Ashley’s Reviews > Danse Macabre > Status Update

Yeah, I think maybe that’s what I want to leave you with, in lieu of a good night kiss, that word which children respect instinctively, that word who truth, we only rediscover as adults in our stories, and in our dreams, magic.

We fall from womb to tomb, from one blackness and towards another, remembering little of the one and knowing nothing of the other, except Through faith. That we retain our sanity in the face of the simply yet binding mysteries is nearly divine.

It’s not A Dance of death at all, not really. There is a third level here, as well. It is, at bottom, A Dance of dreams. It’s a way of awakening the child inside, who never dies, but only sleeps ever more deeply. If the horror story is our rehearsal for death, then its stretched moralities make it also a reaffirmation of life and Goodwill and simple imagination. Just one more pipeline to the infinite.

The job of the fantasy horror writer is to make you, for a little while, a child again. To provide a single powerful spectacle for the third eye.

The imagination is an eye, marvelous third eye that floats free. As children, we see with 2020 clarity. As we grow older, it’s vision begins to dim. And one day the guy at the door lets you into a bar without asking to see any ID and that’s it for you. .. The job of the fantasy writer or the horror writer, is to bust the walls of that tunnel vision wide for a little while….

…. A partner in a rotting ball gown, a partner with missing eye sockets, green mold growing on her elbow length gloves, maggots, squirming in the thin remains of her hair. To hold such a creature in arms?

The Danes macabre is a waltz with death. This is the truth we cannot afford to shy away from. Like the rides in the amusement park, which mimic violent death, the tale of horror is a chance to examine what’s going on behind doors, which we usually keep double locked. The human imagination is not content with locked doors. Somewhere there is another dancing partner the imagination whispers in the night….

I believe it’s this feeling of reintegration arising from a field specializing in death, fear, and monstrosity, that makes the Danes macabre, so rewarding and magical... that and the boundless ability of the human imagination to create endless dreamworlds and then put them to work.