A Music Conundrum

Billie Eilish

The helicopter crash passing of basketball star Kobe Bryant last Sunday resulted with newspapers reporting about prominent people using helicopters as an expedient alternative to traffic here in the greater Los Angeles metropolitan area.  Also last Sunday there was news that the Billie Eilish song "Bad Guy" was honored with Grammy awards for "Song of the Year" and "Record of the Year."  The song is from 18-year-old Billie's album "When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go?" that also brought her awards for "Album of the Year," "Best New Artist" and "Best Pop Vocal Album."

Kobe Bryant's life had revolved around the sport of basketball just as musical performance is among a multitude of life experiences that are possible for a career that may bring someone considerable fame and wealth in our world.  In a recent article Ashley Crossman made these observations:

Popular culture (or "pop culture") refers in general to the traditions and material culture of a particular society.  In the modern West, pop culture refers to cultural products such as music, art, literature, fashion, dance, film, cyberculture, television, and radio that are consumed by the majority of a society's population.  Popular culture is those types of media that have mass accessibility and appeal.

The term "popular culture" was coined in the mid-19th century, and it referred to the cultural traditions of the people, in contrast to the "official culture" of the state or governing classes.

We're all observing people's individual projections of social consciousness all the time.  This article is an example of my own.  In May 2015 this blogger wrote an article reviewing Catherine Clément's book The Call of the Trance (2014) and focusing on her declaration "The possessed today are singers . . ."  In January 2018 again was considered metaphysical aspects of pop songs.  It would be fascinating to learn the reaction of the singers themselves to this abstruse metaphor.

photo collage from a previous article

   

When a person becomes successful in some particular commercial field, the time and effort a successful person devotes to spiritual and metaphysical development can become diminished.  I was fortunate that this wasn't my predicament in life.  In my younger days as a fiction writer and screenwriter whose submissions were passed over by publishers and movie production companies, I continued finding ever more interesting and profound subjects to explore.

Ever since all that began happening to me after my 39th birthday, one aspect of the external reality has involved an intermittently manifesting Force interacting with me through moments of blatant signals and 'synchronicity' when messages and symbols are expressed in diverse ways to communicate tokens of the omnipresent interacting Intelligence. 

In the middle of one night last week, I found myself awake for a few minutes when I heard someone passing by on the sidewalk outside my apartment building.  The person was listening to a song I'd never heard before seemingly turned up to the loudest possible volume — something unusually inconsiderate at this early morning hour when people were trying to sleep.  The lyrics I heard were:

Music
And me
Music
And me
Music
And me
Music
and me
My music and me
Music and me go together perfect harmony . . .

An Internet search identified the song as "Music & Me" performed by Nate Dogg (1969-2011).  This is how the song begins:

 

Hey OG could you tell me how to find some good weed
I need it homie oh so bad
That last bag was the best weed I'd ever had
Bass so deep I can't even seem to feel my feet
Girls so fine I can't help it got to make this one mine
I hit em with my gangsta lean
They can't separate my music from me . . .

At the present time in my life, I usually hear pop songs when I'm at the athletic club and "Bad Guy" remains one of the songs occasionally heard.  Considering the "Music & Me" song overheard last week, the mentality of the singer's persona in this song apparently shows some manner of correlation with Billie Eilish's startling song.

 

"Bad Guy" presents a nonliteral context of the thoughts expressed through a persona of the singer expressly created for the song.  The lyrics are vague and strange — and may resonate in different ways with different people. 

 

The reporting affiliated with my Mark Russell Bell persona has covered many aspects of the human condition and society.  Considering the beginning lyric of the "Music & Me" song, marijuana use has come to be deemed an acceptable drug use in society today.  Transcendental communication about this topic was reported in the article "A Startling Message from the Other Side" in 2018. 

When hearing contemporary songs I'm sometimes reminded that one may wonder about how much attention and thought listeners give to song lyrics today.  Pop music is taken for granted as a common aspect of contemporary life along with cell phones, movies, TV shows, politics, the stock market, etc.  The lyrics to "Bad Guy" are far from my perhaps antiquated expectations of award winners — recalling songs such as "We Are The World" and "Higher Love" from the 1980s. 

2019 Billie Eilish concert video footage

As previously mentioned in the article "'The Possessed' and Today's Pop Culture", I first heard about Billie Eilish when the announcement came last spring that she would be appearing in a special miniconcert at my high school.  The special live performance by Billie was the prize for the students having accomplished the most voter registrations.  I was able to observe through the window and listen to the concert while going about my usual office duties. 

At the beginning of her miniconcert, she declared "Yo, you know what's crazy?  This is the first time I've ever been inside a high school in my life."  She said to the students: "Your voices really do matter and it's really important that you all know that and sort of take advantage of that and understand that, like, you actually trying to be a good person is not pointless."

Right on, Billie!  And I hope you always remember that when you're making your music videos as you are now a role model for young and impressionable minds.  During the miniconcert that first week in April, at one point the students began chanting her name in unison: "Billie Billie Billie . . ."

When a student worker asked me if I was a "Billie Eilish fan," it induced me to reflect.  I wish everyone the best and I think that is always an essential aspect of sociality.  I can readily understand the appeal of the songs that I've heard yet I've never personally related as being any type of 'fan' with the word noticeably being an abbreviated version of 'fanatic.'  There is a 1983 pop song about this subject called "The Fanatic".

A rock idol's 'fans' may embrace elements of their favorite songs and emulate behavior best regarded in a personally detrimental or destructive manner.  The foundation of one's conduct and activities should be one's spiritual and metaphysical understanding.
 

Here is a photo of Billie at the miniconcert.

Billie sang five songs that afternoon: "Bellyache," "Idontwannabeyouanymore," "Ocean Eyes," "Bury a Friend" and "When The Party's Over."

Billie and her fellow music genius brother are leading a life of unusual dimensions after her years of home schooling.  This aspect of her life was evidently deemed necessary to her 'higher self' yet if another person were to emulate that condition, the result could be to become a recluse, loner or hermit.

In a plethora of publicity videos online, Billie can be seen interacting in an emotionally unaffected way despite having become a 'teen sensation.'  The latest Billie Eilish news video is "Billie Eilish Asks Fans To 'Please Stop' Impersonating Her In Prank Videos: 'It Is Mean.'"  

Here are some examples from among the countless videos about Billie on YouTube —

When I worked as a talent agent and later as a press agent (publicist) I knew that the more famous and successful one is, the more unbalanced life might possibly become.  The guiding knowledge is spiritual and metaphysical understanding.  This is also an important consideration for anyone who identifies as being one of her 'fans.'   

Now when I remember Billie Eilish coming to my school and how excited were many of the students, I must confess regarding her as a highly curious young person who'd been able to become a popular recording artist at a remarkably young age.  The media frenzy about Billie shows once again how once someone becomes prominent as a performer or celebrity, mainstream media outlets are attentive to focusing on that person as reporters seek information recognized as being valued by the public.  Sometimes it can be of great benefit and lasting value to inform the public about conditions of life that aren't known or understood by them.  The guiding knowledge is spiritual and metaphysical understanding. 

Billie Eilish's actual name turns out to be Billie Eilish Pirate Baird O'Connell.  Currently involved in performing a lengthy international concert tour, she is helping a lot of people to make a lot of money.  While wishing everyone all the best, one can recognize the challenging aspect for someone like Billie is singing those songs over and over in a continuous repetition of the same experience.  These conditions may result with some artists losing sight of expanding one's spiritual consciousness.  Spiritual development is something that could make possible creating new meaningful forms of self-expression.

Something especially curious to me is the use of the word "duh" in the song "Bad Guy" as it brings me a memory of an incident in my life when I was around Billie's age.  My mother told me about a very strange realistic dream where she'd interacted with a man she didn't know after some minor traffic altercation.  What had most astonished her about the dream was the male driver having spoken to her with a sentence that began with the word 'duh.'  It was a mundane dream in many respects yet she couldn't get over the fact that the man in her dream had used the word 'duh.'  My mother thought that was a peculiar thing circa 1974.

Another song currently being played at my athletic club is a new version of a familiar '80s song that I remember as being prophetic of Christ Consciousness during the New Wave of Pop music in the 1980s: "Running Up That Hill" by Kate Bush.  

This image is a link to a video of the Meg Myers version of "Running Up That Hill".

 

A decade later, it was on Sunday November 19, 1995 when my friend Marie arrived at my Echo Park condo to accompany me when I attended my first weekly lecture at the Philosophical Research Society.  As chronicled in my case study book Testament (1997), discussing synchronicity with Marie at the time I found interesting parallels to my case in CDs she’d given me over the years, recalling the Cowboy Junkies’ “The Trinity Session” and the Jesus Jones CD “Doubt” with the hit song “Right Here, Right Now”.  As with traditional religions and beliefs, every art form and artist are sources of conundrum. 

 
The Philosophical Research Society was found to be a small complex of buildings in the vicinity of the Griffith Park Observatory and Los Angeles Zoo.  On the front wall of a building proclaimed the motto “Honoring The Wisdom Of All Traditions.”  The lecture for the day was by the current president of the organization, Obadiah Harris Ph.D. and was entitled "The Egyptian Origins of Wisdom." 

The PRS, as it was known to regular lecture attendees, was founded in 1934 by Manly Palmer Hall (1901-1990) and was sometimes likened to being a present-day version of the esoteric ‘Mystery Schools’ of the ancient past.  Biographical information at the PRS website attested about Hall: “He showed thousands how universal wisdom could be found in the myths, mysteries, and symbols of the ancient Western Mystery teachings and how to embody this wisdom in their own lives . . . it should be clearly stated that PRS is an entirely separate and independent organization with no links to the Masonic movement.”  Hall himself had been recognized as a 33º Mason (the highest rank possible in the Scottish Rite) at a ceremony held at the PRS on December 8, 1973, according to a PRS biography for Hall.

There were different subjects each week encompassing cosmology and divinity, psychic abilities, Native American spiritual traditions, Christianity and the Bible, Buddhism and Yoga, Gnosticism, Jewish mysticism, Sufism, the Bagavad Gita, consciousness and immortality, the Collective Unconscious and Self Aware Universe, quantum physics and the soul, meditation and creativity, karma and reincarnation, healing modalities, Near Death Experiences, parapsychology, chakras, dreams and visualization, astrology and numerology, Sri Aurobindo, Madame Blavatsky, Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr., Alan Watts, Joseph Campbell, and so on.

My range of life experiences made me aware how easy it is to concentrate upon one particular religion or wisdom tradition; or on the Pop culture temples of emotion and fantasy, as I myself had done for many years.  When one begins to realize how much social interaction and activity is influenced by what is traditional and convenient, one can bring focus and determination to finding a path of spiritual development. 

  
This is Article 20 in the current series My Unexpected Path of Spiritual Discovery.