Caroline Polachek Is Trying To Tell Us Something About The JFK Assassination

The cover of Desire I Want To Turn In To You next to a still of the Zapruder Film

Pop chanteuse Caroline Polachek is no stranger to misdirection. In 2014 she adopted the pseudonym "Ramona Lisa" and engaged in live performances among body-doubles. The choreography for these performances emphasized the confusion of identity; the stage makeup exploited human pareidolia to disorient the viewer.

Even within the ouvre of Chairlift (Polachek's band with Patrick Wimberly), songs such as "Amanaemonesia" and "Met Before" deal in occult themes, if couched in the science of psychology and quantum physics.

Performing under her given name implied a more personal and confessional direction for her solo career after the disbandment of Chairlift. And such an interpretation was bourn out through 2019's Pang, which contained many allusions to interpersonal relations and desire.

Desire, I Want To Turn In To You confounds, beginning even with its very title: who or what is Desire? How can one 'turn in to' it? Indeed, much of Polachek's lyrics seem opaque at first blush. It is my contention, however, that Desire only reveals itself fully through the interpretive lense of the JFK Assassination.

Below you will find annotated selections of Desire's lyrics with annotation explicating their significance. I believe the reader will find the exegesis speaks for itself.

Cover Art

Lyrics	Explanation
	Polachek's pose on the cover is obviously the mirror image of the still of Jackie from the Zapruder film. Jackie extends her right arm with the injured, soon dead Kennedy on the left. Polachek extends her left arm with a subway seat on her right. On the base of the subway seat, a sticker of a volcano, reading "Vesuvius". Like a volcano, JFK has just blown his top. In the background, a 'Crude Drawing of an Angel', an obvious reference to Walter Benjamin's Angel of History.

Lyrics

Explanation

Polachek's pose on the cover is obviously the mirror image of the still of Jackie from the Zapruder film. Jackie extends her right arm with the injured, soon dead Kennedy on the left. Polachek extends her left arm with a subway seat on her right. On the base of the subway seat, a sticker of a volcano, reading "Vesuvius". Like a volcano, JFK has just blown his top. In the background, a 'Crude Drawing of an Angel', an obvious reference to Walter Benjamin's Angel of History.

"Welcome To My Island"

Lyrics	Explanation
Welcome, to my Island	Cuba is an island nation south of the U.S. state of Florida. Since the toppling of the Capitalist government in 1959, Cuba is nearest Communist country to the contiguous United States. As such, it represents
See the palm trees
Wave in the wind
Welcome, to my Island
Hope you like it, you're not leaving	In The Odyssey, Circe is a witch who traps Odysseu and his crew on Aeaea. She turns his crew into pigs. Who else doesn't leave?: The exiled Cubans invading the Bay of Pigs. Polachek references Greek mythology specifically and the realm of myth generally, in the "Bunny is a Rider" music video and throughout the aesthetics of her ouvre, respectively.
...
He says "watch your ego, watch your head, girl" "You're so smart, so talented"	While Polachek speaks as Castro in the chorus, the "Girl" could be either Castro or Kennedy. Both leaders were in similar positions leading up to the assassination. The "He" is an advisor: he could be literal, an individual person; he could be the conscious itself warning the leaders; or he could be the cultural zeitgeist in general, the awareness of the leader's precarity. In every case, the advisor warns the ascendant leader against hubris.
But now the water's turning red	The red is blood spilled in sea water, which attracts 'sharks'. This again could apply to both Castro and Kennedy. In Castro's case, Capitalist Cubans seek revenge for their expropriation with the aid of the CIA. Kennedy's policies, Catholicism and and reigning-in of the CIA invite retaliation from many angles.

"Pretty In Possible"

Lyric	Explanation
If I'm on your street, you'll be the last to know	Washington, D.C accused Moscow of establishing a nuclear missile base on Cuba without their knowledge. Whether or not the accusation was true, it provided grounds for the United States to expand control over Cuba's sovereignty through the Cuban Missile Crisis
...
Now you got one eye on the lane And one eye on the lava	A very literal problem for the motorcade driver.

"Bunny is a Rider"

Lyric	Explanation
Bunny is a rider	An obvious allusion to the White Rabbit from Lewis Carrol's Alice In Wonderland, a definitive cultural touchstone for the 60s counter-culture movements after the release of Jefferson Airplane's "White Rabbit". The counterculture was heavily influenced and infiltrated by CIA-controlled LSD as a result of the MK-Ultra program.
Satellite can't find her	Sputnik went up in 1957, starting the space race. Russian intelligence is unable to detect sleeper agents as the agent themself is unaware of their status as such.
She's in too deep	"Bunny's" MK-Ultra programming provides very 'deep' cover.
Ain't nothin' for free
...
Tryna go ask Alice Tryna catch that rabbit	This makess explicit the Alice reference by re-using lyrics from Jefferson Airplane's "White Rabbit"

"Sunset"

Lyric	Explanation
I turn it right and right and right Instead of turning left	Several political theories describe the continual movement of liberal ideology to the Right: the ratcheting effect, the Overton window, Fukuyama's End of History thesis... Was this continual 'ratcheting' pre-ordained prior to the collapse of the Soviet Union?
...
So no regrets
'Cause you're my sunset Fiery red	The film Red Dawn (1984) dramatizes a potential Soviet invastion of Middle America. Here, Polachek poses its inverse: a red dusk, implying the ultimate marginzalization of socialist analysis from the U.S. working class.
So many stories we were told about a safety net But when I look for it, it's just a hand that's holding mine.

"Crude Drawing Of An Angel"

Lyric	Explanation
Angel	The "Crude Drawing", as noted already by elite rag Pitchfork, invokes Walter Benjamin's conception of the Angel of History: Where we percieve a chain of events, [the angel of history] sees one single catastrophe which keeps piling wreckage upon wreckage and hurls it in front of his his feet The JFK assassination is one such event whose causality from our linear perspective seems one link in an interminable causal chain, but Polachek invites us to view it from the Angel's perspective...
I'd hold you down
Forsake me
Here on the ground
All or nothing
...
Camera one, Camera two	Polchek invites a switch of perspectives, as stated, from the causal/linear to the four-dimensional-- a perspective previously explored in the choose-your-own adventure video for Chairlift's "Met Before"--: that of multiple simultaneous worlds, as would be explored be the MK Ultra Psi experiments.

"Hope Drunk Ever Asking"

Lyric	Explanation
Real life is a rumor Under the theatre Deeper, dig it deeper	Herman and Chomsky's 1988 book Manufacturing Consent lays out how the elite class uses the media to launder narratives (e.g. that there is no evidence of a conspiracy) through the media. Polachek implores us to 'dig[] deeper'.
Till the meanwhile slows
They'll find our bones And yet, they won't	Similar to the creationist perspective that dinosaur fossiles are planted by the Devil to mislead humans as to the true age of the Earth, independent investigators into the assassination must be aware that much evidence has been pre-arranged to point to the story the CIA wants.

"Butterfly Net"

Lyric	Explanation
Oh, if only
The umbrella of the sky	A man with an umbrella was seend attending the fateful motorcade on November 22, 1963. Declassified documents later revealed the existence of a device disguised as an umbrella designed by the KGB to deliver poison to a target. While the Umbrella Man may not have been seen to make contact with JFK, he may have been present as a contingency plan-- to discretely deliver the poison if Kennedy should interact with the crowd after the failed initial assassination.
Could wrap us up and up
That's where I'd zoom in close Dilated as your eyes	The CIA used psychoactive drugs such as LSD in experiments for mind control, brain washing, and ESP. While the public narrative is that the experiments ruined lives and resulted in no meaningful results, there is no doubt a sleeper agent could be
But til then I'll keep it brief

"Fly to You"

Lyric	Explanation
(Grimes)	"Grimes" is a known asset for the peddling of elite soft-power. The artist's public stint as breeding heifer for trillionaire Elon Musk can only be explained by the elite's comfort with showing open disdain for the working class now that all bureaucratic and media apparatuses have been completely captured. Polachek's inclusion of "Grimes" on the album can only be explained by a nod towards such an elite capture, while also flagging the ability of such soft-power product to contain within them a 'poison pill', as it were.
How I remember, how I forget Wanted to hate you but love you instead Violence made me gentle at last	The contrasts here (remember-forget, hate-love, violent-gentle) reflect the phenomenon of cognitive dissonance, which the elite exploit to confuse and guide the working class via Orwellian double-speak and gaslighting. Look know further than the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003 for an example: reinventing their assets as adversaries and somehow paradoxically bringing 'peace' through war.
Closer and closer and closer to you Baby, I'm dying to find you

(Polachek)
Ooh, I fly to you After all the tears You're all I need	JFK and USSR Premier Nikita Khrushchev met at the Vienna Summit in 1961 following the disasterous Bay of Pigs invasion.

"Smoke"

Lyric	Explanation
It's just smoke Floating over the volcano	The "smoke" and mirrors following the "eruption" of the volcano-- i.e. the assassination, including the farcical Warren Commission
And the fallout doesn't phase me	The 'fallout doesn't phase' the CIA because they're controlling the narrative.
Take a bullet for my baby	Lee Harvey Oswald is silenced ('take[s] a bullet')-- the use of the first person in the lyric acknowledging Oswald was himself a CIA asset, likely an MK Ultra sleeper.
For the one thing that'll save me

"Billions"

Lyric	Explanation
Psycho, priceless	Psycho: suggesting the investigations of PSI phenomena during MK Ultra. Priceless: The value of these investigations. The benefit to elites of mind control capabilities cannot be given a dollar amount; it is the domination of the world at large.
Good in a crisis Working the angles	The elites work through controlled crisis: false flags, crisis actors, patsies, etc. They "work" every "angle".
Oh whoa, Billions!	The Pentagon and CIA spend untold billions-- trillions, even-- in influence campaigns. And they're too big and important to audit.