• horsesvisions > paintings — Birdland > Genesis

This intrusion of a psychoanalyst in the binomial Birdland / The Birds (here impersoned by the one who plays the central role of God, eg the Father, the Demiurge : Wilhelm Reich), finds some resonance in Hitchcock’s fascination for psychoanalysis.

The wanderings and mental deviations that this discipline aims to address are some fertile ground for many masterpieces of Alfred Hitchcock, a psychoanalytic common root evidenced by the kind of invisible thread that connects most of these works. The Birds of course, but also Spellbound, Psycho, Rebecca, Strangers on a Train, Frenzy, Vertigo, and particularly the summit that represents the much disparaged and yet unsurpassable film among all of Hitchcock's undisputed masterpieces : Marnie. The latter being truly paramount, if considering the deadly and erotic obsessions that weave the occult fabric of Hitchcockian art. An immense film misunderstood and decried when released in 1964, and which has since then become essential in Hitchcock's filmography.

The dimensions of Psyche has thus been essential as well in my interpretation of Birdland.

As were those of Spirituality and Religion. This for two reasons.

The first one being that one cannot address Patti Smith’s work if skipping over the religious dimension that transcends all her work. Her interest in the Bible and the Christian thematics is recurrent, way beyond the legendary intro of Gloria (in fact an extract from the Oath poem, dating from 1970), where she declares her freedom and her unashamed responsibility as a free artist, evoking Jesus Christ who died for the sins of all men, but certainly not for her own, that she intends to take on …
In that respect, let us remember the omnipresence of the Cross on the cover of the Peace and Noise album (1997) : on the front, the horizontal typography of the title crossing a hanging rosary nailed to the wall -thus forming the Christian sign-, and on the back the beautiful photography of a stained glass window adorned with a cross (some "Peace" initiated by the "Word of God"?), overhanging a pile of debris and rubble. Some ruins that I shall take the liberty of interpreting here as an evocation of "Noise", that is to say of the din and therefore of Chaos. Ultimately, a global symbolic meaning of Peace overwhelming Chaos, in this specific opus of the Punk-Rock poet.