Beck, the Scientologist

By Jesse Jarnow, PopMatters. Posted December 19, 2005.

The relentlessly chirpy Scientologist who administers my Mark Super VII Quantum E-meter stress test in the Times Square subway station isn't familiar with Beck's music.

"Let me ask Matt," she offers. "He's younger than me." She calls over a bright-eyed twenty-something who's just finished evaluating the internal electrical stress balance of a commuter.

Matt admits he listens to the iconic popster, whose semi-recent admission of being a Scientologist has come down particularly hard in some quarters. Conspiracy theories (Clem Bastow's Stylus feature) and well-sourced treatises (Arnie Lerma's The Secret Life of Beck Hansen: A Guide for the Professional Journalist) abound -- both underscored with fundamental bewilderment.

With good reason, too. Distinct from an actor like, say, Tom Cruise, whose work rests at the center of a network of screenwriters, directors, and ensembles, Beck's success rests on the idea that his music is self-expression. When that self is, apparently, taken by something as bizarre as Scientology, it might seem a wee bit troubling.

"His music goes in a lot of different directions," Matt tells me, assessing the impact of Scientology on Beck's albums. "If you were familiar with [Ron] Hubbard's Dianetics, you might be able to say, 'Oh, yeah, I can see that.' Especially when it's about, you know, freedom."

The way Matt emphasizes the last word makes me uncomfortable. Apparently freedom" is an ambiguous Scientologist buzzword having something to do with the "bridge to total freedom," the name of their organization's official publication.

"It's especially hard for those of us whose method of appreciating Dylan over the years has been to identify 100 percent with most everything he says and feels," Paul Williams wrote upon the former Mr. Zimmerman's 1979 conversion to evangelical Christianity. Similarly, Beck fans who held Beck's knowing surrealism to be the paradigm of cool might be having a hard time swallowing this Scientology development.

According to lore, Scientologists -- at least the ones who've paid enough to attend the requisite seminars (as Beck likely has) -- believe in "body Thetans," malignant atavistic spirits who cluster parasitically around humans as a result of nuclear explosions triggered by Xenu, a space tyrant who reigned 75 million years ago.

Now, I'm not sure if Beck himself believes that, but I certainly don't. Allegedly, the 36-year-old singer converted to Scientology after breaking up with a longtime girlfriend, an event that also supposedly prompted him to record 2002's morose Sea Change.

But in truth, this conversion was merely the return of a prodigal son. Raised by Scientologist parents, educated through eighth grade at a Scientologist school, and taking over a dozen Scientologist courses throughout his pre-"Loser" teen years, Beck has never been far from the fold.

As Lerma puts it, the real question is "When was Beck not a Scientologist?" So if this is truly the case and you already like Beck's music, then it does a body no good in getting upset about his beliefs now. Scientology has been there all along, just below Beck's surface, and ultimately shouldn't be that surprising. As Matt reminds me, "his music isn't straightforward."

Just as Beck's catalog can equally accommodate Brazilian-influenced space-cowboy mourners, neon electronic party pastiches, novelty singles, and surrealistic hip-hop, Beck's background can logically sustain the teachings of L. Ron Hubbard side-by-side with a Fluxist grandfather (Al Hansen), a punk bohemian mother (Bibbe Hansen), a Hollywood string-arranger father (David Campbell), and a childhood in the cultural melting pot of greater Los Angeles. It's almost … American. And it is most certainly Californian.

"Some people," Williams wrote about Dylan's born-again Christianity, "see this as a threateningly anti-intellectual move from someone they've always related to on an intense intellectual level."

Likewise, skepticism toward what Hubbard himself deemed a "space opera" seems perfectly logical. But imagine you were a kid with an imagination as churning and fertile as Beck's. Just as violently weird, transcendent Christian imagery of thorned crowns and plagues of frogs and locusts has inspired musicians, from the ghostly mountain crooners of Harry Smith's Anthology of American Folk Music (a big influence on Beck) through contemporary indie wunderkind Sufjan Stevens, Scientology's symbols might seep into an impressionable lad's head in unpredictable ways.

What's more, as a faith that is comparatively new, there isn't much precedent for Dianetics-influenced musicians. Being a critically successful Scientologist might make Beck even more idiosyncratic. And isn't that why we value Beck to begin with?

Jesse Jarnow blogs at wunderkammern27.com.

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