litewave

Eye of God

 

 

Trinity

Just to remind ya'll that these interpretations don't deny the obvious or literal ones but rather parallel them... Here goes another one.
 
Lust for Life
 
Lana revisits the Hollywood theme, which metaphorically refers to time (movies/stories) and fame, all this set in a larger, timeless whole (the name of the A-ha song "Minor Earth Major Sky" comes to mind). Lust for Life is a brisk and optimistic song but it also has an implicit darker side. Although it celebrates life, passion and self confidence, it also hints at a tragedy connected with the H of the Hollywood sign - the actress Peg Entwistle, who committed suicide by jumping from the H.
 
The notion of a ladder has been pointed out as significant by the director of the album trailer and besides there being a ladder attached to the H (as well as to the other letters of the Hollywood sign), the letter H itself looks like a section of a ladder, with the horizontal piece in the middle as a rung. Towering above the earthly West Coast "city of angels" (associated with the "entrance to the underworld" in Tropico), the ladder may symbolize a connection between the earth and heaven known as Jacob's Ladder, which appeared in a dream of the biblical figure Jacob, with angels ascending and descending on it. Lana also referred to this notion a day before the release of Lust for Life when she posted a short clip on Instagram of a little song of hers in which she sings that she would trade everything for a stairway to heaven and take her time as she climbed up to top of it.
 
But when you are on a ladder and you are not vigilant there is the danger of falling. According to Abrahamic religions as well as esoteric accounts of man's origin there was a major spiritual fall at some point in the past, when man lost contact with heaven/God and got mired on earth. His consciousness closed, as the narrowly focused ego became separated from the heaven-oriented soul. What followed is the human history as we know it. Through the arc of long and often arduous history, the fallen ego was gradually revived and lifted from the caves to the age of space flights and the internet.
 
And so the soul's partner is back, Stargirl and Starboy reunited. But watch out, Lana is hanging out on top of the H with a self-proclaimed "King of the Fall". The word "fall" has a double meaning. One meaning is the season of the fall (autumn), as evidenced in The Weeknd's fall tours. After his first international tour in spring 2012 followed the fall tours: The Weeknd Fall Tour (2012), The Weeknd Kiss Land Fall Tour (2013), King of the Fall (2014), and The Madness Fall Tour (2015). In the song Starboy he aptly mentions: "I come alive in the fall time". His latest tour is titled Starboy: Legend of the Fall Tour, even though it is scheduled to last from February to July 2017, so it refers either to his already established status as the "legend" from the past seasonal fall tours, or to the second meaning of the word "fall". The second meaning of "the fall" is spiritual and is reflected in the general content of his songs: fame and decadence. In the song The Fall, he sings about falling to the ground, and in Starboy he also refers to the Brad Pitt movie Legends of the Fall. The title of this movie seems ambiguous: imdb says that it refers to the biblical fall from innocence, although "the Fall" part was translated as the season (autumn) in countries such as Sweden and France, while in Germany and Spain it was translated as "Passion". Anyway, even in the season of the fall we can find a spiritual meaning: the season is connected with harvest, which in a New Testament parable signifies the end of the age when the righteous are "ripe" for entering heaven and the "wheat" is separated from the "chaff".
 
With man's individuality and consciousness revived, his capacity for self-destruction is restored too. Although we now have a history to learn from, will it be sufficient to prevent another fall?

Best American Record
 
Damn this is a good song.

In Lana's art, America is a symbol of God's creation, from the heavenly East Coast to the earthly West Coast, with the nostalgic 1950s-1960s period representing the garden of Eden/Paradise. In the beginning the music of creation unfolded harmoniously under God's benevolent guidance. But the ego of man tried to be too much like God and "write the next best American record", which was an obsession that led to man's extreme self-assertion, separation from God and soul, and falling out of universal harmony.   The soul sings:   My baby used to dance underneath my architecture   The architecture here is the celestial firmament, the spiritual realm of the soul. The baby is the soul's individual expression, the ego, which went down to earth, to the material realm. In the beginning the ego was full of joy and energy, derived from its dynamic contact with the soul. This means that man's spiritual and material sides were in a healthy balance.   To the "Houses of the Holy"
 
"Houses of the Holy" is a Led Zeppelin song from the 1970s, where the singer courts his girl to let him take her "to the movies, to the show". It is a sexual song with spiritual overtones and also with references to Satan. The relationship between the ego and the soul has a masculine-feminine dynamic, which is reflected in human sexual relationships.
 
Smoking on them cigarettes
 
Turning white into black (innocence into experience), burning with passion, breathing the spirit of life.
 
He was seventies in spirit, nineties in his frame of mind
 
Although influenced by the 1960s hippie ideals, the mood of the 1970s turned from the hippie emphasis on community toward individualism (the "Me" decade). This individualistic trend continued in the 1980s and received a new boost in the 1990s from the collapse of communist governments in Eastern Europe and Soviet Union, even as the boundaries between countries and cultures further weakened and unification of the world accelerated. Individualism is the nature of the ego, while collectivism is the nature of the soul.
 
The ego did need to distance itself from the soul - but only for a while, in order to build the mental and physical structures that the soul could infuse at their reunion. But the ego became "obsessed with writing the next best American record", for fame. Its focus on self-aggrandizement and self-gratification isolated it from the soul, from others, and from a larger reality. Man became trapped on earth, ran out of energy and ran out of life.

Funny that yesterday I was thinking about Adam's initial androgyny. The Hebrew word Adam means man, human or mankind (not necessarily a male human). So at the beginning Adam may have been androgynous but then God took out one of his ribs and made a woman from it. The Hebrew word tsela is traditionally understood as a rib but it also has a more general meaning: a side. So the scripture can be interpreted in the sense that God separated a feminine side from the androgynous human and made a female human from it. In the formerly androgynous human the masculine side remained, thus making this human a male. This was not the Fall yet, just a gender-specialization on the physical plane. The male and female egos/bodies were still in harmony with their souls and thus with God.

Here is a few instances when Lana explained the meaning of the word "ultraviolence":
 
“Ultraviolence is about the male that meets the female. But before the actual sense, I just like the word. It has become the space of a sonorous world that I wanted to make.”
http://lanaboards.com/index.php?/topic/4503-lana-covers-french-magazine-libération/?p=177195
 
"It's a matter of musicality. Ultra is a sweet sound that contrast with the meaning of the next word. I relate to that: my essence is sweet but inside me there's also a violent spirit who came out in the last 4 years."
http://lanaboards.com/index.php?/topic/4785-lana-del-rey-interview-with-d-la-repubblica/?p=188232
 
"The juxtaposition of "ultra", which gives a certain idea of luxury; and "violence" which, to me, reflects the sound of the album really well — it's chaotic but also street music, melodic and sophisticating. Altogether then, [the word] Ultraviolence also means that I've lived between these two states; in my private life, a serene kind of love; in my professional life, a lot of negative press, in my opinion..."
http://lanaboards.com/index.php?/topic/4831-lana-del-rey-in-elle-magazine-france/?p=189525
 
This shows that besides associating the word "ultraviolence" with a relationship between a male and a female, she also associates it with a duality within herself or in her life: sweet serene love on the one hand and a violent, critical spirit on the other.

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).

I think Melua in that song was making a point that you can create a richly diverse reality out of a pair of opposites but you’re right, I didn’t intend to imply that the dichotomy I am talking about is an arbitrary social construct. At least some traits in appearance and behavior that are traditionally characterized as feminine and masculine are not just a social construct but also reflect biological differences between sexes. Although the patriarchal society has rigidly emphasized and used these differences to justify subjugation of women, another error would be to deny their existence. By the way, I don’t imply that women are or should be only feminine and men only masculine, just that the balance is usually tilted toward femininity in women and masculinity in men for both biological and social reasons.
 
As for your quote of me using masculine pronouns with regard to the human I guess it would be more gender-sensitive to use “their” or “his/her” instead of “his”. Or even “her” if I wanted to sound super feminist or affirmative action-like But it seemed kinda awkward to me…
 
 
Ok, the integrative feminine and separatist masculine comes for example from the fact that men are usually more aggressive/assertive. This is probably influenced by their higher testosterone levels and physical strength. Women on the other hand tend to be more conciliatory and empathetic, which may be related to maternal instincts. Also, I once read an article which said that when men communicate they tend to stress their individual differences, while women tend to affirm what they have in common, which seems to fit with what I observe. Then there is the popular notion (not sure how much supported by formal research) that women are better at multitasking, which would indicate that they can encompass a larger scope of things in their attention while men are more stuck in focus on a single thing. In general there seems to be a kind of inclusive softness in femininity and a stronger emphasis on boundaries in masculinity. Some of this may be a cultural add-on but ultimately what I describe is a dichotomy in every person (separatist ego/integrative soul) and to do so I use generally understood notions like masculinity and femininity.
 
Speaking of binary ontology, there is a wave-particle duality in the fundamental nature of matter, which has some similarities with the feminine-masculine duality. Depending on the situation, an element of matter can behave as a definite, localized, separate particle or as a wave spread out in space that encompasses probabilistic possibilities of particle manifestations in different locations and can also connect different elements of matter in the so-called quantum entanglement (separatist particles/integrative waves).
 
I am suggesting that reality has a fundamental dichotomy that manifests in various forms. It is a separatist-integrative dichotomy and I don’t even find it surprising because it expresses relationship between part and whole, or entity and its environment, which you will necessarily find everywhere.
 
Thank you. I take it as an opportunity to clarify my thoughts.

The basic theme of Lana's album. I made esoteric interpretations of some specific songs too on the now defunct ldr.fm forum, but I put one of my posts on my blog here.

 

Esoteric accounts of the human condition (as well as the big religions) say that in the beginning the human was in a state of union or harmony with the divine. Some describe it as living in a garden or paradise. That era didn't last, because the human misused his will and separated himself from the divine instead of cooperating with it. In esoteric interpretations, this was a split within the human himself: his separatist masculine part (ego) suppressed his integrative feminine part (soul); there was a narrowing of consciousness and a limitation to the physical sensory perception. This spiritual fall then led to the diminishing of human vitality and ultimately to death, both spiritual and physical. I find it interesting to imagine that Lana's album (songs and videos) reminds us of the fall from that original happiness, by portraying sexual relationships that went wrong and in which Lana plays the suppressed/abused feminine part (soul).

The basic theme of Lana's album. I made esoteric interpretations of some specific songs too on the now defunct ldr.fm forum, but I put one of my posts on my blog here.

 

Esoteric accounts of the human condition (as well as the big religions) say that in the beginning the human was in a state of union or harmony with the divine. Some describe it as living in a garden or paradise. That era didn't last, because the human misused his will and separated himself from the divine instead of cooperating with it. In esoteric interpretations, this was a split within the human himself: his separatist masculine part (ego) suppressed his integrative feminine part (soul); there was a narrowing of consciousness and a limitation to the physical sensory perception. This spiritual fall then led to the diminishing of human vitality and ultimately to death, both spiritual and physical. I find it interesting to imagine that Lana's album (songs and videos) reminds us of the fall from that original happiness, by portraying sexual relationships that went wrong and in which Lana plays the suppressed/abused feminine part (soul).

Eye of God

 

 

Trinity

Body Electric
 

“Elvis is my daddy, Marilyn’s my mother, Jesus is my bestest friend”

An interplay of the separating masculine archetype and the unifying feminine archetype draws out the potential of their common source into creative manifestation. Their background source could be considered a feminine extreme in that it contains everything in a state of undifferentiated unity. In this unity, the masculine and feminine orientations are inherent as naturally as plus and minus are inherent in a zero. The masculine differentiates reality while the feminine integrates it, the result being individual entities arising and interacting in mutual relations. In my understanding these are the fundamental principles of creation and consciousness. In Christianity Jesus is the ultimate example of this manifestation, being regarded as an incarnation of God in human body.


“Whitman is my daddy, Monaco’s my mother, diamonds are my bestest friend”

In this verse I identified archetypal ideas similar to those mentioned before. Whitman is one of Lana’s favorite poets while Monaco represents her idea of beauty. By words we define things and make them explicit/clear. Beauty, on the other hand, is implicitely/vaguely felt. Words analyze beauty while beauty integrates them in a harmonious whole, both actions enhancing the creation and its meaning. Diamonds symbolize a creation that is simultaneously clearly defined and beautiful. Such a creation is also durable because it prevents disintegration into parts by the analytical process and dissolution into vagueness by the integrating process.


“Heaven is my baby, suicide’s her father, opulence is the end”

Here I represented heaven and suicide with upward and downward tendencies, respectively. Fall leads to death, as the masculine/analytical process separates a part from its source, while ascension leads back to heaven, as the feminine/integrating process reunites the part with a larger reality. The two processes alternate in a cycle, resulting in the creation of multitudes of forms, our planet with its biosphere and human society being the richest place we know of. The Christian God descends to earth to die on the cross on Good Friday, only to be resurrected on Easter Sunday and ascend back to heaven. This story reminds us, who got stuck down here, that there is more to life when we open up and expand our perspectives.

A male voice responds to her but I can't hear it clearly.
 
I always thought she was talking to God, asking why she was chosen for carrying a burden or being in a situation.

Bel Air
 
Children's voices, echoes of the time when the ego was still weak and the light of the soul shone more brightly. Here she comes again, emerging from the mists of the unconscious where the ego has relegated her for an age. No longer deterred by his defenses, for the time is ripe for them to meet again, in that place of lush and sublime beauty, in your vehicle of flesh and bones, where spirit and matter unite.

A male voice responds to her but I can't hear it clearly.
 
I always thought she was talking to God, asking why she was chosen for carrying a burden or being in a situation.

In hindsight I have come to view her first three major albums loosely as a trilogy: Born to Die seemed to emphasize the beginning, the paradise, and the tragic fall that followed. Ultraviolence was deep in the fallen state, especially dark and manic-depressive. And in Honeymoon she seemed to find some peace again, with re-integration of complementary polarities.
 
After this personal analytic-synthetic journey, she emerged reinvigorated from her inner world into the outer world with a more socially/politically conscious Lust for Life. I never know what she will do next, but it seems that her future moves will be influenced by what is going on in the world.

Eye of God

 

 

Trinity

I think when Lana sings about drugs (whether it is heroin, cocaine or meth) she doesn't necessarily mean literal drugs but rather intense stimulations, passions and addictions. On the esoteric view these would be the stimulations, passions and addictions that the soul derives from its incarnation in the material world. Basically, sensory or carnal pleasures. During incarnation, as in the activity of the soul in general, there is a temporary and cyclical separation between the ego, which is basically the focus of the soul's consciousness, and the soul as a whole: the ego is sent forth while the soul recedes into the background of the mind. After the ego has analyzed the situation/problem/environment, gained knowledge or created something, it is integrated back into the consciousness of the soul as a whole: the soul and the ego reunite. And again and again - thus the soul evolves. The problem arises when the ego becomes overly fixated, in its narrow focus, on the world or on the material body and forgets about the soul; the consciousness of the soul thus becomes trapped in a part of reality and this is the spiritual fall. The word "heroin" also suggests "hero", which fits with the sense of individuality that the soul experiences in its ego and with the dangers that it must overcome in its exploration of the world.  
 
In the chorus to Heroin the ego travels to the material world (foreign land); this is the initial separation between the soul and the ego during incarnation. The soul hopes for an eventual reunion but the ego falls on the trip; the "heroin" takes its life away. After the death of the ego (spiritual or physical) the soul withdraws into the spiritual world (to the moon). Topanga is used as a symbol of decadent lifestyle, which eventually results in insanity and violence, as shown in the reference to Charles Manson, who lived in Topanga with his followers. His followers committed some grisly murders back in 1969, which involved writing words in their victims' blood on the walls. This was around the end of 1950s-1960s "paradise" era. The hotness of Topanga refers to the insane and violent atmosphere.
 
At the end of the song the soul becomes sick of the crazy lifestyle and desires change.

In recent days I've been having 13 Beaches, White Mustang and Heroin on a loop and I forgot about the gem called Get Free. Indeed, the verses read like from a mystical book about spiritual awakening. She feels that she and the world are undergoing a big change that may unleash the creative potential of mankind and restore the lost paradise in a modern form. Her songs about her romantic relationships, struggles and transformations have always had a wide social aspect but now she's making this social aspect more explicit in songs like Love, Coachella, God Bless America or When the World Was at War.
 
 
Maybe I missed it? I also didn't know about the French interview you just quoted.
 

I just saw The Weeknd's video for his song I Feel It Coming. It came out a few weeks after Lana's Love video and has similar cosmic, otherwordly visuals with eclipses/syzygies. The Weeknd is alone on some dark planet when a being of light arrives, turns into a woman and they start dancing together. However, a parallel visual of a progressing eclipse shows the light body being gradually "eaten up" by the dark body and at the moment of total eclipse the woman turns into stone. Then The Weeknd starts turning into stone too, as a snake appears crawling on the ground.
 

 
In the past times an eclipse was viewed as a dramatic bad omen, a herald of a disaster. It is one of the apocalyptic signs in the New Testament too. The term "eclipse" is derived from an ancient Greek word that means "the abandonment", "the downfall", or "the darkening of a heavenly body". But from a more neutral perspective the phenomenon can also be seen as a symbol for a union of opposites (an alignment of a light body and a dark body) that creates a grander reality.
 
 
 
 

Wow, very interesting post, Stargirl. This is a nice expression of how I view Lana too. I have not read Childhood's End but from the plot summary on Wikipedia it seems that the unification of the children eventually reached an extreme stage where their individual identities merged and stopped existing. I don't think this is what Lana would desire though, as she does care about human individuality (ego). Individuality and diversity are important, for creativity, consciousness and true fulfilment, but so is unity. Without sufficient unity the society as well as individual minds would fall apart. So the goal is some sort of healthy balance between the individual and the collective. Unity in diversity, like in the Gaia hypothesis. There is something both wise and adorable about Lovelock's Daisyworld model!

Oh... I didn't think of it this way, but I imagine a robot/logician might interpret her words like that lol. To me she seemed surprised. Assuming that she genuinely didn't know about Peg's suicide, I can imagine that guided by her aesthetic and spirituality she took the H as a symbol for a ladder to heaven and she was aware that despite its promise something might go wrong there, something regarding spiritual corruption (perhaps inspired by the Led Zeppelin classic Stairway to Heaven). Lyrics like "we are the masters of our own fate" or "boy we're gold" might be innocent or they might indicate a somewhat overblown ego. "Dancing on the H till we run out of breath/till we die" might suggest a gentle warning. She might have been unaware that Peg's suicide on the H dramatically underlined the darker element of the song.

Lana has just denied knowing of the Peg Entwistle story:
 

 
If she really didn't know about it then this looks like an example of synchronicity, a meaningful coincidence that Carl Jung posited is mediated by the collective unconscious or a deeper order of the world.

Just to remind ya'll that these interpretations don't deny the obvious or literal ones but rather parallel them... Here goes another one.
 
Lust for Life
 
Lana revisits the Hollywood theme, which metaphorically refers to time (movies/stories) and fame, all this set in a larger, timeless whole (the name of the A-ha song "Minor Earth Major Sky" comes to mind). Lust for Life is a brisk and optimistic song but it also has an implicit darker side. Although it celebrates life, passion and self confidence, it also hints at a tragedy connected with the H of the Hollywood sign - the actress Peg Entwistle, who committed suicide by jumping from the H.
 
The notion of a ladder has been pointed out as significant by the director of the album trailer and besides there being a ladder attached to the H (as well as to the other letters of the Hollywood sign), the letter H itself looks like a section of a ladder, with the horizontal piece in the middle as a rung. Towering above the earthly West Coast "city of angels" (associated with the "entrance to the underworld" in Tropico), the ladder may symbolize a connection between the earth and heaven known as Jacob's Ladder, which appeared in a dream of the biblical figure Jacob, with angels ascending and descending on it. Lana also referred to this notion a day before the release of Lust for Life when she posted a short clip on Instagram of a little song of hers in which she sings that she would trade everything for a stairway to heaven and take her time as she climbed up to top of it.
 
But when you are on a ladder and you are not vigilant there is the danger of falling. According to Abrahamic religions as well as esoteric accounts of man's origin there was a major spiritual fall at some point in the past, when man lost contact with heaven/God and got mired on earth. His consciousness closed, as the narrowly focused ego became separated from the heaven-oriented soul. What followed is the human history as we know it. Through the arc of long and often arduous history, the fallen ego was gradually revived and lifted from the caves to the age of space flights and the internet.
 
And so the soul's partner is back, Stargirl and Starboy reunited. But watch out, Lana is hanging out on top of the H with a self-proclaimed "King of the Fall". The word "fall" has a double meaning. One meaning is the season of the fall (autumn), as evidenced in The Weeknd's fall tours. After his first international tour in spring 2012 followed the fall tours: The Weeknd Fall Tour (2012), The Weeknd Kiss Land Fall Tour (2013), King of the Fall (2014), and The Madness Fall Tour (2015). In the song Starboy he aptly mentions: "I come alive in the fall time". His latest tour is titled Starboy: Legend of the Fall Tour, even though it is scheduled to last from February to July 2017, so it refers either to his already established status as the "legend" from the past seasonal fall tours, or to the second meaning of the word "fall". The second meaning of "the fall" is spiritual and is reflected in the general content of his songs: fame and decadence. In the song The Fall, he sings about falling to the ground, and in Starboy he also refers to the Brad Pitt movie Legends of the Fall. The title of this movie seems ambiguous: imdb says that it refers to the biblical fall from innocence, although "the Fall" part was translated as the season (autumn) in countries such as Sweden and France, while in Germany and Spain it was translated as "Passion". Anyway, even in the season of the fall we can find a spiritual meaning: the season is connected with harvest, which in a New Testament parable signifies the end of the age when the righteous are "ripe" for entering heaven and the "wheat" is separated from the "chaff".
 
With man's individuality and consciousness revived, his capacity for self-destruction is restored too. Although we now have a history to learn from, will it be sufficient to prevent another fall?

Best American Record
 
Damn this is a good song.

In Lana's art, America is a symbol of God's creation, from the heavenly East Coast to the earthly West Coast, with the nostalgic 1950s-1960s period representing the garden of Eden/Paradise. In the beginning the music of creation unfolded harmoniously under God's benevolent guidance. But the ego of man tried to be too much like God and "write the next best American record", which was an obsession that led to man's extreme self-assertion, separation from God and soul, and falling out of universal harmony.   The soul sings:   My baby used to dance underneath my architecture   The architecture here is the celestial firmament, the spiritual realm of the soul. The baby is the soul's individual expression, the ego, which went down to earth, to the material realm. In the beginning the ego was full of joy and energy, derived from its dynamic contact with the soul. This means that man's spiritual and material sides were in a healthy balance.   To the "Houses of the Holy"
 
"Houses of the Holy" is a Led Zeppelin song from the 1970s, where the singer courts his girl to let him take her "to the movies, to the show". It is a sexual song with spiritual overtones and also with references to Satan. The relationship between the ego and the soul has a masculine-feminine dynamic, which is reflected in human sexual relationships.
 
Smoking on them cigarettes
 
Turning white into black (innocence into experience), burning with passion, breathing the spirit of life.
 
He was seventies in spirit, nineties in his frame of mind
 
Although influenced by the 1960s hippie ideals, the mood of the 1970s turned from the hippie emphasis on community toward individualism (the "Me" decade). This individualistic trend continued in the 1980s and received a new boost in the 1990s from the collapse of communist governments in Eastern Europe and Soviet Union, even as the boundaries between countries and cultures further weakened and unification of the world accelerated. Individualism is the nature of the ego, while collectivism is the nature of the soul.
 
The ego did need to distance itself from the soul - but only for a while, in order to build the mental and physical structures that the soul could infuse at their reunion. But the ego became "obsessed with writing the next best American record", for fame. Its focus on self-aggrandizement and self-gratification isolated it from the soul, from others, and from a larger reality. Man became trapped on earth, ran out of energy and ran out of life.