Douglas Mercer
June 1 2024
Near to the last in the relatively short list in the main line of prophetic Anglo-Saxon singer songwriters (1965-2002) is Charles Michael Kittridge Thompson IV (aka: Black Francis) the lead singer of the Pixies. He lived through his vocation from 1988 to 1991 and then retired from the scene of presentiment. The song Stormy Weather consists of a single line: it is time for Stormy Weather. This simple utterance amounts to a prediction, that there is trouble on the way. Weather is the universal symbol for the “times”, ie, winds of change, which way the wind blows. Thompson is certain that there is a “bad moon rising.” That is humankind’s botched and incomplete sojourn on earth is coming to a close to be replaced by something superior. So one’s runs for cover if one will—it is time for stormy weather.
Born in Scotland David Byrne’s (lead singer of the Talking Heads) vocation was over by the late 1980s. In Burning Down The House (burning the current dwelling, man’s present abode on earth) he writes of “dreams walking in broad daylight”; that is fantasy life is no longer in the dead dark of night but is emerging into the sunlight to be enacted in reality. It has now crossed the threshold of the limn to be conscious rather than unconscious.
Wait until the party’s over
We’re in for nasty weather
Here is the same floating signifier of a free-standing prediction that Thompson makes, that troubled times are on the way. Man has turned away from being and so being reciprocally has turned away from man, which causes disturbances in the atmosphere. So called humanity will pay dearly for its recalcitrance in not attending the word of being. The weather now is not merely stormy but nasty—redolent of the rotting and the rancid.
Here is your ticket
Pack your bags
Time for jumping overboard
The transportation is here
The ticket is the pass out, the means out by the complex of the words, it’s time to leave the fool’s errand that the fools and children of humanity are engaging in; the sound and the hale must prepare themselves (pack their bags) with the goods of their souls; it is time make the leap or jump, time to get off of the sinking ship and not to go down with it, it is time to abandon life on earth as it is practiced by homo sapiens; and the means by which to do this is present that is the car or the vehicle or the vessel is already present via which to make the escape.
All wet—you may need a raincoat.
One needs a raincoat when the weather turns foul, when the weather turns, That is when the fat hits the fire you will need protection (the “mac” of Penny Lane with its pouring rain). It must be noted that these words are inserted in the song apropos of nothing, indeed in a song about fire needing a raincoat is odd, that is the energy and the strangeness that the words are sung with make them pronounced and draw one's attention to them.
This house is out of the ordinary.
The house we are building is the unlikely, the unexpected. A reference to Heidegger’s building dwelling thinking, this is our future house that is still being built, it will be finished and completed soon. It is a strange and an anomalous house which will be the abode of mortals and god together. The house of being will be a bolt out the blue, it will be one that sails along a different set of coordinates, simply put it will be inordinate.
***
Descartes said that even when they were writing twaddle the poets often gave more valuable information and phrased it better than philosophers proper because unlike the latter they were proceeding from inspiration.
In The Two Of Us it is said that “you and I are wearing raincoats”; the free-floating signifier draws attention to itself, sticks out like a sore thumb and a rule is that when something strikes you square in the face you need to pay attention to it. Also in the song are the words “You and I are lifting latches and lighting matches”---that is burning down the house.
Here Comes The Sun King, Here Comes the Sun, I'll Follow The Sun, Good Day Sunshine, I believe I’m going to rain, the sun is what shines, the sun is what rains (reigns). It is the eternal radiance of being, coming (arriving, being willing itself into being) is what Sol Invictus is always doing until the moment it gets here, then it is the present (sent from before).
This is not mysticism, this is simply being able to read and listen. This is a step-by-step logic, it is the words being thrown into being and waiting to be deciphered and placed in their position in the constellation by the Rosetta Stone of the method. It is also plain that the god used popular song to make the esoteric public. That is the word of the gods must not in the end be the private standing reserve of the chosen few initiates but must be an efflorescence traveling incognito into the masses who will without fail take them as nothing but mundane if catchy lyrics. And these persons implicated in the prophetic network of the god (to whatever degree aware) served their purpose, and lived through their vocation, and then had no more to say, having ran out of gas, as it were; fated to being the merest echoes of themselves, while the words that used their proper name live forever, or until they are required no more.
***
When the rain comes
They run and hide their heads
They might as well be dead
When the reign of the god arrives (comes) the mass of men who have paid it no heed will run for cover but it will be of no use; no one’s head can be hidden when the reign asserts final control; utter annihilation will be their lot. This is a recurrent refrain from the Beatles, not quite a tic but a tell: see how they run like pigs from a gun see how they fly (I Am The Walrus/Lady Madonna).
When the rain comes
When the sun shines
We slip into the shade
We sip our marmalade
When the sun shines down
Rain, we don't mind
Shine, the weather's fine
On the other hand those of us who have been paying attention will be sitting pretty; no joker in the pack for us but a hand of all aces of hearts. We will skip quietly and quite unassumingly into the shade (death, eternity) and we will drink our drinks on the veranda in the cool of the evening. We will have no objections to anything, that is we won’t mind—our weather will be fine.
I can show you
That when it starts to rain
When the rain comes down
Everything's the same
I can show you
I can show you
This truth can be demonstrated; for those who can both see and hear and can think it is patently obvious and manifest. When the reign comes all is one, all is identity, all is identical, the only and the one will be in presence; all meanings will collapse into each other by shedding their apparent significations and revealing that underneath it all they were synonyms all along. Then all things equal being all things being equal. Truth will be beauty and beauty truth for instance. This is monism write large in the land of ideas; or now it is, all at once [ἔστιν ὁμοῦ πᾶν] a continuous one.
When it rains and shines
It is just a state of mind
When it rains and shines
Can you hear me?
We can hear you. copy that. In this future state there is no meat or machine, the world of eating and process as change has been abandoned; now all is mind (we won’t mind) and all is spirit and consciousness; it will be a protean world of simultaneous process and instant creation in one place as both time and space, which were created together, fall away.
***
Someone told me long ago
There is a calm before the storm
It has been coming for some time
Long is the time, it’s going to be a long long time; the storm (stormy or nasty weather) has been brewing long since time out of mind and time immemorial, and that world of polite civilization of the last man that we now see before us is a mask or a veneer; history has not only not ended it has not yet begun, and it will be inaugurated by the thunder of the storm god.
When it's over, so they say
It will rain one sunny say
It will shine down like water
Water is best said Pindar; a radiant misty watery light will be the hallmark of the reign once the pestilence of current humanity has been surmounted; once the storm has passed. Whatever has not been tied down tight, whatever was not of great spirit, will prove itself inessential by not enduring; and the sun and the reign will enact their shimmering and iridescent light on the world.
Yesterday and days before
Sun is cold and rain is hard
It has been that way for all our time
Until forever on it goes
Through the circle, fast and slow
Nothing will stop our wonder
Out of the long past it comes this reign that is hard and steely, this sun which is harsh in its judgments; we have known it all along, for it has been living inside us waiting for the moment to arise in its eternal presence. Now more quickly, now seemingly late or tardy but always right on time, nothing will stop the awe that we feel for its coming to light. Soon we will be song, as is said; when German poets attend the words properly, as they most certainly have, the bolt of lightning will have done its beautiful work, and even the spheres will tremble, for a while at least, until the final tranquil calm overcomes us and we for once begin to live.
Rain And Shine
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Douglas Mercer
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Douglas Mercer
- Posts: 10935
- Joined: Tue Mar 28, 2023 7:29 pm
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Douglas Mercer
- Posts: 10935
- Joined: Tue Mar 28, 2023 7:29 pm
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Douglas Mercer
- Posts: 10935
- Joined: Tue Mar 28, 2023 7:29 pm
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Douglas Mercer
- Posts: 10935
- Joined: Tue Mar 28, 2023 7:29 pm
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Douglas Mercer
- Posts: 10935
- Joined: Tue Mar 28, 2023 7:29 pm
