Recommend an artistic path into the shadow

[rivulus]

I am looking for music, poetry, books, movies, etc. that can accompany me into a place inside myself that I long to explore. The place is represented by a room in a dream I had about 13 years ago.

I am walking down a city street, somewhere in the downtown of the city, where the sidewalk feels like it is at the bottom of a deep canyon made by tall, grey buildings. At one point I see some stairs going down below the ground, like a small subway entrance. I go down the stairs and find a basement. But not a big place like the subway, cold with tile and concrete. This place is something much smaller, more intimate, like the cellar of an old house. The ceiling is low, the place smells like earth. It’s dim at the bottom of the stairs.

There are two small rooms. In one room, I look up and there is a body suspended from the ceiling. Up among the rafters. It’s me, it’s my body. I am dead but not dead. Years ago, when I told this dream to my therapist, I remember understanding what dead but not dead means. It’s the way I like to shut down my emotions, to make them still and frozen and dead. So I am alive, but dead at the same time. It’s a familiar state, but it’s also creepy, like being a zombie and walking around dead. It’s not a good way to be.

In the other room, there is the dark man. The room itself is very dark, with only hints of light around the shadows. And in the middle, still like a suspended breath and even darker, is the man. He frightens me. But he is also me. He is dangerous but also more real and powerful than the frozen girl in the other room. That darkness contains life and real death, not the simulated death of the other room. It feels evil in way, like a warm chill, but also not. The darkness is mysterious and ambivalent. I love him.

I explored the girl in the first room those many years ago. I was able to understand her. I never went into the room with the dark man. I didn’t dare. But sometimes I long to go in there with the dark man and let him annihilate me. It’s an artistic, passionate, dangerous place. It’s sort of like the Jungian shadow. But I don’t want to analyze it. I want to go there – but in good company. Hand in hand with artists who have traveled there and shared their experience.

Does this place sound familiar to you? What music, words, and stories would carry me there?