And this is Y all that’s left is Hope

45

Category : Entertainment, art

Where’s your crown, King Nothing? (Metallica)

REFERENCES:

- decoding iamamiwhoami – the beginnings
- A Closer Look To iamamiwhoami’s b Video
- iamamiwhoami’s o video
- u-1
- u-2
- n from Nature/Natural
- T – back in the kingdom we were Kings and Queens
- And this is Y all that’s left is Hope

- Iamamiwhoami – The Book Of Changes – Hexagram Theory

- Iamamiwhoami – Sources of Inspiration
- Identity in iamamiwhoami
- An Archetypal and Mythological Approach to iamamiwhoami
- iamamiwhoami official youtube channel

Did you ever notice that on a chess board the king is the most vulnerable, powerless piece of all? And yet, only the King can secure the victory in a game of chess.

Y is here. Let’s watch it and see what everything is all about.

WOW! It’s great to see the iamamiwhoami concept outdoing itself! With each video being better than the previous, you’d think the task is becoming more and more difficult. It might quite be so, but the results… just wow!

There are a couple of theories that fly above our heads, each sustained with different arguments. I’ve always walked on the perverting of Nature by humans idea, and I could easily see many items to confirm this theory. Looking at MO as being the representation of Nature and at Mr. Underpants as being the representation of humanity itself, I would just conclude Y is showing us how Nature is continually trying to teach the human being how not to destroy it and how each and every time the human being manages to f*ck things up (excuse the language, but it quite its the mood of the video, if you know what I mean) and fail, with dead nature getting re-born over and over again and the human being given yet another chance to try.

Little hope is us. We’re the baby in the video. Remember n? You are the child filming. Little hope. I remember what my grandfather used to tell me: we failed at making this world a better place, it’s in you, the youngsters, to do it. You are the only ones able to induce and complete this change. When we’re young, we’re ambitious children directing stories of ourselves.

As we grow up, we become confused Mr. Underpants. The King and the Knight are one and the same thing. The two sides of a human being: the passive psychic (powerful by nature, but very weak and vulnerable in will) and the active psychic (powerless by nature, but very strong when covered by protective armor, also instinctively violent). In the symbolism of the tarot cards, these two are the equivalents of  The King of Wands and The Knight of Swords. If you read a little bit about both of them, you’ll see what I mean by those two sides.

Plus: Mandrake grows under the gallows of unrepentant murderers, springing up from the criminal’s last semence. It must be uprooted in a particular manner, as the piercing groans of agony are so horrible that whoever hears it will die, or go deaf and insane. In the moonlight, the harvester must put wax in the ears, draw three circles around the plant with a sword or willow wand, and use a dog to actually uproot it.

I cannot move away from that cat! This time, it makes monkey noises, as expected. The thing about a monkey is that to me it looks like a representation of a joker (a fool). You know… the Joker in a court, the one who entertains everybody and who, in his madness, always speaks the truth? Also, in my previous analysis of other iamamiwhoami videos, I was referring at the cat as being a demon or some sort of cruel divinity. I am going to move up to the point where I could consider it a representation of God. The cat is moving around freely among glasses, forks and spoons and it even sits on its butt on a plate for cryin’ out loud! The cat is the story teller (Tell me how this story ends now), the path director.

As we enter Mr. Underpants’ realm, we find him as The King of Nothing, a king of waste, of duct tape. He might have a throne, but it’s placed in a dark, empty palace ans it’s made of duct tape. It’s clear he has failed in becoming what he has been suggested to become in ‘t’. His crown, scepter, orb and entire palace are made of the same material his beard is made of: brown, faded tape. Far from the precious foil of the Mandragora. Even more, he has no idea what to do with these items. He is stopping under their weight. Maybe he doesn’t give a damn either. His lethargic attitude speaks for itself. The way he wastes paper shows his lack of consideration for Nature (trees, as the material paper is made of) and everything else around him. As he marches towards nothing specific, leaving aside his royal regalia possessions, he moves both in space and in time. This is his pathetic try to become active. His walk has nothing of the proud walk of the Mandragora in T. His walk says “I’m too lazy o be a King, I’m self-sufficient”.

Don’t get fooled by the foil surrounding everything in MO’s realm, as this one looks more precious than the one the car in T was wrapped in. This foil is glass looking. It sparkles and it speaks ‘preciousness’. Because it protects precious things. Look on the ground of the forest: it’s full of waste. The trees are practically drowning in waste.

The light bulb is nothing but a direct reference to Little Hope. It’s the small light of hope. The light at the end of the tunnel, as we say. And you can see how this little light bulb has the power to light all the forest in the end. First a sparkle, then a fire. First one little bulb then numerous large neon lights. Also, if you look at the entire scene, it could be an allegory of a child being born and then going through life. We are all born having a small light upon our heads  – our life – and it’s up to us to live in such a way in which we make this life as luminous as possible. It’s our goal to make of ourselves successful individuals, powerful enough to produce light of ourselves, powerful enough to become someones, people whose paths of light would be known by others.

Alone in his empty kingdom, the only thing the King is left to do is to make sure he leaves a little hope behind. In real life, people procreate to make sure their species survives and their offspring do a better job at preserving nature and the environment. The King must be protected in order to win a game of chess, remember? No matter his weakness and his lack of skills in battle. On a board of chess, the king can only move a square. He has the same powers as a pawn. The only difference is the crown.

As the Mandragora leaves the realm of the King, worlds are reversed once more, and the King as left alone in his world, while another character appears, trying to save what’s left of the foiled Nature: the Knight. Or is it that this Knight in shining armor is actually the King who has disguised himself and is actually invading this world? The problem with the Knight is that, while it portrays triumph through direct action, it also implies angry, knee-jerk actions from a person. While he might act swiftly and with confidence, he is not as cautious of the sin of pride. When reversed, the Knight symbolizes the opposite of his upright meaning. He represents an individual’s state of mind marked by feelings of inadequacy or excessive hesitance. Clearly, the King cannot become a Knight, or should not aim at becoming a Knight. This is why he ends in killing the perverted nature and removing himself (the bad apple) as well from it, leaving room for a new future King, the baby.

Thus another cycle is complete, a new one begins, another MO bowl is being ‘fed’ and… well… I guess we’ll see what happens in the next video.

One thing I really liked about the knight is how he is portrayed. He belongs to the foil forest, he is part of it (or wants to be), as his armor is made of foil. Nevertheless, we can clearly see his undies. Then, he is being ‘named’ by his possessions. It’s interesting how the director of this video chose to make the knight kill the trees using all weapons knights fighting in crusades use: a sword, a lance, a bow, and an ax. I cannot make more of this apart from the denomination means. Maybe on an allegorical level. The many ways he pierces those trees as in the many ways to ‘penetrate’ during sexual intercourse.

Now, going on with the mythological approach, we can definitely see how the myth of the Mandragora Officinarum is being shaped and completed. Everything from the birth, to the growth of the MO is present. Even the outrageous ‘dead man’s semen’ we’ve all been avoiding for so long.

Last, but not least, sustaining an archetypal approach, friends from the best iamamiwhoami discussion channel ever have found analogies with the archetype of the German Goddess Alraune. Now, if you would be so kind to read this short wiki description of the myth, you would understand where this analogy comes from. Very similar to the MO myth. Naturally.

Maybe one of the biggest discoveries in what the inspiration for these videos is concerned is a passage from David Brown’s ‘Tchaikovsky the Man and His Music’ referring to the Mandragora. See the ‘About the Knight’ section at the end of this article for details. That is major discovery, especially if you think about the fact that we couldn’t make much of the usage of paper sheets in the iamamiwhoami concept. This changes many things, if you think of it. If the Mandragora morphs into a piece of paper to stick to her knight’s ankle in order to make him see her and fall in love in the end, then we sort of realize what King Underpants is really after.

However, we cannot restrain ourselves to judging the campaign from this point of view only. Because there are many elements that just wouldn’t fit. It’s clear this campaign is a modern interpretation of everything the myth of the Mandragora Officinarum implies, starting with the myth itself and continuing with all the shapes this archetype takes in other works of literature it has inspired.

Another thing that intrigues me is the stick man shaped plant in the black pot.

doubleY

To me it looks like a double Y. Which makes a Psi (Greek alphabet). Which makes me think of a couple of analogies:

  • - Psi – 23rd letter in the Greek alphabet. Jonna Lee has one reference to Greece on her twitter account, I believe?
  • – Psi – as direct reference to psychology, to be more specific to a certain branch: parapsychology. read the first paragraph of the wiki description.
  • - Psi – more exactly the Psi-Theory and more specific the 5 basic needs that trigger behavior, among which species preserving needs (related to sexuality) and need for affiliation (signals of legitimacy).

I’m pretty sure there’s more to the black pot than the ye can see.

Lyrics:

Little hope, little home of heavenly
Come and save us from this ugly truth
Little hope, sprung from necessity
May all good things in life come to you

Little ghost, so innocent and carefree
They would never stop hunting you
Little voice, life got the best of me
And in time that’s what awaits you too

Little hope, sing a song of fire
I know I’m to be just like that
Little hope, little hope, sing a song of fire

Little hope, love is on the inside
If you want, you dream of life now
Little hope, little hope, sing a song of fire

I’ve seen the truth and it’s nothing like you said
I’ve seen your picture of a perfect world
Now you can touch the halo around my crowned head
So many questions, so many things unsaid

Other opinions to sustain video analysis:

We are captain underpants. We long for videos like we long for drugs. We search through page after page of websites for clues and answers then got bored at some point. After getting a new vid, we become maniacs again, forming our own theories and stories (such as a knight in a fairytale), attacking haters and trolls (trees) and wrong information along the way. samchanso - YT iamamiwhoami community

I like that one, makes sense, of course. But as relevant as that might sound, the concept just has to be more profound, right?

‘captain underpants’ is father time- is usually depicted as an elderly bearded man, dressed in a robe, carrying a scythe and an hourglass or other timekeeping device(in B an hourglass is turned over) jonna represents mother nature- In prehistoric times, goddesses were worshiped for their association with fertility, fecundity, and agricultural bounty. As for the sixes-She had eaten six pomegranate seeds and had to spend six? months with Hades – six months that represent fall and winter. I’m guessing the strawberries are actually pomegranates. Jonna last updated her blog with ‘GREECE’ as the title. dreamedwonderland

That’s an interesting point of view and TheBizkitt has completed it perfectly:

I really like the idea that aside from being based on the mandrake it’s also based on the mythology of the six pomegranate seeds and Persephone… Persephone is the daughter of the Goddess Demeter… Ring a bell? She is essentially the goddess of BOUNTY. There are essentially other ties to Demeter, such as how T’s video bears resemblance to Salvador Dali’s painting based on the Empress Tarot Card… A tarot said to be usually tied with Demeter. And of course the setting of the first? videos are kind of like an underworld.

Furthermore:

There is clear message of the videos going a long? with the theme of women are used + the environment is used. The discarding that you speak of Mandrake women doing is of a women leaving a man, who has essentially taken advantage of her and abusive (see the simulated rape scene in U-2)… The same way he abuses nature by wasting a lot of paper (which was once Trees). I see the foil forest scene as a sort of condensed telling of iamamiwhoami…? Kind of like a PLAY of sorts. The Mandrake woman gets the idea (a light-bulb) of leaving her *safe* womb and venturing off to the wilderness, only for a man (possibly in love with this women) to try and play the role of her protector her knight and shining armor, but ends up fucking everything up by destroying nature… The thing that had created the girl in the first place. I don’t think IAM kills the man, he kills himself. She only opens her eyes at the same time because she knows the part where he kills himself is coming, and is very pleased.

About the Knight:

“A knight falls in love with a beautiful lady, who spurns his affections. A feast at the castle. A minstrel sings a ballad about the omnipotent Mandragora. The knight searches in the secret forest for Mandragora. Night. Incantation. The Mandragora blossoms. The prince pulls it up from its roots—and it turns into a beautiful enchantress who, of course, immediately falls in love with him, and in the form of a page, attaches herself to his foot. However, the magic spell is cast, since in the knight’s beloved jealously is at first awakened, and then love. Finale—as a result of this reversal the unfortunate Mandragora turns back into a flower, and the lovers wed” samchanson via and via:1iam

2iam

At the end of everything, the thing that appears to be getting out of the pot is a sheet of paper/a letter:

GIF animations generator gifup.com

Other things I have noticed only after I got into the video frame by frame:

- owl throne

owlthrone

- foiled man’s head on the ground, bottom left, between trees: 5:27

headongrownd

- foiled dead soldier/knight laying on the ground, right beside Mandra: 3:20

foiled man on d ground

- what appear to be some cocoons, and if you’re watching carefully the scenes in the forest, there are many of them laying on the ground

cocoon

I am also looking at Y as being the symbol for the virgula divina (a dowsing rod), a ‘tool’ which shows the way towards water or which has the power to discover hidden treasures. Symbolically, it shows the way towards the origin (water, as the source of life) and towards hidden inner resources (treasures – like creativity, for example – hidden deep inside one’s conscious).

In the same range of symbols, the way the tree MO is born out of looks is interesting. First, because it reminded me of those Vanuatu music instruments here, and second, because:

treehole

Compare the sign for Mo with:

motree

The text is taken  from The Evolution of the Dragon by G. Elliot Smith, page 280. Read it here.

T – Back in the Kingdom, We Were Kings and Queens

7

Category : Entertainment, art

Motto: Back in the kingdom we were kings and queens and, oh, so strong, that God Himself could not contain us. Source

REFERENCES:

- decoding iamamiwhoami – the beginnings
- A Closer Look To iamamiwhoami’s b Video
- iamamiwhoami’s o video
- u-1
- u-2
- n from Nature/Natural
- T – back in the kingdom we were Kings and Queens
- And this is Y all that’s left is Hope

- Iamamiwhoami – The Book Of Changes – Hexagram Theory

- Iamamiwhoami – Sources of Inspiration
- Identity in iamamiwhoami
- An Archetypal and Mythological Approach to iamamiwhoami
- iamamiwhoami official youtube channel

Yes, I know it’s way late, but better now than never. I believe I let perishable pleasure take away from some of my passions. Vacation tends to make you forget about certain things.

Let’s have a look and see what iamaiwhoami’s ‘t’ video is all about:

First of all, it is clear we’re heading towards the so much commented upon BOUNTY theory, innit? So glad, so glad!

Second of all, I didn’t have time to watch the youtube channel and all the great people writing there, so this is purely an analysis of what I see in this video. Check iamamiwhoami’s channel for connections with reality.

Okay…

The video is built in a cyclic manner again, but this time the circle is more evident as the conveyed meaning as well. The symbolism of duality is more prominent in ‘t’. Everything starts in water and ends in the same place. The beginning is placed in the dark and the end is set in the same place. Now… what is the sole thing that begins and ends in water and darkness? LIFE.

Moving ahead, the ocean in which the female character is caught in the first images is a womb. Check out the first few seconds and you’ll see a couple of things: the woman is naked, she is underwater, in darkness, her feet are facing forward, then she’s turning towards us, we’re are witnessing her first twitch, her first contact with the earth (still underwater, she deepens her toes into the sand), and then she gets out of the water. Just like in the process of a child being born. Life and death. Sunrise and sundown. Day and night. Light and darkness.

On the surface of the water, three items float: a scepter, a crown and an imperial orb. All signs of power.  All signs of royalty. The most precious items of a king/queen/an emperor. Some interesting things besides what all of us know about these items.

  • Imperial Crown – Check out the first words in the wiki description: Imperial Crown was also a model of car from Imperial, the luxury division of the Chrysler Corporation. Funny. When you say crown, you also understand ‘tiara’. Heading back to the pageant girls video a little?
  • Imperial Orb- A normal imperial orb also has a cross on it, symbolizing Christ’s (the cross) dominion over the world (the orb). Given the fact that we’re dealing with a cross-less orb in this video, I could only think the message we’re being given is that we’re closer and closer to living in a world without God.
  • Imperial Scepter – Usually signifies authority, but I’m more interested in its representing the axis mundi.

Foiled items. Fake royal regalia icons.

But is this really the beginning or is it the end? The moments MO gets her royal regalia items are actually spread in the entire video. She gets her crown from above. From air. She gets her orb from the earth. And she gets her sceptre from the forest. From Nature.

The way she walks is very interesting as well. At first, with baby steps. Then, with child like steps. It’s like she’s playing. Then she walks backwards and foreword again, confused. Then she walks proud, like a queen, with firm steps. Then she walks like she dances, just like Mr. Underpants did in ‘u’. The places she walks in are also important, as she recrosses through many forms of relief. She’s basically going all around the world. Clearly a sign of generalization. She stands for any human being in this world.

The motif of the mirror is still present in ‘t’, only this time it is represented by water and its power to reveal or hide certain things. To give an example more of you might find relevant in my explanation, think of the underworld as a reversed world. Maybe some of you remember one scene from the latest Pirates of the Caribbean movie, when they have to turn the ship upside down to get back into the real world? That’s my point. And iamiamiwhoami is no stranger to this motif. They often go in the two worlds area, check ‘b’ and ‘n’. Besides, the first lyrics of the song starts with ‘above this world’, right? Taking that into account, analyze everything as given.

The reason for which certain items are wrapped in metal foil is because they represent contracted possessions, which are perishable, thus are, in fact, not as beautiful, not as valuable, not as COLORFUL as all the things nature has to offer. Such possessions are: cars, houses, money (palpable, quantifiable) and fame, POWER, etc (impalpable). Also, to me, foil is again a representation of the mirror motif. Foil acts like an opaque mirror. It doesn’t reflect and it doesn’t let you see what is behind it. The wrapped car suggests we’re being advised not to see what is behind the foil. We’re being advised to forget about perishable values.

Where you go after death, you go naked. This is why all those wrapped signs of power remain ABOVE the water, while she dives in naked.

Lyrics:

A backwards march, my back against
Meadows of fear, where it all began
And there’s a hunt
For the seeker who and the purest of hearts
Let the spirits be consumed

There’s a new world laid at your feet
We build an army from nothing
We raise our children to the beat
Of this comforting, bonding love

A fall went dark starting against
our ways and means,we’re not like them
I’m on a hunt to find a cure
And before I depart into the deepest hole

Behind the insecurity
There is wall of assurance
She is her own worst enemy
She fights her battles for no one

There’s a new world laid at your feet
We build an army from nothing
We raise our children to the beat
Of this comforting, bonding love

Let us sing here for a new beginning
You know that now
Water fills her lungs and she’s inhaling
You feel that now
Underneath the stars her body’s sinking
You do that now
A heavy sigh and not a sound

We had new lives to sacrifice
She makes her sin
, that turns the clock
And there’s a want for something new
Throw
my body at the stars
Where the angels look

Let us sing here for a new beginning
You know that now
Water fills her lungs and she’s inhaling
You feel that now
Underneath the stars her body’s sinking
You do that now
A heavy sigh and not a sound

Genius lyrics! Genius, I tell you! This entire iamaiwhoami concept speaks of how God gave people life, earth, values, of how people succeeded in turning everything around and lose the real meaning of all those things and of how it is time people got back to seeing and understanding those REAL MEANINGS again. MO is just a messenger and the messenger is going through the act of being alive and dieing on and on to make us understand, to make us go back to the beginnings. MO is a preaching child.

And there’s a halt
For the savior who had the purest of heart
Let this be with you soon

Her halt. iamamiwhoami’s halt. The purpose of this halt is for you to have your halt as well. Stop there for a moment and re-think your coordinates. Are you heading in the right way? As she is her worst enemy, each of us are our own enemies. She stands for us. She’s saying get out of that water/darkness, get your crown, scepter and royal collar and get out there into the Nature and walk in it. Walk into the mountains, into the forests, on lakes, into the Savannah, into the desert, get your kingdom back! Get your Holy Graal! Get your BOUNTY!

I think we’re getting closer and closer to Y. I, one, cannot wait for it!

Sorry if this has been somehow superficial. I feel there are many more things I could say about this video. But it’s hard, oh, so hard to think with so many distractions around! I swear I am my worst enemy!

LEs:

I was thinking about the three signs of royalty. I could easily interpret them as portraying a human being’s mind, body and soul. She collects them from air, nature and earth. Well, the action seems to be reversed, actually, like she leaves them. So it would be like when she finishes one circle of life, she leaves her body in the ground (the orb), her mind all around in nature (the scepter) and she leaves her soul somewhere above 9the crown). In the reversed way, when she begins a new circle of life, she collects the ‘items’ again, until she’s complete (queen).

One very important thing that we should all think about is the fact that there is no cat appearing in this video. Instead, we have a slug in the beginning of T. The explanation is simple, if you think of it, and I can’t believe it took me so much to figure it out: the cat stands for domesticity, she represents the inside of a house, she represents home, while the slug, guess what? It’s homeless… ’cause it doesn’t have a shell, right? This taken into account, we could easily spot where iamamiwhoami places the action of each video. T is about the outside, it’s about freedom, it’s about not being trapped inside some human house.

I tried to explain to myself what the role of that collar she’s wearing along with the crown, scepter and orb is and the only thing that maybe would make sense is that maybe they wanted to trace once again the dichotomy body and mind. You can connect it to the Elizabethan collar in O, if you want, but here, it appears it is worn for a certain purpose: to draw an imaginary barrier between one’s head and one’s body. I immediately thought of Christianity and the way in which the Byzantine mosaics for example used to define a boundary between the immortal soul and the forsaken (!) body.

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