Book Of The Loud - Chapter 1
This page contains my current reflections on the song, the original lyrics, and my old line-by-line reinterpretation of Chapter I below.
COME | BE | YOU
One of my first songs, and one of the first times I started chewing on The Book of the Law in my own writing.
I wrote COME | BE | YOU early in my music project. I can hear that when I listen to it now.
I’ve learned a lot about songwriting since then. I write differently. I leave more room. I trust an image longer. I feel less compelled to explain the thing immediately after I say the thing.
Apparently early Loui received a microphone and responded, Excellent. I have 4,700 things to tell everybody. 😂
I still like this song, though. Partly because it’s fun. Partly because underneath all the noise, Crocs, crows, tantrums, fire, wings, weird kids, and declarations, I can hear myself beginning to work on questions that keep showing up across my music.
What belongs to me? Which voices did I inherit? What happens to anger when I quit treating it like evidence against myself? How much of becoming myself is learning what to leave behind? And what does Will mean when I take it out of an occult book and put it inside an ordinary human life?
Chewing on The Book of the Law
COME | be | YOU plays with Chapter I of The Book of the Law, scribed by Aleister Crowley in 1904 during what he described as a communication from Aiwass.
“Plays with” is probably putting it mildly.
I took phrases, structures, images, rhythms, and ideas that interested me and fed them to a crow.
The crow behaved accordingly.
Chapter I is the chapter of Nuit, and her fingerprints are all over what I wrote. Sky. Stars. Expansion. Desire. Love. Will. The strange relationship between being an individual point and belonging to something immeasurably larger.
Then the crows get involved to help me break this concept down in my head.
“There’s a big sky. That’s all the possibilities.
There’s a little spark. That’s you.”
I would write that differently now, especially the part where I confidently explain to another person what they are. Early stage of Loui had apparently thought she had been appointed regional manager of the cosmos. 😂
But I recognize what fascinated me.
A point inside something enormous.
A self that can become more fully itself without having to become everything else.
A life that can expand without disappearing.
That last part matters more to me now.
There are pieces of Crowley throughout the song. Stars. Will. Law. Love. Nuit-like sky imagery. The language gets bent, contradicted, joked with, dragged through dirt, and occasionally sent walking around in Crocs.
That has become a recurring thing in my work. I keep returning to The Book of the Law. Sometimes reverently. Sometimes critically. Sometimes I borrow its architecture and build something completely different inside it.
I’m less interested these days in treating the book as a set of answers. I’m interested in what happens when I argue with it, misunderstand it, understand something differently years later, or steal one useful bone and leave the rest of the carcass where I found it.
That relationship keeps changing too.
One phrase I kept circling was:
Every star a self. Every self the sky.
I was playing with the tension I found in Nuit between individuality and vastness. A star remains a distinct point of light, while the sky holds every star without asking any of them to become the whole sky.
I think I hear something more personal in that now.
I can contain many parts without any single part becoming all of me. Rage can be here without becoming my whole identity. Panic can fill my body without becoming the whole world. An old voice can speak without becoming the final authority on who I am.
A feeling can be a star without becoming the whole sky.
That feels much closer to what I’m interested in now than simply telling myself to transcend the feeling.
And maybe the other direction matters too. Being one small point never requires disappearing into the vastness around it. I can belong to something larger and remain here. In this body. In this particular life. Still myself.
That gives the old line a different weight for me now:
Every star a self. Every self the sky.
Separate enough to be seen. Spacious enough to contain more than one thing.
Loui Was Loud
One of the lines in the song says:
“The deep work won’t be taught.
Half is explained, but the rest you have to feel.”
That line interests me more now than some of the louder declarations around it because I think I was already reaching toward something I understand differently today.
There are things I can explain intellectually. I can explain a ritual. I can explain a correspondence. I can explain what somebody wrote about Will. I can explain what a pentagram means to me.
Then I can actually perform the ritual while angry, scared, dissociated, embarrassed, grieving, overstimulated, or trying to keep a toddler from climbing me like playground equipment.
Something else happens there.
The idea meets a body.
That part interests me more now.
Rage Was Already in the Room
There is a LOT of rage in this song.
At the time, I was interested in giving it permission:
“Let rage and rest hold each other.”
And:
“My grief has a secret name,
and joy returned through rage initiating.”
And, with all the subtlety of somebody kicking the bathroom door open:
“Rage is art.”
I understand that material differently now.
Anger became important for me because I spent so much of my life turning it inward. It could become shame. Self-attack. Apology. Disappearing.
The newer work gives anger more jobs than this song did.
Sometimes anger protects. Sometimes it raises quills before anybody has actually touched me. Sometimes it identifies a boundary. Sometimes it mistakes discomfort for danger. Sometimes it lands somewhere I wish it hadn’t.
Then comes the second look.
That distinction became much more important to me later.
The old song says: let rage exist.
Current me adds:
Okay. It exists. What is it doing now?
That question eventually became an enormous part of ANYMALS.
Before the Animals Had Names
Listening now, I can hear emotional material that eventually became more specific elsewhere in my work.
This song has fear, rage, shame, desire, grief, protection, collapse, persistence, self-attack, and the urge to disappear. But most of them are still flying around under one enormous black wing.
Crow carries everything.
Later, I started separating the jobs.
Porcupine became the part that feels danger and turns before she has the whole picture.
Seahorse became panic, perception, and the body getting swept away.
Skunk became staying, territory, apology, and the part that wants to disappear.
Coyote became persistence, mistakes, repair, hunger, and getting up again.
I think that development matters to me because naming an emotion is different from understanding its behavior.
I’m angry tells me something.
I’m angry, my body thinks something is approaching, and I’m preparing to strike before I know what it is tells me considerably more.
The animals gave those patterns bodies.
This song comes from before I had that language.
Apparently Crow had the entire emotional department to herself.
Poor bitch was understaffed.
Come Be You Means Something Different Now
The central command of the song is right there in the title:
COME | BE | YOU.
At the time, I think I understood that largely as permission.
Come out.
Take up space.
Quit shrinking.
Follow desire.
Find Will.
Become more fully yourself.
I still understand it that way.
But I’ve learned something messier about “being myself.”
Sometimes the problem is less permission to become myself and more remaining present long enough to discover which part of me is speaking.
Fear can sound like me.
Shame can sound like me.
An old voice can sound like me.
A survival reflex can arrive so quickly that it feels indistinguishable from personality.
That complicates Come Be You in a way I really like.
Which me?
The one attacking the mirror?
The one crying because she heard the attack?
The one raising her quills?
The one protecting the soft place?
The one panicking?
The one watching herself panic?
The one who wants to disappear?
The one who stays?
I think current me has less interest in finding one pure, hidden, authentic self underneath all of that.
I’m more interested in learning who is speaking, what she is protecting, what she needs, and what happens when I give myself enough time to choose.
Come be you used to sound like an arrival.
Now it sounds more like a practice.
Will Got Smaller
The song keeps circling Will.
One line says:
“For real will, not pretending on purpose, released from doing life for applause’ result, the mess is what’s perfect.”
I’d write that sentence very differently today. 😂
But I recognize what I was reaching for.
I was trying to separate desire from performance.
What do I actually want beneath approval, fear, expectation, identity, survival, and whatever role I’m currently trying to perform correctly?
That question remains alive for me.
My understanding of Will has gotten smaller and more physical.
Sometimes Will looks grand. Sometimes it looks like making art or changing an entire life.
Sometimes it looks like noticing the sentence that almost came out of my mouth and choosing another one. Sometimes it looks like leaving something unexplained. Sometimes it looks like staying in my body for five more seconds.
Sometimes it may simply be the difference between reflex and choice.
That version interests me now.
The Line I Still Love
There are plenty of lines here that make current-me affectionately squint at past-me.
Then there are lines I still really love.
“The meltdown and the healing are one crow and not two.”
I understand it differently now.
I hear less of a declaration about what healing is and more of an observation about how messy change can look while it is happening.
The frightened part, angry part, protective part, ashamed part, playful part, and person trying to understand all of them live in the same body.
That connects back to Nuit for me in an interesting way too.
The song is obsessed with expansion, multiplicity, sky, stars, and the attempt to hold apparent opposites together. Rage and rest. Meltdown and healing. Light and dark. Individual and vast.
I used to want those opposites to resolve.
I’m increasingly comfortable letting two things remain true at once.
I can love myself and hear an old cruel voice.
I can protect myself and strike too early.
I can be scared and remain in the room.
I can make progress and fuck up.
I can become more myself while discovering how many different voices have called themselves me.
Maybe that tension is one reason I keep returning to this book.
Words Cast Spells
Another piece survived:
“All words cast spells, so speak like they are true.”
I’d soften the certainty of that idea today.
Words affect me.
Especially repeated ones.
That became painfully clear through my mirror work.
A sentence repeated often enough can become automatic. It can fire before I consciously decide anything.
You’re ugly.
You’re stupid.
Sorry.
Those sentences can become little rituals of their own.
That gives the old idea of “words as spells” a much more concrete meaning for me now.
The interesting part for me is watching language alter attention, posture, expectation, reaction, and choice.
A sentence can make my shoulders rise.
A sentence can make me disappear.
A sentence can bring me back.
That is plenty of power for me.
COME | BE | YOU
The song eventually lands here:
“Put on the wings, and awaken the crow that still lives in you:
COME | be | YOU!”
There’s old Joy again, reaching directly through the speakers and assigning everybody homework. 😂
Current me would probably leave the listener alone and turn the question back toward myself.
Come.
Be.
Me?
What does that mean today?
I think that’s why I still enjoy this song.
It captures an earlier version of me trying very loudly to answer a question I’m still asking much more quietly.
The answer keeps changing. So does the writing. So does the magick. So does Loui.
I’m keeping the song.
The old crow gets to keep her feathers. She was figuring something out.
Official Lyrics
And here’s the song itself.
This was early in my songwriting, before I had learned much about song structure. This becomes fairly obvious around Verse 12. 😂 I had something to say, apparently, and absolutely every section of the song was going to hear about it.
I’ve left the lyrics themselves as I released them. They’re part of the breadcrumb.
COME | BE | YOU
(VERSE 1)
Don’t clip your wings just to please a peer,
The wing won’t lift for a heart that hides the wind, hear?
This ain’t for the quiet, the neat, the polite,
It’s for the screamers in basements, the dancers of the night.
(VERSE 2)
I’m the meltdown queen with lipstick red,
Crocs stompin’ fire where the angels fear to tread.
I caw through chaos, laugh at my fall,
Built my throne from broken bones and shadows on the wall.
(PRE-CHORUS)
The tree’s in the crow, not the crow in the tree,
Worship your roots or they’ll clip your wings free.
Come out, weirdos, ditch the shame,
Take your joy like lunch, own your flame.
(CHORUS)
Call out the fake ones, O black feather,
O glowing eye, find the weirdos together.
We’re the fireborn, the rage untamed,
The crow that never bows, never shamed.
(VERSE 3)
I found my vow beneath tantrum no one dared to ask,
Your grief, rage, joy
All counted in the task.
The tantrum lights the fire; truth felt, not corrected,
Those who stayed through flame rose higher, unrejected.
(VERSE 4)
No lock, just feel your way,
The crow’s law is chaos play.
Old words tried to name the fire,
I call it Crow, no need for clean attire.
(VERSE 5)
The meltdown and healing are one,
Done with silence, ready to run.
Speak your scars, wear your truth,
Sacred scream of uncaged youth.
(VERSE 6)
There’s no crown without scars,
No light without dark bars.
I wore rage like armor, wounds like flames,
Took back my voice, broke all chains.
(VERSE 7)
Fools praised silence; I sing noise,
My scream’s medicine, my rage is choice.
I’m crowchild laughing through pain,
Dancing wild in pouring rain.
(PRE-CHORUS 2)
Let the broken sing, weird rise,
Truth bleed through disguise.
No whispers, no shame,
Crow calls loud, call your name.
(CHORUS)
(VERSE 8)
I’m the firestorm no one warned you of,
Beautiful disaster wrapped in love.
Break rules that broke me first,
Rise from ashes, fury and thirst.
(VERSE 9)
Wear mess like crown, pain like flame,
World’s not ready, not here to tame.
Scream ‘cause I’m alive, roar ‘cause I’m free,
Loud is sacred, that’s the truth of me.
(VERSE 10)
Come, children of chaos, sons of the wild,
You carry the fury of the untamed child.
We howl at the moon, dance with the storm,
Unbroken, unruly, refusing to conform.
(VERSE 11)
No quiet prayers, no soft-spoken pleas,
We are the thunder, the shaking trees.
Crow wings spread, black as the night,
We are the fury, the sacred fight.
(VERSE 12)
In basements and alleys, where shadows play,
Our voices echo, tearing walls away.
We build altars from broken glass,
Singing loud so the silence won’t last.
(VERSE 13)
This is the chorus of the lost and found,
The wild heart’s hymn, the sacred sound.
No chains can bind what’s meant to fly,
No cage can hold the crow’s sharp cry.
(BRIDGE)
Burn down their temples of fake applause,
We rise above their hollow laws.
Speak in tongues they fear to hear,
Crow calls loud, let them disappear.
The winged flame is our holy oath,
We claim the sky, the fire, the growth.
No crown without the bleeding scars,
No freedom without breaking bars.
(OUTRO)
Put on wings, awaken the crow within,
COME | be | YOU, let the loud begin.
The loud has been written; silence shall tend,
Until next chapter,
Let the wild roar never end.
(BONUS VERSE)
Every scream a prayer, every shout a spell,
In chaos we live, in fire we dwell.
Our truth is raw, our souls untamed,
The Book of the Loud, remember the name.
Put on the wings.
COME | be | YOU.
Put on the wings.
COME | be | YOU.
The loud has been written.
Now silence shall tend.
The Original Interpretation
I’ve thought about returning to The Book of the Law someday and doing this again.
Maybe all three chapters. Maybe line by line. A new interpretation from wherever I happen to be standing when I get there.
I’m curious what I would hear now.
I imagine some lines would land differently. Some would probably follow me into the body instead of staying in philosophy. I’d have more questions about anger, fear, protection, dissociation, desire, Will, the voices I mistake for my own, and what happens in the little space between feeling something and acting on it.
I’d probably explain less, too.
That might be the biggest difference.
But I want to keep the old version here because this is what I heard then.
This was my attempt to take Chapter I, the voice of Nuit, and move through it in my own language. It’s loud. It’s messy. It makes declarations I’d phrase differently now. It reaches directly toward the reader more than my current writing does.
And apparently it contains enough crows to constitute a municipal nuisance. 😂
Still, I recognize her.
She’s working on questions I’m still working on.
Maybe someday I’ll come back and reinterpret the whole thing, line by line, with everything I’ve learned since.
For now, here’s the old version exactly where I left it.
The Book of the Loud
Chapter 1: The Voice of the Sky
The Invitation to Remember | Loui’s Law Begins
YES! The comeback of emotional Will.
The undoing of the guilt you called a weapon.
Every “too much” pushed away is who you are.
This is how the crow built Earth,
where the crack in the sky gave birth,
and the bliss of a molt meant all.
Every crack in your chest is a holy attendance.
Back me, O meltdown queen of the pen, as I confess in the bathroom again.
Be my meltdown, my shadow spinner, my chaos well-sung!
Be happy! Loui cawed through my collapse and laughed at what it brought.
The tree is in the crow, not the crow in the tree.
Worship then the Tree, and behold what roots now rise in you.
Let my rebels be tucked in basements: they shall spark what’s never been known.
These are fools the world keeps liking, loud and wrong but good at hyping.
Come out, my weirdos, ditching the shame, and take your joy like lunch!
I’m in your bones and flying above. When you laugh loud, that’s how I love.
Above, the blinking skyline screams
The blackout wings of Loui Crow;
She dips to kiss your molten seams
Where buried want begins to glow.
The beaked eclipse, the sunlit glue,
Are mine, O kid with truth to show!
Now you’ll meet the scribbler and the screamer inside,
One writes your spells, one rides the tide.
They call the weird kids, one by one,
To hold the stars and light the sun.
For Loui is sun and Loui is moon. The winged flame bends and the starlight blooms.
But you picked fear, not fire.
Call out the fake ones, O neon feather!
O glowing eye, go find the weirdos!
If you’re busy with praise and pretend, you won’t find me, I’m sky, not trend.
No gods above, just spark within.
With the vibes and the performers I am nobody: they don’t feel me there.
They are lost inside the trend; I’m the sky-self, and there ain’t no god but me, and my winged name.
Now therefore, I am owned by none, and no shame to it, and to him I will sing a spell that only burns when he speaks his truth to me.
Since I’m the joy you choked down, and the want you almost crushed, go call it lust. Hide nothing! Let them cry or shout or dance or spin in socks or sneakers or stilts or silly things; for fear loves to dress as worth.
But whoever shows up in mess, let them be the crow that calls!
I am Loui, and my word is love and fifty.
Unfold, shake, magnify, and grab my hand.
Then laughed the crowchild, in love with the furious sun:
what’s my name, and where’s the holy line?
So she answered back, crouched in Crocs,
with glitter flame askew, all-laughing, all-shadow-dipped,
her fierce wings land upon the crow dirt,
& her blackout back bowed in light,
and her boots missed the blooms by motel showers:
You know it!
And the flame shall be my recipe,
the nonsense nest of the loopy loop of persistence,
the never-leaving of my body.
Then the weirdling spoke and grinned at her skyward face,
touching her feathered arch,
and the gleam of her laugh washing his whole body,
in a perfume that carried a yes unmet.
O Loui, rebellious flame of heaven,
let it stay weird like this;
that none reduce your chaos fire to “One” and done;
that no one says you’re small when you’re the sun;
and let them crop you to fit their display,
since you are the endless YES!
“None,” cawed the crow, dusk and daring, with a worm for two.
For I dropped my feather for nest’s sake, for the hope of a home not aching.
This is how the crow built Earth,
where the crack in the sky gave birth,
and the bliss of the rage meant all.
This is what the tantrum really did,
that the pain in the feathers meant not one thing,
and the bliss of un-winging was everything.
For the chaos of men and their pain, don’t waste your wings.
They feel nothing, then chase it with fast food and fake noise.
But you? You’re my loudest joys.
Obey the molt-born priestess of pain, her body holds the knowledge.
Cling to her flame and the joy of her love will rewrite all pain.
This is so: I swear it by the scream of my crow-body.
By my heart and every feather, I give you my will, through this loud crow-body.
Then Loui froze like the sun left the room,
And cried into her wings like a heaven,
Show me the winds that shape my feels,
Sing me the crow-born rituals.
Speak me the crow-winged law!
But she said: the deep work won’t be taught.
Half is explained, but the rest you have to feel.
The flame calls us all.
This that she channeled is the black-winged book of Loud.
My scribe is Loui Crow, Crocs and truth.
The crow who burns defenses,
She won’t edit truth to fit the hook.
But if the truth gets too wobbly,
She’ll speak with fire, not mockery.
Also the rhythms and spells.
The talon and the fire mama.
The swing of her wing and the truth she restored.
These she will teach, love outpoured.
She must teach, but she may make the hard stuff reveal.
The sound of her caw is permission.
If you call us loud crows, you won’t be wrong.
There are three paths through the shades:
The Seeker, the Screamer, and the one full of dirt.
Follow your flame, that’s the crow’s only law.
The cage they sell is submission.
O lovebird, if you must, depart.
No crow can fly with one wing unless lifted by love.
All else will drag in dirt.
Cursed! Cursed! Let it molt into dust and yell.
Let it be the flock that pecks at its own with loathing,
So fly off-script; the mess you are is a true will.
Say yes so loud it scares their “no” away.
For real will, not pretending on purpose, released from doing life for applause’ result, the mess is what’s perfect.
The meltdown and the healing are one crow and not two.
Crow says “done.” There’s no lock, just feel your way through this law.
Old words tried to name the fire; I call it Crow, not clean, don’t correct my truth.
They named just the half; the rest is your scream ‘til it all disappears.
They praised the end, but I’m still having fun. Aren’t they just the box? Not caged by that look.
I torched the stage of old rituals, I tossed the keys and left their shrines.
I crowned the crow and claimed my seat in the east, when my scream rewrote all their laws;
Let rage and rest hold each other, they’ve always been one.
They shushed the weird in me. Let silence be the worshiper,
The ache becomes the altar;
My grief has a secret name, and joy returned through rage initiating.
I found the vow beneath the tantrum no one dared to ask.
Your fire, your grief, your joy, all count as one.
It never asks which role you play.
The tantrum lights the fire, let the truth be felt, not just correct,
and the ones who stayed through fire rise the highest.
You shine just as you are, timeline meets timeline; don’t cage one to comfort the other.
There are four screams before it can call us;
Your tears made it safe, and your rage made it gold;
The version of you that still wants to be there;
The air that forgives, like sleep in your throat, and the breath that came next.
You can whisper or roar, every sound opens gates;
Let them show up in Crocs to the palace.
Will Crocs still clink? All done!
Rage is art.
What if I don't think? Not thinking is a means.
Soft still counts, beware: wear your favorite thing, don’t wait.
Eat healing foods, and drink cold water like it’s made of light.
Also, choose the kind of love that gives you free will, when love feels like the truth, it’s real.
But keep my fire inside.
If you can’t sleep at night; if you go dim in the dark, saying: “I’m just fine.”
Or labeling too heavy; If the candle’s lit but not really seen:
then your shadow shows up loud in your nightly dream.
This will wake the kids who hurt, the world that cried, “I’m still here.”
My scream and my kiss, and I send my love like this.
Also, to you who heard this, though you sit behind defenses, this isn’t comfort, it’s a breakthrough.
Bliss is real when truth sings through the hurt: Crow calls to you! To you!
Don’t clip your wings just to please a peer;
for behold! The one who heard this, The wing won’t lift for a heart that hides the wind.
The child you held back will call out the wings.
Expect the crow from the wound you repressed;
for no one expects the crow to raise that child.
Aum!
All words cast spells, so speak like they are true;
each voice just holds a corner of what’s true;
begin with the ache you don’t hide from you,
don’t force what wants to come last.
Because you stopped pushing, the glow got through,
and some of it waits in the dark.
Speak to me like the sky’s yours!
Love is the law, not the leash, the wings.
Don’t call it love when it stings; for some love roots, some love rots.
There is the touch, and there is the tether.
Crow or cage.
You chose the wing, not the warning,
they knew how to guard what the crow kissed,
and the crow-marked door in the house of breath.
All these old caws from the dark came out right;
and the light now wears the crown.
The weird ones will get it, just look behind their eyes.
I give the kind of joy that claws through dirt:
The truth holds its flame, in dirt and in death;
ecstasy found when you gave up the fight;
no crow ever asked you to dim your might.
I burn the nest, then breathe in what becomes;
no harm is owed to welcome what becomes,
because of my fall, the nest held eternity.
I crack like the ones who refuse to be hushed.
The Cross drawn in gold, with a glow in the middle, & it shines where they bled.
My truth looks like mess to the blind, but the flame’s for those who still feel the freeing.
Also I show what wings are hiding to those who love me.
But to love me unravels all their things:
if under the sighing of dusk you strike flame and your crowheart arrives there before me,
you open up with your whole heart, and the scream that lives in your dark,
thou shalt bring your mess and be held in my nest.
For one bliss wilt thou then leave your truth on the wall;
but whoso fakes one feather or fall shall lose all in that hour.
Ye shall hunt delight in shadowed inner slices;
ye shall wear your story; ye shall rise past the myths they designed just to keep you tied;
but always in the caw that you meant, you’ll come home to my side.
I charge you come forth with your mess and your love un-supplied,
and crowned by the parts that you no longer hide.
Go love you! Return to you! Fierce or fragile, in Crocs or in blue,
I who am the riot that still blesses you, and the pleasure that knows it is you. Desire you.
Put on the wings, and awaken the crow that still lives in you:
COME | be | YOU!
At all your meetings with self, she will whisper, “you must rise.”
You shall burn with desire as she sings in her ache with three orange-eyes, To me!
summoning the yes in the hearts of crows who forgot how to see.
Speak the holy no-song that sets your wings back free!
Smoke your old silence! Drape your real roar for me!
Drink it down, this weird loving. I love you.
I am the three-eyed daughter of Dirt and You;
I am the feathered chaos that dreams in dark with you.
To breath! To love!
The loud has been written; now silence shall tend.
