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Mystic Allusions in Heavy Rock Lyrics
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Lyrics mystic phenom. allusion
theory
How popular is mysticism with pop
music?
>I've
just read your research/discovery on "Rush lyrics alluding to mystic
dissociative phenomena" and I am totally blown away. To think that someone
has finally figured Neil, Alex and Geddy out (mainly Neil). I haven't
trancended the ego in quite some time but after reading this I have an extreme
urge to caress the hemisphere's again.
Excellent work! Thank you!
...
>>I
am intrigued by your comments and analysis of Rush lyrics. Have you analyzed or any comments to the
lyrics of their latest album / CD, Vapor Trails (2002)?
Many
people have asked for such an analysis.
My time would be best spent developing or clarifying this general theory
of lyric interpretation, rather than adding more particular albums to the
pile. I hope to get around to this
album, but it's not a top priority.
It's possible for anyone to apply my theory to any album to evaluate how
compatible the album is with the theory.
Several people have posted such analyses they have done of other groups'
lyrics, proving that my theory or analysis technique is being communicated well
enough to be understood and applied.
This site
presents a straightforward theory of entheogenic, deterministic ego-death.
The theory
was encouraged by Rush songs alluding to LSD phenomena such as the following:
No One at
the Bridge
Bastille
Day
Chemistry
The Body
Electric
Bacchus
Plateau
The
Twilight Zone
Cygnus X-1
Freewill
Vital
Signs
Driven
I found
the core theory of ego death in January 1988 and discovered the acid-rock
allusions to egodeath and mystic altered state phenomena in Rush around
1994. The allusions reported phenomena
and insights that fully supported the core theory, thus serving as confirmation
and encouragement and showing how Art is ahead of Theory.
>From:
OnlinePromotionsCoord
>Sent:
Saturday, December 15, 2001 8:01 AM
>To:
unitOne at egodeath.com
>Subject:
RushCon II
>
>RushCon
II is really happening!!!
>
>RushCon
II: Citizens of the World will be July 12 - 14, 2002. The Friday Night Mixer will be at The Toronto Colony Hotel, which
is again the official hotel of RushCon.
They have given us a special room rate of $149.00 CDN per night (plus taxes). You can book your room with them by calling
1-800-387-8687 and quoting the code RushCon 2112.
>On
Saturday July 13, 2002, The Opera House (located at 735 Queen Street East) will
host the main events for RushCon II.
Some of the things you will see are: a Tribute Band Concert, Rush
Karaoke, Rush JeoParody, Countdown (a Rush song identification game), fabulous
door prizes, contests, our annual charity auction, and a guest speaker or
two! You get all of this for the
special price of just $30 CDN! Quite a
bargain!
>I also
want to tell you about the exciting happenings we have for Sunday July 14,
2002. We will be holding our Bastille
Day Walking Tour for 50 lucky attendees.
We will storm Toronto on an exciting tour of all the significant Rush
sites, including Canada's Walk of Fame, Massey Hall, Sam the Record Man, Maple
Leaf Gardens, Danforth and Pape and Queen's Park (Moving Pictures cover). More information about the Sunday events
will be released soon.
>If you
have any questions about RushCon II please ask them on the official RushCon
message board http://pub37.ezboard.com/brushcon or for a quicker response
please join the RushCon discussion list at
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/RushCon/
Of course the official RushCon website at www.rushcon.org is another way
to learn all you to need to know about RushCon II. We are currently updating the site and should have all the new
information up soon. We apologize for
any inconvience this may cause you and thank you for your understanding and
patience.
>Once
the website is up and running we'll have online registration available. If you
just can't wait, you can register by calling (705) 446-2481 and asking for a
registration form. You can also call
that number if you have any questions that need to be answered. Thanks!
>To
properly study this takes quite an effort to see through heaps of lyrics. Meantime I propose that mysticism is not
only hugely popular with Classic Rock but also throughout pop music in a an
all-encompassing sense (ie. any music which is popular with the people).
I have
mentioned a degree of presence in other pop music genres before, in this
discussion group, such as Windy.
>For
example, 80's synth-pop is *utterly* contaminated with mystic state allusions.
Classic
Rock inherently has more potential for acid allusions, because it includes the
entire range from Heavy to Soothing, whereas Pop is limited to Soothing, and
Metal is limited to Heavy. This is why
Led Zeppelin ranks at the top of Rock history: a broad command of the full
range of modes. That's why Pop and
Metal have a harder time becoming Classic.
Pop has the advantage of being acceptable in public.
I thought
the Michael Jackson lyrics had too low density of potential acid-mystic
allusions. My doubt about that
particular case slightly lessens the extent of my agreement with the assertion
that there was a *high* density of acid allusions in Pop music such as 80s
synth pop.
>A-HA,
Alphaville and Freddie Mercury are only the first few which immediately come to
mind.
I would
have to analyze their lyrics. Plus,
lyric sheets often mismatch the words which are actually mumbled. All of this hiding is plainly driven by
suppression.
The
obviousness of this suppression, the way the Establishment *forced* artists to
resort to subtle double-entendres and mumbling, provides sound evidence and an
example for the same suppression in esoteric religion; entheogen mystics who
sit at the heart of all religions were forced, by the same forces, to encode
their allusions to visionary plants; such allusions are directly and inherently
and actively *anti*-literalist.
Visionary
plants are a spear aimed at the heart of literalist religion and all the
Establishment that is founded upon or interwoven with literalist religion. Visionary plants are a death threat to
literalist religion and the associated cultural institutions.
I have
previously included some synth-pop in "Classic Rock" and "Pop
Rock", defining these terms broadly, explicitly to include a range such as
the Cars, Eddie Money, Tom Petty, Queen, Metallica, and jumping to
electronica. In terms of genres, we
move from Freakbeat through Psychedelic, Acid Rock, Heavy Metal, Heavy Rock,
New Wave, Metal -- a *clearly discernable* ongoing tradition and language runs
throughout.
It's
debatable whether your clarification is an "expansion" of the
premise. In some mild sense it is an
expansion of the premise, but such an expansion fits seamlessly with the
general point. I have a minor
disagreement. Acid mysticism is found
somewhat more in Heavy Rock than in Pop, because the natural heaviness of LSD
fits better with the heaviness of Heavy Rock.
On the
other hand, *lots* of artists are very interested in LSD, recognizing the Muse
coming through it, and these artists also choose to work in the Pop genre
rather than in the Heavy Rock genre, and it is not difficult for them to weave
in acid mystic conceptual language into their Art. It's like the way all the Greco-Roman Mystery Cults were various
brandings of the same core Mystery Religion, including the Jewish and Christian
religions.
>Likewise
Religion, plant-based mysticism was not only present in the beginning of
pop/rock-music (Beatles) which is the conventional assumption. Everybody knows
that the Beatles tripped out on LSD for good but what about Freddie Mercury?
I don't
know anything about Mercury. I posted a
full analysis of the Queen song "Bohemian Rhapsody". Clearly someone in that band of poets is a
genuine experienced mystic.
People are
clueless about the Beatles' use of acid in the same way as for religion and for
Pop music and Classic Rock. People make
the same chronically narrowing assumption, that the Beatles only used acid a
little, only during one or two years.
Judging from the Net, I'm about the only one who recognizes the totally
obvious, that the song Help! is the Beatles' first acid-allusion song.
People's
fake, narrow "psychedelic music" category -- which relegates all
entheogens to in Rock to the period only of the Summer of Love -- makes them
commit the same fallacy as seeing entheogens only at the ancient beginning of
one or two religions, and only in the inner circle of a couple groups within
that religion.
That is
the minimal entheogen theory of religion, whereas I take the exact opposite
approach, and attempt to perceive heavy use of entheogens in all religions, all
eras, all locales, and then shrink the theory from there. The equivalent maximal entheogen theory of
music is that all music in all eras in all locales was heavily entheogen-oriented
-- then, from that starting assumption or paradigm, shrink the scope to a
limited degree.
>I
propose, like Mr. Hoffman does for Religion, that entheogens are not only the
root of pop music but its ongoing wellspring.
That is a
possibly clarified way of emphasizing a point (the broad rather than narrow
presence of entheogen-induced mysticism in music) which I wrote in previous
posts about Eddie Money, "Windy", Cars, and Devo -- artists who are
not typical of "Classic Rock".
Sting and U2 have high density of allusions to direct mystic
experiencing in some songs. At issue
still is the exact extent of acid allusions in Pop music other than Heavy
Rock/Classic Rock.
As much
research as I've done, I could hardly guess the statistics even for Heavy Rock:
how many songs, %, include acid allusions?
I have not done enough analysis of Pop music to estimate the commonness
of high density of allusions in songs.
Some
deluded prissy, prudish, and priggish empty-headed fans of Rush are completely
reluctant to lump Rush in with the "dirty" acid-using Heavy Rock
bands. Rush is philosophical and
therefore it follows that they don't use drugs -- never mind the unanimous and
uncontroverted, yet literally *forgotten* fact that Passage to Bangkok is about
cannabis -- a "forgotten" fact due to paradigm-based blindness.
It is
irrelevant whether anyone cares about the music of Rush: their case is
fascinating with regard to paradigmatic perception and recognition of a
semi-systemic language of embedded allusions.
People who
operate from the assumption-framework that only Heavy Rock or Psychedelic Rock
is acid-oriented can only perceive acid in those genres; they've decided where
they will and will not see acid, before they even look -- just as people do in
religion, and then they demand of the entheogen scholars "if entheogens
were used, how come there is no evidence?" To those who have blinded themselves by sticking a paradigm in
the way blocking their view, there is no evidence.
>>Entheogens
were not used once by one group [paradigm of minimal entheogen use] but are
used all the time by all the groups [paradigm of maximal enthegen use].
>The
latter is proposing too much but is the more useful paradigm as it clears the
way for further study.
Merker
wrote:
>It's
debatable if suppression is the only cause of the way pop artists choose to
encode their lyric. There at least two other points which demand attention:
>1 -
the artistic point of view to encode /form allusion/allegories naturally lies
closer to the artist than saying things out straight.
>2 -
profanation the mystic state typically was spoken of /hinted at only in
allegorized form
>I
propose a hierarchy of advancement of lyrics:
>level
x: lyrics about entheogens. very profane and not necessarily inspired. focus at
the means.
>level
y: lyrics about the mystic experience. intermediate, more advanced than focus
on the drug itself, but doesn't go beyond what's directly experienced.
>level
z: lyrics about the perfected mind. may also include references to the drug and
the mystic experience, but only adjacent. first of all the lyrics are about the
enlightened mind and *from* an enlightened mind.
>As
(pop) music can be recognized as our current legitimate mythic/mystic-religion
it should be noted that profanation may very well be a serious problem to the
artist.
I agree
that not *all* veiling of allusions to visionary plants in Rock and Pop lyrics
was *entirely* driven by suppression.
Suppression
wasn't the only cause of veiling allusions to LSD in Rock lyrics, but it was the
first and strongest. Video shows John
Lennon lying and denying the acronym of Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds. Rock lyricists were raked over the coals,
literally put in jail because of drug hysteria. The Beatles and Stones were persecuted and punished, though they
should've been left alone. Eight Miles
High had to be denied as alluding to drug use.
Songs with
open drug references were banned, providing a filtering effect like in mystic
writings with the result that all that was permitted to get and remain in print
was the veiled allusions.
Tug-of-war
processes and filtering processes have to be recognized as systemic and
cybernetic systems, such that mystic veiled allusions are consistently the
product. This could connect with my
theory of ultimate referent-meaning; allegory is a more or less distorted
pointing at a definite thing, transcendent knowledge itself, even if no one
person perfectly aims at the target and has perfectly accurate intent of
meaning. No one may have intended to
think of ultimate meaning as I describe it, but they intended to intend that
ultimate meaning.
There is a
perfect target up in the sky, and all mystics point more or less toward it even
if no one points exactly at it. If I
were to perfectly express transcendent truth, no mystic might be in full
agreement, yet I'd say that just indicates that any particular mystic is less
than perfect in their understanding.
This way my theory is not dependent upon the detail of how many individual
mystics would fully agree with it. My
goal isn't to find what the mystics meant in their poetic allusions to
transcendent truth, but what they meant to mean or ideally should have meant.
Received
mythic-religio-philosophy is a consistent-in-character product of ongoing
typical conflicting forces, shaped by a long-lasting tension between mystic
description of the altered state experiential insights and the official
restrictive demands of literalist socio-religio-politics that are enforced.
merker
wrote:
>You're
a victim of love
>just
a victim of love
>i
could be wrong
>but
you know i'm not
I continue
to think of the song "I think I'm in love" by Eddie Money:
"something's got ahold of me now ... it controls me -- makes me do all the
things I do for you ... and I don't think I can make it through the night;
[your love] help me make it through the night". Love and sexual climax is rich in potential for metaphorizing
entheogen determinism.
>Psilocybin
mushrooms combined with Cannabis can be a *highly* potent mixture.
That can't
be emphasized too much, THC as effective augmenter of the core psychedelics --
one reason to look for mixtures in history.
>I
could see myself laying in a coffin. I was dead as dead can be. I knew what it
was all about. I knew everything. All meaning was revealed to me.
It helps
alot to have read my theorization of ego death.
>I was
guilty as hell. My body was alive but *I* was dead by all means. So dead. All
Time is present outside of Time. We don't stand a chance in hell. That's how it
is how it's going to be.
>Sometimes
I wish I've never been born at all
>
>You're
just another sucker ready for the Fall.
>Fight
from the inside, you can't win with your hands tied.
>Everything
is about *it*, revelation of the nature of things brings the most horrible
death to be died.
>No
one gets to heaven till they've lived awhile in hell
>And
even then it's rare
>That
you'll be going there [Dio]
>
>I
*completely* understand this. This is 100% true.
>ROCK'N'ROLL
i completely decoded.
>ROCK:
Perception of CosmicDeterminism, time can be perceived as being not a stream
(usual conception of time) but rather being like a *Rock*, ie. solid as a rock.
>ROLL:
Describes in a minor sense the usual sense of flowing time but more important
it hints at the phases of perception in the mystic experience in which time is
seen as flowing *BUT* it is known it does *NOT*.
>Highest
knowledge: Union of perception of ROCK and of perception of ROLL. Marriage of
low and highEST thinking. ULTIMATE perfection.
>"You'll
never know why we ROCK, ROCK, ROCK" [ozzy]
>
>Saint
of Saints merker
Oh you
prideful saint, they say -- but how can one be proud if determinism? I think what it makes me think; I'm washed
of culpability, metaphysically.
I've
written some about 'Rock' as metaphor, and am impressed with the climactic line
"To be a rock, and not to roll" in context in the song Stairway to
Heaven.
The End of
Time: The Next Revolution in Physics
Julian
Barbour
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0195117298
13K
(very popular)
Book list:
Tenseless time, eternity, and timelessness
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/listmania/list-browse/-/CYO513ZOJFHM
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