Beyond Life after Live Animals

 

An eighteen-song synchronicity soundtrack, “Beyond Life after Live Animals,” merges video from the Twin Peaks season two finale (“Beyond Life and Death” season 2 episode 22, aired 10 June 1991) with audio from original Haanumaan and Live Animals tracks. ***Full video and audio experiment available here: 

 

(1drv.ms/v/s!Aq9H2aUgCmvFgQy9uPX11APc1rou?e=H8fZ5d).

As the arm says, “Let’s rock!”

TS018 (2018-2023)

 

released June 25, 2023

All music by Haanumaan and Live Animals. Except for track 6 by Sharon Von Etten. All video from Twin Peaks season 2 episode 22, "Beyond Life and Death" (aired 10 June 1991)

Guardrail Jaws 007

Guardrail, a band based out of Dover and the Seacoast of New Hampshire, now on hiatus from weekly practices in a crimson-floored basement, proudly released Guardrail Jaws 007, a soundtrack DVD and video on 5 August 2016. The video is based on MKUltrasound's experiment combining Jaws (released a day before the summer solstice in 1975, EST) and The Spy Who Loved Me (released on 7 July '77).

Fueled by Budweiser, vodka, and badji, the soundtrack is based on a series of field recordings from 2014-2015 made on an Olympus digital voice recorder in single, often improvised takes among blacklights, laser-lit masks, and Marilyn Monroe posters. Guardrail was attempting to assemble some of their recordings into a Jaws soundtrack throughout 2014 and 2015, to deliver us from the tyranny of John Williams. 

When David Plate's compilation of Jaws and The Spy Who Loved Me emerged, it proved too good to not be included as the basis for the soundtrack. His conjoined film is synced with an audio track of Styx's The Grand Illusion, released on the same day as The Spy Who Loved Me: 7-7-77. As a key work of perhaps the world's preeminent Movie/album Merge Master, David's video album is a perfect sync, particularly in the trifecta of sections for "Come Sail Away." The Guardrail soundtrack using his video is not meant to detract from that work in any way. On the contrary, Guardrail Jaws 007 is meant to highlight the sublimity of how MKUltrasound's two films are linked. Characters, dialogue, and other symbolism are juxtaposed vertically with continual, and often blatant, connections between the two films. Reoccurring themes, like the two films' predilection for men who wear taupe, provide constant reinforcement for their paired significance.

Recording the songs only occasionally intended to serve specifically as a backing audio track for Jaws, and in those rare cases, the film was not played during recording sessions. In that way, creating the soundtrack was an experiment in synchronicity, with many of The Spy Who Loved Me syncs occurring spontaneously, as an unexpected surprise from the creative aether. For example, in that film's scene where Bond skis off an Austrian cliff face (actually Canada's Mount Asgard on Baffin Island) into a parachute jump (performed in July of 1976 for $30,000 by stuntman and BASE jumper, Rick Sylvester), the song "Down by the River (Martha)" was originally synced with Jaws alone. The timing of the slow motion ski drop sync with the exact start of the first verse (at 0:07:39) appeared only after MKUltrasound combined The Spy Who Loved Me with Jaws in 2016:

 “East five and five street, saw you standing there,   

Penthesilea, Gold Dust in The Air”

The unintentional synchronicities of that scene continue as Bond unfurls a Union Jack parachute (Roger Moore claimed in commentary for the film that Sylvester was nearly killed by a ski almost interfering with the chute's opening) at 0:07:52:

 “Venus Rising near the sun"

The small white and black lead parachute serves as a transiting Venus to the main parachute's British Sun. To underline the stupefying satisfaction of a sultry sync revealed, the next shot shows 007 in relationship to the Jaws characters above him.

 “hiding near the moon, three almost one"

In the Guardrail soundtrack, the next line of "Down by the River (Martha)" is at 0:08:00. Here, Bond forms the posture of the "Mason in Distress" with  Police Chief Martin Brody above him, played by Roy Schneider, who plays moon resonator Dr. Heywood Floyd in 2010. He is joined by the key witness to Chrissie's last swim, who serves as Venus to Brody's Moon and Bond's Sun: they are the "Three are almost one" in cosmological conjunction, referred to in the lyrics.

The above sequence of shots was not timed intentionally with the Guardrail Jaws 007 soundtrack, joining countless synchronicities which were a surprise or an unconscious outcome to many music and image parings. In other cases, the syncs were directly crafted, such as the scene in Jaws where oceanographer Matt Hooper pulls a license plate out of a Tiger Shark's stomach and the plate reads "007," perhaps the sin qua non of David Plate's double movie/music discovery.

 007: License (plate) to kill

Below the spy plate that links the two films like the Sistine Chapel's hand of God, Anya Amasova/Agent Triple X appears, played by Barbara Bach, the wife of Ringo Starr. Agent XXX embodies the Venus/Marilyn Monroe role in The Spy Who Loved Me while Matt Hooper (Richard Dreyfuss) serves that role through a seafaring gender substitution in Jaws. The timing of the Guardrail soundtrack was specifically manipulated so that cymbal flourishes coincide with each fish corpse that Dreyfuss pulls out of the shark's guts (partially at 43:58 and more closely in a 44:07 closeup) until a distinctive bass drop announces a cymbal/symbol crash when the license plate hits the floor (44:19).

Fireball/missile I: 

"He loved to drink his Whiskey, While laughing at the moon"

A partial Guardrail cover of War's "Slippin' into Darkness" (1971) represents the scene where Roy "Moon" Schneider contemplates mortality while stroking a high caliber revolver and a fireball/missile/UFO flies from right to left (1:36:03), part of Spielberg's signature series of  "shooting stars" in many of his films. In this scene, a guitar fill moving up the neck was deliberately overdubbed to highlight and coincide with the appearance of the first fireball.

 Fireball/Missile II: "Honest John"

Another deliberate musical highlight occurs in the next shot when a second "shooting star" moves left to right on screen (1:36:14), simulated by a guitar fill moving down the neck. This flying object recalls lyrics from the second Guardrail track, "Ain't Talkin' 'Bout Marilyn," a partial rendering of Van Halen's "Ain't Talkin' 'Bout Love" joining an improvisational verse about, "Honest John and his football stars." The "shooting star"/ missile scenes in both films transform this lyric into a direct reference to the "Honest John," MGR-1, the first nuclear-capable surface-to-surface missile in the US arsenal. Decommissioned versions of this rocket adorn at least two American high schools (and their football teams) as phallically potent militarized mascots.   

In a later scene in The Spy Who Loved Me, during Guardrail's "End," two nuclear devices are fired from a Russian and an American nuclear submarine, crossing paths from right to left and left to right as a mirror image of the Jaws meteorites (1:48:08). 

After a Ghostbustersesque crossing the streams moment when the missile spermatozoa nearly collide and Quint stares onward like a Kubrickian Jack Torrence or Private Pyle, the contemporary possibility and strategic fallacy of "limited nuclear exchange" is envisioned in stock footage (1:48:44).

A fire on board the Orca (previously known as the "Warlock" when Quint purchased it in Nova Scotia) is mirrored by an atomic fireball below. Quint's visceral hatred of sharks stems from a WWII experience when his ship, the USS Indianapolis, was torpedoed after delivering, "The Hiroshima bomb." In Quint's (Robert Shaw's) epic speech describing the shark-fueled brutality that followed, "eleven hundred men went into the water. 316 men come out, the sharks took the rest, June the 29th, 1945. Anyway, we delivered the bomb."

 CARCHARODON CARCHARIAS = 33

Deliberately designing a movie/music sync demonstrates that such pairings can be consciously created with minimal resources, proving insight into the potential intentionality of many of the movie music mergers that MKUltrasound, iAhuasca, and others have identified. Simultaneously, even while consciously manipulating the merger of sound and vision in some places, spontaneous meaning emerges through unexpected and mystical moments in others. Art happens. These unconscious syncs are often more symbolically powerful than those that are consciously created. As pure entertainment, it beats binge watching the fourth season of Girls, I can tell you that much. As Jungian exercise, it is a deep dive into symbolic fathoms beyond measure.

Laevorotational Journeys in Entheoethnography: Boom 2012

Dancecult, the Journal of Electronic Music and Dance Culture published "Laevorotation at Boom 2012," one of my encounters with psychedelics and psytrance at the biennial Boom festival at Portugal's Lake Idanha-a-Nova. It appears in that journal's "From the Floor" section of the latest issue, and was recently reprinted at Reality Sandwich. It showcases a hypermedia smorgasbord, partially illustrated by some of my photographic attempts to document the experience.  

This image of the central column of Boom's 2012 Dance Temple still serves as my stalwart avatar, and the counterclockwise underpinnings of what transpired there are central to this blog's esoteric name. 

More importantly, it contains some mind-blowing imagery from a number of talented professional photographers who kindly gave me permission to include their work within the article. As the moon spins in laevorotation from its current heavy new phase to blueberry full, many of we happy few are heading to Boom's next installation, now a week away. To the tower!

Wide Foxtrot Eyes Yankee Shut Hotel

Surfing the spiral as it spins, forever outward, inward, and onward, I drew inspiration from recent discussions on Always Record and MK Ultrasound's “The Secret Silent Film Society of Sync.” I journeyed from A.R. episode 59 (“HAL is Other People”) to the far reaches of cyberspace where Mark LeClair from Wrong Way Wizard asserts that Eyes Wide Shut occurs after 9/11 and that one of the central purposes of the rituals depicted in the film is to slow down time, keeping humanity trapped in an eternal HAL-based monolith nothingness (as depicted in LeClair’s post “The Emperor’s New Clothes”). In the past, my desire to simultaneously entertain and know myself through the visual and audio synchronization of films and millennial rock music soundtracks led me to combine Metropolis with the Smashing Pumpkins’ MACHINA/The Machines of God, providing many successfully configured revelations.  

From this meaningful discovery, an intuitive linkage of Eyes Wide Shut with Wilco’s Yankee Hotel Foxtrot made sense due to their shared connections to 9/11. Yankee Hotel Foxtrot's connections are widely documented, including the initial planned release date of the album (9/11/2001), the cover image of two towers, and lyrical allusions in songs such as “Ashes of American Flags” and “Jesus, Etc.” (which includes lyrics such as “Tall buildings shake, voices escape singing sad sad songs…”).

The possible links between the film and album were immediately suggested by their running times.  With a recorded length of 51:51 (IS:IS) minutes, Yankee Hotel Foxtrot resonates with “Isis”: its running time can be inverted and converted from a numerical 5151 to an alphabetical ISIS like an Eyes Wide Shut mirror image. This Isis inversion also reinforces the album’s symbolic connections to 9/11: for nearly a decade, many online commentators, including Goro Adachi, link Isis (and by extension, Magdalene and Venus) to Sept. 11^th, the twin towers, and the Statue of liberty.  The connections between Isis and 9/11 are also explored symbolically on posts at Look at All the Happy Creatures and the Mask of God.  

Image by Jake Kotze from “The Brave New World Order,” based on Manly P. Halls' “Saitic Isis” image in “Secret Teachings.” 

The 51:51/ISIS running time of Yankee Hotel Foxtrot fits 3 times in the 159 minute play length of Eyes Wide Shut. The repetition, of course, becomes a key part of the process and highlights numerous cycles of “three” in the film that might otherwise escape attention.  For example, “Jesus, Etc.” cues exactly at the start of the bedroom mirror sex scene, again at the moment Dr. Bill enters the mansion's door to the masked party, and again when he enters the hospital.  Because the same song starts at the beginning of these three scenes, it creates an otherwise unnoticed link between them and connects them through images of mirrors/glass, sex/death, and doors/entry.  

In other cases, lyrics that comically don’t fit the first or second time through are meaningfully synchronized when they show up the second or third time.  For example, during an ornate dance scene at Ziegler’s party, the line from the first track, “take off your Band-Aid cause I don’t believe in touchdowns,” stands out almost awkwardly.  By the second time it plays, however, Alice and Bill have shared a scene where football was on the television, they’ve gotten into Alice’s weed stash she keeps in a box of Band-Aids, and Bill is walking into a bar with a television showing a football game the exact moment the line about “touchdowns” happens again.  Until I encountered this uncanny football sync, I wasn’t aware that Eyes Wide Shut had any references to football at all, but it actually has three, if Tom Cruise’s association with 1983’s All the Right Moves is included (and how can any sports film made by Michael Chapman, the cinematographer for Raging Bull, be discounted?).  Once again, as Hollywood scribes would have it, Tom “has everything at stake.  He can't afford to lose.  He's got to make all the right moves.”

Based on this harrowing journey of madness and procrastination, I present the following walkthrough for this kinky spiraling rabbit hole. 

A Radio Rainbow Walkthrough:

THE FIRST CYCLE:  “I AM TRYING TO BREAK YOUR HEART”

(00:22) Cue (Track 1): (other “Cue:” points below can serve as markers to re-synchronize if necessary). Start the audio (ideally, with no pauses between album tracks) after the black and white Warner Bros text fades (not the initial WB graphic) so that the music starts with the “Tom Cruise” text on the screen.

Hit play at 00:22 after this screen fades...

 “I am an American aquarium drinker”

Track 1 plays and the “I am an American aquarium drinker” lyrics happens when Alice (who refers to herself as “American” a few minutes later) flushes the toilet, which is disturbingly hilarious in light of the discussion on Always Record ep. 59 about Stanley Kubrick, blue, yellow, and toilets.
  

 “Disposable Dixie cup drinking”

New melodies of Yankee Hotel Foxtrot's many pianos play when Nick Nightingale is introduced and he shares a champagne toast with Dr. Bill just after the line “disposable Dixie cup drinking.” After he is forcibly made to disappear, Nick Nightingale as N.N.= 44 (in numerous numerological ciphers) is the Disposable Dixie as D.D. also = 44.  This same forty-four = 4+4 = 8 infinity lyric/toast pairing is reinforced when it happens for the second time during the scene with N.N./D.D. at the Sonata Café). 

Glitch contact with the Vampire

The most prominent squelches at the end of the first track happen when Count Sandor Szavost drinks Alice’s champagne (7:11), which Mark LeClair argues is part of a menstrual vampire thing.  These glitch squelches are repeated during two other key secret society contact points that follow (the second when Nightingale gets a call with the password for the masked party, and the third when Dr. Bill opens the “cease and desist” letter when he returns to the party’s closed gate). 

“my mind is filled with silvery stars”

Track 3: “Radio Cure.” During this song, Dr. Bill is separated from the two women at the party by one of Ziegler’s servants during the lyrics about “electronic surgical words” and they ascend the staircase covered with thousands of white Christmas lights during the line “my mind is filled with silvery stars.” 

“Picking Apples for the kings and queens of things I have never seen”

13:00 “Picking Apples for the kings and queens of things I have never seen.” Red-Haired Beta programmed “Mandy” is the apple being picked by King Ziegler in his bathroom.

“War on War”: Now II Ziegler’s Bathroom

Cue (track 4): “War on War.” Alice says, “Not just…now” and the song starts and the second scene in Ziegler’s bathroom starts.

ATU XX Glitches: The Aeon

There is another prominent audio glitch or squelch effect in the song linked to bodily fluid contact with Count Sandor Szavost as Alice kisses her fingers, touches his mouth, and then holds her finger to her lips again in the secret styling of the Crowley Aeon tarot card. 

Baby did a Band-Aid thinG 
Cue (track 5): “Jesus Etc.” starts at the beginning of the bedroom scene (with “Baby Did a Bad Bad Thing” on the original soundtrack).  Alice’s joint, rolled from a supply in a Band-Aid box, are her “Last cigarettes, all you can get, turning your orbit around”: a last smoke that turns their orbit around an endless argument.

 “I would like to salute the ashes of American flags”

During the extended stoned argument scene, Bill puts his hand on his heart during the line “I would like to salute the ashes of American flags” from the song of the same name.  As the scene winds on, the Hollywood ex-couple may or may not be “playing Kiss covers,” but they are definitely “beautiful and stoned” during “Heavy Metal Drummer.”  Tom actually says, “…got a little stoned” at the same moment the lyrics “beautiful and stoned” play. 

Poor Places (Track 11): Monitoring 

Cue (Track 11): Dr. Bill puts his hand on the forehead of Lou Nathanson's corpse accompanied by a medical heart monitor sound sample at the beginning of “Poor Places.”

The Second Cycle: Room Five 237

The album can just play through on repeat and things work fine 

(Track 1 starts when Alice calls Bill in Domino’s bedroom), 

but with a 33 second delay before starting the album over, things get even more mind-bending. 

Hit play again on track one at 52:37…

To manually add the 33 second delay, start the recording again at 52:37 (an Overlook Hotel homage number beginning during the second appearance Alice at the kitchen table) at the scene transition just after Dr. Bill says “Is everything all right?” from Domino's bedroom.

“I am Trying to Break Your Heart” II

Wearing a blue bathrobe, the “American aquarium drinker” lyrics during the first song become Alice's theme, especially now that she identified herself as “American” to Count S.S.  This sets up a heavy sync starting at the Sonata (an anagram for “O Satan”) Café. 

“You were so right when you said, I been drinkin’”

Piano in this first track, “I Am Trying to Break Your Heart,” is once again prominently linked to the photograph of Nick Nightingale outside of the café. 

“I want to hold you in the Bible-black predawn”

An African American doorman is clad, like Dr. Bill, in a black overcoat and is paired with the lyrics about “the bible black predawn.”  The next lyrics, “You're quite a quiet domino, bury me now” (with its silent buried 2001 domino-monolith on the moon connotations) now make more sense in light of the previous scene with Domino, the doomed prostitute. 

 “I don’t believe in touchdowns”

Dr. Bill enters the bar with a football game on in the background exactly synched with the word “touchdowns” from the line “take off your Band-Aid cause I don’t believe in touchdowns” (in previous scenes Alice keeps her weed stashed in a Band-Aid box which is revealed just after Dr. Bill watches a football game in the apartment). A repeat of the Nick Nightingale/Bill Harford toast happens before the line “disposable Dixie cup drinking.” 

More Glitches in the Matrix: Contact with Central HQ

Another secret society contact glitch/squelch happens (the first happens when Count S.S. drinks Alice’s champagne, which resonates with the second glitch effect and Alice's Aeon XX finger) when Nightingale gets the call from the Illuminati party HQ (at the “Rothschild enclave,” Mentmore Towers).  

Cue: N.N. answers the phone when track 2: “Kamera” starts. Just another night at the Sonata/O Satan Café, the Overlook Gold Room's basement franchise...

“Picking Apples for the kings and queens of things I have never seen” II

The majority of track 3, “Radio Cure" plays at the Rainbow rental shop (with another “picking apples for the kings and queens of things I’ve never seen” synch as Milich forms a triangle with his arms on the glass). 

During Track 4, “War on War,” Dr. Bill is driving outside of the city in the cab to the party in the woods during the lyrics “Just watching the miles flying by.” 

“Jesus, Etc.”: Enter the Rothschild’s Mentmore Towers

Cue (track 5): “Jesus Etc.” starts just as Dr. Bill enters Illuminati party HQ. 

“Last cigarettes, all you can get, turning your orbit around”

The red-clad ritual High Priest circumambulates anti-clockwise with burning incense surrounded by a circle of women during the lyrics “Last cigarettes, all you can get, turning your orbit around.” 

The asses of American Beta-Programmed Monarch agents

A classic Kubrickian pun happens at during “Ashes of American Flags” as a masked woman, revealed later as Amanda “Mandy” Curran, climbs the stairs with her ass centrally featured during the lyrics, “I would like to salute, the ashes of American flags.”  

Cue (track 7): “Heavy Metal Drummer.” The dark sexual comedy continues as a three girl sex act occurs when the song starts. Watching the unedited orgy scene while this song plays is rather hilarious…and then depraved…then funny again…and then sort of sad.

The Arch Man Who Loves You

Cue (track 8): “I Am the Man Who Loves You.” The song starts just as Dr. Bill walks through the arch.

Black Kettle Black

 
Cue (track 9): “Black Kettle Black.” The naked black-feather masked women (later revealed as the former beauty queen Beta Kitten Amanda “Mandy” Curran) says “Stop!”

“Poor Places” of the unconscious upper class

Cue (track 10): “Poor Places.” Dr. Bill enters the bedroom where Alice is laughing in her sleep just as the song starts.  The Naval Officer fantasy scene is shown during the lyrics “they cried all over overseas.”

Piano Man: The disposable dixie knight of the Black and White Keys

During track 11, “Reservations,” Dr. Bill returns to the Sonata Café and piano plays on cue again for Nick Nightingale’s photograph. 

The third Cycle: “No, Not a Clue”

The album can just play automatically through on repeat.  To manually start from this point, start Track 1 (“I Am Trying to Break Your Heart”) again during the scene at the Hotel Jason where Dr. Bill talks to the front desk clerk after the line “No, not a clue.” Hit play at 1:44:28… 

Another Domino

The lyrics “You're quite a quiet domino, bury me now” (again with its 2010 buried monolith on the moon connotations) happen during the closeup of Milich’s silent daughter while he is hinting that she could be hired as a prostitute, which connects her to the doomed “Domino.”

The next-to-last glitch: “Cease and Desist”

The third cycle’s secret society contact squelch during “I Am Trying to Break Your Heart” happens at the moment Dr. Bill opens the letter addressed to him at the front gate of Illuminati party HQ.   

Cue (track 2): “Kamera” starts with Dr. Bill standing under the surveillance camera at this gate.  The lyrics, “I need a camera to my eye, to my eye, reminding which lies I have been hiding, which echoes belong” become blatantly relevant during this climactic sync.

The Doctor’s Radio Cure

Cue (track 3): “Radio Cure” starts as Dr. Bill makes a call on his black office phone. “My mind is filled with silvery stars” is again paired with Christmas lights at 1:57:32 (fifteen 237).

“Picking Apples for the kings and queens of things I have never seen” II

 
This time, red-haired “Sally” is referred to by the “Picking Apples…” line highlighted in the King Ziegler bathroom scene.

"War on War" 2001

Cue (track 4): “War on War” starts when Sally reveals that Domino is HIV positive at 2:00:01.  


An alternative delay - starting track 4 at 2:01:42, just after the scene transition when Dr. Bill, in a profile shot, is back on the street - produces further mindbending results:

“Demon moving through flaming doors”

While Dr. Bill is being followed by the intimidating bald guy, the lyrics “you could be my demon moving forward through the flaming doors” play and they walk by a restaurant with many Christmas lights that look like “flaming doors.”

“You have to learn how to die if you want to be alive”

Dr. Bill buys a newspaper with the headline “ALIVE” simultaneously with the lyrics “You have to learn how to die if you want to be alive.”

 “You have to die” (x3)

The guy following him stands in the street during the repeated lyrics “You have to die.  You have to die.  You have to learn how to die if you want to be alive.  Okay?"

"tURNING yoUR ORBIT AROUND"

Track 5: “Jesus, Etc.”  The massive set of double hospital doors are rotating and a guy stands outside probably smoking during the lyrics, “Last cigarettes, all you can get, turning your orbit around.”  

“You were right about the stars, each one is a setting sun” plays while Dr. Bill is investigating the death of the star New York beauty queen Amanda “Mandy” Curran at the hospital.  

Cue: The maudlin piano theme of track 6 begins with a close-up moment in the morgue. 

  

“Wears a magic wand.  Empty out your pockets”

Track 9: during “Black Kettle Black” and the line “Wears a magic wand. Empty out your pockets” Ziegler, the Magus, is crotch level in front of Dr. Bill with his hand in his pockets.  The line, “It’s become so obvious, you are so oblivious to yourself” continues to intimately resonate with Dr. Bill Harford.

“Poor Places” of the unConscious upper class II

Cue (track 10): “Poor Places.” The original script suggests in a voice over that Bill thinks Alice found the mask and put it on the bed to represent how she perceives him:

V.O.

He thought he must have dropped it in

the morning when he packed the

costume away, and Alice had found it

and placed it on the pillow beside her,

as though it signified _his_ face, the face

of a husband who had become an

enigma to her.

“How They Cried all over overseas”

The tearful consequences of Dr. Bill’s confession during the line “And it makes no difference to me how they cried all over overseas...”

The Magic Circle: “Yankee Hotel Foxtrot”

The looping radio signal sample, from a short wave radio numbers station transmission, “Yankee...Hotel...Foxtrot” cues during the display of “Magic Circle” board games in the toy store. 

“None of this is real.”

During track 11, in “Reservations,” many lines are relevant: “I’ve got reservations, about so many things, but not about you.” And, of course, “None of this is real.” 

A final Piano chord tones simultaneously with Alice’s final line, “Fuck” (at 2:33:33).

“I MISS THE INNOCENCE I'VE KNOWN.”

 

Of course, there are endless variations and alternative loops beyond the Radio Rainbow walkthrough suggested here.  The strange magic keeps happening with a standard “play and repeat” runthrough, with the minor variations suggested here, or with the unexpected and inevitable glitches encountered when trying to play the film and album simultaneously. One of the most compelling aspects of this film/music sync is the preclusion of intentionality, since the album was written and recorded more than a year after Kubrick's death. What is represented here is the symbolic merger of two artistic achievements organized around similar themes. The results are magical. In a reoccurring example, Wilco's piano progressions highlight Kubrick's obsession with the white and black spatial battle of the chess board, and the ambient carnivalesque sound effects of the album enhance the dreamlike qualities of the  film's imagery, including the anonymous dread of its Venitian carnival masks. The merger of these two artistic statements results in something fantastic, a visionary project joined in sublime perfection and standing on its own terms despite the cracked chasm of intentionality that should separate its two constitutive elements. This is audio-visual alchemy.  

There are so many synchronicities I've left unrepresented, particularly emerging from the deeply human themes that the album and film address with so much subtlety. The second song, “Kamera,” exemplifies these shared themes of relationships, deception, perception, dreams, etc.  Lyrics such as “Deciding which lies I've been hiding...Phone my family, tell em' I'm lost on the sidewalk., and no it's not okay (x3),” not only interact directly with the film, they also embody it's primary level of meaning. This “level one” narrative of the familial dance of fidelity is often lost in interpretations of the descending levels below the surface narrative, which link the film exclusively with exposures or revelations about Monarch programming and spiritual vampirism. Kubrick's swan song certainly exposed underlying secrets of how elite networks and bloodlines operate, but this delicate secret soundtrack also reveals how his last film was a fundamentally human and poetic enterprise.  

If Kubrick died or was eliminated based on what he committed to film, he was “right about the stars...each one is a setting sun.” Kidman and Cruise, the Hollywood Queen and King of the waning millenium, were embroiled in the same desperate carnival that Jeff Tweedy and the tragically-talented Jay Bennett struggled with when their Chicago Loft recording studio became a potent warehouse of genius and jealousy during the production of Yankee Hotel Foxtrot in 2001. Of course, these stars are only distinguished from the rest of us in their relative luminosity: “Our love is all of God's money,  Everyone is a burning sun.” Kubrick's supernova can only illuminate the tragic sadness, careless destruction, and endless potential that fades, radiates, or hibernates in an infinite sea of silvery stars and radio cures.