ELO or more specifically Jeff Lynne have a very special place in my heart.
There's this early mystical experience, and about ten years later, there's this addiction which led to months and months of me listening, watching, rewatching, learning and trying to figure something out, and boy I learned a valuable symbolism lesson from the dance edit versions. It was just fated to be an ELO track. Nobody's found a substitute yet to match it.
On my ELO research travels I came across the Jeff Lynne interview embedded above, and I promise you it's the best and funniest mondegreen story I've ever encountered, and I hope it brings a smile to your face too.
I haven't been to the ballet since Paquita, by the Ballet de l'Opera national de Paris in Beijing, 2008. You can read that linked review if you wish but at the time I couldn't tell the full story as I was a career-focused guy and this blog was mainly for advertising professionals. Well, I got stoned before heading out to the ballet at the Egg cultural centre. I lived just off Tiananmen square, and hopped onto my electric bike to see the show. I was just a smidge too stoned and miscalculated the time I'd need to take a different route around the square than usual, so I was the last person to arrive at the theatre. The ushers at the end of a long corridor were beckoning me wildly to move my ass as the show was just about to begin, so I legged it down the corridor and they let me in, closing the doors behind me.
I was high, out of breath, heart beating wildly, and as I looked around the theatre, the entire Beijing audience turned to gaze at me disapprovingly, knowing full well it was me that had held things up. I had a really good centre seat ticket, so half an entire row had to stand up to let me get there, while I apologised profusely. I sat down and the ballet began immediately.
I'd heard that sometimes performers will choose a person in the crowd to play to on a personal level, to bring out the best and most sincere dramatization, and that night, I was that guy. The lead dancer, a beautiful Parisienne based swan looked at me straight in the eye all night, even to the last pirouette where she gracefully collapsed to the stage floor, arms open looking at me.
Wow, what a night.
Southampton has one of the largest theatres outside of London and is the largest on the South coast. It only takes ten minutes to walk there from my home and I'm grateful to have exceptional cultural content so close to me.
As soon as the curtain raised for Swan Lake I was mesmerised. Stagecraft has progressed noticeably since my last ballet and it looked more real than reality, but in a holographic sense, more three dimensional and I was excited. Act I introduced our hero Prince Siegfried, his wingman Benno and his mother the Queen dowager who is recently widowed. Permit yourself to an appetiser if the text is worth returning to, or not. Let it speak for itself
The first intermission was described as a three-minute scene change but took so long many of the audience seated near me pointed out that a toilet break or a quick drink at the bar may have been possible but eventually the curtain raised and Act II commenced.
Siegfried and Benno have followed a flight of swans to a lake in order to hunt them. This felt transgressive as I am aware that killing swans in the United Kingdom is illegal to kill or eat as they are considered the property of the King. However, the swans they are chasing are in fact human between the hours of midnight and dawn. It is here Siegfried is amazed to see a swan change into the beautiful Odette played by the magnetically tall and exquisitely gifted Yijing Zhang. Some of her moves I'd never seen either a human or a fictional media character ever make.
There was a time when I was training as a gymnast that I did ballet to improve balance, elegance and control. I regret not taking it up professionally. I would have been good. How good? That's another question but the principal male lead, Siegfried played by Tyrone Singleton did an amazing job. This will sound mean but it's just the truth. In these days of the obesity pandemic it's heart lifting to see beautifully formed men and women during ballet. Tyrone's strength raising up Yijing is a sight to behold. This is what the human form was designed for and I'll write about the purposeful destruction of our bodies one day. I now have the date it started and by whom and how.
Many of you will know that I make bold claims fortified with photographic evidence and documentation trails about the use of doubles, masks and clones in the high-profile business of politicians and billionaires and so forth. Swan Lake's central story mechanism is about a double for Odette. Our hero Siegfried falls in love with her but in Act III she is replaced by a black magician double, whose real name is Odile but is for simplicities sake also played by our heroine Yijing. Swan Lake is as contemporary as is possible and for those who recognise the name Odette she was a British agent and French operative Odette Sanson also known as Odette Churchill and Odette Hallowes or Lise as an agent for the clandestine Special Operations Executive.
It's close, isn't it?
Doubles, clones, deception, espionage and subterfuge but in Act III we're back to the Royal court which is now dripping in illuminated red and black shadows for contrast, which is a colour coded and symbolic leitmotif I've been researching for quite some time now since the dance edit of ELO's don't bring me down.
Our handsome hero has fallen for Odette but at court sees double vision Odile and makes the mistake of erroneously pledging his love for her, which is the only magic spell rule that Odette had specified in order for their love to be conjugated.
In a last attempt to gain his attention our Odette locks eyes with Siegfried who finally recognises his mistake and pursues Odette to the lake. After a stunning display of the swans emerging invisibly from ground floor mist before unforgettable choreographed dance scenes, both Odette and Siegfried throw themselves into the lake, thus ensuring that by the morning, their lives will be united in a world of eternal love.
Great pop song, quintessential 80s aesthetic and very acerbic observations. As an aside, I have a theory that ELO's Jeff Lynne could easily be the celebrity with the most doubles, masks etc. So easy to imitate with the perm and glasses. Witty as well as great music. Did you see this on twitter?
It's easy to find, just put Biden + Mask in the search engine, oh let me do it for you. I'm not saying it's true, AI can generate variations of these ad nauseum for a thousand years.
My statements on Biden doubles, masks and so forth is well documented here last time I checked. If it becomes public knowledge, and it looks like it's getting that way, I'll be forced to pick up a new red pill that is considered heresy or madness, but the clones and doubles and masks go so much deeper than I could ever have anticipated.
Another 18 months and nobody will care. We'll have much more pressing matters.
Above is the original by Jeff Lynne'sELO. I did post about the wider topic back here. I love the dance edits so much that I did some digging on. The edit below is a low resolution of the inspirational original as the that Youtube gem was deplatformed, and then the low res edit was deplatformed and an even lower quality resolution took its placed. Arseholes.
The next edit by Sabrina Fani might also have been scrubbed from the net though there seems to be some crossover with or between Alfonso Jimenez.
For me this is the next level choreography. If you pay attention there are always at least three layers of action going (foreground, middle and background) on and there are references to antiquity which just boggle the mind and hint at creative input that is in my opinion rarely seen for public consumption. I probably wouldn't have noticed it, just by watching the 1969 movie Sweet Charity, with Shirley MacLean (sister of Warren Beatty and Illuminati bloodline), but the dance edit by Alfonso Jimenez brings it to life in a way that is unforgettable. Original choreography by Bob Fosse.
The last video is Freemasons (ironic huh?) featuring Katherine Ellis "When you touch me", an homage to the dance scene in Sweet Charity, as she bears a strong resemblance to the lead female dancer - it's not even close in quality to the original. I've yet to find the names of the dancers in the movie Sweet Charity but that's the final piece of the jigsaw.
Update: I did find out the original female dance lead. She's an accomplished woman even in her 70s. It should be part of this post but I've temporarily forgotten where I filed it.
To find the information took me weeks and weeks as I had to trawl through the comments of the Sabrina Fani video edit (now deleted), so a lot of world class information has been scrubbed for the time being.
It's safe to say I'm obsessed with that Sweet Charity choreography and setting. When I found out it was released in the year of my birth, I couldn't believe it. I genuinely thought it was super fresh and made recently. Either I'm thick as mince or it's an exceptionally classic-modern.
I may come back if I find more additions of original material.
The first time I heard this I'd been in a funk for about 10 days. Ordering McDonalds delivery so that the brown paper bags were piling up on my bed and I was tipping the delivery guy to go and buy me some fags because when I don't want to see anybody the most taxing thing is polite chit chat. I'm neither polite, and I'm not interested, and so by that I mean I don't want to speak to the maid, the security guard, reception and I especially don't want to deal with stuff like friends and if you really want to see a grown man cry get my family to call up to see if I'm OK.
Anyway.
Have you noticed I like to say anyway?
Well anyway, Inland Knights say "anyway" better than any mother fucker on the planet. It's like a precursor to bringing out a pistol. I say a Glock, but it could just as easy be a Beretta or a Mauser (when they made pistols). It's like 'anyway, now I shoot you' without actually saying anything, but if you want to verify the validity of that statement you need to check the tune out. It's called Back Chat.
Anyway. The first time I heard this I'd been horizontal for a while and I guess I must have fallen asleep listening to Doug Rushkoffs podcasts, but by the time I awoke I had no idea what the fuck was going on. I recognised the track but it was also really alien. The last time I had a track play games with me like that, was waking up to ELO's Strange Magic which comes close as a description but not close enough because I thought I was having a religious experience on that occasion.
This time I didn't need any epiphany. I wasn't debating whether this was the Good Lord speaking to me so I just leaned over to iTunes and reset it back a few minutes while I adjusted to the rude but welcome musical intrusion into my life. I realised it was special and got out of the 'pit' as I like to call my crib on these occasions and went to blip.fm or Youtube to see if I could track it down.
Somebody once wrote that ABBA were the last band to sing optimistic pop songs. Of course there are exceptions but in general they were our last gasp before we consumed ourselves. Now you may choose to propagate that machine unthinking or otherwise but that's not what makes me tick, so when I listen to ABBA I actually hear the dwindling voice of an age. You can call it the seventies or whatever but no group will ever have the audacity to sing like ABBA ever again or at least until the Long Now Foundation start to make an impact on this smear of mathematics we call culture (One for Steak in Kidney).
So when I heard RIng in Swedish by Abba I tumbled out of the pit to find it so that I could always play it when I needed it and on demand. I needed it in the cloud under a book mark. Ring Ring in Swedish is a culture remix that always existed. Who knows how the song was originally written. It's probably in Wikipedia but the point is that it sounds more authentic than ABBA in English. For all their preternatural and superlative laden, hippy white bread drippy pop aspirations, when ABBA sing why don't you give me a call in Swedish, it's unpretentious and feels more exposed than making a buck in English and somehow taps into what we all felt as young people (before SMS and email) waiting for a phone to ring so that we could know we exist.
As opposed to the brass patina and distressed leather cynicism of middle age when one knows you will eventually call and we extract the quid pro quo of doo lallying in the first place.
