Celina Summers's Blog, page 10

David Bowie, Iconographic Control, Blackstar, And Death

I knew there was a reason I couldn't sleep last night. 
For the past couple of days I've had a killer migraine--the keep one eye closed in order to see kind--and to say that my stomach has been upset is a major understatement. I used to have nasty migraines when I was young, but this is the first mega-migraine I've had in years. For some reason, around 5:30 this morning I randomly checked my Twitter--something I refuse to do before noon--and got gutted. 
David Bowie is dead. 
As I read the news that he'd been battling cancer for 18 months, all of a sudden a lightbulb went off in my head--and it was shaped like a Blackstar--the 10 minute jazz-pop fusion grotesque and yet enchanting title song/video of Bowie's latest...now last...album. If you haven't seen this video yet, you need to. 
Why? 
Because it's David Bowie saying goodbye to David Bowie...and demanding that we do as well.
Blackstar and its followup piece Lazarus share similar themes/iconography/images, and now that the news has churned its way into my writer's soul, I realize that Bowie, the chameleon before Madonna ripped her first fishnets, had not only reinvented himself once again but had done so with his own imminent death in mind.  

This video is vintage Bowie...without being vintage. From the beginning image of what could very well be a crash-landed and long dead Major Tom, through the bejewelled skull of the Thin White Duke to the blind prophet with button eyes (and I never thought button eyes could get creepier than in Gaiman's Coraline) to the three scarecrows being crucified as the sacrifice to a vicious and hungry entity--but particularly in Bowie's pronounced emaciation and the jerky, spasmodic movements of his acolytes the viewer is simultaneously horrified and entranced by the sheer artistic beauty and macabre power of Bowie's always haunting voice. 
From the day of executionFrom the day of executionOnly women kneel and smileAt the centre of it all At the centre of it all--your eyes--your eyes
Bowie's acolytes--or are they his murderers?--repetitively engage in their stop-motion dance of death, and the song suddenly changes:
Something happened on the day he diedSpirit rose a metre and stepped asideSomebody else took his place, and bravely cried(I’m a blackstar, I’m a blackstar)​How many times does an angel fall?How many people lie instead of talking tall?He trod on sacred ground, he cried loud into the crowd(I’m a blackstar, I’m a blackstar, I’m not a gangster)
And when you follow that up with the video for Lazarus--
 --the button-eyed prophet is now in a hospital bed, from which he rises to resurrect--literally--that thin white duke, jumpsuit, high heels and all. And then the lyrics--

Look up here, I’m in heavenI’ve got scars that can’t be seenI’ve got drama, can’t be stolenEverybody knows me now
Look up here, man, I’m in dangerI’ve got nothing left to loseI’m so high it makes my brain whirlDropped my cell phone down below
Ain’t that just like me
By the time I got to New YorkI was living like a kingThen I used up all my moneyI was looking for your ass
This way or no wayYou know, I’ll be freeJust like that bluebirdNow ain’t that just like me

My God. It hits you like a punch in the gut. David Bowie, who has had such an incredible influence over six decades of music, wrote his own Requiem. He starred in his own Passion Play--The Passion of Ziggy Stardust is encapsulated in these two songs and particularly in the videos for them. He not only creates his death iconography, but he demands that we accept his version of events as his reality because he leaves us no choice. But he is not the scarecrow on the cross of martyrdom waiting for his monster to consumer him, he is instead a visionary without vision--a priest without any religion save the religion of self-command, and he compels us to cede our control to him as well. 
All of this is merely speculation. As much as I would love to channel Bowie, I would never presume to say that i know what he was thinking when he came up with this. I can only speculate, as a lifelong fan of Bowie's who has spent literally decades trying to decipher the workings of his brilliant yet tortured artistic muse. But this morning, when the news that David Bowie was dead at 69 filtered into my sleep deprived brain, all of the deciphering I've done over the past few weeks of Blackstar and then a few days ago Lazarus slammed into my mind with the completion one usually feels when the last piece of the puzzle slides inevitably into its proper place. 
Two life events we, as human beings, are absolutely incapable of influencing--our births and our deaths. Only with the latter can we find a way to reconcile ourselves to the inescapable finality of our final hours. But an artist like Bowie, beloved by legions of people aged 70 to 7, has another opportunity to impact those unknowns who loved them--and that is the artist's individual perception not only of death, but their own death. Just as Mozart spent his last hours feverishly fingering orchestration for his great final masterpiece Requiem, so did Bowie spend his last year of life masterminding the iconography of his final masterpiece. For believe me--Blackstar is Bowie's Requiem, his farewell to all his incarnations, his fans, and, at the end, himself. 
I can’t answer why (I’m a blackstar)Just go with me (I’m not a filmstar)I’m-a take you home (I’m a blackstar)Take your passport and shoes (I’m not a popstar)And your sedatives, boo (I’m a blackstar)You’re a flash in the pan (I’m not a marvel star)I’m the great I am (I’m a blackstar)
It is, at the end, both a curse and a gift. A curse against the inevitability of time and disease, and a gift of a true artist's last, brilliant self-image. Whatever happened, David Bowie didn't die cringing and weeping for his fate. He screamed defiantly into the night, and soared beyond all the petty fears that drive so many of us when facing our own mortality. 
Godspeed, David Bowie, to whatever distant star is your Blackstar. 
@all lyrics-- David Bowie, Blackstar (2016) VEVO Music

Let's Bring Cursed: The Bell Witch to a Merciful Close

First off, let me apologize for not posting this blog earlier. I'm recovering (slowly)from strep and not only could I not blog about the show, I couldn't even watch the show.

Only so much crap one can endure when sick. 
Apparently, I didn't miss too much since the first thing that happened the final episode was a pagan ceremony to appease the 'sentinel' that started the curse because John Bell desecrated the land--a ceremony that goes back centuries and was even mentioned by Julius Caesar in his self-aggrandizing book Commentaries on the Gallic Wars. Ancient Druids used to burn actual people, but later ones, instead of burning a human (as we Christians would be doing only a few centuries later) constructed an effigy of straw or wicker and set it on fire on the summer solstice. Pagans, Wiccans, and other non-Judeo-Christian religions and/or groups still practice this ceremony today. In fact, the ceremony has evolved into a popular kind of festival such as the Burning Man Project in Black Rock City, Nevada.  And if you look closely at the straw man John sets on fire, you'll note its similarity to the little corn dolly that showed up dangling from a tree in an earlier episode as well as the ones that showed up randomly in The Blair Witch Project--and the universality of the figure is probably the only thing that is keeping the Blair Witch producers from suing A&E for copyright infringement. 
I have to wonder, though, if there's a tongue in cheek nudge involved from the producers of Cursed. Maybe the 'straw man' is representative of how we usually use the phrase--an argument or position that is offered as a deliberate red herring by someone to his opponent, and then defended by him in such as manner as to deflect his opponent's real interest away from something that he wishes to hide. A sham argument, in fact. An intentional and premeditated falsehood, used to completely obfuscate the originator's real purpose or vulnerability. 
At any rate, the burning of the straw man was touted as the way to appease the sentinel who was cursing the Bell family as a result of the desecration of sacred land. It is irrefutable that there are many Native American burial sites in and around Adams and on the old Bell homestead. There's even an empty grave in the Bell Witch Cave. Contemporaries of the haunting themselves believed that there was potentially a Native American tie to the entity, and I know for a fact that belief has persisted through the oral and written legends in the area.

But something doesn't quite ring true on that front for me. Remember when we discussed what type of haunting the Bell Witch was and I hypothesized that the entity was inhuman. Never having walked the earth as a human, that would relegate the spirit to a demonic-type haunting--something that I believe is borne out by the events of the Bell haunting and the torments employed against not just the family but neighbors, slaves, and even total strangers. In fact, John Zaffis appeared to share my opinion on the show--which makes me wonder something very basic.

They had a foremost demonologist on set and yet they still thought burning a Blair Witch effigy in a mockery of an ancient pagan ceremony was going to resolve the 'curse' aka/the haunting on the Bell land? I refuse to believe that Zaffis was standing behind the camera going, "Yeah, man--burning a six foot tall corn dolly will solve all your problems." And so, I have to believe that no one bothered to ask Zaffis what to do.

And the only reason they wouldn't have? Because there was never any intention of resolving the haunting, and because there was never any curse. So imagine my surprise when--shock!--the ritual didn't work.

I'm sure it has nothing to do with the fact that if someone is going to undertake 'magic'--and make no mistake, that's what this ritual was intended to be--then that person needs to

1) Believe in the religious/magical source of the ritual.
2) Know what they're doing.
3) Mean it.

I don't think any of those elements were in place.

Which brings us to Pastor James Vivian.

*sigh*

Folks, I've been in that cave countless times. I've explored the land. I've gone to the cemeteries both during the day and in the middle of the night. I've heard organ music in a field in the middle of nowhere, dodged creepy animals sitting in the middle of the road, and when I knocked on Mr. Eden's door while he was at the store heard the furniture shifting around inside the house. And believe me when I tell you, sitting in the Bell Witch Cave shouting "I break the curse!" isn't going to do a damn thing but make whatever inhabits that place laugh. A lot. Loudly.

Kind of like I did.

Keep in mind, too, that the Bells were devout Christians, and two of their staunchest allies and supporters during the haunting were the two local ministers. But that didn't affect Kate, because she not only could quote chapter and verse of the Bible, sing hymns, and argue theology but she actually attended church services both with and without the family. Facts which are documented both within and outside the family. So while I cannot dispute the power of prayer, I have to say with one hundred percent certainty that nothing has changed in Adams--or the cave.

Also, too, I seriously doubt that the current owners of the cave (who are turning it into a tourist spot) would permit anyone to exorcise their pet profit-making scheme. No way. Adams doesn't have much--a deserted pre-Depression downtown of crumbling buildings no bigger than a block, a Dollar Store, a community center. The annual Adams Threshers Show is awesome fun, but aside from that all that's there are farms and the Witch. That's it. So the idea that they would jeopardize that is ludicrous.

In the end, A&E's Cursed: The Bell Witch was nothing but...well...bullshit. It was obviously a (poorly) scripted show, that distorted the legend and the history in order to make spurious and patently ridiculous claims regarding this so-called curse that, according to John's own pre-show monologue, apparently only has affected what? Three guys in two hundred years?

Some curse.

And what's lost in Hollywood crapola like this is the REAL legend, the REAL human witnesses, the REAL toll upon the small frontier community of Adams. And not only that, but the absolutely ridiculous way the show portrayed the people of Adams, Robertson County, and Tennessee is grossly insulting and stereotypical. Showing people at a local diner as suspicious people who have it in for the two 'investigators' is just stupid. And throughout the whole affair, the two men--who are from Mississippi, after all, and should be careful about what they condescend to--acted as if they thought their lives were in some kind of danger, running around in the woods with their guns AS IF A BULLET COULD STOP A GHOST.

Almost criminally negligent, in my opinion, and the show's producer's should never be cut loose ever again in public to film any sort of *reality* show ever again.

So there you have it. We all wasted five weeks of our lives on a show that was a piece of garbage, with absolutely nothing to recommend it from beginning to end. If you are interested in the Bell Witch, I recommend that you get the books by MV Ingram and Charles Bailey Bell. They will tell you the real story. Go to Adams, and meet the wholly friendly and kind folks who live there. Go through the little museum and the restored slave cabin, check out the cave and the cemetery. And go in October, so you can check out the play that my old friends from the theater department at APSU put on there every fall. They are all much better actors than I ever was, and I had a nice little career on the stage for a full decade after leaving the area.

Because you'll find out everything you ever wanted to know about the legend that way, instead of wasting your brain cells on a farce like Cursed: The Bell Witch.

A&E should be ashamed of itself. This whole ordeal has convinced me of one thing at least.

I'll never watch another show on that channel, and I strongly advise you to do the same.

So let's toss this stupid straw man on the bonfire, watch it burn, and head to a bar. Much better way to spend our time.