Cycle I: Coming on Strong
The Hidden Voice
The Record · 12 (v2.00)
THE HOUSE OF ZAN — Zan
VOICE ADVISORY: The speaking voice is romantic self-mythology recognizing itself in a fictional monster. Contains themes of desire, darkness, pursuit, rejection, possession, devotion, gothic romance, and the influence of fiction on romantic identity.
If I had to give an example of how I see myself in a romantic space, it would be found in Bram Stoker’s Dracula.
Hear me out.
The 1992 adaptation, directed by Francis Ford Coppola, takes something frightening and allows it to remain frightening while making it intensely romantic.
Dracula can say:
Dracula: I have crossed oceans of time to find you.
Or:
Dracula: Do you believe in destiny? That even the powers of time can be altered for a single purpose? That the luckiest man who walks on this earth is the one who finds… true love?
When Dracula says slick shit it sounds romantic, when it shows up in your DMs it sounds like a future restraining order.
Still, there is something in that contradiction I recognize.
The darkness does not disappear simply because someone finds another person willing to see it.
Neither does the desire.
There is something about another person seeing the parts that should send them running and moving closer instead.
Later, Mina answers with something just as absolute:
Mina: I want to be what you are, see what you see, love what you love.
Dracula: Mina, to walk with me you must die to your breathing life and be reborn to mine.
Mina: You are my love… and my life, always.
That is the part that stays with me.
Not simply Dracula pursuing Mina.
Mina recognizing something in Dracula and answering it.
I don’t imagine the darkness becoming light.
I don’t want to be rescued from it. I want someone who can see in the dark.
I imagine someone seeing it and staying.
Someone who recognizes something familiar there.
Something they want.
The possibility that two people can encounter parts of each other the rest of the world might misunderstand, reject, or fear and find intimacy there instead.
Not because either person became less strange.
Because someone finally understood the language.
A human bondage stronger than the oceans of time.
Companion Track: “To Bring You My Love” — PJ Harvey
VOICE FEEDBACK: Things That Suck… In A Good Way — 665