Uncategorized – Clan Witch & Word Refinery

Long December

When the Pages are Stuck Together

I was supposed to come back a few days after my last post. Well, I hold up my hands, it’s been more than a few days since May, but before the calendar year is out. Take it or leave it. I’m giving both. So here is something for this dark day. Pure human, untweaked, unsanitised, no washing out the blips because they are MY WORDS. Do folks even do this anymore? I’ve read so much that’s run through AI before it’s posted (it’s catfishing using words instead of pictures). I query those pristine lines when I don’t know for sure, and the text feels off. But more often than not, I know, I feel it in my bones; the lies, the manipulation. And I’ve seen those sanitised, helped-off-the-messy-floor words from folks I know—they run a thought through a processor then post a stream that’s void of human voice. Why? Does it make their thought more eloquent, make them appear smarter (appearances are the substance for some), or does the trickery furnish validity to a voice? The truth is, it kills it. Nullifies the tone and heart; the AI shushes your truth with buttered-up bullshit that lacks humanity. It lacks grit! It doesn’t make these fearful folks seem more put together. It dumbs the real down. Faux intelligence and faux art—these are not enhancements, it’s just disrespectful bullshit. Can you tell I’m not a fan of AI in art or writing?

I’m here, tapping the glass as though I were speaking a stream, and my notes have their own life, a voice unsanitised. I’m far more comfortable with the letters on the board than those stumbling from my lips when my vocal cords shake, voice cracks, or paces in a little silence between executing the words. Sometimes they (I) fail because who is really listening anyway, like those who never really read. They see a quote, hear someone else’s summary and think they know the experience or read the book (no, the synopsis or quote was not the book). I’ve noted the curious look in wavering eye, the way the pupil changes when the stream bursts happen to flesh ears. I’m frequently told I’m poetic or passionate, but I feel the ponder addition of a little ‘crazy’. Sure, all three are true. Anyway, even in the digital print now, it’s still me right here, you can fucking well trust that. I sometimes wonder when they ask. Like the pleasantries of how are you and what’s the weather like, they don’t care; it’s just noise. And I’ve never understood that. When it’s asked, and it matters, I don’t know how or what to give. Which edit should you get? Which version can your palate take before you grab the pitchfork and execute me? They’re all real, just naturally diluted with fresh water because I know how heavy full-strength is. My being has been attacked since dawn, learned defence behaviours I’m intimate with. I’ll carry that without any of the huffing and puffing ghosts of complaints from the so-called help. Learn to listen beyond the mirror. There’s always a filter, some knobs to turn and tweak, and a few buttons to release the script. And no, it’s not inauthentic as those who bay for blood in some self-righteous regime may cry. It’s self-preservation built from experience. Experience of challenging what I know the outcome will be (maybe it won’t this time. Maybe they’ve grown. Maybe it’ll be different than I think), misreading signals, thinking their eyes or title or ‘closeness’ meant safety, but it never did. Never does. Because behind every question there’s expectation, and I’ve sometimes missed when they want their answer, not mine. Anyway, that’s all by-the-by, but I’m haunted in Winter. A bag of fucking ghosts murmur; my body thrums in ways that have the floorboards quaking. I’m unsteady, a little weak, like I’ve forgotten to eat. But I’m routinely feeding others, so I must’ve had a bite. Maybe I just sniffed it and told my brain that was enough. The scent is enough. Like teasing about love, I can pretend I know what it feels like to receive that, but I’m a magnet for liars. I take them in like strays and orphans, make them a bed and make them safe enough to play jump rope with my intestines. They’re twisting, and I need to send them away. Maybe I need an organ transplant; the recovery is perhaps less painful.

Fuck. It’s a ‘Long December’ (Nah nah nah nah. Nah nah nah nah nah nah. Nah nah nah nah, yeah).

Organic; Now or I’ll Forget

I can’t believe it’s been this long since I’ve shared anything here. I’ve meant to, but the intention has slipped several times. Perhaps so often, I thought I had already paid these pages a visit. This year, I’ve not written in solid form beyond spatterings of ideas, character notes, and stray poetry swirls—none shareable in any fashion. I’ve written extracts from things I can’t yet give the time and sustenance to nurture and grow. The spatterings of poetic lines, sequences, and numeric strings from the noises that cause my eyes to fly open from technicolour dreamscapes to muted grey silence. Rest? What is that? The threads make sense in how they weave into knots, and those taut threads melt, strengthening into chain links that rattle the posts. I’m awake! I can see constellations within them just as I do with every inspiring bruise, but they’d be senseless to anyone else. A showcase of some insanity; the hyperactivity of the mind fighting against the bloody dripping bones to focus! Ooo, did you see that pretty bird? I wander off direction, tired of the paths I’ve seen and all those damn arrows. Fuck the arrows. I veer off the tracks of tedium, where all the stories have been over-shared; they’re overtrodden, smooshed into the dirt with so many lost details.

New faces, old eyes, same stories. I’ve heard them before, but I’m quiet while they speak. Sometimes, a word will be yanked from among the twigs with blurry intentions, “It’s new!” they’ll cry. It’s never new. They’ve just jumbled up the old letters and pretended to be founder finders. I yawn, say nothing, smile. They declare titles on their stickers and pins like it means something. A statement of what they are—just children role-playing. I prefer the details—the answers to questions, but they don’t allow space to be asked.

I need the wounds that I can still taste the blood from when I draw the air in and pennies dance on my tongue; my mouth waters for more. That taste shows what you are. What you do when all the words are gone is what you truly are. Maybe that craving is why I’ve been painting with blood again. It’s just mine. The aroma has changed. I need the stories that make my core tingle. I’m listening for that. The details can’t be found on the tracks I’ve seen. And I’ve no interest in walking in anyone else’s shoes. I’ll stick to my bleeding bare feet. I like to feel the mud shift from wet to dry and back again. I like the way she sucks my toes after bleeding them. I am in a bloodthirst right now—something else that was entombed. Then I have some pouring when it shouldn’t—life literally bleeding away—an obvious other factor of distraction. I’m not sure what I’m doing here. I’ve been stung by labels and tags in the ear—too tired and tedious to repeat. They are distractions or some showy bunch of rosettes I’m supposed to wave to be part of a series of communities, cults, some dire, suffocating populous that I’ve never trusted. It’s uninspiring, and I’m bored of looking or more so, I’m bored of seeing since looking implies I’m seeking what I’m not. Perhaps that’s why I can’t write how I want. That, along with the lack of time, too many distractions, and desires weeding out falsehoods and fantasisers to find substance that, perhaps, doesn’t exist.

I’m not publishing anything of note right now; I’ve been undoing things that have undid me. I’ve been unburying myself with one handful of earth at a time, and I’ve been remembering, waking, accepting, breathing, working it out, growing, forgiving, and trying to ‘be’. That’s the most challenging part when life is so busy, and it’s not just mine in my hands—it never was. And my mind is cluttered with so many to-dos and the ever-humming starving pieces that have risen from the dirt I’ve been steadily shifting. I drink, and I drink, and my skin is still dry, but I’m not as dead as I thought I was. They’ve been singing to me in some survival revival—those little canopic jars of my organs thrum. The dirt is under my nails, and I’ll keep digging. I’m an archaeologist, and there are revelations from all these old discarded pieces reforming. It’s all in the details. It’s all in the context. I didn’t intend to lack eloquence quite as much as this, but no one can say it isn’t organic.

I’ll come back with more sense in a few days.

She’s Hysterical

Emotional immaturity, lack of self-awareness and lack of accountability. When he calls her crazy, wheels out his stories of psychos and other such variants — ask of his actions that instigated her reactions. He’ll not be able to answer, at least not truthfully, because that would mean being honest with himself. The ego prefers those lights off. Instead, believe that he is so desirable; simply existing drives any woman crazy. If asked, though, he may anger at the audacity of being questioned. He’s even the victim in his mind, and he’ll tell himself another story — how dare she, another fucking psycho.

Years later, he’ll return, peering around corners, lurking behind a screen, fingering old pictures, wondering where she went. He’s alone in his asylum of echos.

Of course, he/she is interchangeable, but it dominates, as noted. Just consider even recent 19th-century history, with a pandemic of sorts and a surge of women being diagnosed with Hysteria and other so-called ‘mental disorders’ for not meeting man’s mark of what is considered reasonable, sane, and well-behaved.

But back to the top, flip the narrative and consider each in equal measure. The truth is often somewhere between — hanging in tatters of opposing communication styles, the shredded ribbons of whys, and paragraphs wedged between the lines.

Suppose we scrape back a little and admit the chemical truth; that although of the same species, the sexes are inherently wired differently. It’s not just physiological; it’s chemical (hormonal) and psychological. We’re not the same. We are not equal. Understanding and empathy can go a long way, but tired, pre-conditioned, defensive, and damaging routes are sadly still more frequently trodden. Footprints smash and merge on that sad muddy path. Nothing grows there.

Popular culture, including methods of control wheeled out by religious and governments, have fed into the tropes that categorise the ill-expressed emotionless and logical male as somehow strong and superior and the overly emotional, sensitive female as unreasonable and, yes, psychotic. And within our sexes, we even betray ourselves. Yes, the external gaslighting happens within the borders too. It’s a fucked up mess to untangle and rework. Neither perpetrator likes to be called out, but that does not mean they shouldn’t.

Unless one is willing to open their eyes and look through a few other lenses, what’s the point? There’s no use in rinsing if one is doomed to repeat.

Until the Last Breath

Another Annoyingly Introspective Personal Post

I was never soothed or comforted – born into a ‘let her cry it out’ parenting style, with the technique of — if a child is that upset, threaten to give them ‘something to really cry about!’. I know that it is not entirely untypical of the 80s and 90s. I can’t deny the impact, though; a significant part of my nature of dealing with everything myself to the point of extremely unhealthy hyper-independence was very much a result of the lack of nurture. I isolate. I squirrel my emotions away so no one else is inconvenienced by them. I process and work through little and big hells in solitude. And that hyper-independence has been taken advantage of in poor relationships.

I’ve never felt loved, only tolerated. And that has carried through all my relationships, including the romantic. I’ve never been loved – tolerated, settled for, or convenient, but never that. Even when those empty words were uttered, I knew that they loved what I did for them, how I made them feel. I was never the subject to be adorned with that robe. That word was never mine. Folks have given me the minimal and I’ve been grateful because I shouldn’t exist. Being born was a mistake, I should be grateful for the crumbs.

I know I’m worth more than how I was conditioned to believe. I know I’m not just an instrument for others. I know I’m more than tolerable.

Still, accepting the minimal is a hard piece of conditioning to break when it was so deeply embedded from the moment I let out my first cry. The world told me to be quiet. Be seen, never heard. And if one could avoid being seen, all the better. I’m trying to fix it. And I’m awful at creating massive swathes of room for the broken parts of others because I want them to feel all the acceptance and love that I’ve never had. And I’ve offered it in abundance to my own detriment. I never want anyone to feel as awful as I have – it’s dark in here, always cold. There’s work to be in done in this messy hollow. I’ll weave the spindly roots into knots, so you don’t fall into the dark when you walk over me. I’ll turn back clocks and drop all time to make someone I care about feel loved, heard, accepted. I struggle to give that time and space to myself.

Every day I’m trying. Changing. Attempting to remake so many broken pieces or accept them with that word. The one that wasn’t mine when it fell from liars’ lips.

I think prioritising being loyal to myself is becoming one of the hardest lessons to learn in this lifetime. The perpetual work in progress until the last gargled breath. Still, the geese. At least none of this is forever….

AI & Digital Art – Opinion Post

It all kicked off on social media for a 24-hour period, which turned into outright bullying. It was a witch hunt, and the bandwagon was a disgusting display of how quickly negativity spirals in the digital age. There’s been a lot of it lately. Being new to the Twitter platform, it seems like a source for much of that ‘hate’ energy. Perhaps I’ve just not been exposed to that much (thankfully)! Anyway, I posted my tuppence worth on Facebook and thought I’d share here since it’s topical within book publishing and is unlikely to disappear any time soon.

The advancements in technology are astounding; we can all agree. The changes in my lifetime that have opened doors for global collaborations and distribution of art, music and literature are beyond what we could have imagined only a few decades ago. Technological advances have indeed made as many as it has broken.

From handwriting to typewriters to computers and printers. Pigeons, boats, airmail, fax, email and instant electronic delivery of words and art. And as difficult an adjustment as some changes may be at first, many ultimately embrace them.

We’ve been carving art from rock with stones since man stood upright. How much art and expression have changed is magnificent, and none of the changes takes away from how inspiring those first scratchings of creativity and communication embedded into our history, into the rocks, the bones are and always will be.

I remember turning my nose up at ‘digital cameras’ and ‘digital art’ when they were developed. I admit my attitude then lacked maturity, and there was perhaps a bit of snobbery. Now, I have a digital camera permanently attached to my hand! There’s magic in a dark room and effects that cannot be achieved any other way. You know what, it doesn’t have to be one or the other — I appreciate both art forms. And I like that people can capture crisper ‘memories’ in photos without professional skill. It’s (arguably) more accessible.

Going after AI is like going after anything else that was once ‘new’ before it. No, it’s not the same as paint on canvas or a human digital artist layering and developing elements to create a unique piece. It isn’t supposed to be either!

I don’t think any creative should be threatened by AI technology (at this point).

It seems that folk are so quick (on social media) to jump on the attack. Pitchforks out, ready for the witch hunt, taking it out on someone entirely undeserving. Whatever happened to the old sentiment ‘if you’ve not got anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all’?

And for all of us working in independent/small press publishing, in whatever role, I wonder what we would be doing without technological advancements. Digital artists would not exist. Self/Independent Publishing would not exist as it does now. Haven’t we each experienced archaic attitudes looking down their noses at our work at one point or another? It seems a somewhat hypocritical thing to go on the attack for.

Summer Solstice Note

Here in the village, the longest day of light is obscured by dense, low-hanging clouds. Heat permeates air molecules, caressing the skin and teasing water just out of reach.

The rain may come, or she may not. Either way, flames will lick skyward.

Flames will dance with padding feet, and shadows and ash will remark spiritual and physical boundaries on Litha.

Steeped in traditions around the globe, the essence of the Sabbat (when the sun is further from the equator) and her rituals are ultimately the same. We dance in tandem. Burning off what is no longer needed, shedding skins, and embracing what is filled with nourishing light and growth opportunities. This is a Sabbat of rebirth, regeneration through fire and light.

Evidence of Solstice traditions goes back to at least the Neolithic era.

Some consider Summer Solstice as Midsummer, and others consider it only the beginning. Like Winter Solstice, I’ve always taken the literal translation of these sabbats being the midpoint of the season regardless of climate, which in Scotland can be unpredictable.

Some traditions of this festival of sun worship can be found in numerous sources. This one is a nice quick read over on National Trust.

Mental Health in Horror

A while ago, I shared a bit about mental health in my writing, inspired by a panel I had taken part in with Mothers of Mayhem. Although naturally nerve-racking and coupled with technical glitches on my end, it was a wonderful experience, and I’m grateful to Marian and Christina (MoM) for the opportunity. This episode of Mothers of Mayhem’s Hidden Voices in Horror has now aired. You can tune in on YouTube to this particular episode featuring me (Natasha Sinclair), Lucas Milliron, Allisha McAdoo, R.E. Shambrook and Gerhard Jason Geick. There is an excellent variety of episodes building — follow MoM to get notified when new episodes drop!

My original post here.

Dead Waltz

A ghost waltzed through me
When I slept deathly deep
Slumber disrupted
Taking advantage
As he did with my
Friendship, my loyalty
My trust, my body

A ghost waltzed through me
Like I was his to enter
No choice but surrender
And I welcomed his touch
Through disgust
Distaste, mistrust
Did I lay down the mat?

A ghost waltzed through me
Did I invite him inside?
An open window, door ajar
In a tongue unknown
A serenade degrade
Billows clouding smoke
Butt of some joke

A ghost waltzed through me
I played dead

Don’t move
Don’t whimper
Quiet heart
Don’t breathe
Don’t stir

A ghost waltzed through me
I lay still.

Tugging

I’m struggling to write this post today, but I need to sprinkle a little something outward. There are many positive and productive things going on professionally and personally. And I want to lean into all that spring light. But other strings are being tugged; tugged into the dark. And as much as I’d like to ignore the pull, sometimes it’s impossible. Balance?
This pendulum is in perpetual motion until the inevitable, the only inevitable.
I stood among the trees this morning; their music in the thundering gale pulled me into the centre of their organic choreography. The chorus spun through my mind, a rustling melody among the lace of interlocking branches. The hypotonic sway nullified the nightmares; my existence among them was silent, serene.
Then I pulled back, time to begin this day, now that dawn winds have cleared.

YouTube Readings

Playing with another platform

I’ve considered doing some reading videos for a while now but only recently began sharing a few online. So far, I have shared a handful of poetry and short stories over on YouTube. Only one is a reading of one of my pieces. The rest are shares of other writers work that I enjoy.
All are welcome to drop by, subscribe, share. Open to requests too, if you have a piece you’d like me to read, drop me a DM. I can’t guarantee I’ll do it or when, but I’ll be in touch nonetheless.