Showing posts with label Lodge. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Lodge. Show all posts

Wednesday 10 October 2018

You Must Tear Out Her Dark Heart


 “You Must Tear Out Her Dark Heart!”


- Pazuzu 

Exorcist II - The Hertic

( for which The World was Not-Yet ready.....)




A Black Mirror










The fact that Ray is yelling at him and threatening him ( like a Tyrant ) is NOT helpful... he’s turning himself into a halfway suitable host — he can’t possess The Clown (Peter) , The Mage (Egon) or The Soldier (Winston), but Ray he finds he has some affinity with....









Exorcist II : The Heretic — An Apologia and An Explanation, not a Review


I speak a lifelong and devoted lover of The Exorcist, not mere the greatest ‘horror’ movie ever made, but also the finest and most important movie on the subject of Spiritual Warfare ever filmed.


I am, however, also, an unashamed apologist for Exorcist II : The Heretic (for which The World was not-yet ready....)


apologist (n.)

"one who speaks or write in defense of something," especially "a defender of Christianity," 1630s, from French apologiste, from apologie, from Late Latin apologia "a speech in defense"


At the outset, let me say this — put on your David Lynch Glasses.


A film such as this can only really be approached beginning at a firmly pre-conscious level; where it begins to fall apart however, therefore, is that while David Lynch maintains total and absolute authorial control over every aspect of the production (cinematography and sound in particular, in case that not being too obvious), and only picks out and works with actors who he knows and trusts to plumb the depths of their own psyches and the collective unconscious enough to tap into what he wants (even if he very often does not know what he actually wants, or indeed what he is doing until it is done being captured on film).


What happens instead here is that there is a baggy creative looseness (no-doubt excacerbated by John Boorman’s 6 week illness in the midst of principle photography), so the whole thing drifts about alarmingly and looses focus, so your inner-eye and attention is never drawn quite where it is supposed to be for much of the film and the actors don’t really know exactly what they are meant to be doing, so the emotional tone is just all over the map in places.


So when something in a David Lynch film comes across as absurd, tacky or bad, its because (and you can be assured of the fact that) Lynch WANTS it to be absurd, tacky or bad — it isn’t because it just doesn’t work.


And in Exorcist II : The Heretic that isn’t the case — so the viewer, even the most charitable apologist such as myself — is constantly being challenged to decide : is this consciously esoteric and dream-like (as much of the film is, or could take place viewed from the perspective of a dream), or is it just an attempt to do something over-ambitious (such as a man falling off the side of a mountain and his body becoming lodged in a tight rock crevasse) that didn’t *quite* work.


So your brain is constantly being overstimulated, and your mind cannot relax on being immersed within the film.


There are also some horrendous errors of judgement that might have been very easily resolved and made the film less superficially ludicrous and absurd. Personally, I have no problem whatsoever with the hypnotic “Synchroniser” device used to achieve shared states of deep trance, it’s both scientifically and spiritually not only plausible but also very largely accurate — unfortunately it just LOOKS completely silly and ridiculous, with the black and red plastic-rubber ECG headbands, and the various bleeping noises are, again, probably clinically accurate but not cinematically helpful.


With every year that passes, more and more I am reminded, with regard to Exorcist II of the great, untold Sherlock Holmes case touching on the Giant Rat of Sumatra (“For which The World is not yet ready”, notes Holmes).


The central theme and message of the film — one which stands in stark contrast and defiance to that of it’s predecessor, where it was the very randomness and seeming pointlessness of Reagan’s ordeal which is speculated to be the whole reason a point to her being singled out for possession — that it is the purest GOOD souls on the Earth who are singled out BECAUSE the diabolical hordes want to take such powerful spiritual warriors off the board by corrupting them and bringing about their self-destruction) stands as bold a statement of Jungian psychic theory as was ever committed to film.


Jung’s ideas and concepts of The Shadow and Spiritus Contra Spiritum inspired the original founders of Alcholoics Annonymous, first originators of the 12 Step model for personal spiritual purgation of the demon drink, and the many other that followed, via formation of “societies of mutual sufferers” - 


“You Must Tear Out Her Dark Heart” 


Very Excellent, Sound Advice. 


For Which The World was Not-Yet Ready.

White Coffee




Cooper, you may be fearless in This World. 

But there are Other Worlds. 

Worlds beyond Life and Death. 

Worlds beyond scientific reality. 

My people believe that the White Lodge is a place where the spirits that rule Man and Nature reside. 

There is also a legend of a place called the Black Lodge. 

The Shadow Self of the White Lodge. 

Legend says that every spirit must pass through there on the way to perfection. 

There, you will meet your own Shadow Self. 

My people call it The Dweller on the Threshold. 

But it is said that if you confront The Black Lodge with imperfect courage  —

It will utterly annihilate your soul.





Monday 6 August 2018

Dedication





To the Memory of My Beloved the Author, Mr. William Shakespeare
BY BEN JONSON

To draw no envy, Shakespeare, on thy name, 
Am I thus ample to thy book and fame; 
While I confess thy writings to be such 
As neither man nor muse can praise too much; 
'Tis true, and all men's suffrage. But these ways 
Were not the paths I meant unto thy praise; 
For seeliest ignorance on these may light, 
Which, when it sounds at best, but echoes right; 
Or blind affection, which doth ne'er advance 
The truth, but gropes, and urgeth all by chance; 
Or crafty malice might pretend this praise, 
And think to ruin, where it seem'd to raise. 
These are, as some infamous bawd or whore 
Should praise a matron; what could hurt her more? 
But thou art proof against them, and indeed, 
Above th' ill fortune of them, or the need. 
I therefore will begin. Soul of the age! 
The applause, delight, the wonder of our stage! 
My Shakespeare, rise! I will not lodge thee by 
Chaucer, or Spenser, or bid Beaumont lie
A little further, to make thee a room: 
Thou art a monument without a tomb, 
And art alive still while thy book doth live 
And we have wits to read and praise to give. 
That I not mix thee so, my brain excuses,
I mean with great, but disproportion'd Muses, 
For if I thought my judgment were of years, 
I should commit thee surely with thy peers, 
And tell how far thou didst our Lyly outshine, 
Or sporting Kyd, or Marlowe's mighty line. 
And though thou hadst small Latin and less Greek, 
From thence to honour thee, I would not seek 
For names; but call forth thund'ring Aeschylus, 
Euripides and Sophocles to us; 
Pacuvius, Accius, him of Cordova dead, 
To life again, to hear thy buskin tread, 
And shake a stage; or, when thy socks were on, 
Leave thee alone for the comparison 
Of all that insolent Greece or haughty Rome 
Sent forth, or since did from their ashes come. 
Tri'umph, my Britain, thou hast one to show 
To whom all scenes of Europe homage owe. 
He was not of an age but for all time! 
And all the Muses still were in their prime, 
When, like Apollo, he came forth to warm 
Our ears, or like a Mercury to charm! 
Nature herself was proud of his designs 
And joy'd to wear the dressing of his lines, 
Which were so richly spun, and woven so fit, 
As, since, she will vouchsafe no other wit.
The merry Greek, tart Aristophanes, 
Neat Terence, witty Plautus, now not please, 
But antiquated and deserted lie, 
As they were not of Nature's family. 
Yet must I not give Nature all: thy art, 
My gentle Shakespeare, must enjoy a part. 
For though the poet's matter nature be, 
His art doth give the fashion; and, that he 
Who casts to write a living line, must sweat, 
(Such as thine are) and strike the second heat 
Upon the Muses' anvil; turn the same 
(And himself with it) that he thinks to frame, 
Or, for the laurel, he may gain a scorn; 
For a good poet's made, as well as born; 
And such wert thou. Look how the father's face 
Lives in his issue, even so the race 
Of Shakespeare's mind and manners brightly shines 
In his well-turned, and true-filed lines; 
In each of which he seems to shake a lance, 
As brandish'd at the eyes of ignorance. 
Sweet Swan of Avon! what a sight it were 
To see thee in our waters yet appear, 
And make those flights upon the banks of Thames, 
That so did take Eliza and our James! 
But stay, I see thee in the hemisphere 
Advanc'd, and made a constellation there! 
Shine forth, thou star of poets, and with rage 
Or influence, chide or cheer the drooping stage; 
Which, since thy flight from hence, hath mourn'd like night, 
And despairs day, but for thy volume's light.