point of view – which isn’t all that easy. But, whatever I said about him, I certainly didn’t expect the vituperative response I got. Sometime after the book came out, Kenneth sent me a letter containing a curse written in fake blood. I opened it up and basically flipped out. I was so troubled by it I immediately took it down to my friends, Julian and Victoria Lloyd, to figure out what to do. On one level the letter was silly and hysterically funny, too. There was the part where he says, ‘You Jew! You Jew, like Kirk Douglas, like DANNY KAYE!’ What kind of curse is that? A Hollywood witch’s curse, I imagine, right out of Vampira’s grimoire. It was all about Jews and Danny Kaye – because Danny Kaye was Jewish, not a fact you would be likely to focus on, but Kenneth, of course, would (being virulently anti-Semitic). I’ve got a lovely Jewish granny, thank God, from whom I got my blonde hair and the big lips. Kenneth knew about all that. This put a rabid bee in his bonnet.

      He’s been going on about my being part Jewish for years. He’s given lectures about it, about ‘my flaw’. I’ve heard from other people about this terrible flaw in my character: the fact that I am Jewish! That was funny and silly; I just laughed at that. But then the really vile stuff started to spew out: ‘DIE OF LUNG CANCER!’ and all that generic malice right out of the Common Book of Beastly Spells. For someone who considers himself a magus scrying out his victim’s secrets, he somehow missed a few critical things that might have hit home to me rather more effectively. Like sleeping pills! You’ll die from an overdose of sleeping pills! Or painkillers. He missed all that. Kenneth was quite capable of picking out the one thing that would truly sting you. The curse he sent to poor Robert Fraser had nothing in it except a razor blade and a piece of type saying: ‘Something to cure your stutter.’ I joke about it, but at the time I was absolutely panicked, holding the vile curse in my hands – not a fun thing to have in one’s possession. I went down to Jules and Vic’s – they were still living on the corner by Leixlip Castle then and showed it to them. Victoria was appalled but Julian was giddily impressed. ‘It’s a masterpiece!’ he declared. ‘You’ve got to send it to the V&A!’ I don’t know exactly what the Victoria & Albert Museum would’ve made of it, but visually it was an astonishing item. Very graphic and ghastly at the same time, and as maliciously conceived as only a true Satanist and twisted individual could conjure up. It was this huge piece of paper with threats inscribed in blood – Max Factor blood, I’m sure, completely fake – but as an artefact it looked incredible. It was a big, malign, poisonous curse – maybe a bit too wordy, maybe he raged on a bit too much. I mean, does the Devil rant you to death?

      ‘What the hell!’ I screamed at Julian. ‘I know it’s sort of wonderful in a ghastly cult artefact sort of way. It would be fine if it went to someone else, but it came to me, and, um, I can’t exactly look at it as an aesthetic object just now.’

      In the end, Victoria told me to take it to the crossroads where there was a Lady Chapel and burn it with salt, rosemary and rue. Where would I find rue in this day and age? In Vic’s garden. Victoria is not a witch and does not grow this stuff for magical purposes. It’s just a herb, a lovely, old-fashioned herb. It’s in the wonderful mad scene in Hamlet: ‘rue for remembrance’. Or was it rosemary?

      OPHELIA: There’s rosemary, that’s for remembrance. Pray you, love, remember. And there is pansies, that’s for thoughts.

      LAERTES: A document in madness!

      But, why burn Kenneth’s hideous screed with rosemary when it was something I clearly didn’t want to remember? I did it in order to remember my true self. And mark that this nonsense from Kenneth had got nothing to do with me. To fight back. For him to remember who he’s dealing with and for me to know who I am.

      Kenneth must have been terribly roiled by what I said about him in my book, but I didn’t mean to hurt him. I just said what I really thought, like I do, but one has to have compassion. I realise now, in hindsight, that Kenneth was half using me, and half trying to help me, and in a funny way, I accept that and I can say ‘thank you’, but at the same time, it caused me a hell of a lot of trouble. I should have just said ‘no’. I don’t mean I was ready to reform completely, but I should have said no. ‘No thank you, darling, perhaps we’ll practise one of your satanic rituals some other time!’ If you let somebody do things to you, such as using you as an actress in a demonic ritual, you will pay a price. Let’s face it, it’s dabbling in darkness and it’s no joke. It’s down to a question of darkness and light, and I’m not even talking about it in religious terms because I’m not a religious person. I have my own spiritual track, but I’m certainly not religious. In fact, I’m against religion, and that helped me, of course, to avoid being drawn into Kenneth’s sway, because black magic is a religion. I, of course, did not tell Kenneth what I’d done – burning his letter at a wayside shrine – because in some Harry Potterish way he could have made a counter curse to that, too. It’s quite complicated, this whole business. And you have to be very careful. What I didn’t want to do – which in fact you can do – was to send the curse back to Kenneth so that it would land on him. Within the occult scheme of things if you send out that much hatred against someone and the recipient has enough power to hurl it back at you psychically, it can rebound – like the piece of paper with the spell on it that Dana Andrews slips back into the magician’s pocket at the end of Curse of the Demon. I’m not an expert, needless to say, but it’s a wearying and aggravating business.

      I do think my counter-attack worked. I somehow knew intuitively what to do. In that way I’m quite like my mother – I’ve got that side to me, I just choose not to go to the dark side. White magic is another story entirely – that I am quite capable of using – and this is what you must do if you’re ever unfortunate enough to get a poison-pen letter from Kenneth.

      Perhaps by playing a demoness I had summoned up long-dormant demons, some ghoulish skull-fondling jinni out of the desert wastes – but what is quite certain is that demons will fasten on you when you are at your weakest point and by toying with them, even in a film, you give them power. As Christopher Marlowe says at the conclusion of Doctor Faustus, his hero’s fate for meddling in dark matters should make wise men pause before dabbling in ‘unlawful things’

      

      Whose deepness doth entice such forward wits To practice more than heavenly power permits.

      And I didn’t entirely rely on my magical practices. In a very English way I wrote him a stiff letter in which I said, ‘Now, look, Kenneth, I’ve supported you, I’ve always said how great you are, and you know what a big fan of your films I am …’ blah-di-blah-blah – I mentioned everything I’d ever done or said about him – ‘so do not go into a queenie fit about the book. Please let’s have no more of this СКАЧАТЬ