DAYTRIPPERS (Whitby)

THE RELUCTANT DONKEY (Whitby) : completed July 2019

Nanna says "Put your best foot forward"

                         
                              Out of the fog of memory, Nanna says "Always put your best foot forward."

"FORTITUDE" SERIES 3 FINALE ; THREEFOLD REALITY

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                                                         Dan handcuffed , threefold manacles


The young golden hero sheriff


The amoral  monster in the wild wilderness

                     FORTITUDE SERIES 3 FINALE

In killing Elana, the love of his life, at the end of series 1, Dan must now bear the consequences of this action. It was an impossible decision and that’s the tragedy of it! The good sheriff saved Carrie and Elana but the   murder with intent condemned him to eternal damnation, same action causes opposite consequences. It drives him mad and he remains in agony throughout series 2 and 3 because without the capacity for love man becomes a monster. So Dan loses the golden hero image and becomes a hairy “steampunk” maniac, possessed, fixated, perverse, deluded, demonic. His world has also gone wild with a riot of gratuitous sex, unlimited violence and hedonism, a place without meaning. The preoccupation is with regeneration and super powers, for life beyond human limits, in fact that age old concern for the secret elixir of eternal life/youth so prevalent in modern Hollywood and represented here by Elsa. Dan’s eyes are now empty, not soulful. Nothing matters, in both senses.

There are attempts to reach out and form relationships, but ultimately it’s just sex. There are attempts to literally and metaphorically “castrate” and limit the unbridled male/Ego, but it’s just messy mutilation. Series 1 oscillated between extremes but series 2 and 3 have become the extreme. There is no voluntary way back unless the forces of the universe take over to restore order and that is what happens in the Finale as the drama itself also coalesces from its riotous multiple forms of genre into the single unity of a Tragedy. (Aspects of the tragic form were always present, for example harmatia, hubris, reversal, cosmic battle between Good and Evil, the evocation of horror and pity towards a tragic hero, eventual catharsis.)

Fittingly, it’s a woman who strikes the fatal blow that brings Dan to his senses and inevitable death. Whether it’s called Natalie or an anima, it’s the same intrusion and an awful shock. The screen goes blank with a bang as his consciousness changes and he becomes aware of his own mortality as a human being once again. Dan is in a womblike ambulance where the real Erich disappears and is replaced by images of the dead, visitations of personal representations of the collective unconscious; matriarchal compassionate woman (Hildur), violent conflict (Pettigrew), fatherly wise old man (Henry), chthonic mystery ( polar bear).

Dan is violently ripped out of the womblike ambulance to be born again into the arctic wasteland, dragged kicking and screaming in resistance until he is forcibly handcuffed to the same pylon he handcuffed Pettigrew ( karma). These handcuffs form the figure 3, suggesting submission to the threefold laws of the universe inside and outside, laws acknowledged by writers as far back as the Upanishads, not the dualities of Descartes that leave a world in conflict, but the tripartite understanding of older civilizations. These natural laws are binding and there to ensure both limitation and safety.

Submitting finally to these laws of nature and mortality, Dan glimpses the mysterious bear, a chthonic elemental force prowling through the fog and lurking at the perimeter of his consciousness. We do not see it attack but it is there, waiting, a beautiful moment. The image of Henry then informs Dan of his impending lonely death. In full realisation of his condition and without delusion, Dan is now alone in turmoil and a state of hell. His eyes empty as he sees a plane above him before losing consciousness. Dan becomes himself again, a man mortal and fallible.

Above him, the lesser character of Lennox is left to mop up the story, as happens with most Tragedies .Finding love in the form of Elsa and forgoing the mind-bending alcohol, Lennox finds meaning in life and accompanies her on a plane to a hospice in Bergen where she can die naturally instead of seeking unnatural  eternal youth. However there is something strange about this plane where everyone is asleep. In response to a shadowy air hostess, Lennox says, “everything is fine, all’s good” before falling asleep together with Elsa. He seems radiant and in bliss, a state of heaven. So he also submits to the cosmic power of the collective unconscious, whether it’s called sleep or death. It’s a welcome catharsis for the audience shattered by the experiences of series 2 and 3.

Dan’s error was to kill Love in the world and in himself. He had no right to do this, though he thought it was the right thing to do at the time. It cut him off from one of the great mysteries of Life and made his world soulless, an empty meaningless materialism. He sought a life without limitation, outside the laws of existence, to be absolutely free with an uncontained Ego. It’s monstrous and mad. Only when forced back into the threefold manacles of “body, mind AND soul” does he submit to the realisation that he is not the centre of it all but only part of something greater than himself .He must find his place in this as a simple, balanced human being. This knowledge releases him to the wonder of a freedom he could never have imagined himself, but that is beyond the tale of any telling.

On one level, “Fortitude” fits into the storytelling tradition of “far fetched yarns, action packed epics of men at arms”, (see Gawain and Green knight, 1400, another mixed bag of bloodthirsty absurd, morality tale, myth and romance). On another level it is pure Tragedy, (see Shakespeare’s Horatio, “ So shall you hear/of carnal, bloody and unnatural acts/of accidental judgements, casual slaughters/of death put on by cunning and forc’d cause/and in this upshot, purposes mistook/fall’n on the inventors heads”). Deeper still it is an exploration of the threefold nature of existence and the role of the Ego (part) within the Psyche (whole) in its struggle to maintain balance and meaning, (see Upanishads, “that something no-one can see, hidden in the space in the heart of a living being/ smaller than an atom and immense/beyond the realm of reason/a treasure wrapped in mystery and impenetrable depths/who lies awake within those who sleep/the radiant self within”).

As series 1 began with the crash of arctic sunlight like a blast of consciousness, series 3 ends with the dissolution back into the void of dark unconscious nothing. However we know from the story that there is something in the nothing that we cannot see. Things not visible are just as real as things visible. This drama itself is the manifestation of something invisible; the Imagination. Like Love, it cannot be found by scientific method or captured by rational thought. These things are real but belong to the impenetrable mysteries of life.

When something fresh and different is brought up from the Imagination, like this drama, it takes time to assimilate. It can be misjudged and not recognised. And it’s true that first seasons are always the best because the first surge of that Imagination is at its brightest before the material demands of number ratings and investor stake interests take hold. The first seasons show the most courage .It’s a relief that this drama ultimately keeps faith with its original vision.

Sky television is currently producing some dramas that defy expectation and category, like Fortitude, True Detective and Britannia. They are opening up a new aesthetics which means they are often misunderstood by contemporary critics and mainstream media. These dramas are products of real Imagination in an industry that has lost itself in political correctness. Let’s hope these outlets continue where brave writers can dare to Imagine.

THE RABBIT

One of the most curious motifs in “Fortitude” is the rabbit, a mundane form of the hare. It recurs as cuddly pet companion, contents of a stew, Harvey from Jimmy Stewart film, a man in fancy dress costume. The rabbit is ordinary and also absurd, comical and grotesque. The man in rabbit costume in series 3 is a numinous hostile trickster figure who refuses to remove his mask and then appears without it in the pub as an ordinary man. The comforting pet in series 1 is harmless. So the same form has many meanings. Its appearance shocks us awake because it is incongruous and disturbing.

In folklore the rabbit is associated with the moon, a mysterious prolific lunar creature who intercedes between worlds, bringing knowledge from one world to another. Thus it is a revelatory animal between the unconscious/night and consciousness/day, between states and connecting them. As a device it is part of the mystery of symbolism which is a product of the Imagination giving glimpses of an understanding beyond reason or explanation, a glimpse of the Psyche in action, perhaps.

(see white rabbit in" Alice In Wonderland")

2019. New Year,new painting called "Nana says,put your best foot forward"

                                    Nana says  "Put Your Best Foot Forward".
                               

snow angels with Tin Star series 2. Nothing tin about this series; all gold so far!

WHITBY 2018 :PIRATE FESTIVAL AND TALL SHIPS,VIEWS OF ABBEY.

                                         What is this thing about the English and Fancy Dress?
                                          Why is is called "make believe"?
                                          Losing yourself in another Self.......an eternal self.....
                                          So it invigorates, a transformation,makes you feel alive.

                                          No 9, The Crescent where Bram Stoker conceived "Dracula".

                                           Moorland walk, 6 hours!

WHITBY SUNSET AND DRACULA

I strange optical illusion happens at Whitby. I've been visiting Whitby since a teenager but this June is the first time I witnessed it. The sun seems to sink and rise in almost the same place over the sea.This seems against the natural order of events so no wonder Bram Stoker set part of Dracula there!

Sunset and sunrise seems very close together instead of opposed in the West and East.I watched this happen from the windows of the house where Bram Stoker stayed, and was amazed.

So it seems only right that a place of apparently unnatural occurrences should be the place where the unnatural events of a horror story unfurl.

Dracula is really about Mina, the woman at the heart of it all, and the battle for her soul.Perhaps that battle for Mina's soul is also a battle for the soul of the nation at a time of great change and uncertainty.Stoker tapped into the zeitgeist of its time. Mina is alternately infected by two foreigners;Van Helsing who is the Dutch Doctor, a man of science and the future, and East European Count Dracula who is a man of mystery and superstition, an aristocrat from the past.These two opposing forces are similar in Nature (Both have authority, hypnotic powers and prodigious memories for instance).

Ha! Does the baddie always have to be in the inscrutable East,like Putin or Sherlock's east wind!?
"Leaving the West and entering the East, Harker fears to go into the unknown....with neither eyes or ears for the outer world...sweeping into the darkness of an unknown night journey..."

In this psychomachy, Mina is pulled in both directions, as in society culture was being pulled in both directions, backwards and forwards.Science won but also lost because its Dracula we remember ,not Van Helsing.

However it's Mina who is the centre of this horror story as the men vie to control (they would say "save"!) her soul.I dont know any horror production that has recognised this, but its obvious if you read the story with any critical awareness.

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oh p.s : The answer to this optical illusion is in the compass! Whitby is on the east coast of yorkshire and appears to face east so the sun should rise over the sea and set over the land in the west. However in fact, England slants to the west and Whitby faces north so the sun rises and sets over the sea almost in the same place!

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Quotes:
about Mina,"it's really wonderful how much resilience there is in human nature"..."there are darknesses in Life and there are lights; you are one of the lights."
about Dracula, "All through there are signs of his advance....the father or furtherer of a new order of beings".

                                       

FROM ABOMINABLE BRIDE TO ABOMINABLE SISTER: SHERLOCK AND THE CASE OF THE OTHER

FROM ABOMINABLE BRIDE TO ABOMINABLE SISTER: SHERLOCK AND THE CASE OF THE OTHER

                                         Is it what it is?

“It is what it is”, say Watson and Sherlock of their adventures, using a phrase founded in the Sufi consciousness writing of Rumi and Ibn Arabi ( see 13^th Century, “Fihi Ma Fihi”), but what is it that is as self evident as the psyche of the writers who created it? Watson and Sherlock investigate crimes of disturbance outside in society whilst confronting disturbances inside themselves in a dazzling display of special effects, camera distortions and dialogue conundrums scattered non-sequentially into 90 minute programmes. Their names may be specific to Doyle’s Victorian England, but they are also universal archetypes recurring endlessly “out of time”, observing a modern red bus from 19^th Century windows. The case that always confronts Sherlock is about himself and a dangerous “Other” that threatens his world order. He only chooses cases that mean something to him in the sense of challenge and discovery. He is not a professional detective accepting any job, but a man in search of deep encounters, and one of his deepest encounters is with Woman as Other.

Sherlock lives in “manly rooms” in a homoerotic double act with Watson, a life that is “single-minded” using logic and deduction, “not concerned with the fair sex or marriage” because “emotion is abhorrent” and a distraction. “I made me like this”, he says, blaming the I/Ego that has formed his one sided lifestyle and split consciousness, thus perceiving everything not him as evil monstrous adversaries, whether women or Moriarty, or one dressed as the other. Likewise, the self-inflated Eustace ridicules his wife, upholding the “insignificance of women” and even the more open minded recently married Watson neglects his wife, struggling to recognise her in the room or acknowledge his irrelevant maid. For these men, women are alien and unknowable.

men only

Mycroft is even more extreme, celibate, insulating himself in fusty Government rooms and silent men-only clubs that appear farcical. It’s all too much, His state of over indulged obese consumption contrasts with the neglected wasting disease of consumption killing Rigoletti. The same word means the opposite to the same end. Mycroft’s fear of irrational women and the subconscious is almost paranoid, “we are at threat of an invisible enemy, everywhere, undetectable”. He has imprisoned his sister and repressed his psyche consciously, but he needs the active “legs” of Sherlock to control it in society where abominable brides are terrorising men. Ghosts are undermining the rigid control of men’s reason and repression, unleashing “other” forces of the other side, supernatural and incongruous, a threat to the dominant world order and the ordered “sanity” of men.

These extremes have created an imbalance that erupts in the revolutionary campaign for Womens’ Rights causing murder and mayhem. Mary recognises this and Rigoletti is an activist who is “going to make her death count” (5 times to be exact, and you really have to follow the use of numbers and calculation in episodes!). Rogoletti’s siren-song lures men to self-destruct, fascinated by this mysterious sexuality, (“do not forget me, remember, recognise our song”), an “otherness” that shows women as fearful monsters or collectively as “the monstrous regiment of women”.

sacrificing herself for the cause

This “secret society of women is at the heart of it all”, outside meeting in subterranean crypts and sewers, inside forming an energy deep in the waters of the subconscious awakening in Sherlock where “reason is toppled by melodrama”. Sherlock is aware of this invasion on both levels. He sees through Mary’s disguise and recognises the value of Lady Carmichael, “a highly intelligent women of rare perception who can see worlds where no one else can see anything”. With Mary, he locates the heart of the insurgence in both places, outside and inside himself. He has had to include Mary  as Watson’s wife and he understands the social danger when “one half of the human race is at war with another, ignored, patronised, disregarded, not allowed so much as a vote, determined to put right an injustice as old as humanity itself”. He recognises heart knowledge.

deep in the heart of it all

As these divisions of Self and Society shift and shake (sometimes visibly via quaking camera work!), Sherlock takes up “an old case, very old. I shall have to go deep into myself”, he says in dreamy hypnotic tones unlike his normal, rapid staccato tones of deduction. “These are deep waters and I shall have to go deeper still”, he reflects inwardly, no longer the man of action but reaching for the cocaine that will open him up to other sides of the psyche. Outlines disappear and things get mixed up in surreal distortions. Characters appear in two places at the same time or scenes repeat, maze hedges morph into Sherlock’s fingers, the waterfall in a painting is flowing, a white Tardis seems grafted on the outside of the Diogenes Club (reminder of another form of the same “time travelling” archetype perhaps!), things are reversed like the mantelpiece mirror reflects a mysterious moonlit landscape while the inside of Baker Street is seen outside in the street.

   

inside out

What is outside is also inside as things are over turned. Transformations coalesce into the grotesque chimera of Moriarty as an Abominable Bride, two adversaries in one. Visionary visual effects contrast with the use of numbers, calculation and deduction until Sherlock’s sanity faces the seductive power of evil anarchy manifest in Moriarty, “It doesn’t make sense. It isn’t real. It’s in your mind. Too deep, far too deep, I’m buried in your mind and I’ll never be dead there. When you are weak I am there. This is how we end, you and I, always here, always together”. Fate or character or both?

Locked in these elemental Manichean dualities of Good and Evil, Hero and Adversary, Reason and Madness etc, they reach the traditional place of the Fall, whether it’s a tangible event over a waterfall or the hero’s misjudgement in the Aristotlean principles of Tragedy (harmatia). In this version the format is interrupted by the presence of a third man who alters the dynamics as Watson appears to remind Sherlock of another reality and another way out. “Time to wake up... Tell me about this other me in another place. I know when I’m in a story or not”, he says.  Watson throws a lifeline to Sherlock that brings him back to his senses, preventing the danger of complete dissolution of consciousness. With 2 against 1, the 3rd man saves the day.  Moriarty is pushed off the edge against his will, but Sherlock chooses consciously to fall in order to wake up. Moriarty is disempowered as Sherlock is empowered. Hard to know if all this is “Poetry or Truth” or both!

"I know when I'm in a story"

“It’s elementary, dear Watson, I always survive a fall”, Sherlock predicts as recurring hero, fulfilling himself as rudimentary to this never ending story. However, Watson’s presence makes reference to a third reality that is the image- art of storytelling, in the same way as Mrs Hudson’s ironic dialogue about herself as critical analysis alerts us to be conscious of  the dramatic form . We are under no illusion here, and are forced to stay conscious of ourselves as audience in another third reality. The Victorian flashback then reveals itself as a drug induced dream on the plane that was taking Sherlock to exile, forcing us to realise our own dissociated exile in armchairs in front of a television. We remain conscious of the illusion in which we participate!

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When series 4 begins the happy trio of Watson, Sherlock and Mary are in a state of domestic bliss and balanced unity. However Sherlock is becoming dangerously full of himself, ego- inflated, back to being a fast talking workaholic in danger of over-reaching. Likewise, Mycroft is arrogantly trying to control everything, avoiding “messy loose ends”, “not good with humans” but excellent at planning strategy. And Mary’s blanked past is about to surface and catch up with her, just as it will with Sherlock in the Finale. A routine case about a missing son taking a gap year leads to a Thatcher statue missing in “the gap on a table where everything else is ordered”. There are gaps in Sherlock’s memory that keep surfacing as Redbeard and seaside holidays too. Watery imagery of the subconscious suggests “something important, missing” as Sherlock struggles to fill the gaps in his Consciousness until he realises “this is all about Mary” and the gap in her life story, a gap in his own life story too.

the over-reaching hero!

Shimmery water imagery of the subconscious and enigmatic mystery tales about Death on the road to Baghdad contrast with orderly, exact references to numbers, calculations and accountancy. So we have 6 statues,2 syllables,2 vinyls,”2 way relationship”,  “it’s never twins”, World war 3, “3 in total”, 666 on the forehead,4 agents,6 years ago in Tbilisi,5Oth birthday, the refrain of 3x “save him”,13^th? on Mycroft’s fridge perhaps alluding to the search for a 13^th Doctor Who! In contrast, we are surrounded by scenes of flickering water, Japanese wave murals, underwater combat in a swimming pool, the London aquarium, stealthy fish swimming amongst undercover spies, childhood memories of pirates and seashore. Sherlock is described nautically as “off the hook, home and dry”, but it’s standing on Vauxhall Bridge across a river between worlds that Sherlock collapses under a surge of recovered memories about his childhood.

Mary attempts to hide herself in various identities, the many faces of Woman, much as Eurus will do later, but it won’t hide the fact Ajay sees her as a monster, as Mycroft sees Eurus, both extremely paranoid men. Ajay has brooded years in isolation plotting his revenge for her betrayal, driven “insane” by a woman’s whispered voice on the end of a telephone, and dwelling in misjudgements about the code name AMO and “an English woman”, “Amo meaning.........” says Sherlock leaving a gap for “Love”, the word that cannot be spoken by him or Moriarty until the Finale).The gap is where Love comes in.

the bitch

The London Aquarium contains the marine imagery of another world and the spying revelations of Norbury, whose name reflects a quiet insignificant London suburb, old and ordinary and everything Sherlock despises. In his over-reaching arrogance Sherlock over looked her, the invisible enemy of an old lady who likes lollies and simple aspirations for a cottage, not a woman of high minded ideological grandeur, but full of disorderly surprises. Mary sacrifices herself for Sherlock in an act of love, but Sherlock takes the bullet as it was intended, to deflate him. AMO, code word LOVE does also mean ammunition, but not in the way expected. Norbury is loaded to destroy comfortable orderly concepts of Self and society. From this point of view, women appear as “bitches”(Mary) or witches (Norbury).

the witch

The death of Mary is a turning point that shatters their world as they lose a part of themselves with her. Watson is reduced to the howl of an animal, withdrawing into himself with no highlights in his inward looking eyes (extraordinary expressions of actor!).Sherlock attempts the “2 way relationship” of therapy but cannot open up because “it’s not his style” and he retreats into the displacement “antidote of work”. There is no communication between them as they fragment and close up.

eyes turned inward

Guidance comes in a message from the “other side” in Mary’s posthumous video, creating a case that will save Watson in saving Sherlock, thus reconnecting them. This seems to be an essential function of women who send messages to men who are stuck in extremes. These messages come via videos, letters, internet, notes, CD’s, the subconscious, songs, telephone, disembodied voices. Amo sends coded messages, Smallwood leaves an invitation to Mycroft, the bus woman gives her email  to Watson, and later Eurus will give directions by camera to Sherlock. So One tries to reach the Other across the gap that divides the Psyche/Soul.

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In episode 2 the world is even more surreal and subliminal with a sense of altered states of consciousness, whether drug induced or grief induced. Sherlock has “drug fuelled fantasies” where he has “dreamt up a magic woman to tell him things he couldn’t know” like Faith whose name suggests the antipathy to Fact, so that Sherlock often appears clairvoyant or telepathic. Watson is also in a world of his own, talking to Mary and a therapist as if they exist. It’s difficult to know what is real since no one else interacts with the therapist or sees Faith, except those who are clairvoyant (Sherlock) or who commune with the dead (Culverton); “not sure if he’s with someone or not”, says Greg. Even Culverton’s personal assistant speaks and behaves more like a 1940’s Noir film star than a real secretary, and we cannot tell if his committee “friends” are alive. It’s all very ambiguous.

visual effects

It’s Faith who keeps Sherlock going, as a woman or a figment of that side of himself.  “I’m going out”, he says with Faith, after months of isolation and paradoxically because going out also means going in (paradox is a means of transcending the limitations of binary thought). Mary is helping Watson too, as an internalised voice “teaching him to be the man she thought he was”. But it’s Mrs. Hudson’s crazy driving that actually brings the two men together as she crashes into the therapy session to wake them up. With Molly as endorsement, these women enable the men to function again.

Sherlock and Watson are really in Hell and there are multiple references to hell as a state of mind; “Who the hell are you?/go to hell/I’m burning up at the bottom of a pit and can’t get out/something on your mind?/you’re looking for what’s on his mind/I’m in hell and can’t do it alone/get the hell on with it”. In this hell Culverton conveys Death, a conduit true to his name (culvert), a hedonist serial killer who finds bliss in injecting death. The near death moment between Sherlock and Culverton is calm and friendly, methodical, as mundane and ordinary as Culverton’s surname Smith. And throughout these episodes we have been shown that Evil is ordinary and close, in plain sight, not extraordinary and apart. Misjudgement of that fact is the fatal error precipitating events.This devil presiding over Hell is detached and clinical, a calculating business man who controls people like things, “In the balance sheet of life I’m in credit”. This is contemporary Hell where Evil is what dehumanises us into a world of commodities to be owned and disposed of at the switch of a button.

Evil as ordinary

This place is very secretive and hidden with Culverton confessing secrets to the dead, using secret doors in the hospital, whispering secrets to his victims, “hiding in plain sight”, or with the secret distillery of illicit drugs in Sherlock’s kitchen, and a “secret brother locked in a tower” or “secret sister”. It’s also very vague, a non specific world of indistinct forms where “something’s happened”. So the killer’s target is “anyone, someone” and Faith sees Sherlock as “nicer than anyone, not what she thought”. Even the one and only Watson can be replaced by an impersonal red balloon without making much difference! Demands to “be specific” seem pointless.

Alive or dead friends?

Pictures of the killer are “everywhere” and Sherlock’s deductions have become fuzzy and inexact, “oh, I don’t know, something”. Likewise the narrative has become a series of non linear sequences with “stream of consciousness” camera work, reflecting Mycroft’s comment on Mrs Hudson’s dialogue as “stream of consciousness abuse or making a point!” “I have reasons “, says Sherlock, but they aren’t much help here! Watson and Sherlock are out of their element. Experience with drugs and death have exposed them to hidden depths of the subconscious hitherto suppressed. So they stand on the perilous edge of Consciousness, facing dangers of the unknown other.

This is a journey inwards with eyes in no need of light or focus, (how did they manage to act that!) They feel their way into the archetypal world of the psyche/soul with its different rules and regulations, “insane” it is said. Sherlock’s “chain of reasoning that reveals a solution” is still there but it’s farcical at times and muddled otherwise because it doesn’t work in this place. His obsession about the “science of the elliptic” just seems absurd. And something is happening to the numbers that run through the episode; TD12/ 2 years ago/2 words, not 1/3 weeks later/2 weeks ago/2 opinions and he falls over/5 a day vitamins/20mins to 5 mins to 10mins/ward 73/5 suspects/1 murder/ 7years/4 years/ 20mins/2pm/extracts from Richard 3^rd/3 mentions of High Wycombe/etc. The numbers are becoming a numerology with meaning. One, two and three are gaining emphasis and significance. So “it is what it is” is repeated 3 times, “I don’t want to die” is repeated three times “for luck” and then once more. Sherlock hides 3 bugging devices, and then one more. “There must be something comforting about the number 3” says Sherlock, “people always give up after 3”.

eyes turned inward

The inclusion of a 4^th is something “extra”, outside the norm, beyond expectations and therefore liberating, as it was in the hospital with 4 listening devices. There is another liberating number here too; nought or zero or nothing, “you’re looking at nothing/ not I, not I/you understand nothing”. Nought is the end of calculation and the absence of form, as“self- noughting” is the end of Ego identity practiced by many mysticisms. No wonder Sherlock needs Faith here, “caring about her deeply, what she thinks”. There is a whole history to this interpretation of numbers, symbolic rather than quantitative, to do with origins, inside and outside, forming a framework for existence, universally understood, elementary, holding everything together.

Amongst the magical shape shifting women is one woman in particular. Earlier, Watson said, “how does it work, you and women?” suggesting “nights of romantic entanglement in High Wycombe with Adler to complete him as a human being”, since it worked for him this way with Mary. Sherlock admits a generic interest in “woman, even I text woman”. And he has clairvoyant connection with Mary, “wearing the damn hat” that she wanted him to wear in conversations from beyond the grave. “Isn’t that right, Mary?” he says, as her image disappears into their assimilation of it.

However, the woman they must confront at the centre of it all is Eurus whose name is mythical, God of the East Wind and also a war god whose symbol is the vase of water bringing rain. In Doyle’s original stories the warnings about the East Wind refer to the war menace of Nazi Germany to the east. Here she is concerned with the inner conflict of consciousness, the war going on inside Sherlock in the duality of his nature as a human being, with the East being the location of origins as this final problem was also Sherlock’s first problem in the dawn of consciousness where he made a fatal error that needs correction in order to move on.

the bullet that wakes up watson

Eurus is secretly hiding behind the form of a therapist and the revelation of her multiple identities blows Watson’s Mind as he realises she is the One behind it all. This bullet out of the blue “makes a hole in his head” like a gap at the centre of his being. Guns often fire the “wake up” call, as with Norbury and Eurus, a psychological death. Watson saw through the multiple identities of his wife, Mary, as she lost her Self in the many faces of woman, and something in him ends, transformed by this revelation about Woman.  They are approaching a very perilous place, face to face with a woman who is “the other one, the secret one, a sister”. This is not a wife or lover or mother but a sibling relative of the same origins, closer than any other woman but forgotten, hiding behind all encounters all their life, closer to them than they are to themselves, inside them as well as outside; this is Woman as anima.

..............

When the eye opens on the Finale it’s the inward eye of the only child awake on a plane of sleepers destined to crash, a child in communication with the dead Moriarty, so we know immediately we are in another reality, the beginning of a surreal nightmare. The narrative jumps from image to image like a “stream of consciousness”. It is another world with different rules. “Wake up”, the child says.

Mycroft’s fantasizing about a favourite black and white film is violently interrupted by Sherlock’s horror tableau. This “disabling of his security” undermines Mycroft’s defences, terrifying him out of his wits to acknowledge the existence of a sister, one that he has incarcerated and Sherlock has forgotten, a hidden related part of themselves. The dialogue between Mycroft and the child’s voice is certainly disabling: “I’m back/come out and show yourself/who are you? /you know me/You can’t have got out/I’m coming to get you/ there’s no defence and nowhere to hide”.

When the three men reconvene in Baker Street they are men without women in their conscious lives. Sherlock ignores them, Watson’s wife is dead and Mycroft only engages with them as fantasies in old films. Their over elaborate calculations and deductions, escape plans, are no match for Eurus’s drone conveying a bomb song. This song IS the bomb about to blow them out of their usual state of consciousness; “The song is the answer, but the song made no sense/16 by 6 and under we go....” The enigmatic songs of women like Rigoletti and Eurus seem to disturb men. The song is inside Mycroft and Sherlock as they recite it off by heart. There is no escape.

 aerial view of 3

So Eurus explodes into their consciousness altering it forever, leaving Mycroft unconscious in hospital and all three transported “off course” at sea, pirating a boat towards the rocks of an island where Eurus is imprisoned, “a secret secure island where we trap them (threats), a fortress, a map reference for Hell”. From the air this fortress forms two interlocking 3’s suggesting the threefold system that contains us from any threat to existence or sanity. The imagery of island fortress, subconscious seas and threefold systems are deep in the psyche, as any modern depth analysis or ancient folk tale will confirm! These are not normal waters and the mention of Sherringford in the BBC radio 4 weather forecast is not normal. However, instead of “forgetting about it” as usual, they break through the defences as pirates in disguise, entering the “restricted area of system lockdown”. “The security is compromised...this is insane” are comments that indicate the breach is in the Psyche, as Sherlock reaches out to his sister in a message in the sand.

anima

 facing the anima

The shape shifting Eurus has changed appearance again. She is almost formless; a figure in shapeless white who plays haunting music on a violin, an expressionless face framed by hair, a disembodied, monotone, somnambulant voice transmitting bizarre messages by video link. This is not woman as a sexual being but woman as part of the psyche, inside them with esoteric knowledge, an enchantment. “She knew things she should not have known, truth beyond normal scope” says Mycroft, and as if to prove this, the child Eurus sees the future brother Mycroft, “you look funny as an adult”. Overturning their authority, it’s Eurus who controls this place, who can break through the “3 foot rule” and change consciousness by a blow to the head. There is in fact no barrier and no glass when “there’s nothing to see through” because changing perception changes reality. These are deep truths Sherlock cannot understand without that side of himself he has forgotten, now imaged with his sister.

breaking through

In legend the East Wind guides the sungod hero across the sky on his journey towards completion, and here Eurus leads the heroes through a series of trials in bare rooms designed to confront male Ego, certainty and logic. She is accompanied by Moriarty as their perceived anarchic enemy, bringing a sense of urgency to focus their intent. They see Eurus as a monster whose absurd irrationality defeats their logical right and reason. Their deductions cannot match her imaginings which are beyond reason, like the three hanging men and the governor’s wife. They see themselves as soldiers on duty, but room by room she breaks them down and demonstrates how powerless their male order is in a place with different rules. Their much debated important choices are irrelevant to any outcome here. There are no causal relationships and no recognisable morality in this place.

Mycroft is the least affected by this whole process, maintaining his distance and refusing to take part. He remains “limited”, just “a bit shaken up” and left isolated in the same cell in which he imprisoned his sister. He returns to his one-sided repressed lifestyle, though he does seem to attend concerts where he can hear his sister play music from a safe distance.

visual effects with monster mother!

Sherlock and Watson do not retreat. Watson has already experienced breakdown over Mary, but now it’s Sherlock’s turn over Molly. Sherlock thought he could save Molly by going through the motions of what was needed, but he didn’t expect to FEEL his own words. Not lying or covering up, he experiences empathy for another. In this room, Love is a word that can at last be spoken because it is genuine in Molly and, now it’s realised in Sherlock. He couldn’t say the word before, and neither could Moriarty when he sings the Queen song by the helicopter. This love is deep and meaningful, not sexual but existential. It matters because in loving another you lose yourself to a state that is beyond Ego.  In this place it’s Love that has the power, not logic. There is an extraordinary change in Sherlock’s face and voice as he experiences this revelation. Now he “knows feelingly”, a heart knowledge. He begins to breakdown. “You’ve got to keep it together”, says Watson, recognising the power of letting love in. Eurus witnesses all this in unworldly precognition as Sherlock pulls himself together and moves on to face his fate.

letting love in

The final fourth room is beyond the “comfort zone of three” where the 3 men face difficult choices about themselves and survival. It will be an extra liberating experience releasing them from the ordeal. Here, in an empty room, they face self sacrifice and the naughting of Ego. Someone has to die. Using paradoxy (which is itself a device that frees the mind and often used in “teaching stories”), Mycroft makes himself obnoxious to sacrifice himself for the sake of Watson, Watson accepts himself as the sacrifice (“soldiers dying for the country, doing the right thing”), but Sherlock breaks all the rules of the game to sacrifice himself in suicide. It’s unthinkable, literally. He is standing outside the framework that sustains his identity as just the thought kills Ego in him. Outside himself, extraneously, he breaks free and this changes everything.

Knowing the state of Love and self-sacrifice, Sherlock is ready to face the truth about Musgrove Hall and its well of secrets, the place where it all started, “deep water, all your life, in all your dreams”. This is where the rift occurred in the original unity of their being, where a brother neglected a sister and a sister murdered a friend, where psyches developed divided instead of whole.  Sherlock comes to a new unified understanding by combining the mysterious words of the elliptical song with the “counting out of order” numbers on the gravestones, making sense out of both by using reason and intuition, poetry and mathematics together; “I am lost without your love. Brother, save my soul. Find my room”. It seems so simple but the journey there was difficult.

bringing song and numbers together

This enables him to break through the illusion of the cockpit door to see Eurus, not as an enemy monster, but as a frightened lonely sister, embracing her to break the spell and correct the error. “You were inseparable but I wanted to play too”, she says. “Open your eyes, I’m here. You’re not lost. This time get it right”. So his deductions reach her imaginings in the tower room to dispel illusions of their own making. The problem has been the perception. Reunited, they save Watson who is in the well, and so they correct the mistake made long ago, healing the rift in their family and in their psyche. Woman is not “other” or a monster but “part of” and a friend. She has a place in him and he in her. In acknowledging her presence Sherlock assimilates her as he should have done when growing up instead of denying her existence in developing a one sided psyche.

Eurus is back where she belongs in her rightful place, deep in the psyche as anima, beyond consciousness but not forgotten. She is not excluded but part of them. Mycroft says, “she won’t communicate, has gone beyond our view, words won’t reach her now”. However Sherlock has gained self knowledge and found a way to reach her through his music because it’s in Art that some find completion. The estranged abominable Other has become the near one and Beloved. When they play together they merge again through the glass in mystical harmonies, exchanging secret smiles. Their music unites the family too.

at one in the music

 It’s a deep mystery that other characters witness from a distance, as we witness from a distance this new psychological interpretation of the Sherlock stories with its fresh insights into old tales, challenging expectations. These episodes are the completion of that exploration. To the end audience is reminded that this is all storytelling in the aesthetics of another reality, a 4^th place outside the framework, a reminder that prevents us losing ourselves in the illusions of truth that is this Drama. So we stay “awake” while watching.

In her send off for the newly energised heroes as they break out from their period of reflection back into action, Mary reminds us that they are not just individual characters in one place and time, but universal elements of legendary stories. These are stories formed by the human Psyche into images of itself; division and unity, dissolution and reintegration, Love and Sacrifice, Duality and the threefold structures of existence, revelation and transformation, the orientation of Soul in the world. The last word in the Final Problem is given to the Woman, not as Other but assimilated. Case solved.

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1) Rumi: Things that seem opposed may in fact be working together. There are other dimensions where the hidden world has its own clouds and rain, but of a different kind. This is apparent to those  not deceived by the seeming completeness of the ordinary world.

2) Ibn Arabi: There are three forms of knowledge. The first is intellectual, information and theories or facts. Second comes knowledge of states as in feelings or intuitions. Third comes real knowledge beyond thought or sense, an apprehension that includes these forms of knowledge and beyond.

 3) Bhagavad Gita: early depiction of the hero’s inward journey in the form of Arjuna who takes time out of the battlefield to penetrate the depths of consciousness before resuming battle in the “right state of mind”.