The Death & Resurrection Show
This blog is about ancient religions and sources of wisdoms.
It is about the people who dare go to Hell and back.
To tell stories that heal, stories that give meanings.
Rogan Taylor’s Model of Shamanism
Back in 2018, I read Rogan P. Taylor’s The Death and Resurrection Show: From Shaman to Superstar (1985). It is a book that traces the origins of modern showbusiness and superstardom back into the ancient religions of the tribal Shamans. While the arguments Taylor makes seem supported by anthropological evidence, particularly from Siberian and Native American tribes, it is undoubtedly somewhat vibesy, somewhat mystic argument…yet an extremely compelling, exciting, and novel one.
Humans roamed the Earth as hunter-gatherer tribes for the vast majority of our existence as species, before the first states and organized religions appeared and fundamentally changed our way of life. During this time, humans constantly settled new environments, faced new challenges, and were forced to adapt and change. We started eating everything that would not kill us, inhabited the most extreme environments, developed large brains and languages, which allowed us to store and share ideas, and evolve and change even more. This "change causes terror. It can also create joy. It is feared and worshipped, pursued and shunned. Inevitable. Unavoidable” (p. 14). In such a world of anxious change, humans seek meaning that will make us worship and pursue that change, rather than fear and shun it.
The ancient religions were in the business of selling the “magic of Change” (p. 15). What were these shamanistic religions like? According to Taylor, “a belief in spirits is the fundamental assumption of peoples who practice shamanism“ (p. 17). Spirits were all around people, in the animals, plants, and objects. Taylor makes a claim that ancient people saw the Cosmos as three-tiered: humans occupying the everyday, observable Middleworld, with the Underworld below them, and the Upperworld above them. Spirits lived in all three tiers, controlled everything important in life, and they could travel from any world to the Middleworld, where they could not only work their magic on shaping reality, but also enter and inform humans themselves. While this conception bears many similarities with the Christian Heaven and Hell conceptions, Taylor warns us against seeing the Upperworld as a good reward, and the Underworld as an evil punishment. Shamanistic religions see them as more neutral, with the Upperworld “inhabited largely by sky gods and their sons and daughters” whose powers were “benevolent and reasonable“, but were also “not too interested in what went down below them“ (p. 22). The Underworld was a different matter, here is where the important and active spirits resided: “luck in hunting, successful childbirth, survival in scarcity, romantic success, all depended on the whims of spirits who were not immoral, but amoral.“ (p. 22). In short, the Upperworld is Order, the Underworld Chaos, and when you need to learn the magic of change, you need to master Chaos.
The Shaman’s role in these old religions is multifaceted. They are a oral historian of the tribe, a walking library of knowledge, a prophet, a priest, a doctor, an entertainer. Their job is to ensure that what can be done is done. They do this by controlling the spirits, particularly the scary and dangerous, soul-stealing ones from the Underworld, to make them refrain from doing bad things, and to encourage them to do good things. This required familiarity with the spirits, and the power to control them. How does one do this? Who becomes a shaman, and how do the people believe their shamanistic power.
One common factor that led to gaining Shamanistic power was the Shaman’s sickness or soul-loss. People who in early age were orphaned, suffered and survived a great sickness, were unconscious for long periods of time, or who were otherwise seen as possessing multiple spirits, like queer or trans people, or like people with “mental illnesses“ who cause them have “delusions of reality” that others do not share. Ancient people interpreted these events as soul-loss, whereby the suffering human loses their soul to an Underworld spirit, and has to go retrieve it back in order to survive. The logic here is simple: if someone had been to the Underworld and survived, that was evidence that they could be around the spirits, wrestle with them, overcome them, and maybe learn from them useful powers to bring back to the people in the Middleworld. Suffering and survival — a Death and a Resurrection! — was therefore a common origin story of the Shaman.
Besides extraordinary or mystic experiences, there were two other steps that Shamans took to be accepted by the people as Shamans. First, they spent years as an apprentice with an older Shaman, learning the crafts, history, and body of knowledge that they would then transfer to the new generations. Shamans often developed traditions of ecstasy and possession, of simulated soul-loss and reunification with the spirits. This often happened through the partnership with what Taylor calls “power plants“, like alcohol, tobacco, cannabis, and a variety of plans and fungi that produce hallucinogenic effects. Their use constituted a “self-induced sickness“ (p. 32), a reunification with spirits of the Underworld.
Second, they must perform the powers for the people to see. It is not simply being around the spirits, experiencing sour-loss and overcoming it, that made one a shaman…it is what one could do as a result. Taylor opens his book with the following quote by the famous Oglala Sioux shaman, Black Elk (1885-1950): “A man who has a vision is not able to use the power of it until after he has performed the vision on earth for the people to see“. The Shaman must perform their story of descent to the Underworld, their interactions with the spirits and how they gained their powers and wisdoms. In short, they must do The Death and Resurrection show! These acts were often of magical proportions that deeply entertaining. They included generating heat, feats of escapology, or a “Memory-Man“ type of performance. These also included stories told of the Shaman’s journeys in the Underworld, and wisdoms and powers they learned from the spirits. Musical performances with drums and bells, often including frenzied dancing, was also common. A dramatic act of destruction and reconstitution was often performed to convince the audience of the Shaman’s power to make the broken whole again, to give them knowledge and meaning about the world, and relieve the anxieties of humanness.
This made Shamans not just religious and medical figures, but also artists and storytellers. As such — and this is my own read — they have to possess some amount of “main character syndrome“, an ego-driven willingness to get on stage, to perform and tell a story. To share with the people, to give them meaning and knowledge, and to be seen and recognized for it. Fundamentally, Shamans have a storytelling drive. The life of a Shaman is not enviable though, and in many tribes becoming a Shaman was seen more as a curse than a blessing. The Shaman’s life is full of dangerous trips to the Underworld, trying to control powerful spirits and their use of power plans, which just like the spirits can get out of hand. Shamans are perpetually stuck between the ego of their powers, and doing good for the people who need to benefit from those powers.
This is how Taylor depicts the old religions. Shamans developed a tradition of ecstasy that I am tempted to believe we almost biologically react to (and maybe even co-evolved with). Tradition that includes storytelling, music, dancing, theatrical arts, performances of “powers“ that induce awe, that heal and give meaning. In essence, this is something fundamentally very very Human. Once agricultural society and organized religions form, this tradition becomes marginalized, oppressed, and persecuted; the "Church" now wants the Monopoly of Magic. But this is also a story of cultural perseverance, because no matter how hard organized power tried to repress these traditions, you cannot repress humanity itself. With the onset of science and increased demystification of the world, our deep yearning for this 'magical' aspect of existence, to seek meaning in the unknown, in the unexplainable, has proliferated in countless shamanic-like cults. Taylor devotes much of the latter parts of the book in drawing very convincing parallels between Shamanistic origin stories and traditions of ecstasy, and modern day entertainers: magicians, clowns, circus performers, musicians, artists, etc. He devotes chapters on Harry Houdini, Charlie Chaplin, Little Richard, Bessie Smith, David Bowie and Jimi Hendrix, the Beatles, and many more. The book ends with case studies that argue such cult-figures not only lived lives very similar to the shamans of our past, but also practice the same tradition of ecstasy and magic, the same storytelling healing rituals that give meaning to people, and relieve us of the fears and anxiety of Humanness.
I have to admit that while Taylor’s parallels are extremely seductive and exciting, I have my own doubts about many of the details and claims in the book. For example, Taylor presents the three-tiered cosmological view as universal among ancient people. But, deep past implies deep uncertainties, and we’re at the limit of science here. We can look at the archeological record that ancient people left, which is scarce, or at anthropological evidence from tribes at the edges of society, but neither can actually get us close to the “Truth“. We just can’t know for sure. So, I will not stake my belief in the veracity of all the claims proposed by Taylor. What I will stake my belief in, is the utility of his narrative of shamanistic origins and practice, and their parallels to artists and entertainers today. I see Taylor’s narrative of the shamanistic “Death and Resurrection“ show as a model of an “archetypal experience associated with gaining supernatural powers“ (p.19), powers to heal and give meaning when performed correctly.
It is this model I want to use to analyze the memoir by economist Glenn Loury, and the poetry of singer-songwriter Lana Del Rey. I want to argue that Glenn and Lana are modern-day Shamans, who source the stories they tell from dangerous journeys to the Underworld. They have Died and were Resurrected many times. They have gone through the same struggles as the ancient Shamans to deliver to the people wisdoms from the Underworld. But they each see their journeys to the Underworld differently. Glenn seems reluctant to embrace the Underworld, while Lana runs into the dark. Fundamentally, they both face the central problem every Shaman needs to solve: How does one embrace the heat of the Underworld, and not burn oneself?
Glenn Loury’s “Enemy Within”
I first heard of Glenn Loury, the black conservative economist, while I was an undergraduate student at Brown. My best friend Ray, was taking Glenn’s Race and Inequality course, and was telling me of the lectures full of debates, where Glenn would suggest something controversial (at least for the median political views of a Brown University student circa 2014), and then argue against a barrage of student pushback. While Ray seemed genuinely energized by his lectures, I did not engage with Glenn much then. It was only around 2018-2019 when I would pay more attention to Glenn, during my phase of watching conservative content on YouTube, for reasons somewhere between genuine disillusionment of liberal politics after college, and an addictive hate-watch to argue in my head with someone I disagree with. And Glenn was one of my favorites to watch! When Glenn feels it, you feel it too. You may disagree with what he is saying, but his excitement, conviction, oration, and performance are undeniably engrossing. Your brain may say no, but your heart will scream yes. He would have many interesting speakers, who agreed or disagreed with him, but few possessed that preacher-like quality that attracted me to Glenn — that Shamanistic quality. I have had many other phases since then, but Glenn was etched in my memory as someone larger than life. So when I saw earlier this year that he had published a memoir — Late Admissions: Confessions of a Black Conservative — I was intrigued enough to buy and read it. I have to admit I loved it! It reads like those Latin American telenovelas I grew up with: fun, dramatic, scandalous, full of ups and downs, laughs and cries. From his upbringing on Chicago’s South Side, to becoming a world-class Harvard economist, and all the sex, drugs, and drama in between. Reading it, I kept going back to the ideas in Taylor’s book on shamanism. Glenn’s memoir comes so close to being a perfect analogy to Taylor’s narrative… it’s almost there, sets everything up, but the punchline is missing.
Yes, Glenn Loury is a Shaman. Let me explain. First, academia is definitely one of those professions where the shamanistic rituals are alive and well, at least for the academics who are doing it right. Research professors, whether you choose to see them as scientists that discover knowledge that improves life, or artists that tell stories to give people meaning that improves life, they carry on one of the fundamental tasks of the ancient shamans. Just like the Shamans in Taylor’s book, academics spend years as apprentices to older Shamans who introduce them to the craft and pass on their powers. Marcus Alexis, the Northwestern economist, is definitely painted as such a figure in Glenn’s memoir, as is his more senior Harvard colleague Tom Schelling. Just like the Shamans, the academics must also perform their powers to their peers. Presentations of research ideas, new theories and findings, are ritualized as exactly such performances, and when they are not boring, they can be either glorious or humiliating. When Glenn Loury arrives as an assistant professor at Northwestern, Stanley Reiter, a senior theorist invites him to his office. Reiter was known to probe young professors on their research, to test their arguments, and criticize them harshly if they deserved it — “that was underwhelming“ would be a common feared response. When Glenn shows him his equations and derivations, anxiously awaiting his judgement, Reiter tell him “That was gorgeous.” This performance of his powers, the sharing of ideas, the storytelling, comes back again and again in the book. Glenn is seduced by the feeling on stage. He likes the attention, the recognition, taking the audience on a journey.
Glenn Loury’s entire memoir is one big Death and Resurrection show. Glenn “dies“ continuously: he becomes a teen dad, drops out of Illinois Tech, gets arrested for attacking his mistress (which he denies), gets arrested for cocaine possession (which he admits), battles crack addiction, is rejected by people and whole communities many time. Despite these falls, he rises. Every time he bounces back, he continues where he left of, unbroken and stronger than ever, ready to rise to new heights. The “feel-good“ aspect of this book consists of conveying precisely that ancient archetype of the Death and Resurrection show Taylor is talking about. The falls and rise of the storyteller that give the listener hope and meaning to their own struggles. If Glenn could get over all of these obstacles, maybe I can also deal with my own!
There are other parallels between Glenn Loury and Taylor’s picture of the Shamans — the close partnership and struggle with “power plants.“ Glenn is not shy about his vices, he openly talks of both his use of weed and his addiction to crack cocaine. Once a young professor at Northwestern, he gets into a spat with his old Shaman-teacher Marcus Alexis, who judges Glenn when he sees a marijuana plant in his bachelor pad in Chicago. For many shamans like Glenn, this partnership with power plants can get out of hand. Taylor notes in his book how many of the artists and performers he claims are modern-day shamans have struggled with drugs. The “27 Club“ is a colloquial list consisting of artists who died at age 27, like Jimi Hendrix, Jim Morrison, Basquiat, Curt Cobain, and Amy Winehouse, many of which were driven there by uncontrolled use of power plants. Interestingly, many of the modern-day shamans solve the problems of their shamanism like Glenn did. Taylor notes that many of these artists — like Little Richard and Bob Dylan — have at one point gone to become born-again Christians. To bow to something bigger than themselves and find meaning in their own life.
However, there is a key difference between Glenn’s narrative of his own Death and Resurrection show and those of Taylor’s shamans. Reading Glenn’s memoir, I get the sense that his rises are despite his falls, not because of them. While Glenn seems to seek and enjoy his trips to the Underworld, his whoring and drug use, it is his “enemy within“ that drives him there. The “enemy within“ crosses his aunt Eloise’s line, the one that separates those “moving upward“ from those “sliding back“ (p. 5). The line that firmly separates the Upperworld and the Underworld. Aunt Eloise, one of the churchgoing Great Aunts of the Chicago South Side, stood firmly on the good side, in the Upperworld. The Freudian in me wants to bring Glenn’s mom and dad into this, and psychoanalyze. His dad, as the Upperworld, ordered, Apollonian, pragmatic and logical like the Mind, something to strive to but never reach, and his mom, as the Underworld, chaotic, Dionysian, desire-driven and instinctive like the Body, something to backslide to. Perhaps it is dichotomy between his mom and dad, and the ambivalent feelings toward his mom, that leads Glenn to reject the Underworld. Or perhaps it is Christianity. Taylor depicts the Church as something that has made the Underworld evil, immoral, and undesirable — made it taboo. Maybe these conceptions prevent embracing of that Underworld darkness, and proclaiming that there is wisdom there?
But is there wisdom in the Underworld, be it imposed or self-induced through power plants? Taylor would say yes, and I want to entertain that idea for a bit. Glenn grew up on Chicago’s South Side, a place that invokes images of poverty and crime in the mind of most Americans — if there is any place that qualifies the narrative of one’s childhood as something of suffering and survival, it is Chicago’s South Side. Undoubtedly, that is a big part of Glenn’s brand, and a huge part of his appeal not just among his colleague economists, but also to the broad public that listens to him. Elite academia has a lot of… well… elites. Not many South Siders end up Harvard professors. So when Glenn shows these elites who have known nothing but other elites, and who imagine the South Side as the literal Underworld, a picture of Hell, that he can not only measure up, but be better at their own game… it has to be fucking impressive to them. The ultimate proof of Glenn’s shamanistic powers.
And I would suggest there is wisdom and knowledge on the South Side. The powers that Glenn shows them are not trivial, it’s not just some fancy math. It is deep ideas about the world. Glenn’s PhD dissertation has one of the first formulations about “social capital” in the social sciences — the idea that social ties matter for people’s outcomes. Glenn devises a mathematical machinery that explains the gap between black and white people not only due to what people do individually (e.g. how much education they gain), but also what other people they are connected to socially (e.g. do they know someone to refer them to a job). He shows that inequality can persist due to differences in social capital, even if other forms of capital like money or education are the same across the groups. Around the same time, French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu was also working on his own theory of social capital, which transformed the social sciences, and for which he has garnered much more credit than Glenn. But Glenn’s dissertation stands as pioneering, and I believe that his experiences growing up can at least partially explain the genius of this idea. I suspect Glenn observed the importance of social capital, not just in a single setting like many of his colleagues have (success in academia also depends on social capital), but also in the many worlds he has occupied. One of the earliest times the importance of social capital becomes apparent to Glenn was perhaps in the divisions created among Black people in the South Side. Glenn’s childhood is marked by active migration of Black people from the Southern US to the North. The Great Aunts, the matriarchs of the South Side, are depicted as delineating between higher-status, older migrants, and the newer ‘country‘ migrants, who can be clocked by the way they speak. It is obvious who they want their daughters to marry. Second, since the moment Glenn enters elite institutions as a student, there is a line drawn between his own background, as someone who struggled to make it, and other black students, with rich professional parents, who are often depicted as boogie blacks role-playing their struggle — the “Negro Conoscenti“ in Glenn’s own words. Perhaps this can be seen as a second important realization about the importance of social capital in his life. His unlikely success despite his lack of social capital is contrasted with the more likely success of his black peers because of their social capital. “Social capital“ may have been an answer to a question likely troubled Glenn back then: why aren’t there more black kids like me here? I like to think that these early experiences on the South Side, his observing social capital across many worlds, has poised him to think about and formalize social capital.
And now for some controversial… less claims, and more questions, at worst suggestions. It is known that drugs can have a mind-opening effect — Taylor claims this is why Shamans use them. They can make people think about things in different ways, not just feeling better or worse, changing inhibitions, or losing or gaining senses, but also as a deeper way of relating to and thinking about the world. Psychedelics are observed to facilitate communication between parts of the brain that don’t normally communicate, to promote growth and development of neurons, but also to make people lose a sense of self and make them have realizations that change their outlook. More recently, magic mushrooms and ketamine are promoted as a promising therapy for depression. Now, I don’t know about crack cocaine, I’ve never tried it and have heard a lot of not-very-good things about it, but consider this. In chapters 15-16, somewhere between Glenn Loury giving us a how-to-guide for cooking and smoking your own crack, and Glenn Loury being arrested after being busted by the police with all his crack-cooking paraphernalia in his car, something interesting is being told to us. Glenn tells us that in between all these addictive cravings, and cracked-up nights in random motels, he is working on some pretty cool and novel ideas on strategic communication: if one wants to convey a taboo opinion in public, how does self-censorship come into play? Essentially it is an idea about dog whistles: how does how people say things matter, not just what people say? Glenn presents this idea in front of his peers at Harvard, and it is a spectacular success: “The novelty of the argument must have come through, because when I concludes, the roof came off the place…entire hall applauded enthusiastically…co-teachers gushed about the lecture, telling me how brilliant it was“ (p. 257). Yet, Glenn would have us believe this is despite his crack addiction, not because of it: “Even as one part of my double life was consuming the other, I was still able to dazzle. Perhaps I just needed to find the right balance between getting high and pursuing my intellectual interests“ (p. 257).
But if we are to take Taylor’s model seriously, I have to ask: is it possible, just possible, that even in the smallest of ways, that idea is not only despite his getting high, but because of it? In contrasting the highest of highs of a brilliant idea and the lowest of lows of drug addiction, we are left to wonder: how are these Underworld and Upperworld connected? Are they connected at all? We are never told about how Glenn’s getting high and his intellectual pursuits are interrelated. They never are. Getting high never becomes the intellectual interest, it’s an obstacle, a hedonistic pursuit of an instinct for pleasure. An Underworld both sought and repudiated.
To be fair to Glenn, he does accept the Enemy Within. In the conclusion of the memoir he admits that he “fought the enemy within, but in truth, he was no intruder, no stranger…[Glenn is] the enemy within“ (p. 423). But this admission is not a happy reunion with the Jungian Shaddow, an admittance of two co-dependent halves, the Hero and the Shaddow, the Upperworld and Underworld… it is an reluctant acceptance of a forever conflict: “I cannot defeat the enemy within, not entirely. To do so would be to defeat myself, to deny my true nature. For now, we hold an uneasy truce, one that requires long negotiations to maintain. I have my strategies. But the game never ends.“ (p. 428) The Hero has to defeat the Shaddow. This is the closest Glenn comes to an acceptance of the Underworld, and I like to think that it belies a deeper wisdom and philosophy that hopefully goes further than his respectable conservative and Christian readership may be unable to swallow, and closer to Taylor’s model of the necessity of the Underworld. I like to think that he has married his mom and dad within himself, and is not just trapped in some hamster wheel, running away from mom and towards dad. One can only hope.
As I was reading Glenn’s memoir, and thinking about Taylor’s shamans, I was also obsessively listening to Lana Del Rey, and I realized that, one, Lana is a Shamaness herself, and two, she seems to go all the way in her lyrics, even where Glenn seems reluctant to go. What does that look like?
Lana Del Rey’s “Run into the Dark“
If you know me, you know I live for Lana Del Rey. I had an phase in high school with Lana’s first album — Born to Die — which I liked for its darkness and sultriness, and the seamless quoting of Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita in Off To The Races. I loved that early Lana, the thorny rose, the manipulative nymphette cunt: “Light of my Life, Fire of my Loins, give me them gold coins, give me them coins“. Years after high school, in 2019, I heard her Norman Fucking Rockwell!, an album that kickstarted my Lana pilgrimage, and has been one of my absolute favorite albums in the past decade (check my old blog for the top 12 albums of my 20s). In the last few years I have really gone down the Lana rabbit hole, obsessively listening to all her 9 albums (except for Lust of Life!). Just like Glenn, she tells us of her battles in the Underworld, performs her magical Death and Resurrection show, and tells stories that give people meaning. Just like Glenn, she battles addiction, has to overcome her own ego, returns to God, and learns to overcome the chaos. But unlike Glenn, she seems to embrace the Underworld, the darkness, the deepness.
Many of Lana’s lyrics are a Death and Resurrection show. Typically, this is being in love with the wrong kind of man, with a “history of violence that surround [him]“, someone who’s “no good for [her]“, and makes her life “sweet like cinnamon“. Cinnamon is a common theme in Lana’s songs — she is Cinnamon Girl! Why cinnamon? It’s the bittersweetness of it all. It’s the learning how to love it… first it is spicy, it might even… choke you… but then the sweetness and warmth settles. It’s a Death and Resurrection, but for the palate. I can write a whole essay about Death and Resurrection parallels in Lana’s music, but in an attempt to be efficient, and a little spicy, I want to submit to the jury only the following lyrics from Ultraviolence:
Here the protagonist Dies — He hit me — and is immediately Resurrected — And it felt like a kiss. QED.
There is a widespread criticism of Lana that accuses her of “glorifying abuse”, a hypothesis that I reject, although I would say that she glorifies masochism, which not tantamount to abuse, and is not inherently bad (but that is a different blog). It’s not “He hit me, and I stayed with him because of the kids”. No — it felt like a kiss! A kiss!! Why? I think it is precisely in its power to summarize this ancient archetype of Death and Resurrection that Taylor is talking about, that humans are wired to respond to in their search for meaning. Do you know how to resurrect when you die? How to turn a hit into a kiss? Lean in babes, cuz Lana really is “the kind of girl who’s gonna make you wonder, who you are, and who you’ve been.“
Lana shares other similarities with Taylor’s ancient Shamans, and with Glenn Loury. She too has been an apprentice to older Shaman. She has many shamanistic teachers, whom she calls her “birds of paradise“, but one that comes up across Lana’s corpus is Jim Morrison — a member of the aforementioned 27 Club that she seems to be fascinated by. Jim is a large influence in her early albums, he “teaches her“, and she talks about her obsession with him in the Tessa DiPietro poem from her book Violet Bent Backwards Over the Grass. She is attracted to Jim’s aura, sees him as “god on stage”, “8 feet tall”, and asks her psychic whether an artist has to “function a bit above [herself]” to “transmit heaven”. After the psychic brings Lana down to the Middleworld, she tell her:
Oh - and Jim died at 27
So find another frame of reference
When you're referencing heaven
And have you ever read the lyrics to 'People are Strange'?
He made no sense!"
Lana seems to have learned this lesson. In her first album, she finds God “in the flash bulbs of the pretty cameras“. In her more recent lyrics, however, she realizes that “the cameras have flashes, the cause the car crashes, but [she’s] not a star“. Just like Glenn’s struggle with his own ego in his memoir, Lana also has to learn how to subdue her ego too. To learn to be in the Middleworld — with the people, not above them.
Just like Glenn Loury, and the many modern-day shamans Taylor talks in his book, Lana also turns to God. Shamans may need to transmit heaven, but they also need heaven transmitted to them! In her early song Money Power Glory, she rebukes God and tells her lover:
But that’s not what this bitch wants,
More recently, the tables have flipped. In Chemtrails Over the Country Club she “contemplates God“, and in The Grants she asks her lover:
My pastor told me, when you leave
All you take is your memories.
And I’m gonna take mine of you with me
This bitch does not want any more money, power, or glory. She wants memories! Of her lover, of “her sister’s first-born child”, of “her grandmother’s last smile”. If her early albums are wild oscillations of trips to the Underworld and Upperworld, in the later albums Lana masters her ability to remain rooted in the Middleworld even as she travels to the other fantastical worlds.
Also like Glenn and the other shamans, Lana uses and struggles with power plants. Lana is really the “dope and diamonds“ Queen. She’s getting high “by the beach“ or “in the garden“, surrounded by babes who love her with “every beat of [their] cocaine heart“. Again, this is all very early Lana. Recently, she’s giving us some deeper wisdoms. In Wild at Heart she asks her lover:
If I wouldn’t sing for them no more?
in the bars drinking Jack and Coke
Goin’ crazy for anyone who would
In Lana’s lyric we understand how closely entangled are power plants and storytelling. Storytelling because of power plants, like when she’s “churning out novels like beat poetry on amphetamines“, but also instead of power plants, like in the lyrics above, where the going crazy and drinking is a result of stopping to sing. In Bartender, we see a protagonist who is a fully blossomed Shamaness:
I bought me a truck in the middle of the night
it’ll buy me a year if I play my cards right
Photo free exits from baby’s bedside
cause they don’t yet know what car I drive
I’m just tryna keep my love alive
With my bartender — hold me all night
Baby remember — I’m not drinking wine
But that Cherry Coke you serve is fine
We learn that Lana is sober, as she asks her bartender for a Cherry Coke. She is there to keep her love alive with the , not for the drinks, but for the storytelling — the poetry inside of her is warm like a gun, and Mother needs a shooting range! She just wants to tell stories. This song is remarkable for its journey to all three worlds. Lana manages to remind us of her trips to the Underworld (“I’m not drinking wine“), boasts her Upperworld status by skillfully escaping paparazzi (“Photo free exits…cause they don’t yet know what car a drive“), yet ends with us, firmly in the Middleworld, buying “60 MPH on PCH drive“ trucks in the middle of the night. To put the truck into context, rriding alone in her car is a theme Lana comes back to a lot, as a space for her to deal with the “war on [her] mind“. Shamaness with her wisdoms coming through!
Most importantly, Lana seems to embrace the Underworld. She knows of the perils, but she also knows that there is wisdom and powers there. In Wild at Heart she sings:
Lana runs into the dark, “doesn’t care what [people] think, drag racing [her] little read sports car“. She’s not unhinged, or unhappy, or bored, “she’s just wild“. She is loved because she is wild, and she is wild because she ran into the dark. She’s never been afraid not just to go in the Underworld, but to proclaim that there is wisdom there and bring it to us.
These lyrics could just as easily be applied to Glenn Loury’s life. But unlike Lana, we never see Glenn realizing (or admitting) in his memoir that he is loved because he is wild — not despite — that he is a shaman because of his trips to the Underworld — not despite!
And who knows…maybe Taylor’s idea is wrong, or not always applicable. Maybe Glenn is right for repudiating the Underworld and Lana is wrong for embracing it. Or maybe Glenn is hiding something from the reader, maybe he has embraced the Underworld, but not as publicly as Lana.
These unanswered questions is why I wrote this blog. I would lie if I said I had the right answers, but I think have the right questions.
