By Maria Padhila
No good deed goes unpunished, and the road to hell is paved with good intentions, and no great artist has ever won a Grammy. These are some of the truisms we live with, and they’re true often enough. Like the other night, when recording artist Macklemore managed to piss off a whole lot of people at the Grammys, first by winning four of them with music partner Ryan Lewis, and next by being part of staging a mass wedding.
Summing it up nicely and with some humor is Scott Kernan of Boston.com:
There was a mass wedding at the Grammy Awards on Sunday night when, during a performance of “Same Love,” the pro-gay marriage rap anthem that became an unlikely hit last year, Macklemore, Ryan Lewis, Mary Lambert, Madonna and Queen Latifah presided over the mass nuptials of 33 diverse couples — gay and straight men and women of various ages and races. There was also a noisy cell phone: The social media reaction. Most people, like the tear-dabbing newlyweds and celeb attendees on TV, seemed moved by the sentiment of the gesture. And there was the expected right-wing backlash about a televised attack on “traditional families.”
But more surprising (though not really) was the small but loud online response from some gay rights supporters, including those within the LGBT community, that the ceremony was horrible — worst thing ever, if you think about it, really. You see, there was a certain amount of hand-wringing about a straight white guy endorsing gay marriage while accompanied by other straight people. It reeked, said certain critics, of head-patting patronizing by privileged folks appropriating the struggles of minorities. (Erm, hey: LGBT nonprofits? Shut down those ally-building initiatives you’ve launched. We don’t really want them.)
The “too long; didn’t read” version is from Jezebel, describing the Grammys: Straight White People Give Each Other Awards for Doing Black Music About Gay Rights Better Than You Convention.
If you haven’t heard “Same Love,” you should give it a Google; you’ll probably like it on a listen, because that’s what popular means — most people find it listenable, inoffensive and appealing. I kind of dare you not to like Macklemore, who is cute, clever, principled, talented and has been toughing it out independently in music for years, as well as supporting all kinds of causes he believes in, when it would have been easy to just leave that political, ethical part of being an artist aside. A lot of what he’s doing is awkward, earnest, humblebraggy and often annoying, but find me an activist who doesn’t tread those waters occasionally.
I’m not going to get into the racial aspects of this one, except to share what I heard on a black radio station the other night: Macklemore sent a text to Kendrick Lamar, the artist he was up against for the award and the artist most felt should have won, that expressed the sentiment that Alexander “was robbed.” The radio DJ said, “well, what’s new, that’s what white people do: rob black people.” That’s pretty much my take on it — the same people are still at the top of the music industry, still hold the control, and are still pulling in the big money, and those guys aren’t Lamar or Macklemore.
I won’t get into the music aspects of it, either, except to say that duh, Lamar’s “good kid, m.A.A.d city” deserves the award; it’s pantheon level work, complex, innovative and extraordinary. When I did a mix for Burning Man International Radio, I put a piece from it right after an excerpt from Stravinsky’s “Firebird,” and it fucking fit right in there. BTW, this is Lamar’s response to it all, as reported in XXL: “It’s well deserved; he did what he did, man. He went out there and hustled and grinded. Everything happens for a reason; the universe comes back around, that’s how it go.” Graceful, spiritual, broad perspective, is how I hear that.
But I do get the backlash about the gay wedding. People feel co-opted, as if he’s ridden to success on their backs (making it the same kind of issues as the race one). I feel that one, and I also know I can’t afford not to change that kind of thinking in myself. First of all, Macklemore and other longtime LGBT rights supporters are hardly the typical type who uses others as stepping stones. You can find that kind in business and Congress; they’re usually Teabagger types harrumphing about pulling their bootstraps, never for a minute acknowledging that hundreds of years of other people’s unpaid labor made the boot and the strap and other people’s unrewarded energy today goes into doing the pulling for them. Could we fight these real enemies first?
I recognize that wearying feeling that comes from having my life co-opted, from suspecting that you’re being turned into a marketing tool. You’ve worked for so long to have your voice heard, and now there’s a guy holding a microphone, drowning you out, and defining you, not listening to you, giving the appearance that he’s setting himself up as spokesman, and in this world, appearances turn into realities.
He’s saying things that aren’t really true for all of us, besides. When I see things like this, sometimes my throat fills up with “yeah, buts” and “that’s not what I mean,” but what I’m really getting angry about, what’s choking my words now, is that the whole point of what I was doing was to define and speak for myself, and the very person who says he’s supporting me has not grasped the fundamental importance of allowing me the space to do just that.
I can understand how those who’ve been struggling for years are reporting they feel. The way you were the one who stuck your neck out first — and looking back on those years and seeing how now, someone is rewarded, respected and revered for the same things that got you spit on — that hurts. The worst of it is that sometimes, those struggling for rights, equality and change are still treated badly, both through legal channels and through attitudes, and even by the same people. You know the type: “Oh, that Macklemore, funny guy, and wasn’t that Big Gay Wedding beautiful! But Jose at work, he’s just a little too obvious. Why does he have to keep putting his ‘lifestyle’ in our faces? Why does everything have to be about who he is, his sexuality, his culture, his ethnicity? Why can’t he just learn to get along? Why can’t he just act normal?”
But expecting every ally to express themselves and act in a way that you’ve decided is the only appropriate one through which to show support can be a losing position — and, as hard as it can be, if I’m taking that position, I need to check myself to be sure I’m not being as intolerant as those I’m pushing against for change. It’s a case of the ‘perfect’ being the ‘frienemy’ of the ‘good’.
Speaking for myself, I have nothing but love for voices of support from monogamous people. There have seen plenty of comments right here in Planet Waves from people saying, in effect, “I’m monogamous and don’t see myself changing, but I’m outraged at intolerance and political targeting of polyamorous people.” To me, it feels not only warm personally, but it gives me a sense of faith and hope that I’m in a world where people can actually simply live. People who can accept and support difference are usually speaking from a place of health and security, not fear, and that’s always a heartening thing for someone like me, who struggles against fear and insecurity, to hear.
I believe in incremental change and in taking heart in even the smallest actions — because I know for myself how hard making even the smallest change can be. As long as we’re throwing around the clichés, how about this one: Nobody’s perfect. And you know, nobody seems to like anyone who is.
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In total agreement wandering_yeti. Woody Guthrie is a true American hero.
Happy to see that Dylan Farrow has finally address what Woody Allen did to her as a child. Truth is coming forward on all fronts. We need to stay centered in the process.
The time when mass entertainment was goodness and light was in a large part a film of happy sauce on a poisoned root. The only people who could be out of the closet were pretty white people playing the game of marriage, job, house, kids, car and a few brave drop outs who were all too often beaten by their own drug habits and the active resistance of a dominator society in the first phases of its downfall. At least now with Pandora’s box open we can deal with things face to face instead of meeting them in dark secret places where the bad daddies have us isolated, paranoid, and alone.
I for one don’t find enjoyment in the happy sauce of the glitter music pumped out by the suits in the skyscrapers. I don’t identify with the pretty men in their suits and the pretty women mostly naked decorating the pretty men mostly hidden in their suits. But then I have Venus retrograde in Aquarius trine Pluto in Libra and sextile Eris in Aries on my 7th house cusp: tripping out in the happy sauce of corporate music irritates me cause I can feel the creature under the surface stirring, the creatures who are suffering and dying from the actions of numb humans. Songs that speak to my experience touch me in a way the happy sauce can never reach. A guitar in my hands is truer to me than all the fabricated glitter the machines make. “This machine kills Fascists” said Woody Guthrie’s guitar. Sure it’s not sweetness and light, but it comes from a loving heart singing the songs of those who have no voice in the mass media.
Interesting response, Maria.
Thank you.
Thanks for your response. I understand that mass ritual is telling in many ways, and there are some interesting thoughts on Eris here. To me, most of the “Illuminati” chatter and its roster of preoccupations is an ongoing conceptual outsider art piece and cultural phenomenon, sometimes hilarious and sometimes irritating. There is so much harm done to children quite out in the open, through war, policy, and individual action, that the kind of endless parsing of symbols I see here and in many similar writings seems a foolish at best and destructively ignorant at worst waste of time and energy. I’m not even a skeptic and I find it so. Second, this kind of speculation about the imagined secret occult lives of celebrities is disrespectful to performers and people and less interesting than the headlines on the supermarket tabloids.
A very thought provoking article, Maria.
My focus was not on the wedding but on Katy Perry and the occult symbolism behind her performance and that of other performances at events such as the London Olympics and half-time performances at football games. I turn 58 today and I remember a time when family entertainment was innocent and light, not loaded with darkness. The Oracle Report articulated this issue beautifully, I think, and so I post it here:
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Special: The Oracle Report – Mars, Eris, and Katy Perry or How the Illuminati Are Poised to Strike and Why They Will Fail (Part 1)
Posted on January 29, 2014
by Jean
OracleReport.com
The world is supposed to be a happy and safe place for children. But that’s not the case anymore with the Illuminati magician-minions’ systematic deconstruction of childhood wonder and innocence, and the calculated exposure of children to rituals blending sexual and occult themes. But the New World Order has gotten as far as it has in large measure because these rituals are timed in accordance with astrology, which is part of the Illuminai’s war chest. Latest case in point: Katy Perry’s ritual-performance at the 2014 Grammy Awards on the eve of the Mars-Eris opposition at the Eris Point, the Illuminati’s preferred degree in the zodiac for furthering their control agenda. Under the surface, this ritual is preparation for war.
The unavoidable consequence (or in Illuminati-speak, the “revelation of the method”) of enacting mass occult rituals, which is exactly what the Grammy Awards and all other mass spectacles like Opening Ceremonies at the Olympics are, is that it leaves a signature, a trail, a calling card. For a “forensic” astrologer like me and the only astrologer to begin researching the planet Eris at the observatory where it was discovered, it is easy to see when the Illuminati will make geopolitical moves (usually through false flag events). Their “secret” is not so secret anymore, however.
Universal principles of electromagnetics and harmonics which are not fully understood by mainstream science (but accurately understood by the Illuminati) indicate optimum energetic times to imprint reality and influence events. In the zodiac, when a planet makes an aspect to 21 degrees of Aries, the Eris Point or degree in the sky where Eris was discovered, the Illuminati enact a ritual that is tied to war. This is because archetypally Eris is known as the Queen of the Battlefield, Queen of the Underworld, and the Goddess of Chaos and Strife.
But the “face” of this goddess is split in two like no other. There is a second side of the Eris archetype – a nurturing wife and mother who leads her children through the cycles of birth and growth, upholding the values of true love and freedom, righteously defending against slavery and tyranny. Her themes are intertwined with protecting those on the margins of society. (New mom Beyonce held this role in the Grammy Awards ritual ceremony.)
Historically, Eris has been known by many names. She is the Sumerian Inanna/Ereshkigal, the Egyptian Isis, the Babylonian Lilith, and the Disney characters of Snow White/the Evil Queen and Sleeping Beauty/Maleficent (the latter also featured during the Grammy Awards). Eris is a shrieking banshee on the battlefield and the protectrix of elite troops. She is the wrinkled witch stirring a cauldron and a seductive underworld goddess mixing elixirs of alchemy.
In astrology, when planets make conjunctions and oppositions to the Eris Point, the degree in the sky where the planet Eris was discovered, powerful archetypal energies engage. It provides a “magical” opportunity to imprint reality. The nature of the opportunity is determined by that planet’s own archetypal themes in association with Eris’ themes. The Illuminati believe that “paying homage” to Eris with a ceremony when the planet Eris and/or the Eris Point are astrologically activated courts favor, so they perform rituals when these astrological aspects coalesce. “Favor” in this sense describes the potential effectiveness of the goal – the spell.
Rituals and ceremonies are more powerful when masses of people participate, thus mass media is the perfect outlet for such activities. Blue eyed and dark haired Katy Perry, Eris du jour, fits the Illuminati’s preferred stereotype of Eris. Katy Perry is an amalgam of fairy princess and dominatrix wrapped up in a package of charm. Her performance motif could have been anything, but a witch in the grove is hardly random. The ceremony at the Grammy Awards occurred on the eve of the exact opposition of Mars and Eris, very close to the Eris Point. Mars is the God of War and he also happens to be Eris’ brother. When Mars and Eris are in aspect, anger, aggression, conflict, and war are heightened. When they are in aspect close to the degree where the planet Eris was first discovered, the influence is enormously magnified.
However, the real cruelty of the ceremony is that Katy Perry retains an ember of childlike wonderment for life; therefore children are naturally drawn to her. She is most popular with (worshiped by) very young children. She’s the voice of Smurfette, after all! Her performance was scheduled early in the show when younger children would still be awake. The Illuminati believe that involving children in their rituals empowers the ritual. Enough whistleblower and court testimony has surfaced regarding ritualized child sexual abuse for us to know that secret rituals with children are a reality. Most likely a real ritual involving children was occurring while those watching the “dramatic” rendition of the ritual, Katy Perry’s performance, unwittingly offered passive participation.
There is a term for the insertion of ideas and intentions into people’s minds at certain times for a desired effect that grows over time and is reinforced at future opportune times: mind control. These broadcast “performances” are ceremonial mass mind control via the entertainment industry using a calendar of astrology for timing.
(Katy Perry should be mindful that the Illuminati wholeheartedly believe in the misogynistic notion that “all goddesses must fall” and thus will engineer or facilitate a future fall from grace. Then, she will either remake herself like the phoenix rising from the ashes or be annihilated in the flames. It’s a win-win for the Illuminati because “goddesses” are powerful regardless of whether they are fallen or risen. Most likely Katy Perry is peripherally aware, as are most artists in the music industry, if not the entertainment industry as whole, that there is a cabal of occult-oriented businessmen-bankers who are truly in control of whom becomes successful and what type of art shapes the world. Jay-Z is rather open about it; his commitment to perpetuating the symbolism is plain. Madonna, a previous ritual pawn who is occasionally trounced back out, is now deeply immersed in the Illuminati’s perversion of the Mysteries. It is perversion because their view is based on foundations of dominance and control of others– principles contrary to life.)
Freedom of expression stands, but it is our job to be wise to what is being expressed. Katy Perry’s performance-ritual is a statement that only those who are schooled in esoteric wisdom would fully understand. In Part 2, we will look at just what that statement is and why it indicates that the New Moon in Aries on March 30, 2014, the astrological New Year, opens the year when the Illuminati make their final move and why the energy that they try so desperately to control will ultimately be their downfall. On that day, Mars comes back to Eris for a repeat performance. This time around, however, the ritual will not be shrouded behind a flimsy stage spectacle. It will play out in the theatre of the world.
Copyright OracleReport.com. 2014. All rights reserved. Permission granted for reposting this article in its entirety when credit is given.
Mia