Dr. Swamplove, Or: How I Learned To Open My Eyes Wide Shut And Hate Stanley Kubrick

At first blush, the term hate is so much more precise than its regular counterpointer of love.  Few have the slightest difficulty expressing what they hate, but for me it's not so simple.  For me, hate is every bit as confusing an emotion as its goodly brother, because the kind of hate I'm talking about--and the only kind of hate I feel--is tangled with anguished admiration. The admiration for an artifice that is as difficult and even cruel as it is shattering and beautiful.  This kind of hate trends wildly away from ordinary dislike or disgust and well into terrible fear and respect.  What am I to do about it?  It is the state of things for me, and I see no way out.

So, as I continue to explain why I hate Stanley Kubrick, and why I think that you ought to hate him too, please keep it in mind--this special kind of capital "H" Hate--because the Beginning of Wisdom is the Hatred of God, and if Stanley Kubrick isn't God, then there is no such thing as Stanley Kubrick.

***

In my magnum opus on Eyes Wide Shut I propose that Kubrick's final riddle, released in 1999, was in fact set during the Christmas Holiday just following the events of September 11th, 2001.  There are many intricate proofs, but the simplest comes from the strange set of images which open the movie.  First, we see Alice, in a lighted nook off the master bedroom, as she slinks out of her gown.  She stands on the bare wall-to-wall carpet, which is pale to the point of white.  After the main title there is an exterior establishing shot of the Harford's apartment building.  Next, we find Bill in the same nook as Alice, now plunged into relative darkness.  There is a reddish-grey area rug on the floor.

The instant interpretation of Alice is as a masonic flash card for the esoteric Isis.  Isis is perpetually veiled and the veils themselves are reported not only as the barrier between the material world and the light of God, but also the forbidden threshold into the the realm of Hades.  The double set of twin pillars that flank Alice seem to be redundant, but in fact illustrate the rectilinear "hallway" effect that Kubrick used again and again, to create the sensation of looking toward a vanishing point through the lens of a camera.  They also serve as a mirror effect, indicating the multiple layers of illusion transmitted by Isis, toward those She wishes to rebuff.  So if we accept Alice as Isis, then the simple follow-up is that as Alice drops her gown, so Isis lowers her many veils and invites the viewer into the Land of the Dead. The completed assumption is that EWS is a post-9/11 movie. We decode that Alice's falling-down gown represents the collapse of the Towers and that the area rug in the darkened nook is the carpet of dust that covered lower Manhattan.  On its own, this assertion is a mighty leap, but not at all in the light of some few and powerful clues.

***

Stanley watches his movie--beginning to end-- from a park bench

The initial establishing shot of the Harford's building, seen in between the opening shots of Alice and Bill, lends a tough problem.  In a recent discussion with Kubrick researcher and writer Jeffery Scott Bernstein, Jeffrey pointed me to an in-depth IMDB discussion thread about the exterior shots in EWS.  There, I learned that the Harford's posh digs are supposed to perch in the elite "San Remo" building.  "San Remo" jumps out as a sly play upon "Somerton", which is the name of the estate where Bill Harford comes face-to-mask with a dangerous world he didn't even know existed.  The term "San" is Latin for "Saint", but also means "without".  My take is that this use of "San" is as a minus sign, and equivalent to any ordinary term of negation, e.g., without; not; un-; ex-; anti-, and so on.  This is revealed at depth by a reversal of the term "Somerton" into "Not Remo's" which then equals "San Remo" or "Without Remo".   

The shot is interesting for another reason, because it is used again near the end of the movie.  One can see it is the same image as the first because a man sits, slouching on a street side bench (screen left).  The message seems to be a playful reference to the movies source material, Traumnovelle, which means dream-book. and such is the normal assessment of this apparent editing redundancy, that Kubrick implies the entirety of Bill's misadventure is only a bad dream, and that he has not even ventured outside the walls of his own home.  The same motif is reinforced as the movie closes.  In FAO-Schwarz, talking over the meaning of his torturous journey, Bill is bewildered, needy and trembling, acting like a kid who has just waked-up from a nightmare.  Alice, on the other hand, has evolved into the completed Mother-Whore.  She strokes and molly-coddles Bill and then suggests politely that they fuck.

However, I think that the complete message is decidedly more arch.  Take a look at a revealing perspective of the "San Remo" building.  It is a pair of Twin Towers"!  I deduce that the hidden mantra here is a classic of double-think programming. Simply, double-think is the conscious awareness of reality held in balance with a falsified version of that same reality.  The added effect is that under the influence of double-think, one can not even discuss the "real" reality in question and will dismiss anyone else who tries to do so.

So, in another leap, I reckon that the "Somerton/San Remo" duality carries the following code: the Towers didn't really come down at all, at least not how you secretly worry they came down: at the hand of some indescribable evil.  Forget it kid, it's all an illusion, a bad dream. Accept the official story and whatever you do, don't ask questions about it.

There is a further complication.  The "San Remo" is next door to the infamous "Dakota" building, where John Lennon was assassinated and exterior scenes of Rosemary's Baby were filmed.  The "Dakota" was so named because during its construction it was "far north" of Manhattan's thriving center--like the Dakota territories.  North by Northwest, to be exact, but that's another story.

Anyhow, in the Masonic ceremony, the Light of Illumination, which is now widely accepted as the Light of Lucifer, is in the position of North.  The exact dignity of Lucifer is murky, because in propaganda, positive terms are appropriated for negative messaging--but here I use Lucifer as the symbol for a "source of light".  The acronym "EWS" lends itself to three of the four cardinal directions.  "N" for North is missing.  Established first as a plain metaphor, and in my own view as a model for the descent of humanity into darkness in a post-9/11 matrix, "EWS" can now be read as "Without North" and then, by way of the Masonic symbol, "Without Light".

So--can we infer that "San Remo" and "Without Remo" mean also "Without North" and therefore "Without Light"?  I would say the title Eyes Wide Shut ought to be enough to cinch the knot, but there is more, and it is chilling.

John Lennon dies and Polanski's Dark Lucifer issues forth on this spot

John Lennon was killed outside the "Dakota" on December 8th, 1980, on the pinpoint spot where Rosemary--Polanski's Mother-Whore--walks into her Satanic Neo-Natal Nervous Breakdown Hotel Hell.  During one exterior scene from Rosemary's Baby, I can't remember which, but I think it is the suicide sidewalk scene, an off camera voice can be heard saying... "...a young man was shot here...".  The date of the Roman Catholic Annunciation, which is the day Catholics uphold as the impregnation of the Virgin Mary, is December 8th.  I can not merely dismiss as coincidence this harmony of dates and the twin births that they foretell.

Rosemary will give birth, we are told, to Lucifer incarnate, but this may be a misuse of the name Lucifer and its Promethean meaning of "light bringer".  Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey is about many things, but I think that it is fairly easy to see the story of David Bowman as that of the birth of Lucifer--Nietzsche's Superman. Side by side with Polanski, EWS heralds a sinister reflection to the birth of this "starchild".  The proximity of the two buildings on a Northern line, along with the already unraveled parts of this code, indicate that Kubrick's child of light, who should be properly called "moonchild", is not the ascension of the human to a higher realm, but the shadow of Death and darkness upon the world entire.  

***

A while back, I chatted a bit with Jay Weidner.  I was intrigued by his thesis that Kubrick faked the Apollo 11 footage.  He finds clues not only in the footage itself, but in Kubrick's films at large and especially in The Shining.  Weidner reserves judgment on the actual status of the 11 Mission, but instead implies only that the imagery and data are at least dubious.  I decided to share another code from The Shining, buried just one layer beneath the precise code of Jay's desiring.  I don't know what he thought of it--the guy is pretty cagey.  He did say it was disturbing.  Here is my evidence as presented.  I have added one or two new thoughts and some images.

Dear Mr. Weidner,

I have just watched your movie, "Kubrick's Odyssey".  You have uncovered a code that has yet another layer of meaning, hidden beneath the first code, in the manner of steganography.

I will make an assertion and then back it up with a short argument.

Kubrick either knew of or helped design the mechanics of the events of 9/11.

The first clue is given when Jack bounces the tennis ball.  The image begins centered on Jack's typewriter and widens out to the Colorado Rm.  We hear Jack's ball bounce a total of 11 times.  The first 9 bounces are contained in the widening shot that begins on the typewriter.  The next 2 are heard after the cut to behind Jack.  This configuration gives 9/11.  Next to the typewriter are four sharp  pencils pointed at the Navajo "rocket mural".  The typewriter is an "Adler", which is German for "eagle", and it bears the crest of an eagle with its wings spread wide in the manner of an airplane.  My contention is that the pencils and the rockets on the mural represent missiles.  The symbol of American Airlines is the "Eagle".  American Flight 11 was the first Tower strike.  Older typewriters did not have a key for the number "1".  Typists would use the lower case "l" for a "1". This adds a double pun to the meaning of Jack's manuscript, by way of a homophone.  "A-11 (All) work and no plane makes Jack a dull boy".  Thus I discern that the eagle/airplane image on the typewriter is analog to the "script" of 9/11 and the four pencils represent the truth of it, the "blueprint" of the plan.  Missiles, not planes. 

The second clue is found when Jack first visits the Gold Room.  There are two cash registers behind the empty bar.  Here, I must remind of Kubrick's connection to IBM, who were expressly thanked in the now removed original closing credits to 2001:ASO.  Also, consider the natural conflation of IBM (makers of cash registers and other "business machines"), with the WTC complex.  For most of the 20th Century and right up to the milennium, IBM utterly dominated world business tabulation systems. The critical value of IBM systems to say, the NY Stock Exchange (housed in the WTC complex), is over bearing to say the least.

In the Gold Room, the bar-back is illuminated with 20 panels of light: 9 interior panels, forming three sconces, and 11 frontal panels.  I infer that the two "registers" stand in as WTC 1 and 2.  And I needn't remind of the position of the Millennium Hilton Hotel standing next to the "event", which design is an open transmission of Kubrick's Monolith.  I wonder what is in Rm. 237 of that hotel?

The third clue is introduced in the form of a smarmy riddle.  Who are the twins that are not twins?  Why, the WTC buildings, of course, completed two years apart.  But another more potent answer is: the twins from The Shining, which may or may not be twins but are certainly sisters.  The young actresses are twins, we are told, but the characters they portray, like the children of Grady described by Ullman at Jack's interview, may be 8 and 10 years old.  They look like twins, but like the Towers, are two years apart. You may also note that one is slightly taller than the other. The images of their dashed bodies are that of WTC 1 and 2, and as it does with the girls, the evidence disappears into thin air, just like pictures in a book.

The final clue must be seen to be believed.  You will note multiple hidden reference here to 2001: ASO.  The term "Odyssey" is featured on a poster for a construction site.  The architect is a "Frank Lloyd", which gives "F-loyd" or "Floyd" as in "Heywood Floyd".  There is a motif regarding the space program.  More subtle: the repeated reference to hollow "Bricks", a German "drummer" who backed the Nazis, and the intriguing fact that Mel Brooks, producer of Get Smart, says his favorite movie is Dr. Strangelove.

***

In a recent comment here at Da WWWiz, synch superstar aferrismoon makes reference to a code that got me banned from Rob Ager's Kubrick Forum.  The terms in question, which are a telescope of  Dr. Strangelove, are "Doc", "Strangle", and "Glove".  This same code can be found in a myriad of media.  Its standard use is the asphyxiation or drowning of a young man who is more often than not a doctor or a policeman, or is acting in a capacity metaphorically similar to these professions.  I have documented a variety of these codes, most notably in an exhaustive analysis of the Coen Bros. Burn After Reading.  In BAR, Chad, played by Brad Pitt, is a physical trainer (doctor) who fancies himself a spy (cop).  In the critical scene, Chad, who is dressed in an uncharacteristic shirt and tie, stands beneath a basement water pipe and cracks his neck to relieve some tension.  A moment later, when he is discovered hiding in a closet, Chad's head will get blown-off.  The completed image, reinforced by the simile of auto-erotic asphyxiation in a bedroom closet, is that of a "hanging" or "dangling" chad.  Chad's killer will dispose of the body in the Chesapeake (drowning).

The prosaic occult connection is to the "Hanged Man", who is also called the "Drowned Man".  But if one apprehends the conflation of this code as it is used by Kubrick to the Talking Heads classic Swamp (from the Album Speaking in Tongues), a colossal truth begins to emerge: that reality has passed into the Land of the Dead.  There are four phases of this truth that must be defined before we jump in the code itself.

1.  August 6, 1945: The Beginning of the End

2.  November 22, 1963:  The End of Life

3.  The Reagan Years: The Tomb is Sealed

4.  September 11, 2001:  The Gateway to the Underverse

The first phase is no more than the Sun catching-up with itself.  Human expansion across the globe is analog to the movement of the Sun from East to West.  After the civilization of the American continent there were "no more worlds to conquer" and the yearning for plunder leapt from the Geographic Stage to the Lunar Stage by pushing Westward into an already ancient and civilized territory.  This may also be stated as the cracking of the nuclear shell, the egg shell of Earthly limitation, which is the duality of Proton and Neutron, and outward toward the Moon, which is the Electron.  The war in the Pacific and the subsequent use of the Atom Bomb do not represent the conflict of World Nations, but instead are the collective desire of humanity to reach for the stars.  Fire all of the guns at once and explode into space.  Greedy bunch of maniacs.  I wonder if we had any idea it was suicide?

Phase two, the death of JFK, is the last gasp of the striving World.  Kennedy urged that we reach out into space and do "these other things", and backed NASA with zeal.  I suspect that NASA's data on the Moon--built on decades of Nazi occult research--was already conclusive.  Namely, that the Moon is a lock on the Earth and that the keyhole is on the outside.  The moon landings are a hoax of some kind, that is for sure, staged to simulate the impossible dream of manifest destiny.

Phase three is SDI, or as it is called in the parlance of our times: "Star Wars".  The Strategic Defense Initiative was the nail in the coffin our geography.  By the late 70's, the satellite radio mapping of our every nook and cranny was completed and could be updated at a moments notice.  SDI locked it up tight with explosive bolts.  We live quite literally inside a gun pointed at itself.  And it is hermetically sealed.

Phase four.  The destruction in NYC of WTC 1 and 2, and the Solomon Bros. Building is the internal recapitulation of Nagasaki, Hiroshima and the Trinity Tests.  The power of the Atom unleashed not outward unto the stars to wander, but back in at itself. The Pentagon breach released Osiris (OZ = 77), to rule over the Land of the Dead, only to proclaim that we had been dead all along.

Kubrick documents the facts of this conundrum in a variety of motifs, but to my mind, none is more mean spirited than the "Doc-Strangle-Glove" code.  Mad nuclear scientist Strangelove chokes himself with a gloved hand.  In The Shining, Danny, whose nickname is Doc, suffers a strangulation too.  In my work on The Shining, I propose that Danny strangles himself, just as Jack suggests to Wendy.  The theory is not popular but is nevertheless correct.  However, it is the juxtaposition of EWS with the Talking Heads Swamp that connects all of the elements discussed thus far into the startling possibility that Kubrick helped design the End of Time event called 9/11, and the utmost certainty that he knew about it well in advance.

In this image we see Dr. Bill examining a boy under the watchful eye of his mother.  This is a fine example of Kubrick's effortless use of Uncanny Doubling.  The three are a trinity of Mother, Father, and Son, but Bill and the boy are also Twins. Bill is a grown-up Doc, Danny is a boy called Doc.  Both the boy Bill examines and Danny are strangled.  Dr. Bill is strangling himself.

Now take a listen to Swamp, about a Doctor and Strangulation, and rooms full of blood, and the A-Bomb.  Listen to its ultimate message: wake up, the whole thing is over.

Here are the key lyrics.

"...No dust, no rocks / The whole thing is over..."

"...all that blood, it's gonna swallow you whole..."

"...when they split those atoms / it's hotter than the sun..."

"...soft violence (violins?) / hands touch your throat / a medical chart on the wall..."

'...all that blood will never cover that mess..."

Here is the full equation.

Alice's Gown = The Veil of Isis

The Gown Drops and we enter the Land of the Dead.

Somerton/San Remo = Without Light = Shade = Hades

Kubrick encodes The Apocalypse Prison and the Resurrection of Osiris

We are all just prisoners here, of our own device.  

                                                                              

                                                                           ***

I want to call attention to two great Gnostic theorists and why I think they

dropped the ball.  Phillip K. Dick, who by way of some vision work, believed the "Head Apollo" would return to free humanity from the "Black Iron Prison", and Terence McKenna, who expressed that the key to our salvation was the creation of Art.  

I think Art is the problem, not the solution, although I would add that it is a problem with no need or possibility of a remedy.  As far as the return of the Messiah--well--that is unnecessary too, because of a hangman's loophole.  The hidden nature of the Prison of our Earthly dwelling is that we are and must be naturally immortal.  Our selves are hermetically sealed, so like the man says, "it's all inside".  There is nowhere for us to go--not even to nowhere itself.  Life is an illusion of amnesia and Death is the mirror image--nothing more.  Yes, there is great suffering and (unfortunately) suffrage too.  But there is no need for either intervention or metamorphoses because our energies are returned to us in full, whether we like it or not.

***

I guess--if we really do "reap as we sow"--I might propose that love is the solution, but for most, love is a labyrinth of blind alleys and lost hope.  No one seems to have a convincing definition of this thing we call love, but for me it's quite simple.  For me, love is the perfect twin of its bad-ass brother, because the kind of love I'm talking about--and the only kind of love I feel--is tangled with demonic delight.  The delight that we survive, that we live on, fly on in a reflected sky, reflected endlessly into itself.  Not only in spite of but because of the infernal and impossible condition of our self-awareness.  This kind of love--this capital "L" Love--which is dumbstruck awe and ignorance and fear, goes where angels dare not tread, and it looks like those winged harpies have the right idea after all.  Bunch of cowards if you ask me.  As for the rest of us, the decision is made. There is no turning back.

So I guess I love Stanley Kubrick after all, and I think that you ought to love him too, because the Beginning of Wisdom is Love.  Love and the Fear of Bog and All of His Wonders.  And as for Stan, well...

...he's the bomb.