Daily Archives: July 24, 2017

lines from The Darkening

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The Darkening

“what’s making me insane is that music was always so beautiful.  It was the most beautiful thing in my life, but all it ever did was draw me further into darkness.  It’s a power that comes from outside my mind and moves everything around and I can never catch it.  When I was a little girl it was free but now it’s all machines and money and death.  How can the world exist like this?  How can it go on?"  Tears rolled down her face. 

(on her deathbed)
"They’re here, Victor.  They’re here to take me away.  Don’t be frightened.  I’ll always love you…"  she closed her eyes.

(a different scene, Becky discussing Goth)
"When we were goth we thought that death mattered,” said Becky.  “We were mourning the death of England.  We were reminding London that she used to represent something to the world and that Thatcher was killing what was left of it.  We didn’t want to be punk, we weren’t fighters, we were just finding ways to live in the darkness we felt was our inheritance.  But now there are almost twice as many people in the world.  What does death mean when you know that not only will there be a new child born to take your place, but three?  That the future is going to be a continuous crushing noise of more and more people, more and more forgetting?  Civilization is drowing beneath waves of people.”

(Jennifer, playing music)

“Who do you sing, when everything is song?” was the chorus.  Finally she finished.

“It’s beautiful,” said Victor.  “It’s haunting.  I’m sure you’ll haunt everyone who hears it.”

“It’s my last song.  It’s my last question.  I never figured it out, my whole life long. I just made music and everything in my life was this huge, empty space filled with sounds and I never found out who I was until I married you, Victor.  I never became anyone.  No one ever saw me.”

He put his arms around her.  “It’s my fault.  I should have married you twenty years ago.”

“I don’t know what it means!  I don’t know what it means!  There’s some presence, some presence I was always trying to reach with music, listening to it or playing it, I was trying to reach this presence and talk to it, but I never understood it and now it’s over, there are no more chances and it’s coming for me to take me away.  Did  I do anything?”

“You did something.  You did something.” he repeated.  “You were with me.  You made me love you and when it comes for you a part of me will go away with you and it and whenever I hear your music you will be with me.”

“I don’t want to let go!  I don’t want to let go!"  She made a fist and struck his shoulder as she cried.  "I want to bite you!  I want to kick you!”

“Go ahead,” he said, “You can’t do anything to make me stop loving you.”

(Becky and Victor, discussing goth and politics)

“There has to be something for me, Victor.  I spent my whole life helping people, and it doesn’t mean anything.  I spent my whole life reading books and thinking about writing and now every day meaning slips away.  We’re even going to war over imaginary weapons now, Bush and Blair just make these goddamn speeches about nothingness and the money moves and everything I ever believed about England is getting crushed into oblivion.  Do you remember when we used to talk about the Western Mind?  About what literature meant to the Western Mind?”

“Yes I do,” replied Victor.  “I remember.  Nothing mattered.  It didn’t matter what we said or did.  It was dying from the time Thatcher got elected, it just took twenty years.  Thatcher got elected and then John Lennon got shot and that was it.  It’s funny now that I think about it.  Could you think, maybe, of Goth as a kind of extended funeral for John Lennon?”

“That would be a way of looking at it, wouldn’t it?  I mean, at the time we thought there would be other things coming.  I did, anyway, I thought dark things would happen but I know I saw us as doing something, going somewhere.  I wish I could go back and relive that experience of hearing an album with a new sound and feeling like the world had moved.  I guess that’s what I miss the most.”

“How much of goth was a funeral for John Lennon, and how much of it could have existed outside the shadow of Margaret Thatcher?  I mean, a lot of them might not see it that way but the older I get the more I see it that way.  And I wonder about responsibility, you know?  That’s really something I might be able to figure out now.  At the time I was so confused.”

“I forgave Maggie a bit after I graduated school, going to work myself and all that.”

“I never did.  I hate her worse.  I hate her soul.  I hate her bloody soul and all this talk of nostalgia makes me think I should write a novel where a rock star discovers that the PM is a vampire and hacks her bloody head off.”

A Million Miles Away: In the End

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A Milliion Miles Away:  In the End

9:24 PM 7/23/2017  I’m writing two texts simultaneously tonight, because I’ve had one of the most intense, confusing, and successful weekends I can remember and there is a lot to sort out.  And not only am I sorting it out, but it’s coming down to specifics after years of vagueness.  For years I’ve wanted to write a book called “A Million Miles Away” based on rock singles that have influenced my life.  Baudelaire wrote a book called “Paris Spleen” which is my model – a series of prose poems depicting with “single-effect” precision various qualities of consciousness evoked by each song. 

I have felt prompted to begin this by the death of Chester Bennington.  As I’ve been recording in elsewhere, Bennington’s death was synchronous for me, in that it came two days after I had a vision of suicide by hanging right before I watched an episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer in which a character commits suicide by hanging.  Bennington’s death by suicide was enough of a synchronicity, but then to find that he died by hanging, and that did so on the 53rd birthday of his friend Chris Cornell, who also died by hanging. 

There was a lot about his death that is going to take time for me to unravel.  It’s going to be a magical process.  The first step was that I was talking to his ghost, and the ghost of Chris Cornell, and I felt prompted to actually begin “A Million Miles Away” on my blog.  I already have a Pinterest board with that title, but I’ve begun to post lines from my story “The Darkening” on my blog and I’m finding they have a magical effect.  So now here’s a second book that I’m working on by means of this same technique, which I call “fractal zoom”.

9:40 PM 7/23/2017  I think Chester is going to help me heal damaged parts of my “mind”, or the fields of energy I perceive when I’m daydreaming about popular music.  Synchronistically, this process began a couple of days before I saw the Rolling Stones exhibit, “Exhibitionism” at Navy Pier, and then that night went to Ravinia to see Exene and John from X, Garbage, and Blondie.  It was a magical experience that clarified a lot of interior states for me and gave me even more to write about. 

There were other things that happened this weekend that also have to be tied together, like the sun entering Leo, Brian’s astrology salon on Thursday night, the release of a new Nine Inch Nails ep, and the opening of Luc Besson’s film Valerian and the struggle I had to get tickets for that.  There’s also some relatedness to upcoming events like the movies Atomic Blonde and Dunkirk, Flashback Weekend, and Wizard World.

I’m not sure what it all means but the synchronous death of Chester Bennington was the tipping point that brought me to begin writing about it, to take the process I began with The Darkening and apply it to “A Million Miles Away”.

So these entries will just be tentative lines and then later I’ll go back and pull them together for a finished manuscript, an effort to emulate Baudelaire’s Paris Spleen.

The Buffy Diaries 7-23-2017

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9:23 PM 7/23/2017

I’m at the end of a huge, and hugely stressful weekend, trying to sort out three highly transformative and jam-packed days.

Fortunately for me there was only one transit to track on Friday, the Moon trining Neptune in the evening while I was watching Valerian.  An interesting facet was that I got asked to fill out a survey for Nielsen because it was opening night.  Also, I spilled my drink about 30 seconds after I sat down.  All the soda and ice poured out on the floor and it was a big drag.  This was especially interesting because on Saturday night at Ravinia, the guy in the seat behind me kicked over my drink within five minutes of me sitting down.  He was sorry and he gave me 10 dollars for another … Even more interesting is that I forgot this synchronicity until I sat down to write, which only emphasizes the importance of blogging for me. 

Furthermore, Valerian was a very dramatic experience.  I found the pacing to be a little slow but now that I’m used to it I’m looking forward to seeing it again.  I think Cara Delevingne is so hot that my angel Kara (coincidence) will probably go around looking like her sometimes.  Of course the film itself was very Neptunian, but my psychic experiences were validating of the transit as well.  I felt a very solid connection with the spirit world and also a powerful intuition of the success of my magical and hypnotic workings with film – I am mastering the trance state that movies create and moving beyond the astral influences to a higher, more stable awareness. 

Seeing West Side Story at the Music Box was also very powerful, and inspired me to want to see more films in general, so I’m looking forward to exploiting this trance more in the future, especially with Dunkirk and Atomic Blonde coming up.  I’ll probably also try to catch Wonder Woman again.  I’m considering getting a membership at the Music Box.  Ravinia was such a powerful experience that I’m also going to start seeing more live bands. 

Chester Bennington’s suicide on Thursday, coming as such a synchronicity for me, timed with the announcement of a new tour from Tori Amos and a new EP from Nine Inch Nails, has affected my interest in music.  I’ve been looking at the website “Loudwire” and using the Apple Music Service to explore new goth and metal bands like Ghost and Chelsea Wolfe.  Chelsea Wolfe is very interesting, and she’s coming to The Metro this fall.  I’m considering getting tickets and synchronistically Shirley Manson mentioned The Metro during her show on Saturday.  Music isn’t as fascinating as it used to be for me but the psychic energy of live crowds is powerful, especially with a good band and I’m looking forward to exploring more.

So the Moon-Neptune trine was a big hit and then then next day I was up early for a stressful Saturday of going all over Chicago.  I was up in the morning, on my way to meditate when the Moon opposed Pluto.  I don’t remember very clearly but I think I was feeling pretty confident about my adventure.  The collective energy of Pluto was definitely related to the days activities and I guess the net effect was to prepare me for them, to bring insights into what I was going to go through as I did feel pretty confident.  I remember how nervous travel in Chicago made me feel when I moved here 9 years ago, but now I’m used to it. 

I was pretty laid back as I got ready, taking time to think, not wanting to expend too much energy because I knew I had to come all the way back from Navy Pier and the drive into the unknown, to Ravinia, where I had never been.  So I tried to focus my energy and pay attention to spirits and as it turns out I really didn’t start to get it together to leave until a few minutes after the Sun entered Leo.  I finally got moving and then I checked the clock to see that the transit had just happened – validating the timing for me.

The trip was smooth although the GPS on my android tablet was confusing and I missed a couple of bus stops and wound up walking all the way from the Grand Red Line to the pier, which didn’t bother me as I’ve done it before.  I ate at the Billy Goat, noticing that they serve fries now.  The exhibit was rewarding and worth the admission, especially for the chance to see the recreation of the legendary apartment where they lived together before they were successuful.  I had a lot to think about and it was very grounding for me, resolving a lot of fantasies I have had about that band, and rock music in general over the years. 

The Moon inconjuncted Saturn around 2:40 pm and I was indeed feeling tired from walking around for hours and wondering about the timing necessary to get to Ravinia.  There was also the issue of all the time that’s passed, 35 years of listening to the Rolling Stones and daydreaming about these guys.  But it was a positive expeirence as well as I feel I’ve gotten quite a bit, magically, out of all of it.

I made it home all right, sleeping on the train and missing the last stop so I wound up at Howard and had to ride back down to Jarvis.  This cost me a few minutes.  I was still tired when I got home so I took a little nap and left for Ravinia at almost six pm.  I made it to the venue on time but then I had to drive around and find the remote lots, and then take the shuttle back so Exene and John had already started playing by the time I got there.  Next time I go to Ravinia I’ll know to be an hour early.

I saw Garbage and Blondie and it was very powerful.  Although I’ve been listening to Garbage for years, seeing how real they seem on stage gave me a different feeling about their music and also about what was going on with rock in the 90s while I wasn’t seeing any bands at all.  I’m not saying that’s all good.  However I am satisfied that Garbage is a good band to see live and I am willing to give other bands a chance now. 

And of course seeing Blondie was a trip and a half, a voyage through history and magic as the Moon approached a square with Uranus and a trine with Chiron – about what you’d expect, especially hitting me on the drive home.  Bringing up old pain and unexpectedly intense psychic experiences that have changed my life.  I have to figure out how to write about them. 

And Exene, Shirley, and Debbie have given me a lot of ideas for The Darkening, about what Jennifer could be like as a person.

Ravinia was surprisingly easy to navigate and although the day was full and I had been dreading the logistics of it, I did pretty well and I am emboldened to see more live music.

It’s going to take me weeks to write about what I experienced psychcially, but I’ve already begun with A Million Miles Away.

I was asleep during the rest of the transits that happened in the early morning, but I’m sure the power of my experiences Saturday was influenced by the Moon-Mars conjunct.

Today I did my usual routine, meditated in the morning and then went to Edgewater in the afternoon.  I picked up a promo for Valerian and read an old story.  I’m very interested now in reading the original series, Valerian et Laureline.  I thought a lot about it and a lot about other worlds.  But I have to come up with a new way to write about all of this as I have crossed the line to specificity now.

At the health club my tablet screwed up my streaming service and since I had already started running I just listened to one of the playlists from my heptalogy instead.  It was probably arranged by my angels because I found that my expereinces of the last few days have increased my ability to focus on higher worlds while I’m listening to music.  I’m not getting pulled so much into the astral now.  In fact this afternoon as I was hanging around Edgewater I felt some major developments in this area and a greater sense of detachment which I am going to try to write about.

So no Buffy this weekend at all.  I have some magical things going on but I have to figure out how I’m going to proceed with my blog.

Tomorrow I’ll be downtown.  Synchronistically, there’s a Pluto aspect in the morning, which I’m looking forward to.  Venus opposing Saturn will be big, I know.  I’m expecting spectacular visions.  I’ll have to pay attention to whether they are negative or postive.  I’m thinking it will be like my own private full Moon.

Mercury trining Uranus will bring something, I know.  I’ll either get some amazing news or come up with the new way of writing that I can feel is now necessary.

Mercury inconjuncting Chrion will be good.  I’ll be on my way home when the Moon trines Saturn, right before it sextiles Venus. These are some extremely intense aspects.  I’m almost afraid of them, but this weekend turned out well, even if it was challenging, so I’m just going to hope for the best.  I wasn’t planning to be downtown tomorrow until there was a mishap on Thursday, so the coincidence of this surprise trip with this day packed full of intense aspects seems very intentional.  My intuition says my main purpose should be to stay focused.  I’m making a note to come back tomorrow night and compare what I’m writing now with what actually happens.