Sigma History

Of music, beauty, Byron, and metaphor

This week I finished a new music video for a new Soulsigma song that will be on the Byronics album. I was fortunate that an old friend of mine, who I’ve known for nearly four decades and for whom the song was originally written, gave me permission to use her as Byron’s avatar of Beauty’s daughter. I won’t belabor the explanation here, but both the original poem and the music video are metaphors. Feel free to attempt the deciphering if you are so inclined.

PERFECTION by Soulsigma (Instagram video mix)

Now, I’ve pointed out many times to men who are confused about their SSH status or suspect they might be a Sigma because they are introverts or didn’t get invited to parties in high school that the second S in SSH stands for sexual. Which is to say, if you’re a man who has not been surrounded by Beauty on a regular basis, you’re observably nothing of the sort.

George Gordon Byron was in many ways the signature Sigma. His reputation and having been dubbed “mad, bad, and dangerous to know” by one of his more literary lovers proved famously alluring to men and women alike, and indeed, his inimitable style not only introduced the word “byronic” into the language, but set the stage for every brooding male sex symbol from Jim Morrison to The Lost Boys, to Sarah McLachlan’s Possession, to 50 Shades of Grey.

Lady Caroline Lamb, author and Byron’s longtime lover, who famously described him as “mad, bad, and dangerous to know.”

I have a number of intellectual heroes, chief among them being Umberto Eco and Herman Hesse. But George Gordon Byron is, and always was, my artistic lodestone, even before I knew anything about him. Not having been much drawn to 19th Century literature in my youth, and Byron having been banished from the approved poetry curriculum in both high school and college, I owned the Dead or Alive CD for several years before realizing who it was named after.

It’s not an accident that the Castalia AI project is named after him. And while his poetry isn’t for everyone, it almost invariably makes for spectacular music lyrics, particularly if your compositional instincts incline toward the dark and melancholy.

So the spirit bows before thee

To listen and adore thee;

With a full but soft emotion,

Like the swell of Summer’s ocean.

There will, of course, be an amount of natural interest in my friend, who is nearly as delightful as an individual as she is beautiful. That’s really what she looked like back in the day and the outfit she’s wearing in the video is what she was wearing on the night I met her, when she showed up at The Living Room in a limousine with ten other girls and asked me to take them to a strip club. I also introduced her to Prince a few years later, at his request. He took his shot and went down in flames, but wound up becoming friends with her as well.

And yes, she and my wife know each other and like each other. That’s perhaps one of the most interesting things about truly beautiful women; contra the near-universal assumption on the part of both men and women alike, they actually tend to be more independent, less insecure, and considerably less bitchy than the average woman.

If you’d like to see the widescreen version of the video or learn more about how it was made or some of the various infelicities you may have observed, there is more about the technical aspects of the production at AI Central. And as for the metaphor, it’s about inspiration and the creative process, if that wasn’t obvious.