iamamiwhoami; rascal

May 21st, 2012

All sins, my dear girl, are brought here by the hot south wind from out of the desert. Where the sun burns through endless centuries there hovers over the sleeping sands a thin white haze that forms itself into soft white clouds that float around until the desert whirlwinds roll them and form them into strange round eggs that contain the sun’s blazing heat.

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There the basilisk slinks around through the pale night. In a strange manner the moon, the eternally infertile moon, fathered it. Yet its mother, the desert sand, is just as infertile as the other is. It is the secret of the desert. Many say it is an animal but that is not true. It is a thought that has grown where there is no soil or no seed. It sprang out of the eternally infertile and took on a chaotic form that life can not recognize. That is why no one can describe this creature. It is fashioned out of nothingness itself.

rascal = spoiled child; charlatan, devil; domineering person, tease; person who fools others, fake; one that is playfully mischievous, deceptive; incubus

Lyrics (approx.):

Empty womb
At a single draft alone
Drain this run
The farthest one can come too close

Life could be better if I let me in
(What is to hold onto?)
But I force myself towards departing
(Leaving is what you do)

I had to rub my dirty in the soil
I have to be the rascal taking all
I wanted us to live in times of bliss
I couldn’t evoke the memories I had missed

Left this wound
Abandoned my ideals for what?
(Want to be just like you)
Molded like I’m shaped in size with anyone
(Standing like I’m next to)
(Everyone just like you)

I had to rub my dirty in the soil
I have to be the rascal taking all
I wanted us to live in times of bliss
I couldn’t evoke the memories I had missed

Shut your eyes fast, it all goes blank
channel the vision, feel the scent of
Someone who dared to lose it all
Someone who’s ready to take the fall for it

(Shut and lightened up, when we rose)

I’m taking all, imma take you all
(I was the rascal I’m taking all)
Let me take you all
I’m taking all, am I taking all
I was the rascal taking all, I’m gonna take you all

It’s hard to describe in words what iamamiwhoami manages to describe through choice of scenery, face expressions and body language, but what I see and feel with rascal is the dryness of the soul tormented by empty hunt, the thirst of the body drained by arid loss, the perseverance of the mind driven by yen of self discovery and self healing. The simpler the videos get, the more they speak to me, and the more they make me ask other and other questions.

Rascal begins where idle talk ended and, even though I was expecting a beach, this desert seems to fit better in the story. MO is crawling on the sand, her moves slow and demanding, accompanied by the heavy sound of a drum, similar the beat of a funeral. Speaking of audio, notice how the incipient sounds, just like water getting drained from a container. And then like sand taking over. Dryness ahead.

She’s either running from something, or run towards something. The farthest one can come too close could refer to someone following her, reason for which she risks the dryness of the desert just to escape it. What if we’re dealing again with two different MOs? It’s very possible. The first one is band aid MO and the second one is white gown MO. Or… again, the two sides of her self, which would explain life could be better if I let me in. I like this option better because it’s like a process of healing we’re witnessing. First she’s covered in band aids, crawling, barely moving ahead, she often stumbles, sits for a while to take her breath and so on, while, towards the end, she loses her band aids (a sign of wounds healing, whatever those wounds are) and she even manages to escape sand and find a rocky field. Rocks, as opposed to sand, suggest stability. They cannot be moved, like sand. And it’s MO’s face expressions and even lyrics that suggest exactly that. She’s drained, but she’s found the way out of the desert, so she’s turning towards us, looks the viewer right in the eyes and… well… she looks like she’s threatening. Her face promises some sort of revenge. She looks stronger now. Her gesture in the end, when she sits on a rock and she looks beaten, that’s not her being dismayed by not finding something, that’s her breathing out in relief and resting her body after having reached a cross line.

What came into my mind these days, right after one of my readers posted a comment, is the fact that we must not forget about what happens in sever, what sever means in the end and what MO portrays in that video. Everything after sever makes sense if we keep in mind what it means. The presence of the clumps, the presence of multiple MOs (most of the times in opposite pairs) and so on. If she’s a patient in a mental institution, sever depicts a split in her mind, drops depicts a major downfall and the start of a battle, the fight a mentally disturbed (depressive, anxious etc) individual bares inside himself, good worker presents an inner dialogue (even a submissive patient, why not, one analyzing the use/benefits of treatment), play portrays the extent of self control loss (plus applied techniques to cure the split – electroshock), in due order shows the power of a balanced mind (the power of treatment), idle talk is the effect of balancing, a want for coming back, rascal represents the devastating effects of the applied cure (a wiping of memories/imagination/harming thoughts – the clumps turned to dust and that desert sand she’s wandering in) and the hard process of healing. Hopefully, kill will portray the end of the split in sever, hopefully something will be left behind forever.

At this point, all the sand in rascal makes sense. Sand is flat, dry, uniform. The mind of a mentally disturbed person after having taken medication. Empty. Full of vast nothingness. Yet in continuous, assiduous search. In the first images, we even have the impression MO’s going. Right there, when she stops, her face planted in the sand, her hands unable to raise her body up. That’s he mind close to being completely erased. Yet she gets herself up, and starts rebuilding memories, she starts searching, wandering through the dunes.

Light plays an important role in rascal. To me it’s like I am witnessing at what MO does during a day. The video starts in darkness (twilight) and ends in dimness (dawn), its middle very luminous.  The cycle of the sun, if you want, crawling from darkness to light, an allegory of the process of healing, again.

The very first time I heard about the title of this track being released I hoped it would somehow take me back to the beginnings and here it is. To me, rascal describes Mandragora herself. It’s the ‘it’s me’ here. She’s the one molded like she’s shaped in size with anyone (the androgynous appearance of the plant). She’s the one who forces herself towards departing (always trying to run from her catchers’ grasp) and the one who would take all when she cannot do that (killing those who keep her captured and those whose object of affection she becomes).

How I wish we had the official lyrics for this track! To know exactly where to go, what to look at…

rascal cover

Check out 202ok‘s amazing audio analysis of rascal here. Makes things so comprehensive!

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iamamiwhoami; idle talk

May 14th, 2012

idle talk = foolish or irrelevant talk; barren, abandoned, empty talk

Lyrics (approx.):

Where are you, my long lost love?
It feels like yesterday has parted
I held you closest to my trusted heart
Now the withdraw seems to be starting

You’re not like anyone I’ve known (I’ve ever met)
With you, I flourish into greatness
Extend my arms into a misty light
Making my future path seem weightless

Quiet undertaking of fair promises, I stopped hearing you grow
Quite an understatement, when hopes of a season is hidden in snow

I should have kept you safe, shielded from approaching wolves

Where are you, my parted son?
The last I saw of you was sinking
Into a giant hole of nothingness
As my desire started shrinking

Or if I choose to take you back, (Swear I’m gonna make ya’)
If I stand up for my believing, (If you can steal me, I’ll come back)
Can we make up for all the joy we’ve lacked? (If was the motion you were making)
Can we start giving and receiving? (I won’t stop moving ’til we leave, oh)

Quiet undertaking of fair promises, I stopped hearing you grow
Quite an understatement, when hopes of a season is hidden in snow

(It’s the same, the same, the same, the same, the same, the same, the same, the same) [reversed]
Where are you, my long lost love?
It feels like yesterday has parted…

Add idle talk to that triangle I was talking about with the in due order post. Place it somewhere in the middle maybe, because, as far as I’m concerned, idle talk MO is the unified play and in due order MO. The first images of the video depict her laying on her back again. She’s dreaming once more and she likes what she dreams. If you take a look at what she is wearing, we’re dealing with in due order MO dressed in play MO clumpy coat. A hybrid. This, to me, tells me that she’s managed to make a choice between body and mind/ two sides of her brain and this choice, fortunately, does not exclude anything, but mixes everything, balancing all traits of her self for the great purpose of finding the perfect measure.

This is the moment I think we should say goodbye to the five clumps. The reconstructed MO is able to turn her fears into dust. Mission accomplished. Or is it… One very interesting thing is how this image is arranged. It’s like when the clumps turned to dust they’ve been splattered against some imaginary walls. I could not figure out why yet, I see those boundaries and cannot understand why…

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The moment she trades the horizontal for the vertical coincides with the changing of setting. She is now back into the field at the beginning of play, from where she went down under, into the ‘dusty hole’. MO looks around, seems comfortable wearing her dusty coat.

The act of placing the hat on her head is the opposite of the act of leaving her helmet behind in drops. The meaning of this gesture is that she’s regaining control of her mind, she starts to compose herself, remember some memories of the real world. Notice how she places the hat on her head and adjusts it until it gets in the right place. That’s her readjusting to(wards) reality. Only after that does she move.

Whoever she is talking to does not exist or is prohibited for her to see/meet. She does talk about love, but it is idle talk and she knows it. The use of ‘parted’ in ‘where are you my parted son’ is very important because it describes a separation (sever). A son that has been taken away from her. It is now that I would make an Alraune reference again and say that this ‘son’ is the prince I was talking about here . The child in Y. The act of touching her womb, accompanied by the fact that she’s weeping comes to sustain the idea of this separation. Taking a look at the lyrics, it’s clear she’s singing about love and the loss of it. The loss a mother suffers at birth, when her child is taken away from her (I should have kept you safe, hidden from approaching wolves – such an Alraune reference to me).

The images showing MO in the middle of the field have a deeper meaning. First of all, it all starts with a flashback of the white room in sever, the wardrobe doors opening and closing to be more precise. That flashback acts like a calling. It’s clearly a memory of the real and it’s there she wants to go back now because that would be the place from where her journey must continue. Yet to get in that place, she needs an exit.

The closest exit is represented by birds. As stated before, they are a sign of freedom and a sign of the outside world (just like  in sever). MO is extending her arms, as if wanting to take her flight (Extend my arms into a misty light/Making my future path seem weightless) or as if waiting for birds to come sit on them (freedom to come to her, oh, what an easy way that would be!). I forgot who talked about it on the youtube board, but the idea was extremely interesting. That person said something like the fact that the clumps are a representation of her fears and she is now wearing the clump coat, MO herself becomes an object of fear, a scarecrow, reason for which the birds do not sit on her arms (freedom does not come to her), on the contrary, they spatter her with bird poop.

Of course, her arms extended remind us of the images in T and, if you want, the image of the current MO is the opposite of the T MO. While MO in T was covered in milk, a nourishing substance, and she was the queen of those lands, this MO is covered in bird poop and she looks pretty close to a homeless person, all dusty and stuff, haha!

Again, while acting like a scarecrow, she has flashbacks of familiar places, the forests in good worker/T. She appears to remember the other exit, a road she has once taken (has been drawn on in good worker) and now has to take back. Thus she begins her walk. Movement looks normal, it takes place from left to right and somewhat upwards. She MUST be heading towards subjective reality! Her walk is pretty confident too.

And that’s exactly where she’s going, because the next images show MO in a white room, similar to the one in sever. I take this is not her room, but the one in which CU was holding the doors of the wardrobe for the clump not to get out. She’s also wearing her sever outfit. This room is the one she initially wanted to reach and everything that happened in between sever and idle talk was part of the road.

It’s what’s in the wardrobe that she’s interested in. Whatever hides in there is something she fears herself, yet she seems strong enough to want to open that door. The lyrics accompanying these images are sang backwards and they say it’s the same, the same, the same which I think is very important. As she opens the door, sand pours in, and the movement she does with her feet is the exact twitch she does in T, underwater. Are we at the beginning of another road? It seems so, as MO steps inside, gets on her knees and starts to crawl into darkness, the door closing behind her. The wardrobe is a portal, a ‘dusty hole’, a time tunnel (remember the sandals in B, sand measuring time). Another way out of the white room, just like the clump she descended through in sever.

One day after idle talk was released, Coopmusicita tweeted this instagram picture accompanied by To be or… iamamiwhoami

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I was saying at that time that the picture could be relevant IF the story still follows Alraune up to a certain extent.

The body of the prostitute, Alma Raune, was assigned for dissection since her relatives in Halberstadt raised no claims and refused to pay the cost of burial when they were notified. The Anatomy professor Holzberger used it in his lectures and assigned parts of it to each of his students to study. These certainly contributed vastly to their education except for the head, which had been given to senior medical student Fassman of the Hansea fraternity. He was supposed to prepare it as a finished skull but forgot it over vacation. He decided that he already had enough skulls and no longer needed to clean it. Instead he fashioned a beautiful dice cup out of the top of the skull. He already had five dice that had been made from the vertebrae of the executed murderer Noerrissen and now they needed a suitable dice cup.

Hence that would be the skull of the prostitute (; john). Of course… no idea how we’re gonna get to that, but anything is possible with iamamiwhoami, isn’t it?

Check out 2020k‘s audio analysis of idle talk here.

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