But what if Rock just wasn't enough?

Dream of the White Robe

December 4^th, 1993 – Last night I entered this giant department store in search of a white robe. I’ve been looking through this building before. It tends to age the more time I spend in it, and the higher I go the more medieval it gets. Soon it wasn’t like a store at all, and I was traveling up stone stairways and opening strange doors. At last I came to the final gate, one of wrought iron with little spikes on top. I opened it and went down into a stone chamber like a catacomb with an aloof ceiling. Across the rectangular chamber was another stairway leading up to a door gilt with gold. I opened it and entered a small, rather compressed but surprisingly ordinary room that looked liked a doctors examining room in a doctor’s office. Marriane was there, sitting on the exam table.

“Oh you’ve made it!” A simple statement with the combined weight of “Finally!” and “Good for you.” There is a sense of completion, of a mission finished.

“So you know your religion, now?” She got a telepathic assent.

“Have you written the book?” The query carried abundant weight, that she needed it, wanted to be converted, a sense that this was also somehow universal; it was a challenge.

“No I haven’t, but I’ll give you what I’ve written so far,” and I put the fuchsia book (with all the Aoreth writings) on the examining table beside her. Yet the book was supposed to contain everything about myself, a form of dialectic apology for everything I have done, enforcing my position combining it with theology. She took the book gladly and disappeared. I wept, as I often do when I hit this space. A small impish little man appeared and embraced me until my weeping drained away, but I’ve forgotten what he said (unfortunately), except the connotation, which was, Let go….

Dream of the Carnival and the Bell Tower - September 1991

Walking about the carnival fair (with Jon, who I loved then, as a brother to my soul), then alone, wandering, whilst on the fringes roams the faceless one. Cowled in white, invisible, darkness, malicious, hater of music, roaming the carnival.

Did you see the great music box, and hear its chanting melody, its incantation lost? It alone the creature robed in white avoids. He remembers the words.

And then he senses you at the fair, and knows you for what you are, light child, had hates you. Can you avoid his power? You must escape the carnival where he roams, out to the edge of the shapeless void beyond. And there stand the ruins of a church, standing but shuttered, the decrepit bell-tower piercing up into the darkness. So you climb the bell rope into the tower, and pray that you remain hidden, and hope that place may protect you.

But the creature follows; He knows you too well. And now you are trapped up there, powerless, and his laughter echoes hollow. He stands below, staring up, determining your end.

But do you remember the music box, with its chanting melody? He hates the music. He fears the music. The words are forgotten, but you were born into the words, they do not matter. It is truth, and the truth is yours. So make the words as you go along. Just sing . . .

I never remember what I sing in my dreams. When I sing it is a powerful, lost incantation that I use to destroy evil forms.

You have no power over me . . .

The faceless one screams his pain and defeat. The song is too strong for him to bear. He cannot touch you. It is dissolving him, and his power is vanquished. And suddenly there is another presence to be felt, one that had been imprisoned, light bottled, suffocated in silence. But his power over her is dying, and now she has the strength to break free. In his scream he holds out a leaden bottle in his hand, clutching it, but the thing shatters, she shatters it, and flies out, soaring exultant in the music towards you. Light Spirit, Fire Sprite, you are free . . .

Never Let Me Go, Bono, "Million Dollar Hotel", March 2000

You take a stranger by the hand, a man who doesn't understand
his wildest dreams
you walk across the dirty sand and offer him an ocean
of what he's never seen

Maybe I was blind, or I, I might have closed my eyes
Maybe I was dumb, but what I forgot to say
If you didn't know
Is never let me go
Never let me go

You run from love and don't believe
Unless it catches you by the heel
And even then you struggle
From red islands across the strand
Your footprints still there in the sand
Everything else washed away

I may not be alone, or I, I may have found my home
I may have lost my way, but what I forgot to say
If you didn't know
Is never let me go

The Lost Chapter - M.M. 3

This happens after Aoreth was saved from an attack wherein she could have been perhaps raped or killed, which was averted by her lover Thiaerin.

Thiaerin freed himself easily and purposefully went and shut the door. When he left Aoreth sank to the stone floor listlessly, as if he had been the only thing holding her up. She lay there without moving, her body curled loosely, her eyes caught in a distance. Thiaerin came near to where she was and sat with his elbows resting on his knees and his hands on the sword hilt between them, the point of the blade resting on the stone. Both were too absorbed in their stillness to be conscious of helping the other. Aoreth had suffered physically and was weakened, but it was what she had experienced in her mind that had catapulted her into a form of shock. Thiaerin was locked into his own inner turmoil.

The paradox of how to deal with his uncle in accordance with what Aoreth wanted offered no apparent solution. He was fairly certain that in order to stop Ingalforn from taking power would be a fight to the death, especially now. He saw no way of avoiding the destruction that would entail. There would be no turning back. Under these terms he may as well role over and die for his uncle’s convenience. He felt an acute sense of defeat that seemed indelible, and the battle hadn’t really even started yet. From Ingalforn’s perspective things must be looking very good, his opponent already felt he had lost, and wasn’t supposed to fight. How could he stop him?

He immediately felt images of his mother, who had tried the utmost within her power to resist him, all he embodied. He knew the pain in consequence of her efforts, how she paid, and the death that emanated in consequence of his hand every day. He felt through her the dying Wood, and deeper still, her pain. She had been poisoned in her own efforts to touch humanity, and it stayed with her like a sickness. He could feel her rage inside his thought like a strident voice, even though she was not speaking to him now, it was as if she was, telling all. Look at me! She cried. Feel me. I tried, Oh, I tried. Would I act in half measure? You cannot love them. You cannot let them touch you, you become them, as I became them. As I must fight them now, as they would have it. I lose myself, so that this is not lost forever, and through it I will survive where they cannot touch me. There is no other way, my son of theirs, you must kill him . . .

All this he touched in an instant. Just to touch her unleashed in him a rage against what had been done. Her very existence bore revelation of fundamental wrong that lay unabsolved within his kingdom. It could not be ignored, and he was the one faced with the dealing of it. He was the one who knew. It dawned easily that for this reason she had given birth to him, to rectify the inevitable. And she was certain that to begin this reversal, Ingalforn must be killed. This was the only way she would stain her hands, in her offspring, one of their own.

After what had transpired Thiaerin believed that she was right, Ingalforn could only be killed. He saw that he was being locked into an inexorable confrontation with his uncle where one would die rather than lose. There was no compromise in their positions. Thiaerin felt an obligation to avenge for all Ingalforn had done, for it touched him, and he alone was touched by all of it. He would assume the burden of retribution for all the injury he had caused to those he loved, in turn to preserve all they each represented. No one would argue that Ingalforn did not deserve to die.

Why did you stop me? I would have killed him, it would have been finished. I should have . . .He faltered, looking in on himself. The answer was self-evident, he needn’t ask for it, he already knew what it would be, for in his heart he found the desire. He wanted to kill him. There was no doubt in his mind that he would have failed to complete it. He knew his desire to be the same as his uncle’s, the same as what became his mother, in her anger. He had adopted the evil of his uncle, become his enemy to fight his enemy. What good was it then, if in overcoming your enemy in victory you became him? What good would that service the kingdom?

Herein lied the trap that held his mother. This was defeat.

This is what Aoreth had sensed and strove with him to avoid. She had tried to protect him. He looked on her with newfound awe mixed with remorse. How could she be here, and still be? How can I, how can we be like you? How can you survive? They will kill you, He will Kill Us . . .

He felt her shudder, saw her tremble, and saw the blood trickle over her breast. He released his sword and gathered her into his arms, clasping her against his body. Her lungs shudderingly released as if she had held her breath from the moment Ingalforn entered the room. Within her she was silent, there was a void of emotion filled with deep sadness, fear and pain. It flooded over him, submerging as she was given release. It nearly made him weep. He could not believe what had been done to her and found himself pleading against what had been rendered. The agony it caused in him was suffusing to anger again, when in the midst of the swirling maelstrom he felt in Aoreth a plea for help . . .

He took his sleeve in his palm and put it against the puncture wound. Beneath it he could fell the heart beating fiercely as if it would burst. He looked at her very directly and asked her: What did he do to you? He maintained a tone as cold and emotionless as steel, but even then he failed not to edge it with menace.

She didn’t answer. Instead he felt her retreating from him, deeper inside herself. This only served to alarm him further, to make him fear the worst. His eyes bored deeply into hers as he strove to cover the growing distance. He realized then that he was in grave danger of becoming part of what she feared.

Please, . . . Tell me, . . . . don’t . . .

Then she saw how things were worsening, that they would soon hurt each other. She couldn’t run and hide. It took courage to pull herself back, to face him and ask that he first must promise not to succumb to his anger. And so he became calm, and gave her his word.

Haltingly at first, and then more smoothly, she relayed the memory. There were moments she became hesitant, instances she clearly did not want to remember or reveal.

Thiaerin felt with himself two opposite reactions: first, he was relieved that nothing graver had happened to her, and simultaneously he was seeing just how much graver it was than what he had perceived possible, within her thought. For now he was made much more aware of her frame of existence, her mind. It had not been so much the physical confrontation from which she suffered, but the inner conflict. Ingalforn had not actually raped her; he had raped her mind. This glimpse into her amazed Thiaerin. She had a level of naïveté and child-like innocence that was perilous, far greater than he could of possibly surmised, as it transcended his perception of human limits. It was gravely threatened. It was what filled him with awe. No human was like this, this was what humanity had lost. But she was human, and that had changed her, and was continuing to change her. (It did not occur to him to wonder, at this, what she had been before.) To be human, for her, was to lose part of herself, and her innocence was among what was being lost. Aoreth had begun with no understanding of what was implied in being human: how they behaved, their imperfections, their capacity for evil, through ignorance or intent. She had been forced to learn what she had about humanity very quickly, too quickly. Ingalforn had terrified her. He embodied evil intent she was previously incapable of imagining.

He had tried to break her by using her own naïveté as a tool against her. More than anything she feared what was happening to herself, and what she, as a human, could become. She feared her own possible failure. Ingalforn had seized upon her vulnerability and used it against her. He utilized force, and fear, but his greatest blow was achieved when he manipulated her into wondering if she had failed in her opposition, and in so defeated herself. Even now she lingered in uncertainty, unsure of what had been her own reactions, for she had never known them before.

Be still, he whispered. You did nothing wrong. You are simply human. You withstood him. He looked at her very intently, his eyes alight. He cannot touch you . . .

He kissed the spot where the mark had been on her forehead, as if to erase the stain on her memory. That memory was now his also to bear, and he felt its pain until at last in was finally forgotten by both of them. But he had taken away its power to do anything else. A surge of relief swept over him and he felt it for both of them, for in her awareness he saw Ingalforn’s devices at work, and so recognized them within himself, which made them powerless. He would no longer be hampered by his own sense of defeat, though he did not know yet how this war was to be fought. For this insight he was grateful to Aoreth and he embraced her closely, and felt now the heart that beat for him.

Perhaps it was this that spurred him to take his next decision, for as he held her he dwelt upon the damage that had already been done. The way he touched you was meant to be used in love, not for hurt. And that role was his. For I love you, and will touch you in love. They had already committed themselves to each other in a way far deeper than Thiaerin could see in any of those surrounding him, so to him he saw no wrong in fulfilling the prospect that was forming in his head. And so he said softly, Will you lie with me?

Aoreth did not really comprehend the seriousness surrounding the question, nor his twinge of self-consciousness, all of which she sensed plainly enough. She was accustomed to a much higher degree of closeness than she saw in this form of existence, that she preferred as good, so she did not see why there was such gravity in asking. She was not so hesitant to say yes.

I would make love to you, but I feel we are not prepared for that yet. But come . . .

Thiaerin had loosed his cloak, he took her hand and brought her to face him by the bed. His eyes momentarily searched hers and she received him, searching him in return. She realized she did not totally understand his intentions, and wanted to know the truth of it. What did he want? His eyes flickered to the floor before he recovered them to face her.

May I take off your gown?

There were both immediately conscious of the cut in it. She stared at him with a new acuteness before slowly acquiescing. He slid it off her shoulders and let it ripple noiselessly to the floor. He appraised her, but his eyes rarely strayed from hers, the vantage into her soul.

You are very beautiful.

He turned with regards to himself and accordingly began removing his garments until his torso and legs were bare. He faced her again.

May I touch you?

The implication in his need to ask charged the air between them, Thiaerin even detected and faint involuntary tremor of fear. But the fear was not of his person, for he had never taken from her. He reached out and caressed her face, gently as if tracing a film of air. Invariably his hand strayed to the path once taken down the line of her jaw. He followed the path of the dagger to her heart, and let his hand fall to take her own. He clasped it momentarily between them before she took his meaning and stirred by the memory, reached up and touched his cheek. Thiaerin was stricken by the invocation of the memory. It was a profound revelation, and made him look on her with newfound wonder.

You knew, even then? (You knew!)

It carried an edge of loss, of remorse. What if he had never come to this point, to know her?

Why did you go? (Why not stay?)

Her hand drifted to her side, her eyes fell.

I was afraid . . .

He uplifted her face, sought her eyes.

Please, do not be afraid of me, or what you feel.

He reached down and pulled back the coverlets.

Lie with me . . .

And so she laid herself in the bed as indicated, almost rigid in her straightness of body. Thiaerin removed the remainder of his clothing and was a little surprised at the simplistic curiosity that became writ on her face. It made him regard himself with a wry sense of false modesty, only for a moment.

What’s that? The humor was too much to be avoided, and he could not help averting and smiling to himself, before approaching her the gravity she deserved.

With that I could begin a child within you.

In his thought he conveyed to her the natural cycle of conception, birth and death, and watched her eyes widen further.

How remarkable, was her response, as he laid down close beside her.

It is you who are remarkable. Like a child, and yet within you lies a timeless existence. Like a child . . .

He touched her, and was infected with a new sensation coupled by its wonder, that reflected on her own.

I feel you, he thought. I can feel you within me.

Her sensation at is touch became his. Her response to him he sensed through his frame, aroused in him a feverish desire to see what he could do. He caressed her tentatively, her lips, her shoulder, her breast. He felt each awakening and each brought him closer. He sent his palm over her belly, and sensed deep within her a place holding potential for new life, he honed his touch until a small cry escaped her lips. He suffused it with his kiss and oh, how she felt!

She wrapped her arms around him in a close embrace. Both were filled with a mutual sense of awe, at this love, which was reciprocally discovered in its form, by each other. For her it was of human love, found through him. And to her it was vital, she needed him to survive.

You are life itself to me. It was her inner jubilant cry, a declaration she had longed to give him, but felt he would never perceive in its fullest, until now. He in turn looked upon her with an even deeper sense of wonder at what she gave him.

That you would give of yourself to me, freely, give of yourself . . .

Simultaneously they reached a plateau, merged in mind and soul in one love, and in one voice was their declaration,

I love you! And they soared, brazen, and unashamed.

The crescendo of that moment reverberated through the land, for those who were capable of sensing it. Briel turned and raised his head in the direction of Eithiln, its source. His tone was serene, pitched with the tranquility of certain triumph, as he sent forth his benediction:

Love, my children, for love is the strongest power in the universe . . .

Silvarin too was struck by it, and momentarily froze. At that instant she knew events had just slid beyond her control.

There were perhaps two others capable of sensing it, for one it was a vague, incomprehensible affirmation of renewal; the other was filled with an impotent rage that made him tremble.

Pearl - Love & Rockets, Sweet FA 1996

This is no ordinary girl, ain't got no jaded feeling
Behind the fooling lies the strain
For a vision to come, I must come clean

And it's a bad, it's a bad, such a bad, state of affairs,
That she holds in the palm of her hand
And it's a bad, it's a bad, such a bad, state of affairs,
I hope she can understand it

This is no ordinary pearl, I ain't got no jaded feeling
This is no ordinary girl, she jokes as she stares at the ceiling
Deep down you're drowning, I can see the tears
Deep down you just don't have a clue
How's the crippled man inside, how's the hopeless Mr. Blue

This is no ordinary girl, I ain't got no jaded feeling

The God Proof - M.M. 1

My Proof that there’s a God underlying certain inspiration in the universal unconscious, based on a circumstantial model.

I’m speculating that with some artistic manifestations there can be an ultimate interpretation or arch-type meaning that can be applied in varying degrees within various people or concerning multiple things, and yet the work can still have an application which defines it ultimately; i.e., the ultimate interpretation is fulfilled or comprehended completely in its fullest sense in one particular space, and it can be that when it is applied to thus, its other applications can be so reduced as to make it seem to have no other exterior meanings.

I was thinking that it may be possible for this insight to occur in only one receiving individual, which would imply that the outlook or circumstance of the recipient was somehow more attuned to the original nature of the work than the artist was with respects to his or her own inspirational source. If the inspiration for the rendering was internal, rather than based on an environmental external, it might beg the question of what is the nature of the inspirational source; is it somehow universal? Actually, even if it was based on a tangible external, if the recipient has a fuller interpretative experience of the work based on their internal perception and environment, why is it more attuned than the inspirational vector itself? Is it the artist’s failure to grasp, or the commonality of the human experience, or can it indicate a subconscious internal universal commonality within the human experience? Can it go so for as to indicate an internal within and beyond the human experience?

Now the pattern I’ve introduced is of itself of no particular significance, and things like this occur all the time. There are lots and lots of instances, whereupon speaking to observers of their work, artists have realized that the recipients have a new or perhaps better level of interpretation based upon their own experience, which falls in with the myriad that are present. After all, that is perhaps the point to art, isn’t it? The eliciting of all these aspects within people’s minds, or celebrating communal awareness; the embrace of all those levels. Accessing the full spectrum and unity within the human experience by successfully rendering an aspect within a medium where it can be frozen and seen. Shedding new light on the topic, or purveying its beauty, or introducing new ones, the point being that what is created is the response within other people, by invoking their own perception and experience.

When I came up with this what I was trying to do was explain how what I am trying to exhibit might not be crazy; how there might be a convergence or interactive pattern between art and occurrence, or between separate individuals and yet no conscious awareness of the interaction within the merger, and yet have it somehow be reasonable to consider. These are the criterion or framework I lay out as a basis for speculation: firstly, the advent of the electronic age is a necessary component. This proposition requires the speedy transmission of information and mass publication and distribution in order to be possible. Secondly it operates on two unproven assumptions: one articulated by Edgar Cayce, that the universal unconscious was like a flowing connected river from which all people derived creative thought, and perhaps that of Marshall McLuhan (though it isn’t required), that what electronic information pathways did is extend and connect our human central nervous system outside of our bodies. In the context I’m about to outline, it’s a nice touch. On these basis you could speculate that we should be beginning to observe patterns of inspiration or indicators of the universal unconscious, and that perhaps these indications should lead to its illumination or cause effects within the patterns themselves.

This is the pattern I was considering: What is going on when the “ultimate application” exists as a tangible element on earth, outside of the sphere of the artist’s inspiration? To give you an idea, let’s mess with it temporally and say that one arena in human existence where this type of thing would be considered to occur is in the case of fulfilled prophecy: The ultimate application has precedence, occurs later in time, and fulfills what an individual was inspired to describe or render. That isn’t even art, its religion. You’re automatically invoking explanations that attribute some form of external inspiration as responsible, be it Godly inspiration, or that of other spiritual or mystical powers. For those who have no belief in spiritual entities beyond ourselves, it can simply be taken as an indication of underlying universal currents or powers within our subconscious but outside human perceptual experience. Whatever your dish, I think you’re caught, 'cause concluding with these open ended external-isms, (none of which can be resolved), is the equivalent of admitting that we are dealing with things we cannot explain. They are beyond our perceptual experience, implying a form of connection or power that extends beyond ourselves.

I’m not here to prove this point; I am interested in what this pattern might imply in an artistic context, if it occurred in the Now, or backwards. I think that if you had an emerging pattern of inspirational thought between a number of individuals occurring simultaneously, then it ought to be assumed that the emerging pattern should indicate some sort of continuity of thought. In other words, this sort of pattern would indicate that there was a universal unconscious, and if so, then the network should bear out some sort of connected pathway or relation of thought in order to exist in the first place.

My context in question is this: what if the “ultimate manifestation” existed as a physical entity in an associated environment prior to being rendered multiply by individual artists, and they had no external awareness of its existence? Additionally, the entity had no awareness of its own existence in this context? They are totally disassociated. Furthermore the artists are in the position of knowing that what they are talking about is beyond their tangible realm of experience. If in this case there existed an ultimate manifestation of what was being produced in the artists’ work, and this existence could be matched to what a variety of artists were saying like a key fitting a multi-faceted lock, thereby having the capacity to prove that the artists did not hold the fullest interpretation of their own art, it does lead one to consider the question: How can the “ultimate interpretation” exist over there, and yet be manifested in some people’s art? Weird things do happen, I suppose.

Let’s refine this scenario a little further; the “ultimate manifestation’s” existence is not static, it changes and operates over time, and is capable of a full spectrum potential of activity. What the artists are rendering exhibits a direct act/response relationship with the “manifestation’s” activities. Additionally the connection is such that being an existing manifestation, it has attributes and is within an environment that is being described by the artists. Now if this sort of a manifestation existed consciously, with no prior knowledge of its existence, and yet it was having these sort of ramifications on more than one individual, with no knowledge of what was occurring, then it should be asked: Why did this live manifestation exist, with a full capacity of fulfilling the artists void of knowledge, and yet having no awareness that it was fulfilling it? Then where did the overall conception of this multiply manifested work of art exist, if not within those who were inspired to create it, and not within the ultimate manifestation of that art? Where then, did it exist? For it can be argued that there must be conception within consciousness for an idea to occur, even one that is multiply rendered, don’t you think? (Especially where art is concerned!) Would this be evidence of an external underlying consciousness, operating within the universal unconscious? It’s not just the connection that’s submerged here, It’s the original concept that’s missing. Do you think you can assume that inspiration is completely submerged in the unconscious? In this case then, Who’s responsible for it?