Sweet Jane and The Nightmare

My friend gjhost dansing* posted a different version of this song on facebook. I choose to share this "official" version here. Somehow, the song led to the horror below. I am not sure but feel I must be in some distress. It would seem so since nothing about the song goes to such a place.

The Nightmare

Oh when did I choose
to stray and lose my station?

I am in descent
into the bleak black
hollow this has placed in me,
the screech of an owl
in the gray moonlight
of my twisted destiny.

I cannot change it.
It does not budge, not
an inch, a fraction. I feel
a scream crack my spine.

April 30, 2012 4:12 PM

The poem invites me to think of Poe or Lovecraft. I wanted to illustrate it with Henry Fuseli's painting The Nightmare but it just doesn't fit. That means I will separate the painting from the poem above, but here it is anyway:

Wiki says:
The Nightmare is a 1781 oil painting by Anglo-Swiss artist Henry Fuseli (1741–1825). Since its creation, it has remained Fuseli's best-known work. With its first exhibition in 1782 at the Royal Academy of London, the image became famous; an engraved version was widely distributed and the painting was parodied in political satire. Due to its fame, Fuseli painted at least three other versions of the painting.

Interpretations of The Nightmare have varied widely. The canvas seems to portray simultaneously a dreaming woman and the content of her nightmare. The incubus and the horse's head refer to contemporary belief and folklore about nightmares, but have been ascribed more specific meanings by some theorists. Contemporary critics were taken aback by the overt sexuality of the painting, which has since been interpreted by some scholars as anticipating Freudian ideas about the subconscious.

*I am not sure I understand why gjhost dansing chooses to spell the name that way on facebook. Perhaps gjhost will explain. I first encountered the name as ghost dansing when I met my friend near the beginnings of this blog of mine. The ectoplasm leaked from one blog to another. Ghost has always chosen to remain above the realm of the sexed and so I take care not to use any misleading words.