"Revolution Evolution" and Love Ghost - Music

Finnegan Bell, lead vocalist and musician for Love Ghost.

Love Ghost is a modern rock & roll band from Los Angeles, CA. This is both a compliment and a curse, since there are one million rock & roll bands in Los Angeles, so it's a little difficult to get noticed. The band stands out thanks to that rare blend of edgy realism, musical talent and a unique cool. Some got it, others don't. They do. Other publications like Rolling Stone think so too. 

I've learned to hate comparing modern bands to others before them, even though it's complimentary and inevitable. Love Ghost reminds one of good bands that were difficult to classify, like Killing Joke, Alice & Chains, Metallica, Black Market Baby, Suicidal Tendencies, Skinny Puppy, Guns and Roses, Nirvana, KMFDM and even The Swans. Finnegan Bell is writing music that will be appreciated by people who like the bands just mentioned and music that's independent without being noise.

Ladies, gentlemen and monsters, behold Love Ghost.

The song and music video for "Revolution Evolution" is gritty, ominous and powerful, full of imagery that doesn't celebrate war as it highlights the chaos it embodies. Marching drums, grinding guitars, harsh vocals and evocative pauses make the song a thinking one. After all, war is destruction, and revolution is just another war. The lyrics aren't mere antiwar poetry. It's not a manifesto, either. Thinking is required. The nuance is subtle.

For the next twenty paragraphs we are going to talk about why the music video discussed is a proper literary work of art that is related to the many great music videos MTV was so famous for decades ago. It's going to get like college or some literary publication as I reference everything known to prove Love Ghost filmed a winner. If you are not interested, please scroll to where you see the IMDb picture of Finnegan.

...

"Land of Confusion" by Genesis. It was the 80's.

It's sad that many Americans do not remember the 80's, because they weren't there. I was. Imagine a chaotic, dangerous time. The conservative politicians running the show were seen as war hawks devouring U.S.A. tax dollars for wars in Latin American and The Middle East at the risk of starting a global thermonuclear war while the economy declined. Many average, middle class people living in America did not trust their government. Wow, so much has changed! We have smartphones!

Now it's 2020, and there are more music videos for songs composed by bands than there are stars in the sky, especially if you live in Los Angeles where the smog and light pollution obliterates any astronomy. I love music videos! Especially this one! "Revolution Evolution" by Love Ghost is a masterpiece and a piece of a masterful class of art Americans should all appreciate: the art of the music video. 

A surreal, creepy visual from "Revolution Evolution."

There was a time when music videos were precious pearls, as rare as peace in The Middle East has been for millenia. Ok, not that rare. I mean, music videos did exist, they were just hard to find because there was no way to watch them predictably. They showed up randomly on TV, usually late at night, and anyone who saw it was probably confused. Then God created MTV. I remember.

Check out early music videos by one of my favorite music bands, The Blue Oyster Cult. (I'm not going to type that .. above the O, I got screenplays to write). What drugs were those guys on? You get the feeling watching many early videos that the band, the director and the people who designed the images weren't on the same page, or book, or planet where that library was on. "Revolution Evolution" is perfect in that all of the music, words and art fit. "Loverboy," by Billy Ocean, is not.

The music videos made by Blue Oyster Cult were crazy before MTV.

Watch "Revolution Evolution" and think about what you just experienced. It all makes sense, right? There were surprises and perspectives to think about. Dramatic, revolutionary, guerrilla warfare type imagery. That's good work. The 80's had music videos very similar to that on MTV. It's why the channel was so smart, appreciated and post punk rock. They were completely out of f*cks, so they gave none.

Now watch "Loverboy" by Billy Ocean. The song doesn't fit the imagery. A soulful, romantic ballad about love, juxtaposed by a large, bipedal humanoid medieval iguana person riding a horse, getting into lasergun fights in caves with cyborgs until he saves a Neanderthal woman and they escape. Plus Billy Ocean dancing by himself and terrible CGI. Blame it on the 80's, STAR WARS, and cocaine. 

Yes, this is a scene from the video "Loverboy." 

Yes, that hazy, dusty air is from cocaine.

Holy lizardman lasers, Batman!

"Billy Don't You Lose My Number" by Phil Collins makes fun of the idea that music videos can be about anything. Great humor is placed in how even Phil is baffled by what he had to do for the music producers with big visions and bigger budgets. No matter what, as a young child watching Phil dressed like a samurai fighting ninjas will still be the movie my soul wanted, and the Old West gunfighter intro is good directing and cinematography, even though the song "Billy Don't You Lose My Number" doesn't make sense. Again, it was the 80's....blame it on movies, cocaine and MTV.

From "Billy Don't You Lose My Number," by Phil Collins.

I always wanted to watch the western from this music video.

Now wonder she lost his number. Whoever imagined this 

all for a song based on her was obviously a schizophrenic.

Although really bad music videos from the 80's can be so nuts they are comedy (the video for "Total Eclipse of the Heart" by Bonnie Tyler is what happens when somebody other than the artist gets to do whatever they want in a mansion...you can't believe they zany visuals they concocted, thanks to cocaine, Reaganomics and MTV) my favorite will always by "You Could Be Mine" by Guns & Roses from the TERMINATOR II soundtrack. 

You are witnessing the artistic/scientific zenith of modern Earth civilization.

Great visuals. Awesome juxtaposition of music, emotion, live performances by the band and clips from the film. However...the lyrics don't have anything whatsoever to do with the visuals. Yeah, I barbecued a sacred cow. Seriously, would you watch a video about a man abusing and leaving his girlfriends? Nope. It would be kind of funny to see a mean, ugly attorney bugging his eyes out and screaming on the phone while Axl screams/sings, "Don't forget to call my lawyer with your ridiculous demands," but instead you see a T-800 punch a hole through somebody's face.

If you'd like to see something that also expands your paradigm, like Finnegan does, to think about what you are seeing when listening to a song and watching a music video, check out the epic classic "Easy Lover" by Phil Collins and Phillip Bailey. It's a music video about making a music video about making a music video. How many fourth walls did they have to break? 

The fake interview inside the music video for "Easy Lover."

Love Ghost is a band with musical influences from the 90's, a decade where MTV got so massive it split into two parts, VHS (easy listening and 70's light pop), and MTV, which began to go beyond music videos into shows. We all know what happened. "Revolution Evolution" has a harsh, surreal quality I saw in music videos during that time. There's even references to Greek philosophy. Plato's allegory of The Cave, combined with a military punk rock fashion aesthetic Darbie Crash or The Clash could appreciate. 

Darbie Crash, punk rock icon, and probably

the only reason I'm still here.

To me, music videos are a chance to be REALLY BIG. The 80's and 90's were all about that. While the ones you saw in the 70's were usually just live performances, later decades brought us art like "Word Up" by Cameo, where a man with a mustache, a red leather codpiece (aww...it's so nice, as a writer, to be able to type, "red letter codpiece") and a very direct stare could make even Geordi La Forge from "Star Trek, The Next Generation" dance instead of arresting Cameo. What is your crime, sir? Is Geordi on the holodeck role playing as The Fashion Police?

For some moments in life, there are no words. Only screams.

Another example of a REALLY BIG music video is "Shadows of the Night" by Pat Benetar. Similar to "No More Words" by Berlin, there's a storyline taken from vintage American gangster and World War II films. It's all vintage MTV music video art, although Pat Benetar really could have not repeated the chorus so much. Lady, we get it. You are running through the shadows of the night. Ok.

Both music videos are miniature films, although Benetar gets to fight Nazis while Berlin is a Roaring 20's era gangster. Both are what MTV embodied...rebellious, antinazi, epic and inspirational. 

Pat Benetar bombing Nazis to death on MTV.

Another favorite, also by Pat Benetar is "Invincible" from THE LEGEND OF BILLIE JEAN soundtrack. It's a perfect fusion of MTV video art, combining Pat Benetar performing with her band in a post apocalyptic wasteland (in the 80's, many music videos absolutely promised that if America was nuked, cool would survive, like "Synchronicity" by The Police and "Wild Boys" by Duran Duran...yet we survived) with footage from the film. It tells a story through good editing, and possibly the fact that Benetar's head looks like a giant strawberry.

"Wild Boys" by Duran Duran. Just another day 

in the life on MTV during the 80's. 

"Revolution Evolution" is big, in an intellectual way. Lot's of themes like transcendence, breaking the fourth wall and out of the mainstream media paradigm, which is what punk rock is all about. The song is about thinking, not mindless acceptance. We live in an age of multimedia corruption, conspiracy theories and unprecedented online mass media influence. It's profound of Finnegan to remind us.

Again, the music videos I loved growing up in the 80's demonstrated this same spirit. While Michael Jackson's "Thriller" was really, really big (the whole continent of America tuned in to watch that video and it was worth it!) my favorite songs on MTV featured Finnegan's same revolutionary awareness, especially post punk videos like "Sweet Dreams" by The Eurythmics ("Even if you sell out you serve larger forces and can never not be controlled while influencing humanity").

"Sweet Dreams" by The Eurythmics. Not crazy at all. Nope.

"Cult of Personality" by Living Colour ("Just like the title says, plus religion and mass media, corporate control") "It's a Mistake" by Men At Work ("Any American war is bad, leading to potential world annihilation via mutually assured destruction via thermonuclear missiles").

"Rock the Casbah" by The Clash. It was edgy before edgy.

But wait, there's more. "Rock the Casbah" by The Clash ("Peace in The Middle East, at least in an 80's music video") and, of course, my favorite, really big, intellectual, very 80's, cocaine fueled multimedia music video of all time, "Land of Confusion" by Genesis (I can't even describe it all with a joke. Watch that video, too. Ronald Reagan nukes the planet by pushing a big red button. It also criticizes politics, religion, the news and multimedia influence that's obviously unhealthy to humanity. Vintage, my friend).

From "Rock the Casbah" by The Clash. I told you it was edgy.

After listening to Love Ghost, many of the other music bands I appreciate from the 90's came to mind, although Finnegan and his band are certainly modern and innovative enough by themselves to have no need for references. Personally, I love Alice in Chains, Nirvana, Helmet, Pantera, industrial music like Nine Inch Nails, Godflesh, Skinny Puppy and Oghr. So of course I liked the song "Revolution Evolution," although it's more rock & roll than synthetics & special effects.

The artist and musician named Finnegan Bell of Love Ghost.

Which brings us to the interview. Thank you for being patient. I just wanted readers to understand why "Revolution Evolution" by Love Ghost is a very real piece of art worth appreciating, which MTV in it's prime would have displayed 24/7. So let's read what Finnegan had to say about Love Ghost, his modern music and artistic style.

What inspired you to become a musician? You are smart enough to do anything. Why choose music?

I didn't choose music because I thought it was the smartest option, I chose it because it was the only thing that didn't make me feel numb. Everything else felt like I was auditioning for a life I didn't actually want. Music was the place where I didn't have to pretend to be okay or impressive or stable.

Tour dates for Love Ghost. Now you know where to go!

It's less of a career choice and more of a survival mechanism. Some people go to church, I make loud, emotional songs and hope it translates. Music is the one thing I can't walk away from without feeling like I'm abandoning something real.

I love the influences in your music, especially in the song "Revolution Evolution" and the video created for it. What music do you listen to, that your fans would not expect?

I listen to a lot of what I jokingly call, "Drunk Girl Music," I don't even know exactly what that means or if that's appropriate to say, but like that 2000's Kesha, Britney Spears, and Katy Perry. That party music that's kind of glittery, chaotic and unhinged in a fun way. I also listen to political music, like the national anthem for the U.S.S.R.  and Saddam Hussein's birthday track, "Leymouni." 

Not because I agree with any of it, but because I'm fascinated by the emotion and scale and how music and sound can be used to unify people or create a sense of power. I think my taste lives somewhere between those two extremes, total escapism and total control, and I like pulling from both.

"Eighties," by Killing Joke, a music video produced

during the 80's about living in the 80's. NOW 

you know why I was inspired to write about 

"Revolution Evolution" by Love Ghost.

Your video for "Revolution Evolution" is Zen in it's inspiration, with a lot of visual depth and MTV 80's-90's Golden Era imagery plus aesthetics. The trick at the end was so cool it made me LOL. What inspired you to imagine the concept for the video?

The concept is about how war turns people into objects for someone else's agenda. I'm tearing soldiers apart and putting them back together like they're disposable, because in reality, to the people making the decisions, they often are. It's not heroic. It's mechanical.

When the soldiers rise up together, it's not some feel-good unity moment, it's more like they realize they were never really enemies, just directed at each other by "something" bigger.

Finnegan Bell from "Revolution Evolution"

by Love Ghost. A modern postpunk rock look

even Darbie Crash could appreciate.

That "something" is power, governments, corporations, and systems that benefit from conflict continuing. It overlaps with capitalism, for sure, especially when profits get tied into just one label. It's any structure where power concentrates and people become expendable to maintain it. That could be imperialism, ethnocentric nationalism, and more. 

(Spoiler alert...you've been warned) Then, at the very end, I'm revealed to be a toy, too. That's the point, there's no clean outside perspective. Even if you think you're calling it out, you're still inside the same system, shaped by it. Some people just have longer strings than others.

I follow Love Ghost on Instagram and so can you!

Check out Love Ghost at their wonderful website!

Buy Tickets for Love Ghost and their Anarchy and Ashes Tour!

Check out their swank music video for "Revolution Evolution" down below!

Stranger Things 4 and 3! - The Weird

LET'S ROCK!!!

What are we running for?

When there's nowhere we can run to, anymore.

-Pat Benatar, Invincible

Well, I'm up there beside The Magic Man

And he laid some tricks on me

He said, "You do need help, my friend."

I whispered, "Obviously."

-Blue Oyster Cult, Shooting Shark

"The lost entity would very soon after death find himself unable to stay in Kamaloka, and would be irresistibly drawn in full consciousness into "his own place," the mysterious eighth sphere, there to slowly disintegrate after experiences best left undescribed. 

If, however, he perishes by suicide or sudden death, he may under certain circumstances...hold himself back from that awful fate by a death in life scarcely less awful-the ghastly existence of the vampire.

Since the eighth sphere cannot claim him until after death of the body, he preserves it in a kind of cataleptic trance by the horrible expedient of the transfusion into it of blood drawn from other human beings...and thus postpones his final destiny by the commission of wholesale murder."

-C.W. Leadbetter, "The Astral Plane, It's Scenery, Inhabitants and Phenomena"

"Thou shalt find

That I shall resume the shape,

Which thou dost think, I have cast off

Forever!"

-King Lear, Act 1, Scene 4, William Shakespeare

And no marvel, for Satan himself is transformed into an angel of light.

-2 Corinthians 11:14, King James Bible

Riddle me this, riddle me this, riddle me that,

I'll bet you don't know just where I'm at.

-Toots and The Maytals, In the Dark

"Now, let's get down to it, boppers..."

-The Warriors

Meet Molisar, from THE KEEP.

He looks like Vecna for a reason.

This is part of my ongoing exegesis on the Netflix series hereby known as STRANGER THINGS, specifically the 4th season, although I'm also going to talk about 3. If you want to see my breakdown of season 3, go here: Stranger Things 3! - The Weird. You can start at the beginning right here: The Monster in Stranger Things.

I must warn you the writing style of these exegesis's is based on me talking to you at a bar or in your house. It's conversational. I'm going to wander around, messing with sticks and rope, until you notice we've just built a tent. That's why there are pauses and so many commas. I'm talking to you, not writing at you. 

We still are going to discuss STRANGER THINGS 3 some more. It's just that we need to discuss season 4 before we go back in time to fully understand season 3. When we do go back, we will talk about the real meaning behind THE NEVER ENDING STORY, and why it was referenced at the end of season 3. 

The Princess from THE NEVERENDING STORY.

Was she a prisoner, too?

Notice the sexual symbolism.

You grow old. Your dreams die.

You give up...maybe your child won't.

That's the new, eternal story mom and dad make.

We are still discussing season 3, it's just that we are engaging in time travel, which is what they will have to do in season 5 to prevent the horrifying gate that opened in season 4, which was a reference to the 80's horror classic THE GATE. The show has been bringing up time travel in some sort of predictive programming method (in the movie theater BACK TO THE FUTURE is showing, and a flaming 11 appears as the Delorean vanishes. 

"Look at me, I'm Jasen T. Davis, blah blah blah..."

Here are my predictions for STRANGER THINGS 5:

1) There's going to be serial killers, as in, mind controlled murderers, including a cult.

2) There's going to be time travel. This will fix the gate opening up. The Montauk Project STRANGER THINGS references was based on time travel.

3) There's going to be extraterrestrials/UFO's. The 80's were full of films involving aliens from space and all that. So it has to show up for the show to be complete.

4) The evil black mold disease in the house will have an extraterrestrial origin from somewhere long ago back in time.

5) The disease infects people. If they are evil, the get possessed and the disease controls them. It wants to duplicate, just like it told Billy in the warehouse at the beginning of season 4. Once it fully infects a person, they can be transformed. There might be a person that is completely evil and replaced, who has been in the show for a while.

6) Papa was killed in season 1. He was duplicated when Demogorgon killed him. There will be another Papa (Brenner) in season 5.

Notice how the Demogorgon, which came from another

dimension and a woman's mind...

...looks like this demon from the 80's horror film,

I, MADMAN, which came from another dimension

and a woman's mind?"

STRANGER THINGS 4 did it's best to get away from Eleven's problem being a tulpa of her doppleganger, or dark side. That's ok, because I'm here to point out that don't worry, tulpas are still a problem, so was The House in the show (it was always The House, since the first season), and nothing has changed. Demogorgon is still a tulpa, Vecna wasn't there since the beginning, and the Creel isn't The Big Bad, he's a possessed boy that somehow ended up in Eleven's head. Literally.

As previously mentioned your humble writer used to compose these STRANGER THINGS essays, put them up on the Internet, and then watch as YouTube video makers referenced the information without citing the original creator (me). Documentaries cite references. So do college papers and scientific abstracts.

That's why I took so long to write this. To make sure nobody copied my writing. For example...nobody figured out the reference to Molisar in season 4. Or that the Creel boy was possessed by The House. Or why his father blinds himself, and lives, whereas Eleven watched Creel die, and was possessed by him via quantum entanglement through here memories. That's why Vecna isn't looking for Eleven, anymore. He's in her head. Last season, it was the opposite, to take her powers.

Besides, if it was Vecna all along, we wouldn't have a season 5.

Squares and boxes, like she's in a crossword puzzle...in Papa's mind.

CROW SWORDS PUS ILLS

I'd like to draw attention to the crossword puzzle Eleven's father is working on in the first episode of season 4. Look at the answers. They correspond to the names involved in Eleven's strange Kali dream sequence in the previous season, where she was wandering around a warehouse with those odd people.

The warehouse is a cube, with cubes and squares everywhere. That's the crossword puzzle. Maybe it was a telepathic link to Papa. Maybe she was in his mind, or vice versa. Freeze the frame and look for words like "Kali" and the names involved in the dream sequence from season 3. They are the same for a reason.

Papa's symbol is the black cube, a powerful symbol of evil you see in film's like HELLRAISER. 

THE KEEP YOUSE PROMISES

I also watched STRANGER THINGS 4, every single damn episode, and suddenly realized, a) no YouTube video maker out there will notice that Vecna looks like Molisar from the 80's horror film THE KEEP, and b) I might not know what the frack I'm talking about. Vecna? Who is he? We've never seen that dude before. So he is the big bad behind everything? If so, have all my theories and essays been for nothing?

Have you noticed Billy ended up like Vecna was?

Before we go further, I disagree that "...Vecna has been there the whole time." Since episode 1 of season 1. Why? Because when Vecna kills people, unlike The Mind Flayer or The Demogorgon or the young Demogorgon hellhounds, they drain blood. Vecna does something else, leading to horrifically mangled, drained corpses. The audience never saw those until season 4, so Vecna didn't do that until then. 

If he was, then the only explanation is that he didn't have Eleven's power, yet. Also remember that the disease is Vecna. To The Shadow, disease, black rot, whatever, the dimension is a personality, and everything it uses to obtain blood and bioelectricity is just a tool, like Vecna, Demogorgon, or Demodogs.

So I went back and watched every single episode while I was writing scripts for Hollywood and realized something. A dirty, dark secret nobody has ever told you. This may break your heart. Like finding out there is no Tooth Fairy. You know the Dungeon Master you grew up with? That came up with all those zany plots you had so much fun playing? Sorry, your DM lied to you.

Like Molisar, Vecna can't leave The House.

He's trapped, like Billy, possessed by

The House as a boy.

When a player in your game decides to be a cynical smartass and suddenly announce to the entire plot of your creation to the others so your entire plot is ruined, all you can do, aside from killing the motherless bastard with a rusty knife, is to smile, nod, and completely change your entire plot from the foundation up. Like Carl Jung said, "If they can't take a hero's journey, fuck 'em."

Now the princess is a powerful vampire wizard that pretended to be kidnapped by the dragon. The evil drow elf assassin following the party around is really a spy trying to warn them that their employer is evil. Major villains are dismissed, minor NPC's become the real bad guys hiding in plain sight disquised as the populace, friends become foes and before they know it, your players are playing in an entirely new plot, without even knowing it.

That's Vecna.

Because of the appearance of a villain that has been there all along, it's time to look back at the last three seasons to see if we missed it. We did, in a way. The house Vecna is in showed up before in the upside down. The red, horrific storm in the background was seen in Billy's mind. Even (spoiler alert) Billy's horrific fate at the end of Stranger Things 3 foreshadows Vecan in Stranger Things 4. It's also a clue.

THE AMITYVILLE HORROR...an evil house.

I'll give The Duffer Brothers credit. They showed us the house in the very beginning, staring at us like a skull, and we just forgot. Even I included a picture of it. So here is what happened: The house is full of evil, like a disease or psychic message. It possessed the little boy, because he is a total sociopath who can contain such evil...good people, who feel guilt, are destroyed.

Look at when the father is thinking of when the family moved into the evil house in season 4. Pay attention to the little evil kid. His eyes are rolling up in his head. He's possessed...but because he was a sociopath who felt no guilt, he became Vecna. The House became him. When Vecna tells his story, it's all there. It's not Creel's perspective, it's The House that possessed the boy, who was a natural sociopath, like many serial killers during the 80's.

Another horror film from the 80's 

about an evil house.

His eyes are rolling up in his head, the whites are showing, and he's tripping from the psychic link. Yet, he doesn't die. The evil boy is the perfect vessel for the house. Later, he died, and has lived as an image in Eleven's head, trying to get out. Vecna still lives, in her head as cancer, absorbing spirits of guilty people to feed him, trying to find another vessel to possess. Vecna is a prisoner of the house, like Billy was a prisoner, and so was Molisar. 

JUST WHAT PAPA BRENNER WANTED ELEVEN TO DO

Speaking of which, notice the sequence. Vecna possessing the person by finding them in the vast darkness where/like Eleven found that Russian spy. He transmits to them, possessing them, the way the house possessed Creel. Their eyes roll up, then they bleed. When the scientists reprogram her memories with VHS tapes, she's getting possessed by that force, getting her powers back. It's quantum entanglement, again. 

Look carefully. Creel appears during the sequence, stepping out of the mirror, and also Eleven's head. When she blows him to bits (just like Demogorgon in season 1...which explains the maneuver, she used it before) he goes into the mirror. Except that doesn't make sense. You can't go in a mirror in STRANGER THINGS. So he goes into her head, a last second move to survive, transmitting his consciousness via quantum entanglement.

                                       

In THE KEEP Molisar can't leave. 

Vecna can't leave, either.

In THE KEEP Molisar is a powerful entity, probably an archon (fallen angel) stuck inside a, uh, keep (surprise) who can't get out. For all of his paranormal abilities, the entity can never leave because of a barrier comprised of silver T's (Da'ath symbols in the Jewish Kaballah) and so must empower and manipulate others. He is eventually defeated by Scott Glen, some sort of angel, for rather obscure reasons.

For all of his power, Vecna is stuck in the house. That's the secret. The key. We weren't told the history of that house. Who owned it, originally? Why didn't anyone ever talk about that house before? Again, did you notice the little boy gets possessed when he walks into the house? Watch that scene. When the father talks about first entering the place, in the lower corner the boy's eyes are turning milky white and he starts trippin'. That's a clue.

Always with the tentacles. It controlled Will. Controlled Billy.

Just like it controlled Creel/Vecna.

Another important series of clues are given to us in season 3. The Russian guard at the scientific research lab calls the strange, black cloud "The Shadow" and says it enters to bodies of the Demogorgons to reanimate them. Billy's medallion that he wears, even when he is possessed, is a reference to Vecna's human name in season 4, Henry Creel, which is also a clue. Let's put them together.

If The Duffer Brothers changed everything it would make logical sense. Many other people like me have written about the connections to The Montauk Project. The series is still using that conspiracy theory, in the background. My theory is that because (spoiler alert) the house is utterly destroyed by the end of season 3, time travel will be necessary (using Eleven's cool and fruity astral projection powers to visit the past) to find out who lived in that house before the Creel's walked in, and how Eleven's mother is connected, if she is.

Don't forget how the shadow infected/controlled Will, too.

Another big arsed clue is the shadow. The Russians call it that. Carl Jung calls it that. I called it that years ago. After Eleven (spoiler alert) blows Creel to Hades (or the mind of someone else...people can go into the minds of other people now, thanks to Eleven's other cool and fruity power, piggybacking) or wherever he goes (now we have another dimension, underneath The Vale of Shadows and the upside-down) Creel looks up and sees a shadow. He thinks he's controlling the shadow. Is it controlling him?

Seem familiar? It was always the rot in the house,

infecting/possessing people.

Creel was the perfect host.

Eleven almost is.

People who are possessed, bleed.

Unless they are perfect.

WHERE THERE WAS A WILL, THERE IS A WAY

Which came first, the shadow or the Creel? This is the question. The shadow is the source of everything. It possesses Will and Billy. It animates the Demogorgons in Russia. At the beginning of Season 3, the Russians fire lightning into the crack into another dimension, reanimating the shadow in the warehouse where Billy goes and tingling Will's spider sense. Vecna is stuck in the house. Why isn't Vecna able to go to where Creel used to hang out at as a kid? Because the shadow in the house, and the shadow controls everything.

THE CLOCK WITH THE HOUSE IN IT'S WALLS

By the way, the reason people infected by the disease/possessed by Vecna see the clock, is because he sees the clock. It's also a reference to the sci fi horror kid's classis, THE HOUSE WITH A CLOCK IN IT'S WALLS and Saturn, aka Da'ath, aka death, the spiritual wormhole spirits end up going too, transporting them back to Hades in The Kaballah.

Bad, bad news. There's a cube

and a 20 sided dice shape there, too.

At the same time, I'm not backing down from the theory that the whole problem is because of a tulpa, somewhere inside Eleven's head. The entire sequence where Vecna showed up is goofy. He appears inside of a mirror, inside of her head, while her memories are being manipulated in a sequence eerily similar to when HAL's memories are being altered in Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A SPACE ODDYSEY. The entire sequence where Creel is introduced feels like THE SHINING. 

Creel even seems like a reflection of Eleven. Considering how goofy the idea is, that The Hawkins scientists can just plug VHS tapes into her head to show her videos that are her memories...huh? In the 80's? Are they serious? Carefully consider what Eleven is told: "We recorded what happened to you, which you don't remember. Watch these VHS tapes and you'll get your power back." 

HAL gets his memories erased in 2001 A SPACE ODDYSEY.

Eleven's memories get changed.

This means they could show Eleven fake images, creating fake memories, gaslighting her into being something she isn't. Something the scientists want...a woman with psychic powers who is evil. Then she would kill anyone they wanted her too, like she wouldn't do before. Hence the tulpa, Demogorgon. 

Why does Creel see Demogorgon crawling out of where he's going, when Eleven kills him, and he's walking around some blasted hellscape, similar to Tartarus? Creel is in her head, via quantum entanglement. He's become a memory that haunts her, possessing her like a ghost, connected by Vecna.

Have you noticed that by the beginning of season 4, Eleven is a rather horrible person? Seriously, she's bad. Her first reaction to any sort of bullying isn't changing her clothing, her attitude, her haircut, thinking about how bizarre Eleven is, or anything like that. She screams and tries to kill them all, like a school shooter/mass murderer that kills everyone at their high school because some kids bullied them. 

The strange, evil kid, a literal manifestation of wickedness,

from THE CARE BEARS MOVIE.

GROWING UP WITH GOOD TELEVISION

Which makes me wonder...is Eleven really in the 80's? Let's look at the children's television shows she would have access too: PUFF THE MAGIC DRAGON...as story about getting along with others despite bullying. THE LITTLE HOUSE ON THE PRARIE, an ongoing series about people working together, without violence, to create a good society. 

THE CARE BEARS, which avoided violence to get kids to understand that negative behavior, like social bullying, gaslighting, lying and otherwise, had repercussions which hurt others and caused a person to devolve. Isn't she watching those shows? 

The answer is that Vecna is in her head. Creel survived after she blew him up, ending up insider her mind via quantum entanglement, possessing her. It's why her eyes were bleeding, like the people Vecna possesses. When the high school journalist nerd gets infected, his noses bleeds, and he sees people taunting him. They are illusions.

Psychological abuse, tulpas, duplicates, 

copies of reality, gaslighting, reframing...

PUFF THE MAGIC DRAGON had it all.

So the answer is that Vecna is causing people to tease Eleven, to cause her pain and separate her from the people that could stop him. The disease, that other dimension with all the tentacles and flying monsters, Vecna...can control people and project illusions. We saw all that in season 3. So that is what is happening to Eleven, so it drives her crazy. She's being gaslighted by her own mind. Eleven is literally projecting.

COUNT THE HAUNTED HOUSES

In 80's horror films the house is the problem. People walk in, and sometimes they don't walk about. Remember that in THE AMYTIVILLE HORROR the fathers both get possessed and kill, or try to kill, their families. It's like a disease people get from the house that leads to dementia so they kill people, similiar to rabies or brain tumors. That's what the disease, the shadow, in the house did to little Creel, making them into Vecna.

HOUSE and HOUSE II are about haunted houses that induce hallucinations and lead to different dimensions. THE KEEP is about a giant haunted house. So is THE HOUSE ON HAUNTED HILL. The family in POLTERGEIST moved into the wrong house. So is BURNT OFFERINGS and THE CHANGELING. The Japanese horror film THE GRUDGE is about a house you should never go into. The real problem with any haunted house horror film is why people don't leave the damn thing. The Creel's obviously left too late.

They practically photocopied the plot of STRANGER THINGS.

I AM THE PRETTY THING THAT LIVES IN THE HOUSE is a Netflix film almost created for Stranger Things 4. I suggest it. It's practically the plot of Stranger Things 4 if my theory is correct. The Netflix horror film is about (spoiler alert) a woman who gets her head whacked off in a house her husband built. The woman's body is then hidden in the walls of the house, becoming black mold. This black mold infects people, who see the ghost of the murdered woman before they die of a heart attack.

My theory is that is what happened to Creel as a young boy when he walked into the house. Everyone else ends up the same way...their eyes turn white, they levitate, blood runs out of their eyes, their bones break as their bodies contort and they die, drained of...something. What is it? Bioelectricity? Their memories? Their souls?

BUSTIN' LOOSH

In the occult, "loosh" is a phrase for the bioelectricity, or chi, evil entities and psychic vampires (or just vampires) drain out of you when they drink your blood or just cause suffering. In David Lynch's TWIN PEAKS, his term for loosh is "gorgonzola," and it's usually depicted as creamed corn. Although clumsy, the metaphor is about pain not just being a torturer's pleasure, it's their food.

The Upside Down in TWIN PEAKS.

Notice the Saturn on the desk.

Plus the red colors, and evil entity.

THE OCCULT AIN'T CUTE

The Theosophy quote we started this whole conversation with above about vampires explains every horror film villain you see. They are demonic entities that were either never human, or partially. They exist in The Astral Plane...The Upside Down...The Kamaloka...possessing people, obtaining loosh, and then they are gone. Mass murderers? Werewolves. Cult leaders? Vampires. Serial Killers? Either or. Who cares? It's all bad.

When you read dusty occult manuals regarding ghosts, demons, haunted places and the realms of the dead ("The Realms of the Dead" would be a great name for a goth industrial band. Lol! Sorry, just trying to lighten the mood) like C. W. Leadbetter's "The Astral Plane, It's Inhabitants, Scenery and Phenomena" (aka Theosophical Manual No. 5) there's a scary warning about the afterworld: it wants you...and it wants to be you.

THE THING. Seem familiar?

The disease from STRANGER THINGS

is just slower.

When Billy communicates to his double created by the Thassalhydra, it says it wants to build, revealing copies of other beings it has consumed. Remember, in STRANGER THINGS the entity is a collective. The beings that allow it to feed from wherever it is are just mindless appendages. There are like masks for a villain with a thousand faces. It's also a disease...which mindlessly wants to spread, duplicate, and is a mass consciousness on a micro level. 

A SIMPLE OCCULT REASON(ING)

C.W. Leadbetter's book describes ghosts as being like recordings, or etheric shells, similar to Russian dolls. Necromancy and really black magic is really bad because nasty entities like vampires, werewolves, necromancers and worse can wear ghosts like a costume, manipulating you, using you for your loosh, through the shedding of blood or otherwise.

I don't make all this crazy shiznit up.

It's by the books.

Whenever you hear a story in the local news about Ouija boards being around mass suicides, or when a parent goes berserk and kills their family (and themselves) that's a werewolf or vampire. Sure, you think you are talking to a dead friend or relative, but underneath that etheric shell is a thing that will use people long enough to use them up, leaving blood in their wake.

In FREDDY VERSUS JASON, it's finally revealed that Jason Voorhees also kills people and stores their spirits in some bog, keeping him around. Freddy mentions doing that in the NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET series, too. 

Billy got possessed and got powers.

That action will be back in 5, for sure.

That's Vecna...and the consuming force behind him. It's important to remember, throughout the entire STRANGER THINGS series, that the biggest problem the good guys face is the bad guy is never really dead, just defeated, like the Eye of Sauron. They whack entities left and right, or drive it away like the cloud/shadow that possessed Will, yet the really Big Bad is behind the violence and untouchable from their dimension.

All the monsters in our horror films, whether they are slashers, vampires, demons, draugars (that's Viking for a talking zombie that can use weapons and eats animals/people) are all just entities slaughtering the actors we see on film and TV are really just feeding another entity...the audience. Us. We are the dark, blood-drinking force the director feeds. 

The monsters in horror films kill for us, and the characters in their stories can do nothing to stop us. We are in a different dimension, drinking deep with our eyes and ears. Draining "loosh," or "gorgonzola" in the films of David Lynch.

Don't forget the black rot from season 2,

which can infect anyone,

allowing Vecna to find them.

The real problem is that damn cloud, in another dimension, filtering through the house, looking for people to possess. Notice how the entity describes the boy as having no empathy. Meanwhile, when Vecna is looking around for people to feed on, he looks for guilty people. So the boy he possessed grew up to be the perfect predator. 

When Eleven destroyed Creel, where did he go? The mirror. Where did Creel come from? As they manipulate Eleven's memories, i.e. gaslight her, i.e. reprogram her, Creel appears out of the mirror, like a double. Eleven's double. Here evil alter ego. Her id. The demon she's been fighting in another form. That's my theory. The problem isn't Vecna. It's the cloud, the house, and whatever is in that house that possesses people. It's also related to seeing the image, which is why Creel's blinded father lives.

The image outside ends up inside. Creel is in Eleven's mind.

He's probably been there, the entire time.

Notice how Vecna is constrained by the tentacles. Held in place. Look familiar? Like Billy ended up from last season, right? Because Billy was a prisoner, held in place, forced to do the bidding of a greater evil, just like Vecna. Besides, by the end of season 4 Vecna is smoldering dog food. 

So if it was him along, who will be the villain in the next season? The same villain it always was...Eleven's dark twin, the cloud, the house and the gate...they will just send another monster, another Yellow King to represent Hastur the Unspeakable, just like last season and every season.

The leftover spirits, or ti bon ange, of the people

consumed by The Upside Down entity,

which feeds on blood, always.

What about Demogorgon? It's simple. Let's look at African voodoo. When Eleven absorbed Creel, he ended up as an image, or memory in her mind because of quantum entanglement...the concept that an image of an object can be linked, by electrons, to a copy. 

His soul, the gros bon ange, is stuck in her head, and The House. His spirit, or ti bon ange, ended up as Demogorgon. That's why he watches it crawl away, from where he is in her brain. It's starving, so it feeds on the guilty, temporarily possessing them to be drained. Or it could be he saw the tulpa appear when Eleven though about it, when she found the Russian spy Eleven was sent to kill, just like Vecna does.

Where did the spy go?

What did Demogorgon do with the body?

Is this Russian spy still in The Upside Down?

Now, for my last confession.

I thought my idea for Eleven's tulpa was original. Nope. It was done a lot in the 80's In fact, I think there's an ultimate source for Demogorgon in season 1 of STRANGER THINGS. Check out the beautiful, vintage horror film I, MADMAN. It's about a woman who reads a spellbook, and then is haunted by a demon in one book, a ghost in the other. Eventually, the ghost from the horror novel she's reading comes to life, murdering people in the real world. He's a tulpa.

To defeat him the woman summons the demon in the first book from her head, and it drags the ghost back to Hades, just like Pinhead plus the Cenobites in HELLRAISER. The demon she summons even looks like Demogorgon in STRANGER THINGS season 1. I have to admit, that realization didn't come to me until now. Again, The Duffer Brothers are brilliant artists who deserve more credit than they get. Each of them is a real genius.

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Me, performing comedy at The Ice House in Pasadena, California

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