Ayin Aleph
....
Through the Looking Glass
....
By Alex S. Johnson
There is only one good descriptive word for Ayin Aleph’s home décor, and that is tchotchkes.
The word is Yiddish, originally Polish, and refers to knickknacks,
swag—unidentifiable stuff one might encounter when visiting the Los
Angeles abode of an insanely gifted, multitalent hybrid who has places
in Moscow and Paris, mantles adorned with a fantastic array of books in
Russian and English, some with old, gilt bindings; cabinets, armoires,
end tables, coffee tables, lacquered statues, a cherry-red Steinway, a
nude painting of the artist in which her hair looks bewitched and she’s
chatting away to a pair of Sphinxes; and, unaccountably, a bust of
Joseph Stalin. (Stalin is coming back in a big way; or so I’ve heard.
And so are Sphinxes.)
The
first letter in the Hebrew alphabet, the aleph plays a significant role
in Kabbalistic mysticism; it is considered magical. In a short story by
the great Argentine fabulist Jorge Luis Borges, the aleph is a portal
to the entire universe, a gateway to infinity. Like her namesake, Ayin
Aleph is not quite real—she is perhaps hyper-real-- and anyone
encountering this actress/singer-chanteuse/former piano
prodigy/composer/diva of the most hybrid French-Russian-Angelino stripe
quickly picks up on the fact. Her world appears completely of her own
devising, a construct both ancient and futuristic, its architecture
fierce and palpable as blood and bones and skin.
Something else—the melody she serves—is pouring through her and from her.
She
is perfectly comfortable here in her domicile, as it should be; it is
we who must find our way to her magic castle, along a path studded with
magnificent, slightly sinister musical notations, accompanied by the
subliminal bite of some Anne Rice-style crop whip (“le sadomasochisme,”
Ayin intones, dreamily sounding out all the syllables), and into a room
tiny, ornamented and elaborate as a Faberge egg, where the diva holds
court in a mesh see-through top and tight-fitting lime green skirt.
Listening to Ayin’s metal album, Ayin Aleph I,
and then watching a series of YouTube videos of the artist performing
her songs “My Bloody Marriage (To Evil Angels)”, “Butterfly” and
“Hamlet” (in the video, she is Hamlet, and Gertrude, and Ophelia, and
Claudius; in short, she reproduces in her own irreducible
self-multiplying way the complex themes of Shakespeare’s masterpiece,
and does it all in under four minutes), I was ready for anything:
Languid blood-baths, ambisexual orgies in the manner of Fellini Satyricon; the darkest wines, the most rare and illicit perfumes. I was fortified with a glass of the vin rouge.
I was willing to endure it all--hideous flashbacks of masked balls at ....midnight, dwarves; the full freaky-deaky, really--just to get the story.
At
some point in the evening I recall dancing, headbanging actually, in
Ayin’s kitchen to the strains of Pantera’s “Cemetery Gates” (Ayin is a
big fan of Phil Anselmo), while a publicist present at the interview
makes savage chopping motions in the air with a kitchen knife.
Later, at ........Hollywood metal ........Mecca
the Rainbow Bar & Grille, we are harassed by a bitter black
homosexual. On learning from my friend that I’m a writer, he airily
dismisses my entire existence--“Why don’t you write yourself out of the
story”—whereupon Ayin slurps his finger for no apparent reason. No
snaps for this man, not tonight. Slurps instead. This is strange,
although not the strangest experience I’ve had at the Rainbow.
“I
quite admire this artist,” she says when I mention British avant-pop
singer Kate Bush as a possible influence—“My Bloody Marriage” comes off
like Bush’s paean to “Hammer Horror,” gene-spliced with “Babylon AD (So
Glad for the Madness)” by Cradle of Filth—“but I am not this artist.”
Ayin’s
evident wish to clearly define herself as an entity apart, not gothic
or even neoclassical but as full-metal as Phil Anselmo, makes complete
sense; the only hitch I can see in this plan is Ayin’s virtual
anonymity in metal circles compared with her more visible presence
among Goths. In pure genre terms she is close kin to artists like Sarah
Jezebel Deva, Cradle’s long-time female voice, but her music is harder,
louder and much more aggressive than Deva’s solo work, with a
pronounced theatrical flair that feels like an extension of her
personality.
And
don’t even think of placing her in the company, however tentative, of
Diamanda Galas, the Greek singer with the freaky vocal chords and dark,
witchy looks. “I hate her,” says Aleph, shooting an imaginary spitball
in Diamanda’s direction. Diamanda fades into the background, clutching
bloody sheets smeared with plague virus, wailing and keening like an
old widow on an Ouzo binge.
“I’m
metal in spirit,” says Ayin. “I can do various styles only in a metal
style of execution.” The interview will happen in a bit, but first, a
listening party.
Wine
and tasty, not doubt exquisitely costly European cigarettes are
proffered, pages of lyrics in three languages are thrust eagerly in
one’s hand, and suddenly the place booms with this fantastic storm und drang piano
music, pianos stacked on pianos (“15 pianos,” she says with undisguised
glee; “21 pianos”); piano music many stories high, crashing down with a
furious, thundering melody—three parts Phantom of the Opera, one part a medley of baroque, Russian Romantics, thrash metal and the “Anvil Chorus” from Giuseppe Verdi’s Il Trovatore—accompanied
by Aleph’s multioctave, classically trained operatic voice, doubled
live, in person, in this intimate space designed by Hieronymous Bosch,
right in my ear.
This
music, this metal opera composed on a cherry-red Steinway and blasted
directly to the unconscious by virtue of Aleph’s surrealistic lyrics
(“Slayers are fantasy’s games/crossing in my blood with jokes/and die
in my eyes” is just a sample, from the song “Aleph”); this
chamber-of-horrors sonic puzzle is from her acoustic album, no less, which may give you some idea of what she’s capable of when she really screws on the intensity. Ayin Aleph II is the logical follow-up to her debut album Ayin Aleph I, 19 songs in which Aleph articulates a host of characters—men and women, old and young—accompanied by a full-metal band.
The
arrangements on the first album are quite complex, an original
synthesis of baroque and black metal, reminiscent at times of a female
Dani Filth on a more potent brand of absinthe, and at other moments of
some decadent nightclub in Weimar Germany just before the second World
War. Sneak in a pinch of Tori Amos, Freddie Mercury and Nina Hagen, and
you start to get the idea. (“But I am not these people,” as Ayin would
say.)....
“Be in love,” Ayin writes on my copy of Ayin Aleph I,
and it is this directive, this philosophy really, that underlies
everything she does. “Being in love,” says Ayin, “is a condition of the
highest aspiration to beauty in everything. It is a cascade of unusual,
fine desires, a body on divine fire, unearthly sensations, a new visual
opening of subjects and their nuances…all material breaks up to these
fine nuances, and then gathers in a monolith creating a harmony of
desire, and forces you to sound as an organ out of a temple.”
Exactly.