Jack White - That Black Bat Licorice Album

So who is this She, the women in the song, and what kind of licorice is this? Like this review the song starts with so many questions,

“WHAWHAWHAWHATWHATWHAT?”

Let’s answer these questions shall we?

She says behave yourself. For what does he need to behave himself for? Hopefully another question we can soon answer.

With the first verse he tells us about her…

“…Built like a castrum doloris”,

Castrum doloris is a structure with decorations (design) that accompany the the stand that supports a casket during a catholic funeral.

Castra or castrum is also the name of a Roman built trench.

“Good for the needy, like Nietzsche, Freud and Horace”

Horace is a Roman poet.
Freud is a psychoanalyst.
Nietzsche is a German philosopher.

She must be designed very well… being built with characteristics of three important historical figures and all…

He also talks about about himself…

“But I’m skinflint….I won’t joke with you”

So he’s thrifty, but says he won’t pull any quick ones on us. I’ll take it he’s honest.

The second verse comes in and ooofta! She’s must be a live one boys! With what it’s doing to him, making his feet all hot.

“My feet are burning like a Roman hypocaust”

-A hypocaust is central heating below the floor, used in ancient Rome, Horace knows what I’m talking about.

“She writes letters like a Jack Chick Comic”

-Jack Chick wrote comic that were anti-religious. Parallels here with Nietzsche.

I mean listen to “this….and this”, She’s making him fucking hysterical.

“Make my fingers histrionic”

[“Feet burning” (hysteria, origin of the Greek Uterus; historically diagnosed in women) “like Roman hypocaust” (Horace) ]

In the third verse, he starts talking about his monkey. It’s jumping up and down (hysteria), probably cause its feet are all hot now. And when that monkey is jumping, he says, he just has to go! Let’s keep that in mind.

The chorus, comes and he’s spitting out Black Bat Licorice.

The color Black is associated with power, mystery, elegance. It affects the mind and body by creating an inconspicuous feeling, and increasing the sense of potential and possibility.
Bats represents the perception of things that others cannot see. On the Great Plains bats also imparted great wisdom on people.
While licorice has been used in herbalism and traditional medicine.
A sort of synthetic meaning being built with symbols of these words. I think we are getting closer to the meaning of this peculiar candy that needs spitting out.

After the chorus, everything gets monotone….

“I wanna cut out my tongue…”

Tongue help you communicate. Loosing ones tongue would also be loosing expressiveness, hence the monotone. Freud would have a hay day interpreting this bridge if it was in a dream…

When you dream that about your tongue being cut suggests that others don’t understand the way you expect them too, generally speaking. That Black Bat Licorice having common parallels here.

“And the phases of the moon directin’ all of my decisions like this”

So his monkey, and the moon doing “this…..and this”

Sounds like some magical and primal stuff going on here. To explain the astrological reference here, I’ll quote a passage from Synchronicity An Acausal Connecting Principle by C.G. Jung.

“I discovered an instructive account [of magic] in Avicenna’s Liber sextus naturalium, which says that a certain power (monkey) to alter thing indwells in the human soul and subordinates the other things to Her, particularly when she is swept into a great excess of love or hate or the like (Monkey’s jumping, hysteria). When therefore the soul of man falls into great excess of any passion (hysteria),it can be proved by experiment that it (the excess) binds things (magically) and alters them in the way it wants….I found that the emotionality of the human soul is the chief cause of all these things, whether because, on account of her great emotion, she alters her bodily substance and the other things towards which she strives, or because, on account of her dignity, the other, lower things are subject to her, or because the appropriate hour or astrological situation or another power coincides with so inordinate an emotion, and we (in consequence) believe that what this power does is then done by the soul…. Whoever would learn the secret of doing and undoing these thing must know that everyone can influence everything magically if he falls into a great excess…and he must fo it at that hour when the excess befalls him, and operate with the things which the should prescribes. Thus it is the soul who desires a thing more intensely, who makes thing more effective and more like what comes forth.
Albert Mangus on magic.”

Here it is revealed what She is. She is the soul of man.

Continuing with the song the Final verse he asks:

“Don’t you want to lose the part of the brain that has opinions?”

Nothing would be good or bad, Nietzsche poking his head up again here…

It would certainly stop you from getting your feelings hurt. Then you wouldn’t have to run away to New York, Dumbo. Loosing all worries would help with self-expression. When you get out of your own way, there isn’t anything to hold that monkey back. Let that monkey free!

Closing the song with this last chorus, she tells him to behave himself again. Behaving yourself, tailoring what you have to say. Designing the best way to say something. Designing it a particular way, but then most people wouldn’t understand you (Black Bat, Freud and cut tongue).

Being told through the art of songwriting and storytelling, with the specific choice of objects and words and using the common parallels they share a wholeness is achieved. In the wholeness is wisdom and deeper meaning. Thus, revealing here, the soul of man, She. She, something in us all, and the peak experience she brings with her.