litewave

Lana's father putting West and East Coasts together again... From the song Ultraviolence it appears that New York is coming to symbolize an origin of sorts, a place of original harmony (We could go back to New York 'cause loving you is really hard) but also a place where individual identities are not yet fully developed (where they don't know who we are). The short snippet of Brooklyn Baby suggests a happy and carefree time.

this union / disunion

This is the kind of melody that brings me to catharsis. Lana at her finest.

She does have a number of gems under her belt. I also love the video for her latest single Sadness is a guest of honor.

This is really interesting symbolism, in a Eurovision-style postmodern-tacky way, that the winner (whose name can be translated as "pussy sausage") is a half-man/half-woman of the Eastern Empire and sings about the rebirth of Phoenix.

^ I agree that the beach scenes are pre-Fall and the car scenes are post-Fall. And I remember when I met him, it was so clear that he was the only one for me. We both knew it, right away. And as the years went on, things got more difficult -- we were faced with more challenges. I begged him to stay. Try to remember what we had at the beginning.

Would love to see her final thesis or something. Some time back I was searching for it in the online catalogue of Fordham library but the only thing I found was Born to Die CD (linked to author name Lizzy Grant).

Isn't Lake Placid just a place she grew up in?

I couldn't help noticing that her father in heaven is now actively engaged in her career. Some of the stuff he tweets is actually quite interesting. Lana was born in New York (East/garden of Eden), now she is in LA (West/garden of evil).

Hmm... Daddy in the WC video being God? Like, the soul returned to God because her incarnated part (ego) literally died? Fuck, that would be a whole new level of depressive!

The replacement of the young lover with an old one in the WC video can represent the maturation but also devitalization and ossification of the ego as it becomes alienated from the soul. The soul herself doesn't seem to age because she is the transcendent aspect, youthful innocence, closer to heaven and to the source of eternal life. I think the two guys look similar and as was pointed out the video is a reference to a documentary about the jazz musician Chet Baker – which contrasts the same young and old Baker. But it is not explicitely shown that the two guys in the WC video are the same person (and there are no traces of tattooes on the old guy but this may just indicate that he lost his rebellious nature). This ambiguity may be there to retain the option of interpreting the video in both an esoteric way (relationship between ego and soul – if the two guys are the same person) and an exoteric way (relationship between man and woman – if the two guys are different persons, because it wouldn't make much sense if the man got old while the woman stayed young?). Either way the contrast between an earlier happy and a later unhappy relationship is a classic Lana theme and the fire scene too offers the choice of both an esoteric interpretation (a phoenix-like transformation) and an exoteric one (burning love).

SNL performance: Lana Del Jesus stumbles while bearing the cross.

This board is like a bizarre version of Rapture Ready.

Now that I look at the loop in the audio video, perhaps the cycle of union and separation is implied here too. Anyway, the fact that the cig is all white and the flame is red (at least on the UV billboard) definitely seems to be deliberate symbolism. The white cig turns black and decomposes into bits of ash. But I guess this is supposed to be an enjoyable process, only the end looks dismal lol. But then again, a sort of "rising from the ashes" might be implied...

Speaking of alchemy there's the general motto of Solve et Coagula: In terms of soul evolution, I suppose this corresponds to the narrowing of one's consciousness/soul into an isolated part/ego (the darkening or Nigredo phase as you mentioned) for the purpose of defining/developing it and the subsequent re-establishment of balance by integrating in consciousness the developed part with one's whole identity. This cycle of differentiation and integration seems to occur on many scales, for example also on a small daily scale as the ebb and flow of focus and relaxation, getting absorbed in a problem and then re-establishing contact with a wider environment, etc.

West Coast I can see my baby swingin' His Parliament's on fire and his hands are up Chances are that once you made out what Lana was saying in the chorus the first image that emerged in your mind was one of a Cuban guy smoking a cigarette and swaying on a balcony. That's a nice image, it has an atmosphere and a vividness Lana is known for. But for someone like me, who is rather clueless about cigarette brands, the first thing that came to me with the word Parliament was a… Parliament (you know, the assembly of people who vote on laws of the country). Although I got quickly oriented with the help of this forum the original idea of a Parliament still seemed intriguing so I let myself explore it further. Initially there was an image of a national leader delivering a fiery speech in a Parliament, reminiscent of the National Anthem video. Then as I kept drifting on the ethereal waves of the chorus, more abstract thoughts emerged. In a Parliament you will typically find two kinds of people: those who prefer that the laws should promote individual liberty and responsibility, and those who place more emphasis on solidarity among individuals and collective cohesion. Traditionally these two political orientations came to be called right wing and left wing, respectively. In the US the right is currently associated with conservatism/Republican party and the left with liberalism/Democratic party. As I described in an older post (here) we can draw parallels between these two orientations and the dichotomy of the human being I've been referring to as the ego and the soul. The right wing emphasizes the autonomy and distinctness of the ego, the left wing the inclusiveness and expansiveness of the soul. This human dichotomy is also reflected in the orientations of our brain hemispheres: the left brain hemisphere specializes in analyzing, in breaking things up into and focusing on parts, differentiating, separating, individualizing; and the right brain hemisphere specializes in making connections, merging, intuitively sensing a larger whole or context. Where one sees the trees the other sees the forest. As we grow older, developing our individuality and specializing in a selected field, we tend to move from the intuitive right brain orientation toward the analytical left brain orientation and get stuck there. So has done mankind, moving from a primitive unity with nature and others towards the modern bureaucratic and technological world. But persistence of such an imbalance is not inevitable. In fact, the growth of consciousness and society requires both orientations at least to some extent: without wholeness the mind and society start to disintegrate; without analysis progress is stopped too. As you know, Lana wears a tattoo saying "Paradise" on her left hand and "Trust no one" on her right hand. The left half of the body is controlled by the right brain hemisphere and the right half of the body is controlled by the left brain hemisphere. "Paradise" expresses the childlike guilelessness of the soul, "Trust no one" the shrewdness of the ego. But back to West Coast. My interpretation is as follows: the guy whose Parliament is on fire represents a human whose mind/brain is aroused, synapses are firing; he moves rhythmically between left and right and votes with both hands because he knows the value of both perspectives, and surrenders to the value that unites them, love. He stands on an elevated platform, above the fray of the dichotomy. The Spanish/Latin references indicate sensuality and heightened emotion. Lana, the symbol of the soul as usual, the music in him, sings to him, as the soul, now not just an orientation toward the whole but the whole itself of his forgotten identity, descends into his body and infuses his ego-delimited consciousness, in the reunion of the ego and the soul. The values of individualism and liberty have achieved their fullest, even though sometimes decadent, expression in the Western culture, and now the reunion is happening in the west of the West, metaphorically speaking. There's nothing further west but the wide and wavering ocean, again a symbol of the holistic soul, who awaits her west-bound beloved after the cycle has passed and West turns to East, night to dawn.

The initial verses are quite simple for people to sing along and then Lana will take them through the bridge to the chorus where everyone will sing again.

Now I know what she meant by "stripped down". But it's still gorgeous. The chorus is so dreamy and oceanic.

Hmm... the garden of Eden was in the east. That's not necessarily just a geographical detail. There's the symbolism of the sun rising and setting, light and dark.

white cigarette meets red flame... brief and intense like life... then ashes

WTF

I think it was already pointed out somewhere in these boards that the word "ultra" has a double meaning: extremely (as in ultramodern) and beyond (as in ultraviolet). Interestingly, the choice between succumbing to violence and going beyond violence is also reflected in the final chapter of A Clockwork Orange in which Alex willingly foregoes violence: the chapter was omitted in some editions because the publisher thought it was unrealistic (Kubrick ditto). Looking back at Lana's reference to violence in Bel Air ("the violentest kind of love") she will probably also interpret "ultraviolence" not as a choice between the two meanings but, on another level, as a union of them, like a combination of masculine thrust and feminine nurturance. All of this would be a continuation of Lana's previous efforts to portray the struggle to reconcile the masculine and feminine impulses into something creative and the tragic consequences - destructive or numbing - of the failure to do so.

Those UFOs look really ambiguous. Is it clouds or is it spaceships? Or not exactly either? Would a soul qualify as an "extra-terrestrial"?

When I began noticing spiritual themes in pop music some 11 years ago it was hard to find discussions about it on the internet (a shining exception being Pink Floyd's Publius Enigma). Now it has much more attention but honestly I'm disappointed by the frequent paranoid twist. I am not saying that everything is rosy in the music industry but I have seen beautiful and inspiring songs reduced to absurdity by fearful, narrow-minded or superficial analysis. At least the music I listen to doesn't seem evil and the artists often seem to have much freedom in creating the songs or in choosing the people they cooperate with, so I find it implausible that the spiritual themes and symbols in it are implanted by some evil group.