Genesis' "it" and Allen Ginsberg's Holy Holy Holy!
Peter Gabriel on Genesis' concept album THE LAMB LIES DOWN ON BROADWAY (1974) from the bonus DVD interviews on the new boxed set GENESIS 1970-1975 "The story is in a way like a pilgrim's progress, but on the streets of New York. So it's a spiritual journey into the soul, but this is quite a tough world that is feeding the imagery and the starting point. One of the influences on me was a film called El Topo by Elejandro Jodorowsky (note: Peter later mentions West Side Story as an influence) who I later invited to work on a screenplay for The Lamb with me. This was as rough, visceral, cowboy spiritual film and it was unique at the time. It had a really strong cult following and that was the blend I was trying to put together in a way that would allow more people to travel with me. " On the lyrics: "To try and keep everybody happy, there would be parts of it where we'd be discussing lyrics and throwing some of the words around for different bits. So "The Lamia" which was sort of Tony's musical piece, or "Supernatural Anaesthetist" Steve brought in, so then they would discuss some of the lyrical ideas with me 'cause they had sort of got the writer's ticket. But I was pretty anal about hanging on to some lyrical flow-through and being able to put a stamp on it. I really wanted a sort of tougher edge to this record than we'd had previously, and I didn't think there was anyone else in the band that was going to deliver that." A word on the boxed set: when you try to play the DVD of the Lamb, which has the studio album fit with the stage show's slide presentation and some other photos and film tidbits, the song title stamp won't turn off! This has got to be a glitch and I'm not sure if it's just mine or on all of them. So you might want to check into that before investing in the boxed set. There's so much bonus video you could easily take a couple of weeks, or an intensive weekend, to watch it all. As always, I'll leave the analysis of the sound quality to the audiophiles, but playing it on my ipod with a decent pair of headphones has been amazing. The first thing heard was "Looking for Someone" from Trespass (1970) and was in awe, especially for John Mayhew's drumming (and they got rid of him WHY?). Right now I'm listening to The Lamb, but not the whole album. I'm listening to "Silent Sorrow on Empty Boats" on loop, over and over again. I was thought this mellow, spacey, minimalist instrumental was a wonder to behold. ===== om==-= with IT, Nick
"The Waiting Room", visuals for concert, new book, and Phil Collins remark
I just watched the visuals that Genesis has resurrected on their new DVD version of "The Waiting Room" from The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway (1974) in the boxed set GENESIS 1970-1975. Actually, it looks like they didn't use much visuals for this instrumental in concert. The song is divided into two parts, the dark/evil part, and the light/good part. During the dark part of the song, when all manner of sinister sound is conjured, I would assume that nothing visual was happening on the stage, because what is shown on the DVD is simply created by a camera slowly panning around the album cover. Even when the light part enters (when the rhythm section kicks in), they only show pictures of the band performing until about the last minute. That's when what we must assume is Peter Gabriel appears behind the screens in silhouette form in a costume. It does look rather macabre, a caped figure with very long fingernails and long pointy objects coming out of the head. Believe it or not, there is even a tad of concert film footage they had of this scene, and it reminded me a bit of the scariness that the evil witch conjured in The Wizard of Oz when I was a child. Fortunately, it is followed by some of the loveliest musical moments on The Lamb: "Anyway," "The Supernatural Anaesthetist," and my personal favorite, the unbelievably beautiful "The Lamia," an exquisite bit of storytelling, followed by the extraordinary bit of mellow minimalism, the instrumental "Silent Sorrow in Empty Boats".
Still, I think the initial question as to what this creature represents is unanswered. Whoever suggested "death" is probably on to something. The story at this point says that Rael has been led into a dark cave-like room by a blind figure. She leaves Rael alone in the darkness and the room fills with a bright light and Rael hurls a stone at the light which causes a sound of shattering glass and then the ceiling caves in on Rael, trapping him. The story continues, "Exhausted by all this conjecture, our hero gets the cance in a lifetime to meet his hero: Death. Death is wearing a light disguise, he made the outfit himself. He calls it the 'Supernatural Anaesthetist.' Death likes meeting people and likes to travel. Death approaches Rael with his special canister, releases a puff, and appears to walk away content into the wall." If you listen to the sounds in "The Waiting Room," it's easy to imagine that the the sound that separates the dark from the light section is the roof caving in.
Here's what Phil Collins says about a session for "The Waiting Room":
"Our brief on 'The Waiting Room' for example was: the mood we want is darkness to light. We started out making noises-- Steve with his darkness-- and lots of rain sticks and eerie noises and suddenly Tony would s tart playing his chords-- and literally it was pouring outside, and Tony started putting some chords in and suddenly it started changing rhythm and there was a rainbow-- it stopped raining and the sun came out. It's the most cosmic thing-- I just report the news, I don't make it-- I was there and it happened. It was the most amazing thing and it was kind of a golden eight or nine minute moment. "
Here's a link to the new book about The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway by Kevin Holm-Hudson
By the way, there is also a group on facebook dedicated to The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway, just look for it in the "Groups" application, or link to it from my page at the bottom of the info/profile section. As always, I invite people to hit me up for friendship; my name is Nick Kokoshis and I'm the ONLY one on facebook or the earth. Unless your a greed-sucking right wing jerk in which case please leave me alone.
=-==- om== Nick
The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway, Joseph Campbell, and Eastern concepts of God
OK, today's big event was to listen to the entire Lamb Lies Down on Broadway while watching the concert's slide show, then flipping through article, The Annotated Lamb Lies Down on Broadway (google it and it will appear, all 46 pages of it).
So my feelings are now that THE LAMB is basically like one of mythologist Joseph Campbell's "hero" adventures. "There is what I would call the hero journey," writes Campbell in THE HERO'S JOURNEY, "the night sea journey, the hero quest, where the individual is going to bring forth in his life something that was never beheld before." This is definitely the best description of Rael, who after all must choose between the comforts of home and saving his brother (also paralleled here is Gabriel's professed love for the film The Last Temptation of Christ for which he did the soundtrack). Peter Gabriel describes Rael's journey like this: "The imagery of the lyrics owes more to the supernatural than subways and sidewalks. Rael's journey through his subconscious to eventual self-discovery includes a confrontation with death, 'The Supernatural Anaesthetist', falling in love, 'The Lamia' (which are female demons in classical mythology); and sensual gratification, 'The Colony of Slippermen'. There follows a nasty castration followed by the comical theft of the dismembered organ by a bird, and his final self-realization."
My feeling about The Lamb is that it is somewhat simliar to Supper's Ready-- a spiritual quest with a surrealistic overlay. But Supper's Ready was so heavily invested in Christian imagery at the climax of the epic. Indeed one might associate the idea of the lamb itself with the image of Christ (didn't Gabriel once say that the lamb represented God? I don't have my library with me and can't check in any of my books.) But I still feel that The Lamb represented a shift toward a more Eastern concept of divinity. Look how the story ends:
" (Rael)...hauls his brother's limp body onto the bank, he lies him out and looks hopefully into his eyes for a sign of life. He staggers back in recoil, for staring at him with eyes wide open is not John's face-- but his own. Rael cannot look away from those eyes, mesmerized by his own image. In a quick movement, his consciousness darts from one face to the other, then back again, until his presence is no longer solidly contained in one or other. In this fluid state he observes both bodies outlined in yellow and the surrounding scenery melting into a purple haze. With a sudden rush of energy up both spinal columns, their bodies, as well, finally dissolve into the haze."
This climax to the story can be compared to two things: experiences on psychedelics, and unitive experiences (in other words, experiences of oneness) in Eastern mysticism. The feeling of oneness obliterates Rael's sense of separateness from John, and when the scenery and the two characters dissolve into a haze, it is very much like the concept of non-duality in yoga mysticism, or perhaps the concept of emptiness (sunyata) in Buddhism. In yoga, the experience of the soul (atman) can make one understand the source of all souls, brahman, which in the non-dual traditions dissolves all individuality (ego) and only God remains. This seems to be very much happening to the Rael character in THE LAMB. Also, the image of "a sudden rush of energy up both spinal columns" is very reminiscent of the concept of kundalini in yoga. Kundalini is an energy that lies at the base of the spine and is awakened by spiritual practices and illuminates other psychic centers up the spine. One might easily consider Rael's dilemma with the colony of Slippermen as a test or austerity that releases the kundalini. Remember what the story says when Rael and his brother John find each other in the colony: "They hug each other; John bitterly explains that the entire life of the Slipperman is devoted to satisfying the never-ending hunger of the senses." Suspicion of sense-desires is at the heart of the austere factions of Eastern philosophy, be they Hindu, Buddhist, or Jain. (Even in Western religions, sense gratification is treated suspiciously enough to be accompanied by a boatload of rules). Rael's only solution to the dilemma is castration, which could symbolize the relinquishing of desire for a higher cause. Surely enough, as soon as Rael does this, he is confronted with the temptation of home (comfort) versus saving his brother (danger in the cause of altruism). Again, one could compare this to Gabriel's love of The Last Temptation of Christ as well as an Eastern path of enlightenment.
In fact, maybe it doesn't have to be one or the other, East or West, but a universal story, a meta-story, that encompasses both Eastern and Western methods of self-realization. (Maybe this is why Gabriel has been reluctant to discuss it in detail because of the complex intertwining of his religious interests.) This is very much in the mode of mythologist Joseph Campbell (who loves to discuss anything religious) who believed there was one mythology that was interpreted differently by various cultures. Both Gabriel and Campbell were raised Christian, but Campbell became disillusioned with the conflict between science and faith and found his way back to spirituality through the Hindu scripture The Upanishads, and Gabriel's interest in Christianity was accompanied by a passion for Gandhi (witness his extensive work on human rights issues), Buddhism, yoga, and vegetarianism. This alone should tell you a lot about THE LAMB LIES DOWN ON BROADWAY, and about the quest of the hero named Rael.
Lastly, I would say that the song that climaxes THE LAMB, "It," is a more diffuse and Eastern way of expressing divinity and enlightenment than the climax of "Supper's Ready," where we have "Lord of Lord/ King of Kings/ Has returned to lead his children home/ To take them to the?new Jerusalem." Gabriel seems to have been going through a period of growth, where before he could only express his spirituality in Christian terminology. The jubilant and devotional "It" was an attempt to reach for a more inclusive concept of the Divine. Of course, my argument, as always, is that his is a preoccupation of most counterculture seekers coming out of the hippie-influenced 1960s, and Genesis comes into being right at the tail end of that cultural explosion. Another thing you might do to understand the diffuse expression of self-actualization in "It" is to read a couple accounts of spiritual awakening. I'd suggest reading Paramahansa Yogananda's description of his experience of cosmic consciousness in the chapter called, practically enough, "An Experience in Cosmic Consciousness," (chapter 24 of The Autobiography of a Yogi, the very book that inspired Yes' TALES FROM TOPOGRAPHIC OCEANS). Or perhaps read chapter 15 of Kink's guitarist Dave Davies autobiography, Kinked, where he explains a spiritual awakening in 1982 that is nothing short of astounding and inclusive of both Eastern and Western paths. The cosmic nature of mystical experiences is given a wonderful artistic rendering by Gabriel in the ecstatic "It."
It's over to you.
---=-=-=- om==-= Nick
==--==- om=-=-= Nick
I was just watching The Life and Times of Allen Ginsberg, and I found this quote from when Allen was being interviewed by conservative TV host William F. Buckley Jr. in 1968. Allen had just read a poem that he wrote under the influence of LSD and went into a little monologue that I think is the same as the ideas that permeate The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway-- especially the broadest idea that the unitive experience is the goal. (Please note that this quote from Ginsberg on Buckley's shows in from 1968 when Allen was more influenced by non-dualism and the kind of interfaith mysticism or the Perrenial Tradition (please google it). In 1970 he would become a student of Tibetan Buddhist teacher Chogyam Trungpa and thereafter his lingo and outlook would be more Buddhist and devoid of any references to God).
"I think the primary hippie (and beatnik, originally, back in 1956) perception was a recognition of that unity of being, and a recognition of that Great Consciousness which we all were identical with, see? And that's what I think was the meaning of 'flower power,'-- you know like 'make love not war'-- ultimately is like it's grounded in an understanding of the nature of the universe in that you can't fight 'us' and the problem is seeing our unity: particularly black and white, particularly square and hippie, pa rticularly police and student, particularly (points at Buckley) Birchite and faggot individualist."
Or perhaps consider this quote from a poem that Patti Smith read at Allen's memorial:
Oh Allen, Allen Ginsberg See what you have done See see Allen See what you have done You have taken us in from many worlds And you made us all as one. --- Letter to Allen, by Patti Smith
===- om-==- Nick
I was just watching more bonus material from the documentary The Life and Times of Allen Ginsberg, and I came across a memorial for him where Patti Smith reads his poem FOOTNOTE TO HOWL. It's my favorite Ginsberg poem, and really, it's the only thing that I can honestly compare Genesis' "It" (which closes THE LAMB) to-- the ecstatic nature, as well as the diffuse depiction of divine realization, is palpable in both. So I'll print the words to both. Of course, the best way to understand these poems is to hear them read/sung by the authors which is what I would recommend. There are several myspaces devoted to Ginsberg and one of them has Footnote to Howl up for listen. To hear Genesis' "It," you might try searching for a version on YouTube. The mood of "It" is completely different from every other song on The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway, and for a good reason-- because the moment of spiritual awakening is so completely "other" from the rest of life that it is impossible to compare. -=== om==- Nick
Footnote To Howl by Allen Ginsberg
Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy!
Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy!
The world is holy! The soul is holy! The skin is holy!
The nose is holy! The tongue and cock and hand
and asshole holy!
Everything is holy! everybody's holy! everywhere is
holy! everyday is in eternity! Everyman's an
angel!
The bum's as holy as the seraphim! the madman is
holy as you my soul are holy!
The typewriter is holy the poem is holy the voice is
holy the hearers are holy the ecstasy is holy!
Holy Peter holy Allen holy Solomon holy Lucien holy
Kerouac holy Huncke holy Burroughs holy Cas-
sady holy the unknown buggered and suffering
beggars holy the hideous human angels!
Holy my mother in the insane asylum! Holy the cocks
of the grandfathers of Kansas!
Holy the groaning saxophone! Holy the bop
apocalypse! Holy the jazzbands marijuana
hipsters peace & junk & drums!
Holy the solitudes of skyscrapers and pavements! Holy
the cafeterias filled with the millions! Holy the
mysterious rivers of tears under the streets!0
Holy the lone juggernaut! Holy the vast lamb of the
middle class! Holy the crazy shepherds of rebell-
ion! Who digs Los Angeles IS Los Angeles!
Holy New York Holy San Francisco Holy Peoria &
Seattle Holy Paris Holy Tangiers Holy Moscow
Holy Istanbul!
Holy time in eternity holy eternity in time holy the
clocks in space holy the fourth dimension holy
the fifth International holy the Angel in Moloch!
Holy the sea holy the desert holy the railroad holy the
locomotive holy the visions holy the hallucina-
tions holy the miracles holy the eyeball holy the
abyss!
Holy forgiveness! mercy! charity! faith! Holy! Ours!
bodies! suffering! magnanimity!
Holy the supernatural extra brilliant intelligent
kindness of the soul!
(Berkeley 1955)
IT by Genesis
(note: on the original lyric sheet, t he word "it" is always italicized!, probably for a good cosmic reason)
When it's cold, it comes slow.
it is warm, just watch it grow.
-all around me.
it is here. it is now.
Just a little bit of it can bring you up or down.
Like the supper it is cooking in your hometown.
it is chicken, it is eggs,
it is in between your legs.
it is walking on the moon,
leaving your cocoon.
it is the jigsaw. it is purple haze.
it never stays in one place, but it's not a passing phase,
it is in the single's bar, in the distance of the face,
it is in between the cages, it is always in a space
it is here. it is now.
Any rock can be made to roll,
If you've enough of it to pay the toll.
it has no home in words or goal,
Not even in your favourite hole.
it is the hope for the dope.
When you ride the horse without a hoof.
it is shaken, not stirred;
Cocktails on the roof.
When you eat right fru it you see everything alive,
it is inside spirit, with=2 0enough grit to survive
If you think it's pretentious, you've been taken for a ride.
Look across the mirror, before you chose de cide
it is here. it is now
it is Real. it is Rael
'cos it's only knock and knowall, but I like it.
'cos it's only knock and knowall, but I like it.
'cos it's only knock and knowall, but I like it.
'cos it's only knock and knowall, but I like it.
Rock's 10 Greatest Concept Albums (March 2003) according to Classic Rock Magazine
1. Dark Side Of The Moon - Pink Floyd
2. Operation: Mindcrime - Queensrÿche
3. Tommy - The Who
4. Misplaced Childhood - Marillion
5. Antichrist Superstar - Marilyn Manson
6. Lamb Lies Down On Broadway - Genesis
7. Tales From The Topographic Oceans - Yes
8. Rise And Fall Of Ziggy Stardust And The Spiders From Mars - David Bowie
9. 2112 - Rush
10. The Wall - Pink Floyd
Ramakrishna's mysticism and "it"
I've been flipping through Kevin Holm-Hudson's book GENESIS AND THE LAMB LIES DOWN ON BROADWAY (about the 1974 concept album by rock band Genesis) and I was disappointed by his analysis of the concept album's finale, "it." I was thinking, "if only I could find the right quote by the Indian mystic Ramakrishna, that would explain 'it' and it. And then I remembered-- I work in a new age bookstore!! So I walked twenty feet to the shelf and picked up The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna and flipped for a couple minutes until I found this quote which perfectly mirrors the expansive expression of divinity in 'it':
"Sri Ramakrishna one day fed a cat with the food that was to be offered to (the Goddess) Kali. This was too much for the manager of the temple garden, who considered himself responsible for the proper conduct of the worship. He reported Sri Ramakrishna's insane behavior to Mathur Babu. Sri Ramakrishna has described the incident thus: ' The Divine Mother revealed to me in the Kali temple that it was She who had become everything. She showed me that everything was full of Consciousness. The image was Consciousness, the altar was Consciousness, the water-vessels were Consciousness, the doorsill was Consciousness, the marble floor was Consciousness-- all was Consciousness. I found everything inside the room soaked, as it were, in Bliss-- the Bliss of God. I saw a wicked man in front of the Kali temple; but in him also I saw the power of the Divine Mother vibrating. That was why I fed a cat with the food that was to be offered to the Divine Mother. I clearly perceived that all this was the Divine Mother-- even the cat'."
This is not only like the song "it," it is like the slide show that accompanied the song in the stage performance. The slides contain a lot of artistic renderings of the word "it," but if you look inside the lettering you see pictures from throughout the slide show that has told the entire story of Rael in THE LAMB. The implications seem obvious-- it's all "it." Just as Rael's brother turns out to be Rael himself, and "both" experience a spiritual awakening which finds them dissolving into the oneness (as does the entire environment around them), so the song "it" is a devotional celebration of this divine oneness. The song bears no resemblance in mood to anything else on THE LAMB LIES DOWN ON BROADWAY. The album is almost a nonstop alternation between the two sides of Rael's personality-- the tough street kid and the bewildered human on an inexplicable spiritual journey. The ending song, buoyant and jubilant, comes out of nowhere. Actually, it comes out of somewhere-- spiritual illumination. The opening synthesizer noises that glissando up the scale into "it" symbolize "a sudden rush of energy up both spinal columns" at which point Rael realizes that he and John are one: "his presence is no longer solidly contained in one or other." And in comes "it" in a rush of joy, completely dispelling the beautiful gloomy brooding that permeates the rest of the double album. It's a perfect ending to the story.
(As a side note, a couple years after THE LAMB, Yes lead vocalist Jon Anderson would release his first and best solo album, OLIAS OF SUNHILLOW, which also contained a full story on the gatefold sleeve like THE LAMB, and also ended with the main characters end in a similar state:
" And so in parting Olias, Ranyart and Qoquaq climbed to the highest mountain, lying down with eyes fixed to the stars, only seeing the stars, they again became one with the universe and drifted away towards the sun." So the theme of oneness was something that permeated the popular conceptions of divinity in the counterculture in the 60s and 70s, and this was a new paradigm that had been brought in by Eastern, mostly Indian, mystics through books that were circulated amongst friends.) You can read the full story here:
-===----===---====update-=====-=-
Actually, I just found a quote in Holm-Hudson's book that confirms my thesis: on page 127: "Broadly speaking, then, we can consider Rael's situation at the beginning of THE LAMB as one of sociopathic alienation (expressed particularly in the title track and 'Back in N.Y.C.'); by the end ("it') he has achieved oneness with the universe (individuation in psychological terms, satori or enlightenment in the language of the Bardo). "
++=============update---------===++
OK, this is probably a stretch, but I'm brainstorming so I'm gonna put this out there. I was reading this book about Allen Ginsberg and it reminded me of this line from The Lamb (story and lyric). It regards the line "the wall of death is lowered in times square" from the song "Fly On a Windshield." Here's some excerpt sfrom the The Annotated Lamb (just google that an the whole thing will pop up), and afterward I'll put the quote from the book A BLUE HAND: THE BEATS IN INDIA by Deborah Baker
FLY ON A WINDSHIELD
The sky is overcast and as Rael looks back as a dark cloud is descending like a balloon into Times Square. It rests on the ground and shapes itself into a hard edged flat surface, which solidifies and extends itself all the way East and West along 47th Street and reaching up to the dark sky. As the wall takes up its tension it becomes a screen showing what had existed in three dimensions, on the other side just a moment before. The image flickers and then cracks like painted clay and the wall silently moves forward, absorbing everything in its path.
Peter Gabriel: "So I was just walking along the street when this big cloud comes down. It becomes solid, like a screen showing up pictures of what existed around it before on the back side of it."
[Looking back, he sees the cloud take shape into what appears to be a movie screen, "showing what had existed in three dimensions, on the other side". This movie screen he alone sees is much like the one in the movie palace. The one in the theater shows a world created by someone in Hollywood who wishes the movie-goers to believe in the reality of something which is obviously false. The romance of the movie is that it takes something unreal and presents it in a form which people not only can believe, but really want to believe. The screen that is moving in the street (behaving much like "The Langoliers" in the short story of the same name by Stephen King) is taking what Rael "knew" to be reality and turning it into a movie. Are we to believe what is on this screen? If what once was thought real is now a movie, is what was a movie now real?]
Lyric: "There's something solid forming in the air, and the wall of death is lowered in Times Square/No-one seems to care, They carry on as if nothing was there."
OK, now here's a a couple pages from the book A BLUE HAND: THE BEATS IN INDIA. The author, Deborah Baker, is discussing Allen Ginberg's religious visions involving the poetry of William Blake, and I think the second vision reminds me a bit of Gabriel's lyric.
=== The first extended description of what Allen Ginsberg saw out his Harlem window found its way into print in the 1966 Paris Review interview conducted nearly two decades later, several years after his return from India. Ginsberg referred all future interviewers to this account when repetition had soured him on talking about it further. By then, he had abandoned the Christian references. By then, he was no longer 'Little Allen.' Now his bearded, bespectacled face and swamiesque figure was ubiquitous on college campuses and protests against the Vietnam War.
After hearing the ancient voice reciting Blake in his sublet apartment, Ginsberg described what he saw outside the window:
"I began noticing in every corner where I looked evidences of a living hand, even in the bricks, in the arrangement of each brick. Some hand placed them there-- some hand had placed the whole universe in front of me. That same hand had placed the sky. No, that's exaggerating...the sky was the living blue hand itself."
Nor was this the end of it. The sense of exaltation returned peridically that week, like a divine mood swing. Gradually, his sense of panoramic awe downshifted to a microcosmic view of the wretched humanity surrounding him. One day, a bookstore clerk's long and vaguely horselike face suddenly transformed before his eyes into something out of Jonathan Swift. Astonished, horrified, mesmerized, Allen realized he was being granted access to the man't true nature. As he glanced around, an entire menagerie of souls began to open around him, rvealing their lot of suffering and joy. Suddenly, too, he saw with pity the fears that held hostage those Columbia dons and friends who, however sympathetic, were unable to see the shimmering world he had beheld.
In 1948, in the immediate grip of his vision, Allen recognized that for him, as for Blake, poetry was key to sustaning this altered perception. Through some secret machinery, a poem might open the door to the cosmos. All spring he had read and reread the works of Dante, Saint John of the Cross, T. S. Eliot, and Donne, feeling for the first time that each of these poets was talking directly to him from the deepeset reaches of their minds. His own poems, he realized, had only imitated the masters, and though they had been sincere, he had not yet found the right key. As the memory of the Harlem vision faded, he tried to bring it back. Here the story changed.
As he walked past the new Columbia library and intoned Blake's poem 'The Sick Rose' over and over like a magic spell, the vision did return. However, it was not a blue hand that opened the door. Instead, an alien apparition, a fanged serpentine monster of doom, swooped down from the black skies of upper Broadway, malevolent and vast and intent on eating him alive. 'The sky was not the blue hand anymore but like the hand of death coming down on me,' Allen said, 'and I got scared, and thought, I've gone too far.'
This complicated the entire experience.
William James had described this phenomenon as well, ascribing it to the fact that mystical experience and parnoid delusion arive from the same mental stratum. 'Seraph and snake abide there, side by side,' he wrote prettily. While Ginsberg had sworn an oathg that he would 'never foret, never renege, never deny' the 'sense sublime' of his 1948 vision, a darker possibility had inescapably presented itself."=== ===
