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stvlti · 21 days

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linger like a sandwalk - a playlist for Dune Part Two

I'm back 💃 after 2 years of not posting new playlists for my fandoms 💃 this new Dune movie is living in my head rent free 😮‍💨 of course I had to make fanmix for this one to try and consolidate my thoughts.

Tracks ⏏️

Bloodline -- Gabriels // No Church in the Wild -- Jay-Z & Kanye West // Mary Magdalene -- FKA Twigs // Pink Matter -- Frank Ocean // Smother -- Daughter // Say You'll Go -- Janelle Monáe // A Time of Quiet Between Storms (Dune Part Two OST) -- Hans Zimmer // Your Blood -- Nothing But Thieves // The River -- Kero Kero Bonito // Bad Religion -- Frank Ocean // Telekinesis -- Travis Scott ft. SZA & Future // Transform -- Daniel Caesar ft. Charlotte Day Wilson

Meta ⏏️

An explanation of the song choices & related thoughts on the film *

(*) I still have not read the book *lies down* As soon as life slows down I swear I will. The 2 Denis Villeneuve films combined already make for a rich narrative and storyworld however, and this playlist is very much based on that.

▶️ Bloodline -- Gabriels

It's the bloodline This thing came before you Bloodline

I wanted to open this playlist on something that gets right at (one of) the core themes of Villeneuve's Dune, and to me that is the idea of bloodlines, legacies and self-fulfilling prophecies.

Birth rights can be stole Truth is you were always alone Tears in your hands Seems you lost before you began Your ancestors' blood fed the soil and the sand

I think a point that many filmgoers miss - and is also a point I missed on my first viewing of Part Two - is that the Lisan Al Gaib prophecy and Paul's claim to it is wholly manufactured. Upon rewatch, several lines in the 2 films jumped out to me: 'On Arrakis, a path has been laid' (Mother Mohiam in Part One), and first Paul (during his first meal in Sietch Tabr) and then Lady Jessica's declaration that they must persuade the non-believers that he is the Lisan Al Gaib so as to ensure their continued survival among the Fremen. Irulan's later commentary, 'these are our religious patterns', cemented this fact for me. We are reminded that The Bene Gesserit has sent missionaries to the Fremen over decades and centuries, creating the religious circumstances for Paul to consolidate power among the natives. He has as much a claim to the title of the Mahdi / Lisan Al Gaib as any other outerworlder from the Houses of the Imperium - that is to say, he isn't really the Chosen One. 'Birth rights can be stole', and this is a birth right he stole.

Yet, he does undoubtedly hail from his mother's Bene Gesserit lineage and, through consuming the Water of Life, inherit the ancestral memories of both his masculine and feminine forebearers from both the royal bloodlines and the Fremen lineage of Reverend Mothers. (We see this during the montage after he takes the WoL, falling through a super cut of the faces of the Fremen Reverend Mothers who came before him before eventually finding a vision of Alia on the sand dunes.) His 'ancestors' blood fed the soil and the sand' on which he now stands as the (false) prophet that will lead his Fremen tribe to ruin...

It's the bloodline Don't let it destroy you Bloodline

... and in ascending to the title of the Mahdi, he will undoubtedly lose everything that made him Paul the individual in the first place. Greater prophecies, plans and conspiracies will eclipse his humanity. This is the real bloodline that drives him to war and genocide. 'Don't let it destroy you' - but maybe it's already too late.

▶️ No Church in the Wild -- Jay-Z & Kanye West

I mean, come on, this song choice is just too obvious isn't it?

Human beings in a mob What's a mob to a king? What's a king to a God? What's a God to a non-believer who don't believe in anything? Will he make it out alive? Alright, alright No church in the wild

'Mob' = the Fremen and their Fedaykin guerilla troops. 'King' = Rabban, and later Feyd-Rautha, and the Harkonnen regime. 'God' = Paul as Mahdi and Muad'dib, the desert terrorist. 'Non-believer' = Chani and her brethren among the Northern skeptics.

But the sonical landscape of this song also played a huge part in my inclusion of the song on this list. I'm a lover of words before all else, but something about Dune made me want to curate a sonically coherent playlist that accompanies the story in lyrics as much as it does in sound. The grueling, forward momentum of this song's iconic beat lends itself to the raids the Fedaykin warriors launched against the Harkonnen-controlled spice fields.

▶️ Mary Magdalene -- FKA Twigs

In my head I call this the quintessential Bene Gesserit song. Listen, and read the lyrics:

A woman's work A woman's prerogative

The song makes it clear from the very first lines that it's about the woman's birthright and sovereignty. Most of the Bene Gesserit ladies we see in this film have roots in the royal bloodlines themselves. In that, they have a claim to a particular prerogative. Yet they also actively govern the domain of procreation, descendancy, succession, and survival of royal bloodlines. That is the nature of 'a woman's work' in this storyworld.

A woman's touch, a sacred geometry I know where you start, where you end How to please, how to curse Yes, I learnt you needed me Yes, I'm here to open you Yes, I know that your heart is blue (So cold)

FKA Twigs' darkly seductive vocals paired with this particular verse really evokes that entire Lady Fenring/Feyd-Rautha sequence.

I fear before the fire True as Mary Magdalene Creature of desire Come just a little bit closer to me Step just a little bit closer to me

The seduction continues here, but there's power inherent in the 'creature of desire' Mary Magdalene represents. Her story and her iconography bears a heavy resemblance to the Bene Gesserit sisters and their relationships with the men of the Imperium and its court.

I can lift you higher I do it like Mary Magdalene I want you to say it Come just a little bit closer 'til we collide

A woman's hands So dark and provocative A nurturing breath that could stroke Your divine confidence

I really fuck with the Mary Magdalene allegory in this song, and the chorus nails the mythos and authority she commands in modern reimaginings of her figure in relation to Jesus' mythos. Yet there's something softer in the latter half of the chorus - the devotion she shows to her partner is on equal footing, less of manipulation and more of the muse she can be for him to realise his full potential. With the arrival of the second verse we truly see how important she is to a man's dominion. 'A nurturing breath that could stroke [His] divine confidence': that is the power of Lady's Jessica's love for and devotion to Leto Atreides.

A woman's war Unoccupied history True nature won't search to destroy If it doesn't make sense

Of course, it would be remiss of me not to point out that certain parts of the Bene Gesserit's characterisation functions as a manifestation and perpetuation of Frank Herbert's very of-its-time misogynistic, gender essentialist ideas of a woman's station and the (only) avenue through which she derives her power in the material world - her womb. (Miss me with that radical feminist bs.) But we also see, in the film, Princess Irulan's character: a female historian whom the film suggests would have been happier free from the trappings of the Bene Gesserit programme and her Imperial lineage. 'A woman's war; unoccupied history': Mary Magdalene is a prime example of how for most of history, women are often anonymous (as that Virginia Woolf saying goes), their histories are often erased and deemed as unimportant; Irulan's inner thoughts and history are also cast aside and given no voice in the Dune narrative, but in an ironic twist, she dedicates her life to documenting the history of others.

▶️ Pink Matter -- Frank Ocean

What do you think my brain is made for? Is it just a container for the mind? This great, grey matter Sensei replied, "What is your woman? Is she just a container for the child?" That soft, pink matter

This song provides more of a male - or at least, androgynous - perspective on the question of the Bene Gesserit breeding programme ('Is she just a container for the child?' / 'My God, she's giving me pleasure'). But it gets right at the core of the question of whether the women in this universe, and the avenue through which they gain power, is truly confined to being 'just a container for the child'. I also really liked the direct parallels Frank Ocean's lyrics draw between the womb (pink matter) and the mind (grey matter), as the other main source of power Jessica drives from is through her mind and the prescience becoming the Reverend Mother has afforded her.

▶️ Smother -- Daughter

In my head I call this Lady Jessica's song.

I want all that is not mine I want him, but we're not right In the darkness, I will meet my creators And they will all agree that I'm a suffocator

I think it's more intimate than either of the 2 songs that come before this one, and centres Jessica squarely in her role as a mother before her place as a Bene Gesserit sister. She knows she will meet her creators - the generations of mothers and Bene Gesserit sisters who came before her - and she knows they will disapprove of the path she has manipulated to suit her ends, first for Duke Leto (in bearing him a son) and then for her son's survival (in spreading propaganda of him as the Lisan Al Gaib among the Fremen tribes). Now I know that the films sort of reduce her to a one-dimensional villain in Part Two, but I've heard that she is a lot less gungho about their little homegrown personality cult of Paul as the Lisan Al Gaib / Mahdi in the book. In fact, his accelerated transformation into a religious figurehead and his willingness to exploit the Fremen for that, at the cost of his own humanity, seems to be an unintended outcome that she regrets. She has unwittingly become a 'suffocator', in that regard - a mother killing her own child's humanity in his metaphorical cradle as soon as she exposed him to tales of the prophecy.

Oh love I'm sorry if I smothered you I sometimes wish I'd stayed inside My mother

▶️ Say You'll Go -- Janelle Monáe

Say you'll go to Nirvana Will you leave Samsara? Or in the words of Dhammapada, "Who will lead? Who will follow?" Our love will sail in this ark The world could end outside our window Let's find forever And write our name in fire on each others' hearts

Something about Janelle's crooning vocals against the symphonic strings and melodies just makes this a timeless love song. I love including it in for my ships 🥺 and I think it rather fits PaulChani, the star-crossed lovers that they are. 'Let's find forever' is my 'I will love you as long as I breathe'.

But of course, the question of whether Paul will go south looms over their heads like the Sword of Damocles. 'Will you leave Samsara? ... Who will lead? Who will follow?'

▶️ A Time of Quiet Between Storms (Dune Part Two OST)

Among the Dune OST, this song holds a higher and special place in my heart because of the way it celebrates their first on-screen kiss, but is also used as a reprise of sorts at the end of the film as Chani walks out on Paul. It's a bittersweet track. And it's lived in my mind rent free much the same way that last shot of Chani, with her quivering lips and angry eyes, has.

This brings me to the name of the playlist: the PaulChani tragedy, and just, the film as a whole, has definitely lingered in my mind. It has dragged against my thoughts gently, but persistently like the rhythm of a sandwalk.

I also chose to place it in the middle of playlist to sever it into 2 parts, much the same way the film is severed into 2 parts: before Paul undergoes the Water of Life ritual, when he is still an idealistic boy who actively rejects the title of the Mahdi for fear of the wartorn future he's foreseen, and afterwards, when he claims the mantle of the Mahdi.

▶️ Your Blood -- Nothing But Thieves

You know it's your blood that I bleed Tell me that there's some way that I'll get through the night I carry your moral disease I don't wanna be something I'm not to stay alive

You guys don't know how long I've wanted to put this song on a fanmix!! I've called this Joey Wilson/Jericho's song from the moment I heard it 😂 but I think the same themes can be found in Paul's story too, specifically his first scene right after recovering from the Water of Life ritual. 'We're Harkonnens.' And his realisation that that's how they'll survive: by becoming Harkonnens. It's the Baron's blood that he bleeds, and conflicted as he is about that, eventually he'll come to realise that he has to 'be something I'm not to stay alive'.

▶️ The River -- Kero Kero Bonito

Holy mother Receive our hearts in your arms And let our souls pass The day the rain returns again

These 4 lines are repeated throughout the song, almost like a prayer. It reminds me of the way Stilgar holds onto those same 4 words, 'As it was written', throughout the film as an affirmation of his religious convictions - the belief that the true Mahdi will bring paradise one day and with it, the rain.

When Earth is submerging And heaven is open The river will carry all of us to Where we belong ... Then a torrent crashes down Releasing the jungle swelling in the ground And as was foretold our time is out

▶️ Bad Religion -- Frank Ocean

If it brings me to my knees It's a bad religion This unrequited love To me, it's nothing but a one-man cult And cyanide in my styrofoam cup I can never make him love me Never make him love me

This song places us in Chani's pov. To her, Paul's meteoric rise of notoriety among the Fremen is 'nohting but a one-man cult'. She loved him as he was - an outsider who stayed humble and learnt her ways, and earned a place among her Fedaykin brethren. But as a power-tripping outerworlder claiming to be the Mahdi - she doesn't recognise him, and she 'can never make him love [her]' again, not as the man he has become.

▶️ Telekinesis -- Travis Scott ft. SZA & Future

I could've took the pain and I could've went out sad Streets stepped in and raised me, but I ain't have my daddy

So I'm gonna be honest: this is actually the track that started this entire project for me 🙈 But you see it, right? Travis Scott as Paul's voice, and SZA as Chani's...

I can see the future, it's lookin' like we level through the sky I can't wait to live in glory in eternal lastin' life

The fact that 'I can see the future' is the refrain of this song. In its original context I'm almost certain that Travis meant it less literally, and more in the realm of being able to guess the trajectory of his career as he continues to top the charts as a hip hop superstar. But it lends well to the context of Paul's religious myth-making as well. 'Eternal lasting life' and all that.

How can I sleep when you're out catchin' bodies? I still wanna be with you, trust me, I know that's insane ... We both ain't shit and it's workin' for me Workin' for me, yeah I can see the future, I can see the future

The thing that breaks my heart about the ending of the film is that you can see Chani still loves Paul, but not who he has become. I also like that the song flips the refrain around and has SZA sing it too. Except when she says, 'I can see the future', she says it self-deprecatingly. It's a future of more heartbreak and betrayal (by way of mutual infidelity) and ruin.

▶️ Transform -- Daniel Caesar ft. Charlotte Day Wilson

If a leopard never changes its spots How can I change what I've got? Transform, transform, transform, transform We don't punish the tiger for catching its prey So how am I the one to blame? If it's in my nature Transform, transform, transform, transform

One thing rewatching these films has made me realise is that Paul's 'sudden flip' to becoming a coloniser exploiting the Fremen's religion for his own gains in Imperial politics after drinking the Water of Life is actually less of a plot twist and more of an inevitability that has been advertised since Part One. Towards the end of the first film, he says to Liet Kynes that he intends to marry one of the Emperor's daughters and make a play for the throne. In Part Two, during his first meal at Sietch Tabr, he says to his mother that he must convince the non-believers that he is the Lisan Al Gaib. He may not have intended to bear the mantle of the Mahdi, perhaps he was foolishly, idealistically looking for a different path towards revenge and the throne, but he has never been above playing the game and utilising court politics to secure his 'victory', so to speak. He was born of royal blood and forged in those politics. It's in his nature.

It's never over until life ends Lay down beside me, do it again

These 2 lines reminds me again of that promise Paul and Chani exchanged: 'I will love you as long as I breathe'. (And if I remember correctly, Chani said something to the effect of 'I will be here for you as long as you stay who you are' as well.) I didn't want to end this playlist on a downer ending, hence this song choice.

If you've made it this far into my meta-commentary, thank you! Hope you've enjoyed this playlist ♡