From the very beginning I saw this story as one somehow centered on some kind of possession or channeling. And now that seems to be the only explanation for this endless parade of omen and ancient symbolism of the love goddess and her shepherd-boy consort.
And it only gets stranger and more impossible.
In truth, I suspected Elizabeth Fraser was channeling something entirely different as soon as I heard “Sugar Hiccup” back in 1983. I grew up around professional musicians- my mother was a trained soprano- and I heard a hell of a lot of music. But somehow I knew something seemed to have come here from somewhere else.
It wasn’t just me- you hear the phrase “otherworldly” used quite a lot to describe her singing.
Even then it felt like something was revealing itself, something very big and strange, through this shy, vulnerable, troubled girl (she was only 19 when she sang “Hiccup”) with the mile-wide howl and her art-damaged bandmates.
I just had no idea how big and strange it truly was.
UNDER APHRODITE’S SPELL
Now, Elizabeth Fraser loved Jeff Buckley. I mean she really loved him.
I mean she really, really, really loved him.
This isn’t conjecture on my part. She talked about it in interviews, saying her love for him was an “addiction” and that she was “maniacal.” She sang that she was a “junkie” for him. Twice.
Five years after his death she appeared in the “widow role” on a BBC documentary on Buckley and it was painfully clear that that love still burned inside her.
This is the kind of love that poets used to write epics about. The kind of love that Innana had for Dumuzi, that Selene had for Endymion, that Isis had for Osiris. The kind of love city-states used to go to war over.
She sang about this love. A lot. She wrote an entire EP about it, made a heart-wrenching (and startlingly-prophetic) longform music video about it, dedicated an entire album to it, and eventually wrote the best-known song of her career about it, a song which tens of millions of people have heard.
And again, she recorded that song the day Buckley died.
So bear all this in mind as we take a deeper look into the prophetic foreshadowing in the Cocteau Twins’ music and this increasingly impossible avalanche of omen and symbol, all leading to what very much looks like a real-time god-LARP of the one of the oldest stories known to history- one that’s been retold many different times in many different places- the love of the Love Goddess for a doomed shepherd-boy.
It’s a story upon which the world’s first great empire rose and fell.
Elvis died in Memphis 20 years before Buckley did so (1977). He is also closely connected to the Carnival Memphis.
He was also known as Apollo Lyceus, or “Apollo the Wolf God.” One of the grand old theaters in Memphis was named in honor of Apollo Lyceus, The Lyceum.
The Homeric Hymn to Apollo acknowledges that Apollo’s gift of prophecy first came to him from three bee maidens, usually but doubtfully identified with the Thriae, a trinity of pre-Hellenic Aegean bee goddesses.
The Pythia (or Oracle of Delphi) was the priestess who held court at Pytho, the sanctuary of the Delphinians, a sanctuary dedicated to the Greek god Apollo. Pythia were highly-regarded, for it was believed that she channeled prophecies from Apollo himself, while steeped in a dreamlike trance.
A Roman historian described how this channeling came about:
At last Apollo mastered the breast of the Delphian priestess ; as fully as ever in the past, he forced his way into her body, driving out her former thoughts, and bidding her human nature to come forth and leave her heart at his disposal.
(F)irst the wild frenzy overflowed through her foaming lips ; she groaned and uttered loud inarticulate cries with panting breath ; next, a dismal wailing filled the vast cave ; and at last, when she was mastered, came the sound of articulate speech… ” – Lukan- The Civil Wars
Perhaps more than anyone else, Elvis is nearly synonymous with Las Vegas. He first played there in 1956 (a month before appearing at the Carnival Memphis) and later began a long residency in the Dog Days of 1969 at the Las Vegas International which would eventually see him give over 700 performances there.
There was even an Elvis Presley Museum in Vegas. There are still Elvis Wedding Chapels there.
And just as there is one overlooking the exact spot where Jeff Buckley ascended to Heaven, there is also an Elvis statue in Las Vegas.
It was quite noticeable that he was borne along by a divine inspiration when he spoke, when from this so wise a mouth flowed in waves the words, which flew like flakes of snow. Then it seemed that his eyes filled with a shining splendor, and all over his face spread rays of a divine illumination. – Marsinus on Proclus, author of On the Signs of Divine Possession
Fraser’s distinctive singing has earned her much critical praise; she was once described as “the voice of God.” Her lyrics range from straightforward English to semi-comprehensible sentences (glossolalia) and abstract mouth music. For some recordings, Fraser has said that she used foreign words without knowing what they meant – the words acquired meaning for her only as she sang them.
So by assembling lyrics out of words in foreign languages she didn’t understand, Fraser was literally “speaking in tongues.” And it’s in this and her use of glossolalia that Fraser was once again acting in the exact same manner as the ancient oracles:
Neoplatonist philosopher Iamblichus linked glossolalia to prophecy, writing that prophecy was divine spirit possession that “emits words which are not understood by those that utter them; for they pronounce them, as it is said, with an insane mouth and are wholly subservient, and entirely yield themselves to the energy of the predominating God.”
LULLABIES REVISITED
The Sibyl with raving mouth utters solemn, unadorned, unlovely words, but she reaches out over a thousand years with her voice by force of the god within her. – Heraclitus
Calla lilies have become a common favorite in wedding ceremonies, but in contrast, lilies are also associated with death. They were often used on the graves of youths who suffered an untimely death.
When Venus, goddess of love, beauty, and desire, saw the lilies she was jealous of their beauty. She cursed their beauty by placing a large yellow pistil in the middle of the flowers. Because of this story, some associate the calla lily with Venus and thus with lust and sexuality.
And guess what? That’s exactly what Apollo imparted onto his oracles. Exactly like someone or something seems to imparted onto the young Elizabeth Fraser.
Now we get to the truly frightening part of the program.
Wake takes a lonely one
(Note: I’ve listened to this song many times now and am convinced she’s singing “Wake takes a lonely one” only she’s Liz’ing the hell out of the syllables. It makes more sense with the rest of the lyrics- bone, stone, on)
And note that like the Pythia, Fraser sounds like she’s a trancelike state for the entire EP, even though she belted these songs out live like a trouper. It’s actually unnerving. Especially on these lyrics:
Flaxen, the dress is on
And look! Another handy graphic!
Flax was cultivated in Mespoptania, Assyria, and Babylonia, but Egypt was known as the “land of linen.” Linen was woven at least six thousand years ago; fragments of Egyptian cloth have been dated to 4500 B.C.
And there’s also the association with death (“Flaxen, dress is bone”). Of course.
Mummification, practiced from the first dynasty (2920-2770 B.C), required mountains of linen for bandage.
The very first stanza of the very first telling of the myth of the Love Goddess and the Shepherd Boy– the furiously-pornographic Courtship of Inanna and Dumuzi– is about- wait for it, now- flax.
The brother spoke to his younger sister.
LIKE AMERICAN GODS, ONLY REAL
Lastly, what connection does “Feathers Oar Blades,” a garbled rowing term, possibly have with the Jeff Buckley drama?
“What was essential to Delphic divination, then, was the frenzy of the Pythoness and the sounds which she uttered in this state which were interpreted by the Ὅσιοι [Osioi] and the ‘prophet’ according to some conventional code of their own.” Lewis Farnell, The Cults of the Greek States
On the face of it, I mean.
Her honey mouth has got me all fool gold
Gold Dust Rush
But we saw Fraser sing of honey again in a song about drowning in a lagoon, didn’t we?
The Homeric Hymn to Apollo acknowledges that Apollo’s gift of prophecy first came to him from three bee maidens…
Well, how about the death of Elvis Presley? In Memphis? Will that do?
The peanut butter and banana sandwich with melted bacon grease has been referred as a favorite of Elvis Presley, who was renowned for his food cravings such as the Fool’s Gold Loaf, a loaf of Italian bread filled with a pound of bacon, peanut butter, and grape jelly.
Oh, as in Wolf River, um, Harbor…
So let’s add this up: “Her Honey Mouth”- Fraser, Wolf River, Bee Maidens’ prophecy, Apollo- “Has got me all fool gold” Elvis’ death in Memphis (largely caused by his horrible diet, including the PBJ-bacon combo, “the Fool’s Gold”).
Honey is Harbor
John the baptizer appeared in the wilderness, proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. 5 And people from the whole Judean countryside and all the people of Jerusalem were going out to him, and were baptized by him in the river Jordan, confessing their sins. 6 Now John was clothed with camel’s hair, with a leather belt around his waist, and he ate locusts and wild honey. Mark 1:4-8
While John the Baptist‘s use of a deep river for his baptism suggests immersion, “The fact that he chose a permanent and deep river suggests that more than a token quantity of water was needed, and both the preposition ‘in’ (the Jordan) and the basic meaning of the verb ‘baptize’ probably indicate immersion.
Might that have anything to do with the first verse of Elizabeth Fraser and Jeff Buckley’s legendary duet, “All Flowers in Time Bend Towards the Sun?”
Now how do we put this last verse together?
How about the famous Historic Baptist Church on Beale St, just six short blocks from where Jeff Buckley’s body washed up at the mouth of the Honey-is-Harbor?
Will that do?
“In The Gold Dust Rush” is the first song on the second side of Head Over Heels. The next song is “Tinderbox of a Heart,” which goes something like this:
How heavy you are, it’s spitting you out
It’s believed the weight of Buckley’s clothes and shoes contributed to his drowning.
The last song on Head Over Heels is a howling firestorm about the most famous doomed lovers of all, Romeo and Juilet. The chorus is heart-ripping:
Well, there are dozens of other songs and lyrics we’re not looking at, many of which are not in English or any other consistent language.
“Above anything else (Apollo) was a god of oracles and prophecy – and the oracles he gave out were riddles, full of ambiguities and traps. It was the people who believed everything was bright and clear who ended up in trouble.
“Often he’s associated with bright music and song. And yet, especially in Anatolia, he had a very different side. There songs were sung in his honour that were full of strange words, sung in an incantatory language no one could understand.
And his oracles were spoken by his prophet in a voice heavy with trance: oracles full of repetitions and riddles, expressed in a poetry that at times hardly seemed poetry at all. For Apollo was a god who operated on another level of consciousness with rules and a logic of its own.”
PS: Elizabeth Fraser quit the Cocteau Twins shortly after Jeff Buckley died and has produced very little music since. But even this has mythic echoes:
Lost is her lovely lord, and with him lost her hallowed beauty. When Adonis yet lived Cypris was beautiful to see to, but when Adonis died her loveliness died also. — Bion, The Fragments