Siren Song

Early Western mythology wove tales of creatures who beached on the shores of distant islands, crooning songs which lured wayward sailors to their unknowing doom. The Sirens were often portrayed as hybrid human-avian women with voices that rang like crystalline bells through the thick, humid ocean air. Vaguely preternatural and born from the God's themselves, the sirens kept an insidious secret about their aural incantations. The ultimate pursuit of the Siren was to capture and destroy their hapless mariner prey. All the while, the enchanted pilgrims would be utterly enrapt by the glorious songs of their captors. 

Perhaps their demise was one of both agony and ecstasy. 

From the flippant musings of the collective this morning, I am brought to an image of our beloved artist from the song and video that made of him a supernatural force in worldwide music culture. This image, a still from the ubiquitous "STIUTK" video, hints at the mythological imagery of the Siren. Salient even more so is the notion of the man as a dynamic, often emotionally devouring vocalist who imparts a range of halcyon notes into every song he creates. Often by his own perspective his vocals are questionably competent, yet the listener is swiftly conquered by the soft loveliness of his voice. The marriage of this visual imagery with that of the vocal brilliance of the musician evoke an uncanny allegory of The Siren. The film clip for the "Somebody" hit also seems to play upon the mythological modus operandi of the Siren-in its innate ability to conceal itself as both human-like and simultaneously  chimerical. The initial stark yet circuitous nudity of the musician and the focus upon his melancholy green eyes and downturned mouth invoke a sense of brooding vulnerability and pensiveness that begins to lure the viewer/listener in immediately. The music hypnotically pulses along, and as we are drawn deeper into the abyss we see the man transform into something strange and abberantly alluring. Once he is subsumed by vaguely earthy and oceanic tones and angles, we find the man now a beast of sorts, with stabbing eyes and gaping mouth. At that moment the song reaches a peak, and the Siren abandons pretense to unhinge its toothy jaw and swallow us whole. We are amongst the captive maritime travelers who have found their way to the Siren's beach and have been laid to waste as a result.

Perhaps our Wally indeed arose from the briney deep on a conch shell such as the mythical Venus. Perhaps he is some oceanic creature come to consume our souls for his own amusement. Or perhaps, he is only a man, whose own being has also been subsumed into his Siren song. 

~~~

c. P. 2012