I was going to write Part 3 on the "Voice of Saruman" and discuss some insights and story implications regarding our well-versed adversary, but I am going to take a break from that and use the last couple of days to illustrate the things that go on in my head, how I approach them, and how they affect me. And some of it does tie to Saruman, anyway.
Sometime early morning I had a brief dream sequence where I was looking at what appeared to be a newspaper (looking at writing is a common theme in many of my dreams). There was a phrase that my eyes zoomed in on that looked to be in the form of either a headline or caption that read:
"Deadly Head Droned".
That was it, and I woke up. As has often been the case with me, I felt like the phrase had meaning and that I was supposed to have seen it, although the nature of the words themselves seemed silly in some way and without a clear story or purpose.
This is how these things often go - either in forms of languages I can't understand, with images and pictures that aren't quite clear, or with even English phrases that don't seem straightforward. But then, as is usually the case, I begin to find meaning in them. The phrase won't leave me, and I will continue to find layers of meaning in it as the day goes on.
When I was in therapy, this was viewed as likely not a good thing. I had a condition that made me attach meaning to what was otherwise gibberish and nonsense, and making all sorts of connections that weren't there. They made no sense to anyone else, and so I should take that as a cue that they probably shouldn't mean anything to me, either.
It is hard to let them go, though. The best analogy I can use is it really is like someone came along and planted a seed in my mind, and then it just starts to grow, with stories just kind of coming out of it. It gets tiring sometimes because many times the dreams that are like this - where you feel that you are supposed to be paying attention to something - come multiple times during the night and I don't sleep very well. I just keep waking up with some new thing I saw, heard, or experienced. And then in waking life, they occupy my mind, even if not always at the forefront, always working in the background so I could be working, talking to someone, or whatever, and some new insight will suddenly present itself. Eureka! It's kind of fun but kind of exhausting. It comes in waves, and I am on one again right now and again it gets a bit tiring.
Anyway, on this phrase from this morning, here is how my mind approached it.
It seemed right away that the 'droned' had multiple levels of meaning, and even different descriptions of actions (meaning, the deadly head both droned, and was droned). That was the first thing.
The second is that this Head was a Being or entity, and obviously not good from its description of it being deadly. Since Saruman was where I left off my last post, and I have done some more thinking on him, I quickly assumed that the Head in question was Saruman. He was the former Head of both the White Council, but also more importantly I believe he is the defacto Head behind many things, including the corrupt Mormon church, which is where I was going using the imagery of that last music video (and which I still plan to go into more detail on).
So, I settled quickly on Saruman as the being referenced, and this seemed right, or at least it seemed to open up or allow for other aspects of the story that opened up as I thought more on it. I also see this is a potential thing for Brigham, but I am not sure if he is grouped in here or not.
So, back to 'droned', both as a thing the Head did, as well was what was done to the Head/ Saruman. First off, it occurred to be that drone, without the d at the end, is actually the name for a male bee (keeping with the honey/ Deseret themes that keep coming up), specifically the types of bees that hope to mate with the queen. I have already mentioned the corrupt sexual nature and crimes of those that belong to Saruman's true order, and which potentially influence him also, but what came specifically to my mind in this instance was what happens to drones heading into winter.
In the fall as things start to wrap up resource-wise and the colony looks to conserve its resources, all of the worker bees (who are all female) take all of the drones in their colony (who are all males), and kick them out of the hive, where they will die of starvation or hypothermia. It should also be noted that drones are used in a figurative sense to talk about an idle or lazy worker, since they do not make any honey.
So, in this case, I took the Deadly Head as being 'droned', as being that he was going to get the drone treatment. The Honey Queen Deseret-Eowyn was going to ensure that this Being was going to have no more place in her kingdom, basically. Simple enough, I guess.
But I also felt like 'droned' was something the Head did. Made sense since heads do have mouths with which to speak. I actually think of the talking Head from C.S. Lewis' "That Hideous Strength" also here, but will save some things from Lewis and his Space Trilogy for another time.
Looking up 'drone' as a verb in Etymonline gives me this:
mid-14c., drounen, "to roar, bellow;" c. 1500, "to give forth a monotonous and unvaried tone, hum, or buzz," imitative (see drone (n.)). In modern times it often is the characteristic sound of airplane engines. Meaning "speak in a dull, monotonous tone" is from 1610s. Related: Droned; droning.
That last definition on speaking in a dull monotonous tone is how I thought of the word, meaning that the Head spoke in that fashion - droning on and on. This brought to mind another dream I had a couple years ago:
In that dream, I stood at the back of a chapel in a Mormon church building. At the pulpit was my best friend from childhood. He was delivering a talk that was the most boring thing I had ever heard. It was delivered in a dull and monotonous way, just like the definition of droning. It was a chore to listen to him, and I looked around me and noticed that everybody was bored out of their mind, some were dozing off... everyone sitting in their pews completely checked out. As I stood there and saw this, suddenly a wave of emotion hit me extremely hard. It was one of absolute sadness . . .this feeling essentially swelled within me and I began to cry. I noticed I was holding something, and when I brought it up to my eyes I saw what it was that had suddenly given me this feeling. It was the charred and severed foot of a small child. I think I wondered why no one else could feel this, and I then woke up.
I will have to elaborate on the child's foot at the end of the post, but for now I will just note that when I realized this morning that the 'Droned' could be also what the Head did, I first thought of that dream with my friend speaking in such a boring, and yet somehow hypnotic, way. I didn't need to look up a definition to make that connection automatically.
However, what was interesting in that definition I pasted in was the reference to a 'tone, hum, or buzz', and this is where it gets fascinating to me, and where I will have to give a tip of the cap to the Fairies.
I mentioned in my allegory of the fiber optic cables (that post here), that this was all part of my effort to make our barn a habitable space for activities other than farming. I originally planned to have our loft an area where the kids could shoot hockey pucks and have other exercise equipment. In the middle of the project, as I was putting up the walls, I realized that this loft could be like the best room on our property. So, I changed plans, moved that recreation area downstairs to where the chickens were supposed to be (thus necessitating the chickens' move to the outside shed for winter... sorry chickens!), and finished the loft as a really nice room. I have my office up here, but also made half of it into a live music room. My daughter had just switched over from piano to guitar lessons, I play the piano/ keyboard, and our youngest son was interested in the drums... so, I figured I would create a jam session room.
It has turned out pretty cool - we have the full deal up here, including a full drum set. Why not? (There is a point to this, by the way, trust me).
However, the guitar thing is new. She had an acoustic guitar, but she is young and acoustic strings are thicker and harder for her to press, so her teacher suggested she get an electric guitar. Which meant another guitar and an amp. No problem.
The only issue, though, in setting everything up was that the amp was generating this crazy buzzing sound. I went through everything to try and resolve this... switched out the amp, had the guitar checked out, and had the electrician out to check all of the grounding wires and connections to make sure everything checked out there. After that all checked out, I even had the energy company out and they drove around scanning for electrical mains that might be off, and even seeing if they could detect air interference. It was nuts. I ultimately found a way to eliminate the buzz by going into the amp software and ratcheting up a noise suppression setting, which helped greatly. It just wasn't fun to play with that level of buzz.
In any case, something that had been recommended to me in my efforts to get to the bottom of the buzz was a product called the Morley Hum Exterminator. A lot of rave reviews about how it worked exist, but it didn't do the trick for me. I still have it, and it is currently sitting on my digital piano like this:
Yes, I took a picture. I told the Fairies while I put them under evaluation that I wasn't going to take pictures, but this one was too good to pass up and it was sitting right next to me, so perhaps they thought that even I wouldn't be too lazy or disinclined to snap a shot.
In the picture, you will note, are gold and silver stereo adapters. The funny story about them is that they were sitting on my desk next to my computer last week as I was typing out my post on the gold and silver crossed keys. I noticed them, and then didn't want to notice them, so I moved them to the top of the piano which sits next to my desk. I unknowingly moved them next to the box containing the Hum Exterminator, which I guess I had left there at some point.
I noticed this actually over the weekend, and it struck me at the time that "Hum" might actually be a double-meaning word, as in it means something in Elvish. Sure enough, it means "to sleep, slumber, or be drowsy". You have got to be kidding me. When I realized this, I was tempted to take a picture, but utterly refused out of principle. So, we have something that could be known as the "Morley Sleep or Drowsiness Exterminator". To exterminate sleep or drowsiness might also be called "Waking Up", right?
It gets better. For the first time the name Morley also struck me. Morley is the maiden name of what I think is my great-great-great-great-great-grandmother (I forget how many greats...). Her name is Diantha Morley, and the farm she lived on and her brother, Isaac, figure prominently in Mormon history. They and their families became converts to Campbellism under Sidney Rigdon in Ohio. When Parley Pratt came along and introduced the Book of Mormon to Rigdon and the Morleys, the were baptized. Diantha's husband, Titus Billings, was said to be the first person baptized after Sidney Rigdon when this occurred.
The interesting thing about the Morley Farm is that they practiced communal living during those years before they became Mormons, and were called "The Family". When the Joseph Smith and other Mormons relocated out to Ohio, Isaac Morley invited many of them to live on his land. He even built a house for Joseph and Emma there on his farm.
Later, Titus Billings would later sell the Morley Farm in 1832 as he was told to do in a revelation that is now D&C 63 (it is an interesting revelation if anyone wants to look into it... not completely unrelated to events now).
Anyway, I am looking at this stupid box with this hum eliminator and these two stereo jack adapters, and a whole story unfolds in an image.
It is the gold and silver 'keys' (or Stones) that will be used in stereo. The song or stories produced by these keys will exterminate sleep (meaning, it will be "Wake Up Time"), and for who? A group of people I have consistently referred to as a Family - the Family of Light. It is they who will finally wake up. This box has now morphed into the "Family Sleep Exterminator" now for me. Crazy, right?
I think the Deadly Head has droned on for long enough, using the pipes and pulpits of Mormonism to confound a message and cast a spell of sleep on the Family for too long. He, and his droning, will be droned - identified and cast out, not having any more place in that Good Family.
And perhaps we will be hum and buzz free, awake, and finally able to get on with playing some real music.
I was about to sign off, but remembered I mentioned the child's foot in my other dream. What was that all about?
Briefly, this has to do with the assault by Pharazon on Eressea. Tolkien didn't give any detail on this in his own writings, or at least only very vaguely in what Christopher Tolkien has in the Silmarillion. Doug included a more detailed account in his second book entitled, aptly, "Words of them which have Slumbered". It is a pretty horrific account of what actually befell those on Eressea by the hands of the Numenoreans on their way to Aman in their quest for eternal life and power. I will not quote it here, but it mentions that children were hunted and killed by ravenous wolves and their bodies were piled up on a hill. That land was also set to fire, thus explaining the foot being charred in my dream. Only through the intervention of a man named Ki-Abroam (Abraham-Tom Bombadil) and Eru was any part of Eressea saved, but much (half) was lost.
I also mentioned 'last couple of days'... there were some interesting dream sequences from the night before last that I was also going to tie in or at least review, but I will leave that for another post.
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