he eighteenth century , into phrases shaped by the authors I «ve read. But in spite of my French accent, I talk like a cross between a flatboatman and detective Sam Spade, actually. So I hope you »ll bear with me when my style is inconsistent. When I blow the atmosphere of an eighteenth century scene to smithereens now and then.came out into the twentieth century last year.brought me up were two things. - The information I was receiving from amplified voices that had begun their cacophony in the air around the time I lay down to sleep. «m referring here to the voices of radios, of course, and phonographs and later television machines. I heard the radios in the cars that passed in the streets of the old Garden District near the place where I lay. I heard the phonographs and TVs from the houses that surrounded mine., When a vampire turn up out of the blue to the underground as we call it - when he ceases to drink blood and he just lies in the earth - he soon becomes too weak to resurrect himself, and what follows is a dream state.that state, I absorbed the voices sluggishly, surrounding them with my own responsive images as a mortal does in sleep. But at some point during the past fifty-five years I began to «remember» what I was hearing, to follow the entertainment programs, to listen to the news broadcasts, the lyrics and rhythms of the popular songs.very gradually, I began to understand the caliber of the changes that the world had undergone. I began listening for specific pieces of information about wars or inventions, certain new patterns of speech.a self-consciousness developed in me. I realized I was no longer dreaming. I was thinking about what I heard. I was wide awake. I was lying in the ground and I was starved for living blood. I started to believe that maybe all the old wounds I »d sustained had been healed by now. Maybe my strength had come back. Maybe my strength had actually increased as it would have done with time if I «d never been hurt. I wanted to find out.started to think incessantly of drinking human blood.second thing that brought me back-gosh, the decisive thing really - was the sudden presence near me of a band of young rock singers who called themselves Satan »s Night Out.moved into a house on Sixth Street - less than a block away from where I slumbered under my own house on Prytania near the Lafayette Cemetery - and they started to rehearse their rock music in the attic some time in 1984.Heavens! I could hear their whining electric guitars, their frantic singing. It was as good as the radio and stereo songs I heard, and it was more melodic than most. There was a romance to it in spite of its pounding drums. The electric piano sounded like a harpsichord.caught images from the thoughts of the musicians that told me what they looked like, what they saw when they looked at each other and into mirrors. They were slender, sinewy, and altogether lovely young mortals - beguilingly androgynous and even a little savage in their dress and movements - two male and one female.drowned out most of the other amplified voices around me when they were playing. But that was perfectly all right.wanted to rise and join the rock band called Satan «s Night Out. I wanted to sing and to dance.I can »t say that in the very beginning there was great thought behind my wish. It was rather a ruling impulse, strong enough to bring me up from the earth.was enchanted by the world of rock music - the way the singers ...
