Nico
Desertshore

Incitement to enchantment...
I can't fathom how one could go beyond "The Marble Index," where the shock of nullification had already been cast: "Everyone has vanished, when the game begins, there's no one. And no sound has told them they are not there, not there..." (No One Is There). And instead...

Tall, blonde, beautiful... Ancient. Vague embellishments of old stories present in the previous work, she repeats the dose by reappearing totally devoid of trinkets, an absent massacre. Misleading for us is the material beauty provided to her by Nature, which distances the awareness of essence. But she has been magnificent for countless lives, becoming a sophisticated trap that we all fall into. Earthly desire materializes, consumption possesses us, we cloudily exalt the carnal part, both physical and artistic, of ICON, but here the "desert" is almost inscrutable. Exhale, project, estrange is our only hope of grasping flickering infinitesimals of this Hereafter. And feeling something here that is over there is no small thing. But here I have no measure to gauge the abyss that lies before us.

A polyglot of a cruise where she spreads her sails mystifying "buried ports," she underscores the deformed reflection of our faces on the brass railings to immerse us in an endless ocean. Drowning in the shipwreck will be a grandiloquent pleasure for our shell returned to carriage, like a revived Alain Delon. The Sphinx demands, to have the chance to walk alongside her, "just" to fall into this Mariana Trench to abandon the screens hiding the nothingness we need: Do you want to do it for Yourself? Want to take a walk with Me? "He who knows can speak the unknown word and meet me on the deserted shore" (All That Is My Own). Drenched in cold sweat (yes, the kind with little droplets... yeah, it's tough) you're offered to swallow the forbidden fruit, a universal key for the Leap.

A magic carpet transports our essences, making us float in a delirious space with ancient reminiscences. But if we can plan for the long term, we cannot foresee the ancient of the ancient. The call is definitive, here one "jokes" with millennial instruments. After a while, one can no longer distinguish the viola from the "wheezing harmonium," the sound flow becomes psychic. A fatalistic music box spins you on a horizontally marked roller coaster. We are hypnotized: "You can dispose of me as you believe, even tear me apart," the hungry suitors of the Sibyl's crumbs implore. Everything that will come from you will transform into a fierce Paradise: give me an orange, and my life will have meaning. Impersonal devotion, that's what it is, nullification to find centering. We are visited by entities made sound that communicate to us that there is a vast world we are unaware of: "My only son, don't be so blind; see what you own" (My Only Child).

Proactive Circe, she is a medium linking us to a transcendental motivation, the only true longing we can have in our earthly reappearances: "Confuse your lust, conquer what is false" (Afraid). The impersonal training is ruthless, also because it places itself free from judgements. She is there, apparently immobile, calling for no one and expecting no one. The "beauty and the damned" is our invention, a justification for our impotence, inopportune already in the solute we find ourselves nonexistent to welcome the absoluteness. The supports are hands brandishing mist, Nico's solitude makes us shiver ("You are beautiful, and you are alone"), ours makes us despair. We cry our soul's grief and cleanse with tears the distance from the truth. Like a Siren, she projects in an inner movie theatre dreams and nightmares simultaneously. By osmosis, her scar pulses within us, and it hurts. She's there to make you dare to reclaim your legend. Valkyrie of the unconscious leaves us no escape... Did you want beauty? Did you want reality? Here it is!

On the upper floor of the cone, a game is played sharper than that of a jester, a hermit, or a madman: "Custodian of madness Identify my destiny Revive the imploring dream Forgive the supplicant cry" (Janitor of Lunacy). Without frills or frippery, a viola continuously scrapes from your heart the gilt crust you have built. A sidereal voice severs the cords of possessions and throws you in front of a mirror which does not reflect you. The harmonium transports you into an unspeakable anguish: only the semblance of perdition stimulates change. Organ echoes unleash ancestral fears that make you clench the "little hole."

And here everything is different; Nico recounts the intimate, the invisible, the splendors of our soul, the reunion with the Unity. Summarily Atlantean, she is the bearer of a message of death where, however, playing with a solar ball, she suggests that the end is the concrete engine of life. With her impersonal detachment, she cleanses illusions and waters our hopes with compassion: we always await the gift of the juice. A prophetic parenthesis of the sky, she will visit us (interpreting the words of "Le Petit Chevalier") when we are ready, Annunciation conveyed by "le petit Ari" who with his little voice mounts hideous anxiety.

Well then, let’s face the fall, we have a competent guide, and she’s beautiful too!

The temple of Päffgen is a psychic construction; the brazier burns eternally. Narcotized by this elixir of prolonged despair, we abandon ourselves in this well of consciousness. Addiction to this drug becomes legitimate. Mundane Medusa has the prudence and benevolence not to linger in her message for more than half an hour, already like this she kicks our ass, beyond we risk petrification. An Amazon, she has always fought for what is right, she still feels when she was stabbed in the back, there isn’t much pain, the metal exits, the blood flows copiously, in the bleeding, you fall asleep. Claimed tempter, she remembers the smell of her burnt flesh when she was burned alive, recalling the stench of her tormentors: "Father Son Angels of the night garnish with silver the light of my candle" (The Falconer).

She tells us all these things by tracing a biography of her Eternal, the divine bride remembers her deaths, the white horsewoman of the Apocalypse invites renunciation. There is no definition for the tracks: beyond anguish, beyond fear, beyond arcane, beyond darkness, beyond... Those trumpets on "Mütterlein" that scream: "Remember that you must live!" No furniture inside the house, no objects, no house...

The dependency on heroin manifests bizarrely: it is the improper substance that turns out to be drugged. In the veins flows a sap that has witnessed the legendary splendors of the golden age. The addiction is projected into the non-time. The open rooms are so dark they dazzle us like a nuclear mushroom. The implosion lights up the plane of the pyramid occupied by the Teutonic reincarnation: few stones near the tip, solitude is conquered. At the top of the pyramid, the eye closes, this time on the feminine, we witness the rejection of "all this will be yours!", we don’t believe in fake banknotes: "In Christa We Trust!"

The High Priestess is surrounded by nothing, the noise of nothingness is deafening, her throne is a Sphinx, her face is hidden, in her left hand she holds the keys to those rooms which have no walls, in her right hand she holds the Liber Mundi. The Yin Yang symbol on the cover matches the sexual ambiguity of her voice and helps us recover our original androgyny. The crown of Moons illuminates our eclipses, behind her the two columns B&J (which is not a whiskey brand) support Maya's veil. Will we have the courage to tear it? The exotic invitation is a one-way ticket: surrender!

Ardor and aridity coexist, undress the immediate in obscene, this is the only possible theater. There's no deception, no exchange in Ibiza, it's no longer time for sunbathing. Before her there was only the shadow of light, but Nico’s shadow is more beautiful than Nico... and tans.
"Uncertainty is your realm
Your pain turns into delight
And wraps you in victorious waves"
(Mütterlein).
Courage...