I can't in all honesty tell you if light has taste nor claim to know whether it possesses scent. Darkness is a similar sensory mystery. Can it be felt? Smelled? Tasted? I couldn't say. But I do know that darkness has a sound, a voice in fact, and it is embodied in the wonderful speech and readings of a woman known as Morgan Scorpion.
I have a particular fondness for listening to ghostly and eerie tales, an indulgence that calls for blackness or candlelight or jack-o-lantern. Spooky stories were no doubt told around fires long before the written word and claim a lineage that spans from the tradition of the British Christmas ghost story and the offerings of old time radio on up to the present, which is where Morgan Scorpion comes in. Morgan has blessed the fan of spoken unearthliness with a range of recorded readings by authors such as Ambrose Bierce, Arthur Machen, H. Russell Wakfield, and H.P. Lovecraft. Plenty of Lovecraft! To name a few.
Her readings are a joy! She expresses the works in a way that is part reading, part performance, a potent, evocative blend that gives ghostly life to the stories she applies her talents to. And such an accent! I recently had the good fortune to have Morgan do a recording of my story The Company of Others from my collection Urn and Willow. I was delighted, of course, and I had quite a spell of chills when she sang part of a John Dowland song that is sung by a character in one of the scenes.
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Morgan has done readings for Librivox, Lovecraft eZine, and has a YouTube channel stocked with hours of recordings by masters ranging from M.R. James to W.H. Pugmire. She has also applied her abilities on the metal record Nyarlathotep by the group The Old Ones.
About Morgan Scorpion
Links
MORGAN READS THE COMPANY OF OTHERS FROM URN AND WILLOW
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CLu1MZPxpjw&list=UU32Wi3OvfE0b6w7YG9dRTlQ&index=4
MORGAN SCORPION CHANNEL AT YOUTUBE
http://www.youtube.com/user/MorganScorpion
MORGAN'S PAGE AT UNFILMABLE.COM
NYARLATHOTEP BY THE OLD ONES
Her readings are superb. It's cool the way such marvelous readings can, to my ears, enhance my own work and give it new life.
ReplyDeleteI feel the same way, Wilum! She made me mesmerized by my own story, as if it was something by someone else. It's quite an ability!
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