lili

Yes, the surreal images of Lana in Shades of Cool suggest she is in the role of the soul and she wants to come back to his consciousness to restore psychological balance. He is old and lonely, apparently has forgotten his spiritual origin. He is reminded of the soul in his visions, resurfacing memories or relationships with women.

http://www.clashmusic.com/features/american-dreamer-lana-del-rey-interviewed
 
She seems to be using America as a symbolic representation of the Creation landscape. East Coast as the origin, Eden, full of ideals, Brooklyn baby, the Queen of New York City. She wants to experience love and freedom, so she leaves home and moves to West, earth. It's more vivid and exciting down there but she also tastes separation, addictions, madness. Now she understands that the key to happiness is in a balance - in uniting West and East, ego and soul, heaven and earth... Ultraviolence is mainly about being in West though, down on earth and with a fading memory of heaven; Lana alternates between the role of the soul that is abused and repressed by the ego and the role of her ego, which, having repressed her soul, enters into abusive relationships with men.

http://csp.org/experience/james-varieties/james-varieties8.html
 
 
Lizzy is a classic "twice-born" who attains to a new name, Lana, having rejected the name given to her at her first birth -- and such is the root of her melancholy
 

 
Bradley doing the "Hanged Man" pose in "Born to Die"
 
 
The more we learn about "Ultraviolence" the less sense it makes on a literal level; clearly she isn't literally telling Jim that she wants to leave Barrie and run away with him to New York, is she? She is an accomplished symbolist--as she says, her imagination is vast. Do her critics, then, act as her own initiators?
 
http://hermetic.com/legis/new-comment/
 
 
 
"My heart it breaks every step that I take
But I'm hoping at the gates they'll tell me that you're mine" http://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/14599/pg14599.html
 

Regarding the cult guru that Lana mentioned in Grazia, this echoes the general concept of her being in a destructive love relationship. The breaking down of people and building them up again obviously evokes the creative alchemical process of Solve et Coagula (analysis and synthesis), but I get the sense that this guru's specialty was mainly to break people down. I am also reminded of the mythical concept of the soul being imprisoned by the lord of the underworld:
 
http://phoenixrise.awardspace.com/cayce.htm
 
Basically I would say that the guru is another representative of the ego. Alternatively he is a male partner of the female ego. The female ego has a suppressed masculine aspect called animus, and as a suppressed aspect it needs to be re-activated in her consciousness (usually through interactions with males) on her way back to wholeness (the soul or Jungian Self).

I guess you could associate Lizzy with her "normal self" or ego, and Lana with her "higher self" or soul. It's the same person of course.
 
She is heavily involved in the creation of her art so she certainly planned lots of details. But I am not sure how much she is guided by her intuition or aesthetic sense and how much she understands the esoteric/abstract aspects intellectually.

Source: 

What do you see when you look at  the mirror? 

A really tired girl! When i am in tour the day start with the sound check at 4 pm and finish at 2 am, after my all dedication to the fans and the people that come in the backstage.

And when aren’t you tired?

I look at the mirror and and i say to myself: “I hope that today everything will be ok”. I hate have problems with my family and with my music, also for the little things like the acoustic during the concerts.

Are the million copies sold of Born To Die the scale of your success?

Personally i use two parameters. First, find a musical community to belong with. Second, know that the community respect me and my job. Unfortunately i have to say that musically i don’t find my “tribe” yet, find somebody to love and share a sense of comradeship. Maybe it’s a romantic inspiration but i think about Bob Dylan when in the 60s he arrived in the Greenwich Village and he found his group of folk music. I’ve tried that too when nine years ago i arrived in Brooklyn but i have to please me of a different version, more simple. I hoped to find people that want to base their life on art. Maybe i found those people in London where i lived for 4 years. And now for 7 months i live in Los Angeles, that’s my escape. I love swim, go to the beach everyday and drive along the coast listening to music.

What do you like to listening to? 

I really like the soundtracks of movies like American Beauty, Il Padrino, Scarface… But the grunge too, Mark Lanegan, Nirvana, and jazz: Chuck Baker, Nina Simone, Billie Holiday and then Bob Dylan and all the musicians of that period.

What is your first musical memory? 

When i was 15 or 16 they sent me to the Kent School for fight my alcohol addiction, it was a private school in Connecticut where i didn’t have a lot of friends but a really young teacher, Gene Campbell, told me about hip hop and the beauty of soundtracks.

That’s not for change argoument but do you ever smoking so much? You just lighted up another cigarette, is not bad for your voice? 

Maybe yes but it’s good for me. It relaxes me but i admit that i smoke,i smoke,i smoke. And i drink a lot of coffee. I have to smoke before,after and during the concerts. And also during the breaks with a cup of coffee.

You say that you’re shy, so how can you stay in front of 5 thousand people during your concerts? 

Get on the stage it’s the part that i like less of my job. I love write and make music but i don’t like all the things that comes after the realization, for promoting the album.

How do you react to the critics?

Not really well. If someone’s write something bad about me and i get to know it i become really disappointed but i try to not let them influence my creativity.

Where and when do you compose music? 

I am a nocturnal animal. I write at night, outside, with a lot of noise in the background that comes from the tv or the radio while i’m smoking and drinking coffee. It’s 4 years that i make music with the same group of people, except for Dan Auerbach that produced with me my last album, Ultraviolence.

Why is Ultraviolence the title of the album?

It’s different from Born To Die,which is about the years of my alcohol addiction, Ultraviolence doesn’t have a specific argoument ,the compactness is in the sounds,in the energy. It’s ambient music, the atmosphere mixes the sound of the California with the Jazz of the 60s.

What’s your favourite song of the album?

The first, Cruel World, which it gives the rythm to the album. The song has 25 seconds of guitar that i define “narco-swing”: it’s like being high. It’s like that for 7 song then the sound became more slow and then it grows up again for the last 20 minutes.

Can you be a down to earth person with this success?

It’s really important to me being a normal person. Anonymity and normality are essentials for my creativity. Fortunately  i grew up with strong roots in my family and when they are so deep it’s easy to harvest the fruits of own work. Also live with my brothers help me to be a down earth person.

Do you live with all your family in Los Angeles?

I’ve always have a central role in my family, also now that  i live with my sister,of 24, and my brother,of 20: Caroline is a yoga teacher, Charlie studies cinema at the UCLA. I’m doing everything that i can do for help them to follow their passions.

They say that Lana is an eccentric person but it seems that you have your head screwed on.

I define myself eccentric psychologically but in the interviews that is often misunderstended. Maybe because my life had a lot of transformations, more transitions. But i’m not provocative, i’m a conservative person, i use words for express myself. Even if i believe in different life-styles and in alternative relationships.

What is your reference in fact of epoch? 

In the middle of 60s and 70s when it grows up a new concept of freedom that it was so new to generate deep passions. A lot mor exciting than the freedoms that we have now.

So thanks for the long conversation, I was biased…

Everyone is before meeting me, I don’t know what to do. I can only try to talk sincerly and let my personality come out. I don’t want to inspire the other people. But i want to be a good person.

What does it mean for you?

A patient person with the people that she loves, generous and that is try to find the serenity.

Do you think that you made it?

I am a calm person but it’s been years that i don’t feel in peace. Maybe it’s because i don’t find my tribe yet.

 

 

(Sorry if there are some mistakes but i’m not english and i tried to translate everything in the best way that i can)
 

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.

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/gemini
 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Castor_and_Pollux (emphasis mine)

Back to the East ... we can escape to the Great Sunshine
 
 
 
http://www.swedenborgstudy.com/books/T.Pitcairn_The-Story-of-Creation-in-Genesis/Pitcairn5.htm
 
 
The girl in red = the "outer man"

The girl in white = the "inner man"
 
http://www.fastcocreate.com/3023186/the-director-of-lana-del-reys-tropico-film-helps-us-make-sense-of-it-all
 
 
http://www.thefader.com/2014/06/04/lana-del-rey-cover-interview/
 
 
Thus they denounce her as "fake," but see only their own superficiality and condemn themselves http://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&js=n&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.spiegel.de%2Fspiegel%2Fkulturspiegel%2Fd-89726953.html
 
 
The external man sees only the external woman ... the soul of the thing-in-itself is not apprehended, since like can only see like ... http://gnosis.org/naghamm/2seth.html
 
 
 
She leaves her lover in the radio mix "for the music"; i.e. she is voluntarily crucifying herself on the stage by turning her life into a work of theurgy; a Phoenix committed to the flames. But it is only the external, bodily Lana (a china doll) that is subjected to the slings and arrows of her crucifiers; her essential Self is beyond these things.

Apparently she also mentions Woodstock here:
 
We could go back to Woodstock
Where they don't know who we are
 
That would make sense in a number of ways. Loss of individual identity in a crowd. Woodstock was a spectacle of hippie ideals - love, peace, spirituality. And the festival was hosted by the town of Bethel, NY - same name as the ancient Israeli town of Bethel, which means "House of God".

Theme:
 
"Got my bad baby by my heavenly side
I know if I go, I'll die happy tonight"
 
Strength and Temperance; the wrath of a wild child quenched by the virgin
 
"Spotlight, bad baby, you've got a flair
For the violentest kind of love anywhere out there

Mon amour, sweet child of mine,
You're divine.
Didn't anyone ever tell you
It's OK to shine?"
 
Without any music videos for the other songs, I can only speculate ... maybe "Ultraviolence" is just about how much she loves Jimmy Gnecco's D. But I also remember this: http://www.idolator.com/7443878/lana-del-rey-new-album-spiritual-stripped-down-dark
 

 
"Spiritual"
 
 
"You have no room for light
Love is lost on you ...
Oh, what can I do?
To turn you on or get through to you"

litewave and deadagainst:
 
Thank you sooo so much for taking your time to post such interesting and detailed interpretations. And please keep posting! Everytime I see this thread having new posts I'm beyond excited.

I guess it has to do with the suppressed soul trying to break through to the modern day ego.

Thus the otherwise inexplicable critical animosity towards her. On an unconscious level they project their own poison and darkness onto one of the few women who is actually free (so she says in "Ride"), as she represents everything that they are not.
 
"Comprende these white lines," or understand YAYO--
 
I wear your sparkle, you call me your mama
Let me put on a show for you, daddy
 
A transition from the particular (the Son and Daughter) to the general (the Father and Mother)--externalized beautiful Form (Maya-shakti the jazz singer as High Priestess) creates play for the Observer (Siva the cult leader as Hierophant)--Video Games--"Don't you know you are the world?"
 
 
The girl in red as Body (Electric), with poison in her tar-black soul ... the cup of Babalon is filled with (Summer) Wine, (Diet Mountain) Dew and bitterness--"just an inner indecisiveness that was as wide and as wavering as the ocean" (as she dreams of Zep Tepi in the Urgrund of the Nun)
 
 
Reminded me of when we were kids
 
I'm very familiar with Jung ... his work on alchemy is invaluable here of course. The animus has potent negative aspects as well.
 
I'm not sure if I would classify L as a Thelemite, but there are certain common themes -- http://hermetic.com/crowley/book-4/aba2.html
 

 
Son = animus, Daughter = anima. The Mother is the Lonely Queen, the Self. Father Yod as Jim.
 
 
 
I note the "empty throne" of Binah behind her ...

I think Lana's "poisonous" character in the UV song can refer both to the soul as well as to the manifestation of the soul in a female body (female ego). As a soul she can be perceived by the ego as a threat to his autonomy and control; in a female body she can be a seductress who entrenches her male lover in matter. If interpreted in the latter sense, then Jim can be seen as a male ego (another person) or alternatively as a suppressed masculine aspect of herself, which in Jungian psychology is called animus - I guess that would be what you called her Holy Guardian Angel.
 
To clarify, while I generally associate ego with masculinity (in the sense of separatist/analytical/definite/conscious) and soul with femininity (in the sense of integrative/intuitive/indefinite/unconscious), the male ego is more skewed toward masculinity than the female ego. The masculine aspect suppressed in the female ego is called animus in Jungian psychology and the feminine aspect suppressed in the male ego is called anima. By the soul I mean the integrative aspect of one's identity or what Jungians call the Self, one's identity as a whole.
 

Yes, Brooklyn as the symbolic East after the night-journey in the West of LA (land of fallen angels)
 
To "go back" as a re-entry into Zep Tepi and Paradise
 
Brooklyn Baby, "heaven is my baby"?
 
 
"Ultraviolence" ties into "Yayo" as a description of her esoteric "epiphany" (her words). Deadly Nightshade, Poison Ivy ... these are aspects of the blackness of the Prima Materia. Jim is her Holy Guardian Angel (Forever) as the man of Tiphareth whom she weds when he carries her on his black motorcycle over the Abyss of the dark night.
 
I love you the first time
I love you the last time
Yo soy la princesa, comprende these white lines
Cause I'm your jazz singer
And you're my cult leader
 
=
 
Put me onto your black motorcycle
50’s baby doll dress for my "I do"
It only takes two hours to Nevada
I wear your sparkle, you call me your mama

Let me put on a show for you, daddy ...

Hello, heaven, you are a tunnel-lined
With yellow lights on a dark night
 
The Princesa in Malkuth is "raised" to Binah ("your mama") ... Lana is quite underrated as a metaphysician
 
http://lanaboards.com/index.php?/topic/4738-lana-del-rey-interview-xlsemanal/&do=findComment&comment=186095
 
 
"Shades of Cool" is a deconstruction of the masculine ego, stoic and impenetrable to higher pneumatic influences.
 
And when he calls
He calls for me and not for you
He prays for love, he prays for peace
And maybe someone new
 
Man lives in a state of duality and separation, chasing after a woman in the world of images that he will never truly possess. When he turns away from these things, Lana will be there as the Other Woman (the High Priestess of Soul as a lonely queen), calling him back to her from a space of millions of years. Compare to "She's Not Me."
 
And when her own man comes to call on her
He'll find her waiting like a lonesome queen
Cos when she's by his side
It's such a change from old routine
 
Singing Lou Reed -- "take a walk on the wild side"
 
The explanation of the coniunctio here is a bit mangled but has some good points:
 
 

 
The unheard music hidden in the shrubbery,
And the unseen eyebeam crossed, for the roses
Had the look of flowers that are looked at. --TS Eliot, "Burnt Norton"
 

Super big thank you to @@ednafrau for translating the interview!
 
 
Source

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.

^ 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.

Tropico is:

Mary : John
Eve : Adam

"West Coast" is:
 
Lana : Daddy
Lana : Bradley

So it would be better to say that they symbolize her in simultaneous "fallen" (i.e. active in the world) and "unfallen" aspects ("I believe in the person I want to become"), praying the rosary for her broken mind

Hollywood and New York, mister major
And there's me
Little queen of the stage, yeah
He's a god
One the stars, call creator
Hail the king of the industry players
Take off your business suit
Sitting in your lap for my interview

The union of Yahweh and Israel becomes John's love letter to Miss America, or Rob taking care of his little princess (You can be my higher power, baby)
 
Always about her Father's business, Tropico shirts in Paradise

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 guess my reasoning was that if Lana in white is Mary, then her Daddy must be "Dear John" by default . . .
 
"Now I'm in LA and it's Paradise"
 
There is some merit to interpreting UV as being about her musical career as well; this seems to be part of her design to turn her life into a work of Art, by which she seems to mean a work of poetic alchemy (thus the flames as she sways on the SNL stage--stumbling on the way to Golgotha, as you say).
 
"Three years down the line of being on an endless world tour"--well, she hadn't been on an endless world tour for three years when she said that; she is obviously referring to a spiritual path (feet, don't fail me now) rather than anything literal. Fuck your way to the top.
 
"And if I said I didn't plan for it to turn out this way, I'd be lying ..."
 
"No man taketh it from me, but I lay it down of myself ..."

i find it interestingthat she says WHAT you are not WHO you are 

On the balcony, overlooking the world = Lana in white (higher Mary-Sophia) with her "Daddy" character as God (YHWH, "Our Father, whose Art's in heaven"), riding her throne-chariot through the heavens ...
 

 
Lana in red (lower Eve-Sophia) as the "Girl on Fire," the Phoenix in flames. ("Phoenix" = "palm tree.")
 

 
The final scene shows Christ crucified with Lana as Sophia overshadowing him in her soft resurrection.
 

 
She is seen in the flames in red before turning to black leather--the Nigredo when she puts on her black wedding dress.

"Mary" on the balcony



Ravens = Nigredo

Good overview: http://www.soul-guidance.com/houseofthesun/alchemyintro.htm


"I'm leaving you for the moment" = "My soul and my spirit depart"

Many scales, yes . . . alchemy repeats the creation of the universe; the Fall and Redemption



Dark Paradise



--The Tower of Alchemy



Fire as violent love, Sulphur and Mars energy of transformation performing the Operation of the Sun

Guy Fawkes the revolutionary attempts to blow up Parliament; i.e. destroy the old order of Ego and its ossified belief structures (represented by Jackoff Jack in the Tower in Tropico)





The video for "Born to Die" with Bradley again depicts the first stage of the Alchemical work as "Death": Lana in two forms as the Higher and Lower Shekinah (Sophia). Bradley as the alchemical King from whom Soul departs in a fiery crash as he steers his Merkabah-Chariot. Brad takes the cig and gives it to Lana ("His Parliament's on fire ..."); i.e. he communicates his alchemical fire to her.

"I got the ice, you got the fire.
I got the stuff, to take you higher....
This is a race, let's go fast honey....
C'mon pretty baby, I'll be takin' you down."