Dear Yuri, it’s a pleasure having you here in my blog. We've known each other for a long time, so it’s a bit strange for me interviewing you, but I do have some curiosities which I think could be interesting for the people reading this, and all the people interested to H.P Lovecraft, Creepy-pasta, Horror, Magic and everything related to occult. Also, this is not a website, it’s a non-blog, so we can do and say whatever we want to
First of all, could you tell us a bit about yourself, more about your background as a journalist in the videogame industry?
I started as a freelance writer and translator in the late eighties and early nineties working for Stratelibri, the main importer and publisher of role-playing games, boardgames and collectible-card games here in Italy. Later I started working for Studio VIT, the publisher of very well known and loved videogames and console magazines like “Game Power”, “K” and “ZETA”. I continued my collaboration as a freelance journalist, reviewer and translator for role-playing games magazines like “Excalibur” and videogames/console magazines like “GMC – Giochi per il Mio Computer”, “PlayStation Power”, “PlayStation Magazine”, “Il Mio Computer”, “Il Mio Portatile” and many others. For some time I worked as a webmaster/web-designer full time for “Il Mio Castello Editore” creating and mantaining websites for their magazines, like “Il Mio Cavallo”, “Cavalli e Cavalieri” and “Il Mio Vino”, and also as a translator and journalist for “Gruppo Orange”. I've made a lot different things and most of the time I had a lot of fun!
Yuri Abietti
Yuri writes, sings, plays, enjoys occultism and magic, fantasy, science fiction, horror and pop culture.
One of his essay it’s about Cthulhu as a contemporary fashion Icon.
Did video games influenced you as a Musician or as a Writer?
I think so, yes. But more than videogames, I'm sure tabletop role-playing games and fantasy/horror literature had the biggest impact on me. I don't know how widespread is the hobby of tabletop role-playing nowadays and surely the Covid outbreak didn't help, but at the time it was something utterly new and mind-blowing. I think RPG are the highest form of human gaming experience.
You wrote beautiful lyrics for a song named “Dim Carcosa”, when you were the lead singer of the Silver Key. I must say that I love this song, it’s in my playlist since years. Can you tell us more about it? What’s behind this song, what inspired you?
Actually, “Dim Carcosa” was the only song in the two albums I made with the band that I didn't write the lyrics for! I put in music the fictional lyrics of the “King in Yellow”, in the book of the same title, written by Robert W. Chambers. They are beautiful and haunting, and I tried for months to come up with a melodic/harmonic progression that could go hand in hand with the metric of the poetry, that was a bit weird and irregular. When I found that music and I started singing the lyrics it was a very magical moment. I actually composed that song with my acoustic guitar years before proposing it to the band and putting it into the long suite of the first album.
Dim Carcosa it’s a masterpiece. I really hope that you are planning some surprise for all the people who were loving your voice and your style of writing, in the next future, do you?
Not really, unfortunately. I tried some experiment with a friend of mine on a very different genre and we published two or three songs but then the project kind of fell apart. Maybe we'll work on it again in the future, who knows. It's called “Dee & Kelly”, after the two famous magicians of the sixteenth century England. At least in this moment of my life I feel like I'm done with music. But, as I said, you never know. It's all that I want to say on the subject at the moment...
I wasn’t aware that you wrote also many essay and horror novels. It was a pleasant surprise when I did. The first novel I’ve read from you is “Il Quadro” (The Painting), in the “Ore Nere” (Dark hours) collection. That reminded me about a videogame named “Layers of fears” and a novel from H.P named “Pickman’s Model”. Did you had any of those reference in mind when you started working on your novel? If not, what else did inspired you?
Not consciously, no... But I had in mind other sources of inspiration like the painting scene of “In the Mouth of Madness” by John Carpenter and “The Mezzotint”, a short horror story by the master of ghost-stories M. R. James. Lovecraft, of course, is always a great source of inspiration. I don't think there's another single author who had so profound an impact in every little way we now think of horror, sci-fi and fantasy (well, except for Tolkien).
The “story behind the story” is kind of weird. I started that short tale years before completing it and the beginning was completely different. Then, one day, I stumbled upon the file on a backup drive, and I read it and I thought: “Well, the beginning is crap and I don't really know where I'm heading with this, but the idea is haunting and interesting. Let's work on it a little more...” A few days later I had this short-story and I submitted it to a literary contest, and, to my surprise, I won. I was very happy about it and I still think it's a very scary and weird short story.
You had not one but two scary and very entertaining collection of creepypastas novel. Can you tell us more about that?
Around 2008 I discovered the Creepypastas that were all the rage that year even if there was nothing at all about them in Italian, online or otherwise. I was instantly hooked. So I started a blog translating the best Creepypastas I found online and I had a lot of fun. Around that time, the editor of dBooks.it contacted me asking if I was interested in making a book, a collection of the scariest Creepypastas in Italian and I agreed. It was a very successful book (at least for an independent publisher and for a very niche product) so dBooks greenlit a sequel that was published two or three years later.
I’m crossing my finger for a third volume of the Creepy Pasta collection. Can we expect it soon?
After the good success of the first two volumes, the publisher and I talked about a third book – something less “generic” and more focused on some specific type of Creepypasta. We decided the general topic and I started writing it but at the time I was dealing with a lot of issues and so it was delayed for more than a year – and it was my fault. Anyway, now the third Creepypasta book has been in the hands of the publisher for almost two years and I'm waiting to see if and when it will be published. I'm guessing the Covid pandemic didn't help with this either. I hope it will be available soon, of course.
You wrote an essay on Cthulhu, which I’ve read with extreme attention, because I wanted to know more about this incredible character and because I love everything related to H.P Lovecraft. Can you tell us why you felt the desire to write about it?
I love Cthulhu and all Lovecraft-related stuff in modern pop culture, and it's clear that I share this love with a lot of people. Nowadays you can find any kind of videogame, board-game, RPG, card-game, whatever with Cthulhu attached to it. There are toys, plushies, dice, a TON of music inspired by Lovecraft, movies, tv-shows... Cthulhu is everywhere. Unfortunately, most of the time they portray the character not as Lovecraft intended but as it has evolved in the pop culture in recent years. So I thought about that and I thought It would have been nice to trace back that original concept and idea, regardless of what we think we know of Cthulhu today, and write a little eBook about it that I self-published on Amazon. Seems like it has been well received and I'm happy about it. I'm not against any “new” depiction of the Ancient One, I just wanted to point out that the original Lovecraft concept was something very peculiar and interesting and it's a shame that it was lost in some kind of “whispers” game through the years...
Why do you think Lovecraft novels are still so powerful to fascinate so many people, more than 80 years after his death?
Because Lovecraft had a unique approach on horror, in my opinion. He was a self-proclaimed atheist and rationalist. He thought that the idea of a universe without any “higher power” was even more terrifying than any “hell” humans could come up with. A universe completely indifferent to the existence of humankind or of life itself as a whole, actually. His “monsters” are almost never “evil” in a human sense. They are not particularly interested in us one way or another. They just “exist” and sometimes they destroy things like sometimes we destroy an anthill just walking, without giving it a second thought. There's no ethical dilemma, no “good” or “bad”, no “reward” or “punishment” ... Just entities so powerful, ancient and beyond our comprehension that we just cannot grasp their motivations. I think he was the first author to strip horror of its gothic-Victorian elements and to look into the abyss with a new approach, and I think that he single-handedly fathered modern horror, sci-fi, weird literature and dark fantasy. Well, maybe not exactly single-handedly: he was friend with a lot of authors that created the “Cthulhu Mythos” with him... Pulp magazines in the twenties and thirties, in the US, were the cradle of modern fantasy storytelling.
Cthulhu is contemporary fashion Icon: it is one of the most famous creations of the American writer Howard Phillips Lovecraft. Appears on t-shirts, in "motivational" on Facebook, in films, series and cartoons; he is the protagonist of role-playing games, videogames, card and board games and we can buy soft toys and toys with his appearance ... But are we sure we know him? What do the lyrics of the original stories of the Providence Solitaire tell us about his identity and his role? Let's find out together in this ebook: the attempt to retrace a path full of manipulations, changes and simplifications made over the last eighty years.
You are a singer, so you know you have a good and entertaining voice. You are also a writer of horror novel and a good narrator. I don’t know why, but I always thought you could do something on Youtube related to Horror. Maybe reading out a Creepy Pasta novel at each episode, like a sort of Uncle Creepy host (Zio Tibia).
Well, that's definitely an idea! With two friends of mine, we've created a Youtube channel but it's about magic, the occult and such (it's called “Octagram”). Also, I'm working on a couple of podcast projects that should be published in the next few weeks/months... So, my plate is almost full. And we (me and you) have our projects too, that I really, really hope we'll find the time to realize in the future. BUT: a horror narrative channel could be a lot of fun! I'll have to think about that!
I know that you are running a successful website about magic: the eight-pointed star (la stella a otto punte). Many people are fascinated by the topic, but afraid to reveal they fascination in public. Why so?
Oh yeah, you're very right. You don't have the slightest idea of how many magicians or witches “in the closet” are out there, right now. I realized that when I did my “coming out” on Facebook and revealed to all my friends that I was practicing magic. Many people contacted me in private chat to talk about magic, what they were doing, asking for advice or telling me their stories... But they would have never talked about that on their public profiles. There is a lot of social stigma about magic for a very wide variety of reasons, especially in Italy. The catholic view is that magic is inherently evil and “satanic” and that you would be better off staying the hell away from any of that. The sceptic view is that... well, it's all bullshit and there's no such thing, and if you argue otherwise, you're basically laughed out of any conversation. There's a lot of fear of “practicing it wrong” and summoning the Prince of Darkness in your living room or something (unfortunately that doesn't work, trust me. I tried. It would be awesome, though).
So yeah: many people are absolutely fascinated with magic and the occult, but they are scared to talk about that in public. Even hard-core sceptics... usually... let's just say, pay them a couple of beers and you'll hear the weirdest stories. It's just we're programmed to think that if you even entertain the idea of magic, you're stupid and silly... Of course, that's not what I think.
Could you tell us what is magic, in your opinion?
Oh well, I think I'll have to write a book to answer that...
But, in a nutshell... Magic is a very ancient and very effective technology of consciousness. Not just our individual consciousness, but some kind of universal awareness. Magic is the art and the science to tap into that awareness, to use it and to communicate with it. It's something totally different from what you can see in movies (with some notable exception) or in the pop culture in general. It's not like you wave a wand and say some Latin words and your dishes are washed, money fall from the ceiling and a very attracting lady (or gentleman) knocks at your door out of nowhere. Most of the time it's kind of boring, from the outside. It's a lot of studying and a lot of meditating. It's noticing little signs and messages from coincidences and synchronicities. And sometimes, yeah, it's summoning the Prince of Darkness in your living room.
I lied before. It does work, you know.
Is there any project that you would like to work on in the near future?
Yes, there are many! I have my blog, the Octagram Youtube channel and a couple of podcasts. Also, I'm (of course) writing a book (actually, more than one) about magic, about the Goetia (the demon-summoning traditional branch of magic) and about my tutelary Goddess. The horror/narrative Youtube channel is a great idea and I'll have to think about that. Also, as I mentioned before, the two of us have some projects and I hope we'll find a way to realize that. I would like, for example, to go back on our urbex/esoteric explorations project, maybe with a blog and a Youtube channel linked to it. Also, the pandemic put a halt to many ideas that I and my colleagues had more than a year ago, when we started Octagram... Like public speeches and conferences and maybe some specific courses or lessons on some aspects of the magic practice. There are a ton of wonderful ideas. This is one of the thing that magic does: it opens up new ways for your creativity to emerge and express itself and gives you a sense of wonder and a sense of adventure that we aren't used to feel anymore in this society.
You know that already but It’s worth repeating it. I really would love to work on a photographic project about magic, magical lore, rites. It’s not something that I can improvise, I need a solid expert. Will I be able to convince you taking a walk on this journey along with me, sooner or later?
You had me at “Hello”. Of course, I want to do that! Let's do it!
Yuri Abietti
Hasselblad X1D
Last but not least. You can send a message to your future self. Which message this would be?
I did my best. I tried to enjoy the ride. :)
Thanx Davide for this. Let's meet again soon and let's go have some adventures together. Blessed be!