"The Lightning I, II" - Arcade Fire

Though this is sparse it means volumes in this context, and it's going to make me unpack the course of the lightning, which was the postscript, beginning/end that prompted me to publish this as a public experiment. Fortunately I've made mention a couple times with what's happened already. which helps support that I'm not making this up to fit what's happening now; it's in the original letter too, but barely, so it's time for a linear explanation, because despite how spare this is, -it's there, in a resurrective sense. So I will put its sparse touchstones in a narrative order: 

It's not up to you
Some you win, some you lose (When the lightning comes)
You don't get to choose 

The first time the spiral thunder happened was in the iBook (as mentioned, (p. 1792), the night of the unicorn dream, which already had an indirect allusion before thanks to Johnny Marr's "Ariel". Close, immediate flash followed by proximity thunder means the same about lightning. This one in 2002 was very strange in that it descended above my room in sound spiral (and it did it in a place that doesn't hardly even get thunderstorms in summer, and this was the dead of winter), -don't ask me how. It captured the moment of a heart breaking, but the heartbreak really happening was going to be a full seven years into the future with the same person, William Patrick Corgan. It was a torture-some affair that got to happen multiple times in multiple ways until he did it himself deliberately in 2009. WPC made a choice, some you win, some you lose. (We were born in paradise under a poison sky under a dark sign in the micro-age of Gemini ascribes this to my birth sign, as does Jack White's interior album sleeve art for Fear of the Dawn.)

Lightning light our way until the sky changes from dark to indigo is talking about transiting from darkness into elevated consciousness in terms of the meaning ascribed to the aura colour in children. (It's the same colour Jack White has for every video release to do with these pending albums, and the "WE" logo is basically Jack's Third Man logo doubled.)

What was the unlearning? The only way to learn that this was transcendent inspiration happening was in the elimination of every other possibility, which in this circumstance amounted to getting your heart broken. Everything that transpired with WPC seemed to make it a certainty it was him, only to have that not be true. It was harmful in both directions to both parties (and all parties) in terms of what I failed to see, and it happened a second time, but not before the second spiral thunder, which was leading into April 1st 2012 (the "husband" recollect in the Valentine's entry, which was the second occasion of a thunderclap in a spiral of sound descending directly over my bed). And again, this seemed a certainty, until the disintegration that was 2013 and getting my heart broken a second time. 

The third time time around (when lightning really appeared) was during the learned response that this is transcendent of all the individual parties involved, the narrative happens. Leading into this there was the usual summer monsoon season and what happened was caused by writing the sum of the past post iBook's end to one party, Martin Gore. When I typed, 'That was only a possibility in terms of what it might prove with you' to Martin, lightning hit in the alley less than fifty feet feet away during a torrential douwnpour. I jumped out of my seat not quite half a foot, actually turned almost a 180, just enough to see the lightning hit out of the corner of my eye (closest in my lifetime and likely the last). I wrote that statement because the transcendent awareness had resided in Martin's work since 2000. It was sort of like a back pocket of last resort, but from an inspirational standpoint, perfectly organized for the right moment to hit. And when the aspect that resided with Gore finished hitting, which was Valentine's Day 2021, there was a massive thunder and lightning storm again, the same front that had rolled through and was responsible freezing Texas.

In terms of musicians/songwriting that went into the backgrounder portion of the Martin’s letter bringing him up to date, there were only four apart from himself and his band that I cited and discussed at length: Nick Cave, Bono, David Bowie, and Arcade Fire, because I could center the discussion as per Bono and David using Arcade Fire's "Relflektor", which hijacked the substance of the letter unexpectedly to such an overwhelming extent I literally called it the "Rabbit Hole". This is the third sentence in Martin's letter: "Nobody’s expecting to mention that they listened to Reflektor and David Bowie for the first time in years and have it produce a rabbit hole of 16 pages....) -Serious stuff ahead." I did the same with all the hyperlinked footnotes, eight enumerated "Rabbit Hole"s.

(As per the Arcade Fire's music video, did the Valentine's Day storm cause a tornado locally? Yes it did. And quite a few more the further it went; -February being the peak month for tornadoes in central Florida. Incidentally, five days after Arcade Fire's tornado video (and you'll notice this is a second time for this depiction as well), also a multi-vortext tornado ripped through New Orleans taking one life five days later, (-where Arcade Fire are based).)

The lightning appeared visibly during the writing at a very significant point of place. 

Concurrently we have Win Butler describing lightning ocurring in impossible circumstances and invoking Jesus Christ almost indicidentally in the same verse, which is striking considering this is the name I predicted would be invoked as the transcendent Identity responsible for universal inspiration if It got a handle at all, who was signified to me personally by lightning happening four different times in different ways/aspects. (The unicorn dream signified personal miraculous salvation in terms of a fantastical being.) Incidentally Win does this with exact same phrase WPC used in a state of refellion in "Bullet With Butterfly Wings" (2:49 - been there, done that, meaning that personal choice literally happened with some serious consequences, which the iBook relates and which WPC is still reacting to). I realize this is ambivalently inserted in the verse and this whole transpiration can be viewed as a random accident, but it is in accord. So inadvertently WPC was pointing to the real transcendent Identity it would turn out to be instead of himself many years later, and the same phrase is dropped here at the conclusion. Win furthermore describes that he was specifically instructed ("told") to put this inspirational experience into a song, including this term. For him the lightning is a signifier of light, but he's waiting for what it has appeared to reveal, with every moment in his life devised to bring him to this threshold. Well, this is it.

I heard the thunder and I thought is was the answer but I got the question wrong could surmise the fact that I was asking the wrong person in my mind when I thought I was asking WPC in 1998, because technically, due to the nature of the inspiration and that WPC was just inspired in terms of creating a comprehensive response, I misperceived the asking and the answer completely, which caused me to ask the wrong question. The heartbreak was signified by thunder and so was the restoration, thrice over. 

Just to cap it off, "The Lightning I,II" premiered on WPC's 55th birthday. The devastation of the first verse corresponds to the aftermath of the devastation of getting my heart broken there in 2009. 

(It was WPC who first directed me to indigo children. Of course his link was better.)