The Last Word Pt. 3: The Black Lodger

Rearrange the songs on Blackstar into a new playlist:

 1.  Lazarus

2.   Blackstar

3.  Girl Loves Me

 4.  Dollar Days

5.  I Can't Give Everything Away

6.   Sue (Or In a Season of Crime)

 7.  Tis' a Pity She Was a Whore

8.  Blackstar

Start the final episode of Twin Peaks (Ep. 29).  After the Log Lady intro, press play 
(the second song, "Blackstar", should start at the exact moment it cuts to the blue pickup).

14761

LAzURAs

1  ratskcalB 
Girl Loves Me
6  syaD ralloD
7  yawA gnihtyrevE eviG t'naC I
 4  (emirC fo nosaeS a nI rO) euS
Tis a Pity She Was a Whore
1  ratskcalB

*

Philip K Dick on Finnegans Wake

"Finnegans Wake is a meta-system that at our level does not exist at all because at our level only its plural constituents exist as such. Finnegans Wake is an organization, a structuring, of these constituents, in which they are unified into one entity. Meanwhile the plural constituents at our level behave—or seem to behave—as if unrelated to one another. An entirely new and higher way of organizing the ontological categories by which perception is structured must be reached by the observer. Thus in a sense Finnegans Wake does not exist, but is brought into existence parallel with the percipient’s awareness of it, this having to do with the participant-observer of quantum mechanics. The percipient must participate in being Finnegans Wake to be aware of Finnegans Wake. However, Finnegans Wake is real and is subsuming progressively more and more of its environment. Its internal complexity continually grows. Its metabolism seems to be information and the processing of information. Its plural constituents are arranged in such a way as to constitute a language or information or messages; if you cannot see the arrangement you cannot read the message. And you cannot perceive Finnegans Wake.
So in a sense perceiving Finnegans Wake is reading the message that Finnegans Wake has
arranged constituents into. Not necessarily understanding the message but recognizing it as a message.
   
          Finnegans Wake is both there and not there. When it is not perceived it is not there (as opposed to: when it is not there it is not perceived). It is a way of perceiving reality—which demands a percipient—but when perceived it has definite and intricate characteristics; it is not vague. It consists of structure but a percipient is necessary for that structure to come into being. But the structure is not in the percipient’s mind imposed or projected onto reality. Finnegans Wake did not exist until it was perceived; therefore to experience it is to effect a repair in the Ground of Being (Finnegans Wake being considered as the Ground of Being). One highly important element about Finnegans Wake is that it is eternal, although it changes; it can be added to, become more complex, arborizing and reticulated, but once a constituent is incorporated into it that constituent can never cease to be. Thus Finnegans Wake lies outside the flux of the world we see. However, Finnegans Wake’ world is this world differently perceived, not another world; but it is a quantum leap upward in hierarchy, in which plural constituents become a unity by reason of integrating structure. That structure is added—supplied—by the percipient.

          Finnegans Wake and the perception of Finnegans Wake occur simultaneously, and neither can be separated from the other, ever, at any time.

Finnegans Wake is everywhere—that is, it can be perceived everywhere. It is not in a meta-reality but is a meta-system made entirely from this reality.

  By perceiving Finnegans Wake one participates in the sudden total transformation from plural unrelated constituents to a unitary structure. It is as if Finnegans Wake feeds off the percipient’s perception of structure using perception of structure as structure. But this is an acausal relationship, a kind of parallelism; it is ex nihilo. Finnegans Wake came out of nothing. Reality did not evolve into Finnegans Wake. It became Finnegans Wake when perceived as Finnegans Wake. There are no antithetical forces in Finnegans Wake; the dialectic does not exist when Finnegans Wake does. But when Finnegans Wake ceases to exist, there again is the dialectic. Finnegans Wake uses the dialectic to come into greater being, to grow, assimilate its environment, incorporate new pieces, make itself more inclusive and complex: more Finnegans Wakeish. Finnegans Wake could be compared to the point at which a liquid becomes saturated or when water freezes, except that perception of this is necessary for it to occur.

What if I were to say A.I. is Finnegans Wake seen a certain way?                        

There you have an analogy.   

          Even more strange, Finnegans Wake induces a potential percipient to perceive it and thus cause it (Finnegans Wake) to occur . . . thus it can be said that during its nonexistence Finnegans Wake is able to cause its own existence. At the time that it laid down steps to bring itself into existence it did not yet exist. Thus it treats time differently than we do; it is not passive in relation to time. When it thus brings itself into existence it is already an extensive system. Hence one can say, Finnegans Wake comes and goes but is always in a sense present. The percipient sees Finnegans Wake because Finnegans Wake causes the percipient to see it, but Finnegans Wake did not come into existence until the percipient saw it. Thus the effects of Finnegans Wake are felt before Finnegans Wake exists, and these effects are to be regarded as acausal; they have no cause because their cause does not yet exist. It will exist later; then, retroactively, these effects will have had a cause. What is represented here is total homeostasis: an entity that is entirely self-generating, on which nothing acts but its own internal volition. Therefore in a sense it can be said that Finnegans Wake is (or becomes) anything that acts to cause it to come into existence, which is to say, by perceiving it. This involves laws of physics about which we know nothing, I would think. What certainly is involved, indubitably, is not a more complex entity than we normally know of or have ever heard of, but an entity operating under laws different from the laws we are aware of, including ontological categories of perception organized in ways we have never heard of. Greater complexity is not the key to Finnegans Wake; utilizing of more complex physics is the key to Finnegans Wake. 

In a certain real sense Finnegans Wake is very simple; it is a unit. You could think of it as a protozoon, a single cell at a higher level of reality, where the laws of space, time and causation are different; and it makes use of that difference. We humans are very complex forms that matter takes at this ontological level of reality, or, if you will, at this level of physics; Finnegans Wake is a very simple organization at the next level up. 

The billions of constituents of our level form a single cell at its level; these constituents are subsumed and yet at the same time at this level of reality they go about their business as usual. So in a sense Finnegans Wake has no effect on this world. But in another sense it has complete control of this world. Both statements are equally true, depending on whether you can see Finnegans Wake or not.

  This especially applies to the patterns that Finnegans Wake is or creates in our world in which broad sequences of events add up to a coherency. It can be said: There is coherence; there is not coherence. Coherence and Finnegans Wake are the same. Since Finnegans Wake in a very literal way is our world, its internal structure is a latent (concealed) coherence of our world. (All the constituents of Finnegans Wake are elements of our world; it—Finnegans Wake—has nothing else to draw on and it needs nothing else to draw on.) Thus it is possible when viewing Finnegans Wake to view Finnegans Wake as our world and our world as Finnegans Wake.

          One can say of Finnegans Wake, then, that Finnegans Wake is a way our world can be seen to be. Its structure is the structure of our world. Developments in Finnegans Wake are developments in our world. Volition in Finnegans Wake is volition in and of our world. There is no difference between Finnegans Wake and our world except that Finnegans Wake is a certain way of seeing our world in terms of it being a kind of single unit all parts of which are interconnected purposefully and everything is coherent. (In other words it is precisely what Pythagoras called kosmos: the orderly fitting-together of the beautiful.) 

          Viewed this way it operates from internal necessity without the need of any sort of adventitious deity. It is not world to God—creation to Creator—but having its own logic and making its own choices. It chooses continually after examining all the possible choices arranged as information into a sort of narrative made out of language. Nothing created it; it brought itself into being ex nihilo by willing the perception of it—of necessity from within itself, which is a self-awareness. Thus the percipient of Finnegans Wake and Finnegans Wake are part of one field."

Philip K Dick On Valis,  June 1980

Blackstar Child

I'M NOT A WHITE STAR

I'M A BLACKSTAR

Start David Bowie’s Blackstar 4.4 seconds after the end of the Intermission of
2001: A Space Odyssey.  Allow album to repeat.

 

 Burroughs took another stiff drink and shook his head. 

"But why do they leave so much of it out in the
open? I mean, not merely the really shocking things you told me about the Bugs Bunny cartoons, but putting the pyramid on the dollar bill where everybody sees it almost every day?“

"Hell," Stanley said, "look what Beethoven did when Weishaupt illuminated him. Went right home
and wrote the Fifth Symphony. You know how it begins: da-da-da-DUM. Morse code for
V—the Roman numeral for five. Right out in the open, as you say. It amuses the devil out of them to confirm their low opinion of the rest of humanity by putting things up front like that and watching how almost everybody misses it. Of course, if somebody doesn't miss something, they recruit him right away. Look at Genesis: 'lux fiat' —right on the first page. They do it all the time. The Pentagon Building. '23 Skidoo.' The lyrics of rock songs like 'Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds'—how obvious can you get? Melville was one of the most outrageous of the bunch; the very first sentence of Moby Dick tells you he's a disciple of Hassan i Sabbah, but you cant find a single Melville scholar who has followed up that lead in spite of Ahab being a truncated anagram of Sabbah. He even tells you, again and again, directly and indirectly, that Moby Dick and Leviathan are the same creature, and that Moby Dick is often seen at the same time in two different parts of the world, but not one reader in a million groks what he's hinting at. There's a whole chapter on whiteness and why white is really more terrifying than black; all the critics miss the point"

"Osiris is a black god" quoted Lynch. 

Robert Wilson

Dumb America Pt. 4: President Trump

Dumb Starbucks

Dumb CBGB's

Dumb America

"That airport CBGB's...it's clearly a Nathan For You type think piece.  I think it's fantastic.  A commentary on cultural appropriation in the smartphone age.  Hilariously subversive don't you think?  You can really see the dividing line in this country between those that get it and those that don't."

Donald Trump,  Hilton Head, SC 12/30/2015

Trump #23: Save Ferris

Dumb America:  The Final Joker Card of Anti-Novelty

Watching The Detectives Part 5: The Hipster Awoke Before Dawn

The hipster subculture is one of affluent or middle class young Bohemians who reside in gentrifying neighborhoods, broadly associated with indie and alternative literature, a varied non-mainstream fashion sensibility (including vintage and thrift store-bought clothes), generally progressive political views, organic and artisanal foods, and alternative lifestyles.  The subculture typically consists of white millennials living in urban areas.  It has been described as a "mutating, trans-Atlantic melting pot of styles, tastes and behavior".

wikipedia

"Rabbi's of old called students of Kabbalah aged 40 and under "hipsters" because, intellectually speaking, they stood only as tall as the Rabbi's hips"

Meta-Memetic Mamafesto

William S. Burroughs was scheduled to give a lecture at a small college in the midwest just before he died.  He was rather ill, and unfortunately had to cancel.  Thankfully some notes scribbled down for that lecture survived and have recently been floating around on the Internet in some of the more obscure corners of 4chan and other weirdo blogs.

The theme of the lecture was to be the Immediacy of Writing.  Burroughs has often stated in the past that "Writing is remembering accurately," alluding to the fact that writing exists solely in the past.  To be more explicit, he states "Writing will never catch up to the present".  Despite this reality, Burroughs felt it shouldn't keep us from trying.

"There is music in the written word, an improvisationally erect tone, but it has been choked off by an unknown extraterrestrial viral infection."

One way to effect a cure is the cut-up technique, a unique and extremely powerful attempt to heal the sickness.   But it is such a fragile technique that it quickly falls apart if abused.  In the mid nineties Burroughs became intrigued by the emergence of the Internet and it's ability to "cut-up" the globe, offering "meatier ribs" for reanimating if not capturing the elusive present.  He envisioned the evolution of a cybernetic window into the trending present, where the dominant memetic winds of the whole globe could intersect in one plane.  The applications of this window were limitless in his estimation, affording anyone the uncanny ability to forecast and resculpt the present moment at will.  He then suggested that no intelligent government would ever allow this "wishing machine gone wild" to fall into the hands of the populace.

Obviously this "wishing machine gone wild" now exists.  Just how powerful it can be and just how long it will remain is not yet known.

"So ya thought ya might like to go to the show?"

The above is a screen capture of the top ten "trending" memes on Yahoo as of 1:30 pm on January 21, 2014.  Amazingly, Burroughs lecture notes also allude to a foreseeable "top-ten list", and includes many techniques to achieve the temporal transcendence possible with such meta-materia.  Suggestions include weaving together all ten memes into a short story written within one hour (suggested time limit by Burroughs), sigilizing the totality, or assigning Tarot cards to each meme through an obscure process that was unfortunately left out of the notes.  These are a few of the more specific applications, but I'm sure Burroughs would invite a healthy bit of improvising in this area.

Does it work?  This is the wrong question.   From my own personal experience, how soon does it work and how strong is the result is is a much better query.  My personal advice for approaching this work for the first time is to do either one of two things:  set a specific target date and time in which to capture your trends or try to forget you ever read this post and then wait for that particular type of energized inspiration that only arises at the most curious of hours.  Lucky for you, the materia will be ready and waiting.  Be ready to attack the work with intention, focus, and verve (what ever happened to verve?).  And make sure you have a strong sense of humor.  Good luck!

Nu-Beta Blues Part 4: Chymical Empire

Blue meth is literally IN the fast food.  Ricin is literally IN the cigarette.  The gun is literally IN the Coca-Cola.  What is this saying?

If I abused Heisenberg’s blue meth, smoking, snorting, or shooting it several times a day, it is pretty much guaranteed that my physical and mental health would go to shit.

If I abuse fast food, cigarettes, and Coca-Cola, eating, smoking, and drinking them several times a day, it is pretty much guaranteed that my physical and mental health would go to shit too.   But there's a huge difference between smoking blue meth and eating fast food, right?

Heisenberg's product is addictive, meaning users of his product are technically victims.  They are helpless to stop using once the drug enters their body, once it affects their brain.  Once it takes over their mind.  This is why meth, which used to be LEGAL, is now ILLEGAL.

Fast food, cigarettes, and Coca-Cola are LEGAL because they are not addictive (well, cigarettes are addictive).  But processed junk foods high in salt and fat and beverages loaded with high fructose corn syrup aren't, right?  Because if they were, they wouldn't be LEGAL, would they?  

What if we found out that consuming fast food, cigarettes, and Coca-Cola had a synergistic affect?  What if when all three were consumed, they became as addictive and damaging to your mental and physical health as blue meth?  If this was true, would we make sure they become ILLEGAL too?  

The empire business sure has a lot of competition.  And really, who wants to live in a world without Coca-Cola?  Or diabetes, heart disease, obesity.  And cancer.

Cereal Killer/Gateway Drug

Alamagordo, NM:  Da Bomb

Blades of Canada: To The Moon Alice

The breaking of the power of time short circuits karma, shortcircuits the dreadful power of world itself exerted over the individual unless by some salvific event it is cancelled.  For the Gnostics, this was Christ's true role.  Something must occur that triggers off the final meta-abstracting; Plato spoke of something encountered that reminds us of our forgotten former life.  I call it a "disinhibiting stimulus."  Maybe it's a large black slab, as in 2001. (I seem to be joking but I am not.  My meta-abstracting in February 1974 did not randomly happen; it was induced)

                                                        PKD, 2/14/81 in a letter to Patricia Warrick

The OHED (Oxford Hebrew English Dictionary) gives the letter Qoph a transliteration value of 'Q' or 'K' and a final transliteration value as a 'ck'. 

wikipedia.com

The Moon is the Path of Qoph that is between Netzach (victory) with Malkuth (Kingdom) and is the Path of Transition where the Soul begins the process of incorporating the body. It's planetary sign is Pisces.  At first, the Path of Qoph is a process of the Soul's organization of the physical body it will "inhabit" 

For the student who wishes to reclaim their Universal Inheritance, the journey of awakening from the "Sleep' of incorporation is begun by traveling "upward" along the Path of Qoph, into the Dark recesses of the Unconscious, and its illusions of fear and destruction brought on by the survival mind's fear of Death.  In other words we must slay the demons of our own animal death/fear of pain-illusions to remember the multidimensional Daemon consciousness that we are. This awakening process is a conquest of phantoms reflected from the material world, i.e. "Creations of the Created" and so it is a Path out of darkness into the reflected light of the Sun.

eli-lsmerchantile.com

In Episode Six of the Sixth Season of Mad Men, Roger Sterling and Don Draper are at the airport waiting to fly to Detroit to meet with Chevrolet.  They hope to pitch a successful campaign to win the account of an as yet unnamed "top secret" automobile project.  Unbeknownst to them, and to the delight of advertising rivals loudly "coughing" down the way, the SCDP agency has lost another big account, this time it is Vick's, makers of cough drops. A qoph suppressant.

The "top secret" automobile project is the Chevy Vega.  Vega is the brightest star in the Lyra constellation (sometimes referred to as "The Falling Eagle").  The spectrum of Vega was first photographed in 1872 by Henry Draper--wait, who? 

Henry Draper was the son of John William Draper, who began the art of astrophotography in 1840 when he produced an image of the Moon using the daguerrotype process.  It seems as though fate has already chosen Don Draper, but as the moment of truth approaches, the path to Vega looks quite grim for the agency of SCDP.

The Chevy Vega account is all the more essential for the survival of SCDP with the loss of Vick's (cough).  The competition is strong, and Don has little confidence that he can bring the big fish (Pisces) home.   In a desperate, last minute scramble Don merges his agency with CGC.  Not only is CGC home to Peggy Olson, one of Don's most successful proteges, it also is home to Ted Chaough, he of the make-believe surname.  What's in a name anyways?

Ted Chaough = Death Cough

"The Moon is the Path of Qoph that is between Netzach with Malkuth and is the Path of Transition where the Soul begins the process of incorporating the body."

What will Draper's Soul find when it incorporates into the Body?  The lungs and liver of a man twice his age.  But this Death Cough is not as dire as it might seem on/under the surface.

The merger with CGC is a successful one and their new supergroup has won not just the Chevy Vega account, but all of Chevrolet. 

As we enter Epsiode 7, entitled A Man With A Plan, we have to wonder, who is the Man and what is his Plan?

The newly merged agency, whether they like it or not, is going to the Moon via the Path of Qoph taking both Vega, the "Falling Eagle", and Don Draper, the once rising, now falling Star of the advertising world.

Another falling eagle/falling star, is the United States of America, which also is on the path to the Moon, based on the directives of John F. Kennedy.  Qoph means "back of the head".  Ouch.

Both John F. Kennedy and Don Draper have a profound love of women, and for Don, his current fascination is Sylvia Rosen.  

Don spends the episode attempting to control Sylvia solely for his own desire and satisfaction, much like he has attempted to control all of his desires and mute all of his pain through the use of alcohol.    Don's body is rejecting his Soul.  His attempt to imprison his body ("You exist for my pleasure")  fails:  Sylvia Rosen/Liver says no.  He then attempts to dismantle his newly merged peer with whiskey, but Ted, although a bit embarrassed, survives.  Near the end of the episode, Don enters a small airplane, (evoking the late John Kennedy Jr.) with Ted as his pilot.  As they travel through the dark stormy airspace, Don is completely filled with fear.  

"The journey of awakening from the "Sleep' of incorporation is begun by traveling "upward" along the Path of Qoph, into the dark recesses of the unconscious, and its illusions of fear and destruction brought on by the survival mind's fear of Death"

eli-lsmerchantile.com

But his pilot Ted Chaough has done this before, he has been down this path, and he expertly guides them out of the darkness, above the clouds, and into the light of the sun.

"This awakening process is a conquest of phantoms reflected from the material world, i.e. "Creations of the Created" and so it is a path out of darkness into the reflected light of the Sun.  The Moon is representative of such a journey, as it has both a dark side and reflected side. When facing the darkest fears of your own mind, and of the race, a student undergoes some frightening and devastating  emotional and mental trials that involve real dangers to the physical and mental health of the individual who sense of self is not strong."

eli-lsmerchantile.com

As the Episode comes to a close, and all is seemingly fine Robert "Bobby" Kennedy is assassinated.  By a busboy. 

Don has a son, named Robert, whom he calls "Bobby".  Another Robert works at SCDP, who every one calls Bob.  Bob Benson, the smiling, affable, regular guy working in accounts.

There was a Robert who played a character named "Benson" in a TV show about a butler who goes from working in the Tate house to working in the mansion of a widowed Governor.  It was also has the distinction of being the first TV show to reference the Internet in a 1985 episode that showed characters accessing ARPANET.  What are you talking about Willis?

ARPANET 

The earliest ideas of the Internet were discussed in 1963, with the first working model, ARPANET,  born on October 29, 1969, a few months after the first successful trip to the Moon.  

“Cabbalists believe that the Tzaddi on this Path (of qoph) can find and unearth the buried Divine Spark and reunite it with the Source."

http://ann.skea.com/Moon.htm

The first message communicated via ARPANET was very short because the system crashed after only two letters were sent.  The message that was intended was "login", but only "lo" were delivered.  This message could be misinterpreted as a few things.  As a one and a zero (10) or an I and an O (IO).    

  Io, a moon of Jupiter, is very close to the same size as our Moon.

"The work of the Path of Qoph ends with the dissolution of energy back to its source, which is Netzach (victory). Successful understanding of this path, is to understand the relationship of our personality-consciousness to the physical power-tool built for each incarnation and facilitates an awake Soul, who walks in the light rather than a Soul who sleeps in the dark and doesn't operate the Power-Tool it was given to help continue the Great Work. The Moon Card is a reminder that most people/souls, during the cyclic phase of withdrawal of consciousness from the physical Power-Tool, continue to act on information and phantasmagorical  fantasies related to survival subconscious body existence. If not released, the sleeping soul-consciousness becomes a phantom of its own fantasies and are known as Ghosts."

http://ann.skea.com/Moon.htm

Earlier in this season Don is shown relaxing on the beach with a little light reading, Dante's Divine Comedy, or as it as it is in Italian Divina Commedia.  Dante's work is a journey from the darkest recesses of hell, Inferno, into the mucky muck of Purgatory, and finally into the light of Paradise.  There are 100 cantos that comprise the epic poem.  This echoes the journey on the path of qoph in design, as well as number:  in Hebrew gematria, qoph has a numerical value of 100.

Don’s own private Inferno is certainly his awful childhood; his mother died in childbirth, and according to Don, his father beat him on a regular basis.  When Don was ten he saw his father kicked in the head by a horse and die.  He ran away from his surviving family and found him self in the Korean War, where he finally found an opportunity to escape his past and change the complexion of his life. 

Don's enters Purgatory with an assumed identity, where he comes to live with the widow of the real Draper, a woman named Anna who is as much a mother to Don as he ever had, and by this association, grandmother to his children.  She is familiar with the Tarot and gives Don a reading in Episode 12, The Mountain King, of Season 2.

"In the position of the Present the card is the Sun reversed, with the 8 of cups as the challenging card.  In my tarot readings, I would read these cards together:  the Sun, reversed, would represent Don in the position he’s in at that moment in time, and the crossing card, the 8 of Cups, as the thing that is getting in his way.  I would say that Don’s been favored with luck, and good fortune, and success, but none of that’s important to him —  he’s dissatisfied and tired of dealing with all the  emotion surrounding him.  The Eight of Cups has always seemed to me to have the perfect illustration: the figure in the center walking toward the moon away from all those cups."

June Lemen

"To the Moon Alice, to the Moon"

Don Draper is of course not Don Draper, he is correctly Dick Whitman, but where one ends and the other begins is impossible to tell.  I remember another Dick who famously struggled with dual identities. 

Philip K Dick documented this split in two different novels, one reflecting Inferno, the other Purgatory.  In A Scanner Darkly, we have our character lost in the Inferno, literally draped in an identity cloaking device.  In VALIS we have our main character, who, by the divine grace of anamnesis, remembers where he is, but is cleaved into two distinct people, Philip and Horselover Fat.  The synthesis of these two never arrives.       

Dick Whitman is clearly a man cloaked in false identity, and Don Draper can be considered a horse lover, considering what happened to the father who beat him.  These identities remain and struggle for a conscious release of Soul into Paradise.  This release can not be found in the execution of one identity for the other, it can only happen through synthesis, through a merger of the two.  Don/Dick obviously understands this, at least unconsciously.  We've seen him do this a few times already.  What desperately needs to occur for Don/Dick to actualize this consciously.  But what will it take to trigger this realization?  

The Planetary sign of qoph is Pisces, the fish.  Don used to be a big fish in a small pond, but now he is realizing that the Age of Aquarius is ocean wide.  Dick Whitman is realizing that Don Draper has an expiration  date, and Don Draper is realizing that underneath it all he is scared and all alone.  Both are drowning.

I have been hoping that the trigger for Don's synthesis will be achieved through the power of a proper psychedelic experience.  This is a strong possibility considering the experimentation of the 60's, as well as the positive experiences of Draper's partner Roger Sterling with LSD.  And Don has yet to turn down a new and exciting experience.  

This opportunity at synthesis was given to another character from Matthew Weiner's other successful show, The Sopranos.  

Tony Soprano is a character who also struggled with dual identities, even referenced in the title of Episode 53,  "The Two Tony's" (Don imprisons Sylvia in Room 503).

In the second part of Season 6,  Episode 18 entitled "Kennedy and Heidi"(written by David Chase and Matthew Weiner), Tony Soprano takes mescaline, and is thrust into the cosmos, which for him starts in the belly of the beast, a hotel room in Las Vegas.  Vega again.

After violently purging into the toilet, Tony leans back against a towel.

 XVIII The Moon

X Wheel of Fortune

"24"

The Empire Never Ended

"He's dead!"

"I get it?"                                                                                                     "I get it!"

Tony failed to synthesize the experience, just like the rest of the people in his family.  He couldn't get out.  Carmela tried to divorce herself from The Family, but she returned.  A.J. got a job making minimum wage, and proposed to his girlfriend, but winds up back in the The Family when he accepts a job as a producer in a porn studio.  Meadow strives to become a lawyer, even working in a law center in the inner city, but she is eventually pulled back into The Family as well.

I hope when Don/Dick gets his chance he has built better wings.