An old photo: a hypnotist is pendulum-ing his shiny watch
before the eyes of a person-to-be-hypnotized.
An advertisement kitsch in a local newspaper: a witch is staring
into a crystal ball.
A work of modern art: a stuffed corpse covered by hundreds
of glass beads.
-----------------------------
The only one thing which bothered me after writing two
articles about Bowie was “how his stuff works” i.e. how his songs really get
under one’s skin. It was beyond my understanding how a committed Christian
while knowing very well, for example, about the references to Crowley in
‘Station to station’ still partakes that triumphant sadistic joy the song
conveys? What is there that so much violates a human will, and in such a way
that the very rape of a will induces a pleasure? Those questions are not just
about Bowie – it just happened that “his stuff” is probably the most brilliant
of its kind in our time. They are about “how the ultimate staff works”.
As it was already stated in ‘Death as a work of art’ “the
real stuff” in general and its particular manifestation, the Bowie’s work, can
be adequately addressed only from the position of Christian mysticism. Consider
the examples below.
‘The Next Day’, video
A night/sex-club for Catholic clergy. One of them is lashing his own naked back; much blood. The decadent whores, among them one, almost albino, dressed in “bridal”, extremely transparent, attire. One of the whores, together with a priest, brings in a silver plate with two freshly plucked out human eyes. Another one who looks somewhat more humane then others, reluctantly begins dancing with a priest. An old cardinal distributes banknotes in exchange to a kiss of his hand, a sign of submission. A singer, Bowie himself, dressed in “ancient” tunic but with a scarf around his neck, sings and dramatically points at “the most humane whore”; that jester causes the stigmata to appear on her palms. Blood is gashing from them; the white clothes of “the bride” become stained and then soaked in blood. The priest who danced with her and is now standing between her and “the bride” somehow entirely avoids being stained. Everybody is now looking in a trance at the singer; “the bride” has no bloody stains now. Bowie finishes his song and thanks the actors, “Gary” and “Mary” by their names, and then “everybody”.
‘The Next Day’, video
A night/sex-club for Catholic clergy. One of them is lashing his own naked back; much blood. The decadent whores, among them one, almost albino, dressed in “bridal”, extremely transparent, attire. One of the whores, together with a priest, brings in a silver plate with two freshly plucked out human eyes. Another one who looks somewhat more humane then others, reluctantly begins dancing with a priest. An old cardinal distributes banknotes in exchange to a kiss of his hand, a sign of submission. A singer, Bowie himself, dressed in “ancient” tunic but with a scarf around his neck, sings and dramatically points at “the most humane whore”; that jester causes the stigmata to appear on her palms. Blood is gashing from them; the white clothes of “the bride” become stained and then soaked in blood. The priest who danced with her and is now standing between her and “the bride” somehow entirely avoids being stained. Everybody is now looking in a trance at the singer; “the bride” has no bloody stains now. Bowie finishes his song and thanks the actors, “Gary” and “Mary” by their names, and then “everybody”.
An interpretation #1: evangelical.
Bowie sings about the “grand whore”, the Catholic Church. A cardinal is Satan = the Catholic Pope. Bowie also mocks stigmata, the typical Catholic case of delusion/ demonic possession. However, he also says something about someone “stuck in a hollow tree” for three days. Could it be Christ? The place is perverse: there they use prostitutes and serve human eyes.
An interpretation #2: Catholic.
Bowie is mocking the Catholic Church representing it as ran by money, bribes and the lies structure. A lashing himself priest represents the supposed Catholic hypocrisy (“discipline” in a brothel). He mocks Christ and Christianity visa various references (stigmata; allusion to St Mary Magdalene, Bowie himself represents “Christ” etc). Also, the lyrics have multiple hints to the Gospels story.
An interpretation #3: Catholic mystical tradition.
A lashing himself priest is a mockery of Catholic practice of “discipline” but the close-up of his naked back can be also a reference to Christ being lashed as well. Two eyes on the plate are the direct quote of the Western iconography of St Luci (“Light”), commonly depicted holding the plate with two eyes, a virgin and martyr whose eyes were plucked out as a result of her refusal to renounce Christ. The perverse “bride” soaked by blood gashing from stigmata represents the birth of the Church = the Bride of Christ which, according to the Christian teaching, was born from the wound of Christ on the Cross, as a result of His death. The real Church = the Bride of Christ is pure, here she is the worst of perverse whores. It is not even pseudo-Christ (Bowie) who bleeds for the Church there but another female, “St Mary Magdalene”. This can be a hint to the Gnostic texts about “the female principal = “St Mary Magdalene” as the spouse of Christ; “the female principal giving a life to a society of initiated”; it can be just a simple mockery; whatever it is it pollutes the mystical understanding of the Church as the Bride of Christ. Next, the brothel or sex club which “represents” the Church can be seen as the official Church against the will of which right now, from a female, not from Christ, the new Church is born – from the whore and as a whore-bride. In authentic Christianity the Virgin Mary (Virgin, Bride, Mother) is one of the symbols of the Church; there are gnostic stories about her as a whore who conceived from the Roman solder – so it is another blasphemous gnostic reference. The video is stuffed with multitude of symbols but the most visually stunning among them are two eyes on the plate (can be interpreted also as the symbol of “the Church blinds the believers”/ destruction of light “God is light” etc), stigmata and the blood poured onto “the bride”. This is a very sophisticated and dense perversion of the heart of the Catholic, Christian, and even, to some extent, the Old Testament mysticism. However, all the above is rendered “not real = nothing” by Bowie thanking actors for the roles played. It is nothing – “not serious”. It is also “uninitiated can see nothing” statement of gnosis. It is also the return to the chaotic unconscious where the symbols are popping up and sink without any rationale – the religious irrational. Finally, it means that it was “nothing” that created it, for the purpose of rendering all to nothing, and this latter is actually the only true here. Hence, this gnostic game is beyond a simple stage of making something new and twisted with borrowed from Christianity symbols, it is making everything senseless, apart from “I AM” which Bowie represents. It is the gnosis of only One Adept who pulls the strings of puppets (the rest of humanity or the humanity as such).
This is actually not all. One, with the knowledge of
Christian theology, especially mystical theology and also of gnostic texts and
occult practices could pile a meaning upon meaning because Bowie literally
stuffed his video with numerous symbols, some of them mutually exclusive, some
twisted, some tainted etc. This is in essence “the library” of symbols,
Christian and occult but the library completely disorganized. The role of a
librarian is ascribed to the viewer and listener.
Speaking about a listener, it is noteworthy that the lyrics have not been brought in for the analysis yet and yet we already have such a mess of symbols and conveyed by them ideas that its almost begs to be called “paranoid”. It is actually close to the truth but not in a sense the proponents of that kind of “stuff” employ speaking about Christians, as it will be shown below.
So, we have the “soup” of loosely connected religious/occult symbols and ideas; almost each of them can be interpreted in multiple ways. Let us see how “the visual soup” will behave when we throw in the lyrics (my comments are [in]).
Look into my eyes he tells her
I’m gonna say goodbye he says yea
Do not cry she begs of him goodbye yea
All that day she thinks of his love
[seems to be a simple love song]
They whip him through the streets and alleys there
The gormless and the baying crowd right there
They can’t get enough of that doomsday song
They can’t get enough of that all.
[this is unmistakably the way to Calvary]
Listen
Listen to the whores he tells her
He fashions paper sculptures of them
Then drug them to the river’s bank in the cart
They soggy paper bodies wash ashore in the dark
And the priest stiff in hate now demanding fun begin
of his women dressed as men for the pleasure of that priest
[here the lyrics and the video come together, the perverted Church has twisted “his” teaching]
The gormless and the baying crowd right there
They can’t get enough of that doomsday song
They can’t get enough of that all.
[this is unmistakably the way to Calvary]
Listen
Listen to the whores he tells her
He fashions paper sculptures of them
Then drug them to the river’s bank in the cart
They soggy paper bodies wash ashore in the dark
And the priest stiff in hate now demanding fun begin
of his women dressed as men for the pleasure of that priest
[here the lyrics and the video come together, the perverted Church has twisted “his” teaching]
Here I am
Not quite dying
My body left to rot in a hollow tree
Its brunches throwing shadows
On the gallows for me
And the next day
And the next day
And another day
[“Christ”, not really dying, not really dead is lying in a tomb (a hollow tree), triple repetition of “day” makes three days of the Gospels albeit not exactly straight because those words can also be interpreted as “endlessly”. However, that “endlessly” can also serve a gnostic right because it can be read as “they (the Church) left “the Christ of gnosis” endlessly rot via perverting his teaching, they made him dead”]
Ignoring the pain of their particular diseases
They chase him through the alleys chase him down the steps
They haul him through the mud and they chant for his death
And drug him to the feet of the purple headed priest.
[the same, drugging “Christ”; Church kills him]
First they give you everything you want
Then they take back everything you have
[the devil’s/ gnostic society self-portrait]
They live upon their feet and they die upon their knees
They can work with Satan while they dress like saints
They know God for the devil told them so
They scream my name aloud down the well below
[“the mutual reflections” created by the references to the Church and by the voice of the devil himself, to be considered in detail below]
Here I am
Not quite dying
My body left to rot in a hollow tree
Its brunches throwing shadows
On the gallows for me
And the next day
And the next day
And another day
It is important now to really apply oneself and put, in one’s mind, the video and the lyrics together – and, that is even more impossible, to keep it there. While this action clarifies some things, it hides other. This was the purpose of the author I believe. Here are the big parts of the collage:
A video would be seen by the majority simply as a primitive stance against the corruption in the Catholic Church while the lyrics express the major idea of gnosis, that Christ did not die, that the Church teaches wrong story. Those two notions, “accusatory” and “gnostic” are held together by the idea of “stupid people whom the Church fools”.
The giving a “good prostitute” stigmata enhances stance against corruption in the Catholic Church making it looks like Bowie is a modern Christian prophet who wants to purify the Church. Meanwhile, many sophisticated blasphemies of the video enhance the major idea of gnosis, that Christ did not die. The stance against the corruption in the Church and sophisticated blasphemies of the author, the “prophet” clash terribly.
The beginning of the lyrics, the “love story” seems to be out of context here but it is actually a tool, both for hiding a true meaning and for creating a cognitive dissonance. To this purpose serve also some murky elements like references to gallows. Noteworthy, even the elements which are designed to cover or to subtly change the meaning of others also can work as additional mocking references. For example, gallows can be perceived as a reference to Tarot card, the Hung Man and also as a mocking reference to Christ commonly referred as hanging on the cross.
Next comes “First they give you everything you want/ Then they take back everything you have/ They live upon their feet and they die upon their knees/ They can work with Satan while they dress like saints” – this is, in my mind, the voice of the devil himself describing the true situation of his adepts but it is also what the adepts, gnostics/occultist say about Christians so it is a technically excellent double reflection again.
And then comes the remarkable, the line which can be read in two ways, like the “double reflection” above “They know God for the devil/ (told them so)” or “They know God/ for the devil told them so”
“they take God for the devil” or “they know God because the devil told it is so. This is the voice of the devil again.
Finally, after restating the major message of the song, that Christ is not dead but left to rot for three days, Bowie render all to be a jock saying “thank you” for well-played roles, so all that “paranoid soup” is nothing – and even more so if one attempts to analyse it because since it is nothing, farce, it is plain stupid to try to find any meaning there.
Not quite dying
My body left to rot in a hollow tree
Its brunches throwing shadows
On the gallows for me
And the next day
And the next day
And another day
[“Christ”, not really dying, not really dead is lying in a tomb (a hollow tree), triple repetition of “day” makes three days of the Gospels albeit not exactly straight because those words can also be interpreted as “endlessly”. However, that “endlessly” can also serve a gnostic right because it can be read as “they (the Church) left “the Christ of gnosis” endlessly rot via perverting his teaching, they made him dead”]
Ignoring the pain of their particular diseases
They chase him through the alleys chase him down the steps
They haul him through the mud and they chant for his death
And drug him to the feet of the purple headed priest.
[the same, drugging “Christ”; Church kills him]
First they give you everything you want
Then they take back everything you have
[the devil’s/ gnostic society self-portrait]
They live upon their feet and they die upon their knees
They can work with Satan while they dress like saints
They know God for the devil told them so
They scream my name aloud down the well below
[“the mutual reflections” created by the references to the Church and by the voice of the devil himself, to be considered in detail below]
Here I am
Not quite dying
My body left to rot in a hollow tree
Its brunches throwing shadows
On the gallows for me
And the next day
And the next day
And another day
It is important now to really apply oneself and put, in one’s mind, the video and the lyrics together – and, that is even more impossible, to keep it there. While this action clarifies some things, it hides other. This was the purpose of the author I believe. Here are the big parts of the collage:
A video would be seen by the majority simply as a primitive stance against the corruption in the Catholic Church while the lyrics express the major idea of gnosis, that Christ did not die, that the Church teaches wrong story. Those two notions, “accusatory” and “gnostic” are held together by the idea of “stupid people whom the Church fools”.
The giving a “good prostitute” stigmata enhances stance against corruption in the Catholic Church making it looks like Bowie is a modern Christian prophet who wants to purify the Church. Meanwhile, many sophisticated blasphemies of the video enhance the major idea of gnosis, that Christ did not die. The stance against the corruption in the Church and sophisticated blasphemies of the author, the “prophet” clash terribly.
The beginning of the lyrics, the “love story” seems to be out of context here but it is actually a tool, both for hiding a true meaning and for creating a cognitive dissonance. To this purpose serve also some murky elements like references to gallows. Noteworthy, even the elements which are designed to cover or to subtly change the meaning of others also can work as additional mocking references. For example, gallows can be perceived as a reference to Tarot card, the Hung Man and also as a mocking reference to Christ commonly referred as hanging on the cross.
Next comes “First they give you everything you want/ Then they take back everything you have/ They live upon their feet and they die upon their knees/ They can work with Satan while they dress like saints” – this is, in my mind, the voice of the devil himself describing the true situation of his adepts but it is also what the adepts, gnostics/occultist say about Christians so it is a technically excellent double reflection again.
And then comes the remarkable, the line which can be read in two ways, like the “double reflection” above “They know God for the devil/ (told them so)” or “They know God/ for the devil told them so”
“they take God for the devil” or “they know God because the devil told it is so. This is the voice of the devil again.
Finally, after restating the major message of the song, that Christ is not dead but left to rot for three days, Bowie render all to be a jock saying “thank you” for well-played roles, so all that “paranoid soup” is nothing – and even more so if one attempts to analyse it because since it is nothing, farce, it is plain stupid to try to find any meaning there.
However, creativity is not about creating meaninglessness/nothing
(that is the work of a madhouse), creativity is about making something that
makes a sense, even if it is a very new sense – it may look “mad” but it still
must have a coherency to be perceived. An intricate system above, of devalued
and abused symbols, deception, endless cross-references, and clashing meanings
look quite the chaotic dead matter; it lacks something else to come to a life,
some organizing principal. The role of such a principal, in my opinion, plays a
listener himself and Bowie, his voice and music carefully guiding a listener to
extract meaning(s) from otherwise meaningless collection. Here the creative act
takes a place not so much during the writing of a song but while listening to
it. While the same can be said about any work of art which requires a
performance (i.e. not a once and forever done painting) most of the songs are
usually finished by their authors, i.e. the singer can change their character a
bit but not their entire content; the listener can do that even less, if at
all. In case of Bowie a song remains perpetually fluid.
Bowie’s voice, exceptionally rich with modulations, seems to work as a trance-inducing agent, together with his music, conveying “the desirable general mood” like, for example, ecstatic violence of ‘Oxford town’. The extreme ambiguity of the lyrics, typically without an easy to follow plot and also devoid of warm humane emotions (those elements would define the song landscape too clearly) achieves several points: it give the listener a sense of freedom to choose his own meanings from many implicitly offered thus giving him an illusion of his own creativity. At the same time, the occasional clashes of contradictory meanings put a mind in a state of a “mental block” from where a mind can escape by an altered state of consciousness similar to derealisation/depersonalisation. A mind enters into a trans-like state and opens to suggestions; what exactly a mind would choose from the Bowie’s collection depends on the “general mood” of the induced trance, conveyed by the musical part. The meaning which a person takes from the “soup” is determined by the predominant emotions conveyed by the music: the negative meaning(s) are chosen, while the “positive” exists as well, because of the negative emotions of the music.
There are additional methods to achieve the desirable purpose, the delivery of a certain oblique message, as well. A song (the lyrics) often is not one songs but several, cut into lines, mixed and made one, parts glued together; the voice and music highlight and occasionally, at the key-points, “restore” the hidden separate lines thus recovering coherency of the otherwise hidden message. Often the line which carries only the secondary meaning or no real meaning whatsoever is made extremely catching by the music and voice (for example “bring me a disco king”, “it’s too late to be happy”) and is used to switch an attention from the important content, the serious and direct occult references. On the other hand, the repetition and emotional force can be used to highlight the dark messages which look innocent or attractively-enigmatic to uninitiated: “the return of the Thin White Duke throwing darts in lover’s eyes”, “I am a seer and I am a liar”, “if you can see me I can see you” etc. A mind goes even further into a trance and absorbs the lines of the major importance without much conscious notice; they get stuck in a mind so a person is forced to repeat and repeat them, making message his own. This of course does not make the listener automatically “a Satan-worshiper” but put into his mind the words which (I hope) the majority would not choose to repeat mindlessly if they knew what they really say.
It is of course not like “totally hidden satanic message” about which there is much noise on evangelical websites. Something that is totally hidden from a human consciousness cannot be used to bring a human being down irrevocably because it would be a fundamental violation of God’s design, His gift of a free will and a rational mind. I wonder if it is the reason of a quite strange phenomenon, that the voice of the evil in a person occasionally breaks through in some of Bowie’s songs albeit after a mind of the listener was sufficiently clouded by the rest. Or, perhaps, it is simply a mockery, of the evil who takes a pleasure to state plainly who is he are what his intentions are while knowing that those before him will never believe it.
Bowie’s voice, exceptionally rich with modulations, seems to work as a trance-inducing agent, together with his music, conveying “the desirable general mood” like, for example, ecstatic violence of ‘Oxford town’. The extreme ambiguity of the lyrics, typically without an easy to follow plot and also devoid of warm humane emotions (those elements would define the song landscape too clearly) achieves several points: it give the listener a sense of freedom to choose his own meanings from many implicitly offered thus giving him an illusion of his own creativity. At the same time, the occasional clashes of contradictory meanings put a mind in a state of a “mental block” from where a mind can escape by an altered state of consciousness similar to derealisation/depersonalisation. A mind enters into a trans-like state and opens to suggestions; what exactly a mind would choose from the Bowie’s collection depends on the “general mood” of the induced trance, conveyed by the musical part. The meaning which a person takes from the “soup” is determined by the predominant emotions conveyed by the music: the negative meaning(s) are chosen, while the “positive” exists as well, because of the negative emotions of the music.
There are additional methods to achieve the desirable purpose, the delivery of a certain oblique message, as well. A song (the lyrics) often is not one songs but several, cut into lines, mixed and made one, parts glued together; the voice and music highlight and occasionally, at the key-points, “restore” the hidden separate lines thus recovering coherency of the otherwise hidden message. Often the line which carries only the secondary meaning or no real meaning whatsoever is made extremely catching by the music and voice (for example “bring me a disco king”, “it’s too late to be happy”) and is used to switch an attention from the important content, the serious and direct occult references. On the other hand, the repetition and emotional force can be used to highlight the dark messages which look innocent or attractively-enigmatic to uninitiated: “the return of the Thin White Duke throwing darts in lover’s eyes”, “I am a seer and I am a liar”, “if you can see me I can see you” etc. A mind goes even further into a trance and absorbs the lines of the major importance without much conscious notice; they get stuck in a mind so a person is forced to repeat and repeat them, making message his own. This of course does not make the listener automatically “a Satan-worshiper” but put into his mind the words which (I hope) the majority would not choose to repeat mindlessly if they knew what they really say.
It is of course not like “totally hidden satanic message” about which there is much noise on evangelical websites. Something that is totally hidden from a human consciousness cannot be used to bring a human being down irrevocably because it would be a fundamental violation of God’s design, His gift of a free will and a rational mind. I wonder if it is the reason of a quite strange phenomenon, that the voice of the evil in a person occasionally breaks through in some of Bowie’s songs albeit after a mind of the listener was sufficiently clouded by the rest. Or, perhaps, it is simply a mockery, of the evil who takes a pleasure to state plainly who is he are what his intentions are while knowing that those before him will never believe it.
The question arises what happens next. Do the lines which
convey the occult stuff eventually start working as the “mantras” or “spells”
in a mind of a listener? It seems that their major damage is that they condition
a mind for certain dark things, making it easier for it to except the things of
a similar kind in the future; this is also aided by the parallel devaluing of
the Christian symbols/anything that is good and by the corruption of meanings which
takes a place on other levels. The “dark messages” which carry in themselves
the emotions of deception, hatred, evil, futility etc – all that eventually causes
disintegration of the psyche and self – simply participate in the fragmentation
of a mind as “power points” or “pressure points” in the fragmented, with
mutually exclusive messages, songs – so the mind is forced to fragment like a faulty
floppy disk. The fragmentation of a mind is encouraged by the pleasure which a person
feels while listening the songs which convey the idea of superhuman,
unrestrained force and total freedom. And then rationale melts; eventually the
rational mind gives a way to unconscious. This unconscious can be (and often is)
perceived by others as conscious and even rational via employing postmodern
logic, of the endless reflections of “meanings” which cover emptiness but
eventually, when all the “molecules” of the collage are spent and nothing is
left to disintegrate, then comes that most dreaded, by a postmodernist, sight
of the sheer banality, the true ‘Blackstar’.
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