Journaling into the Void

An interview with me on weird fiction, nonduality, and the muse within

Dear Living Dark reader,

What follows is an interview with me that was conducted six months ago by writer, independent scholar, and role-playing game designer Michael D. Miller. It appeared in the Fall 2023 issue of Dead Reckonings, “a review of horror and the weird in the arts.” I think the content of our conversation will be of distinct interest to readers of this newsletter.

What prompted this conversation was the publication of the second volume of my Journals in October. Michael’s review of the first volume had already appeared in the Spring 2023 issue of Dead Reckonings under the title “Dark Nights of the Soul.” For the second volume, instead of writing a straight review he asked me for an interview to discuss some of my journals’s primary themes. I consented, and the resulting conversation proved rather expansive, encompassing cosmic horror, the mysteries of identity, the nature of consciousness, and the ultimate purpose of creative expression. I also ended up talking about the origin of The Living Dark.

Before the interview itself, a side note: I wrote for Dead Reckonings myself during the early years of its existence, contributing reviews to its first seven issues from 2007 to 2010. Its other reviewers over the years have included horror and speculative fiction luminaries such as S. T. Joshi, Darrell Schweitzer, and Ramsey Campbell, the latter of whom contributes a regular column (“Ramsey’s Rants”). I highly recommend this publication to any reader who is interested in lucid assessments of what’s being published in contemporary English-language horror fiction.

Note that for this republished version of my interview, I revised and polished some of the language, sometimes significantly, for clearer expression. Some passages represent a kind of reimagined and perfected version of what I said extemporaneously in live conversation. Such is the privilege of exercising editorial control from behind the computer keyboard (which in turns creates a temptation to wish life at large were subject to the same revision capabilities, which goes to the fact that lately, for some reason, I have found myself spontaneously reading several books by Neville Goddard, which is a conversation for an entirely different occasion).

Warm regards,

Issues 33 and 34 of Dead Reckonings, featuring a review of my Journals, Volume 1 and an interview with me on Journals, Volume 2.

CROSSING THE VOID

An interview with Matt Cardin

by Michael D. Miller

Originally published in Dead Reckonings no. 34 (Fall 2023)

“I walk a fine line in my innermost thoughts and attitudes, and I don’t always walk it well. It is the line between embracing wholeness, purity, and light, and encouraging darkness.” —Matt Cardin

So begins the second and final volume of Matt Cardin’s journals, documenting two decades of spiritual awakening on the writer’s path, from 2002 to 2022. With nearly triple the time span of the eight years of Volume I, this volume continues to expand Cardin’s philosophical examinations of the Western and Eastern traditions, the implications of a personal religious background against a foreground of “cosmic theology,” and his further explorations of the demon muse. But this volume sharply focuses on a growing awareness of questioning existence itself, including who or what we really are, how we know, and why we should bother doing anything at all. Due to the subjectivity of the journals, I thought the best review would be to interview the writer directly. So I sat down with Matt Cardin via Zoom on October 18, 2023, in the prime of horror season, to take a deep delve into Journals, Volumes 1 and 2.

Matt’s initiation into the weird and horrific through Lovecraft and Ligotti is familiar to many of us who were born in a certain era, beginning circa 1970. In his youth he felt an orientation toward the speculative fiction genres of fantasy, science, fiction, and horror. Like many of us at ages eight to fourteen, he found that fantasy was his genre of choice, including Tolkien, Moorcock, Saberhagen, Rosenberg, and Brooks, with an additional heavy influence of Dungeons & Dragons.

We can all remember when or where we first heard the name of Lovecraft. For Matt it came from an early eighties “D&D explosion” book titled Dicing with Dragons, which mentioned another game that, for him, ended up serving as a kind of initiation rite for Lovecraftian works: Call of Cthulhu. Matt also notes that Marvel comics, which he loved, introduced him to many Lovecraftian tropes. So he was primed for Lovecraft before he ever read him. The game Call of Cthulhu itself coalesced many ideas that were already partly formed in Matt’s psyche. Then came a quick dive into the Ballantine Lovecraft anthologies bearing the famous Michael Whelan covers, at which point reading Lovecraft’s actual stories confirmed everything.

This was followed by an interest in the man himself when Cardin discovered L. Sprague de Camp’s Lovecraft: A Biography at the country library circa 1987. At that point, Lovecraft became like a drug to him, providing, in Cardin’s words, “an emotional and philosophical education in cosmic horror for someone already primed in psyche and soul to receive it.” He combined this with his evangelical Christian background and his grasp of religion, especially the aspect of “disturbing the universe,” which he took from Donald Burleson’s book of Lovecraft criticism by that title. During college Cardin’s self-imposed side curriculum was Lovecraft criticism—works by Schweitzer, Burleson, Lévy, Joshi—as backed by the Lovecraftian cinema of the time (Re-Animator, Alien, The Thing) and immersion in S. T. Joshi’s corrected Lovecraft texts for Arkham House.

The segue to Ligotti was philosophical and creative. A college minor in philosophy, a personal study of Eastern religion (Alan Watts, Zen, etc.), and terrible post-college bouts with sleep paralysis beginning in 1994 led Matt to write the cosmic horror story “Teeth.” This was before he had discovered Thomas Ligotti. But his psychological state of nihilism, pessimism, and Lovecraftian cosmic horror led naturally to Ligotti, and when he was introduced to Ligotti in 1997 via the man’s short story collection Grimscribe, he found the incantatory writing almost too powerful to believe. Shortly after this, in 1998, “Teeth” was published at the then-new website Thomas Ligotti Online by the site’s founder, Jon Padgett. For Cardin, the transition from Lovecraft to Ligotti was a “complete organic move. Ligotti is the modern distillation of all that was best in Lovecraft. A subjective and arguable view, yet I stand by it.”

* * *

MICHAEL MILLER: Lest we forget Edgar Allan Poe, there is a presence of weirdness in his stories that is only perceivable by the narrator (and also the reader by default) separate from what is happening in the narrative. I believe in your journals you call this “the experience of first-personhood and the nature of subjectivity.” How important is this to anyone who wants to write authentically in the tradition of Poe, Lovecraft, and Ligotti?

MATT CARDIN: An awareness of this matter is absolutely important for writing this kind of fiction. The most important effects of weird fiction and horror involve possible perturbations, disturbances, and alterations of the perspective of mundane reality that occur in first-person subjectivity. Ligotti’s “The Red Tower” is a powerful example. It’s essentially plotless, characterless, a brilliant exercise in experimental fiction. And yet it is told from the viewpoint of a deranged subjectivity of its own, and it affects the reader’s subjectivity in interesting ways. It is a transformative reading experience of prose fiction. Both for the reader and for the narrative viewpoint of weird fiction, the questioning, the undermining, the overturning, the warping, and the disturbing of first-personhood is primary in a way that it is not for any other type of fiction.

The idea of journaling itself seems connected to this. It is a first-person account of the experiences of the writer. Writing is not just something to do for money, publication, or fame. It’s actually more real than that. The struggle of relating this to existence is clear in your journals. What are your thoughts on the role of the journal for writers in the weird and horror tradition?

Journals and diaries are of course important in the personal lives of the authors who write in this field, even as they also play a central role in the actual books and stories that make up the Gothic tradition itself. For writers—and this is something I mention in the final entry to my second volume of journals—these texts end up concealing, in retrospect, as much as they reveal. My own journals often present an obverse of what anyone observing my outer life may have perceived. I would often turn to my journal to engage with things not possible in my outer life. A person’s subjectivity is called to the fore in this act of honestly writing to oneself, without thinking of anyone else, simply for the purpose of writing. It’s one of the most active ways to become aware of the nature of your own subjectivity. So journaling can certainly be effective for cultivating the art form of weird fiction that makes such subjectivity central.

Regarding that subjectivity, many Lovecraft or Ligotti stories seem like they were written as if no one else would ever read them. They have that sort of power in them. Are there any journals by other writers that you theoretically wish you could read, though we don’t have them readily available or published?

The journal of Thomas Ligotti would naturally be wonderful. I sometimes speculate that aspects of his The Conspiracy Against the Human Race may come close to approaching that, but of course his actual private writing may be, and probably is, quite different. Or maybe not.¹ Poe famously spoke of writing an ultimate, and ultimately impossible, book whose title would be My Heart Laid Bare. It seems to me that Ligotti has managed to actually write that book in his total body of work. He has really has put himself out there with his tortured experience of life and his antinatalism—to the disdain of many readers who are too comfortable in their shallow reality.

“Personal journals end up concealing as much as they reveal. My own journals often present an obverse of what anyone observing my outer life may have perceived.”

In your journals I noted a struggle between consciousness and annihilation, between the idea of who we think we are and the annihilation of that idea. That may be the ultimate horror, in the sense that maybe journals of that level are more terrifying than any work of fiction can ever be. This is especially true when we consider this is really happening to the writer. It gives such writing a feeling almost equal to the confrontation with the unknown or fear of annihilation that weird horror stories produce. Where does the demon muse fit into that process? It is one thing to consider these things in a story, but a whole other matter when they are really happening to the author.

The demon muse has two halves to it. One is the demon, the thing the prods you, the fiery, primal energy that is moving you. The other is the muse, the channel to the gods or the archetypes or the realm of the ideas, the imaginal realm that provides the source materials of creativity. So the experience of the demon muse is an intra-psychic phenomenon, like being connected to another intelligence. It highlights, it foregrounds, it calls out things about the nature of personal selfhood, and reality, and subjectivity, that widen the sense of identity.

This causes the fear of personal annihilation to become recontextualized: What do you mean by “I?” What do you mean by my “self?” What does it mean to say that “I” or my “self” might be wiped out of existence? Depending on how you view it, your “I” is either smaller or bigger than you think. It’s smaller because the ego is swamped from above and below by ideas and intimations of a wider identity, something that feels like not you. Call it the unconscious self if you like, but all that does is put a name on something and thereby obscure the fact that it’s a pure mystery. But your self is also wider than you conventionally feel, since the demon muse is really what’s referred to by “I” in the broader or deeper sense. It’s a link to a wider sense of identity than appears to be connected to the conscious self. Regarding the fear of annihilation, this is really a fear of the personal ego being annihilated, either as a psychological fact or a mystical experience. The wider identity sinks, at bottom, into Being itself. This changes things. If the conscious self goes away, will the deeper one still be there?

“The demon muse calls out things about the nature of personal selfhood, and reality, and subjectivity, that widen the sense of identity. It is closer to you than what you think you are.”

At that point we are going beyond even weird fiction. Most such stories end at that point, where the annihilation of whatever, the self in this case, happens. That is the horrific moment or terminal climax for the narrative. But the demon muse continues beyond these apocalyptic realizations. Is the demon muse akin to an ability or power?

I would say no. The demon muse is a layer of identity. An ability would be some quality that “you” as a separate being have. But the demon muse, by contrast, has you. You are a quality of the demon muse, so to speak. You are an emanation down the chain of being from it.

Is that the realization, then? The demon muse is really you more than you think it is?

Right. It is closer to you than what you think you are.

It is bigger than us. And bigger than weird fiction. In your journals you mention the “self as a literary construction.” And through questioning, you arrive at “Why bother?” That is a huge void to cross, and it is revisited time after time in your journals. When we think today of worldly developments like AI replicating fiction, we realize there could be a day when the commercial sense of what fiction is will be annihilated by technology. But one thing AI could never do is experience the process of writing a journal, of forcing itself to face the difficult questions on the road to discovery and annihilation on one’s own. So maybe eventually the journal will be the popular reading choice over fiction?

Writing produced by AI raises the question of who it’s for. It’s not written by anyone. Language model AI’s are not sentient. They’re like the infinite number of monkeys pounding on typewriter keys and eventually producing something that looks meaningful. Their output is based on algorithmic rules. And if you have a world full of people reading essays written by AI’s, well, what subjectivity are they hooking into? What is the point of the writing or the reading? The answer is that it’s pure distraction. There is no person behind the writing, there’s nothing channeled through a perspective, because there was no perspective that produced the writing to begin with.

If the journal is the most pointed, pure, personal form of writing, then I find it resonant to think it represents the core of what human writing will need to be going forward. Because this form of writing, in which an actual sentient being is using words to figure out the mystery of sentience, of identity, of first-personhood, of the cradle of consciousness in which he or she has been ensconced from birth—this can only be produced by that solitary, singular individual. It is proprietary writing, unique to each person. It thus never invokes the question of “Who’s writing this?” or “Why was this written?” or “Why read this?” This ultra-personal and unfiltered form of subjective writing is by its nature the antithesis of that unmoored sense of aimlessness and meaninglessness in AI writing.

So yes, I agree with you, when text is produced cheaply on a massive scale by AI’s, ultra-personal writing by actual people will take on a new premium.

“If the journal is the most pointed, pure, personal form of writing, then I find it resonant to think it represents the core of what human writing will need to be going forward. When text is produced cheaply on a massive scale by AI’s, ultra-personal writing by actual people will take on a new premium.”

Yes. The last refuge of subjectivity would be in the journal.

Part of your current work seems to be geared towards teaching and learning. Is that the goal of your Living Dark newsletter?

Yes. The Living Dark is in effect a fusion of two previous blogs that I wrote. From 2009 to 2011 I wrote Demon Muse, a blog that was a culmination of my years-long exploration of the inner genius. Most of the essays that I published there became my book A Course in Demonic Creativity, which I felt led by my own demon muse to publish for free in electronic form. It’s still freely available at my author website.² I also ran a blog titled The Teeming Brain for many years, starting in 2006. Its focus, or rather anti-focus, was to channel the whole multiverse of ideas, though it ended up with a distinct ongoing interest in horror, creativity, the paranormal, and tracking apocalyptic and dystopian cultural trends.

A couple of years ago, I realized I wanted to create a Substack newsletter, something to give me a fresh start and serve as a successor to the other two. Hence, The Living Dark was born as a kind a fusion of my existing interests. It combines the demon muse sense of creativity with the sense that we’re living in an ascendant apocalyptic age, and also the sense of living out the implications of the nondual viewpoint.

Regarding nonduality, my journey into that view of existence has intensified over the last five or six years. Nonduality involves the understanding that one’s self is a construct, a fiction. Your real identity right now is the spacious field of awareness or presence in which the notion of yourself as a separate unit in an objective world simply arises like a show, an outflow, a configuration of shapes. We are all the same one, the same being. Some find this fascinating. Others find it stupid. But talking about it is another matter. I theorized about it in thirty years of journaling, but my real awakening to it has unfolded over the last five years.

My sensory perceptions of the world around me are the contents of awareness. And if you are aware of something, you are not it. You are whatever is aware of it. That’s the subjectivity. So, what is the subject itself? It seems to be nothing to the conscious mind. The essence of the matter is that we are all the one thing witnessing projections of the one thing. This obviously ties into all the issues in weird fiction that we’ve been talking about.

Yes. That easily carries over to the cosmic quality of weird fiction as well. Last question: We are in the middle of October season. Is there anything you do to celebrate the mood and atmosphere? Any films or music you might traditionally visit?

I might read a story or two from Bradbury’s October County, but I don’t actually read much fiction anymore. These days I can get as much joy from holding Bradbury’s book and leafing through it as I can from actually reading it. Sometimes I’ll listen to music by Goblin or Rob Zombie. I may reread some Lovecraft or Ligotti. I just discovered last year that every October Sirius XM has a pop-up station called Scream, “your station for Halloween.” It’s full of weird unexplained soundscapes, wordless stories or fully written audio plays, lots of horror movie soundtrack music. During my drive home from work today, they were playing the score from the 1963 version of The Haunting. Yesterday it was the soundtrack to John Carpenter’s The Fog. I savor these. But really, lots of these things feel more distant than they used to. It used to feel great when my emotions were inflamed in autumn by all those books and movies and all that music. But speaking from a nondual viewpoint, trying to import all that can wear out the notional “you.” The thing you are seeking is not actually in the things you are seeking it through. I am much more interested in a primary experience of happiness now.

CONCLUDING NOTE: Sarnath Press has done us all a favor by publishing these journals, and if you’re willing to take the plunge into the confrontation with annihilation of the self, as (the notional) “I” did, the journals are a rewarding read that will linger with you for a long time to come.

MATT CARDIN: Journals

• From the publisher’s description: “Cardin wrestles with profound philosophical and religious issues, absorbing the work of thinkers ranging from Plato to Nietzsche to Alan Watts; at the same time, he speaks of his fascination with such writers as H. P. Lovecraft, Ray Bradbury, and Thomas Ligotti, whom he has made a special subject of study.”

• From the review by Publisher’s Weekly’s Booklife: “Lovers of weird fiction will relish Cardin's insights, story ideas, unsettling dreams, and reports on his reading, game-playing, and his fascinating spiritual and philosophical development....The result is epic and intimate, a portrait of a mind and a milieu, with deep dives into the creative mind, the nature of the weird, and how to find one's way in a world that's sick.”

• From the publisher’s description: “In this second volume of his journals, Matt Cardin continues his ruminations on the subjects he has made his own—the theory and practice of weird fiction, the complexities of religious belief, and the relation between these two seemingly disparate realms….Throughout, the author brings an incisive sensibility to the problems of life, thought, and feeling in the modern world.”

• From the review by Publishers Weekly’s Booklife: “This heady second volume of the journals of Cardin, the writer of and expert on weird/cosmic horror fiction, charts two decades of thinking, searching, reading and feeling of matters artistic, theological, and philosophical. It also captures, with pained observations and many evocative and unsettling dreams and story ideas ripped straight from the unconscious, moments of uncertainty and even rage, as the world Cardin (To Rouse Leviathan) grew up in dissolved into the anxious post-truth mess we all live in now....A weird fiction authority’s searching, incisive journals of this millennium.”

1. When I said this, I forgot to mention “We Can Hide from Horror Only in the Heart of Horror: Notes and Aphorisms.” This brief collection of excerpts from Tom’s notebooks, written between 1976 and 1982, was actually a seminal text in my early acquaintance with him. It first circulated in English not long after I started reading his work, and the compressed, candid, and essentially context-less statements and perspectives that it put forth—“Taking one's place among the monsters”; “Narrator who is reliable because he is mad”; “The only progress mankind makes is its progressive acclimation to greater and greater horrors. Unfortunately, there is no end in this process, no foreseeable reward, no rest”; “Only in the unreal can we be saved. Reality ruins everything and everyone”—profoundly fascinated and resonated with me.

2. In a development that is still quite new as I write this footnote (in June 2024), there are plans afoot to publish a physical edition of A Course in Demonic Creativity. People have been asking me about this for the past dozen years. It appears the stars are right.