The Perceived Labyrinth: Reality’s Inevitable Fall

Thus far, 2011 has marked numerous new staples in my life, the purest deconstruction of my known reality notwithstanding. Days before Christmas, I watched the 1980’s film Labyrinth both while rolling and drugged up with an inebriating and exhilarating amount of ketamine.

Before anyone injects a toxic level of judgment or displeasure upon my admitted transparency, know that I realistically have no excuse or justification of recreational drugs that I care enough to communicate. Get with the program; they’re fun. Now, judge away.

That being said, this was my first viewing of Labyrinth I’d watched all the way through. Some films I curse myself for not having seen sooner, but during and after this experience, it was clear that this movie, and many of Hensen’s creations, was made for the altered state of mind. The evening’s opened state of consciousness and learning has finally brought to words what I’ve recently been able to feel.

Bearing the mantle of the current culture’s meta-transformation, from the near mythological hunger of hoarding and obsession with the ego, it became clear that Sarah’s invented labyrinth, which she created to take away her brother, is a metaphor for the illusionary realities that have been created around us, forming what we see, hear, and relate to.

As we approach a magnified turning point in our world, the necessity for our species to choose evolution becoming exponentially direr even as seconds pass, the technologies and parasitic illusions we’ve created to satisfy and feed us are clamoring for survival. As Sarah travels through the labyrinth, searching for her “inner child,” Jareth, the Goblin King, the trickster and master of ceremonies, whom she also called upon, appears randomly to lead her astray. One doesn’t have to be particularly savvy to look outside and know that the boundaries we have established, the known reality — economics, corporation, and implanted disinformation — is collapsing.

At the beginning of the story, Sarah was recalling what would be foretold, though fighting to recall the resolution: “For my will is as strong as yours, and my kingdom as great… Oh, I can never remember that line…”

It was Sarah’s baby brother, a metaphor for the inner-child archetype, that she willed away from her by the Goblin King, in the same vein that we’ve willfully subjected our fallen nation to a falsified “American dream” — to simplify the metaphor — guiding ourselves away from the playful birthright of our divine child. Bowie’s character, akin to the illusions of our culture’s proposed sickness, ultimately require no return but sympathy, as he proclaims, countless times throughout the story, that he is only doing what was asked of him.

Throughout the course of the Labyrinth’s illusions, Sarah finds herself in a junkyard surrounded by hags and tramps. As she is lead into what seems to be her childhood room, she’s coddled and entranced by “her things” as the junk lady shoves trinkets, dolls, and toys — personified attachments constructed to be meaningful in our lives — to dull the girl’s intentions. Sarah escapes, once more, only by remembering what it is she is meant to do — take back the child, and undo the labyrinth, undo the illusion. “It’s just junk,” she proclaims.

As Sarah confronts the Goblin King at the heart of his labyrinth, his confinement of reality, the words of his final song echo what the current planetary metaphor must be feeling toward the collective “us.” Remember, Sarah embodies the everyman seeking “something,” though finding themselves unequivocally, but perhaps not unintentionally, lost.

How you turned my world
You precious thing

You starve and near exhaust me
Everything I’ve done
I’ve done for you

I move the stars for no one
You’ve run so long
You’ve run so far
Your eyes can be so cruel

Just as I can be so cruel
Though I do believe in you
Yes I do

Live without the sunlight
Love without your heartbeat
I can’t live within you

Through his final statement, “I can’t live within you,” Jareth reveals that he is farce, an illusion, aligned with the modern constructs of reality. He was indeed created to serve a purpose. The question remains, have we somehow collectively asked to become separated from an attuned spiritual awareness? Was it another force that intervened?

However, a few phrases earlier, Jareth had stated, “Though I do believe in you/ Yes, I do.” It begs to question which side this supposed planetary antagonist is on. We blame the government. We blame the status quo. We blame Fox News. Though, are we asking to reject the child within and live within the construct, within the labyrinth, ever only to repeat ourselves through our looped quests; fighting, and wondering, though never achieving the goal we’re born unaware of. As the junk lady proclaimed, “You can’t look where you’re going if you don’t know where you’re going.” And, it has been the labyrinth’s job to make sure we don’t know.

During their final confrontation, the will of the Goblin King becomes ever more transparent.

“Sarah, beware. I have been generous up until now, but I can be cruel.”

“Generous! What have you done that’s generous?”

“Everything! Everything that you wanted I have done. You asked that the child be taken — I took him. You cowered before me — I was frightening. I have reordered time. I have turned the world upside-down, and I have done it all for you! I am exhausted from living up to your expectations of me. Isn’t that generous?”

“Through dangers untold and hardships unnumbered, I have fought my way here to the castle beyond the Goblin City, for my will is as strong as yours. And my — “

“Stop! Wait! Look, Sarah. Look what I’m offering you — your dreams.”

“My kingdom as great.”

“I ask for so little. Just let me rule you, and you can have everything that you want…”

“My kingdom as great… Damn. I can never remember that line.”

“Just fear me, love me, do as I say, and I will be your slave.” Let me control you, and I’ll give you everything you want.

Touché, Bowie. You just went there. Have we enslaved reality? The question is interesting, considering the perspective of our world, and how we abuse our own, as well as the planet and its fellow inhabitants.

Seen in the context of what we have created, what has been willed into existence to govern time and our perspectives of reality, it is no wonder history has turned the way it has, leading the remembrance of such truth to be experienced through painful earthquakes, tragedies, and likewise deconstructive trauma. Have we enslaved reality? Undoubtedly, it is our mission to remember something, and until we do, we’re cursed to sift through a muck of confusing thralls and dizzying convictions — manipulations and imitations of the true reality (whatever that means) — reliving an endless cycle of labyrinthine proportions.

It’s also humbling to think of the world as exhausting itself, whether it through resources, foundation, or spiritual aptitude, to fit our perceived “expectations.” Jareth, evil as he is perceived, speaks the truth. We, the people, are exhausting our realities. Thereby, it is time to let them go; let it crumble, where a renewed, fulfilled, and sustainable existence — our new truth — might awaken from within our stilled bones.

“My kingdom as great. My kingdom as great…”

Perhaps it is the purpose of our generation to end this seemingly endless curse of perceived salvation and break the labyrinth as Sarah successfully did, destroying the false construct, destroying reality, and finally remembering the “divine child” within, and proclaim to the walls surrounding us, “…You have no power over me.”