Bible CAMP: MAYHEM Requiem

[bxr 1,794]

On 5/23/2026 at 9:32 AM, Apec said:

I need to answer here too... I have always found BJ+AF to be such an incredibly fascinating song (a bonus track even!) because it's supposedly about her background and coming-of-age yet centers on not only worldly but spiritual change the whole way through, the line that embodies the entire song for me has always been the one you quoted, “concrete poetry to feed my mind, old symbolism was left behind", embedded in a song in which she indeed centers a notion many Westerners still find too radical: That Jesus, geographically, would never be white, but darker in skin tone merely JUST CANNOT BE according to so many because of dogma. He needs to look like "us" to be acceptable. 

This hints at much deeper developments for her younger self: that the symbolic nature of this concept meant that all her received religious notions were on shaky foundations and while she yearned for truth and freedom, her mind needed community and liturgy, but in thinking for herself she rejected dogma and the discovery of such free ecstasy AND secular freedom (as it were) must've meant a lot to a young person trying to rhyme seeming contradictions (belief, ecstasy and liturgy making you feel more connected to humanity as well as divinity while organized religion has and still spreads misogyny, homophobia and further "others", marginalizes/scapegoats and has incredibly painful skeletons in its closet that came out even more as she grew up)... Seeing that she could integrate both profane openness of thought/sheer kindness and strenghten religious texts and ecstasy about loving, grace and humanity's inability to "throw the first stone" must've been the second layer to this song and why she chose "Black Jesus" to represent a song about her growing up and thus also about expanding her mind.

The incredible feat to turn said tools of oppression in either ways of self-expression and identity, using tools of subjugation and either defang them or use them to show survival or even dominance in a MV (I talked more at length about my views in a previous post) was masterful. But that rosary was indeed the key to understanding nearly all that came next: I've always seen it as HER portal, as it were, to her ever-evolving thinking. You put it beautifully, that the deconstruction and digesting of said rosary signals her already blossoming but finally integrated views: "loving thy neighbor" isn't an exclusionary idea ever and is even inextricably bound to "loving thyself". As you put so eloquently: "This type of “vanity,” which would previously have been decried as heretical by the patriarchal church becomes sacred self-manifestation of the divine through self-expression and compassion (“letting your own light shine…[gives] others permission to do the same”). Non-dualism shows up more and more in her work, a fascinating tightrope.

A trove of intrigue throughout the abovementioned, but/and particularly the revisitation of Black Jesus † Amen Fashion … the story within the song always feels like a sphinx hidden in plain sight … you explore the record‘s eponymous duality quite beautifully … somewhere at the locus of the existing dichotomy (Black Jesus, Amen Fashion) and evolving into this blossoming integration with the rosary and a certain portal into divine feminine / sacred matriarch embodied consciousness … I was just thinking of The Black Madonna (Monsterrat, Czestochowa, etc.), and am really curious wondering where / how / if you see any narrative association … ?

Hope you‘re resting well!

Spoiler

Also 

[T]he line that embodies the entire song for me has always been the one you quoted, “concrete poetry to feed my mind, old symbolism was left behind", embedded in a song in which she indeed centers a notion many Westerners still find too radical: That Jesus, geographically, would never be white, but darker in skin tone merely JUST CANNOT BE according to so many because of dogma. He needs to look like "us" to be acceptable.