On Friday

“When you surrender to what is and so become fully present, the past ceases to have any power. You do not need it anymore. Presence is the key. Now is the key.”

– Eckhart Tolle

(Recommended reading: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kfVsfOSbJY0)

This essay seeks to trace the diverse philosophical influences and spiritual insights expounded in ‘Friday’, Rebecca Black’s acclaimed critique of the Kantian theory of time as a necessary category of experience, modern ennui and the Existential plight. Drawing on the wealth of Eastern spiritual philosophy as well as Christian theology and morality, Black’s arguments touch on responses to the most profound of human experiences: anxiety, stress, fear and the challenge of standing still in a rotating world. It is the aim of this author to present ‘Friday’ as a welcome, albeit belated, Acquarian commentary of considerable philosophical import made remarkable by its refreshing candour and enthusiasm to embrace often underused analytical resources in the spiritual teachings and indigenous theologies of both Occident and Orient.

I.

(Yeah, ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah)

Oh-oh-oh, oh yeah, yeah

Yeah, yeah

Yeah-ah-ah

Yeah-ah-ah

Yeah-ah-ah

Yeah-ah-ah

Yeah, yeah, yeah

The prolegomena to ‘Friday’ serves as an exhilarating summation of Black’s entire work. Born and educated in California, home to the largest concentration of Native Americans in the United States, Black’s influences are made immediately evident by her paraphrasing of the Navajo spiritual ‘Yeha Noha’in a volley of ecstatic ‘yeah’s and ‘yeah-ah’s, affirming as they do the indigenous song’s simple meaning: “wishes of happiness and prosperity”. The opening lines to Friday are an unmistakable invitation to passion, positivity and the affirmation of living as an inherently sacred activity.

Yeha Noha

The preponderance of the ‘yeah’s, almost wearisome in their number, is distinctly redolent of Allen Ginsberg’s footnote to ‘Howl‘, where the word ‘Holy’ is intoned fifteen times without context, introduction or prior warning. The challenge presented by this repetition is to engage with the stark simplicity and naked potency of the word, the eternal logos, which was there in the Beginning, was with God and was God (John 1:1).

II.

7 a.m., waking up in the morning

Got to be fresh, got to go downstairs

Got to have my bowl, got to have cereal

Revelling in unconventiality, Black elects to juxtapose the main body of her thesis with the prologue by commencing the discussion with a number rather than a word. The numerological significance of the number 7 has been exhaustively interpreted throughout both theology and academic discourses and its potential for analysis is so broad as to be beyond the full remit of this piece. However, it is submitted that when taken in the broader context of Black’s Oriental spiritual influences as evidenced throughout her entire oeuvre, it would be remiss to ignore the number’s relevance as it has been elaborated on in Asian philosophy.

Muladhara: the base chakra, presented as a yellow square with four red petals

Chinese numerology attributes mixed meanings to the number 7, with its Mandarin pronunciation as qi or chi having the additional meaning of ‘life-force’ or ‘positive energy’. Indeed, Hindu and Buddhist tradition recognise seven chakras, with the seventh – Muladhara – representing the seat of ‘coiled’ corporeal energy and sexual potential: kundalini. Hence the natural sequence of awakening and consciousness to which Black refers – ‘waking up in the morning’ – is an arousal to the presence of qi, the uncoiling of kundalini: waking up at 7 with the need to be fresh, to be vibrant, to be truly present.

Furthermore, Black’s recognition of the binary need to go ‘down’-stairs having only woken ‘up’ is a classic expression of Taoist principle: the coincidentia oppositorum, the yin and yang. Tantric philosophy honours both states as natural expressions of lingam energy – an outlook, it is regretted, which is not shared by modern Western culture, where to be ‘up and running’ is perceived of as the healthy, ‘natural’ default, while being ‘down and out’ is an undesirable condition. Modern society has been mechanized to the point where it routinely expresses itself in terms consistent with this idea of strict dichotomy: it is better to have a computer which is ‘up’ than one which is ‘down’, for instance. Black neatly sidesteps the impoverished exclusivism of this philosophy, recognising both up and down as intrinsically linked states which are mutually dependent: it would be equally unsustainable to remain woken up without going downstairs to access the nourishment that awaits there, as it would to remain downstairs, tirelessly enduring endless bowls of cereal without any prospect of ascent to the fertile dark of sleep and dreams.

The significance of that classic artistic symbol, the bowl, facilitates the hermeneutical meter of the piece. Having embodied the lingam energy of arousal, rising and uprightness, Black instantly switches to the yoni-like embrace of the cavernous bowl, the empty space, the curved uterine receptacle into which the very stuff of life is poured and emptied in the daily menstruation of eating and digestion.

Demeter carrying sheafs of cereal

Cereal remains one of the more potent symbols in Black’s meditation on the unity of opposites. Demeter, the Greek goddess of the harvest traditionally depicted in art as holding a sheaf of cereal grain, was mother to Persephone, the maiden abducted by Hades. According to legend, Zeus secured a compromise whereby Persephone could temporarily return to her mother on earth but, since she had eaten pomegranate seeds while in the underworld, Persephone was fated to spend the rest of each year with her husband Hades, reverberating back and forth between worlds in an eternal cycle. Thus, during those months when Demeter and Persephone were reunited, spring and summer would reign in the world of the living. However, Persephone’s descent back to the land of the shadows would see autumn and winter sweep the earth. Thus, the cereal reference bespeaks the cycle of the seasons, the rising and descending of Persephone to and from the land of the living. Spring and autumn, summer and winter, world and underworld, up and down, lingam and yoni – sleep and cereal.

Additionally, Black’s references to Christian soteriological myth are perhaps the most thinly veiled of all. Christ, having been raised high on the cross in the most supreme act of agape love, immediately commences the descent into Hell (alluded to in Acts 2:31). This theme of the symbiosis of high and low, up and down, is one which resonates throughout the entire Bible and by expressing this article of faith through music, Black follows in an established tradition commenced by George Friederic Handel whose Messiah famously applied the prophecy of Isaiah 40:4 that “Ev’ry valley shall be exalted, every mountain and hill laid low”. The significance of this influence on Black’s work remains clear throughout: Christ’s own up/down trajectory, of course, occurred on what became known as Good Friday.

III.

Seeing everything, the time is going

Ticking on and on, everybody’s rushing

Got to get down to the bus stop

Got to catch my bus,

I see my friends (my friends)

The oppressive phenomenon of Time is a provocative undercurrent to Black’s essay. Prima facie, there appears to be no small amount of poignancy, even angst, in the author’s reflection that time is ‘going’ and everybody is ‘rushing’, leaving the author bereaved with nothing but the prospect of bus stops, deadlines and further Time-based pressure to endure. However, taking this chapter in the context of its broader spiritual dogmatism, a more peaceful vista is allowed to emerge.

Crucial to this development is, once more, the opening declaration. Black’s profession to be ‘seeing everything’ transfigures the remaining verse into a meditation on unhurried calm rather than any frantic to-and-fro of hectic stress. The gift of vision – the ability to be ‘seeing everything’ – is a form of Christian grace, as well as a cornerstone for inner stillness and acceptance. Eckhart Tolle describes how peace from the incessant mental noise of an overactive and anxious mind may be accessed through the spiritual practice of ‘watching the thinker’ – that is, by becoming aware of the overexertions of the mind and thereby seeing and realizing that ‘you are not your mind’. The gift of seeing everything, and so being at peace, was articulated by many of Black’s predecessors – most notable Mukti, who wrote that “When you look without grasping, the whole universe is looking out of your eyes.”

The symbol of the bus stop is also one of profound significance. In Stillness Speaks, Tolle emphasizes the bus stop as a sacred place where the inner pathways to contemplative stillness may be traversed: “Everybody has time for a moment of space, and it could start with taking a single thing, like taking one conscious in-and-out breath occasionally while you are waiting at the bus stop or at the traffic light, or while you are going up and down in the elevator.”

From her vantage point of inner stillness, Black is able to calmly observe the pandemonium unfolding around her without being affected or swayed off course by it. Her ability to watch time going, to observe it ticking on and to see the entire human race panicking to keep to its deadly rhythms is exercised from a position of supreme peace, awareness and consciousness. Dean Moriarty, the famous hero of Kerouac’s ‘On The Road’, was wont to repeat that this transcendental awareness – to ‘know time’ – was the fundamental quality of enlightenment: “the point being that we know what IT is and we know TIME and we know that everything is really FINE… Everything is fine, God exists, we know time. Everything since the Greeks has been predicated wrong. You can’t make it with geometry and geometrical systems of thinking. It’s all this!”

By remaining fully conscious, by seeing everything, Black is able to remain perfectly still in unhurried readiness within the unfolding of the present moment. Verse 16 of the Tao Te Ching affirms that such patience attains to all things and that it is into this onlooking, ungrasping presence that the universe pours itself:

Empty yourself of everything.
Let the mind become still.
The ten thousand things rise and fall while the Self watches their return.
They grow and flourish and then return to the source.

“God’s greatest gifts”, wrote St John of the Cross, “fall into those hearts which are empty of self”. Sure enough, having emptied herself completely, Black’s friends come into sight. The gifts of companionship, amity and fidelity have arrived.

IV.

Kicking in the front seat

Sitting in the back seat

Got to make my mind up

Which seat can I take?

The Damascene Conversion

Encapsulating as it does the essence of Existentialist thought, Black’s conundrum over the issue of which seat to occupy carries unmistakeable resonance of Hamlet’s soliloquys: whether it is nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous back-seat sitting, or to take arms against a sea of front seats, and by kickin’, end them – indeed. The symbolic act of kicking echoes the famous story of Acts 26:14, when Saul was struck blind by God while travelling on the road to Damascus: “We all fell to the ground, and I heard a voice saying to me in Aramaic, ‘Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me? It is hard for you to kick against the goads.’” It is no mere coincidence that Black presents this theme while travelling in the company of her friends: the Damascene conversion itself occurred while Saul was “on the road… [with] my companions” (Acts 26:13).

V.

 It’s Friday, Friday

Got to get down on Friday

Everybody’s looking forward to the weekend, weekend

Friday, Friday

Getting down on Friday

Everybody’s looking forward to the weekend

Partying, partying (yeah) Partying, partying (yeah)

Fun, fun, fun, fun

Looking forward to the weekend

The author then moves to espousing abandon of Bacchanalian proportions in the ecstatic prayer ‘fun fun fun fun’, which – by no accident – echoes the chanting meditation practised by Zen Buddhists in their pursuit of the enlightening trance-like state – santori in the nomenclature of Japanese Buddhism, or samadhi which in Hindu rite denotes the state of mind where one is “not devoured by time, is not bound by karma, is invulnerable to any weapon and unassailable by any person”. Again, by no coincidence, samadhi and santori form the etymological root of the word ‘Saturday’ which is, as Black helpfully points out, ‘tomorrow’. Kafka, in many ways the classic Existentialist, famously despaired that humanity would not re-enter Paradise until the day after the second coming of Christ. Black’s rebuttal could not be more forceful, as she ridicules any and all concept of some blissful divine state that is imagined to rest permanently and tantalisingly in the near future rather than in the heart of the Now. ‘Friday’, above all else, represents a considered criticism of the procrastinating ennui of modern man. Excessive focus on ‘tomorrow‘ or, more mystically yet, what ‘comes afterwards‘ is to deny one’s self the exultation and liberation of total immersion in the present moment – Friday or ‘free day’.

VI.

7:45, we’re driving on the highway

Cruising so fast, I want time to fly

Fun, fun, think about fun

You know what it is

Having repeatedly affirmed the imperative to ‘get down’, Black then moves to balance the narrative with references to ‘upward’ spiritual movement: the ‘high’ way, the urge to fly and exhortations to cerebral activity and philosophical inquiry (the imperative to ‘think’ about fun). Once more, the central enthusiasms of Black’s argument are prefaced by a number bearing profound significance – in this instance 7:45. It has been speculated that, having drawn upon the primary sources of symbolism from the Orient (Chinese numerology, Tantra) in her reference to 7 in the first verse, Black chooses to attribute an Occidental (and predominantly Biblical) significance to 7:45 in the second.

The Anointing of Jesus

7:45 is the citation in the Gospel of Luke where Christ rebukes Simon as follows: “You did not give me a kiss, but this woman, from the time I entered, has not stopped kissing my feet.” This woman, named in John 12:1-3 as Mary, sister of Martha, was known to have lived a sinful life and Simon and his companions were embarrassed that she had invaded the house and was tearfully anointing the feet of Jesus with spikenard from an alabaster jar. Intervening on her behalf, Christ tells the parable of the moneylender who forgave two debts, one for five hundred denarii, the other for fifty. “Which of them will love him more?”, Christ asks – to which Simon replies “The one who had the bigger debt cancelled” at Luke 7:43. Biblical scholarship diverges at this point as to the exact response of Jesus. The King James Bible (Cambridge ed.) suggests “Thou hast rightly judged”, the Bible in Basic English (one of Black’s most treasured resources) states “Your decision is right” while the International Standard Version (2008) gives “You have answered correctly”. Black’s suggestion, innovative to the last, offers an equally viable response from the Redeemer: “You know what it is”. In an essay now teeming with religious cross-references, this chapter of ‘Friday’ echoes Psalm 139 – “O Lord, you search me and you know me. You know when I sit and when I rise…” – whether it is at 7 a.m. waking up in the morning or otherwise.

VII.

 I got this, you got this

My friend is by my right

I got this, you got this

Now you know it

The penultimate chapter of ‘Friday’ offers an epilogue that is equally playful as it is layered with rich spiritual significance. The opening two lines present a mischievous deviation of poetic meter as Black toys with the established structure of the Japanese haiku. Although the haiku traditionally consists of 17 syllables, the shorter sound units used in English have necessitated some adjustments to form when translated. To maintain the rhythm of the haiku, then, poetic scholarship (including most notably the recommendations of the Haiku Society of America in 1973) has concluded that 12 English syllables approximates to the 17 on or morae which are used as a rule in Japanese. Having achieved seamless movement between Eastern and Western metaphor throughout the piece, Black’s subtle fusion of the two in the 12-syllabled “I got this, you got this, My friend is by my right” – the Western expression of an Eastern art form – represents a perfect communion of yin and yang, while retaining a nuanced wit and playfulness resonant with the masters of classical Zen lore.

Moreover, the symbolic significance of the second line is considerable, resonating as it does with centuries of Christian art and Eastern geomancy. The Session of Christ, the doctrine which states that Christ is now seated at the right hand of God the Father, finds several sources in Scripture – including, for example, Acts 2:33 (“Exalted to the right hand of God, he has received from the Father the promised Holy Spirit and has poured out what you now see and hear”) and Psalm 110:1 (“The LORD says to my Lord: “Sit at my right hand until I make your enemies a footstool for your feet”). Judeo-Christian culture considers the right hand to be a position of honour, with the left regarded as negative and unfavourable – echoed in the Latin sinister and Italian sinistre. Indeed, the argot of the corporate world recognises the provenance of the ‘right-hand man’. In a further homage to her broad musical ancestry, Black’s positioning of this verse towards the end of ‘Friday’ recalls the final verse of the carol Once In Royal David’s City, where it is foretold that “We shall see Him; but in Heaven, Set at God’s right hand on high”. A Western reading, therefore, is compelled to regard the positioning of Black’s friend as a favourable omen and a deliberate invocation of sanctity by the author.

The Session of Christ

However, Black’s message is so consumed with the equilibrium of the coincidentia oppositorum that no such Judeo-Christian conclusion is permitted to stand without challenge from the East. Chapter 31 of the Tao Te Ching notes that the right hand is in fact an ominous, forbidding position of dreadful power – a portentous development in times of devastation and war:

“The superior man ordinarily considers the left hand the most honourable place,

but in time of war the right hand.

The second in command of the army has his place on the left.

The general commanding in chief has his on the right;

his place, that is, is assigned to him as in the rites of mourning.”

 

This quintessential Blackian juxtaposition returns the reader to the middle ground between the beatific vision which the blessed will receive of Christ seated at the right hand of the Father, and the wartime mourning foretold by the right hand in Taoist philosophy. Her repeated assertion that both you and I have ‘got this’ might represent a further description of the unity of opposites – the side-by-side positioning of East and West, the yin and yang, you and I – with one relying on the other for definition. Cognitive psychology contends that the right hemisphere of the brain is the province of creativity, imagination and musical awareness, while the left hemisphere controls reason, speech and writing. One cannot lay claim to the superior attributes of one hemisphere, Black suggests, without negating the role played by its counterpart in animating those qualities on which it depends. So it is with the conflicts between East and West, left and right: each relies on the other for their very existence, despite seeming to remain permanently at odds. The lesson, then, begins with the satire that the right is sacred in the West and ominous in the East, the left is sinister to the West and honourable in the East. However, by combining both hemispheres, we reach a deadlock – a dead heat – where right is no longer ‘right’ but objectively neutral and indistinguishable from the left. The conflicting sides have been equalised and spiritual peace breaks out as yin and yang achieve total harmony and communion. From this new platform, Black remarks, it is possible to see everything without being swayed into the past (the left) or the future (the right) but to behold eternal truth as being alive in the fullness of the present moment, the immediate, the Now in which we know it.

VIII.

Yesterday was Thursday, Thursday

Today is Friday, Friday (partying)

We-we-we so excited

We so excited

We going to have a ball today

Having achieved divine insight, Black is able to behold the illusion of Time with the alacrity and exuberance of a child and her liberation from the twin pulls of past and future gives way to great rejoicing in the Now. Flying into an ecstasy of religious proportions, Black breaks free from the conventional structures of language and grammatical order, defying the dry regulations of sentence formation in a flurry of childlike exclamations and repetitions of simple, verb-free phrases. Having displayed no small amount of epistolary sophistication earlier in her work, this sudden lapse into incoherent ecstasy is especially significant: Black’s rapturous monologue bears many of the characteristics of glossolalia, or speaking in tongues displayed by the apostles of Christ. In Mark 16:17, the risen Jesus announces “And these signs shall follow them that believe: In my name they shall cast out devils. They shall speak with new tongues.“, while in Acts 2:4 the arrival of the Holy Spirit is marked by the apostles’ newfound ability to speak in foreign languages hitherto unknown by them: “And they were all filled with the Holy Ghost, and they began to speak with divers tongues, according as the Holy Ghost gave them to speak.”

Pentecost

Black’s sudden epiphany regarding the illusion of Time and the all-pervasive brilliance of the Now collapses all inhibitions and allows her to speak from her centre with the unmistakeable peace and excitement of a seer who has awoken to find that, in the words of E.E. Cummings, “now the ears of my ears awake and now the eyes of my eyes are opened”. Today is Friday – the day named after Venus, Roman goddess of love. The day upon which God’s only son gave His life for the love of mankind. The day which was set apart in ancient Celtic times for rising above the illusions of the world and engage in rituals to become closer to God (the Irish Aoine being an old term for ‘fasting’). Indeed, the author’s very own name has been inextricably linked with the day of which she speaks: ‘Black Friday’ being the day after Thanksgiving and the beginning of the Christmas season – a day of huge excitement in the author’s native USA. “This is the day that the Lord has made” – and so Black rejoices and is glad in it (Psalm 118:24).

IX.

 Tomorrow is Saturday

And Sunday comes afterwards

I don’t want this weekend to end

Black’s concluding notes are an extraordinary exercise in theological appreciation. Friday is the most holy day of the week in Islam, Saturday is the Jewish Sabbath while Sunday is the Christian day of worship: an intriguing metaphor for unity amidst the three major monotheistic religions, existing almost as an Abrahamic trinity – ‘three faiths, one God’ or ‘three days, one weekend’. Once more, Black playfully sidesteps the empty demands of linear Time and dislodges each religion from their chronological position: Islam (Friday), the youngest of the three, is placed before Judaism (Saturday), which itself is older than Christianity (Sunday). The author’s desire for the weekend to never end is underpinned by the realisation that the dance of East and West is one which can never end: the ‘ball’ which we have ‘today’ is the bi-hemispheric planet whose revolution and orbit possess no beginning or end. The linearistic mindset which Black parodies in her simplistic deconstruction discussed above is held up for us to see it for the ridiculous construction it is, beneath which lies true reality, free of Time, free of beginnings and ends, free of chronologies and past and future tenses: “I tell you the truth”, Jesus answers in John 8:58: “before Abraham was born, I am!”. Having dispensed with the illusions of division and Time, and accomplished her exposition of the eternal Now, Black concludes the discussion in the most ironically (and appropriately) cyclical and inconclusive fashion – beginning as she ended, reiterating a mantra, this time of ‘Friday, Friday…’ until her sound, like all sound, gradually returns into the silence from which it emerged, leaving us enriched, enlightened and yes – thoroughly looking forward to the weekend.

2011

10/21

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