The following is an excerpt of a 29 December 2012 email sent from Art to Will wherein Art answers certain questions about Arthur's involvement in Carlton Farthington's cult.
That's a good question.
The songs are quite a bit more aimless. Think Marvin Gaye's In Our Lifetime? which was written, recorded, arranged, mixed, and produced by Marvin.
It's gloriously awful and at the same time wonderful. It has some of my favorite Marvin Gaye moments, all of which are defaced by bad creative choices, stupid lyrics, etc.
Of course, all the chops are there...beautiful singing, masterful harmonies but totally solipsistic, wrapped up in some mystic baloney in his increasingly addled brain.
I like to think that Apotheosis ends up being somewhere between In Our Lifetime? and Band of Gypsies:
An artist gets sick of what he sees as dead weight holding him back from what he truly wants to express and he finally acts on that impulse. What the artist didn't realize was that the "dead weight" was actually the ballast of the ship, providing it with the needed stability to sail the murky, primordial waters of creativity and not be sucked down into the maelstrom.
Not surprisingly, the results of these enterprises are usually less than stellar, but, at the same time, so worthwhile to the true enthusiast! Stevie Wonder is an example of someone who took full control and was able to hold it all together. But Arthur would fall into the former category.
Obviously, there's got to be some arrangement with the cult here, but that's no problem, because they are completely willing to bend doctrine when it comes to making money.
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