A Preview into the Newly released edition of Lightning In a Bottle : A Book Series On the Most Impo
Track # 4
Love Over Gold
The title track was a masterful creation by Mark Knopfler and is, yet again, most certainly one of finest songs ever written in Rock history. The song featured the album’s quintessential message, “Love Over Gold”! Knopfler saw this message spray painted on a wall and it stuck with him for a very long time! For Knopfler, the statement represented that if personal freedom was ever going to be achieved in the physical realm, then it would have to come through the inner projection of LOVE outwards, onto society, onto the diseased world built upon Lies, Hate and Violence. Thus, the principle message in the song was that we must CHANGE the way we view the physical world "out there", we must approach every single moment out of the vibration of Love, which is Honesty, Integrity and Peacefulness...
"You pay no heed to danger and less to advice..."
The song was constructed lyrically from his signature recording on the Making Movies album, Skateaway, which was Knopfler’s first deep musical foray into the Spiritual World of Human existence. Skateaway featured a young woman that had transformed her life by doing nothing more than living her "highest high". She no longer feared the "out there" filled with dangerous traffic, angry cab drivers and stalkers of the night. By ALLOWING herself to completely embrace the moment, and follow her absolute passion of rollerblading throughout the city (with headphones on, no less), skating and dancing out her artistic impressions of the music that she listened to, she had transcended the physical world "out there"! Whether she realized it consciously or not, she had created a "Zen Moment" by forcing the physical world to bend to her WILL by consciously focusing on one thing, her passion!
"I seen a girl on a one way corridor stealing down a wrong way street, for all the world like an urban toreador, she had wheels on, on her feet..."
https://youtu.be/GNW8ZPh4Sp4
She was "making movies on location" and she didn’t even know what that meant, and she didn't need to, she was just living in the moment! This song was a powerful representation of how ALL OF US are supposed to be living our lives…without Fear, doing whatever pleases us THE MOST in any moment. She turned the dangers of rollerblading amongst all of the road traffic within a city into a game of her own design, one that saw her living life to the fullest, in complete joy! As you watch the video above, pay attention to the lyrics as if you are hearing them for the first time...let Knopfler's carefully chosen words be free inside of you...don't pass judgments on them...just still your mind and listen...
Well the cars do their usual dances, same old cruise and the kerbside crawl
But the roller girl she's taking chances, they just love to see her take them all
No fears alone at night she’s sailing through the crowd
In her ears the phones are tight and the music’s playing loud
Hallelujah, here she comes, Queen Rollerball
Enchanté, what can I say, don’t care at all
You know she used to have to wait around
She used to be the lonely one
But now that she can skate around town
She’s the only, only one
She gets rock n roll a rock n roll station
And a rock n roll dream
She’s making movies on location
She don’t know what it means
But the music make her wanna be the story
And the story was whatever was the song what it was
Rollergirl don’t worry DJ play the movies all night long
She tortures taxi drivers just for fun
She like to read their lips
Says toro toro taxi see ya tomorrow my son
I swear she let a big truck graze her hip
She got her own world in the city
You can’t intrude on her, no, oh-no
She got her own world in the city
‘Cos the city’s been so rude to her
The girl, Skateaway, triumphed over the crowded, loud, dirty and dangerous cityscape by refusing to see (or hear) ANY of these things...to her, the crowded streets were merely the "platform" by which she played her games. And through listening to the entire song, you never once harbored a feeling of worry or concern for Skateaway, she wasn't in harms way of getting run over by the "out there", she was in charge, she was playing on her home turf! Like Professor Tolkien's character, Tom Bombadil, she was the Master, the Master over herself, no one ruled Tom Bombadil and Tom ruled no one, which by the way has been the central theme behind ALL of the writings of Ayn Rand (who is John Galt?). Knopfler's song, Love Over Gold, built upon this deep understanding that the secret to happiness in our physical lives, came from the rejection of Fear and the acceptance of Love…and all of Love’s rewards. Have the courage to receive ALL of the gifts that God has bestowed upon you and never let fear dissuade you from becoming your true self...
"An original is always worth more than a copy..."
Knopfler structured the song into three distinct parts (verses)…the first section focused on choosing one’s passion in the face of society’s built in Fears…the second section featured the spirit, or essence of Skateaway, from Making Movies, in complete control of her physical experience, even manifesting instantaneously from one location to another…while the third section brilliantly spelled out the solution to our physical world’s perceived problems, “it takes Love over Gold, and mind over matter to do what you do that you must”! This was true Genius, and it represents the answer for all of us who seek for personal control and happiness within the framework of our own lives! Once again, Knopfler left the deepest, truest, parts of himself hanging out in the wind for everyone to see...that could…this was selflessness and courage rarely witnessed by a musical artist from any era...with MILLIONS of dollars hanging in the balance...
"You're a dancer on thin ice..."
During the song’s beginning, at the intro, the principle melody was played softly and bittersweet; which sounded slightly out of place after all of the contrast that was featured on the previous track. This was purposefully designed by Knopfler, the proverbial calm after the storm...to drive home the subtle, but powerful message of Love Over Gold, he preceded it with the striking divergence of Industrial Disease. Both Knopfler’s acoustic guitar and Clark’s piano gently, tenderly touched their notes/chords; however, by the end, the song’s message of Love over all else was played powerfully, resonating in unison with the entire band...
You walk out on the high wire
You’re a dancer on thin ice
You pay no heed to the danger
And less to advice
Your footsteps are forbidden
But with knowledge of your sin
You throw your love to all the strangers
And caution to the wind
This brilliant first verse set the stage for the song’s character (which could have been female or male...but for the purposes of this analysis I will set as a more mature version of Skateaway). Like the spirit of the young Skateaway, the protagonist was following her own desires "out there", in our physical world; and please note, that these were activities that society would label as dangerous! She walked out “on a high wire” she was “a dancer on thin ice”. It was the “out there” that was describing the wire as “high” and the ice as “thin” through their unnecessary and unsolicited advice or laws! She was experiencing “forbidden” places...things that society didn’t want us humans going near…they labeled her as a trespasser and perhaps even a criminal for her “careless, reckless” actions. But she knew that their words and laws were empty, and held no power over her, she realized that their meaningless physical laws had no pronouncement over her world. And yet, instead of hating them, or judging them as “wrong”, she merely sent them (and everyone else) her Love...as she danced gracefully beyond their boundaries, throwing “caution to the wind”! Knopfler was demonstrating to us, Love over Gold in action…she was connected to God Consciousness (in our nonphysical state) and thus, was living her physical life without Fear! When you remove Fear out of your life, all that is left is Love…and that is pure logic and common sense...
And you go dancing through doorways
Just to see what you will find
Leaving nothing to interfere
With the crazy balance of your mind
And when you finally reappear
At the place where you came in
You’ve thrown your love to all the strangers
And caution to the wind
This second verse demonstrated life as we were meant to live it! “You go dancing through doorways just to see what you will find, leaving nothing to interfere with the crazy balance of your mind” referenced humanity having the courage and the clear vision to do whatever we wanted, in any moment! Her mind was her own, she was her own master, she was free from the false beliefs that society enforces upon the masses, not caring what people thought or said…doing things just to find out what would occur (true Science)! This is called a hands-on experience, and this is what life is supposed to be like...not simply taking everything that we are told by others to be our truth...that doesn't work at all for the INDIVIDUAL! We do things because situations present themselves...because we want to...there doesn’t need to be any other reason and none of us, EVER, require anyone else’s approval to do anything...that is freedom! We are eternal beings gifted with God's powers inside ourselves; thus, we shouldn’t ever think in terms of whether ANYTHING is appropriate or not! The only reason that we think along these lines is due to the fact that from the moment we are born, WE ARE TOLD WHAT TO DO and WHAT NOT TO DO! We are taught society's concept of Singularity. That everything is a fixed event in space and time, and therefore must be judged so that we can rationalize the said event (you know, what an "intelligent" person does). And not just as a baby, but all through our time living at home, going to school, watching TV, going to the movies, or interacting with any form of organized society...WE ARE ALWAYS BEING TOLD WHAT TO DO and WHAT TO THINK, and to treat everything separately! And yet, this perspective epitomizes insanity as everything within God's creation is a DUALITY. We live in a physical reality where everything is this AND that (Duality), not this or that (Singularity). Now, I am not making this stuff up, so follow this along carefully...EVERY structural aspect to our Earth possesses an opposite (Duality)...we all possess FREE WILL...so, how does singularity fit in, at all (everything being viewed as a separate, adjudicated event), with our physical reality??? The fact is, it doesn't! We have been mind controlled from birth to think in a measured, robotic, inhuman way; so much so, that we are rewarded when we do think from the perspective of singularity, and we are punished/ridiculed for seeing life as a Duality...it's that simple...fake monkey see, fake monkey do...
"Nickelodeon and Kellogg engage in business practices that literally sicken our children. It's a multi-media brainwashing and re-education campaign...and a disease-promoting one at that!"
Michael Jackson, shortly before he conveniently died
Herein lies the actual power of the Matrix, our society and those that rule it...to attack our minds, from moment one, with false, illusory beliefs so that WE POLICE OURSELVES by perceiving ALL things as either "right" or "wrong", "good" or "bad", "helpful" or "unhelpful", "heaven" or "hell"…singularities. And again, as in the novel/movie, V for Vendetta, the character of Evey signifies our brainwashed state of policing the self! Cognitive Dissonance and the rejection of truth, even when it is in plain sight, and the lie is working against us! All we were ever meant to do was just LIVE FREELY...there are no such things as goals or objectives, these are merely the "plot devices" of a scripted storyline that we were taught from birth! The classic line from society is, "we don't plan to fail, we fail to plan", and this little nugget is shared with us from every famous, "self-made", rich person! And yet, the truth of the matter is completely opposite...we fail at life BECAUSE WE PLAN...we think...we measure EVERYTHING out through our upside down, diseased minds, and therefore, continually sabotage all of our forced actions...just like we are meant to! Who in society has EVER taught you to go through doorways just to see what you will find? Who tells you to Love everyone and to throw caution to the wind? Huh? Why is this perspective of randomly experiencing the Earth without some kind of reward in return ever taught to us? Because if we were taught these things from a young age, we would NEVER become gullible enough to buy into this game of life where we work our fingers to the bone, forever, to pay off our debts and to pay our bills, on time! Again, THINK for a moment, if God exists and you believe in God, is this why he created this perfect, eternal Earth??? So that you could hand over the responsibility of your children to Governments and Corporations just so that you can get a job to pay for things...because things cost money??? Huh? Just how profoundly diseased must we all be to buy into this massive LIE?
The Dalai Lama is not a Llama...
When we encounter something we possess the ability to observe it, touch it, smell it, listen to it and even taste it! We were born with FREE WILL and these five senses for this precise reason! Who gives a flying fuck what your Parents, some talking head on television, a governmental law or the Church think about your experimenting with say fields of grass or Psilocybin mushrooms??? This is the GRAND ILLUSION of our physical world, that there are rules and laws, patterns of behaviors that we are supposed to observe. But as I demonstrated earlier, WE FOOLS in the middle class are the ONLY ones who obey because we FEAR the consequences…we Fear becoming poor and homeless, having no “stuff” left! God did not create everything in existence for such a pathetic purpose! There is no truth in society's "out there" because they don't acknowledge the INDIVIDUAL, and before you rush off and say that they do, and there are laws to prove it, THEY DON'T and there are NO LAWS that can support the Free Will of the Individual if these laws can be overridden during "times of crisis", and do not recognize ALL Individuals, like people of color, people of little to no wealth, women, children, the elderly...give me a fucking break! All of what we experience is only ever the result our personal beliefs! Life functions from the inside out, not the way we have been told…which is always the opposite of the actual truth. We must ALL WAKE UP and realize that even our vision does not function in this way! The image of the cow in a field with mountains in the background and a setting sun is created WITHIN our own brains and projected back to our eyes to “see”. This is why society attacks our brains with limiting lies of FEAR from day one…knowing full well that if we believe that we are weak and that life is about money, getting a job and trying to afford a house, then we the VAST MAJORITY of society will continue to blindly, ignorantly, and stupidly play a rigged game where a TINY MINORITY own most of everything, and make up all the rules, all the laws, and all the beliefs! Families like the Rothschilds and the Rockefellers secretly quake inside their boots because they KNOW that one day we will wake up, shake our heads and CHANGE EVERYTING within a short time frame, because WE CAN...
This is what Knopfler was foreshadowing for all of us with his principal character! Her reality changed to whatever she wanted by rejecting Fear and by embracing Love! Most people think that when REAL CHANGE comes it will result in massive violence and upheaval…IT WON’T! As even Einstein understood, changing any problem(s) can only come from a different, opposing energy to what caused the problem(s) in the first place; thus, LOVE is the ONLY WAY that we can shift from this current paradigm of FEAR on Earth! Love does NOT blame someone else for our enslavement, Love takes responsibility for ourselves, Love sees all of us as ONE and seeks to create Loving relationships with everyone and everything we encounter! True Freedom and Peace are what await us when we finally enter this ascension as human beings! Governments and Socities (and all their rules) will collapse in the moment we realize that we don’t need them and that we have NEVER needed them! When we live our lives out of Love, inquisitiveness, and passion then we too will “go dancing through doorways just to see what we will find”! The thoughts and opinions of others won’t mean a thing as we “finally reappear at the place where we came in”! We will be capable of moving through all "matter" whenever and wherever we want, all we have to do is throw our “Love to all the strangers and caution to the wind”, just as Mark Knopfler laid out for us! When we invite only Love into all of our thoughts and inspirations, only Loving responses can occur…this is the truth of God through his gift of Free Will…The Law of Attraction…that what we focus upon with our thoughts will become our reality…
It takes love over gold
And mind over matter
To do what you do that you must
When the things that you hold
Can fall and be shattered
Or run through your fingers like dust
Everything, on not only this song but the entire album, built to this verse both musically and especially lyrically. It was perhaps the very highest point of Mark Knopfler’s storied career! It was the essence of the album’s message and obviously the inner workings of the man himself. Just listen to how Knopfler segued through the song’s second refrain back into this final verse. He and Alan Clark built up the passage’s importance by climbing the musical scales together, adding in Angelic voices as he began to sing the words…that’s how important this verse was to Mark Knopfler! And even now, after listening to this song at least a thousand times, this passage NEVER fails to profoundly move me, even to tears, as I can both FEEL and hear Knopfler's profound message in every syllable and in every note! In this phrasing, Gold represented all things physical, the insidious lure of a world that seemed so real, matter so solid, colors so vibrant, it had to be real…but its NOT! Thus, when Knopfler wrote that “it takes Love over Gold and mind over matter to do what you do that you must”, he meant that to become free, truly FREE, of an outside system of control (and all the Lies and false beliefs forced upon us), we have to reject the limiting, fearful beliefs of our physical world! “Mind over matter” means that since all thought processes take place within our mind and come from our conscious self, not our physical self, so we must accept consciousness over what we have been told about the supposed solidity of matter (by the likes of Newton and Einstein)! Matter is NOT SOLID...the Double Slit Experiment has proven this ad nauseam (as it is the most replicated scientific experiment ever). To do the things that we “must” do (e.g. to become a painter because it’s what our passion is and what we feel we “have” to do, even though we might believe that our economic prospects would be slim at best) requires belief in ourselves over all else…that is “mind over matter”. The final lines clearly revealed Knopfler’s lucid understanding of God's Duality and the basis for human spirituality, which is Love. “When the things that you hold can fall and be shattered, or run through your fingers like dust” was Knopfler recognizing that all PHYSICAL things, matter (even if you believe in the solidity of matter), will unavoidably return into the nothingness that they came from. Thus, what is left? If the entire physical world eventually turns back into "dust", and you "can't take it with you" to the "other side", then, again, what is left? Our Consciousness...and our Consciousness is the awareness that LOVE is all there is! So, "what have you got at the end of the day, what have you got to take away", not the pain behind your eyes that comes from worrying about the Maya (the illusory physical world), rather ONLY LOVE...Love is what is always left at the end of the day...and the moment that we awaken ourselves entirely to God's Love, Love is what will only be at the beginning and middle as well!
Love is indeed all we need...
The best musical moment on the album (and perhaps in Knopfler’s career) was the gorgeous change that Knopfler wrote into the music when he sang, “CAN FALL and be shattered” during the second to last line. He used that precise moment to drive home the beautiful importance of trusting in ourselves, no matter what! It was a moment of intense vulnerability; acknowledging that letting go of the physical world as an illusion and allowing ourselves to operate out of Love only, was a massive first step over a chasm that had no bridge and seemed to have no end! It was Faith…faith in ourselves, faith in God that would always see us through whatever experience we chose, no matter how “safe” or “dangerous”. From there he initiated the song’s bittersweet and evocative coda, with the entire band giving moving performances, from Wither’s sweeping drum sounds (subtle and nether-worldly in moments, then loud and moving in others), Clark’s beautiful piano, Illsley’s bold and sensual bass riffs, Knopfler’s incredibly moving guitar work trading melody lines with Mike Mainieri’s brilliant and flowing Marimba sounds. It was an outro designed to give you the feeling of space and time to REFLECT upon that last passage, and that last musical change! Knopfler was hoping that verse (and song) would move the listener to engage more deeply into the music and the message, which is all any artist can ever hope for...and I know for me it powerfully did…even today when I hear that change, within the context of the song, it moves me, it is so beautiful, such a Loving inspiration from Knopfler! It also encouraged me as a young man to continue to reject the failing society around me and search for a higher purpose to my life; which ultimately led me to taking on this this massive project because I knew it's what I wanted to do...so thank you Mark!
“When the things that you hold can fall and be shattered or run through your fingers like dust.”
