Recap: LIVE PROSE with Adam Parfrey and Joseph Scott Morgan

Forty or so people came out on Monday night to witness Adam Parfrey and Joseph Scott Morgan present their work in the cavernous main room of 725 St. Ferdinand St. (a private residence).

Morgan, who is more of a hulking brute in real life than in pictures, delivered an oratory at times sermon-esque that wove together his troubled youth, wrought with themes of murder and violence, and the life it led to as a death investigator. He wrung the Southern gothic tradition until it was nearly dripping actual blood on the church floor, and if he seemed to veer occasionally over the top, one only needed to remind oneself that the stories he told were not products of his dark imagination, but his dark life.

Adam Parfrey led attendees through an in-depth visual journey into the bowels of masonic tradition and its influence on American society, casting images on the huge church walls that showed characters from Babe Ruth to Franklin Roosevelt to the Ku Klux Klan owing deep debts to the creepy order. He even related an account of being inducted into the quasi-masonic brotherhood The Oddfellows in Texas–a betrayal of their secrets ostensibly punishable by death–that involved a set of funny glasses and a plastic skeleton.

Thanks to everyone for coming out.

Joseph Scott Morgan prepares to bring the grimness.

Mostly Satan worshipers

The Church of 220

Joseph Scott Morgan and Adam Parfrey

Darkness pauses for lighthearted banter around the piano and audio-visual adjustments.

The concession stands … of darkness.

Joseph Scott Morgan and Wesley Stokes

The exterior view of 725 St. Ferdinand St. (a private residence)