Hello all who have been following this discussion... I have some new questions, concerning Prince's spiritual peaks... Maybe some of youall have thought about these things as well.

Kind of picking up where the last thread left off - well, more or less - what is that chant at the end of "Three Chains of Gold?" Is that "you will love me for me?" As in, "She just loves me for me" on TRC?

I'm finding all sorts of links...

Carry on, all!

That is to say, I am finding all sorts of odd links between one album and the next... the same themes coming back and back.

And I think so far, that the second disc of "Emancipation" is the principle one, the thesis statement, more or less - am I right?

Heiress said:

"U will go before me"

http://www.dtt-lyrics.com...bol.html#3

If I don't think about the fact that she left me
If I don't see the pearls fall from the sky
If I don't hear the accusations of blasphemy
If I don't feel the tears in my eyes
This is the best day of my life

U say U'll call me and then U don't
I want 2 kiss U and then I won't
We both do nothing and call it love
Is this love?
Is this love?

This morning I wanted a cup of coffee
But I didn't have any cream
Last night I wanted some inspiration
But I didn't have any dreams
Coupled with the fact that U belong 2 another
Whose name is self-righteousness
So evil girl, if one of us has a date with the undertaker
Which one will it be?
U can cry 4ever, but U'll get no sympathy
This is the best day of my life!

I've got 3 chains of gold
And they will shine 4ever
They are the nucleus of my soul
Melt down? No, they will never
I've got 3 chains of gold
And they will shine 4ever
They are the nucleus of my soul
Melt down? No, they will never

Yes

Give back the chains
If U don't, U will die
Nothing should come between U and I

I've got 3 chains of gold
And they will shine 4ever
If one of us has 2 go
U will go before me
If one of us has 2 go (3 chains of gold)
U will go before me (3 chains of gold)
U will go before me, baby (They will shine 4ever)
Cuz I sho'nuff say U will

(3 chains of gold)
(U will go before me) {x4}
I've got 3 chains of gold

They gonna shine… 4ever, 4ever, 4ever!
(3 chains of gold)

DTT Lyrics site

langebleu said:

ay, that is heinous!

... let me just add that I don't have a theory worked out at all for this song.

the nucleus of my soul? am pondering that one.

I never understood what he meant by "u will go b4 me". Does he mean in death or something else? any thoughts?

destinyismine said:

That's kind of how I'm taking it now, in lieu of mre obscure meanings...

he means death as in if you dont give up the gold you will go before me

HAMISHA said:

... back to some archetypal meaning of "gold," then?

Has anyone remarked how much fire imagery there is in in general?

Fire destroys, but it also refines... and it's the masculine principle, the yang.

... and speaking of rampant heterosexual masculinity, the microphone gun? Gangster glam? ol' Tommy Barbarella? (my little daughters points to him and says "Ma-dame"?)...

One of these days, I know I'm going to have to do an investigation of the power of Barbarella, due to the fact that it's had such an influence on so many artists I like - Duran Duran, to state the most obvious... I could not get through that movie, the one time I tried to watch it as a teenager. Will have to try again!

he is saying give back the chains ( gold ) or you will die meaning if you dont you will die before me

HAMISHA said:

great, so the chains are the nucleus of his soul, which she still holds in her hands?

is this a devil-woman?

The key line: "so evil girl, if one of us has a date with the undertaker which one will it be? U can pray 4 Heaven but u'll get no sympathy".

"Give back the chains
If U don't, U will die"

?

(mulling it over)

Has anyone else noticed all the third eye symbols?

Like the one over the doorway at Paisley Park studios... or the one in the "Holy River" video, blooming out of a pink rose - a feminine, innocent third eye presiding over the proceedings...

Heiress said:

...or the song "Third Eye"?

JediMaster said:

On "The Truth," right? I don't have that one. I keep losing the auctions...

From

http://www.princelyrics.c...=14#3rdeye

3rd Eye
Using a special code he accessed his mind
In search of the reason why
In passion and fashion he began travelin' time
3rd eye, 3rd eye, 3rd eye

The serpent approves
Then appears between Adam's thighs
And he tries 2 release upon Eve the nectar
The injector tries
He tries, he tries, he tries

So abduction complete
All stand on their feet
Look at one another and cry

What have we done?
Could this be the fun
On the dotted line 4 which I did sign?
Oh yeah

I resign from the notion
Cuz yours was the potion
That I'm supposed 2 die 4
I resign

In self-pity so dark
This shitty and stark
Realization is all that will soothe

Ultimately the only one
That can save U is U
Your God is inside and 4 that God U will do
Whatever it takes
If nothing else is true
The only one that can save U is U, yeah

(Shoobedoop)

©1997 NPG Records - ASCAP

Heiress said:

They prolly cost so much money he wants them back.

Novabreaker said:

NO, this is something DEEP and SYMBOLIC full of archetypal meaning!!



... haha, like a high school promise ring...

There are really too many songs to work with, in an overview of Spiritual Utopias...

Here's what I have so far, though (not conclusive):

Sister
Controversy
Sexuality
1999
Lady Cab Driver
Let's Go Crazy
When Doves Cry
I Would Die 4 U
Purple Rain
Around the World In a Day
Paisley Park
The Ladder
Temptation
Mountains
The Cross
I No
Anna Stesia
My Name is Prince
And God Created Woman
7
Gold
Sex in the Summer
The Holy River
Saviour
Friend, Lover, Sister, Mother, Wife
Slave

... I am working up to TRC era just now!

By the way, if anyone wants to check out the first thread (which mysteriously is locked, despite the fact that everyone was getting along famously. I assume this is a glitch, not a mod decision), here it is:

http://www.prince.org/msg...1968?sub=1

JediMaster said:

It was locked?? That's what happened to it?

Maybe I'd better find out what's going on... I'd like that thread back!

Heiress said:

Me too! No reason at all for us being unable to post on it! It was a great thread!

JediMaster said:

By the way, I found a page of Jung that seems to exactly explain "Three Chains of Gold."

Heiress said:

Cool! Share!

here we go:

Jung, C.G. (1959), The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious, vol. 9, pt. 1 of The Collected Works of C.G. Jung, London: Bollingen p. 30


178 There is no consciousness without discrimination of opposites. This is the paternal principle, the Logos, which eternally struggles to extricate itself from the primal warmth and primal darkness of the maternal womb; in a word, from unconsciousness. Divine curiosity yearns to be born and does not shrink from conflict, suffering or sin. Unconsciousness is the primal sin, evil itself, for the Logos. Therefore its first creative act of liberation is matricide, and the spirit that dared all heights and all depths must, as Synesius says, suffer the divine punishment, enchainment on the rocks of the Caucasus. Nothing can exist without its opposite; the two were one in the beginning and will be one again in the end. Consciousness can only exist through continual recognition of the unconscious, just as everything that lives must pass through many deaths.
179 The stirring up of conflict is a Luciferian virtue in the true sense of the word. Conflict engenders fire, the fire of affects and emotions, and like every other fire it has two aspects, that of combustion and that of creating light. On the one hand, emotion is the moment when steel meets flint and a spark is struck forth, for emotion is the chief source of consciousness. There is no change from darkness to light or from inertia to movement without emotion.
180 The woman whose fate it is to be a disturbing element is not solely destructive, except in pathological cases. Normally the disturber is herself caught in the disturbance; the worker of change is herself changed, and the glare of the fire she ignites both illuminates and enlightens all the victims of the entanglement. What seemed a senseless upheaval becomes a process of purification:

So that all that is vain
Might dwindle and wane.
(Faust, part II, Act 5.)

181 If a woman of this type remains unconscious of the meaning of her function, if she does not know what she is
Part of that power which would
Ever work evil but engenders good, 2

she will herself perish by the sword she brings. But consciousness transforms her into a deliverer and redeemer.

(Ibid., Part 1, Act 1).

Reposting a bit of that long quote... Is this not the very definition of a muse?



180 The woman whose fate it is to be a disturbing element is not solely destructive, except in pathological cases. Normally the disturber is herself caught in the disturbance; the worker of change is herself changed, and the glare of the fire she ignites both illuminates and enlightens all the victims of the entanglement. What seemed a senseless upheaval becomes a process of purification:

So that all that is vain
Might dwindle and wane.
(Faust, part II, Act 5.)

181 If a woman of this type remains unconscious of the meaning of her function, if she does not know what she is
Part of that power which would
Ever work evil but engenders good, 2

she will herself perish by the sword she brings. But consciousness transforms her into a deliverer and redeemer.

(Ibid., Part 1, Act 1).

wow!

JediMaster said:

I was somehow reminded of "3 chains of gold" by the last bit of that excerpt, especially where the girl is saying "you're going to die!"