The Music of 9/11 Clairvoyance (Radiohead at Suffolk Downs)

[FourthBase]

Sure, they're terrifying and depressing us. They took over from Pink Floyd. They're all fucking witches over there.

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I fucking love Pink Floyd, too. For real.

Chicken or egg question, seriously: Did I feel Pink Floyd spoke to me because I was depressed and anxious, or did I feel depressed and anxious because Pink Floyd spoke to me?

[FourthBase]

Told someone to read this thread but he only got about halfway. So when he finally gets to this post he'll freak out because I'm going to post my side of the text exchange we had while he was reading it, lol.

Yep. It's very nice writing, makes you think a bit. But it's not a good conspiracy theory, in my humble conspiracy theorist opinion. Just an excuse for him to say literary things, really.

I asked because I just pieced together a much, much more interesting conspiracy theory along the same lines. As I type, right now, I'm still shook by it. You'd have to read a message board thread from beginning to end, which at the moment constitutes four pages. Wanna give it a go?

True, the whole night of music was dark and panicky. But I defy you to name me any popular songs by Radiohead that aren't dark. I honestly can't think of any.

Word.

The dilemma/conundrum/paradox I've been struggling with lately is how can we tell the difference between an artist who is reflecting/addressing/fighting evil versus an artist who is generating/celebrating/promoting evil. They often seem identical.

Not naive, or any more naive than 100% of Radiohead fans, including myself. Always figured the same thing. To see how that expression of pain could actually be a devious weapon, it would be helpful to read a very quick short story called The Beautiful Gelreesh. It's about a devilish creature who empathizes with people's pain so much that they wind up jumping off a cliff, at which point the creature fucking eats their corpses, because that's how it hunts, by compassionately indulging people's depressive thoughts.

Stereolab are good witches, I think, lol. I see what you mean tho. Stereolab encourages awareness for a better future, Radiohead is like, we're already completely aware and shit is GRIM and hopeless.

Ever heard the saying that the devil would have to be an optimist, if he thinks he can make people any worse. It's a cute idea, but I'm of the opinion that, yes, humans could get way, way worse if we tried.

Absolutely. Can't think of a single hopeful Radiohead song. I thought there were some, but then I re-read the lyrics, and...nope! If you think of one let me know. There's comfort when you're feeling hopeless and you hear/see hopelessness in art and realize you're not alone. There's danger that all that reflecting becomes reinforcing, permanently settling you into a hopeless place.

I dig that interpretation. To be honest, since I still love their music, I'm very open to interpreting their lyrics in however optimistic a way as possible, if only to spite their hopelessness and retain my enjoyment. So like, "Aww, that's some nice depression there Thom. [Pat on the head] But I'mma go ahead and completely misread your lyrics so that your songs are emotionally healthy to my ears, okay little buddy?"

That's the pleasant scenario. Just some magically sensitive dudes transmitting bad vibes from the air. Oh how I wish I still thought it was the most plausible scenario.

Huh? Yeah, that's the scenario everyone including myself prefers. There's a far less pleasant scenario, though. And it's an even weirder scenario than the idea that Radiohead are tuned into some cosmic frequency where future bad vibes slip backward into the past. The worse scenario is what I'm forced by logic to consider the most plausible for the time being. I've never spooked myself this hard before. Well, actually, I have, but that was during moments of peak lunacy. I've never spooked myself this hard while sane before.

Finish the thread.

You get to the painting on page 3 yet and all my reaction gifs?

Ok cool.

I like that theory. A conspiracy theory about Radiohead being eerily accurate conspiracy theorists. Very cool.

Trouble is, absolutely no one outside the terrorist fucks who did 9/11 are supposed to have had the slightest clue, except for intelligence agencies who constantly ignored the warnings. So that would mean that Yorke associated with some very evil people, like spies who knew what was coming but for some evil reason didn't stop it. Or maybe he met some heavyweight evil bastards at a satanic afterparty. I don't even know. I don't speculate about any of that in the thread. I just take the fact that there's...well, you still didn't get to page 3, right, so I won't spoil it.

[Laodicean]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t_qM2ggk4es

Interesting interview with Thom here.

And his favorite R.E.M. song here. Fitting.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=msWi0c4tHV8

[Grizzly]

For some reason, the dark denseness of this thread, especially that last vid/song Harrowdowh hill, as well as all the art/pics make me think of the following ominous song that has been the closest tha I have found that has resonated with me to the core of my being post 911/Iraq the hopelessness anger and ultimate sadness of watching so many people say, no to the insanity only to have it thrust upon them anyway...

[FourthBase]

"These rivers of suggestion are driving me away", indeed. I'm beginning to wonder what in the fuck all this "cool" angst and nihilism has really been doing to us. Why did I ever think this shit was cool? The trope of a moody kid who as a rite of passage gets into edgy culture is a relatively new thing. Before rock and roll, it didn't exist, right? And if the squares of the 1950s were concerned about the influence of the proto-rock back then, what in the hell would they think of, say, Radiohead? I don't ever wanna go Jack Chick on art, but...I mean...

Yes, of course, the world itself is scary and full of evil, and it's important to distinguish between artistic expression that reflects that scary evil in order to overcome it versus art that wallows in the evil and seeks to proliferate it. But I think most of the time nowadays we're giving credit where credit isn't due, where credit should actually be withheld and condemnation is due. I think most of these dark artists are evil themselves. I think Vigilant Citizen is mostly correct.

The kind of video Grizzly posted is almost indistinguishable from something an MKUltra fiend would use to brainwash a slave into a depressive, dissociative state. Isn't it? Yeah, the disturbing parts are footage of real things that happened in the world. Does that mean that if a contemporary Ewan Cameron made a compilation tape of animal abuse and violent warfare it could be a healthy and normal outlet for teen angst to view it over and over, as long as it's accompanied by Tool music or some shit?

p.s. I had carefully managed my whole fucking life to avoid seeing that scene from Buñuel, despite reading about here and there for decades. Thanks.

[FourthBase]

Here's "The Beautiful Gelreesh" by Jeffrey Ford. Fuck copyright restrictions, it's a wicked short story. How many artists that you love for expressing the sorrow and horror of the world, in a beautiful way that makes you feel less alone, are actually just the equivalent of Gelreeshians*?

His fa­cial fur was a swirling won­der of blond and blue with high­lights the or­ange of a No­vem­ber sun. It cov­ered every inch of his brow and cheeks, the blunt ridge of his nose, even his eye­lids. When be­set by a bout of over­whelm­ing sym­pa­thy, he would twirl the thicket of longer strands that sprouted from the cen­ter of his fore­head. His bright sil­ver eyes emit­ted in­vis­i­ble beams that pen­e­trated the most guarded de­meanors of his pa­tients and shed light upon the con­di­tion of their souls. Dis­cov­er­ing the essence of an in­di­vid­ual, the Gel­reesh would sit qui­etly, star­ing, tap­ping the black enamel nails of his hir­sute hands to­gether in an in­can­ta­tory rhythm that would reg­u­late the heart­beat of his vis­i­tor to that of his own blood mus­cle.

“And when, may I ask, did you per­ceive the first inklings of your de­spair?” he would say with a sud­den whim­per.

Once his ques­tion was posed, the sub­ject was no longer dis­tracted by the charm of his promi­nent in­cisors. He would lick his lips once, twice, three times, with di­min­ish­ing speed, ad­just­ing the ini­ti­ate’s res­pi­ra­tion and brain pulse. Then the love­li­ness of his pointed ears, the grace of his silk fash­ions would melt away, and his lucky in­ter­locu­tor would have no choice but to tell the truth even if in her heart of hearts she be­lieved her­self to be ly­ing.

“When my fa­ther left us,” might be the an­swer.

“Let us walk, my dear,” the Gel­reesh would sug­gest.

The woman or man or child, as the case might be, would put a hand into the warm hand of the heart’s physi­cian. He would lead them through his an­techam­ber into the hall­way and out through a back en­trance of his house. To walk with the Gel­reesh, match­ing his lan­guorous stride, was to par­take in a slow, stately pro­ces­sion. His gen­tle di­rec­tion would guide one down the gar­den path to the hole in the crum­bling brick and mor­tar wall net­ted with ivy. Be­fore leav­ing the con­fines of the wild gar­den, he might pluck a lily to be handed to his trou­bled charge.

The path through the woods snaked in great loops around stands of oak and maple. Al­though the gar­den should ap­pear to be at the height of sum­mer life, this ad­ja­cent stretch of for­est, lead­ing to­ward the sea, was for­ever trapped in au­tumn. Here, just above the mur­mur of the wind and just be­low the rus­tle of red and yel­low leaves, the Gel­reesh would me­thod­i­cally pose his ques­tions de­signed to fan the flames of his com­pan­ion’s an­guish. With each trou­bled an­swer, he would re­spond with phrases he was cer­tain would keep that melan­cholic heart drenched in a black sweat. “Hor­ri­ble,” he would say in the whine of a dog dream­ing. “My dear, that’s ghastly.” “How can you go on?” “If I were you I would be weep­ing,” was one that never failed to turn the trick.

When the tears would be­gin to flow, he’d reach into the pocket of his loose fit­ting jacket of pais­ley de­sign for a hand­ker­chief stitched in ver­mil­lion, bear­ing the sym­bol of a bro­ken heart. Hand­ing it to his pa­tient, he would again con­tinue walk­ing and the gen­tle in­ter­ro­ga­tion would re­sume.

An hour might pass, even two, but there was no rush. There were so many ques­tions to be asked and an­swered. Upon fi­nally reach­ing the edge of the cliff that gave a view out­ward of the bound­less ocean, the Gel­reesh would re­lease the hand of his sub­ject and say with ten­der con­vic­tion, “And so, you see, this ocean must be for you a rep­re­sen­ta­tion of the over­whelm­ing, in­tractable dilemma that gnaws at your heart. You know with­out my telling you that there is re­ally only one so­lu­tion. You must move to­ward peace, to a bet­ter place.”

“Yes, yes, thank you,” would come the re­sponse fol­lowed by a fresh tor­rent of tears. The hand­ker­chief would be em­ployed, and then the Gel­reesh would kindly ask for it back.

“The fu­ture lies ahead of you and the trou­bled past bites at your heels, my child.”

Three steps for­ward and the pre­scrip­tion would be filled. A short flight of free­dom, a mo­ment of calm for the tor­tured soul and then end­less rest on the rocks be­low sur­rounded by the rib cages and skulls of fel­low trav­el­ers once pur­sued by grief and now cured.

The mar­velous crea­ture would pause and dab a tear or two from the cor­ners of his own eyes be­fore un­dress­ing. Then naked but for the spi­ral pat­tern of his body’s fur, he would walk ten paces to the east where he kept a long rope tied at one end to the base of a mighty oak, grow­ing at the very edge of the cliff. His de­scent could only be de­scribed as ac­ro­batic, point­ing to a his­tory with the cir­cus. When fi­nally down among the rocks, he would find the corpse of the new im­mi­grant to the coun­try with­out care and tidily de­vour every trace of flesh.

Later, in the con­fines of his of­fice, he would com­pose a let­ter in turquoise ink on yel­low pa­per, as­sur­ing the loved ones of his most re­cent pa­tient that she or he, seek­ing the so­lace of a warm sun and crys­tal sea, had booked pas­sage for a two-year va­ca­tion on the is­land of Val­shavar—a par­a­disi­a­cal atoll strung like a bead on the neck­lace of the equa­tor. Let not the price of this jour­ney trou­ble your minds, for I, un­der­stand­ing the ex­em­plary na­ture of the in­di­vid­ual in ques­tion have de­cided to pay all ex­penses for their es­cape from tor­ment. In a year or two, when next you meet them, they will ap­pear younger, and in their laugh­ter you will feel the warmth of the trop­i­cal sun. With their touch, your own prob­lems will van­ish as if con­jured away by is­land magic. This mis­sive would then be rolled like a scroll, tied fast with a length of green rib­bon and given into the talons of a great horned owl to be de­liv­ered.

And so it was that the Gel­reesh op­er­ated, from con­ti­nent to con­ti­nent, dis­pens­ing his ex­quis­ite pity and re­liev­ing his pa­tients of their un­nec­es­sary mor­tal coils. When sus­pi­cion arose to the point where doubt be­gan to negate his beauty in the eyes of the pop­u­lace, then, by dark of night, he would flee on all fours, ac­com­pa­nied by the owl, deep into the deep­est for­est, never to be seen again in that lo­cale. The pile of bones he’d leave be­hind were un­de­ni­able proof of his treach­ery, but the vic­tims’ fam­i­lies pre­ferred to think of their loved ones stretched out be­neath a palm frond canopy on the pink beach of Val­shavar, be­ing fed peeled grapes by a mon­key valet. This day­dream in the face of hor­ror would de­flate all at­tempts at or­ga­niz­ing a search party to hunt him down.

Al­though he would in­vari­ably move on, set­ting up a prac­tice in a new lo­cale rich in heavy hearts and haunted minds, some­thing of him would re­main be­hind in the form of a ques­tion, namely, “What was The Beau­ti­ful Gel­reesh?” Granted, there were no end of ac­counts of his il­lu­sory form—every­thing from that of a dash­ing cav­alry of­fi­cer with waxed mus­tache to the re­fined blond im­per­ti­nence of a sym­phony con­duc­tor. He re­minded one young woman whom he had danced with at a cer­tain town soiree as be­ing a blend of her fa­ther, her boss and her older brother. In fact, when notes were later com­pared, no two could agree on the pre­cise de­tails of his splen­dor.

He was fi­nally cap­tured dur­ing one of his es­capes, found with his leg in a fox trap only a mile from the vil­lage he had last be­stowed his pity upon. This beast in pain could not fully con­cen­trate on cre­at­ing the il­lu­sion of love­li­ness, and the in­cred­u­lous chicken farmer who dis­cov­ered him writhing in the bite of the steel jaws wit­nessed him shift­ing back and forth be­tween suave charm and gnash­ing hor­ror. The poor man was cer­tain he had snared the devil. A spe­cial in­ves­ti­ga­tor was sent to han­dle the case. Blind and some­what autis­tic, the fa­mous de­tec­tive, Gal de Gui, me­thod­i­cally put the en­tire legacy to­gether as if it was a child’s jig­saw puz­zle. Of course, in the mo­ments of in­ter­ro­ga­tion by De Gui, the Gel­reesh tried to catch him up with a glam­orous il­lu­sion. The de­tec­tive re­sponded to this de­cep­tion with a yawn. The crea­ture later told his prison guards that De Gui’s soul was blank as a white wall and per­fect. De Gui’s fi­nal com­ment on the Gel­reesh was, “Put down some news­pa­per and give him a bone. Here is the clas­sic case of man’s best friend.”

It was when the Gel­reesh re­lated his own life story to the court, elic­it­ing pity from a peo­ple who pre­vi­ously de­sired his, that he al­lowed him­self to ap­pear as the ho­minid-ca­nine en­tity that had al­ways lurked be­hind his il­lu­sion. As the tears filled the eyes of the jury, his hand­some vis­age wa­vered like a desert mi­rage and then lifted away to re­veal fur and fangs. No longer were his words the mel­liflu­ous susurra­tions of the sym­pa­thetic ther­a­pist, but now came through as growl­ing dog talk in a spray of spit­tle. Even the huge owl that sat on his shoul­der in the wit­ness stand shrank and dark­ened to be­come a grackle.

As he told it, he had been born to an aris­to­cratic fam­ily, the name of which every­one pre­sent would have known, but he would not men­tion it for fear of bring­ing reprisals down upon them for his ac­tions. Be­cause of his fright­en­ing as­pect at birth, his fa­ther ac­cused his mother of bes­tial­ity. The ven­er­a­ble pa­tri­arch made plans to do away with his wife, but she saved him the trou­ble by poi­son­ing her­self with small sips of opium and an ar­senic pas­try of her own recipe. The strange child was named Rameau af­ter a dis­tant re­la­tion on the mother’s side and sent to live in a newly con­structed barn on the out­skirts of the fam­ily es­tate. At the same time that the fa­ther or­dered the lo­cal clergy to try to ex­or­cise the beast out of him, there was a stand­ing or­der for the care­taker to feed him noth­ing but raw meat. As the Gel­reesh had said on the wit­ness stand, “My fa­ther spent lit­tle time think­ing about me, but when he did, the fact of my ex­is­tence twisted his think­ing so that it la­bored point­lessly at cross-pur­poses.”

The fam­ily priest taught the young Rameau how to speak and read, so that the strange child could learn the Bible. Through this knowl­edge of lan­guage he was soon able to un­der­stand the holy man’s phi­los­o­phy, which, in brief, was that the world was a ball of shit adrift in a sea of sin and the sooner one passed to heaven the bet­ter. As the Gel­reesh con­fessed, he took these lessons to heart, and so later in life when he helped free his pa­tients’ souls from ex­cre­men­tal bondage, he felt he was ac­tu­ally do­ing them a great fa­vor. It was from that bald and jowly man of God that the crea­ture be­came ac­quainted with the power of pity.

On the other hand, the care­taker who daily brought the beef was a man of the world. He was very old and had trav­eled far and wide. This kindly aged vagabond would tell the young Rameau sto­ries of far off places—is­lands at the equa­tor and tun­dra crowded with mi­grat­ing elk. One day, he told the boy about a fel­low he had met in a far-off king­dom that sat along the old Silk Road to China. This re­mark­able fel­low, Ibn Sadi was his name, had the power of per­sua­sion. With sub­tle move­ments of his body, cer­tain tricks of res­pi­ra­tion in ac­cor­dance with that of his au­di­ence, he could make him­self in­vis­i­ble or ap­pear as a beau­ti­ful woman. It was an il­lu­sion, of course, but to the viewer it seemed as real as the day. “What was his se­cret?” asked Rameau. The old man leaned in close to the boy’s cage and whis­pered, “Lis­ten to the rhythm of life and when you look, do not ac­cept but pro­ject. Feel what the other is feel­ing and make what they have felt what you feel. Speak only their own de­sire to them in a calm, soft voice, and they will see you as beau­ti­ful as they wish them­selves to be.”

The Gel­reesh had time, days on end, to mull over his for­mula for con­trol. He worked at it and tried dif­fer­ent vari­a­tions un­til one day he was able to look into the soul of the priest and dis­cover what it was—a mouse nib­bling a wedge of wooden cheese. Soon af­ter, he de­vised the tech­nique of click­ing to­gether his fin­ger­nails in or­der to send out a hyp­notic pulse, and with this welded the power of pity to the de­vices of the adept from the king­dom along the old Silk Road. Imag­ine the in­nate in­tel­li­gence of this boy they con­sid­ered a beast. A week fol­low­ing, he had es­caped. For some rea­son, the priest had opened the cage and for his trou­ble was found by the care­taker to have been ush­ered into the next and bet­ter world mi­nus the bag­gage of his flesh.

The jury heard the story of the Gel­reesh’s wan­der­ings and the per­fec­tion of his art, how he changed his name to that of a cer­tain brand of Mediter­ranean cig­a­rettes he had en­joyed. “I wanted to help the emo­tion­ally wounded,” he had said to his ac­cusers, and all grew sym­pa­thetic, but when they vented their grief for his soli­tary life and saw his true form, they unan­i­mously voted for his ex­e­cu­tion. Just prior to ac­cept­ing, against his will, the thirty bul­lets from the ri­fles of the fir­ing squad marks­men, the Gel­reesh per­formed a spec­tac­u­lar dis­play of meta­mor­pho­sis, be­com­ing, in turn, each of his ex­e­cu­tion­ers. Be­fore the cap­tain of the guard could shout the or­der for the deadly vol­ley, the beau­ti­ful one be­came, again, him­self, shouted, “I feel your pain,” and begged for all in at­ten­dance to par­tic­i­pate in de­vour­ing him com­pletely once he was dead. This fi­nal plea went un­heeded. His corpse was left to the dogs and car­rion birds. His bones were later gath­ered and sent to the Mu­seum of Nat­ural Sci­ence in the city of Nethit. The grackle was re­leased into the wild.

Once he had been dis­posed of and the truth had been cir­cu­lated, it seemed that every­one on all con­ti­nents wanted to claim some at­tach­ment to the Gel­reesh. For a five year pe­riod there was no in­ter­na­tional fig­ure more pop­u­lar. My God, the sto­ries told about him—women claimed to have had his chil­dren, men claimed they were him or his brother or at least the son of the care­taker who gave him his first clues to the pro­to­col of per­sua­sion. Chil­dren played Gel­reesh, and the lucky tike who got to be his name­sake re­tained for the day ul­ti­mate power in the game. An en­tire branch of psy­chother­apy had sprung up called Non-Con­sump­tive Gel­reeshia, mean­ing that the ther­a­pists swamped their pa­tients with pity but had de­signs not on the con­sump­tion of their flesh, merely their bank ac­counts. There were stud­ies writ­ten about him, nov­els and plays and an epic poem en­ti­tled Mon­ster of Pity. The phe­nom­e­non of his pop­u­lar­ity had given rise to a philo­soph­i­cal reeval­u­a­tion of Beauty.

Gel­reesh ma­nia died out in the year of the great comet, for here was some­thing even more spec­tac­u­lar for peo­ple to turn their at­ten­tion to. With the promise of the end of the world, mankind had learned to pity it­self. For­tu­nately or un­for­tu­nately, how­ever one might see it, this spin­ning ball of shit, this par­a­disi­a­cal Val­shavar of plan­ets, was spared for an­other mil­len­nium in which more star­tling forms of anom­alous hu­man­ity might spring up and lend per­spec­tive to the mun­dane herd.

And now, ages hence, re­cent news from Nethit con­cern­ing the Gel­reesh. Two years ago, an en­ter­pris­ing grad­u­ate stu­dent from Nethit Uni­ver­sity, hav­ing been told the leg­ends of the beau­ti­ful one when he was a child, went in search through the base­ment of the mu­seum to try to un­cover the box con­tain­ing the crea­ture’s re­mains. The cat­a­combs that lay be­neath the im­pos­ing struc­ture are vast and the records kept as to what had been stored where have been eaten by an un­usual mite that was be­lieved to have been in­tro­duced into the en­vi­rons of the mu­seum by a mummy brought back from a glac­ier at the top of the world. Ap­par­ently, this ter­mitic flea species awoke in the un­der­ground warmth and dis­cov­ered its taste for pa­per, so that now the ledgers are filled with sheets of lace, more hole than text.

Still, the con­sci­en­tious young man con­tin­ued to search for over a year. His de­sire was to study the phys­i­o­log­i­cal form of this leg­end. Even­tu­ally, af­ter months of ex­haus­tive search­ing, he came upon a crate marked with grease pen­cil, GEL­REESH. Upon pry­ing open the box, he found in­side a col­lec­tion of bones wrapped in a tat­tered gar­ment of ma­roon silk. There was also a hand­ker­chief bear­ing the stitched sym­bol of a bro­ken heart. When he un­cov­ered the bones, he was shocked to find the skele­ton of a very large bird in­stead of that of a mu­tant hu­man. A pro­fes­sor of his from the uni­ver­sity de­ter­mined upon in­spec­tion that these were in­deed the re­mains of a great horned owl.

*Non-Consumptive...or otherwise!

[FourthBase]

I should point out that there's a flip side to art which appears to be merely expressing how evil the world is and hoping to make it better versus art which is secretly luxuriating in how evil the world is and hoping to make it worse. If a good faith warning about evil might as well be a bad faith celebration of it, then it's just as true that evil fucks who try to brainwash us with art that glorifies evil might as well be good people who try to awaken us with art that warns about evil. Even if Radiohead were deranged satanists trying to corrupt us, they might as well have been anti-satanic activists attempting to teach us about deranged satanists. Poor Kim Noble is a survivor trying to express her pain and expose the monsters who hurt her, but she might as well be a monster who gets off on reliving memories of the abuse depicted. Based on just the art alone, there's no easy way to distinguish the two types of art. Distinctions only begin with the context of the artist, with the consequences of the art. Nevertheless, Noble could be trying her heart out to expose evil and still wind up being celebrated by sick fucks who like what she paints. (*cough*OPRAH?*cough*) And Radiohead could have been trying their damnedest to demoralize and destabilize the minds of a whole generation and yet still wound up beloved by perfectly normal people who are actually cheered up by that great, demented music.

[FourthBase]

I know it was already seconded by lucky, but just for the sake of being sure that I'm not seeing things, does anyone else want to comment on this Kid A painting? Give their opinion of whether or not it looks like the WTC, how subtle or obvious it is? Feel free to disagree and say it's just a few random streaks of paint, if you really think so. No matter the explanation, psychic sensitivity or insider foreknowledge or cosmic synchronicity or whatever, if that's the WTC, then it's a huge revelation of...something. Right? Either something mysteriously paranormal or something straightforwardly parapolitical. Yes?

As far as I can tell, no one else had ever noticed any WTC-ness about the painting until this thread, now, in 2019. Which is strange, considering this was a major band that a major author posited had predicted 9/11. Wouldn't you think some hyper-associative obsessive in the years since should have already followed up on Klosterman's (weak sauce) theory and inspected all Radiohead art for something as arguably blatant as this? Why did no one notice it before? I'm not just seeing things, right?

[FourthBase]

And then maybe offer up an opinion of that seemingly official Donwood desktop wallpaper? I mean, the skyscraper added to the left should kind of dispel any doubt that those rectangular things on the right were meant to be skyscrapers, right? And then there are the figures drawn on the left one of the two rectangles, and notably contained only within that rectangle. What is happening there with those figures? Is that a witch? On a flying broomstick? What's sitting on that broomstick-like object? Does the pointy conical landscape behind her intentionally have one of the mountains-or-whatever scratched out? Is the demonic bear making a sacrifice? It says "despot" on its chest, and the furnace it's feeding corpses into says...W.A.ST.E? Or is it N.A.ST.E.? Is it supposed to be a cremation? (Of care?)

Is there any way to verify that it was an official Donwood creation? Any way to tell if it was created before 9/11, too?

[Elvis]

Any way to tell if it was created before 9/11, too?

Can you enlarge the lower right corner to read the writing there? looks like there might be a date.

The two rectangles—I can't decide what they are/aren't; they do suggest the WTC towers to me.

So that would mean that Yorke associated with some very evil people, like spies who knew what was coming but for some evil reason didn't stop it. Or maybe he met some heavyweight evil bastards at a satanic afterparty.

Aren't you leaving out clairvoyance?—it is a thing, you know.

Remember the little grade-school boy who got in trouble for (more or less) predicting the attack on the towers? And this:

[FourthBase]

Any way to tell if it was created before 9/11, too?

Can you enlarge the lower right corner to read the writing there? looks like there might be a date.

The two rectangles—I can't decide what they are/aren't; they do suggest the WTC towers to me.

So that would mean that Yorke associated with some very evil people, like spies who knew what was coming but for some evil reason didn't stop it. Or maybe he met some heavyweight evil bastards at a satanic afterparty.

Aren't you leaving out clairvoyance?—it is a thing, you know.

I'd been including clairvoyance the whole thread, it's in the thread's title of course, it was my working assumption, except that when I saw that painting, the unlikely paranormal explanations took a major backseat to far likelier explanations of prosaic foreknowledge.

The painting has a name, I discovered.

"Residential Nemesis"

So, yeah, definitely buildings, definitely a fire.

I think they more than suggest the WTC, but thank you for your interpretation. When I think of what they might merely suggest, I think about how the discolored streaks down the rectangles suggest the collapse of those two buildings. Do their bottom halves not look a little like post-collapse remnants? Now that suggestion I can't really believe was anything more than coincidence or clairvoyance, too specific. But hey, maybe.

https://amp.smh.com.au/entertainment/ar ... hcz91.html

(Interesting origin story for the demonic bear in there.)

Remember the little grade-school boy who got in trouble for (more or less) predicting the attack on the towers? And this:

You mean the fifth grader in Dallas who predicted World War III? Or the high school freshman in Brooklyn who told his teacher, "Do you see those two buildings? They won’t be standing there next week”?

http://www.nbcnews.com/id/3067562/t/chilling-tale/

Moreover, according to police, the youth confirmed having made the Sept. 6 statement about the towers. At the moment he did so, his older brother elbowed him, said he had been “kidding,” and the youth in question agreed. The younger brother seemed upset and said he was “having a bad day.” When asked why, he said that his father was supposed to come back from Pakistan that day. Further details of the interrogation are unclear, in part because the FBI is not discussing it.

There are only three possibilities. One, the youth was clairvoyant. Two, the youth, knowing about the 1993 bombing, was just venting anger in a particularly timely way. Three, word of the attack on the World Trade Center was rumored in his neighborhood and he heard about it.

I understand how weird the universe is. Clairvoyance and coincidence are possible/plausible explanations. But simply knowing about the damned thing in advance is way, way, way, way, way, way, way more likely. If some stranger predicts you're going to get robbed, and you then immediately get robbed by an unknown assailant, you're telling me you're more likely to chalk it up to psychic powers or random chance than simple literal foreknowledge? Come on. Be real.

As for The Coup, as I just said to someone who subscribes to the "tapped in" not "tipped off" theory: If The Coup were sponsored by Raytheon, how willing would you be to assume mere clairvoyance or coincidence?

[FourthBase]

Or did you mean the boy in Duisburg who told his kindergarten teacher about 9/11?

"Even before he took his jacket off, he came to me and blurted out that he'd come from Arabic school, and that he'd heard some grown-ups talking there. They'd said that a plane was going to hit a big building and that a lot of people would die."

https://m.dw.com/en/alleged-duisburg-li ... /a-2777019

Coincidences happen.
Clairvoyance happens.
Literal foreknowledge happens, too.

[Elvis]

Not him, but a boy in NYC (I think) who had a precognitive dream about it. There were other cases, like the politician who skipped one of the flights because of a persistent dread about it? Maybe I'll search later. One idea is, that the "bigger" the event, the more people will have some kind of precognition of it.

(This might be a good time to crack a book I picked up awhile back about precognition; I'll have a look and report back.)

Or did you mean the boy in Duisburg who told his kindergarten teacher about 9/11?

"Even before he took his jacket off, he came to me and blurted out that he'd come from Arabic school, and that he'd heard some grown-ups talking there. They'd said that a plane was going to hit a big building and that a lot of people would die."

https://m.dw.com/en/alleged-duisburg-li ... /a-2777019

Coincidences happen.
Clairvoyance happens.
Literal foreknowledge happens, too.

[FourthBase]

Not him, but a boy in NYC (I think) who had a precognitive dream about it. There were other cases, like the politician who skipped one of the flights because of a persistent dread about it? Maybe I'll search later. One idea is, that the "bigger" the event, the more people will have some kind of precognition of it.

(This might be a good time to crack a book I picked up awhile back about precognition; I'll have a look and report back.)

Or did you mean the boy in Duisburg who told his kindergarten teacher about 9/11?

"Even before he took his jacket off, he came to me and blurted out that he'd come from Arabic school, and that he'd heard some grown-ups talking there. They'd said that a plane was going to hit a big building and that a lot of people would die."

https://m.dw.com/en/alleged-duisburg-li ... /a-2777019

Coincidences happen.
Clairvoyance happens.
Literal foreknowledge happens, too.

Remember the job at the Prudential that I bailed on the week before 4/15/13 because of persistent premonitions about a terrorist attack, including an extremely weird instance of deja vu, and visions of my funeral? I also had sensed something ominous and ritualistic about semi-annual fires being set in the Fens.

viewtopic.php?f=8&t=36259&hilit=Boston+marathon+bombings#p497685

My point is, I'm well aware that spooky paranormal foresight and associations can happen to people who are completely removed from a plot. But I tend to assume non-innocuous explanations when the people are famous cultural influencers with all sorts of interesting business and social connections that might constitute a rich grapevine of taboo information, when the premonitions are pretty fucking exact as they were in the case of the Lone Gunmen, Party Music, and Kid A.

[FourthBase]

p.s. here's a more interesting perspective on the "precognitive" kid in Brooklyn.

https://drinkthis.typepad.com/shapiro/2 ... _prio.html

I wonder if the FBI ever investigated the Lone Gunmen creators or The Coup. One assumes they didn't have the chance to even contemplate investigating Radiohead because this "precognitive" Residential Nemesis painting was so obscured and cropped in the Kid A booklet.