I consider myself a connoisseur of the obscure and a champion of the forgotten, falling a little bit into both camps. I admire those creators who bring themselves to the brink of disaster and death to bring their visions to life, whether or not there’s financial gain or fame at the end of the whole mess. Spend five minutes watching the films of Damon Packard to witness the pure beautiful madness of it all. I remain envious of those creators who are capable of art at all costs, beyond all sacrifices. There’s a certain insanity in that.
So, when ‘The Unicorn Man‘, penned by the mysterious Vox Anon, found its way to my mailbox a few weeks ago, I was a little scared. I mean, I’ve never been disappointed by identity-obscuring creators before – Leon Redbone, Unknown Hinson, Jandek, The Residents – all good things, if not completely bizarre, but as a creator who practices radical transparency myself, the whole world of anonymous creativity can sometimes fall outside of my realm of understanding.
The simple paperback is structured in three parts, bound in black paper and using a very organic typewriter font, like the manifesto of a fevered revolutionary or an isolated man-monster trying desperately to communicate with the world using the only materials available to him. Indeed, is the author to titular Unicorn Man, or Vox Anon, or the oft-mentioned Qayin? Or are they all the same thing? Is he here to steal our women, or to just invite himself in for coffee?
Pages I though LVIII are dedicated to three narratives, which tangentially describe the origins and travails of the beleaguered Unicorn Man in a dizzying miasma of action and fire and fairy tale. One gets the impression that hidden somewhere in here is a set of clues which direct the reader towards an answer to an unasked question. As the reader progresses through the pages, they slowly begin to unravel into an avalanche of words and a collage of sounds, which mimic the collages that represent the latter third of the book.
This artful strangeness is followed by 233 pages of poems, thick with religious imagery and icons. These comprise the bulk of the book, and are divided up into seven sections, evoking something biblical. I’ve been guilty of poetry in my day, but most of it evolved into writings within the ‘Shel Silverstein’ school of lyricism. Again, I get the feeling that every poem is a hint towards an identity, as the phrase ‘I am’ is used in almost every single one, and usually at the end of a phrase, Yoda-style. 233 pages of ‘I am’ must mean something.
The final pages of collages, all black-and-white digital overlays, are the most frenetic part of the whole collection. The theme of the unicorn is repeated in hundreds of ways, with a variety of unicorn imagery heretofore unseen, including everything from medical textbooks to Pokemon and My Little Pony images, with Ultraman and charts of M.U.S.C.L.E. figurines mixed in with zodiolocical and scientific diagrams and symbols. Is it talking about the strange unity of all of these disparate things, or is it an ultra-dense dumpsite for an information overload? I’m not qualified to answer that, but the whole package feels like someone frustratedly wringing their hands in some undisclosed location, knowing more secrets than they can handle.
I admit : I don’t fully understand it, and I enjoy things that I can’t understand or exist outside of my usual zone of awareness. It’s a challenge, and a curious addition to my collection of the obscure.
