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Post by Al Truest on Dec 20, 2006 4:55:55 GMT
Hmm. 'Haven't seen a post from MX since his untimely death. It was chilling to read this one on the subject matter. I wonder what he knows about things now. May he Rest In Peace. I guess that as long as he's remembered here, he'll always be about. At the risk of going all mystical, I wonder what happened to all of that positive MX/Kate Bush energy? "Where will it go, surely not with his soul.."You are correct. The excitation of the quantum vacuum generated by his energy will augment the ripple we are all now sustaining and building into a wave of glorious enlightenment. ;D
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Post by margot on Jan 23, 2007 12:19:36 GMT
I think about this song a lot in this class I'm taking on comparative mysticism. There's one passage in the oldest Upanishad, a group of ancient mystic texts from the Indus valley that was transmitted orally for a thousand years by chanting it in the woods with a guru: "Into blind darkness they enter, people who worship ignorance; And into still blinder darkness, people who delight in learning." This reminds me so much of the character in the song who seems to me to be pursuing knowledge and wisdom for vanity's sake (I want to be a scholar, but I really can't be bothered, gimme it quick!) and not really for any noble cause. This particular passage (and pretty much all of the text we've read) is about knowing the nature of the ultimate reality (or God or you know, the big stuff , which connects to the song at the end when the character is singing about going to Mecca and Tibet and whatnot. I was thinking about printing the lyrics for the professor. Maybe I'll bring them to class today.
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Post by tannis on Nov 26, 2007 17:56:38 GMT
KB: "I'm learning things all the time, and the more I learn, the more I see there is to learn, and that's so fascinating." - The Mike Nicholls Interview, Among the Bushes gaffa.org/reaching/i80_rm.htmlI must admit, just when I think I'm king (I just begin... ...to write THE DREAMING... IMHO... SAT IN YOUR LAP concerns alienation and the 'blessing or curse' to (want to) see deeper. The opening lines express exclusion from the ordered, functioning bourgeois world. Projecting ability onto others but not being able to fit into the "triviality of everydayness". Colin Wilson describes two types of Outsider: the one who feels excluded from knowledge; and the one who Knows (the godlike '...I'm King'). The song pendulates between these high and low mental states. ('The Outsider', Colin Wilson, 1956.) 'When I'm king' everything fits into place and you see knowledge is Sat In Your Lap. But 'when I'm dunce' (video for SIYL), there is nothing there/within. As previously posted, SIYL also highlights the dangers of a (deluded) knowledge and knowledge-quest... Adolf Hitler: ‘By means of shrewd lies, unremittingly repeated, it is possible to make people believe that heaven is hell - and hell, heaven ... The greater the lie, the more readily will it be believed’ (Mein Kampf) ... Choose wisely your teachers! The song regards philosophical enquiry - The Longest Journey - as a religious experience... effort, balance, frustration, realisation... It kinda reminds me of ANNE SEXTON'S "GODS" ... And maybe the search ends with: "Ha, ha, ha Ho, ho, ho And a couple of tra - la - las That's how we laugh the day away In the Merry Old Land of Oz!" *** THE DREAMING is a remarkable album... 'Sat in Your Lap', 'Suspended in Gaffa', 'Leave It Open', etc. are windows into the machine room of the self-actualizing, self-transcending mind... THE DREAMING is a peak experience! Kate is the whole story… It’s all there, patiently crafted, sat in her lap... ‘I must have been talking for an hour… That’s all there is… That’s the whole story…’ - from the existential horror classic CARNIVAL OF SOULS (1962). *** GODSAnne SextonMrs. Sexton went out looking for the gods. She began looking in the sky — expecting a large white angel with a blue crotch. No one. She looked next in all the learned books and the print spat back at her. No one She made a pilgrimage to the great poet and he belched in her face. No one. She prayed in all the churches of the world and learned a great deal about culture. No one. She went to the Atlantic, the Pacific, for surely God... No one. She went to the Buddha, the Brahma, the Pyramids and found immense postcards. No one. Then she journeyed back to her own house and the gods of the world were shut in the lavatory. At last! she cried out, and locked the door.
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Post by rosabelbelieve on Jan 14, 2008 23:17:16 GMT
A very chaotic song, full of intellectual and spiritual disorder. It seems to me the beginning of a questioning, the beginning of a spiritual and philosophical awakening in all the frustration and confusion these processes usually bring. Our protagonist is being drowned in a multitude of clashing voices, issueing both from the world and her own mind, her own unconscious. Immersed in the cacophanous chorus of "Some say.." she cannot find her own balance in the many conflicting voices of knowledge, all masquerading as wisdom and universal truth, making a mockery and a paradox of everything. This seems to me to say that truth itself is an intrinsically multipliced, illusory, swarming, dancing thing, with paradox at it's very heart- that real truth slips mysteriously right through the bounds of logic like water through a sieve, impossible to catch and pin up on the wall like some rare specimen of butterfly. In essence- we can never wholly possess it. Not what our knowledge ravenous protagonist wishes to hear. But there must be some way to discern truth, to gain insight into the nature of things and their workings! Otherwise the whole of human thought has simply been folly. Our protagonist (who I think I might start calling X, to save space) doesn''t yet think to search outside the bounds of accepted logic, ends up humbled and stripped bare, a fool instead of a king. Just when I think I am king, I must admit- I just begin... so X learns, unwillingly, that many beginnings, many dismantlings of illusions and planting of new ideas are neccesary if you are to find any sort of wisdom, and sort of path to the centre of knowledge (where one can find in the strange dancing movements of the opposites ever present in the universe and in philosophy a pattern and an order, a unity and a balance in the great paradox of chaos.) X is very impatient with this process, and slow to master an effective way of thinking and gaining knowledge. She must accept her emptiness, her being The Fool (who, in the cycle of the major arcana in the Tarot, is really quite the same as The World.) Innocence and Wisdom are the beginning and end of the path of knowledge, and, with it's neverending and circular nature, it could be argued that they coalesce. It seems to me that by the end of the song, progress is being made. X has found her balance, and her path, after a period of deep confusion, and she is able to channel her frustrated energy into furthering herself on this path. The way to truth is a labyrinth, yes- full of mythological beasts, strange dreams and incomprehensible turns- but at the centre of it's strange mandala is a great treasure. The philosopher's stone, the golden flower, the artistic masterpiece, the wholeness of the psyche, the experience of God... She has an immeasureable distance to go, and much work to do to transform her ravishing dreams into something tangible and complete, but she has energy, and is finally on her true path.
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Post by tannis on Mar 18, 2008 0:51:45 GMT
[purple] I must work on my mind. For now I realise Everyone of us has a heaven inside... They open doorways that I thought were shut for good They read me Gurdjieff and Jesu...[/purple]
[green]I see the people working And see it working for them...[/green] In his early lectures G.I. Gurdjieff described his approach to self-development as a Fourth Way. In contrast to the three eastern teachings that emphasize the development of the body, mind, or the emotions separately, Gurdjieff's exercises worked on all three at the same time to promote comprehensive and balanced inner development. Today, Gurdjieff's teachings are also sometimes referred to as "The Work", "The Gurdjieff Work", "Work on oneself" or simply the "Work"... Some of those who had contact with Gurdjieff saw him as a spiritual Master – someone who possessed what Gurdjieff himself called objective consciousness - in other words a human being who is fully awake or enlightened. Others saw him as an esotericist or occultist. Gurdjieff widely admitted his teaching was esoteric but he claimed that none of it was veiled in secrecy... To provide conditions in which attention could be exercised more intensively, Gurdjieff also taught his pupils "sacred dances" or "movements" which they performed together as a group, and he left a body of music inspired by what he heard in visits to remote monasteries and other places... - en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourth_WaySo maybe KB's reference to work/working refers to Gurdjieff's Fourth Way or The Work...?
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Adena
Moving
This time around we dance - we're chosen ones
Posts: 611
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Post by Adena on Jun 9, 2008 10:35:30 GMT
'I just begin...'
The statement 'some say that heaven is hell, some say that hell is heaven' is quite interesting. Implications of this saying that hell and heaven are one creates an oddly pagan image of integration of the fates after death, and reinforces a belief that no person is totally bad or good.
'My goal is moving near...' What is said goal? A person alone's mad ramblings or a bud about to bloom? Who are mere humans to judge on the topics that were given to us by the Celestial Mother and shall shape all past, present and future beings?
And why? Why are we here?
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Post by tannis on Jun 9, 2008 13:57:53 GMT
The statement 'some say that heaven is hell, some say that hell is heaven' is quite interesting. Implications of this saying that hell and heaven are one creates an oddly pagan image of integration of the fates after death, and reinforces a belief that no person is totally bad or good. Heathcliff: 'What do they know of heaven or hell, Cathy... who know nothing of life?' (Wuthering Heights, 1939)Adolf Hitler: ‘By means of shrewd lies, unremittingly repeated, it is possible to make people believe that heaven is hell - and hell, heaven ... The greater the lie, the more readily will it be believed’ (Mein Kampf).Heather Chandler: 'God, Veronica. My afterlife is so boring! If I have to sing Kumbaya one more time...' (Heathers, 1989).Greetings and Salutations! ... To say that "heaven is hell"/"hell is heaven" might suggest that 'heaven' is to be avoided and 'hell' is to be sought. Both statements seem to promote hell as the hippest way to go! Does this mean that only fools are kind and that it's wise to be cruel? ... What's it all about, Alfie? ... Or does 'some say that heaven is hell, some say that hell is heaven' suggest a paradigmatic, magnetic pole reversal of The Golden Compass? Should what is heaven be reclassified as hell, and vice versa? And Does this imply that we should all be following the Left Hand Path? ... “The Teutonic Goddess of the Dead and daughter of Loki was named Hel, a Pagan god of torture and punishment. Another "L" was added when the books of the Old Testament were formulated. The prophets who wrote the Bible did not know the word "Hell"; they used the Hebrew Sheol and the Greek Hades, which meant the grave; also the Greek Tartaros, which was the abode of fallen angels, the underworld (inside the earth), and Gehenna, which was a valley near Jerusalem where Moloch reigned and garbage was dumped and burned. It is from this that the Christian Church has evolved the idea of "fire and brimstone" in Hell. The Protestant Hell and the Catholic Hell are places of eternal punishment; however, the Catholics also believe there is a "Purgatory" where all souls go for a time, and a "Limbo" where unbaptized souls go. The Buddhist Hell is divided into eight sections, the first seven of which can be expiated. The ecclesiastical description of Hell is that of a horrible place of fire and torment; in Dante's Inferno, and in northern climates, it was thought to be an icy cold region, a giant refrigerator.” ~ The Satanic Bible...Eskimo... Plutarch (46-125CE) and the early Christians viewed hell as a symbolic place. It was only over time that Christianity became the literalistic belief system that it is now, initially all of its teachings were either Roman Mystery religion or Jewish in origin. The Valley of Hinnom was a place where sinners were actually burnt, the hell that the pagan religions believed in was a symbolic place (where those who died went) used to persuade people to behave better, and the Jews had little actual teachings on the concept of Hell. The result was that Christianity, a religion that was popular amongst the illiterate and undereducated in the Roman empire, lost its inner symbolic nature and became seen as an actual real place where sinners were punished forever, after death."There is no heaven of glory bright, and no hell where sinners roast. Here and now is our day of torment! Here and now is our day of joy! Here and now is our opportunity! Choose ye this day, this hour, for no redeemer liveth!" ~ The Satanic BibleDespite the lack of belief in a literal Hell, the imagery and symbolism of Hell is used a lot in Satanic text, music, art and liturgy. In general, Satanism uses imagery of Hell derived from medieval times, of hordes of people being tormented by demons. The masses who are being tortured are the unthinking sheep of Humanity. Satanism accepts hell only in symbolism. Satanism does not believe in any form of afterlife and therefore does not believe in any form of Hell. The imagery is used to inspire and to create emotional responses. Hell is sometimes used as a symbolic place where power, demonic forces and strength comes from, and is sometimes jokingly considered a place where stupid people and religious sheep are punished. If something is from hell it is normally considered powerful and good, but something in Hell is normally considered to be suffering. There is no consistent usage of the term because Satanists use various other religions' concepts of Hell."The flames of Hell burn fierce and purify!" ~ The Satanic BiblePurification and mental well being are benefits of being without guilt; of being able to understand and accept your own past without the hindrance of guilt inspired by the belief that an eternal God is going to ruminate over your errors. Without the need for forgiveness from anyone but oneself; the negativity and pent up emotion that turns a good man into a bitter one instead turns into a relaxing and calming sensation of inner peace. Cleansed. Part of this cleansing process, the fierce burning of hell, involves revoking past demons and, would you guess, allowing those god-shaped holes in your heart to heal."The Eighteenth Enochian Key opens the gates of Hell and casts up Lucifer and his blessing" ~ The Satanic BibleAccording to the doctrines of Satanism, "Lucifer the Crown Prince brings enlightenment. Lucifer's blessing is Redemption, as we become secure in the knowledge that we are our own, masterless, and no God exists. As the entire world realizes this, Hell is unleashed, and all of humankind is redeemed from past guilts and misinformation. Enlightenment!"History of Hellwww.dpjs.co.uk/hell.htmlThey say that the Devil is a charming man......hiding behind the priesthood! To find out why we are here, of course! ...
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Post by rosabelbelieve on Jun 9, 2008 17:04:09 GMT
'I just begin...' The statement 'some say that heaven is hell, some say that hell is heaven' is quite interesting. Implications of this saying that hell and heaven are one creates an oddly pagan image of integration of the fates after death, and reinforces a belief that no person is totally bad or good. I've always seen the 'some say that hell is heaven' as an example of the unity of opposites, I think - the way the greatest revelation of knowledge is often so unfathomed that it shatters the boundaries of duality. The narrator seems to me to be expressing the paradoxical nature of this knowledge, and lamenting the way this can make it very hard to distinguish between wisdom and nonsense. But you make interesting points as well. It does reflect the way no person is entirely 'bad' or 'good.' And Tannis' observations are also fascinating. To find out why we are here, of course! ... Obviously a very deep question, and a very good answer. I've always thought the goal, in this particular song, is spiritual enlightenment, or 'having it all.' But I suppose it could be many things.
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Adena
Moving
This time around we dance - we're chosen ones
Posts: 611
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Post by Adena on Jun 10, 2008 8:42:11 GMT
The celestial mother is good. She gave us life.
But for what purpose, when she could have been alone?
We will never know...
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Post by tannis on Jun 10, 2008 10:07:34 GMT
The statement 'some say that heaven is hell, some say that hell is heaven' is quite interesting. Implications of this saying that hell and heaven are one creates an oddly pagan image of integration of the fates after death, and reinforces a belief that no person is totally bad or good. I've always seen the 'some say that hell is heaven' as an example of the unity of opposites, I think - the way the greatest revelation of knowledge is often so unfathomed that it shatters the boundaries of duality. The narrator seems to me to be expressing the paradoxical nature of this knowledge, and lamenting the way this can make it very hard to distinguish between wisdom and nonsense. Some say that heaven is hell Some say that hell is heaven...Yes, these lines can suggest a unity of opposites, creating an oddly pagan image of integration of the fates, and reflecting the way no person is entirely 'bad' or 'good'.
They are like dialectical opposites looking for synthesis: Change moves in spirals not circles. Thesis-Antithesis-Synthesis-Thesis. Being and Nothing united as Becoming. Analyst-Analysand-Transcendental Fees! ... Immersed in the cacophanous chorus of "Some say.." she cannot find her own balance in the many conflicting voices of knowledge... I've always thought the goal, in this particular song, is spiritual enlightenment, or 'having it all.' But I suppose it could be many things. Yes, I also agree. But, given its cacophanous chorus and overwhelming drive, SIYL brings to mind the dilemma of wanting it all, unforgettably expressed by the protagonist of The Bell Jar...I saw my life branching out before me like the green fig tree in the story. From the tip of every branch, like a fat purple fig, a wonderful future beckoned and winked. One fig was a husband and a happy home and children, and another fig was a famous poet and another fig was a brilliant professor, and another fig was Ee Gee, the amazing editor, and another fig was Europe and Africa and South America, and another fig was Constantin and Socrates and Attila and a pack of other lovers with queer names and offbeat professions, and another fig was an Olympic lady crew champion, and beyond and above these figs were many more figs I couldn't quite make out. I saw myself sitting in the crotch of this fig tree, starving to death, just because I couldn't make up my mind which of the figs I would choose. I wanted each and every one of them, but choosing one meant losing all the rest, and, as I sat there, unable to decide, the figs began to wrinkle and go black, and, one by one, they plopped to the ground at my feet. ~ Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar (1966).
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Post by tannis on Jun 10, 2008 10:11:55 GMT
The celestial mother is good. She gave us life. But for what purpose, when she could have been alone? We will never know... Question: "Why did God create us?"
Answer: The short answer to the question “why did God create us?” is “for His pleasure.” Revelation 4:11 says, “Thou hast created all things, and for Thy pleasure they are and were created.” Colossians 1:16 reiterates the point: “All things were created by Him and for Him.”
Being made in the image and likeness of God (Genesis 1:27), human beings have the ability to know God—and therefore love Him, worship Him, serve Him, and fellowship with Him. God did not create human beings because He needed them. As God, He needs nothing. In all eternity past, He felt no loneliness, so He was not looking for a “friend.” He loves us, but this is not the same as needing us. If we had never existed, God would still be God—the Unchanging One (Malachi 3:6).
Why did God create us?www.gotquestions.org/why-did-God-create-us.htmlThe Alchemists, Magicians and the Spirit of Enlightenment
The alchemists and magicians saw that the contrasts and oppositions between the divine and the human, and between spirit and nature, were not unbridgeable. The cosmos was a whole, united by a series of internal relations, correspondences and ‘sympathies’ between its parts. In the most important of these, the connection between humanity and nature, the human individual was a microcosm whose structure corresponded to that of the macrocosm. Each individual included the whole world within itself. This was an active connection: when God created the world, he had not completed the job, and to rectify the remaining imperfections required human subjective activity. Indeed, the question: ‘why did God create the world?’ could only be answered in terms of his need for humanity to do this work. Through his own personality and imagination, the Magus called down cosmic forces, which his knowledge enabled him to direct. This was the Great Work of creation, in which he participated. Thus he identified himself with the world, even with God. (You had to be careful: in the wrong hands, this knowledge could bring demons instead of angels into the picture: big trouble. So to become an ‘adept’ required a long apprenticeship, in which false ideas were purged.) Hegel used many of these notions to link God, Nature and individual psychology.
Hegel sees God creating and being created by humanity. God creates the world and humanity within it because he has to, not out of free choice. He needs his creation: without it ‘God is not God’ and without our consciousness God is not self-conscious. A major problem arises in many religions: if God created and maintains a world which contains evil, was he then the creator of evil? But then what chance do we have of making the world a decent place to live? The Catholic Church in particular fought for centuries against any kind of dualist answer to this conundrum. It objected to any idea that the world is a product of both Good and Evil, ‘matter’ being the evil part. Hegel faces this problem in a manner which entirely separates him from orthodoxy. For Hegel, Evil is a part of God’s creation. Indeed, the contradiction between Good and Evil is the driving force of all movement and development, and without it, there is no humanity. Thus Hegel’s account of the Fall tears Genesis apart.
Hegel, Marx and the Enlightenmentwww.marxists.org/reference/archive/smith-cyril/works/articles/interim.htm
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Post by rosabelbelieve on Jun 10, 2008 15:29:58 GMT
Yes, I also agree. But, given its cacophanous chorus and overwhelming drive, SIYL brings to mind the dilemma of wanting it all, unforgettably expressed by the protagonist of The Bell Jar... Yes, the situation in SIYL is much more like 'wanting it all' than 'having it all.' That is indeed an interesting and unforgettable passage. And of course the similarities are very strong.
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Adena
Moving
This time around we dance - we're chosen ones
Posts: 611
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Post by Adena on Jun 11, 2008 10:54:32 GMT
Heaven is Hell... Hell is Heaven...
May you rest in peace, Damien. I will miss you.
This brings me around on the big circle to the subject of Hell as Heaven. Damien was a Christian, and by his upbringing, his soul will burn in hell for eternity. However, I doubt that this will happen... Damien was in great distress when he took his own life.
So maybe the reference in this song is saying that the line between heaven and hell is not as clear as God-fearing people believe?
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Post by tannis on Jun 11, 2008 18:05:56 GMT
SIYL is full of philosophical and religious references: working Gurdjieffs, happy hari krishnas, personality orders and disorders, the sacred and the profane...
Life Is Not A Picnic... "Some say that heaven is hell..." could be saying that getting to 'heaven' (Enlightenment) is tough, hard and disciplined work, and that the required focus, demands and moral discipline make the process seem like a boot-camp 'hell'... Conversely, "Some say that hell is heaven..." could be saying that the boot-camp, the journey towards Enlightenment, is what defines heaven (Enlightenment as a journey, not a destination)... However, given the likely 'Mein Kampf' origin of the "some say" lines, they seem more concerned with truth and lies than with heaven and hell. Question everything!
I must admit, just when I think I'm king (I just begin) Just when I think I'm king, I must admit (I just begin) Just when I think everything's going great (I just begin) Hey, I get the break Hey, I'm gonna take it all (I just begin) When I'm king (Just begin)...
"When I'm king" everything fits into place and knowledge is Sat In Your Lap. But 'when I'm dunce' (video for SIYL), there is nothing there/within... Like manic depression! ...
Manic depression is touching my soul I know what I want but I just dont know How to, go about gettin it Feeling sweet feeling, Drops from my fingers, fingers Manic depression is catchin my soul ~ "Manic Depression", Jimi Hendrix (1967)
Snakes and Ladders! The lines also suggest that when one has reached one peak, the journey begins all over from the next rung on the ladder. Like in a computer game, going from one level to another level, advancing through a series of new beginnings... or hitting snakes!
Her goal keeps changing, shifting, expanding. There is focus and loss of focus; and there's the desire to 'want it all', to want each and every fig. The single cover shows KaTe wearing a dunce cap and holding a globe. The universe makes us all feel inadequate, tiny, and at times empty. How do we fit into the big picture? Is KaTe meditating on the globe? Or is she hungry to become its spinning force? ...
"Give me the karma, mama!"
Knowledge as "something sat in your lap" brings to mind Zen teachings and practices: Zen asserts that all sentient beings have Buddha-nature, the universal nature of inherent wisdom and virtue, and emphasizes that Buddha-nature is nothing other than the nature of the mind itself. The aim of Zen practice is to discover this Buddha-nature within each person, through meditation and mindfulness of daily experiences. Zen de-emphasizes reliance on religious texts and verbal discourse on metaphysical questions. Zen holds that these things lead the practitioner to seek external answers, rather than searching within their own minds for the direct intuitive apperception of Buddha-nature. This search within goes under various terms such as “introspection,” “a backward step,” “turning-about,” or “turning the eye inward.” What Zen emphasizes is that the awakening taught by the Buddha came through his meditation practice, not from any words that he read or discovered, and so it is primarily through meditation that others too may awaken to the same insights as the Buddha.
Some say that knowledge is something sat in your lap Some say that knowledge is ho-ho-ho-ho...
Knowledge as "ho-ho-ho" could suggest the value of laughter, maybe the Laughing Buddha or the Merry Old Land of Oz... However, KaTe sings the lines like she's been driven to distraction by impatience and dull epistemological answers... blah blah blah!
The Wizard of Oz Sing Along: In the Merry Old Land of Oz www.youtube.com/watch?v=9BM-531NQpw
Her skullish "dome of ivory" and her brainy "grey and white matter" are overloading with questions, like she's a rocket on fire! But wanting answers quickly is frustrating and depleting; hence the lack of energy. She holds a cup of wisdom and wants to see her cup overfloweth with wisdom. But maybe there is nothing within the true cup of wisdom, and that she is too impatient or not yet ready to see this. The Divine created everything out of nothing. We are of the Divine, so maybe we too create everything from nothing...
All learning is ultimately a kind of self-teaching and self-realization. This idea is reflected in a jocular context in Plato’s Symposium:
[Agathon] immediately called: “Socrates, come lie down next to me. Who knows, if I touch you, I may catch a bit of the wisdom that came to you under my neighbour’s porch. It’s clear you’ve seen the light. If you hadn’t, you’d still be standing there.” Socrates sat down next to him and said, “How wonderful it would be, dear Agathon, if the foolish were filled with wisdom simply by touching the wise. If only wisdom were like water, which always flows from a full cup into an empty one when we connect them with a piece of yarn – well, then I would consider it the greatest prize to have the chance to lie down next to you. I would soon be overflowing with your wonderful wisdom. My own wisdom is of no account - a shadow in a dream - while yours is bright and radiant and has a splendid future. Why, young as you are, you're so brilliant I could call more than thirty thousand Greeks as witnesses” (Symposium 175d-e). www.chass.utoronto.ca/~dhutchin/n23a.htm
I put on my pointed hat...
The SIYL single cover shows KaTe, dressed in a ballet tutu and wearing a dunce cap, contemplating the World.
Kate Bush Sat In Your Lap Cover gaffa.org/sensual/p_siyl2.jpg
A dunce cap is a pointy hat. In popular culture, it is typically made of paper and often marked with a D or the word "dunce", and given to schoolchildren to wear as punishment by public humiliation for naughty behaviour and, as the name implies, stupidity.
So is KaTe wearing the dunce cap because she's been naughty or stupid? Or is she admitting that she knows nothing and is therefore among the wisest?
"I am the wisest man alive, for I know one thing, and that is that I know nothing." ~ Socrates
After his service in the war, Socrates devoted himself to his favorite pastime: the pursuit of truth. His reputation as a philosopher, literally meaning 'a lover of wisdom', soon spread all over Athens and beyond. When told that the Oracle of Delphi had revealed to one of his friends that Socrates was the wisest man in Athens, he responded not by boasting or celebrating, but by trying to prove the Oracle wrong. So Socrates decided he would try and find out if anyone knew what was truly worthwhile in life, because anyone who knew that would surely be wiser than him. He set about questioning everyone he could find, but no one could give him a satisfactory answer. Instead they all pretended to know something they clearly did not. Finally he realized the Oracle might be right after all. He was the wisest man in Athens because he alone was prepared to admit his own ignorance rather than pretend to know something he did not. www.pbs.org/empires/thegreeks/characters/socrates_p4.html
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Post by rosabelbelieve on Jun 11, 2008 20:16:08 GMT
The lines also suggest that when one has reached one peak, the journey begins all over from the next rung on the ladder. Like in a computer game, going from one level to another level, advancing through a series of new beginnings. Her goal keeps changing, shifting, expanding. There is focus and loss of focus; and there's the desire to 'want it all', to want each and every fig. The single cover shows KaTe wearing a dunce cap and holding a globe. The universe makes us all feel inadequate, tiny, and at times empty. How do we fit into the big picture? Is KaTe meditating on the globe? Or is she hungry to become its spinning force? Yes. The goal is 'having it all,' and because 'all' is a neverending and expanding thing, the seeker is continually left inadequate and empty as her destination shifts and 'up and disappears.' Very good connection with Zen Buddhism. In fact, the 'Some say that heaven is hell' now reminds me a bit of a koan, or an unanswerable question, which must be meditated upon until an intuitive flash of insight illuminates the paradox. Buddha-nature and the idea that intrinsically we all hold within us the perfect wisdom, even in unknowing, is indeed very similar to 'Some say that knowledge is something sat in your lap.' And the often somewhat nonsensical or illogical topsy-turviness that can be a part of Zen reminds me of 'Some say that knowlege is something you can never have.' Maybe nothing and everything are the same! Maybe the possibility of unlimited existence is present in nonbeing, in an unmanifest state. The Fool is the same as The World. [/color][/quote] Good question. The feeling of frustration in the song gives a sense that the protagonist doesn't feel very wise, I think. But the visuals in the video and the single cover seem to give a much more lighthearted and almost comical view, which maybe finds more wisdom than seriousness does.
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