Book Review: Go Ask Ogre: Letters From A Deathrock Cutter, by Jolene Siana

Go Ask Ogre is a compilation of letters written compulsively, over a three-year period, by Jolene Siana—an artistic, sensitive, suicidally-depressed, self-mutilating teenaged girl living on the bum side of Toledo, Ohio—to Kevin Ogilvie, AKA Nivek Ogre, the singer of her favorite mud and fake blood-coated industrial band, Skinny Puppy. Siana was 17 years old when she began.

Skinny Puppy, for the uninitiated, is a seminal industrial band and experimental art project formed in the early 80’s. They released several brilliant albums which are to disco what Norwegian death metal is to rock, and then some.

Many of Siana's letters are like this one, which was written and illustrated in her own blood:

She took the blade and looked at you. Life isn’t so bad, so they say—but for her she only had you—and even though she didn't really know you, there was something about you, she thought sincerity, but if extremes won't do what will? I know that you understand what I'm trying to say—this book means a lot to me. That is why I chose to write in blood for the final page. My pen doesn't agree with the blood. I hope you see the importance of this book, that is why I cut myself just for you. Sure it's been done before, but it is for you—especially. For you from me. It's not something you can buy in a store, it's mine, and I have chosen you to keep it. Please. I will be upset if you throw it out or something. Keep it and read it whenever. I think you'll write me back because I'm not dead yet, and when I do die, you can remember me. 419 335 4701, 2550 Greenway #11 TOLEDO OHIO 43607-1380 USA. Though it's not love, it means something, Believe it all.

Sound pathetic and creepy? I thought so, too.

I was prepared to voyeuristically savor the shadenfreude with cool ironic detachment; and while it's true that there's a desperation in this letter, and this book, that no one likes to show, or look too closely at, what with the pleading, the full address and phone number included, and the blood, but the truth is, Go Ask Ogre is anything but pathetic. It's the very human record of a young girl’s fight against, and victory over a potentially deadly illness of the soul, and secondarily, it's the genuinely touching account of one person reaching out to another—the unlikeliest other—and being heard.

Siana's letters and the artwork that accompanied them are full of that aching desire to be seen, known and loved that all of us felt stretched-out upon the rack of, when we were teenagers, but with an extra dose of darkness borne out of real suicidal depression. Siana is unflinching about the depth of her loneliness, and unabashed in her expression of her adolescent suffering. Her artwork is beautiful, and completely communicates the agony of a talented and sensitive young soul in the face of a difficult home life, dreams and aspirations that seem impossible from the vantage point of a job at Burger King, and a really, really boring math class.

Article Author: Jaime Nichols

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