The Anti-Joe Lazarus Album

The following is an excerpt of an email sent from Art to the group on 16 November 2016.



Although I like the idea of era-specific concerts, I think the fundraiser for the Joe Lazarus album should feature the songs from the Joe Lazarus album. I'm wondering if these songs would, due to their uniqueness of style and their importance to the project, should have been the ones written just before or right after the turbulent reversals, July 4, 1976.

Bad things happened to make it not come out (Concert for Iceland, ECT, etc.). Could the Eagles' Hotel California be the anti-Joe Lazarus album, an album that came out in the psychic void left by the Arthur White/Joe Lazarus collaboration? Interestingly, that was the album when they brought on Joe Walsh. I don't know, that may be a totally unrelated can of worms.

Another concern about the era-specific shows: they run up the bill pretty fast and involve a lot of extra work. I at least feel the need to track down era-specific instruments, costuming, etc. I'm not sure we would make any money whatsoever. What I like about the washed-up "Return of" shows is that they are extremely cheap and easy to do. If we were trying to do a fundraiser to record the unrecorded Joe Lazarus album, I think it makes sense that we would be in 2016, trying to do this in time for the 40th Anniversary of the Turbulent Reversals, that ambiguous event with an even more ambiguous legacy. Instead of Father interviewing us on All Things New, we could have Joe Lazarus, Jr. interviewing us about the album, about his father, about his father's supposed clone, Joseph Lazarus III, who is actually in the current iteration of the band (so awkward!).

Maybe we could have a telethon aspect of the fundraiser, with operators standing by!

I think this could make for some top-rate theater, with Joe Jr. being torn between his passion to record his father's album and being weirded out by his father's clone being in the band!

That would be so awesome with a bank of volunteer operators sitting at a long table off to the side actually answering the phone and talking with donors during songs, plugging their other ears so they can hear. Every now and again, we could pipe in a voice of someone actually calling in, perhaps real people from Arthur's past who couldn't make it to the show. Liza, I love that moment in The Eraserhead Stories, when David Lynch has a long phone conversation with Catherine Coulson in the middle of the interview. I love the idea of Joe Lazarus, Jr. as a vaguely depressed, increasingly bewildered telethon host!

What an amazing dynamic to have him avoid talking to/about his father's clone, who is sitting right there!

The Living Arrow

The following is an excerpt of an email sent from Art to the group on 28 May 2015.



I love the idea of Arthur as the "living arrow" in the sisters' quiver.

Probably unrelated, but I picked up The Once and Future King this morning and turned to this exchange between Lancelot and Arthur:

"We don't see many arrows thrilling in people's hearts nowadays," remarked Lancelot one afternoon at the archery butts.

"Thrilling!" exclaimed Arthur. "What a splendid word to describe an arrow vibrating, just after it has hit!" Lancelot said: "I heard it in a ballad." They went away and sat in an arbour, from which they could watch the young people practising their shots.

"It is true," said the King gloomily. "We don't get much of the old fighting in these decadent days."

I also like the arrow verses at the end of Kahlil Gibran's "Your Children":

You are the bows from which your children
as living arrows are sent forth.
The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite,
and He bends you with His might
that His arrows may go swift and far.
Let your bending in the archer's hand be for gladness;
For even as He loves the arrow that flies,
so He loves also the bow that is stable.

I think what you wrote could be a key to the puzzle: "To [the Savage Sisters], this is to have triumphed over society’s corruption of the child.  To them, this is to have slaughtered society at its own game."

ECT, originally intended to make Arthur more shallow and thus more profitable, ended up turning him back into a child. This is God's unlikely triumph and perhaps a model for how a decadent society will not just incrementally improve (i.e. "the pendulum swinging back") but be utterly transformed by grace. And the reason why this victory is so unexpected and definitive is that it utilizes on the enemy's own arsenal. Just as he gloats over Christ crucified, the king of this world doesn't realize that--in crushing humanity's soul--he unwittingly catapulted it into definitive glory.

Epistemological Context

The following is an excerpt of an email sent from Art to Will on 29 March 2015.

Werner Erhard at "Breakthrough Racing" event, Sears Point Raceway, 1979

Yeah, it's not Being There, even though it may have some aspects of that after ECT. It's way more like Household Saints.

I haven't figured out what exactly happened but I think your "motivators" make sense. There's probably a very human explanation, like loneliness. I also think that Knology, like a lot of sensitivity-awareness group seminars, would claim to welcome people growing deeper in their own religions of origin, because, as people like Werner Erhard figured out, it's far more powerful to control the context than it is to control the content (e.g. Scientology). I say that Farthington would have affirmed Arthur's childhood visions (content) in the interest of providing him a frame for understanding those visions (context). Will's regimen/tactics would definitely have diminished Arthur's vision by the point he arrives in Tokyo; perhaps in his desolation Arthur sees a way of returning to the deep communion he once felt. Now that it's no longer effortless, Knology seems to provide the clearest pathway. Knology disclaims any status as a religion, saying it only desires to see people fully enlivened in their relationships, their job, their places of worship, blah, blah.

In Erhard's words

The other main difference between est (Erhard Seminars Training) and Scientology lies in the treatment of knowing. Ron Hubbard seems to have no difficulty in codifying the truth and in urging people to believe it. But I suspect all codifications, particularly my own. In presenting my own ideas, I emphasize their epistemological context. I hold them as pointers to the truth, not as the truth itself. 

I don’t think anyone ought to believe the ideas that we use in est. The est philosophy is not a belief system and most certainly ought not to be believed. In any case, even the truth, when believed, is a lie. You must experience the truth, not believe it.

All sorts of doctrine in that statement, but ostensibly only setting up an "epistemological context."

The Monster May Actually Be Real

The following is an excerpt of an email sent from Art to Will on 20 August 2014.

Maybe a "staged" Concert for Iceland is an attempt by Arthur's therapists to overcome his psychic break. I don't know, maybe a post-ECT Arthur has become uncooperative, incorrigible. Although never violent, he becomes a danger to himself and others.

Maybe it's his stylite phase, climbing up on things.

Fr. Bernard comes on at the beginning of the show, explaining the whole concept: "Thanks for coming tonight, and thank you for your support for Arthur and his ongoing recovery and healing..." Fr. Bernard explains that the Concert for Iceland was a sham hatched by the charlatan cult leader, Carlton Farthington, and that Arthur was swept up in the story. At the recommendation of his therapists, they are trying to give Arthur an experience of closure: preparing for the Concert and performing it. The idea being that, once that is all done, he will have peace.

St. Alpius the Stylite

Finally, after the long explanatory intro, Arthur is wheeled out on stage by his nurse. Seems like everything is going according to plan. Nothing would need to be huge or amazingly produced because we're just trying to trick this borderline-catatonic guy that the Concert is happening.

But then we can have some weird stuff happen that makes us wonder whose reality is real.

Maybe he's a stylite and he's encouraging the other patients to do the same through his example. Maybe even some of the orderlies are being converted. Could he be wheeled in in a straitjacket and just do the singing? Could the entire band be made up of people from the sanitarium: therapists, orderlies, etc. (also Will and Fr. Bernard, of course)? Could we field questions from the crowd between songs (maybe even members of the media)?

And maybe he somehow gets away again in the end.

The crowd follows him through the streets. Could we fake a death with him falling from a pillar (there is a row of nonfunctional pillars on campus). Or could he just wade across the river and disappear into the darkness? That'd be some awesome footage, people tweeting it as they follow.

I think Will would be pissed and do it begrudgingly. But probably he also does it because there was nothing else doing at that point. Maybe this is the penance Fr. Bernard gave him for doing this to Arthur in the first place. There could be heated conversations between him and Fr. Bernard. Maybe Arthur has to go to the bathroom at some point so they wheel him off and Will and Fr. Bernard come downstage and have a conversation while he's gone. It'd be cool for them to be having that conversation the way they way people plot against each other in Shakespeare plays--not acknowledging the audience. But then have one of the media break down the wall by asking them questions, giving Will and Fr. Bernard a chance to field some uncomfortable questions, providing some more character development in the process.

I'm thinking we could get a large percentage of the story--including the apocalyptic ending with the sea monster--through diegesis, just telling it. A lot of what we've imagined would be very hard to show and I think it'd be better to start from the rationalistic perspective that these are just the dreams of a madman. Maybe we can get some scary scrawled drawings on a slideshow as part of the intro. Perhaps the head therapist comes in at this point and takes over the telling of the story.

As the show goes on, however, we should cast some doubt on these rationalistic narratives; the monster may actually be real.

This Creepy Nihilistic Thing

The following is an excerpt of an email sent from Will to Art on 29 May 2014.

Plot-wise, I feel like the Farthington stuff is really coming together.

Thief starring James Caan and Tuesday Weld

The problem I'm seeing is that it has in some ways crowded out the stories of Joe Lazarus, Arthur White's Brand New Life, and Will Witkowski. I don't want to undo any of the Farthington stuff; it's really good. I just want to figure out how to revise and reinsert a few things it has eclipsed.

Originally (and I think we disagreed on this one a bit), I really loved the idea that at some point, Arthur came really close to making the sort of music he was born to make. I saw Brand New Life being the first step in that process and an escape with Joe Lazarus being the closest he came to fulfilling it. Before Farthington, Will was the nemesis who crushed Arthur right when he was about to become the artist he was supposed to become.

The Farthington plot eclipses all that in a lot of ways, so we've got to figure out how to give its impact back. I really don't want to lose the idea that, at some point, Arthur almost became the artist he could have been. He won't stand up as a protagonist if we never feel that he could have been great. At the same time, that feeling we develop is something to make suspect, as the bit of heaven Arthur can show people on earth is only a faint glimmer of what heaven has in store for us. We should be torn between the idea of loving the bit of heaven we see through Arthur and the lesser thing rooted in the American Dream, lamenting that Arthur could have "made it."

So, I don't want to touch the Farthington plotline.

I just want to make room for an Arthur who almost made it and wasn't just a victim; a Joe Lazarus who almost saved Arthur and was dashed by failure; a Will who is the flawed but protective brother who tries to save Arthur from Carlton Farthington; and a Brand New Life that for a period sets Arthur on a positive path.

Reasserting these ideas may complicate the story a bit, but if we're thinking of five TV seasons, we need several ups and downs and some squirminess in terms of how the audience reads the characters.

I don't yet have a clear picture of how to reintegrate these pieces, but my hunch is that after Will rescues Arthur from Farthington and gets him his first treatment, Joe Lazarus helps bring Arthur back to his true form; Will then works with Joe to put Brand New Life together; Will sees the initial success and starts doing a bunch of dumb commercial stuff in his eagerness to make Arthur a star; and the tension that creates between Will and Joe drives Arthur back into the predatory hands of Farthington, who validates Arthur's vision and lures him into the heroic quest to save Iceland.

Maybe after Will kills Farthington, we think he's a good guy looking out for his brother. But then he has Arthur committed until the money runs out, at which points he dumps him on Linda. So maybe what looks like Will's heroic quest actually ends up being this creepy nihilistic thing...more like the end of Thief starring James Caan and Tuesday Weld.

The Comeback

The following is an excerpt of an email sent from Will to Art on 22 December 2012.

The ending of Arthur White only works if it's comic, but there should be two tragic phases.

The first is Arthur succumbing to hubris, worshipping himself, and losing everything. The second is Will, through his best intentions, destroying Arthur.

I think we almost need to invent a new type of tragedy here...not tragedy of fate or tragedy of will but tragedy of culture...the culture of the American Dream. Of course, you've already pointed out Arthur Miller here. Just as a Willy Loman spared the American Dream would have been a talented and happy carpenter, an Arthur White spared the American Dream would have been a Therese of Lisieux.

Instead, he'll have to take the low road as a tortured, disfigured version of what he was made to be. I see the first round of tragedy as the anarchic individualism of the American Dream coming out of the sixties. I see the second round as the homogenizing effects of the American Dream of the mid-seventies and eighties.

I see Brand New Life as having two phases: a very happy, promising early phase, and then a convoluted mess phase...kind of like Love.

There have been something like 70 members of Love. There is the "real" Love from the first three albums (mediocre musicians who made great music), the second Love (outstanding musicians who made lame music), and then whomever Arthur Lee could find until he died. The last decent version was a group called Baby Lemonade who just did perfect covers of the original group's recordings.

I think Arthur White wants the right things out of life but finds little guidance until the early days of Brand New Life, which is full of fallen people on a path to redemption, like Joe Lazarus Sr.

Will thinks he wants the right things in life but doesn't. Still he pursues them like a faithful, disciplined soldier. Joe Jr. has no confidence in any sort of reality, and like Pilate asks, "What is Truth?" Agniesczka is a lioness who protects her kids first, then her husband; she is probably materialistic partly because she wants to protect her kids and partly because she's a little vain. Will isn't all that different: he likes to be known as his little brother's protector.

I see late-seventies Arthur being destroyed for doing the right things musically, and Will being a tragic figure for destroying something beautiful and holy out of a misguided faith in the American Dream.

The story of the last thirty years is that Arthur has pace been healing at a snail's pace, and, over the past year or so, has gotten to the point that he can play music again, recording it on cassette tapes in hopes of getting it to Joe Lazarus Sr.

It's a really sad, pathetic-seeming plan, but Arthur is responding to God's voice telling him to get this last album out to the public. He thinks Joe is the only one who will understand. Unfortunately, Joe is dead, which is even more pathetic. But God gets the tapes to Joe Jr., which can bring him healing and shape a new destiny for him.

For the past thirty years, Will has had to cope with Arthur.

At first, he had him committed so he wouldn't have to deal with him. Then he couldn't afford the bills, so his girlfriend, a nurse, said they could care for him at home. Will stuck her with him, and, as she cared for him, she was converted and left Will to join a convent. Will resented Arthur for that, but has seen the empty place his dream has led him to.  He's just about at that point where he is ready to admit his failures and repent. He just doesn't know how...

That's where the comeback comes in.

Cataclysmic Changes (Part 1 of 3)

The following is an excerpt of an email sent from Will to Art on 10 April 2014.

I was thinking about the idea of cataclysmic changes and the Concert for Iceland while watching a documentary about backup singers that had some reflections on the Concert for Bangladesh.

I started thinking about Farthington, and it dawned on me that maybe he isn't just using Arthur for his talent, but for his spiritual gifts...that maybe the number one thing he wants is to somehow siphon Arthur's power from him.  Whether that can actually be done is unclear to me and I don't want to put anything rooted in magic rather than Catholicism out there, but I wonder about a few possibilities:

1. Is it not just the electroshock, but some sort of power-siphoning that damages Arthur?
2. Do the cataclysmic changes happen on some level?  Does Farthington somehow use Arthur's power to bring about some horrible power that shapes the 80's?  Some sort of void?  Maybe something electronic?
3. If so, does Arthur know?  Does he feel guilt?

I worry about Arthur coming off as too much of a vegetable.  He may appear to be one at times, but his interior life should nearly always be far more dramatic than any other character's.

His natural state should be life in the Sweet World--joy in God's garden with Mary--but being torn from that Garden, seduced away from it, weaving in and out of it, being convinced that it isn't the highest reality of his experiences, all of these things and more should be sources of inexplicable drama.

Arthur should be inexplicable because he is tied into the inexplicable.  The appeal of both Will and Farthington--the American dream and cultish psychospiritual babble--is that both offer some order to the inexplicable.

Will reduces reality to a very simple code, and Farthington offers answers, even if they are grounded in nothing.  The appeal of both Joe Lazaruses is their ability to catch glimpses of the Sweet World that Arthur lives in, to share in that beauty on even a small level with Arthur as friends, and to help communicate what Arthur sees to the rest of the world.

The Concert for Iceland

The following is an excerpt of an email sent from Art to Will and Joe on 12 March 2014.

Catastrophic eruptions in Iceland

I want to see if I can help hammer out the Iceland story a bit.  Remember that in our "more commodious" frame, this may just be one story among many, not the least of which being our own story: three guys trying to make rock music past our prime (well, not you Joe).

My hope is that this doesn't sound absolutely, utterly insane.

Here goes:

1. Sometime during his Asian odyssey, Arthur falls in with Carlton Farthington
2. Will, seeing his brother sinking deeper into a dangerous cult, manages to get Arthur home again: disaster averted (for the time being)
3. From America, Arthur begins campaigning to have Farthington brought to the states
4. Farthington, who had never considered the idea, becomes personally interested
5. With his Oxford doctorate, Farthington actually receives permission to run a summer pilot program at a Midwestern university on the topic of "multidimensional learning"
6. Long story short, the program devolves into spending a lot of time down in the university's steam tunnels trying to find an entrance to the underworld
7. Arthur is ecstatic about this development; for the sake of the story, however, he needs to be occupied such that he is unable to be with Farthington that summer
8. Meanwhile, catastrophic eruptions occur in Iceland; Farthington begins talking to his students/followers and Arthur about mounting a humanitarian campaign
9. Plans are made for "The Concert for Iceland"; Rustyy Kryystyylz, famed guitarist of the band Beefoven, is contacted and promptly becomes a cult member (he's a little ditzy)
10. Will, in a last ditch effort to save everything that he has worked for, is able to have Arthur committed to a sanitarium and zapped
11. Around the same time, Farthington's pilot program goes horribly wrong with university officials pulling the plug; Farthington and his handful of students/followers get mangled and/or killed by some unknown beast in the steam tunnels beneath the school
12. Arthur is catatonic; Farthington may or may not be dead (spoiler alert: not)
13. Some years after the fact (circa 2014?) buzz originating from an online source begins circling: the Concert for Iceland will finally happen!
14. But the status of just about every participant in the project is in doubt: Isn't Arthur still catatonic? Wasn't Farthington was among the mangled dead found in the steam tunnels? Isn't Rustyy Kryystyylz just a washed-up has-been? And where is Will Witkowski? (Not like he would have been in the benefit band)
15. As time goes on, clues emerge that the online source is none other than Carlton Farthington; after all, his cult involved a "novitiate" whereby novices would forfeit all identifying information and artifacts about themselves--the online source (a blog) indeed seems to be a "clearinghouse" for this kind of material
16. The blog builds to the point that actualization seems imminent.  Posts reveal increasing focus, productivity, and purpose...

What happens?

• The Concert for Iceland: The "original" imagined concert (leave it to the audience to decide whether it actually did happen or this is a figment of someone's imagination) OR
• A "Second-Chance" Concert for Iceland: The original never happened; this occurs long after the fact with a bunch of washed-up has-beens seeking redemption OR
• Karaoke Tour of Arthur White and Rustyy Kryystyylz: This may lead to the "Second-Chance" Concert once people realize who these two losers are OR
• Joe Lazarus Jr.'s Crusade: Joe finds Arthur and leads a campaign to win back the rights to Arthur's material à la The Artist Formerly Known As Prince re-recording and re-releasing all the old material (although it wouldn't need to take that exact form)

Other fun facts:

• Carlton Farthington, if he is still alive, is now ensconced in an entirely electronic identity.  He lives through the blog, websites, online voicemail, text-to-speech software, and speech-to-text transcription.  One of the more disturbing developments is Carlton's "spoken" synthetic messages that begin surfacing around this time, leading to two interpretations: (1) Carlton is dead and someone else is creating these transmissions or (2) he was severely mangled, likely losing the parts of his face and mouth used for speaking and now pulling the strings using these electronic tools.  In some ways, it's the old Star Wars theme of how evil makes one less human ("He's more machine now than man"). And, yes, this wholly electronic existence is meant to be a reflection of the plight of modern man in general.
• Carlton Farthington's real reason for wanting to go to Iceland had to do with an arcane theory that melting ice from the volcanic eruptions will cool the lava, opening up caverns that go down to the center of the earth, safe haven from all the "turbulent reversals" he thought imminent. Complicating matters, he believed that live dinosaurs--both frozen in the ice and living in the warm subterranean caves--would be released at precisely this moment (he considered this one of the less dramatic aspects of the "turbulent reversals," which he theorized would ultimately result in a "new physics").  The humanitarian concert was a front for this agenda.

Questions for Will

The following is excerpted from a December 2012 email exchange between Will and Art.

What role does Agniesczka play?  

I don't foresee getting an actress to play her.  At most, we might need some old photographs, but even those could be of her and the kids.   

In the old days, Arthur wasn't around much or there wasn't any reason for her to end up in the band footage, so she is mostly just alluded to in the narrative.  In the present day, she is dead or otherwise gone.   

I do hope for a day when we turn the whole story into a musical; at that point, neither of us will play our roles, so we can develop her role more fully then--and that of Will's girlfriend Linda--when there's no need for us to do the acting.  Will spends most of his life in the future and Arthur has a really tenuous relationship with chronological time, so I don't see either of them as big picture takers.

Why would Will use marriage to control Arthur?  

Will is torn between his Polish roots and his New World roots.   

His New World roots can only think in terms of being a swinging single: initially, he tempts Arthur into forming The Sweet World through women.   

He feels guilty about that when he sees how that path nearly destroyed him, so he turns to the Old World alternative: marriage. Will can't think in terms of celibacy, which is what Arthur really needs.  But if Arthur becomes a monk or hermit, he can't be a rock star.  Plus, celibacy just seems to weird and unnatural to a modern man like Will.   

So Will wants to make amends (here again is how we keep Will from wearing a black top hat and twirling his mustache).  Will took a vow that he would make his brother a star. His approach in the Sweet World failed, so he tries another approach, grounded in a very Polish vision of stability (marriage and church) as well as a 70's vision (psychology, counseling, support groups, settling down).   

I think Will feels that if Arthur has stability at home, he can compartmentalize and be a husband and father by day and a rock star by night.  Initially, Arthur sings about domestic bliss, but soon he feels called to subjects like confessing his guilt and the state of America's soul.   

As Arthur comes closer to singing about the things he feels called to sing about, his marriage, band, and relationship with his brother deteriorate.  Will sees everything that he tried to build for Arthur falling apart and resents him for it.  Will can only think in terms of real-world responsibilities, and here's Arthur chasing ghosts while the woods are burning.  

The ECT is a combination of revenge, resentment, a quest for control, love for his brother, and fear that his brother may be right and that everything Will has pursued is wrong. 

Will's hamartia is a type of misguided nobility.  If you want to go as far as a lobotomy, we can; I think he does need to be permanently scarred from his institutionalization, but ECT might be enough.  The treatment severs his ability to easily distinguish between past, present, and future, real and mystical, word and deed.  His capacity to distinguish what is reality the way other people perceive it and what is his own mystical connection to God was never strong to begin with, but it's gone now.   

Will is too salt of the earth to get that, and he just sees crazy.  Joe will figure it out, though, and help Arthur reenter the world.

An Austere Cult

The following is an excerpt of a 26 December 2012 email sent from Art to Will.

I still see an austere cult as fitting the story/songs, for several reasons.

It's more in keeping with the meaning/process of apotheosis

I'm thinking very much of Ovid's (my paesan, who lived and wrote just 20 miles north of where my family originates!) telling of Heracles poisoning and subsequent apotheosis.  Apotheosis usually (to my knowledge, always) involves a burning away of the human so that the only divine is left.  It's a pagan concept, co-opted probably by the Manichaeans, but it is also not a far cry from John of the Cross or Catherine of Genoa.

So apotheosis would not likely happen after or during a period of self-indulgence, but rather after a period of self-abnegation and mortification.  I think it's perfect that Heracles' apotheosis occurs shortly after his new wife is almost kidnapped by a centaur, and that, upon realizing that he has been poisoned, he initiates his apotheosis himself (building and igniting his own funeral pyre!).  Likewise, Arthur's initiates his own imagined apotheosis during or shortly after his divorce.

It's more in keeping with the normative rock/r&b star phenomenon

I see the spirituality of chastened hubris as the more common phenomenon when it comes to rock star types (cf. George Harrison and the Beatles generally, John MacLaughlin/Mahavishnu, Carlos Santana, Robert Alpert/Ram Dass, Stevie Wonder, etc., etc.).

You can also lump in Al Green and Marvin Gaye, who, when burned by the fires of human love, would retreat into spirituality (the Rev. Al Green did this for a couple decades after his then girlfriend assaulted him with a pan of hot grits and then committed suicide).

I am less impressed by the more modern phenomenon of Scientology and Kabbala (and by the types of people who tend fall into it).  I think  it's a distinctly different phenomenon and one reserved for people who don't have the rich spiritual background (such as Catholics or blacks have).

It more clearly parallels the normative path as laid out by the mystical doctors of the Church

I really see this as key to the plot line of this story.

It's borrowed loosely from the Household Saints character Teresa Santangelo, played by Lili Taylor. By the end of the movie, it's clear that, in spite of getting knocked off the traditional saintly path by modernity, she nonetheless became the saint God intended her to be.

In short, it seems that God used the spiritual desolation of modern life as her road of trials.

Arthur goes through a similar process.  His divorce is a distorted version of the dark night of the senses. The cult represents a distorted version of the dark night of the spirit.  Electroshock represents the final threshold after which Arthur arrives at a distorted version of "the soul in a state of perfection" from which it is unlikely to fall again (in his case, a pure spiritual state that many ascribe to cognitively disabled people).

In other words, all these stages have their normative counterpart in mysticism.

But, since modern American life provides none of the traditional guides or guideposts (once widely available to anyone desiring to embark on the journey toward God), God intervenes and sanctifies Arthur through these counterfeit, unintended trials.

It illustrates something that I believe generally about an unbelieving age: that many modern saints (though probably not the canonized ones) will be sanctified almost entirely within God's consequent (as opposed to antecedent) will.  The irony is that someone who departs from God's will can't fully free himself from God's will; God's will asserts itself even in an evil and unbelieving age.

Yes, Jonah returns to the right path and preaches repentance to the Ninevites, but the famed "sign of Jonah" is his time spent in the belly of the whale!

A sudden loss of musical inspiration wouldn't seem rational

One of the ideas implicit in the distorted spiritual path concept is that something pure persists in spite of being dragged through the muck.  It's a very incarnational idea.

In the case of Arthur White, that something is music.

Whether he is at the height of his hubris/bravado, in the abyss of his involvement with a cult, or even the catatonia of his post-electroshock life, the music persists.  In fact, it is paradoxically strengthened by each debasement.  Grace flourishes further.

I know that a cult could be considered an "irrational element" that brings about an abrupt change (such as an abrupt loss of musical taste/talent), but, like Aristotle, I believe that irrational elements (another one would be deus ex machina) should be kept to a minimum.  It seems more likely that his inspiration would remain with him through this period as well.

Concert for Iceland Update

The following is an excerpt of a 29 December 2013 email sent from Art to Will and Joe.

I want to start the re-recording process with songs from Concert for Iceland, which I see as Arthur White's last show under his full powers.

Some of the material relates Arthur's marital and mental breakdown, but also some hopeful songs in which he is clearly breaking free from the sham promises of Carlton Farthington.  I'm not sure Arthur even made it to Iceland: this may have been when Will staged his definitive intervention.  Indeed, in the song "Iceland," Arthur seemed to be under the impression that Iceland is made entirely of ice (thus rendering the volcanic explosion even more devastating in his mind).  But he was at least ready to go and not just for the concert.

The true object of the trip is explained in Farthington's Principles of Theory.

The other exciting possibility in this stage is the rediscovery of famed guitarist Rustyy Kryystyylz, who was planning on playing the benefit concert with Arthur.  This was widely seen as a potential new creative collaboration after the dissolution of The Sweet World.

A funny show would be Arthur and Rustyy playing along with a karaoke machine, dramatizing just how both had fallen after the failed benefit.

"Let the Atheists Themselves Choose A God"

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.

I like the idea that Brand New Life begins with a burst of newfound creativity and productivity.

I like the idea that Arthur is on the verge of sainthood (although that sounds a little like confounding sainthood with enlightenment) and that Will is likewise on the brink of success.

I agree that this is when Will starts to have concerns and steps in (with ECT), because he sees these two things as mutually exclusive.

I also agree that God wins in spite of all of this. 

If you haven't already, you need to check out the movie Household Saints and in particular the resolution of the whole sainthood thing. Without giving the ending away, sainthood is achieved in utter defeat--even the defeat of the protagonist's pursuit of saintliness! 

It seems borderline blasphemous, but I feel this notion is totally orthodox, having its roots in the utter defeat and scandal of the cross.

Here is one of my favorite Chesterton quotes (from Orthodoxy):

[Atheists] will not find another god who has himself been in revolt. Nay (the matter grows difficult for human speech), but let the atheists themselves choose a god. They will find only one divinity who ever uttered their isolation; only one religion in which God seemed for an instant to be an atheist.

It's true that Will is successful in releasing Arthur's gift of prophesy. But I think the profoundest irony is that electroshock, which was designed to bring prophecy within the fold of profitability and predictability, actually releases it to an even fuller extent.

So in the process of totally scrambling Arthur's brain, Will inadvertently pushed Arthur into the final phase: the soul in a state of perfection.

Now, it's important to note that he exists here in a borderline catatonic state, but that was how God accomplished his will in its consequent form.

No, it's not ideal that someone would reach sainthood with a severely addled intellect, but it illustrates the paradox of human freedom and the supreme will of an omnipotent God.

What Comes Out is Pure Prophesy

The following is an excerpt of a 19 December 2012 email sent from Art to Will.

I agree with you that the other characters need to be developed, to be protagonists in their own right.

I may have less insight into them because their personas derive (at least in part) from you and Joe.  Also, having written more poetry and songs than fiction, I'm not as adept at juggling multiple characters in a large, expansive plot as you are.

The only thing that I'm trying to represent is my sense of my own character and the songs, many of which I haven't had a chance to play for you yet.  I don't think it's that big of a difference of opinion philosophically.

Actually, it may be less philosophical as it is the organization of events.  

Without getting into super long paragraphs again, I just think that the marriage/children have to come first (toward the end of the Sweet World era) for the progression of songs to make sense.

Then losing the band-->short stint with Apotheosis-->losing wife, kids-->joining a cult, getting out of the cult-->getting electroconvulsed-->getting propped back up by Will to front Brand New Life.  

Brand New Life is ironic because for Will it's just an attempt to do definitively what he has been trying to do all along: whitewash all the mystic mumbo-jumbo and bring Arthur back down to the Kierkegaardian aesthetic sphere where he can be made profitable.  

The irony is that this "final solution" actually does the exact opposite, making Brand New Life a true resurrection of the original Arthur, catapulting him definitively into the religious sphere, never to descend again.  

Now, in spite of (because of?) his destroyed mental state, he speaks prophetic words that cut like a double-edged sword.  He's kind of like Dave Bowman has become by the movie 2010.  Unlike Dave, however, Arthur may be thoroughly broken on a human level--mental anguish can still be occurring.

But when he sings, what comes out is pure prophesy.

"Burma Born, Oxford Educated"

The following is an excerpt from an email sent from Art to Will on 2 May 2013.

I'm working on Arthur White a little and at least a phase of his character has to involve this charismatic cult figure, who, at this point, bears a lot of resemblance to Dr. Carlton Farthington of The Principles of Theory: A Systematic Approach to Ideas fame.

I like the idea that Arthur, disillusioned with touring and the general superficiality of modern life, falls for this "Burma-born, Oxford-educated" guru in Japan.  Something makes me think that Farthington isn't based in Japan though, that he was visiting some followers or having a fundraiser, and that his "compound" or "temple complex" or "institute" is based in Borneo or Laos or some other less-developed nation where these kinds of things can flourish without a lot of outside interference.

An aspiration of Arthur's after meeting Dr. Farthington is to bring him to the United States, to get him a residency at some college/university, or even build him an institute where his teachings can reach the larger audience they "deserve."  This may or may not happen.  Maybe Arthur is able to eventually hit bottom and get out of the whole thing himself.  Alternatively, maybe this is when Will decides it's time to pull the trigger with ECT.  

On the other hand, perhaps Dr. Farthington does make it to America.  If he does, I can cannibalize some of the Principles of Theory material about the interdisciplinary, multidimensional summer pilot program gone horribly wrong, ending in the dismemberment of Dr. Farthington, two Oberlin students, and Officer Morales of the Ann Arbor Police Department.  I think the whole thing is loosely inspired by The Adventures of Buckaroo Bonzai Across the 8th Dimension.

In a potential interview, I can imagine Arthur rambling on about this sort of thing with Will impatiently interjecting, steering the subject back to music, the band, goals, etc.  The cool thing is that it actually wouldn't need to be terribly coherent.

I want to keep the philosophy deliberately inscrutable.  Even the title of the "text" my friend and I were working on was utterly meaningless: Principles of Theory: A Systematic Approach to Ideas.  You can impose exactly nothing and everything onto that title.  So I think we should say little about the actual content except confusing statements (which is basically what's in the book).