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.
I am not certain I agree about
Control. Control is at the surface but, beneath the surface everything is uncontrolled. There is even a sense in which the
Twins lack even control over their
"own genders". There is a hint that there is "no He and no She". Which might well mean that the
Twins are, in fact protean in character and embracing their lack of fixed, physical identity.
There is a sense in which
Absence of Control is the state of nature for the
Twins. Much as claimed in the
Eulogy of Aristophanes, the Children of the Sun, Moon and Earth have different binding of male-female; male-male; and, female-female. Nowhere does Aristophanes insist that those combinations are fixed. So, for example - and easiest to visualise - there is no guarantee that the female of the female-male is not interchanged, at some point, with the male. The satire of Aristophanes in the Eulogy makes the fluidity of the protean state the natural state. In that sense, Control is simply not part of the relationship. Mister X is struggling with
Loss - the absence of his own
Other Half whose death has left him less of a person in the Arisophean sense. It is not so much a matter of
Control as the
Twins demonstrating their inherent nature is protean: there is no he or she just they.
In being in a natural state that lacks control, the
Twins substitute
Compassion for
Control. Unlike the simplistic duality of
Arf and
Omega there is no conflict between the two identities with the
Twins simply an endless exchanging on the
Dao. The
Twins are a literal embodiment of
The Way 道 which Mister X fails to apprehend. If there is a theme of
Control it is subverted by a theme of
compassion. Which, like the
Way, Mister X fails to apprehend. In that failure, Mister X condemns the
Twins to physical separation but does not achieve any kind of reconciliation to his own situation: that of Widower.
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.
This I agree with but would not characterise it as confusion but, instead,
anamnesis. Anamnesis is the process whereby one remembers what one has forgotten. In
Socratic Method, Socrates leads the Learner to
remember the wisdom that they have 'forgotten' by posing a series of questions. It is fundamental to Socratic theories of knowledge that we simply "remember" the forgotten wisdom and bring it to the front of our minds. Mister X knows - and the Listener knows he knows - that his wife is dead. There is no confusion. Simply a refusal to answer the question which the
Twins pose: do you think you know more than we do? That refusal keeps Mister X from knowing what he knew when his wife was alive.
The question from the
Twins is compassionate and the failure to answer, by Mister X is the source of all the suffering. Mister X, were he to answer, would know what he knew when
she was alive. When he was part of the Children Of The Moon. In the
Eulogy of Aristophanes in Plato's
Symposium the Children of The Moon were an androgyne mix of male and female. In the language of the Alchemists, they were the hermaphrodite and the presence was synonymous with the Alchemical wedding. The
Twins, as the Dao, pose the question to Mister X: what is your true nature.
Mister X, it seems, only understands and reconciles himself to his true nature after the
Kiss of Flesh.
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.
This is the part I agree with most and least. This narrative of Mister X in terms of
only sexuality seems almost right. Although I would stress that Mister X condemns the
Twins to the transience of sexuality by severing their physical link between the
Twins thus reducing them - as Aristophanes explains in his Eulogy - to seeking the connection with their partner, that they have lost. Mister X can never experience that connection, ever again. Not only because of his wife being absent but because he refused to simply embrace the protean nature of being one in the many.
In that respect, it is the collision of a theology - that of the Christian Trinity - and of the godlessness of Buddhism and Taoism. Mister X fails to embrace the salvation of
the Way because he chooses the traditional sacrifice of the Abrahamitic Trinity of Religions (Islam, Christianity and Judaism). Mister X substitutes an assault with a knife for the dissolution into the oneness. In this sense, Mister X is avoiding duality. He is sacrificing - which is traditional - and so not becoming at one with his true nature.
The
God In Three Persons is an immanent deity that has no duality. It simply is. The only duality is the one created by Mister X. The duality is an illusion. In truth there is always a unity. The unity that Mister X deliberately breaks. Not because he is human and fallible or because he is unworthy of becoming at one with the
Twins but because he cannot answer the question: what is your true nature.
While I agree that duality is a way to explore the theme, I suppose that loss and innocence are better. Mister X needs to remember his true nature and the
Twins are the way to do so: once Mister X can get beyond the duality of their personhood. They are much closer to the Dao of Taoism than they are to being two persons. Perhaps, rather than duality, I am convinced this has more in common with the notion of
"betweeneness". But that would be another thing.