Arthur Russell - Being It

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04 Being It 1.mp3


We all have different songs that we feel have changed our life, particularly if we are someone who has a very intimate relationship with music. Off the top of my head, I can think of dozens of songs that have made an impact on the way I think about the world, myself and my life. There are many songs that have been important in the way they can act as a sort of marker for where I was at a certain point in my life, and they can take me to a deep and intimate place within myself that I otherwise may have forgotten. These songs are wonderful and will always have a special place in my heart.

But there is no song that has brought me the same degree of actual enlightenment than Arthur Russell's "Being It". The effect it has is different than the everyday profundity of Paul Haig's "Something Good" (see below), for while the latter is a reminder to change how we interact with the world and the choices that we make within the world, Being It is about seeing past the world we live in altogether; it is literally about transcendence, and acts as a harbinger for that transcendence.

Let me tell you a little anecdote. Once, this past fall, I was having a rough day for whatever reason. I was exhausted and at work and I just felt kind of bored. I was talking with this girl who is a very old friend of mine and I was playfully but somewhat boldly flirting with her, although I did not expect her to reciprocate it. She didn't, and it upset me. I felt rejected. I had also applied to several jobs the day before but had not heard back from any of them. This also made me feel rejected. In both instances, the feeling of rejection was, of course, stupid. Why should I feel rejected by either? But I did anyway.

On the train ride home, I was listening to Being It. I was sitting there, and I noticed that almost no one on the train was talking to anyone else. Everyone was alone. At first, this depressed me. I was on a poorly-lit 7 train, we were going under the river into Queens and I felt rejected and I was listening to this somewhat intense song. Then, I just decided to surrender to it. I closed my eyes and felt the sensations filling my torso shift; I became softer inside and then, when Arthur sings what he does at the 3:55 mark, I suddenly felt a profound sense of liberation, and I no longer felt rejected in any way.

It is only being.

Think about that. It is only being. If you feel willing to indulge me, close your eyes and think about that phrase for even five minutes. Hell, even one minute. It is only being. It is only life. It is only being who we are. It is only being human. It is only our egos. It is only our emotions. It is only what we want. It is only what we fear. It is only what we know. It is only what we feel. It is only all of these things. What makes us think that these things are so monumentally important? Think about that.

Now, I believe that we all have souls, and that there is a world beyond our material one. Maybe you do, maybe you don't. But believing what I do is a huge part of believing Arthur when he says, "It is only being." Our egos, our selves, are impure and create drama. They desire and fear and demand of others, although I believe that our souls do not. Why do we equate intensity with profundity? Why is pain or longing considered important or profound? It is only pain. And we are only ourselves, and we cannot take things personally. If someone rejects us, it wasn't meant to be; at least not at that moment. If we don't get what we want, it wasn't meant to be. It is what it is, at every moment.

Think about that. It is what it is. Our life is only our life; our bodies are only our bodies; our thoughts are only our thoughts; our desires are only our desires; being is only being. Why do we think any of these things are important? This song is a call to let go of thinking anything is more than it is, and once we achieve that, once we realize that it is what it is, we see beyond it to what it truly is, but only once we let go of what our emotions think it is. Confused? It is very confusing, but profoundly simple. When I was rejected by my friend, I was only rejected by my friend. That is it. There is nothing more to it than that. It does not matter what the reasons were, because they do not affect what is and what is not. Sit in stillness and ponder this; when we lose, we only lose. Detach all emotional connection to words; loss is loss. It is when something is no longer there, when it no longer is. And that loss is what it is, and nothing more. Our selves are what fears loss. Fear fears loss. And what is fear? Fear is fear, and nothing more. It is what it is. Our selves judge life and others; they determine something to be good or bad. Why is one thing good and another bad? Everything is what it is. Good and bad are constructs of the self, and really: who are we to judge the universe, to judge existence, to judge being and the way of God or heaven or nature or the universe or Isness or whatever you want to call it? We are only ourselves, and everything is what it is, and what is not is what it is in being what it is not.

Let me relate something very personal to me. When I was a child, I used to have dreams and occasionally conscious visions in which I would see what Aldous Huxley called "Preternatural light" in his book about LSD, The Doors Of Perception. This kind of light has been associated for more or less the whole of recorded human history with spirituality and enlightenment, and for whatever reasons I was lucky enough to see it. Preternatural light is essentially light that appears to be self-luminous and alive. It is unlike anything in the material world, and cannot possibly be recreated, even by computers. In fact, the closest thing to it is to stare at a Dan Flavin and let the layers of entoptic phenomena flow in until the light gives the impression of being alive and moving (hence why I love Flavin). In the light I have typically seen, there are colors that flow into one another as one; they are distinguishable but only at certain moments; they are one and many at once, orange is green and green is orange, yet one can still be called by its name and the other by its own. The appearance of preternatural light has always been accompanied by this strange sensation of simultaneous fullness and emptiness, with each moving in and out of the other, like a moving, living Yin and Yang. It feels something like sand shifting so quickly that we cannot comprehend it, and it feels slowed down to what our human bodies can apprehend. I used to often have dreams in which all material had vanished, and all that remained was a mass of preternatural light; there was no sky, no ground. All that was, was light.

Part two of this story: when I was a senior in college, I had a vision while writing a paper on Stan Brakhage (fittingly). Now, when I say vision, I mean something that I knew was borne of my intuition, from my soul. I suddenly had a flash of what love looks like. Yes, of what love itself looks like, if it could be photographed or represented visually. It was of a blue light, reflected identically on the other side of a streak of black void. That was it. It was a reflection of light, with a void between it. I realized a few months ago, while listening to Being It, that that blue light is what the soul looks like, and that that mass of preternatural light is essentially what the non-material world appears as. Perhaps the non-material world I refer to is what Christians would call Heaven. Now, I know that most of you will probably think that I am totally nuts, and not buy any of this, but I believe this very deeply; take it or leave it. I know it sounds strange. But if you look throughout loads and loads of literature, many very well-respected scholars and writers have said more or less the same thing. Why do you think people are obsessed with light? "Let there be light." "All that is, is light." St. Augustine equated the soul to a living light. And why is mescaline important in many Native American cultures? Anyway, you can take it or leave it, as I said. It is what it is.

All of this has made me realize something which I will now try to explain. Love is the most important thing to me. Love is what I value above all else. And the big thing that I have realized, is that love is not an emotion. Love has nothing to do with the Self. We only think it does because when our Selves experience it, it is intense, and provokes much longing, fear and general emotion. Love is as still and simple as the light filling your room right now. It is as simple as reflection in a pond, as light reflecting in a mirror. That is all it is. My vision of love was not a metaphor; it is what it looks like. That is what love is; it is being. Love is merely acceptance of what is and what is not, because love is what is natural and already there. Love is Being and Being is Love. God is Love and Love is God, and Love is God is Being. With those whom I love unconditionally, I feel each and every time a sense of wonder at who they are, a sense of stillness and peace when reflecting on them. I cannot tell you why I feel this, either. Why do we love? I think that when we feel unconditional love for another person - we meaning our Selves - it is because our souls reflect one another; they are the same light with a space between them. Or perhaps that black void I saw was just the 98.7% (approximately) of light that is invisible in the universe (scientific fact!). But when we feel that love, we see beyond ourselves, beyond this world, and into the eternal. But this love; this can be full of joy and it can be full of fear. Yet I firmly believe that true love is not about the Self; it is not about emotion. It is simply a fact, a state of being. It is as simple as saying, "This still pond is reflecting the sky above it." That is love, my friends. It is what it is, and nothing more. It is light reflecting itself. It is the acknowledgement of this, and of letting things be. Our Selves experience love as this huge dramatic thing that is so cinematic, but it is so simple. It is only being. It is the light coming through your window right now. It is as simple as a mass of light and color, together as one, in complete and eternal silence. In the silence of light is love. In becoming the silence of light, we become love; but there is nothing to become, for we already are. When we let go of our Selves, when we quiet our minds, we become love, for it is what we already are and always shall be. When we love another, we love and accept them; we let them be, and respect their being. Our love for them is a fact, a state of mind; it is as straightforward as seeing our face in a mirror when we stand before it. Love is only profound to us because it signals the overcoming of fear; in reality, love is everywhere and everything.

All that is, is light.

Love is God and God is Love.

God is light.

All that is, is love.

This summer, at the Dan Flavin retrospective at the LACMA, I was staring at one of his corner pieces, in which green and pink illuminate the corner. As the colors transposed due to my photoreceptors wearing out, I was overcome with the utter certainty that I was looking at - and seeing - God.

All of this is immediately before us, we only have to recognize it. Being It is about that recognition.

For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known. -Corinthians 13:12

Everybody on earth knowing
that beauty is beautiful
makes ugliness.

Everybody knowing
that goodness is good
makes wickedness.

For being and nonbeing
arise together;
hard and easy
complete each other;
long and short
shape each other;
high and low
depend on each other;
note and voice
make the music together;
before and after
follow each other.

That's why the wise soul
does without doing,
teaches without talking.

The things of this world
exist, they are;
you can't refuse them.

To bear and not to own;
to act and not lay claim;
to do the work and let it go:
for just letting it go
is what makes it stay.

-Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching, Chapter Two

Dinosaur - Kiss Me Again

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Dinosaur - Kiss Me Again (Jimmy Simpson Mix).mp3

After my long hiatus, I decided to return with a truly special song, one that is worth even two really good songs. And so, I present to you one of Arthur Russell's greatest of his many great achievements: the Jimmy Simpson mix of Dinosaur's "Kiss Me Again". This is the version that appeared as the a-side on what was Sire Records' very first disco release, and the one that I prefer to the band's personal b-side mix. But before launching into this 13-minute movin' 'n' shakin' monster, let's cover a brief bit of background. Arthur Russell was a classically-trained, Buddhist cellist from Iowa who came to New York in the 1973 and later began recording what are now considered crucial and innovative disco records with a variety of musicians (including David Byrne, noted nerd and frontman for Talking Heads, who plays guitar on Kiss Me Again) and under a variety of monikers (e.g. Felix, Loose Joints, Dinosaur L, etc.). Along with Juggy Gales and William Socolov, he founded Sleeping Bag Records and ended up working in one way or another with an extremely impressive list of folks, including Phillip Glass, John Cage, Francois Kevorkian, Larry Levan, Diane Madden and many, many others. Glass once said that Russell "was a guy who could sit down with a cello and sing with it in a way that no one on this Earth has ever done before, or will do so again." Arthur was no square. He was a beast, and if you listen to even his biggest releases (which I admit is all I've done, for the most part), you can tell that the guy was a genius. Sadly, he died of AIDS in April of 1992.

Kiss Me Again sounds like fairly standard, good disco right off the bat. But one thing becomes apparent quickly: the song is patient. It doesn't rush into anything like a chorus, and you can tell that even when the vocals come in, the song is still warming up. It establishes this weird, tethery tension that makes you move but feel uneasy at once. You feel awkward; like you don't know where you stand and where the song is taking you. But you do know one thing: this thing is a beast. We start hearing a standard disco diva voice telling us about how she's running uptown and she wants this person (presumably a dude) beside her (at least that is the plan) and so forth. Then the clouds break and she wonders if she is a woman or a saint. This is a really striking line. Things seem to be going pretty well with this dude. She sees him so clear, even though the world is a smoky cloud (or something like that). But there's still this nagging tension, and we wait for some kind of catharsis or development. This tension is only elevated by the bridge where she keeps saying "I know my visions are real", in both thought and movement. What are these visions? Is she imagining all of this? It must pertain to the situation somehow, or she wouldn't be talking about it here. But we are immediately given a sense of an uncertain reality, even though she claims faith that her visions are real. But she acknowledges them as visions, and the music seems to imply a kind of uncertainty.

And then that amazing cello comes in. Where the hell did that come from? That, of course, is Arthur playing. Just what kind of weird disco song is this? Cello? And we STILL haven't felt the song "break" musically. It's still just keeping you moving back and forth in simple motions, creating a mold of movement. And we're three minutes into the damn thing. But that's not even a quarter of the way through, if you read the record label closely. When she begins saying "Here we are again" and begins asking simple questions, we know something is up, perhaps even slightly amiss. You know things maybe aren't as perfect as she made them seem at first. And the music, of course, tells its own story.

And then: the piano. Blood in the water. A tension starts beaming through, and there is a crack in the song's impenetrable facade. And once the chords break out at 3:38, a giant light just fucking bursts through, and everything goes nuts. I think this is one of the most beautiful moments I've ever heard, and I could hear this again and again for the rest of my life. It's definitely the most beautiful moment in the song. It's like being kissed. The whole song is like this tension of being with someone you dig who you know digs you, and the piano comes in right when there is an awkward pause in the conversation, perhaps after a really earnest compliment that tips one party's hand. For a few seconds, there is that delicious tension in the air, and then BOOM! A kiss. The wild ride of adrenaline soaring and shivering up and down your spine, that sickly sweet sensation of lust and fear that fits so perfectly with the deep resonance of the piano and, hell, of disco music in general.

"Oh baby, is this the woman I want to be? The door is unlocked, the windows are open, every time the place looks best for me. I said, kiss me, kiss me, kiss me again, kiss me again..."

Then, a shock. Everything slows down, stops. She can't seem to make up her mind, but he makes it for her. What is she doing? There is a hesitation, a concern, a quiet, savage desperation. Is this the right thing?

Then it goes berserk again, and Byrne goes fucking wild. That guitar line just embodies personal disintegration. It is clear that everything is falling apart for this woman, as she wonders aloud, "Is this the woman I want to be? Tell me...is this what I want to be?" She is brutally breaking herself down for this relationship.

Have you ever gotten back together with someone who you shouldn't have? I think most of us have, and I think that's what this song is getting at, and the music tells the story even more than the words. But, back to the song...

We get that gorgeous cello again, that tension. Then her story begins changing, as she refers to times past in which he hurt her, pleading for kindness and love. Then she says that the first time and the last time are much too confused, and that she wants to be used. Clearly, this doesn't sound incredibly healthy, as they keep coming back here "again and again and again."

And when she returns to saying that she knows her visions are real, we look at this statement in a different manner. It is as if she has to keep telling herself this in order to maintain her sanity, her dignity, herself. There is a desperation in the music and in her voice during this repeated bridge, and we know that this is crucial for her. But what does this mean? What are these visions? Are they, in fact, real? Or is she fooling herself?

Then, following another haunting cello interlude, she wonders whether she is a woman or a toy before the song goes into a haunting, rather minimal little section that formally replaces the earlier piano segment. This part is as haunting as anything I've ever heard in any kind of dance music. Her cries of "Hey baby, is this the woman you want me to be?" come scorching directly from her soul, searing and swirling all around it into a blistering sandstorm of self-doubt and a loss of self-control. Does this dude want her to be ambiguously a woman or a toy? And the way she so defiantly yet subserviently asks what she does. She clearly feels crushed by her wondering, but will she decide for herself, as anyone should? The fact that she asks this says it all...

Then it slows down, stops, again. A moment of pause, of contemplation. A deep breath. Then, Byrne. What a fucking beast. The disintegration is even more pointed this time around, because it is undeniably there, too. She realizes it now, too. "Is this what I want to be? I don't know. Ah, tell me..." Everything has fallen apart for this woman, and her sense of self seems to be gone, lost to lust and misplaced love. All hell breaks lose after the guitar part, and after a sort of insane repetition of various mutations of "Is this what I want to be? Tell me..." she says, "But first, kiss me," and it is clear that all is lost. She has totally lost control of herself and her sense of happiness and even love.

And the brilliant thing about this song is that it's all there from the beginning. The tension embodies that intuitive feeling we have in our gut when we get (back) together with someone we know in our heart we shouldn't be, but we ignore it all for the sake of kissing them. We want to connect, we want to fuck, we want to kiss. We want somebody. And Kiss Me Again embodies that feeling of the best intentions that go awry, but we really have no one to blame but ourselves for getting involved with people we know we shouldn't. And that same initial feeling of "No, this is wrong" continues throughout the song through the musical arrangements themselves, only they build and build and give way to an increasing structure of desperation and a kind of madness, marked by the one moment of great beauty: the kiss. A kiss is almost always beautiful if you let it be, even if it's with the wrong person.

And doesn't this song also just speak to the dangers of the night life, of the boogie? Of the danger in not respecting the body and the heart? I mean, some bands (I'm thinking of Happy Mondays, first and foremost) have based their entire output on that theme, more or less. This kind of culture and lifestyle can be incredibly fun, but also dangerous if you're not prudent like George Bush, Sr.

But more than anything, I think this song is a masterwork. It's absolutely phenomenal. It's so subtle and so barn-burning at once. It's like it burns the barn to the ground, but leaves the wreckage precisely in the shape of Alfred Hitchcock's face or something. And it's thirteen fucking minutes long, with not a minute wasted. I hope you enjoy this amazing song, if you haven't heard it already.