Pour Some Sugar On Me

I’ve found something of a dichotomy between the croon and falsetto aspects of my voice. As I find more power in the ‘chest’ voice, the ‘head’ voice by contrast seems a little weak, and so the crossing from the lower notes to the higher is not as convincing as I’d like. I’ve been thinking of this as some kind of a physical metaphor for where I am psychically right now. A few posts ago I was talking about feeling an imbalance between my masculine and feminine ‘sides’. And I still need to deal with this.

There are a few reasons why I think there is some kind of imbalance.

First, I have a feeling of estrangement from ‘something’, some part of myself. I think this estrangement is the cause of some escalating shadowy behaviours (sex, drugs, shopping and biscuits). Attempts to salve that feeling of lack or loss?

Second, I dreamed that a young woman whom I wasn't sexually attracted to was trying to call me, but my phone has no signal (15 missed calls), and then when it finally rings I 'reject the call', because I haven't got used to the controls of my new phone yet. Couple of nights later, this highly satirical dream: as I kissed a woman (without authentic feeling), a shadowy fellow in the rafters poured icing sugar over us. I then shouted at her just to see what the shadow guy would do this time. He poured lemon juice on us. Interpretation: that I need to make contact with this woman, but I’m going about it in the wrong ways. I’m schmoozing her (pouring sugar on her), and if I don’t get what I want, I’ll give her sour lemon. I need to find the middle way.
According to Carl Jung, this ‘she’ is really a representation of my ‘soul’. Jung called this dream woman the ‘anima’. She is the unconscious female personality (‘woman within’) that influences a man’s relationships (through projection) and appears personified in his dreams.
So the dream appears to suggest that I am behaving in an unbalanced way with regards to my relationship with my Self. On a basic level, I do not love myself. It’s that typical emotional rollercoaster of people with suspect self-esteem: in one breath they think they are amazing genius songwriters (sugar) and in the next, they cannot even look at themselves in the mirror (lemon).

Looking for more clarity on this I remembered Christopher Booker’s book ‘The Seven Basic Plots’: a dry and sometimes chauvinistic treatise on the true purpose of storytelling. Or an arduous (709 page) retelling of the Hero with A Thousand Faces. But there is an interesting section where Booker delineates the various possible imbalances between the archetypes in an individual psyche, and how these might manifest in the story (in life). It seems that I am ‘in thrall to the dark feminine, who

works through a superificial show of feminine qualities, by appearing to feel and to care. She gets her way by guile, seduction, placation, deception. She disguises her true predatory intent beneath a pretence that she is serving the hero’s best interests, like Circe or the Witch in Hansel and Gretel who offers the children gingerbread as a lure. It is only later that her real nature and purpose emerges, that she really wishes to imprison or devour her victims. The Dark Mother/Temptress promises the hero ease and self-gratification, that he does not have to make any effort or show firmness, that there is a short cut to becoming a man. She seeks to flatter his vanity or to gratify his physical appetites – for food, sex, comfort, relaxation...And here, in order to resist her wiles, the hero’s task is to show himself as fully masculine. He has to show strength, judgement, the ability to discriminate...The purpose of the ‘dark feminine’ is to unman him, to make him weak and dependent, to turn him into ‘the boy who cannot grow up’...it requires his to summon up all his masculine strength, will-power and self reliance, as Odysseus does when he finally manages to break free from the enchantments of Calypso.

Christopher Booker, The Seven Basic Plots (pages 280-1)


So, it seems that I need to connect with some male energy: in order to free the damsel imprisoned within the tower, I’ve got to build a ladder, and in order to build a ladder, I’ve got to learn woodwork. To corroborate this I ask for a 'life-centring communication' from the Self. I get an erupting volcano and then a huge square trench with equal diameter to the volcano. Interestingly, the phallus image came first (excuse pun). I ask if these images are meant to suggest that my work now is balancing this male and female stuff and get a definite yes.