The Two Towers, or the Siren’s Ultimate Prophecy (UPDATE)

So for the past few weeks we’ve been looking at how a constellation of connections, syncs and symbols surrounding the doomed romance of Elizabeth Fraser and Jeff Buckley all ultimately point back to the great myth of the love goddess and her shepherd boy consort. 

For what possible reason I can only speculate.

Somehow this story seems to revolve around “Song to the Siren,” the totemic ballad about love and death Fraser made her signature, as well as the tragic young singer whose fate seems to have been foretold for a very, very long time. (And that ballad seems to have a growing death toll, incidentally).*

I thought I’d wrapped this all up for good a few years ago but Chris Cornell’s death seemed to dredge something up. He was Jeff Buckley’s close friend and surrogate and died on the banks of the Detroit River near Belle Isle, itself infused with ancient traditions remarkably similar to the Siren. (SEE UPDATE AT BOTTOM)

And sure enough, a reader informed me that a few hundred feet east of the MGM Grand Hotel where Chris Cornell died, a very interesting landmark is about to open:

Siren Hotel to open in Wurlitzer Building in November

The Siren Hotel in downtown Detroit’s historic Wurlitzer Building will be ready for guests in November, following a $22 million build-out of the 14-story, 55,000-square-foot space. 

The hotel, at 1509 Broadway St., will feature 98 rooms and eight suites, along with seven food and beverage spaces, two retail shops and panoramic rooftop views, according to real estate developer ASH NYC, which owns and operates the hotel.   

The name is inspired by Sirens of ancient Greek mythology, a metaphoric beckoning of people back to a revitalizing Detroit. 

This really shouldn’t surprise me anymore. 

After all, we’ve seen how nearly every significant detail in this story seems to correspond to another significant detail in the stories and history surrounding the goddess-consort myth. 

We’ve seen how the foreshadowings of how the story would ultimately end were written and delivered in the exact same manner that the ancient priestesses of Apollo would deliver their prophecies.

This only makes sense, because priestesses of Apollo used to prophesy in the temples of Atargatis, the Syrian love goddess who turned herself into the first mermaid after the death of her own shepherd-boy lover. Mermaids would come to be identified with Sirens in late antiquity.

But who cares, right? I mean, this is probably all either typical OCD-driven fan-blog projection or just some glitch in the Matrix, some random anomaly in the code. I mean, everything’s ultimately connected to everything, right? Can’t we all be brothers?

And plus, if any of this were real then someone else would have already noticed it, right?

Well, maybe someone did. Maybe some very powerful and influential people, in fact. Maybe those people wanted to rub off some of that magic on their own spells. Maybe they in fact did exactly that.

In the immortal words of Max Fenig, “Somebody’s always paying attention.”

VENUS FALLING

Something happened to Elizabeth Fraser when her lost love died. After their breakup Fraser was nearly despondent with what she herself called “grief” and “mourning.” 

Like I said, she really loved this guy. Almost like “hide the bunny, Jeff” loved this guy. He seemed to have that effect on people.

She wrote and recorded a number of songs (at least seven, by my reckoning) for and about Buckley, produced a nakedly-confessional long-form music video as a love letter and dedicated an album to him. 

One of the songs she wrote – which became her best-known– was recorded the day Buckley died by drowning in Memphis’ Wolf River Harbor.

But just as Aphrodite lost her beauty when her Adonis died and descended into the Underworld, Fraser thereafter seemed to shun the astonishing range that made her famous. She floated into the wispy, breathy reaches of her upper register, eschewing that lusty, meaty mezzo that made the best of her Cocteau Twins material so compelling. 

It was almost as if she had intentionally wanted to become a ghost of herself. She since confessed to succumbing to a long and crippling bout of depression.

She seemed to signal this when she sang, “Oh, what woman can sing without loving the primitive heart?” She did so on a 1996 EP that also contained perhaps her most startling take on the Siren mythos, “Flock of Soul.” The chorus on that song – written as an entreaty to a former lover who also happens to be a singer– goes like this: 

Come feel the deep
It’s my little friend
Come feel the deep 
It’s love in a flood 

The song, recorded in 1995, was released shortly after Jeff Buckley and girlfriend Joan Wasser nearly drowned during a midnight swim in Gold Coast, Australia.

HOORAY FOR HOLLYWOOD

After leaving the Cocteau Twins, Fraser found her services were called upon by some very famous directors.

Alan Rickman (best known as Severus Snape in the Harry Potter films) hired her to sing the theme song to his directorial debut, The Winter Guest, starring another future Harry Potter alum, Emma Thompson (who, incidentally, brings on the apocalypse in I Am Legend).

Irish director Neil Jordan then hired Fraser to sing the theme song for his film In Dreams. This surreal psychological thriller, starring Annette Bening and Robert Downey Jr, is entirely centered on drowning and rivers. 

No, seriously. From stem to stern. 

It also centers on the crossover between the world of dreams and symbols with consensus reality and features what can reasonably be called a kind of Siren character.

Here’s the first verse to the song Fraser recorded for the soundtrack:

Waters cover me, wrap me where I sleep, 
Wash between us, 
Where you’re dreaming, 
Where you wake tomorrow.

Given then-recent events one can’t help but wonder what exactly is going on here, and why a woman so clearly devastated by a drowning death would agree to such a project.

(Oh before I forget, In Dreams also centers on the destruction of a town and Bening’s character’s husband is an airline pilot).


THE LAMENTATIONS OF THEIR WOMEN

Then (Sir) Peter Jackson hired Fraser to sing on the soundtracks to the first two Lord of the Rings films. She sang “Lament for Gandalf” on the Fellowship of the Ring soundtrack and “Isengard Unleashed” and “Lament for Haldir” for the Two Towers soundtrack.

Both latter songs focus on the Battle of Helm’s Deep, the climactic scene in The Two Towers where the sanctuary of the peoples of Rohan is attacked by an army of Uruk-Hai. Helm’s Deep’s walls are ultimately breached by a Uruk-Hai wielding a giant bomb.

“Isengard Unleashed” is also the title of a scene in The Two Towers that features Brad Dourif, who also appears in Blue Velvet, the film for which David Lynch tried to license Elizabeth Fraser’s “Song to the Siren.”

The first Rings movie opened two months after 9/11. There was some concern at the time about the Two Towers title and some discussion that it might be changed. There were also parallels drawn by some between 9/11 and the siege of Helm’s Deep in The Two Towers. 

The fact that Fraser was chosen for two of the three laments in the film series ties quite snugly into our overarching mythic narrative. Laments are traditionally sung by women (as Conan would remind you) and are commonly associated with the love goddesses we’ve been looking at, which they sang for the shepherd lovers upon their deaths. (Remember that Gandalf the Grey also descended to the Underworld before being “reborn” in The Two Towers as Gandalf the White).

And appropriately, the ancient laments are filled with the same kinds of lyrical repetitions that Elizabeth Fraser’s songs are, particularly the ones that we’ve looked at in the context of foreshadowing. For example that of Inana:

Let me utter the lament for you, the lament for you, the lament! 
Let me utter the lament for you, the lament for you, the lament! 
In the birthplace let me utter the lament for you, the lament! 
In the desert, O Dumuzid, let me utter the lament for you, the lament! 

And of course, Isis:

Come to your house, come to your house!
You of On, come to your house,
Your foes are not!
O good musician, come to your house!

Laments are also a particularly prominent form in Scottish music. And by any reasonable standard the songs Fraser wrote to Jeff Buckley for Rilkean Dreams are laments. Particularly when you read the almost-unbearably heartbreaking lines like these from ‘Half-Gifts’ which I mentioned before:

I still have a life, and it’s a rich one even with mourning
Even with grief and sadness

I still care about this planet
I am still connected to nature and to my dreams for myself

I have my friends, my family
I have myself
I still have me

Interesting that she felt “grief” and “mourning” over their breakup, considering that these are terms most commonly associated with death.

‘Rilkean Heart’ and Rilkean Dreams are references to the poet Rainier Maria Rilke, whom the well-read Fraser compared Buckley to. And sure enough, Rilke is perhaps most famous for his own lament, The Sonnets to Orpheus, which he wrote when a young friend of the family died. 

Orpheus was a legendary musician and devotee of Apollo. He was killed by a raving pack of Maenads when he refused to worship Dionysus. His head and lyre floated down a river to the island of Lesbos where they were enshrined.

Jeff Buckley’s body washed up three short blocks away from the Orpheum Theater. The next show there will be The Little Mermaid.

But the earliest known lament is the Sumerian Lamentation to Ur, believed to have been written when the Gutians, barbarians from the Central Asian steppes, destroyed the city in the 21st Century BCE.

The great storm howls above — the people groan. The storm that annihilates the Land roars below — the people groan. The evil wind, like a rushing torrent, cannot be restrained.

After the haze had lifted at noon, he made fires blaze. He locked up the day and the rising of the bright sun together with the good storm. In the Land he did not let the bright sun rise; it shone like the evening star.  

The scorching potsherds made the dust glow — the people groan.  

The storm blazing like fire performed its task upon the people. The storm ordered by Enlil in hate, the storm which wears away the Land, covered Urim like a garment, was spread out over it like linen.

All of which takes us now into the Millennium Dome Show.

The Millennium Dome Show– in what was promised to be the biggest dome in the world- was a yearlong production intended to initiate the titular landmark built on the banks of the River Thames as part of a project meant to reclaim the Greenwich Penisula, the same location for which Greenwich Mean Time is named. 

The Dome project was conceived, originally on a somewhat smaller scale, under John Major’s Conservative government, as a Festival of Britain or World’s Fair-type showcase to celebrate the third millennium. The incoming Labour government elected in 1997 under Tony Blair, greatly expanded the size, scope and funding of the project. It also significantly increased expectations of what would be delivered. 

Just before its opening Blair claimed the Dome would be “a triumph of confidence over cynicism, boldness over blandness, excellence over mediocrity”. In the words of BBC correspondent Robert Orchard, “the Dome was to be highlighted as a glittering New Labour achievement in the next election manifesto”.

The Dome project was designed to inaugurate a new era for Britain and establish it as a new world capital (which it has largely become). But the Dome was essentially a boondoggle, sitting vacant for years before it was reborn as the O2 Arena. 

Even so, the Dome Show was better received than the Dome itself and was designed by Mark Fisher, the maestro of the modern mass spectacle, having designed installations for everyone from Pink Floyd to U2 to Lady Gaga. Essentially, all of these quasi-ritualistic displays on the Super Bowl and the Grammies and the rest that we’re so familiar with today are inspired by Mark Fisher.

Oh, before I forget: Fisher also designed the opening and closing ceremonies for the Beijing and London Olympics. 

For the Dome Show Fisher hired Peter Gabriel to compose the soundtrack. The backstory for the show itself is kind of, uh, interesting:

The Romeo-and-Juliet-like story told of a feud between the earth-people and the sky-people. A young boy from the sky and a young girl from the earth fell in love, but the feud between their people made it difficult for them to meet. 

So, I’ve gathered here that the Earth people learn to use metals and machines. Or something. They build an enormous tower as a fortress and declare war on the Sky People (calling Dr. Von Braun,  white courtesy telephone, please). 

An Earth-Girl falls in love with a Sky-Boy, but he’s eventually captured and imprisoned in the tower. And is, uh, going to be dismembered. So the Earth-Girl leads an insurrection against the tower and it’s blown up. 

By controlled demolition. 

As the song goes:

The sky people got hungry and their welfare was ignored
She let them in the tower and the bloody battle roared
Down came iron and the tower fell as well
The dark days were over and the sky people’s hell

But don’t worry; there’s a happy ending.

Eventually the earth-people suffered a crushing defeat, which ultimately led them to unite with their sky enemies. At the end of the show, the lovers flew together into a better future.

Wow, interesting; what the fuck does any of this have to do with London and the Millennium?

The Millennium Show is steeped in the imagery of William Blake’s great epic poem, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, and features fire-breathing Mad Max-style contraptions doing battle with with the “earth people” and their huge dragonflies.

OK, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell and the Earth People and the Sky People. I get it. 

Well, not really.

Let’s pretend I do. How is this “better” future brought about?

 In the end, said Ms Page, “a child is born symbolising hope. We think it is a modern, timeless story with a subversive edge. It’s also a story where the girl gets the boy…” 

So the child is a hybrid, basically. Of an Earth girl and a Sky person. Quite literally a hybrid, since Peter Gabriel worked with a French cartoonist on a comic book meant to clarify the story, which attendees found confusing and hard to follow.

And boy howdy, the Sky-People look one hell of a lot like “demons of the air.” It’s kinda funny- Peter Gabriel got his start singing for Genesis and what we have here is a new spin on Genesis 6:4. 

Life’s full of those quirky little ironies.

Anyhow, I guess we shouldn’t be surprised when the hybrid flies off in a nest Gabriel compares to a flying saucer, both in interviews and in his lyrics.

Sitting up in a spaceship
Looking down at the earth
You wonder what they all struggling for
What’s it all really worth
Making tomorrow today
Making tomorrow today

Oh, before I forget the Earth-Girl- who seems to be responsible for the destruction of the Tower- is named Sofia. As in this Sophia.  

She [Sophia] will cast them down into the abyss. They [the Archons] will be obliterated because of their wickedness. For they will come to be like volcanoes and consume one another until they perish at the hand of the prime parent. When he has destroyed them, he will turn against himself and destroy himself until he ceases to exist. And their heavens will fall one upon the next and their forces will be consumed by fire. Their eternal realms, too, will be overturned. And his heaven will fall and break in two.

On the Origin of the World, the Nag Hammadi library

Many scholars believe that Sophia was in fact a Gnostic adaptation of Isis, particularly her Hellenistic incarnation.

And guess what? The part of Sofiaº in the Dome Show is sung by Elizabeth Fraser.

Here are the first lyrics Fraser is given to sing:

I looked up at the tallest building.
Felt it falling down.
I could feel my balance shifting.
Everything was moving around.

These streets so fixed and solid.
Ah, shimmering haze.
And everything I relied on disappeared.

Now, the Rings producers took great care to ensure that the collapse of Sauron’s tower at Mordor didn’t look too much like the collapse of the Twin Towers. Since that hadn’t happened yet when the Millennium Dome Show played, their producers weren’t any such restrictions. 

And holy shit, does the collapse of the Millennium Tower (@ 7:35) look one devil of a lot like the collapse of the North Tower.

And by a sheer fluke of happenstance there are actually two towers involved in the Millenniun Dome Show– one placed inside another. Note also the tower here is meant to resemble the Tower of Babel, or the Ziggurat of Babylon, Ishtar’s city.

So let’s be perfectly clear about this: the main event at the Millennium Dome, set to run the entire year and ring in the new age and herald a new era of glory for London and the UK, was a story about a war between Earth people and Sky-people climaxing in the demolition of a skyscraper. 

After which peace is reached when a Sky-boy and an Earth-girl bear a hybrid child (named OVO, or Egg) who then floats off in a what is essentially a flying saucer (again with the flying saucers).

The British people paid millions of pounds for all of this and it was all overseen by none other than Tony Blair himself.  This was not just some Vegas Cirque De Soleil revue. This was an official production of the British Government. The world’s foremost producer of mass spectacle was hired to put all this on and he in turn hired Peter Gabriel to produce the soundtrack.

And Gabriel in turn hires Elizabeth Fraser to play his Sophia-Isis. 

London’s Sophia-Isis. On the Thames, also called “The Isis” (No, seriously. It is)

Of all the singers in the world he could have chosen – of all the stars who would have loved to land that part- he picks the very eccentric former singer from a very weird cult band who had their heyday some ten years before. (Fraser also looked quite gaunt and seemed a bit, um,  off when interviewed for a documentary on the project. But the Muses do so love their broken vessels).

Now if Gabriel hired Fraser for one of his solo LPs, no one would bat an eye. Gabriel had been chasing that sweet, sweet, sweet Kate Bush dragon since the buxom Babooshka rocked his world when she was barely legal.† And Gabriel subsequently “worked with” several other singers including Laurie Anderson, Sinead O’Connor and Paula Cole. 

But this was clearly not just a solo project and this was clearly not just another gig. The symbolism here couldn’t possibly be more potent. Isis and England go back a long ways, certainly back to the first Queen Elizabeth.  

And chew on this bubblegum for a minute: what are the odds a singer would be randomly chosen to contribute to the soundtracks of not one but two separate and very high-profile productions climaxing with the destruction of a tower within a short span of time of the most notorious tower-destruction since Babel?

If the odds don’t seem too vanishingly small to you, then factor in all the other overkill syncs and symbols surrounding this extremely unlikely figure.

I should also remind you here that Peter Gabriel is a graduate of Charterhouse, one of the most exclusive schools in the world and an institution whose list of alumni reads like a who’s who of the British Elite. He’s also very tightly woven into the highest echelons of the Globalist hierarchy and has been for a very long time.

So I’m not saying Elizabeth Fraser was handpicked to be rubbed all over some bizarre, apocalyptic, elite ritual cycle because someone finally happened to notice that something very unusual happened to be, shall we say, interested in her.

Or maybe I am. I’m not sure. 

I’ll have to get back to you on that.

Now, I’d love to be done with all of this but I have a strong feeling it’s not yet done with me. So in the meantime I’ll let the great Bruce Rux have the last word:

Mysticism and Intelligence circles often overlap.  Psychic spies have been employed throughout history, in many different kingdoms of the world.  The CIA, MI-6 and NKVD employ them quite a bit.

Sometimes the Spooks employ the occult deliberately, for their own obscure reasons.

Musical groups, singers, actors, directors, producers, all kinds of entertainment industry people, are as often clandestine spies as people in the news business.  So it’s always possible some deliberate machinations are at work behind the scenes.  

This Fraser/Buckley business is one of those that seems to go beyond that, though.  It’s like the Intelligence boys go around trying to peer behind Isis’ veil, only to find she’s ahead of them. Some “bloody-handed dabblers” go poking-around, only to find there’s already something in the shadows poking back..

Either way, a subtle form of dance is at play.  Artists can be modern shamans, knowingly or not.  They can tap into something much broader and deeper than they know.

I suspect that’s what is at work  here.  The gods had their dance with Buckley and Fraser and their lot: A few perceptive people noticed.


UPDATE: A new Little Mermaid movie. About “the Mermaid of the Mississippi.”  Her name is Elizabeth. I’m not kidding. Co-starring Shirley MacLaine.

CORRECTION: There are three Little Mermaid movies now on the way. Plus The Lure, about two mermaids who become New Wave singers. In the early 80s. Because who doesn’t immediately think “Early 80s New Wave singers” when they hear the word “mermaid?”

UPDATE: Throughout this conversation we’ve seen how “Wolf in the Breast” and “Road, River and Rail” eerily foreshadow Jeff Buckley’s death. But what about “Frou Frou Foxes in Midsummer Fires?” How does that play into this drama, if at all?

Bonfires were lit to protect against evil spirits which were believed to roam freely when the sun was turning southward again. In later years, witches were also thought to be on their way to meetings with other powerful beings.

St. John’s Church is right across the street from the Fox Theater. 

Foxes were sacrificed in Midsummer fires.

• Heath Ledger and James Gandolfini both died two years after appearing in films with “Song to the Siren” on the soundtrack.

º Sky-Boy is played by the former lead singer of The Blue Nile. Cute, eh?

† Bush and Fraser are often compared and had their own mutual admiration society going. Also, Fraser’s other contribution to It’ll End in Tears (besides ‘Song to the Siren’) was Roy Harper’s ‘Another Day’, which Peter Gabriel and Kate Bush sang in 1979 for a Christmas special. 

Kate Bush’s “Running Up that Hill”, which rather cheekily borrows the old Cocteau beat, was featured in the symbol-drenched 2012 Olympic closing ceremonies.