The Tarot of Songwriting 13 - Death
toddler rage, Lacan and the Esalen insitute for human potential
I read a book called Mutants and Mystics ten years ago when I was travelling up Highway 1 with my sister. It’s about science fiction and comic book culture and their relationship to American West Coast occultism. I was staying at Deejtens in Big Sur when reading about how the nearby Esalen Institute inspired the creator of X-Men. I love shit like that.
One section early on in the book had a lasting, unpleasant effect on me. The author explains in the introduction that he hopes to demonstrate why comic books and sci-fi took such prominence in American popular culture. He argues that the allure of the paranormal is that it represents not an intangible thing but rather “a dramatic physical manifestation of the meaning and force of consciousness itself”. In other words, the appeal of this type of fiction is that it provokes something satisfying in us; the gaps left between things by what is seemingly unexplainable feel as though they can be answered by something in the shadows of our preverbal brains.
To illustrate this, the author recounts a true story told to him by late 70’s comic book author Doug Moench:
Moench had just finished writing a scene for a Planet of the Apes comic book about a black-hooded gorilla named Brutus. The scene involved Brutus invading the human hero’s home, where he grabbed the man’s mate by the neck and held a gun to her head in order to manipulate the hero. Just as Doug finished this scene, he heard his wife call for him in an odd sort of way from the living room across the house. He got up, walked the length of the house, and entered the living room only to encounter a man in a black hood with one arm around his wife’s neck and the other holding a gun to her head: “It was exactly what I had written. . . . it was so, so immediate in relation to the writing and such an exact duplicate of what I had written, that it became an instant altered state. […]”
Doug’s emotional response to this series of events was a very understandable and natural one. He became obsessed with the black-hooded intruder for months, then years. More immediately, he found it very difficult to write, so terrified was he of that eerie connection between what he might write and what might happen: “It really does make you wonder. Are you seeing the future? Are you creating a reality? Should you give up writing forever after something like that happens? I don’t know.”
I find that profoundly terrifying. Not just literally, but consequently, as it relates to the idea of fiction and reality. Does composing fiction assign us a reality? I know as I write that how dumb and basic that sounds. Metaphor, subtext, poetry - art is not literal. Even some literal things aren’t literal. But when those oddities, those one-in-a-million chances line up and fiction drags down on reality, that’s true horror to me.
Try as I might to use my rational brain to extinguish this mangled form of anxiety, it has many times interrupted my writing process - possibly in my favour. At a certain point, I became over-cautious when it came to the karmic nature of songwriting; a kind of superstition led me to jump ship Lennon and join yacht McCartney - if you will. I made a conscious effort not to let anger dominate my writing. Anger is easier to channel in songwriting than brighter or more delicate things like innocence, tenderness or forms of love that go beyond the romantic - all in all, reading that story in that book ten years ago has been a net positive for my writing. However, I can’t shake the feeling (or the sound of a phantom analyst in my head) that the extent to which I fear the consequences of my own anger must be addressed before I can progress to the next level…of anything.
Jodorowsky has an unbelievably detailed book about tarot, which I highly recommend. In his description of the Death card, following the more common consensus that it signifies a revolution of mind, he goes on to suggest that it may indicate some unconscious aggressiveness in the consultant that they cannot figure out what to do with. I currently spend my days with a two-year-old - I know where that comes from. What do you suggest a two-year-old do with their daily combination of frustrations and language limitations? That potent aimless anger remains familiar to us for the rest of our lives - and in many cases, is dismissed and therefore never filed correctly.
I hated being pregnant the first time around - and I don’t like it much this time either, because it feels like a prison - even knowing how incredible release day is. You’re limited in movement, cognitive function - freedom generally. I am not one of those people who find pregnancy magical. My friend Phoebe pointed out to me that pregnancy takes all your death drive from you - my little flirtations with the edge that keep me in balance. You can’t have two+ wines or a chic cig with your girlfriends or four coffees on an empty stomach; you have to think about all the things you put in your body because you’re quite literally a life vessel. Without the vices, I’ve had to face the world stone-cold sober for 9 months (plus) and in this respect, pregnancy does force a revolution of mind - an uncomfortable meeting with the real, unknowingly preparing you for the profound vulnerability of parenthood.
Whenever I think of the Death card, I think of ego death, or the experience of being egoic-ly dismembered; a point in one's life where the structure between you and the world dissolves, provoking either a profound revelation and opportunity for rebirth or an intangible, irretrievable mess forever longing to return to its original state. It’s an experience commonly associated with psychedelic drugs.
In Lacanian psychoanalysis, there is a theory about an experience related to the Mirror Stage in which the infant becomes aware (via self-recognition in a reflection) of his own image, provoking the emergence of the ego. However, without the complete picture and relationship to the extremities of their own physical form, alongside the still subsiding sense that the mother and child are one, the infant acquires an uneasy sense of the body in pieces, of Corps Morcelé as Lacan refers to it. According to Lacan, “the imago of the fragmented body reappears when the analysis touches upon or provokes the aggressivity of the analysand […]” who is “constantly threatened by the memory of this sense of fragmentation, which manifests itself in images of castration, emasculation, mutilation, dismemberment, dislocation, evisceration, devouring, bursting open of the body which haunt the human imagination.”
This is all to say that a revolution of mind often feels like a threat to existence, particularly as nothing is so indiscriminate and inevitable as the consequence of living. Making the transition through something that transforms you will require moments of feeling like a body in pieces, a preverbal mess of feeling - soon to take on new form. This is the spirit of Death, in my understanding.
Feels a bit silly to say, as the Planet of the Apes story is so stark and literal, but I had a strange experience with writing that I still think about. When I was little, I mimicked my favorite author at the time and used her character’s name in my stories, only changing their surnames. I loved one character’s name because it traditionally seen as a “boy’s” name and it felt unique. Years later: I have my first romantic relationship with a boy who had the same first name as that character. It fizzles but was definitely impactful on me. One day I mindlessly read through my childhood stories and see that, years ago, before I even lived in the same state as this guy, the character I wrote had the exact same name as him, first and last. I hadn’t remembered this detail at all. Very random but still insanely coincidental. I remember the exact moment when I realized, how strange reality felt then. What pieces of us following us through life, our work, that we carry with us without even realizing?
Laura, is this also an example of apophenia or patternicity - basically the human behaviour of finding meanings in patterns? I think we’re all wired with this ability otherwise we’d be unable to think up stories, write poetry, draw pictures, etc. To put it bluntly it gives us an evolutionary advantage to predetermine our futures. And our 16 month old toddler would certainly agree with this judging by their tantrums!