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Home
Introduction
A New Interpretation of
SMiLE
Zen and Pet Sounds
The Elements
The Koan/The Hallucination
Bio Based SMiLE
The Opposites
Ego
Zen and The Beatles' Revolver
East Or West Indies
Cool Links
The Trip
This essay was
the end product of all this website's SMiLE=Zen koan theorizing.
The essay hinted
at something happening between the Americana & Elemental
movements and placed "Surf's Up" near the center of
SMiLE.
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This attempt was finished on February 19th, 2004;
one day prior to the live premiere of SMILE.
The essay was meant to demonstrate that a basic understanding
of the work could be had by an average fan.
SUNRISE SERVICE SMILE
The following may or may not be a fictional explanation of SMiLE.
The quotes used within may or may not be used in their proper
context.
Brian Wilson’s
growing spiritual awareness and his desire to find “the
answer” led him to a beach. This is where Brian found the
ultimate religious experience.
“It’s only happened to me once---early in
the morning alone on the beach…” – from Surfing
Saints (Look! Listen! VIBRATE! SMILE!, page 98)
Brian’s biography describes his final LSD trip
as, “…the ultimate in LSD joyrides...four hours of
enlightenment and spirituality.”- (Wouldn’t It Be Nice,
page 144)
“…I had what I consider a very religious
experience. I took LSD, a full dose of LSD, and later, another
time, I took a smaller dose. And I learned a lot of things...”-
Brian Wilson to Tom Nolan (LLVS, page 167)
The two trip dynamic of Brian’s religious experience
claim implies that the earlier trip was part of the later trip.
There was only one religious experience.
“It’s only happened to me once---early in
the morning alone on the beach with the sun coming up very red.”
– from Surfing Saints (LLVS, page 98)
Brian stood on the beach, tripping, facing America.
The dawn’s early light illuminated the horizon with an all
encompassing red glow. It looked as if there was a huge fire
burning in the distance. This brought back bad memories of Brian’s
prior trip. It too had involved fire.
“As the LSD kicked in, I remember hearing fire
trucks from the station across the street rumbling out of the
driveway, their sirens wailing louder and louder.”- (WIBN,
page 123)
There was a time element involved during this bad
trip.
“I visualized myself drifting back in time. Getting
smaller and younger…”- (WIBN, page 123)
There was also Brian’s battle filled past.
“I relived arguments I’d had with my dad.”-
(WIBN, page 123)
The sun continued to rise as the bad memories of his
previous trip, and his life, continued to haunt Wilson.
“I continued getting smaller…. And then,
finally, I was gone. I didn’t exist”- (WIBN, page 123)
Brian was dead, or near death at this point. It wasn’t
a physical death but rather a spiritual one; an ego death.
The song, “Surf’s Up,” portrays the
still rising sun this day as a glass of red wine.
“The glass was raised, the fired rose, the fullness
of the wine, the dim last toasting. While at port adieu or die.
A choke of grief, heart-hardened I, beyond belief, a broken man
too tough to cry.”- from “Surf’s Up”
Wilson elaborated upon the lyrics, “’A choke
of grief.’ At his own sorrow and the emptiness of his life,
because he can’t even cry for the suffering in the world,
for his own suffering…. And then, hope.’”- Brian
Wilson to Jules Siegel (LLVS, page 89)
At this point the rising sun broke away from the faraway
hills and the eerie red fog that had lit the skyline quickly
evaporated from the horizon.
There was a moment of clear light.
The problems of Brian’s life faded like the far-off
fire.
“The thing you really look for is the moment
of clear light. It’s only happened to me once---early in
the morning alone on the beach with the sun coming up very red.
A moment of clear light.” – from Surfing Saints (LLVS,
page 98)
"Existence not only ceases to be a problem; the
mind is so wonder-struck at the self-evident and self-sufficient
fitness of things as they are, including what would ordinarily
be thought the very worst, that it cannot find any word strong
enough to express the perfection and beauty of the experience.
Its clarity sometimes gives the sensation that the world has
become transparent or luminous, and its simplicity the sensation
that it is pervaded and ordered by a supreme intelligence."-
Alan Watts (This Is It)
"Clarity--the disappearance of problems--suggests
light, and in moments of such acute clarity there may be the
physical sensation of light penetrating everything. To a theist
this will naturally seem to be a glimpse of the presence of God..."-
Alan Watts (This Is It)
It is at this point that the vinyl SMiLE record album
would have had to have been turned over; at the point of God’s
intervention.
On the beach Brian saw that the sun had broken from
the horizon and his fiery fear and all that it implied had vanished.
The red sun now showed fire as a life-giving essential part of
all things. Fire was now understood on an elemental level.
“You need the elements.”- Brian Wilson from
his “Smog” rant
Brian turned his feet around in the sand.
“Come about hard…”- from “Surf’s
Up”
Brian saw the water, the spiritual element, the opposite
of fire. Brian understood perfectly.
He felt reborn. He had no past. He felt like a child.
He realized that there is only now.
“…the whole thing was there. I mean my whole
life. Birth and death and rebirth. The whole thing. Even the
beach was in it, a whole thing about the beach. It was my whole
life…”- Brian Wilson commenting about the movie SECONDS
to Jules Siegel (LLVS, page 87)
"Out of the LSD madness (and there were few horrors)
there came a few 'zaps'. It made me laugh. I'd never thought
about, couldn't even say the word 'God'. It embarrassed me, but
you know it was so strange, GOD, and it washed away all these
fears and doubts and little things that hang you up...."-
George Harrison (I Me Mine)
Side one of SMiLE was to be set in America (as was
the sunrise) and set in the past (as was Brian’s earlier
trip and some of the places that trip took him to). Often there
seems to be a battle going on between the spiritually “in
tune” and those less spiritual (as was the case with Brian
and his dad). There is a separation of the enlightened and the
unenlightened. Brian identified with the spiritually enlightened.
Side two of SMiLE was to present the beach experience
as well as the new enlightened Brian in the present tense; via
the elements.
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