Note: The following was written a few weeks ago but due to vacations hasn't been posted until now. The King is Dead !
So read the banner headline of the Drudge Report on June 26. How fitting this comes so soon after the summer solstice.
Long Live the King!
The phrase was first employed when Charles VII inherited the crown from Charles VI in 1422 and embodies the principle of le mort saisit le vif-death takes the living-which signifies the instant transfer of sovereignty upon the death of a reigning monarch.
Ebony and Ivory, living together in perfect harmony. This would be more than the piano keyboard as metaphor for racial harmony, but the code for the tessellated chessboard of the magickal universe. Jachin and Boaz, Tonto (fool) and the Lone Ranger (dipshit).
Michael was Whacko Jacko in life, but in death becomes the celebrated icon who burst through racial barriers and made it possible for black entertainers to become bona fide superstars. But then again he is white, no? Ebony and Ivory indeed. Strange to see him celebrated as a black icon when he strove in life to remove all traces of his African heritage.
And the Mormons used to tell the Indians that if they sold their land to the church and became Mormons, they would become white....er, pure.
In July 1831 after the arrival of Joseph Smith, Jr., and others in Jackson County, Missouri, plans were made to preach to the Native Americans. Smith received a directive on intermarriage with the Indians....
He was an androgynous creature, not quite male or female, not quite adult or child. Not quite black or white. Like some mythical beast representing the reconciliation of opposites: Long Live the King! The King is Dead. The circle of life goes on. The sun dies and is reborn.
He was the King of Pop, which spelled backwards still makes him the King of Pop. And he took himself for a king. Even named his sons Prince Michael I and Prince Michael II. And his daughter is Paris. Which isn’t Versailles but close enough. Did someone say Sun King? Here’s looking at the man in the hall of mirrors.
The sun has just begun its dying process: The King is Dead! Long Live the King!
Oh and lest you forget, there’s a great alchemical secret to get in on: Nature can be perfected....
"There is also, of course, the old adage that celebrities die in threes, with the deaths of Gianni Versace, Princess Diana and Mother Teresa in 1997 frequently held up as an example of this."
"There is also, of course, the old adage that celebrities die in threes, with the deaths of Gianni Versace, Princess Diana and Mother Teresa in 1997 frequently held up as an example of this."
We cite (Carradine, Farrah Fawcett aka Darby Crash) and Michael Jackson. All icons of the Dead Seventies.
And in South Carolina, another king, Governor Sanford, as in Sanford and Sun, disappeared, leaving the state in a tizzy, but his return didn’t really smooth things over. Seems he was visiting his Argentine mistress: Maria (mother of Jesus) Belen (Bethlehem) Chapur. Chapur is a Persian surname. And in Persia the media has perfect leverage to wag the dog. Which backwards spells God. As if waving in front of your face. Heroic youth on the front-lines. With the death of an old regime a new one can be born. Martyred beautiful young woman, liberty leading the people, dead on the barricades, her last breath captured on a cell phone.
The King is Dead! Long Live the King!
It’s Easter and Christmas all rolled up into one. It’s the solstice.
"In the end, sometimes our reactions were divorced from reason and rationale, and had nothing to do with how we felt about him. They were reactions born of the raw emotion that comes when a seam in the fabric of our culture unravels, when someone as undeniably monumental as Michael Jackson dies."
How now, brown cow?
[added July 15]
So get ready for the resurrection and the visions. Just like Jesus we've had a (now located) missing body, miraculous sightings and both Kings have appeared in a lowly Cheeto....
So get ready for the resurrection and the visions. Just like Jesus we've had a (now located) missing body, miraculous sightings and both Kings have appeared in a lowly Cheeto....
"The Eclipsed Celebrity Death Club"
ReplyDelete"Poor Farrah Fawcett. A month ago, People magazine's Larry Hackett admitted to the Times that she only had one remaining chance for some friendly press: 'At this point, Farrah has to die,' he said. 'It's the only cover left for her.' Needless to say, she's missed her chance ... The championship trophy for badly timed death, though, goes to a pair of British writers. Aldous Huxley, the author of Brave New World, died the same day as C.S. Lewis, who wrote the Chronicles of Narnia series. Unfortunately for both of their legacies, that day was November 22, 1963, just as John Kennedy's motorcade passed the Texas School Book Depository. Huxley, at least, made it interesting: At his request, his wife shot him up with LSD a couple of hours before the end, and he tripped his way out of this world. Which, if you're going to go to your reward without anyone's noticing, is probably not a bad way to end it all."
Poor Farrah. I must admit I thought the very same thing. An unfortunate by-product of Celebrity culture.
ReplyDeleteDid you catch the Darby Crash reference? I'm not sure if you know of him or not, but he was the singer for the Germs; he committed suicide at the age of 22 in what some claim was a bid for rock and roll martyrdom, the culmination of a five year plan (inspired by Bowie's "Five Years).
Unfortunately for his plan he OD'd on the eve of John Lennon's assassination!
You'll enjoy this article.
That's a long article. But good reading.
ReplyDeleteThe Germs are great, of course.
Somehow, this article makes me think about how fascism killed the hippies, something that I think, but haven't quite figured out, was brought upon themselves by themselves, wrought inevitably from the lonely beats, beat up, and then admired somehow, that admiration of the lonely, an inherent vice for such a _group_ following.
Okay, OK, BS aside ...
As they said, "Initiation into Circle One was by cigarette burn to the wrist, preferably administered by Darby personally or by one of the female recruiters who'd nab longhaired strays at the Masque and shear their hair before branding their wrists with a lit cigarette to create a permanent circular scar."
Proof enough that there oughta be, but seriously for all my catwallering, I really, rilly hate the worship of youth, which probably led to this whole stupid suicide.
I admire old men and I admire old women.
F*ck the young.
I hate suicide and its shortsightedness. Even if you are a great band, you Germs, you. You think you have a cult, but you're just slavishly worshiping Youth.
Not glamorous.
In my book, both the Germs and Beatles died a long, long time ago.
Iggy Pop, he's the man.
Yes,the cult of youth in America. MJ was so beyond the pale (hehe) with the Peter Pan syndrome, but it's pretty much standard fare among celebrities. People go thru crazy lengths to appear youthful, adhere to impossible standards of an idealized "sexually attractive" beauty. I mean, what's a girl like Pamela Anderson gonna do when she reaches what the French call "a certain age"? Sad, really.
ReplyDeleteWe could rename Hollywood "Silicon Valley South."
One last bit about the Germs, though. Isn't is crazy how there was a California public school which used Scientology methods? Does the article go into that? If you can nab it, give the book "Lexicon Devil" a read. It's about Crash and the Germs, but it's a great portrait of the LA punk and nascent hardcore scene.
His lyrics are definitely a cut above the rest and they're all reprinted in the book....