Omphalos/Vance Mellen

     Some night, I was trying out the search results of various alchemical and gnostic keywords on YouTube, scrying for some dark wizard lore, an ancient aliens manifesto, or maybe a renegade guru of consciousness. I happ'd to try the word “omphalos”, a cool-sounding Greek term meaning “navel”, often abused by brain-melted pseudo-philosophers like myself. This was the name given to symbolic stone sculptures used long ago in Greece as a representations of a hub of physical and celestial space. The most famous of these sculptures was that of the mystical oracle at Delphi. The omphalos has come to mean the Axis Mundi, a center and a passageway of dimensions, a world tree or celestial gate, connecting and grounding different worlds. It can can used to mean sacred stones or other powerful objects of various churches, communication with the gods, the center of the Earth or the universe, arguments about creationism, and the stone Zeus' father swallowed in place of his infant son in ancient Greek mythology. It can also be combined with other Greek words to make mystical sounding constructions like “omphaloskepsis”, “omphaloscopy” and “omphalopsychic.” We both just got smarter. People interested in omphaluses on YouTube will write things like:

OMPHALOS is an anagram cipher for OLYMPUS (OLYMPHALOS). This is another allegory of the phallus, which is the Hindu Lingam, that is the pillar, that is the spire, that is the obelisk, which is the premiere symbol, eluding [sic?] to the worship of the deepest control structure.

Those on the lower rungs of the hierarchy of control worship "the most high"
"light, more light!", they cry
as the children around them lay slain and die,
ever profane they shall remain
as SLAVES in LIES

     My “omphalos” search led me through a tribe of women in a spooky sword dance, a religion based on writings occultist Aleister Crowley transcribed from an encounter with the astral being Aiwass, videos tracing Queen Elizabeth's line back to the biblical Abraham (who was really the first Egyptian pharaoh), and lots of dark, ambient music. Eventually I came upon a video of a hairy square of disembodied paunch with a roving eye for a belly button and a big rough lump to the side (a mole, it turned out). It was accompanied by creaking, watery sounds, like a working stomach magnified. A lispy whisper took me through some spiritual (Mormon) thoughts around the piece with the exaggerated, infuriating cadence of someone who ignores their listener's cues of disinterest and panic: a boring neighbor, a fossilized teacher, a friend's dad you try not to encourage. The artist's name was Vance Mellen. The belly was his belly and the eye was his eye. This video was years old, with views that were in the low hundreds, and something told me that the Mellenhead Productions it came from was probably not owned by a different Mellen. I had to know more.

     On Mellen's page I saw how vast and varied his work is: there are videos of his stories at youth conferences, competitions and opening for his exhibits, a home-made version of Shakespeare's “As You Like It”, cataloged acting reels of his wife, animations of moving machinery, fake Santa sightings, a skateboarding film made with boy scouts, multi-tracked acapella songwriting, and experimental horror movies of the short and loud variety. There are also videos explaining his paintings and sculptures, such as a fertility fetish for increasing reproduction, a suit for God inspired by Elvis and William Blake, and a tinfoil roll of toilet paper with scriptures for a church he would like to build a thousand years from now.

     Despite the cosmic concerns of much of his art, Mellen is primarily focused on scaring children. Most of his storytelling footage involves him trying to spook groups of young people in the dark, and he has painted intricate portraits of each of his own children in harm's way: breaking free of parental guidance and wandering near a mountaintop ledge , playing with scorpions, losing circulation from being twisted in string, trapped underwater by an inflatable. Mellen has produced an alien movie where his kids kill each other and made a movie (for kids) where he plays a creepy Southerner and locks kids in a barn to be eaten by dinosaurs.

     Maybe he's such an aggressive spooker because he got scared so bad in his own childhood: He claims to have accidentally fried his brother by putting an electric cord into the boy's mouth, which stopped his heart for a half hour until their father and a Mormon bishop resurrected him In his youth. Vance Mellen also used to watch escaped mental patients try and kill themselves by jumping off the bridge in front of his house near the Kansas State Mental Institution, where his mom would later send him to the be locked in a dark room to face his fears and ease his trauma. Despite all of this, I think his art bores most people, and his YouTube account gives off the impression his life is pleasant and prosaic, Midwestern and Mormon. Mellen's actors and audiences always seem to be slightly embarrassed but tolerant community and family members. Mellen's work is perplexing and ambitious, in a way that I suspect will make his kids want to die from shame when they're older, but for now it seems like they love their untethered father, who is raising a family and pursuing an artistic life with passion and humor.

Snorkie the Mouse