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Interlude II: Pluto

from Empyreum by Spirit and the Trickster

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Interlude II: Pluto
In Roman mythology the god Pluto was the ruler of the Underworld, the repressed realm of our unresolved, unconscious conflicts. Our conscious egos naturally want to avoid the descent into the suffering and death we will find there. But suffering and death belong to the inevitable cycles of nature. Religious symbolism acknowledges this reality, and Judeo-Christian expressions include the Dark Night of the Soul, the Belly of the Whale, the Great Flood, and Death as a prerequisite for Resurrection. As in Dante’s ninth circle of Hell, at our lowest points, we feel dead, petrified, and frozen.

In the Underworld we can no longer continue with business as usual. To illustrate this idea, the first section of this interlude abandons traditional piano techniques to include sounds produced by strumming, plucking, and even bowing the strings inside the piano. The wind sounds were recorded by NASA’s InSight Lander on the uninhabitable surface of Mars. One theme included is that of the murdered King Agamemnon from the opera Elektra by Richard Strauss. Greek tragedies, myths and fairy tales often elaborate upon the theme of the dead king – the passing away of the old order that must be grieved before a new order can emerge. In the second section of the interlude, the ice begins to thaw with the violin’s statement of the Agamemnon theme. This represents an acceptance of grief and sadness of loss, the descent into authentic suffering. Swiss psychologist C. G. Jung makes a distinction between neurotic and authentic suffering. In earlier stages of the process we suffer by seeking to shut out the pain we would rather avoid. We rely on addictions which help us to go on autopilot in an effort to numb ourselves. This is neurotic suffering, a vicious circle leading nowhere. The true healing potential of the Underworld lies in authentic suffering, which frees us from the past and reconnects us to the dissociated parts of our psyche. Reconnecting these inner parts gives us the energy to climb out of the Underworld and rejoin life.

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from Empyreum, released September 20, 2020

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Spirit and the Trickster Houston, Texas

When a singer/songwriter and a classical pianist meet in the field of Jungian psychology, the result is a genre-bending collaboration dedicated to the exploration of archetypal themes, alchemical process, order and chaos, dreams and consciousness, and the confusing beauty of paradox. ... more

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