On 14th June 2021, in the aftermath of a huge anti-lockdown protest in London, a senior BBC reporter named Nick Watt was chased out of Whitehall, to taunts of ‘traitor’, ‘scum’, and ‘liar’.
This is a magisterial reading of Gill’s public sculpture series at the artistic level (details of what we see and their organization), the cultural/political level (symbolic meaning), and the historical level (manifest and occulted context). To introduce the analysis in the time and space of the covid lockdown protests is an inspiration.
I hadn’t heard of Clement Freud, only his brother Lucian (speaking of lurid imagery) and their cousin Edward Bernays, the maestro of modern media propaganda and mass mind control.
I suppose it’s been known for millennia that the easiest, fastest and crudest way to control people at any scale is through traumatic victimization, preferably starting in childhood aka pedophilia, or abuse of older targets by infantilizing them.
The puerile Ariel figure’s musical iconography is instructive, in the sense of “Clockwork Orange”’s (both novel and film) twisting of Beethoven to torture and program young Alex. I trace music’s power to seduce — as well as to induce/incite — to the fact that it’s the only art that physically touches us via moving waves of air, especially in the lowest bass register. The effect is magical, spooky action at a distance.
No wonder that Plato and strict caliphates confine it to marches and patriotic hymns. The flute held by Gill’s Ariel is phallic in shape and use — lips, fingers, mouth, tongue: a “blow” job — and in my homosexual orbits, the penis is coded as “skin flute”.
You’re surely right to allegorize Ariel’s musical medium as the media in general — radio, television and now internet. It is thus the BBC itself (and all government-corporate communications) astride that globe, which in the setting of “The Tempest” makes me speculate how Shakespeare’s Globe Theater prefigured globalism (“the sun never sets on the British Empire“). As we’ve discussed already, the Bard is a locus classicus of covert identity (de Vere, Bacon, maybe both and/or others?) and state intrigue.
In the age of Epstein, politics perversion and plague come together in your excursus that documents the masonic practice of revealing its own method in order to display power and subdue victims.
Ariel sounds like a form of god of flocks and herds like Pan, meaning All. Peter Pan, and the Pied Piper with his flute comes to mind too. Pan was known for his sweet music and sexual desires, an allegory for "overcoming the goat/animal nature" as he was a God-Man in his higher nature.
Pan was known to strike terror in people who saw him (meaning Ultimate Reality) and the last 100 years has been a Palace of Illusions on steroids. This is all to say that BBC, Saville, Epstein and Co.'s exposure illustrates the inner differences between people the way nothing else could.
True. But Ariel is a little different from Pan -- he's an elemental spirit of fire and air, with none of Pan's earthiness. He can appear in terrifying forms when instructed to, but he burns with a very pure flame, and ultimately has a benign influence on Prospero, who forgives his enemies, releases the spirit and gives up his magic art.
Very interesting. Two things have got me very interested in myth making lately. A new book I’m reading, Liturgies of the Wild by Martin Shaw, and the movie Hamnet I saw shortly after starting the book. I highly recommend both and would enjoy your take on either.
This is a magisterial reading of Gill’s public sculpture series at the artistic level (details of what we see and their organization), the cultural/political level (symbolic meaning), and the historical level (manifest and occulted context). To introduce the analysis in the time and space of the covid lockdown protests is an inspiration.
I hadn’t heard of Clement Freud, only his brother Lucian (speaking of lurid imagery) and their cousin Edward Bernays, the maestro of modern media propaganda and mass mind control.
I suppose it’s been known for millennia that the easiest, fastest and crudest way to control people at any scale is through traumatic victimization, preferably starting in childhood aka pedophilia, or abuse of older targets by infantilizing them.
The puerile Ariel figure’s musical iconography is instructive, in the sense of “Clockwork Orange”’s (both novel and film) twisting of Beethoven to torture and program young Alex. I trace music’s power to seduce — as well as to induce/incite — to the fact that it’s the only art that physically touches us via moving waves of air, especially in the lowest bass register. The effect is magical, spooky action at a distance.
No wonder that Plato and strict caliphates confine it to marches and patriotic hymns. The flute held by Gill’s Ariel is phallic in shape and use — lips, fingers, mouth, tongue: a “blow” job — and in my homosexual orbits, the penis is coded as “skin flute”.
You’re surely right to allegorize Ariel’s musical medium as the media in general — radio, television and now internet. It is thus the BBC itself (and all government-corporate communications) astride that globe, which in the setting of “The Tempest” makes me speculate how Shakespeare’s Globe Theater prefigured globalism (“the sun never sets on the British Empire“). As we’ve discussed already, the Bard is a locus classicus of covert identity (de Vere, Bacon, maybe both and/or others?) and state intrigue.
In the age of Epstein, politics perversion and plague come together in your excursus that documents the masonic practice of revealing its own method in order to display power and subdue victims.
Ariel sounds like a form of god of flocks and herds like Pan, meaning All. Peter Pan, and the Pied Piper with his flute comes to mind too. Pan was known for his sweet music and sexual desires, an allegory for "overcoming the goat/animal nature" as he was a God-Man in his higher nature.
Pan was known to strike terror in people who saw him (meaning Ultimate Reality) and the last 100 years has been a Palace of Illusions on steroids. This is all to say that BBC, Saville, Epstein and Co.'s exposure illustrates the inner differences between people the way nothing else could.
True. But Ariel is a little different from Pan -- he's an elemental spirit of fire and air, with none of Pan's earthiness. He can appear in terrifying forms when instructed to, but he burns with a very pure flame, and ultimately has a benign influence on Prospero, who forgives his enemies, releases the spirit and gives up his magic art.
Lovely, thank you.
Nation shall speak unto nation. While raping, destroying and demonizing one another. Yes. That seems like a very apt motto for such an institution.
I didn't deliberately omit the word Peace. It's even more ironic in the fresco once you read the imagery.
Excellent work Lethal Text! A proper deep dive.
Very interesting. Two things have got me very interested in myth making lately. A new book I’m reading, Liturgies of the Wild by Martin Shaw, and the movie Hamnet I saw shortly after starting the book. I highly recommend both and would enjoy your take on either.
Thank you for continuing to ask "WTF?" regarding covid. I'm so tired of notion of just "putting it all behind us.."
And thank you for all the literary and artistic insights... you truly exemplify the meaning of a true Teacher.