18 March 2005: The Inanna Dialogue, Part Five

Speaking of Lila (which I'm about to do, in the next paragraph, though I seem to have got ahead of myself and started speaking of her in this paragraph), she's looking for erotic graphics to illustrate her online journal and story site, Guttergaunt. If you're a visual artist and you're in the mood to do some work with a lesbian BDSM theme (that being the theme of Lila's journal and stories) and a playful, lighthearted tone (that being the tone of Lila's journal and stories), check out the Guttergaunt Submission Guidelines. Or pass the word on to your kinky visual artist friends (here in the Bay Area, everyone's got a few of those). Artists will receive no money, but payment of a sort is involved, sort of.

Damn it, now I've gone and written a paragraph containing the phrase "lesbian BDSM." As if this site didn't have enough of a Pederast Clown Syndrome problem already.

Damn it again! The parenthetical statement in the first sentence of the first paragraph of this entry claims that I'm going to speak of Lila in the next paragraph, but the paragraph prior to this one, which is the second paragraph of the entry and thus the next paragraph relative to the first paragraph, doesn't mention Lila at all, which makes the first sentence of this entry, or at least the parenthetical therein, false. Furthermore, the sentence immediately prior to the one you are currently reading is excessively long and complex, in a style that no doubt stems from the unfortunate intersection of my sense of humor, if one can rightly call it such, with the aftereffects of my recent readings of John Locke, Immanuel Kant, and other tediously verbose Enlightenment philosophers, and which is, alas, the same general style that I seem to be pursuing in the present sentence as well, although, as the reader will perhaps be pleased to note, the present sentence is now reaching its long-awaited end.

Anyway, speaking of Lila....

At the end of my February 5th entry, I wrote about the most recent homemade compilation CD that my dad sent me, entitled 100 Years of Solitude. Lila got curious and asked me to burn her a copy of it, and I finally got around to it, and here's an excerpt from an exchange of emails that followed:

Lila: Wow, I see what you mean about his "eclectic taste!" Some fun nostalgia in there... I hadn't heard Juice Newton's "Angel of the Morning" since it was a radio hit back... when? I must have been in high school at the time, and I didn't pay any attention to it because I was Little Miss Genre-Identfied Hard Rock Chick. Though I remember seeing the 45 in the Top 40 display in a record store (vinyl... remember vinyl?), with Juice Newton's picture on the cover, and being seriously hot for her. And of course, I envied her hair.

Anyway, hearing it now, it's a totally amazing song, moving and incredibly sexy. For me, anyway. That voice! I've been playing it over and over (it's better than Cats...).

 

Me: I had much the same reaction to re-encountering "Angel of the Morning" on that CD. I quite agree with you about the sexiness of Ms. Newton's voice. I also find the song moving, but, being who I am, I'm not moved by the romantic angle, but by the religious/mythological angle (an angle which may have been entirely unintentional on Ms. Newton's part, though one never knows with these things).

 

Lila: Okay, I'll bite... I've just listened to the song twice through, and I can't for the life of me figure out what this "religious/mythological angle" is of which you speak.

 

Me: Well, according to certain apocryphal Christian mythology, mostly inspired by Milton and by Isiah 14:12, "Angel of the Morning" was Lucifer's title before the Fall. Kind of puts a whole different spin on the song, doesn't it?

 

Lila: Holy shit, you're fucking insane. Are you saying that you think Lucifer is the narrator of the song? How could you tell me such a thing? I'm never going to be able to listen to that song the same way again!

 

Me: Listen to it again right now! It all fits. And it’s a much more interesting and sophisticated perspective on Lucifer’s psychology than “Sympathy for the Devil” and other such simplistic juvenile efforts, isn’t it?

 

Lila: Aaarrgh! You’re right! I can’t believe that this was a Top 40 hit at the height of the Christian Right’s war on “Satanic messages in music,” and nobody caught it! You usuallly can’t even sneak so much as a Teletubby past those bastards, but a song sung by Lucifer himself sat on the Top 40 right under their noses!

And now that you’ve opened my eyes to it, I don’t for a moment think that the Lucifer angle might have been “entirely unintentional on Ms. Newton’s part.” It all makes sense now… only the Devil could have hair that good!