The Paradise and the esoteric origin of mankind

[DeadAgainst 1,515]

I really have no idea what I was saying on the previous pages; I'll try to simplify a bit.

 

On 3/1/2021 at 5:53 AM, BluebirdXO said:

"XL. It requires a lot of self-control, doesn't it?

 

L.R. It's patience. Like letting the lyrics come to me. Sometimes is painful, but it's the only way. I feel that my path was revealed to me, but I needed to be an empty vessel for it to happen. Like an electrical conduit. Electricity does not go through you if you're blocked."

 

Maybe she's describing some sort of psychography (spirit writing/automatic writing)?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automatic_writing

 

 

I think she is rather speaking of obeying the intuitive promptings of the Self, or, as she said elsewhere, "channeling angels in the New Age..." 

 

'Cause my body is my temple, my heart is one, too...

I wish you could see to my soul through this black bathing suit
You don't know me any better than they do, baby
'Cause I sing like an angel, my heart's like one, too

 

Some other choice quotes from that interview--

 

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XL. You are either hated or loved. Why do you think that is?

L.R. Maybe my messages are confusing. I don't make pop, my creative process is more psychological. When people started to listen, I had already been writing for ten years and had a very deep psychological universe.

 

XL. What differences are there between Lizzy and Lana?

L.R. None. I changed my name to show others how I was on the inside.

 

XL. You studied Metaphysics in college. Where did that interest come from?

L.R. When I was 11 years old I realized that we were all going to die...and that distressed me deeply. The concepts of infinity and eternity also tortured me. In boarding school, I signed up for Metaphysics classes. It was the first subject, apart from Literature, that I was truly interested in. For the first time I felt in good company. Although the ancient philosophers had been gone for centuries.

 

 

She references this in quite a few places and has mentioned multiple times her fascination with Carl Jung. Her music, by her own words, is depicting the interior landscape of the Self. Her songs and poems seem to flit in and out of exotericism and esotericism; witness "Paradise is Very Fragile":

 

Who am I to dream for you?

It’s just that in my own mind,

I was born with a little bit of paradise.

I was lucky in that way.

Not like my husband,

Who was born and raised in hell.

 

I always had something gentle to give.

All of me, in fact.

It’s one of the beautiful things about me.

It’s one of the beautiful things about nature....

 

Paradise is very fragile,

and it’s only getting worse.

 

And every time I think of that,

I think about the curse bestowed upon Eve

That fateful eve she took that bite of fruit from that fruitful tree.

And this summer night, you in front of me,

Makes me contemplate the origins of good and evil.

 

Because you take, and you take, and take, and you take,

But you taste like the beach and a kiss.

Candy from my eyes,

in my veins you run citrus.

 

Watercolour images of serpents on orange trees arise in my midst.

Kundalini, you breathe me.

I could do this forever.

 

But my heart is very fragile,

and I have nothing left to give.

 

What is she talking about here? She starts with a concrete picture of the Woolsey Fire; but the end is quite different. Who is her "husband"? Well, wasn't Jesus her boyfriend? Is this her Animus, in the Jungian sense? Why do serpents on orange trees arise in her "midst"? Isn't that the "heart girt with a serpent," representing the risen Kundalini? Or is it the Guns and Roses of her Axl Rose Husband? The following lines make the connection explicit. Compare to the poem by Aleister Crowley:

 

I am the Heart; and the Snake is entwined

About the invisible core of the mind.

Rise, O my snake! It is now is the hour

Of the hooded and holy ineffable flower.

Rise, O my snake, into brilliance of bloom

On the corpse of Osiris afloat in the tomb!

O heart of my mother, my sister, mine own,

Thou art given to Nile, to the terror Typhon!

Ah me! but the glory of ravening storm

Enswathes thee and wraps thee in frenzy of form.

Be still, O my soul! that the spell may dissolve

As the wands are upraised, and the æons revolve.

Behold! in my beauty how joyous Thou art,

O Snake that caresses the crown of mine heart!

 

Some sources on Yoga will claim that the Kundalini must rise to the top of the head, but this is a bit of a misconception; it is rather the vehicle of awakening the Self in the heart.

 

"The fire of Kundalini is at the base of all existence. It is the raw foundational energy that the spiritual seeker wants to cultivate, develop, or awaken, depending on which tradition or terms they use."

 

I'm on fire, baby, I'm on fire

He's got the fire and he walks with it
He's got the fire and he talks with it

His Bonnie on the side, Bonnie on the side
Makes me a sad, sad girl

 

Who is "he"? Her unseen husband? But why does it make her a sad girl? Because awakening the Kundalini is accompanied by a profound Melancholy; the Dark Night of the Soul.

 

"This is the beginning of the Nigredo process, whereby the initiate is pulverised, disintegrated, burnt to blackness. Nigredo is ‘Melancholia’; the saturnine mood is sober, sardonic, grave or sullen. This is the lead of the Alchemists. The beginning of the spiritual process."

 

Well, wasn't "Melancholia the original" "Ultraviolence" title from the Queen of Alchemy wedded to the heavy-hitting King, who once proclaimed SOLVE ET COAGULA? A song like "The Blackest Day" is about journeying into the depths of the Unconscious.

 

"For the Alchemist, the first stage of the 'Great Work' is the Nigredo, the stage of Blackness, disintegration, chaos, where the material (metal, the soul of Man, or what have you) is reduced to the 'prima materia' or formless original stuff, before it can proceed to the second stage, the Albedo (whiteness), where the material may be unified once again. The Alchemical process is circular, alternating between Solve and Coagula on its path towards perfection." (John R. Stahl)

 

The next step of the alchemical process is Albedo--the title of an interlude in 2016. And indeed, Ultraviolence finds her cooking up snow on her alchemical stove; comprehend her sure white lines. (Why is "Yayo" such a significant song for her? Why did she sell heart-shaped coke spoon necklaces?) Now compare the subject of the title track to this stage of Joseph Campbell's Hero's Journey:

 

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Atonement with the Father/Abyss[edit]

In this step, the hero must confront and be initiated by whatever holds the ultimate power in their life. In many myths and stories, this is the father or a father figure who has life and death power. This is the center point of the journey. All the previous steps have been moving into this place, all that follow will move out from it....

Atonement consists in no more than the abandonment of that self-generated double monster—the dragon thought to be God (superego) and the dragon thought to be Sin (repressed id). But this requires an abandonment of the attachment to ego itself, and that is what is difficult. One must have faith that the father is merciful, and then a reliance on that mercy. Therewith, the center of belief is transferred outside of the bedeviling god's tight scaly ring, and the dreadful ogres dissolve.... The problem of the hero going to meet the father is to open his soul beyond terror to such a degree that he will be ripe to understand how the sickening and insane tragedies of this vast and ruthless cosmos are completely validated in the majesty of Being. The hero transcends life with its peculiar blind spot and for a moment rises to a glimpse of the source. They behold the face of the father, understand — and the two are atoned.

 

 

"Ultraviolence" is a study in Initiation by the archetypal Father where the initiate is "pulverised, disintegrated, burnt." "Jim takes me down, he's a fire eater..." 

 

I could have died right there
'Cause he was right beside me

Jim raised me up [Mississippi South]
He hurt me but it felt like true love
Jim taught me that
Loving him was never enough

With his ultraviolence

 

Now turn to her explanation of "Get Free":

 

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When I was writing that song, I had a little conversation with my engineer, who's one of my dear friends; his name's Kieron Menzies. And we were talking about this model they use in literature; sometimes it's called the Hero's Journey. And it starts with crossing the threshold of the ordinary world and moving to the main character's reveal of the heart. And then the character goes through all these different cycles; they battle the giant, they battle themselves, and then they come back and they find out who they really are. And so I liked that idea. I thought it sort of resembled my story. (Inaudible), I revealed my heart. And then the rest is a Mystery. All I'll say.

 

And her explanation on World Café, this is the key to getting free:

 

"I think going deeper, you know? Knowing that you're your own doorway to the answers and not looking for answers in other people."

And now I do, I wanna move
Out of the black (out of the black)
Into the blue (into the blue)
Finally, gone is the burden of the Crowley way of being
That comes from energies combined (2017)

"The Great Work is the uniting of opposites. It may mean the uniting of the soul with God, of the microcosm with the macrocosm, of the female with the male, of the ego with the non-ego." (Crowley)

Crowley's works were based on the western tradition of Hermetic alchemy...among other things.

I'm crossing the threshold
From the ordinary world
To the reveal of my heart
Undoubtedly
That will for certain
Take the dead out of the sea
And the darkness from the arts

"For as thy blood is mingled in the cup of BABALON, so is thine heart the universal heart." (Crowley)

The "threshold" is in Crowley's system a crossing of the Abyss; the "energies combined" are the alchemical King and Queen, or Fire and Water, Animus and Anima. The arts are, of course, the Hermetic arts; in one live performance, she replaces "arts" with heart, where the transformation takes place in the core of being.

After 2017, it seems like she made a deliberate decision, as stated in "Get Free," to focus more on the realities of her day-to-day life and less on mysticism (out of the black, into the blue). Her songs since then seem to lack the overt symbolism of her previous work, trying to find paradise in the mundane. "Life is beautiful, but you don't have a clue."

[DeadAgainst 1,515]

There’s a hole that’s in my heart

All my women try and heal

They’re doing a good job convincing me that it’s not real

It’s heat lightning, ooh

 

‘Cause there’s a man that’s in my past

There’s a man that’s still right here

He’s real enough to touch in my darkest nights

He’s shining

 

The new dichotomy in her work—trying to ignore the promptings of the soul but knowing that it is always there, beckoning to go deeper. Per Wiki, "the Great Work... is considered to be the pursuit of self-knowledge to, as Crowley said in The Confessions of Aleister Crowley, 'obtain the knowledge of the nature and powers of my own being.' However, Crowley continues, the Great Work should also be something that is integrated into the daily life of all. Although Crowley often discussed the idea of 'succeeding' or 'accomplishing' in the Great Work, he also recognized that the process is ongoing." No chasing rainbows and hoping for an end to them.

 

He's Jesus Christ
And I’m his baby doll...
Jesus is my boyfriend

He's my personal savior
He's my personal angel
My God thinks I’m smashing
He thinks I’m fine
My God takes me dashing 'cross the party line

He's my personal savior
He's my personal savior

My God treats me special
Gives me lots of things
I had some of his boyfriends offer diamond rings

He's my personal savior
He's my personal savior

He's my personal angel
He's my cherry pie
Said to call him "Dick Tracy"
He's my private eye
When I get in my gown
He comes to me in the night

 

During this era, she commented that she didn't censor herself as much as she did later. These lyrics, though rough, bear a strange similarity to "Yayo"; interpreted first as a Jim(my Gnecco) song and then the mysterious Rob. Fervid Lanalysts, if I read the thread right, seem to have come to the conclusion that it is pure fantasy—real people that then transform into archetypal Animus figures in an interior psychic landscape, as concrete as Jesus or Axl Rose. As a long-time studier of Carl Jung, she would know of this well. Again...she calls this song a un moment fondamental de ma vie. Un déclic. But how can it be if nobody can confirm a single bit of it happened IRL? These are the questions I keep coming back to, trying to measure the lines drawn between the ordinary world and the extraordinary. But to open up her current work, I first need to read Women Who Run with the Wolves by another Jungian.

[DeadAgainst 1,515]

I find that the common interpretation of Lana's songs is that they are from a woman always longing for fulfillment in the arms of a man. Yet when she discusses this topic herself, her position is much more nuanced:

 

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I subscribe to the idea that what’s going on in the macrocosm, whether it be in the presidency or a virus that keeps us isolated, is a reflection of what’s going on in the individual home and inside bedrooms and what people intimately talk about. I think there’s been existential panic for a long time, but people haven’t been paying attention to it... you have to look at your partner and be like, “I’ve lived with you for 20 years, but do I even know you?” You realize maybe you’ve only ever allowed yourself to scratch the surface of yourself because if you went any deeper, you might have a mild meltdown for no reason, just out of the blue, and no amount of talking could explain why. It’s just a part of your genetic makeup. You could just be prone to panic. I think a lot of people are that way. I got a lot of shit for not only talking about it, but talking about lots of other things for a super long time. I don’t feel justified in it, because I’m not the kind of artist who’s ever going to get justified. I will die an underdog and that’s cool with me. But I was right to ask, “Why are we here? Where did we come from? What are we doing? What happens if this insane, crazy, sci-fi crisis happens, and then you’re stuck with yourself, and you’re stuck with your partner who doesn’t pay attention to you?”

 

...I’m not trying to say I’m a holy roller because I’m not, but I think people are looking up to the sky a bit more and being like, “Why? What’s the reason?” 

 

If you think that you know yourself, you can come over

 

Here she invokes the Hermetic image of the microcosm and Macrocosm. But who out there listens to a Lana Del Rey song and understands that her intent, in her own words, is to ask the great questions of the soul's origin and its return? A casual listener would probably say they're about drugs and daddy issues. And from the Variety award show, she expresses the same Hermetic belief:

 

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I’m really always grateful for any acknowledgement and also super grateful for all the criticism – I get a lot. What’s good about it is I really believe what’s reflected back to you is in some way a mirror to what’s going on in your inner life. It’s given me a huge opportunity to look inward and to look at my family of origin, look at my lineage, see what’s going on up there....

 

Why there's a price on my head

It's nothin' to do with them (= the critics)

It's my karmic lineage...

 

Untraditional lover

Can you handle that?

 

I guess I'm complicated, my life's sorta too

I wish you could see to my soul through this black bathing suit

You don't know me any better than they do, baby

'Cause I sing like an angel, my heart's like one too

 

Her frustration in matters of love seems rather to be that her men do not "know themselves," and thus cannot know her soul (she once said she could only marry someone exactly like herself); the subject-object problem, that of Shiva and Shakti as one flesh in perfect Tantric union, remains unresolved.

 

The goal of Kundalini yoga is to burn away one's karmas ("through the fire, we're born again"); even in such an incongruous place as an award ceremony, she mentions that she is always in a process of going deeper—but only in the song does she explain that this lineage is karmic. It is interesting how she will self-censor, in one interview only mentioning "genetics" rather than some concept of ancestral karma ("let's ch-ch-change our DNA").

 

And to return to her own perspective on Get Free:
 

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For Amy [Winehouse], and for Whitney [Houston]. "And all my birds of paradise / Who never got to fly at night, / 'Cause they were caught up in the dance." It's about people who don't get to reach their full potential because they let controlling people stop them from being free....

 

What's the key to getting free?

I think going deeper, you know? Knowing that you're your own doorway to the answers and not looking for answers in other people.

 

Repeatedly, she says that "the culture's" modern malaise is precisely that they seek fulfillment from others without looking within themselves. She contemplates the image of marriage and domesticity in Blue Banisters, but does not quite assent to it. It is a far cry from what people like Lorde saw in her music, but she leaves this for people to puzzle out for themselves, despite dropping hints at every opportunity.

 

Because I'm going deeper and deeper (deeper)
Harder and harder (harder)
Getting darker and darker
Looking for love
In all the wrong places
Oh my God

[DeadAgainst 1,515]

"I am certainly of opinion that genius can be acquired" (Crowley)

 

Listening to Lana's early work, there is a marked transformation that occurs around 2007. On Sirens ca. 2005-2006, we have "diaristic" songs about life as it is; it is rightly called juvenilia. It is interesting to chart her development with her lyrics. One of the earliest tracks to show her new development is, appropriately, "Pawn Shop Blues"—its first performance was in May, 2006:

 

In the name of higher consciousness
I let the best man I knew go
'Cause it's nice to love and be loved
But it's better to know all you can know
Said it's nice to love and be loved
But I'd rather know what God knows

Oh-no, oh-no, oh-no, oh-no, oh-no

I can't do this once more
No man can keep me together
Been broken since I was born

 

So her mindset in this period is clear. She has entered a sort of seclusion to "know" God, in the Gnostic sense. 

 

Then in early 2007:

 

It's the voodoo Mississippi south
Sixty-nine million stars
Birds are comin' out of my mouth
Spirits creepin' in my yard

Oh, my head, it's tiltin' back
Something's dancin' me around
Puttin' crystals on my neck
Liftin' my toes off the ground, ah-ah-ahh, ground, ah-ha-ah-ah

Rai-rai-rai-raise me up

 

A great change in her lyrics is already seen; the imagery is rich and figurative. The Melancholia of "Pawn Shop Blues" is followed by a sort of resurrection—"Jim raised me up". Then a theme emerges:

I am my only God now

 

Baby, I have become someone
A monster, hey, yeah, yeah

Baby, I've become someone
Not of this world, hey, yeah, yeah (cf. "Maha Maha")

 

I remember we came in May
And we changed our names to Lana and Ray

 

Lizzy has become Lana Ray, someone not of this world; the truest expression of who she is "on the inside." Somewhere in this time period, she writes "Yayo," which she has said depicts a pivotal moment in her life. Its first performance is June 14, 2007, appropriately before a performance of "Pawn Shop Blues". When she re-records the song for Paradise, it is the connecting link between "Gods and Monsters" and "Bel Air"—the necessary transition from hell to heaven.

 

You have to take me right now
From this dark trailer park life now...

Hello, Heaven, you are a tunnel lined
With yellow lights on a dark night

 

Palm trees in black and white
Was the last thing I saw before I died
Bright light, right man
Right mixture of cocaine and heroin

All that's real to me is Marilyn and Jesus
Jumpin' off'a bridges, sparklers and streamers, honey
I wanna die (fly), I wanna die (fly), I wanna die (fly)

 

A death and rebirth. A jump into the Abyss. Visions of a tropical Paradise. The alchemical mixture of elements ("energies combined"); figuratively cocaine (white) and heroin (black?). Marilyn and Jesus, archetypal forms from an eternal reality.

You my Axl Rose husband
Blue hydrangea
White Pontiac Heaven
Me, your red, white, and blue girl
Star-spangled danger

 

Now a richly-textured archetypal interior world emerges, entirely her own: the white car in heaven (seen in the "West Coast" video). Lana as the embodiment of America. The pun of "heavy metal" and alchemical metals. The men she most adores now become figures of her Animus that represent the alchemical King in the coniunctio. "At night I fell asleep with visions of myself dancing and laughing and crying with them..."

You, my heavy metal king, king

I said, "Daddy, I need you" (Yes)
Greenwich, I need you
Strangled up in ivy
I'm the garden of Eden
Lady Liberty
Teal with flame I'm shinin'
Queen, queen

You're my one king, daddy
I'm your little queen, red, white, and blue

 

(Cf. 2009: You can be my higher power, baby
I can be your empress USA)

 

I can be your 4th of July

Gimme that, gimme that, gimme that crystal meth, love
Because

Feels like sugar in me

 

Lana, or the temple that is her body and heart, becomes America and the Garden of Eden as the fertile earth (an image repeated in "Arcadia") in which Paradise is revealed, figuratively impregnated by a deity or Animus figure. Says Crowley, the Empress "is fitted to represent one of the three alchemical forms of energy, Salt. Salt is the inactive principle of Nature; Salt is matter which must be energized by Sulphur to maintain the whirling equilibrium of the Universe." Crystal meth as the alchemical Elixir: "This liquor is the Amrita of the Indian philosophers, the Nepenthe and Ambrosia of the Greeks, the Alkahest and Universal Medicine of the Alchemists, the Blood of the Grail; or, rather, the nectar which is the mother of that blood" (Crowley). Refer again to "Paradise is Very Fragile":

 

But you taste like the beach and a kiss.

Candy from my eyes,

in my veins you run citrus.

Watercolor images of serpents on orange trees arise in my midst.

Kundalini, you breathe me.

Fast forward to 2009:

 

I got that magical trance potion
Gotta leave, I can't wait 'til I'm older

 

2012:

 

Gargoyles standing at the front of your gate (= "Spirits creepin' in my yard")
Trying to tell me to wait, but I can’t wait to see you
So I run like I'm mad to Heaven’s door
I don’t wanna be bad, I won’t cheat you no more

Roses, Bel Air
Take me there
I’ve been waiting to meet you
Palm trees in the light
I can see late at night
Darling, I’m waiting to greet you
Come to me, baby

Spotlight, bad baby, you’ve got a flair
For the violentest kind of love anywhere out there

 

A summation of her Work so far; the great reveal at the end of Paradise that the fallen girl in "Gods and Monsters" has already been redeemed, and asks others to follow her. Ultraviolence is foreshadowed. Violent love that offers resurrection. 

 

2014:

 

They say I'm too young to love you
I don't know what I need
They think I don't understand
The freedom land of the 70s

 

At about the age of 21, almost unheard of in someone so young, something happened to Elizabeth Grant; something that she will not discuss openly even now, as it is impossible to describe in straightforward words—"an obsession for freedom that terrified me to the point that I couldn't even talk about it." This something changed the whole of her life to such an extent that she changed her name, changed her hair to suit the truth of her new interior reality ("the mood of your soul"), and transformed her songwriting into allegorical poetry. I hope this provides some insight into the true depth of her art, even in the earliest material.

 

You never liked the way I said it
If you don't get it, then forget it
'Cause I don't have to fucking explain it

[DeadAgainst 1,515]

"I can be smart when it's important. But most men don't like it."

(Marilyn Monroe in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes)

 

 

 

You have to take me out of this strange trailer park life

 

In the first known performance of "Yayo" in 2006 (? Lanapedia is unreliable on this point), Lizzy stands shrouded in darkness, wearing black. The lyrics are different. Instead of "hello Heaven," we have only (if I hear right) "I think the stars are right about there, but it's gettin' there." She immediately segues into "Pawn Shop Blues". 

 

 

In 2017, “Pawn Shop Blues” became the second song from AKA to be resurrected by Lana Del Rey:

 

 

The video is highly symbolic. Lana appears as a bride, recalling the “Ultraviolence” video. Butterflies are traditionally a symbol of Psyche, the soul; her story is told in Apuleius’ Metamorphoses, AKA The Golden Ass, a Platonic allegory wherein the protagonist undergoes “a long journey, literal and metaphorical… He finally finds salvation through the intervention of the goddess Isis”. Lana stands as a pregnant Goddess, Lizzy locked like Snow White in the coffin of the depths from which she must be raised. This is a slight inversion of the usual interpretation: Lana as Self as Goddess cannot be trapped, as she is eternal; she is beckoning her from a higher plane to free her limited self, as seen in Tropico. Cigarettes are the consuming fire in this hermetic vessel that cleanses a tar-black soul.

 

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I want to give a shoutout to Tessa DiPietro.… the first thing she said to me was, “A question is coming off of your right shoulder that wants to be acknowledged, and that question is, how does it serve you to be submissive in your life?” And I went a shade of red you can't describe and I didn't know if it was a sexual innuendo, but I said, “Well, if you’re submissive in general, people don’t get mad at you.” She said, “It’s not a question that needs to be answered, it's a question to present to your psyche.” Since then, she's brought so many. I like the concept that she brought to light about the over-culture. You know how some things go badly in your life, things are also weird in other people's lives? There's a power of that superconscious. It's also why you'll see like five movies come out that are all about Snow White. The tone of the over-culture is very powerful.

 

Now that we’ve established a rough chronology, it may be possible to read “Get Free” as “her story” depicting the important moments in her recent life:

 

No Kung Fu/The Ocean/Kill Kill/AKA

 

Finally

I'm crossing the threshold
From the ordinary world
To the reveal of my heart
Undoubtedly

That will for certain
Take the dead out of the sea
& the darkness from the arts

 

Born to Die

This is my commitment

My modern manifesto
I'm doing it for all of us

Who never got the chance
For Amy and for Whitney
& all my birds of paradise

Who never got to fly at night
'Cause they were caught up in the dance

 

Paradise

Sometimes it feels like I've got a war in my mind
I want to get off, but I keep riding the ride
I never really noticed that I had to decide
To play someone's game or live my own life
& now I do

I wanna move
Out of the black (out of the black!)
Into the blue (into the blue!)

 

Ultraviolence/Honeymoon

Finally

Gone is the burden
Of the Crowley way of being
That comes from energies combined
Like my part was I

Was not discerning
And you, as we found out
Were not in your right mind

 

Lust for Life

 

There's no more chasing rainbows

& hoping for an end to them

Their arches are illusions

Solid at first glance

But then you try to touch them

There's nothing to hold onto

The colors used to lure you in

& put you in a trance

 

With Lust for Life, she was, as said at the time, jolted back to reality by the Trump presidency. The songs get political, and when she sings of Lady Liberty, there is no hint of acknowledgement of her past usage. This marks the end of what could be considered her “classic” era. Now comes a desire to take off Crowley’s uniform of imagery, strip herself down and rebuild herself anew as one engaged with the world instead of sinking in the quicksand of her thoughts.

 

I go on trips with my friends to the beach who don’t know that I’m crazy.

I can do that.

I can do anything,

Even leave you…

The more I step into my poetry,

The less I will fall into being with you.

 

For the first time since boarding school (according to her), she had real friends; who cares if they’ll never truly know who you are?

 

You, in your madness
The satellite that's constellating my world
Mimicking the inner chaos that i've disowned
A mirror to my past life retribution
A reflection of my sadness...
My feet aren't on the ground
 

Repeatedly in Violet she contemplates grounding herself in the exoteric and turning away from the inner life, particularly in “Never to Heaven,” a sort of modern Ecclesiastes.

 

Norman Fucking Rockwell was a critical triumph, and it was precisely because she stripped herself of overt symbolism, instead relegating it to the lyrical margins and enigmatic images like “God in a burnt coffee pot” that she refused to explain when asked. But the message remains open on the cover and in "Mariners Apartment Complex," the medicine now sugared to go down easier:

 

 

I'm the bolt, the lightning, the thunder
Kind of girl who's gonna make you wonder
Who you are and who you've been...

Maybe I could save you from your sins
So, kiss the sky and whisper to Jesus
My, my, my, you found this, you need this
Take a deep breath, baby, let me in
You lose your way, just take my hand
You're lost at sea, then I'll command your boat to me again
Don't look too far, right where you are, that's where I am
I'm your man
 

Overwhelmingly, the critics finally understood what she was saying when discussing the mundane life, and heralded it as a new triumph in her songwriting when, in many important ways, it was a step back to May Jailer. By doing so, she lost contact with something vital, as she later confessed; suddenly the words did not flow and she turned to poetry as a form of loosening the binds of the unconscious.

 

I'm generally quite quiet
Quite a meditator, actually
I'll do very well down by Paramhansa Yogananda's realization center, I'm sure

 

Quote

I’m a big studier of Carl Jung, who says that the only opportunity that the unconscious has to speak to you is through your dreams, or through automatic writing, which is similar to what I do when I’m singing into my phone in the mornings. He even suggests you write with your left hand if you’re right-handed, so you can see what comes up first. Because you have to write so slowly, you might end up writing, “Help!” 

 

Violet presents some insights into her inner life at this time; the old symbols had been cast away, and new symbols were being modeled. Her verses are on one page allegorical and on another literal, and one is always unsure where the lines are drawn. But when she talks directly to the city of Los Angeles or Kundalini itself, we know that those lines are often crossed. Witness where she flips the tables and refers to literal beings in allegorical terms, the without always being a reflection of the within, the archetypal role in which she is always trapped:

 

What will it take for me not to need you

so I can just have you for fun

and for who you really are

 

Not you as the savior

not me as Ophelia

not us putting our faith in the public's dark art

 

The savior needs no explanation. Ophelia—an image from Paradise, the Self submerged beneath the waters of the unconscious. The public, the dark alchemical art of criticism that tears them apart and puts them together again. ("I get a lot.")

 

 

(Source: Shirley Alvarez)

 

I acknowledged who you really were for the first time.

 

I didn’t call you by any other name, (Axl Rose? Jesus? Jim?)

I let you know that I knew the true nature of your heart.

That it was evil,

and that it convinced me that darkness was real,

That the devil is a real devil,

and that monsters don’t always know that they’re monsters.

 

But projection is an amazing thing.

After you left and burnt the house down,

You tried to convince me it was I who was holding the matches.

 

You told me I didn’t know who I was,

But I do.

 

So when we turn to these lines, is this a real person? Or is this addressed to her own Shadow Self as Dark Animus, that she rejects and yet continually falls into bed with? Is this not her husband from hell?

 

Quote

[T]hey battle themselves, and then they come back and they find out who they really are…. I thought it sort of resembled my story…. I revealed my heart. And then the rest is a Mystery. All I'll say.

 

 

In a 2007 live rendition of “Pin-Up Galore,” she declares herself both a monster and a being not of this world. The performance is, in a word, strange; she is melancholic, but seems to possess a greater confidence.

 

 

Quote

In California, earth, wind, and fire are huge. All the elements are taken into consideration with my art, all the time. 

 

The symbolism in "My Bedroom is a Sacred Place Now - There Are Children at the Foot of My Bed" would seem to actually follow that of the Tarot, where the Devil becomes the Tower, the House of Ego destroyed in that all-consuming fire. Elsewhere, she writes in one of her most overtly esoteric pieces, directly addressing the Kundalini serpent—

 

I think about the curse bestowed upon Eve

That fateful eve she took that bite of fruit from that fruitful tree.

And this summer night, you in front of me,

Makes me contemplate the origins of good and evil.

 

This recalls not the Biblical fall, but the awakening that came in the moment that Eve, obeying the serpent, plucked the fruit and attained Gnosis to both the nature of absolute darkness and absolute light (that Sparkle not of this world) in the Abyss. She contemplates if she is, in fact, cursed, having taken the Jump that changed the entire trajectory of her life. A familiar image from Paradise.

 

To shut the door on the past and step

blindly

into the abyss

no destination intact

 

 

Quote

In the left hand there is a great flaming torch, inverted towards the earth…. The figures are tailed, to signify the animal nature, but there is human intelligence in the faces, and he who is exalted above them is not to be their master for ever. Even now, he is also a bondsman, sustained by the evil that is in him and blind to the liberty of service…. What it does signify is the Dweller on the Threshold without the Mystical Garden when those are driven forth therefrom who have eaten the forbidden fruit. (A.E. Waite)

 

Internally, we know that we are potential lords of creation. But here we meet a check, and there a defeat, and so we try to explain why we are not actually as free as we feel ourselves internally to be.... "What keeps me from expressing this inner freedom I feel?" At the same time, this picture indicates the correct solution to the problem, and points to the way which leads out of the difficulty.... The picture refers to man's ideas concerning the nature of that which seems so relentlessly to oppose his struggles for freedom…. Remember, too, that the Devil personifies the serpent-power represented by… Strength.

 

The name for the serpent which tempted Eve is NChSh, Nachash, and the number of this word is 358, the value of MShICh, Messiah. Here is a profound subtlety, for numerical identity between Hebrew words points to some inner correspondence of meaning. Finally, it has been said: "The Devil is God, as He is misunderstood by the wicked.” (Paul Foster Case)

 

 

Quote

The picture shows the destruction of existing material by fire. (Aleister Crowley)

 

It signifies the materialization of the spiritual word... it is the downfall of the mind, seeking to penetrate the mystery of God. (A.E. Waite)

 

The falling figures correspond to the chained prisoners in the preceding picture. They fall headfirst, because the sudden influx of spiritual consciousness represented by the lightning-flash completely upsets all our old notions about the relations between subconsciousness and self-consciousness…

 

This picture corresponds to the second stage of spiritual unfoldment, wherein a series of sudden, fitful inspirations leads to the perception that the structure of knowledge built on the foundation of the fallacy of personal separateness is a tower of false science. At this stage, the advancing seeker for wisdom suffers the destruction of his whole former philosophy. For this tower is built upon a foundation of misapprehension. (Paul Foster Case)

 

 

You're only as happy as your least happy child
 

They don’t understand.

I’m a dreamer.

And I had big dreams for the country.

Not for what it could do, but how it could feel.

How it could think,

How it could dream.

 

I know.

Who am I to dream for you?

It’s just that in my own mind,

I was born with a little bit of paradise.

I was lucky in that way.

Not like my husband,

Who was born and raised in hell.

 

That bit of paradise was not necessarily Lizzy, but Lana Ray who was born on the day she died. Her husband is not strictly the devil of the outer church but akin to the Baphomet of Eliphas Levi.

 

Maybe an artist has to function a little bit above themselves

If they really want to transmit some heaven

 

 

Let me put on a show for you, tiger

 

Her work on Born to Die: The Paradise Edition is characterized by what one would almost call subliminal messages, encouraging the listener to follow her on the Path of Sylvia Plath, all the way from “Take a walk on the wild side” spoken by the Goddess through to “Come to me, baby,” the very last line of Paradise. In early interviews, she is evasive and constantly contradicts herself, as if she is hiding some big secret by claiming to have none--the source of the later backlash. She has the audacity to shave years off of her age and claim "Axl Rose Husband" was written at age 16, a bit of meaningless juvenilia, while striking every mention of that dead phantom known as Lizzy Grant; a creature produced by nature and not by Art. Damnatio memoriae. Is it vanity (years later, she did say, with perhaps some latent guilt, that she always forgets her birth year—but a woman can lie about that), or the realization that such earlier works gave away too much? She needn’t have worried, in the latter case.

 

She shrugs, putting on a ditzy Marilyn Monroe affectation, and says the songs on Born to Die are about nothing much at all, yet strangely gets upset when people treat them as meaningless. By November, the mask starts to slip, but not quite. By the time of Ultraviolence, after a year spent in cruel exile, she contradicts herself again: She doesn’t write pop songs, and never has. Those were psychological. In truth, Born to Die is a perfect and enduring pop record, camouflaged in its intent and designed to embed itself as a seed in the over-culture.

 

I'm just a soul whose intentions are good
Oh Lord, please don't let me be misunderstood

 

It’s apparent that she later came to view this as youthful folly, a naïveté for how little the world would understand her. Perhaps she originally planned to traffic in visions of money, power and glory as some great work of performance art that would be unveiled in Tropico, but that, too, went awry. That latent bitterness and resentment remained, and was behind her frustration that Twigs’ work was considered Art while Tropico was mocked as the work of a whore and not a poet.

 

But... lately I’ve been thinking that I wish

Someone had told me when I was younger

More about the inhabitants that thrive off of paradise.

 

That should they take too much,

There would be nothing left to give.

 

There's something in the water

I can taste it turning sour 

It's bitter

I'm coughing

But now it's in my blood

 

Lately I've been thinking 

It's just someone else's job to care 

Who am I to sympathize

When no one gave a damn

I've been thinking

It's just someone else's job to care

Who am I to want to try...

 

But my heart is very fragile,

and I have nothing left to give.

 

This rejection is what she wishes she had foreseen when younger. She grows tired of attempting to “transmit some heaven” to those who only parasitically consume. In 2019 live performances, her mind seems elsewhere, perhaps even bored. If only she had read the warning of Robert Graves that the Goddess “is hated by saints and sober men.”

 

She said, "You can't be a Muse and be happy, too

You can't blacken the pages with Russian poetry

And be happy"

And that scared me

 

Quote

For Robert Graves in The White Goddess, “Woman is not a poet: she is either muse or she is nothing”, adding that this doesn’t mean women can’t write poems, but that the woman who chooses to do so: “must be the Muse in the complete sense: she should be in turn Arianrhod, Blodeuwedd, and the Old Sow of Maenawr Penardd who eats her farrow, and should write in each of these capacities with an antique authority. She should be the visible moon: impartial, loving, serene, wise”.

 

This reads like a rather patriarchal and antiquated precept. But it also seems to have been Lana’s intent to embody the Goddess entirely; to be a living Muse. And now, this scares her, because her archetype is also a Goddess of Sorrows, and she stands in the way of happiness. The past years have seen her in seeming rebellion to this role as Muse, stripping away more and more layers of artifice, no longer even wearing makeup. There is a last idol to kill. The idyllic life in Arcadia where it's always 1962 under chemtrails comes to a crashing halt. She now flirts with not the Goddess in her youthful purity, but the Wild Woman, strange and free.

 

The power of youth is on my mind

Sunset, small town

I'm out of time

 

My time has run over, so the only time you'll

Ever see me is in your dreams in my black bathing suit

Lookin' at me lookin' over at you

Real cute, 'cause

He said I was bad, let me show you how bad girls do

 

Time weighs heavy. At her age, David Bowie had already released Tonight and would slide into artistic irrelevance for a decade; Kate Bush, shortly after releasing her Tropico-esque The Line, the Cross and the Curve, had already retired. The Goddess retreats to a land of dreams, but the Wild Woman carries on, and tries to have fun in the meantime.

[Dark Angel 201,230]

@DeadAgainst i just wanted to say, it makes me so, so happy to see somebody making contributions to this amazing, spellbinding thread, even if sometimes it’s difficult to keep up with it all lol!

 

do you have any thoughts about the track “born to die”? it’s a song i’ve been quite into lately, it feels significant to me, at this moment, somehow, spiritually? subconsciously? psychologically? it could be anything, but i definitely feel like there’s a lot to be said about that song, it just feels so subtle, abstract, as she said in “joshy & i” so hard to reel in

[DeadAgainst 1,515]

On 9/17/2022 at 10:00 AM, Surf Noir said:

@DeadAgainst i just wanted to say, it makes me so, so happy to see somebody making contributions to this amazing, spellbinding thread, even if sometimes it’s difficult to keep up with it all lol!

 

do you have any thoughts about the track “born to die”? it’s a song i’ve been quite into lately, it feels significant to me, at this moment, somehow, spiritually? subconsciously? psychologically? it could be anything, but i definitely feel like there’s a lot to be said about that song, it just feels so subtle, abstract, as she said in “joshy & i” so hard to reel in

 

Watching the old Born to Die interviews, Lana is extremely cagey about what is happening, as she is with everything on the record; she will either have some brusque explanation about "having fun before you die" or not say anything at all. Virtually everything she says in early 2012 publicly appears to be subterfuge; a blind of normality to hide that she's "fucking crazy." Even the title, Born to Die, was not meant as a nihilistic statement of "live fast, die young." As Lana later suggested, the title appears to have been chosen because of the realization that "we were born to die" in her childhood--

 

Quote

I remember being — I was, I think, 4 years old — and I’d just seen a show on TV where the person was killed. And I turned to my parents and said, “Are we all going to die?” They said “Yes,” and I was totally distraught! I broke down in tears and said, “We have to move!”

 

There is one frame that shows that Lana is actually showing something more:

 

 

Quote

He who can understand that the story of his higher nature is imbedded in this symbolism will receive intimations concerning a great awakening that is possible, and will know that after the sacred Mystery of Death there is a glorious Mystery of Resurrection. (A.E. Waite)

 

Here is rather the "death" of Lizzy Grant as she crosses the threshold to the reveal of her heart; the Lovers an alchemical coniunctio (cigarettes always having the same alchemical fire symbolism for Lana).

 

Who, me?
Why?

 

She asks God why she was chosen bear a fragment of paradise not of this world.

 

Feet don't fail me now
Take me to the finish line
Oh, my heart, it breaks every step that I take
But I'm hoping at the gates, they'll tell me that you're mine

 

(Cf. Gargoyles standing at the front of your gate
Trying to tell me to wait, but I can’t wait to see you
So I run like I'm mad to Heaven’s door
I don’t wanna be bad, I won’t cheat you no more)
 

A double meaning; Lizzy walking the path of higher consciousness and an exhortation by the Lonely Queen to join her.

 

 

Quote

I really did want the tigers, just because of what they symbolize to me, and just visually, they're so striking... I always like the vision of a girl in a white nightgown with two majestic tigers.

 

 

The image of the Lonely Queen seems to be a combination of two Tarot cards.

 

Come and take a walk on the wild side
Let me kiss you hard in the pouring rain
You like your girls insane, so
Choose your last words, this is the last time
'Cause you and I
We were born to die

 

Another exhortation by the Goddess to walk the path that leads from death to resurrection on the "wild side" across the abyss.

 

Lost, but now I am found
I can see, but once I was blind
I was so confused as a little child
Tried to take what I could get, scared that I couldn't find
All the answers, honey
 

Spoken by Lana recalling life as Lizzy, searching for answers—and finding them.

 

Lana seems to have had two actual goals for Born to Die, to tell her story and to turn people on, in the '60s sense. Her manifesto was fully encapsulated in "Bel Air," a directive to the listener--

 

Mon amour, sweet child of mine, you’re divine
Didn’t anyone ever tell you it’s okay to shine?
 

Don’t be afraid of me
Don’t be ashamed
Walk in the way of my soft resurrection

 

Darling, I’m waiting to greet you
Come to me, baby

 

Quote

What is the meaning and reason behind the word "paradise" for you since you've been using it often in lyrics, name for the new album and your tattoo?

 

For me, every so often, I find a word or a place that really speaks to me. so certain words... I believe words are sacred. They're the one thing that translates across all the spectrums of humanity. So I believe in the power of really loving words or really, in my case, I love really tropical words or kind of words that suggest a heavenly afterlife, like heaven or paradise or... So I just really love words that have an exotic ring to it and I kind of try and incorporate it into my music in hopes of manifesting my actual surroundings to kind of be as beautiful as those words. 

 

To that end, she lays within her traditional songs untraditional anamnesis triggers, usually sung in a higher register, meant to speak directly to the unconscious--

 

You just need to remember
I will love you till the end of time
I would wait a million years
Promise you'll remember that you're mine
Baby, can you see through the tears?
 

On Ultraviolence, she still considers this to be a worthy project; an invocation of "the freedom land of the '70s." But "Shades of Cool" expresses her frustration that she "can't break through your world." The lyrics take a more personal turn. She tries again on Honeymoon to gather the Freaks, but there is a sort of resignation—"God knows I tried."

 

 

Quote

The veil or mask of life is perpetuated in change, transformation and passage from lower to higher, and this is more fitly represented in the rectified Tarot by one of the apocalyptic visions than by the crude notion of the reaping skeleton. Behind it lies the whole world of ascent in the spirit. The mysterious horseman moves slowly, bearing a black banner emblazoned with the Mystic Rose, which signifies life. Between two pillars on the verge of the horizon there shines the sun of immortality....

 

There should be no need to point out that the suggestion of death which I have made in connection with the previous card is, of course, to be understood mystically... the exotic and almost unknown entrance, while still in this life, into the state of mystical death is a change in the form of consciousness and the passage into a state to which ordinary death is neither the path nor gate. The existing occult explanations of the 13th card are, on the whole, better than usual, rebirth, creation, destination, renewal, and the rest. (A.E. Waite)

 

You say that you wanna go
To a land that's far away
How are we supposed to get there
With the way that we're living today?
You talk lots about God
Freedom comes from the call

 

Quote

What's the key to getting free?

 

I think going deeper, you know? Knowing that you're your own doorway to the answers and not looking for answers in other people.

[DeadAgainst 1,515]

I know some might find that interpretation of Born to Die to be a bit out there, but look at this very revealing quote from Lana:

 

Quote

There is a message. I really do believe that words are one of the last forms of magic and I’m a bit of a mystic at heart.... I’ve got good intentions. It’s not always going to come out right – it hasn’t come out right a lot of the time – but at the core my intentions have always been so good. 

 

There's a new revolution
A loud evolution
That I saw

 

Back in 2012, she was still trying to play dumb at being some Marilyn Monroe type. They ask her about metaphysics, and she starts dancing around the subject like it's on fire:

 

Quote

Well, it depends on what branch of metaphysics you're studying and sort of... I mean, the term metaphysics has been... the meaning of it, it means something different now than obviously what Aristotle meant when he wrote his first books on metaphysics and invented that term.

 

I mean, now it kind of suggests more of like a New Age way of life, which actually I'm also interested in, those New Age books, which more have to do with visualizing the future you'd like to manifest into reality, and that kind of has more of a metaphysical... You would call that like a metaphysical... but originally, it was philosophers trying to trace back the study... the origin of the soul and how the origin of reality came to be.... 

 

If we all collectively started to think about what else was out there and pooled all of our imagination, which is the most important thing, and then resources and knowledge and money and intelligence towards... what's out there even further... It's in talking about it where it all begins. And that's something... that like i was talking earlier about the spirit of the '60s and the early '70s, kind of before Vietnam, I mean, everyone was... so conversational and everyone was throwing out all these ideas.

 

At the end of the Tropico film, you see them ascending to heaven and flying saucers appear. From what I can gather from the crumbs she's dropped, she wanted the world to attain a higher level of consciousness so they could finally go into space and make alien contact (itself a very New Age idea). "I'm more into SpaceX and Tesla, what's going to happen with our intergalactic possibilities."

 

On Born to Die's meaning, the only lie is one of omission:

 

Quote

I used to wonder if it was God's plan that I should be alone for so much of my life. But I found peace. I found happiness within people and the world. So there is a sad tone, but also real joy. It seemed like a mix of two beautiful worlds coming together.

 

I was so confused as a little child

 

Born of confusion 
And quiet collusion of which
Mostly I've known

 

On how she uses men from her past as archetypal figures in her work (2012):

 

Quote

I had met this guy and I was really struck by him visually. And when it became clear that we couldn't be together anymore, I just knew in my heart that I would still honor that relationship for a long time. It was just more about living in the memories of the best of the past and, yeah, just honoring that time and that sort of work.

 

On how particular she is about choosing everything in her videos to fit into her archetypal world (2014):

 

Quote

I mean, obviously, for me, I storyboard every one of the videos and have a close relationship with whoever the director is, trying to sort of explain why I choose which frames I would want at each tempo change, et cetera.... I think knowing what I've wanted to do for so long and kind of being tamed in my own way for so long, the person I'm looking for is just sort of a more serene, intelligent, probably an older figure. But I was aware that people would take that literally as a sort of, I don't know, archetypal... maybe already been done, played-on relationship. But for me, I have a more personal connection with the concept of a very giving, affectionate, older... maybe older than me character. But I mean, one thing I felt that didn't necessarily get translated is that scene in the car was supposed to almost have a more heavenly filter on it. It was supposed to be more of... almost more of like a wave and a haze over the lens so that you could see that where the reality was the beach but the dream was the car with the love interest. So it's hard. Some things get lost in translation. And for that reason, I think... I'm open to more criticism because I'm exploring my fantasies. I'm exploring my kind of archetypal visions. 

 

Cigarettes and Robitussin

Will I ever get to heaven?

 

I’m gentle.

I’m funny when I’m drunk,

But I haven’t been drunk for 14 years.

 

Lana points back to 2006 as being the pivotal year.

 

Hello it's the most famous woman you know on the iPad
Calling from beyond the grave, I just wanna say
"Hi dad"

 

Rob still knows her as Lizzy; does she call him from "beyond the grave" because Lizzy died on the day she saw palm trees in black and white?

 

On how nobody understands her music and she'd like to keep it that way:

 

Quote

This is Del Rey waving away the mist that surrounds her music, deflating other people’s grand ideas without apologizing, the same way her new album does. She wanted her new songs to be as legible as they could be. “I think that’s what people like about this record,” she says. “There’s clarity to it.”

 

“It sounds kind of hippy-dippy, but there is, like, a little process that reveals itself to me and is revealing to me about myself,” she says.... Wandering around the margins of your consciousness can lead you to the center of your self. Jotting down things you didn’t actually do can tell you what you’re really doing. Ultimately, it “has to do with writing one’s own narrative,” she says. “How does one do that? One actually physically writes their own narrative.”

 

As for the meanings of her lyrics, not all of them are up for discussion. Some of her most intimate and enigmatic phrases swirl alongside one another during “Hope Is a Dangerous Thing,” including the lyric, “Serving up God in a burnt coffee pot for the triad.” Would she explain what the triad is? “I will not,” she says, smiling and shrugging. “I’m not going to tell everybody everything.... There’s so much to be treasured [in a song], just keep to yourself so that nobody can trash it.”

 

 

Get out of my blood, salamander!...

And yet, everywhere I go, it seems there you are,

And there I am.

 

Before touching on Kundalini in a poem, Lana uses blatant alchemical symbolism with the salamander (called, like Jim, a fire-eater). The salamander being another fire emblem (not the Video Games); the Sulphur as all-consuming fire that is the source of true poetic insight. She would rather keep her inner life private, but the fire in her veins compels her. (Since this part of the board is indexed on Google, maybe I'm even giving away too much? Or maybe this is all just mad ravings.)

 

On fighting her Shadow and monsters:

 

Shaking my ass is the only thing that's
Got this black narcissist off my back
She couldn't care less
And I never cared more

 

In her "Money Power Glory" commentary, she mentions that it was inspired by Carl Jung and the concept of projection--but it also serves as an exorcism of her degenerate beauty queen persona (and let's face it, it was a persona).

 

Monsters still under my bed
That I could never fight off
A gatekeeper carelessly dropping the keys on my nights off

 

What gatekeeper? To what gate? The only one I can remember is from, again, "Bel Air"--

 

Gargoyles standing at the front of your gate

 

Quote

This track and the record are about these two worlds — death and love — coming together.

 

[Dark Angel 201,230]

@DeadAgainst adding to your last point about the mentions of a “gate” in hope is a dangerous thing and bel air, she mentions “the gates” in the opening lines of the born to die title track

[Dark Angel 201,230]

13 hours ago, Surf Noir said:

@DeadAgainst adding to your last point about the mentions of a “gate” in hope is a dangerous thing and bel air, she mentions “the gates” in the opening lines of the born to die title track

 

she also mentions a gate in off to the races

 

ready, set, the gate is down & now we’re going in

 

if this is in anyway interesting, it’s just a word but it seems like the way she uses it is kinda vague

[DeadAgainst 1,515]

"We wanted someone with the Blessed Mother on his hands."
 

17 hours ago, Surf Noir said:

she also mentions a gate in off to the races

 

ready, set, the gate is down & now we’re going in

 

if this is in anyway interesting, it’s just a word but it seems like the way she uses it is kinda vague

 

It seems like there are a few possible interpretations:

• People keep breaking into her house (simple)
• She found the keys to the gate that were dropped
• The monsters used the keys to open the gate she kept shut

God knows.

 

Bish is over there reading Aleister Crowley and Hermes Trismegistus while y'all still think her favorite book is Lolita--

 

Quote

I've had like a long-time interest in all things ancient and occult, like so many people. And I guess I draw on a little bit of that inspiration for my music and for whatever. I love to read up on stuff like that.

 

Every Lana interview is full of gems. For as obsessive as her fans are, they could do a better job of collating them all in one place:

 

Quote

Almost every song on Born To Die is in the second person, the same goes for Paradise. To what extent is it all addressed to the same person?

It depends. It’s just like a general, spiritual collective. The ether....

 

For me, there are moments of pure happiness, but you can’t achieve that over a sustained period of time. It’s just you try to make those as many as possible.

Definitely. And I mean, it sounds really strange, but just in general, I have found that devoting your life to the people around you and caring for them is the true road to general happiness.

 

Why is that strange?

Well, I mean, people aren’t going to understand. Trust me. But I’m just saying, in my experience.

 

Well, it does seem kind of sad, it is almost as though you can’t do anything right.

Yeah, oh it is sad. Trust me. It’s not fair.

 

And do you think that’s a feminism thing? Or would you say an anti-woman thing?

[laughs] No, I think it’s an anti-me thing.

 

Quote

THEOREMS
I. The world progresses by virtue of the appearance of Christs (geniuses).

II. Christs (geniuses) are men with super-consciousness of the highest order.

III. Super-consciousnes of the highest order is obtainable by known methods.

Therefore, by employing the quintessence of known methods we cause the world to progress.

 

MISTAKES OF MYSTICS
I. Since truth is supra-rational, it is incommunicable in the language of reason.

II. Hence all mystics have written nonsense, and what sense they have written is so far untrue.

 

[Veinsineon 76,350]

wat da hell

[DeadAgainst 1,515]

10 hours ago, Veinsineon said:

wat da hell

 

 

Quote

Well, I mean, people aren’t going to understand.

 

 

 

There are seven worlds in my eyes
 
I'm accessing all of them once
 
One to draw my words from and my muses
Another one I try and harness late at night that lies somewhere
Off of the right of Jupiter
 

Inside of my stomach, the cosmos are baking
The universe hung like a mobile
The alignments of these planets unique
In me the earth moves around the sun
No land all sea

[DeadAgainst 1,515]

 

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The verse was about the way things were with one person, and the chorus was the way that I wished things had really been with another person, who I thought about for a long time. That was what happened, you know? He’d come home and I’d see him. But then the chorus wasn’t like that. That was the way that I wished it was – the melody sounds so compelling and heavenly because I wanted it to be that way. The verse is more matter-of-fact because that’s how it was. It’s a mix of memories and the way I wished it could have been.

 

This gives some good insight into how Lana was constructing her music around the time of BTD. There’s those two currents of the mundane and transcendent running through everything—or death and love, as she said elsewhere. People just could not believe how some kid obsessed with tropical kitsch could come out of nowhere with a conviction to not record "stupid music" and create this perfect pop album on the very first try, then decide she had done all she could in the genre and proceed to create the music she actually wanted to make, baroque neo-psychedelia. The whole thing was pure fucking witchcraft.

 

 

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[A]nything that came through me to help you is not even ego-based. It's so much a channel that it's almost not even a compliment. It's just awesome that it happened and came through. So I mean... If that makes any sense.

 

[DeadAgainst 1,515]

 

On 6/20/2013 at 9:21 PM, sukiedelrey said:

I feel like if you have a degree in something, you should be able to talk about it. If she spent four whole years studying philosophy, I feel like she should be able to better articulate its ideas and seem aware/passionate/interested in questions regarding it. Her quotes about religion/philosophy seem underdeveloped at best and immature and misunderstanding at worst. She seems to fumble in talking about the topics  that supposedly influenced her growing up and music so much--nihilism, hedonism, free will, spirituality, fate--which should be very intimate and familiar to her. Remember that cringe-worthy interview where she defined metaphysics as "mathematically proving the reality of god"?? Maybe she was too high on ~methamphetamines~ through college to pay attention to the thing she was majoring in.

 

It's certainly a difficult thing to reconcile the stupidly hateful Lana in recent interviews with the Lana who kisses her crying fans and the Lana who wrote the sheer brilliance that is "You and Me." 

 

(Nothing about Lana's metaphysics, as portrayed in her work, is underdeveloped. You would have to dive deep into such subjects as Neoplatonism to know that stuff. What she said about her metaphysics in 2012-13 was.)

 

On 6/20/2013 at 10:22 PM, FROGGO said:

I don't think Lana ever actually graduated. I mean, the fact that she consistently flubs and gives nonanswers when talking about philosophy/metaphysics (remember that interview when she was explicitly asked about metaphysics and couldn't give a legitimate answer?), the "mathematically proving reality of God" answer was horribly ignorant, and she CONSISTENTLY says that she went to school to study metaphysics... red flags galore.

 

An aside—I stumbled on this nine-year-old thread and everyone was totally convinced that Lana was a complete moron, lol. She really was trying to play dumb on the metaphysics stuff as part of some weird persona that went completely out of her control. Even a decade later, people still think she's a nihilist as depicted in Ride, even though Tropico and any of her interviews in the following years would prove that wrong—"die young" was meant in a mystical sense. Like, everyone knows she’s hiding something, but WTF is it? It’s not that Interscope is writing everything, and she’s had ten years to prove that. She just wants to completely obfuscate that there’s more to Born to Die than a bunch of pop songs; it’s more like culture-jamming.

 

On 6/22/2013 at 1:00 PM, slang said:

It's hard not to see the "Lana Del Rey" persona as a foot-in-the-door technique to get popular, in a sense similar to Gaga, Adele, Perry, Kesha, and then to do something with her status. I don't consider this an authenticity rehash, as my thinking is that the persona was a tool to get noticed, but it's the quality of her work that got her famous. I'm hoping what she wanted to do with her status was bitch-slap the music business in the constructive sense of making it easier for diverse and retro kinds of music to become popular.

 

(Note how Lana always says that she wants nothing to do with the "culture"—she regards herself as a foreign invader, a chameleon, who has to play to their tastes—"I know you like the bad girls"—but badly overshot the target in 2012. I recall in one old interview, she calls herself an "introvert" and then quickly walks the statement back when she realizes it would make her sound abnormal. 2012 Lana would never say the crazy shit that 2021 Lana says, even if their beliefs haven't changed.)

 

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I wanted music to change in the early 2000s and I wanted it to be better than it was. I think it is and I genuinely think I had a hand in it for female singer-songwriters.... It takes a more dignified-looking person with a better reputation to call out the world, or the President or some guy who runs a restaurant. I’m going to be the person who corroborates that story, the blonde at the end of the bar… 

 

 

Which brings us back to the "Love" video—Lana's modern manifesto, with a knowing wink. Lady Stardust teaches the kids how to become Star Children and finally venture into space. Lana takes the place of the Monolith from 2001: A Space Odyssey, which "seems to represent and even trigger epic transitions in the history of human evolution." Laying all the cards on the table. (And somehow predicting Elon Musk launching his own car into space the following year.)

 

https://www.lofficielusa.com/music/lana-del-rey-cover-story

 

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I think really, there’s a rise of sociopathy and narcissism, and a mental health crisis. Everyone’s kind of becoming aware of the fact that that needs to be fully addressed. Maybe there is a link. It’s probably related to consciousness.... I’m a realist as much as I am a mystic. I believe we will still be on the planet until extremely different conditions.

 

What about all these children and all their children's children?
And why am I even wonderin' that today?
Maybe my contribution could be as small as hopin'
That words could turn to birds
And birds would send my thoughts your way
I'd trade it all for a stairway to heaven

 

"I believe words are sacred." The dream that they had In the one nine sixties.

 

On 6/21/2013 at 11:59 PM, COLACNT said:

i kind of feel like the root of her insecurities / neuroses / eccentricities stem from the seemingly vast disconnect between her outer appearance and her inner world -- and the resulting disconnect between the way people perceive her and the way she actually is. i think this interviewer puts it best: 

 

"she is capable of shifting swiftly from a kind of coltish innocence (*2) to vampish knowingness (*1). It’s a quality that is hard to pin down ... a kind of doubleness, a sense of duality and merging contradictions. She is a person into whom you can read a lot."

 

... how do you trust that person when you can't understand or process their fundamental energy?

 

[DeadAgainst 1,515]

[DeadAgainst 1,515]

[Adrift 4,813]

big fan of the work that has been done in this thread over literally more than a decade. this isnt a forum this is a dissertation

[Blossom 8,961]

wtf is this thread

[SoftwareUpgrade 19,348]

 

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