Author Topic: GOD IN THREE PERSONS (Project of the Week for 13th of February)  (Read 772 times)

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moleshow

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Re: PROJECT OF THE WEEK (13th of February): GOD IN THREE PERSONS
« on: February 16, 2017, 11:03:37 pm »
(part 2)

Themes (the Complicated Stuff)

It seems to me that the themes are split up into three, with a singular undercurrent of sexuality.

The themes are control, confusion, and duality.

Control

Throughout the album, there is a desperate attempt from all parties to have control. For the twins, this comes quite easily. They are rational, and can control what they feel. When confronted with Mr. X, a man who longs only to control what lies outside of him (as he cannot control that which lies within himself), they inevitably have fun for quite a while, denying him of or allowing him the realities that he seeks. Their encounters with him establish to them the way in which he deals with those who he believes know less than him. Back and forth they go, escalating into physical control as well as psychological, until it becomes too real to maintain and dissipates.

For Mr. X, to seize control of the twins is to control his desire. To make them be who he wants them to be and when is an act of aggression, a statement of dominance. His need to dominate others reduces his ability to consider the nature of the passivity that enables his behavior. Blinded by desire.

Confusion

The theme of confusion blends into that of fluidity.

The twins are indeed fundamentally fluid, at least in the aspects that Mr. X focuses on. Their personhood flows between the minds of one person, two people, or a blend of the two. The aspect of their existence that is “gendered” is so incredibly fluid that it is one of the main aspects of why the events of Kiss of Flesh occurred. They simply cannot be placed into boxes of “is” and “is not”. The labels applied to them by outside presences just don’t stick.

Mr. X denies himself of this fluidity that the twins are based in. He has what he assumes to be a strong sense of self. Unshakeable. Through his acts that shoved those around him away, he had no need to confront the ever-changing aspects of his vague and unclear “self”. He believes he knows what he does, why he does it, and what he wants. A disruption of that is a disruption of all that he knows.

Duality

The twins are both a singularity and a duality. Their fluidity enables this. They exist in many different ways. They are connected in both a mental and physical manner.

Mr. X believes that he is a singularity, creating a trinity. God in three persons. But through his interactions with the twins, he creates dualities within himself that can have no third presence to correct them. He sees the twins as both male and female… and when he comes too close in Kiss of Flesh, neither. The duality remains, as he recognizes that there is no ‘she’. It is the twins and Mr. X. But his attraction to them is both hateful and loving, controlling and passive, desperate and detached. His experience of them is comprised of pain and pleasure. Everything he experiences with them is matched with an accompanying experience that both enhances and negates it, depending on the situation.

The main trinity that he creates is, in a strange and fluid way, the eventual physical one. Him and the twins, the latter party now being split apart. But a duality is within this nonetheless. Countless ones are. The twins are connected spiritually and mentally. Mr. X’s attraction to them still places a blend of heterosexuality and homosexuality within him. They are all irreversibly connected, while still ending all at a distance from each other. Close, but no longer close enough to create danger.

In Conclusion...

This album set a tone and standard for other storytelling works from the group. Mr. X is sort of a recurring type - you can see him in Tweedles (especially, since Tweedles takes until there is nothing left to take in a similar manner), in Randy, (to some extent) in Roger, in Harry the Head, in Tex. The album is humanizing for all parties involved, making us question who is in the right and where manipulation can be accepted, or if it can be accepted at all. And who is to blame in a game of weak and strong where two parties push and pull endlessly until the rope breaks?

I find it to be simply one of the best. Musically fresh, conceptually complex, contextually advanced, and it really gets the gears turning. Hard not to think about it. It is actually almost impossible to simply listen to it, for me. All parts of it need to be considered for quite some time before throwing in the towel.

Delicious, utterly Residential in its ability to deny and reject perceived notions of The Residents, what they are and what they do. And it is rewarding, I must say. Embracing the discomfort of the story is a wonderful part of the experience, since that is so utterly vital to really having anything to say about it.

Yeah.
« Last Edit: February 17, 2017, 09:41:04 am by moleshow »
"All our lives we love illusion, neatly caught between confusion and the need to know we are alive."