Inside the Invisible Circus, Part Huh?

ok Truepz. . . weirdid we leaveoff?

.... wars of antedeluvian sorcerers, blood carne-vales, staying too long at the faer...

self-awareness and resonance of place: the sentience of the land, often latent, as with eruptions or quakes . . . earth's conservation of mood, action, necessity -- earth's exponential, potential power when these are combined and repeated as ritual [wrote that paragraph on May 2]

toss in Penny Lane, Invisible Medical Facility Circuses, and Priestesses of the Black Oak

qwite a kollekshun o kritturz! (lol the Show Goes On)

Meanwhile Back in Ring Two, this from Yaho/oracle:

Corruption Trial Bares Vegas Secrets

By KEN RITTER, Associated Press Writer Sun Apr 30, 2:14 PM ET

LAS VEGAS - Even in a town used to baring it all — where gangster Bugsy Siegel is considered a founding father, showgirls are a way of life and old-timers fondly recall when the mob ran the casinos — the revelations in a political corruption trial have been shocking.

[abridged]


ack! and someone promised me Bingo Nite!

is it too late to just go bowling?

McCartney's "Penny Lane" (lyrics below) infers Penny Arcade, therefore a "carnival" of "low order" -- way downtown -- broadly The Meatpuppet Market of life, but more pointedly, perhaps . . . Las Vegas which, despite its ritzy glitzy tittified exterior, is the Shearing Capital of the World, lotsa bodies out in the desert etc

St. Pepper's L.H.C. Band, the "act you've known for all these years," is led by supposedly-apocryphal "one and only Billy Shears" . . . like "tourguides" Jolly Jimmy Johnson" and "Miss Winters" in the film Magical Mystery Tour, Billy shears the goats, lambs, rubes etc . . . hmm, is that the Voice of Known Patriot "Butcher Bill Cutting" radio-ing in from Ground Zero?

some have suggested the Beatles' "twenty years ago today" (prior to the album's release) referred to the death of Crowley in 1947

what's more certain is: the Cirque du Soleil/Beatles/Mirage Casino collaboration, "Love," opens in one month

fleabit old hippies all over zion must be skritchin their noggins and asking the protocosmic Question: uh . . . huh?

would the original Beatles have approved? how much resistance to commercialism and/or power was lost with George Harrison? how influential have Lennon and Harrison's widows become in deciding "Beatles matters"?

in Vegas, cash is King (well, Queen actually)

there can only be one king of this world, and if it's Cash, well . . . cash don't last, and methinks we can all do better

Vegas also commerizes sex, and thus profits from the alienation and degradation of libido

the show is advertised, after all, as "LOVE"

like the Beach Boys, the Beatles' once sounded clean, though not altogether pure (nothing is)

. . . but very, very clean -- and hopeful for the right reasons -- like the best of the new generation of american boys

"Penny Lane" perhaps captures that adolescent verve and hope, the sense of belonging -- a familiarity attached not only to persons, but to place . . . natural and non-natural "environmental" features resonating the environment, transposing with the citizenry . . . sacralizing and immotalizing the ordinary

"Penny Lane" reanimates a geographic, social, and psychic landscape, resurrecting it with slight variation in fifty million frontal lobes, a generation's innocence and zeal and mojo gathered like thunderclouds and suspended not only in a specific song, but in a specific place and mood . . . needletracked into vinyl and the collective mind

echoic evocation of mood is especially important to hypnosis and sorcery

in Liverpool, Penny Lane junctions with Smithdown Road to form a crossroads, a-hem . . . the Penny Arcade as lure, a four-card monte, providing streetside entertainment while roasting the "passengers" down in "Old Smithy"

"Penny Lane" was first a single, flipside to Lennon's "Strawberry Fields Forever," then later included on Magical Mystery Tour

the promo film for "Penny Lane" was filmed not in England's Penny Lane/Smithdown neighborhood, but in the East End's "Angel Lane"

Lennon was raised at 251 Menlove Avenue (locally called "Mendips")

Wikipedia reports two morsels:

The mysterious lyrics "A four of fish and finger pie" are British slang. "A four of fish" refers to fourpennyworth of fish and chips, while "finger pie" is a gratuitous sexual reference.


and:

Upon the release of the "Penny Lane" single, Douglas Adams claimed to have beaten up a child who'd heard the song on the radio, reportedly just to get him to hum the tune.


the wink-and-nod "joke" by author Douglas Adams suggests the tangential, subtly coercive aspect of the song -- a tune containing the ouroboric "meanwhile back" hook/chorus


In Penny Lane there is a barber showing photographs
Of ev’ry head he’s had the pleasure to know
And all the people that come and go
Stop and say ‘Hello’

On the corner is a banker with a motorcar,
The little children laugh at him behind his back
And the banker never wears a mac
In the pouring rain - very strange

Penny Lane is in my ears and in my eyes
There beneath the blue suburban skies I sit
and meanwhile back

In Penny Lane there is a fireman with an hourglass
And in his pocket is a portrait of the Queen
He likes to keep his fire engine clean
It’s a clean machine

Penny Lane is in my ears and in my eyes
A four of fish and finger pies in summer
meanwhile back

Behind the shelter in the middle of the roundabout
The pretty nurse is selling poppies from a tray
And though she feels as if she’s in a play
She is anyway

In Penny Lane
the barber shaves another customer
We see the banker sitting waiting for a trim
And then the fireman rushes in
From the pouring rain - very strange

Penny Lane is in my ears and in my eyes
There beneath the blue suburban skies I sit
and meanwhile back

...Penny Lane!

beneath the song's cheery, synathestic, beer-hall presentation, McCartney is revealing Something else -- the lyric is labyrinthine, a comfortable prison . . . the customers in Penny Lane's magickal circus ring, like the characters in the film Magical Mystery Tour, are penned by myriad obsessive, earthly attachments -- the greatest collective obsession being the Circus itself -- (mostly) unconscious, vast, powerful, leviathanesque

the "Barber" opens and closes the lyric, because he's the circusmaster, shearing the sheep, er, patrons -- who are "heads" (addicts of various sorts)

the Barber's "photographs" suggest transtemporality and, again, a kind of spiritual "capture" inferring blackmail (a la the "prisoners" in iconography of the Egyptian underworld)

the Banker's distinguishing characteristic is his imperviousness to rain, i.e., the natural elements of this world, suggesting

1) a magickal shielding or cloaking or, at minimum, some type of occult power or alliance (probably via el jefe, the Barber)

and/or

2) reference to a Mackintosh -- a rubber raincoat -- with strong undertones in the song of British "rubber fetishism" (thus, the Banker prefers his golden showers au naturel)

the kids secretly mock the Banker, seeing through his motives

as for the Fireman -- could be different in Jolly Olde, but in 'merica Firemen don't use hourglasses LOL! . . . but these are more like our-glasses, prolly

:O)

apparently this "Fire man," however, has a Thang for the Regina Monologue -- keeps a snapshot of his long lost love handy for, uh, for investigative purposes only ma'am

but the Fireman is an honorable knight of the Queen . . . a defender and custodian of Earth, whose "hourglass" keeps kosmik time [NOT to be differentiated from STANDARD time, from which it isn't]

:O)

McCartney's Penny Lane Tourbus leads us verse by verse through the familiar, alluring, jolly, infernal neighborhood: the Barber's butchery and malice, the Banker's greed, the Fireman's lust, and finally -- in the very heart of the "roundabout," in the hidden control room at Grand Central Station

-- there is Queen Again, this time dressed as Sister Morphine, selling beauty and comfort (sexuality and drugs, specifically "poppies from a tray" . . . but, somehow, trapped now in her own Artifice du Matir, by forces and circumstances greater than her highness

poppies were the chief poison of Oz' Wicked Witch of the West, and the Witch/Miss Gulch were unacknowleged shadows of Dear Old Autie Em, of course . . . with witch the new western female was, and still is, struggling like Dorothy

"Miss Gulch" owns "half the county" and Aunt Em -- though unstated, because unconscious -- owns the other half!

the Kansas of Oz, like the Kansas of America, is a matriarchate, ruled by elder females

the males in Oz are weak, mostly phony, or goofy farm-hands -- and on The Farm, everybody (including Uncle Henry) openly defer to Aunt Em

meanwhile back . . .

in the Pen, the Show goes on

the carousel grinds around, the horses sweat blood, and deep in the roundabout's heart, the Pretty Nurse is selling poppies, the Barber shaving patrons, the Banker drooling for his carne cut

the song closes with the Fireman, perhaps apocalyptically, "rushing in" from the same "pouring rain" from which the Banker never shelters

the Fireman/rain is a kind of paradox, a complexio oppositorum -- like a hard day's night . . . and in this Hard Rain, the whole circus wheel's on fire, and a fireman's job is to, well, put fires out

"Penny Lane" also resonates with "Magical Mystery Tour," a film that attempts to externalize, to make conscious, to reveal the modern magickal process -- the Invisible Circus

that, hopefully, is next