The music video for Mortimer, Be Quiet.’s The Alchemist continues in the grand gothic tradition of the exploration of the soul, accompanied by a fascination with gender and duality. Equal parts Frankenstein and Re-Animator, it delves into the alchemical as a means to explore death and reinvention in a uniquely lyrical, and uniquely Queer, manner. It’s also rife with symbols and references, both overt and obscure, including Tarot, alchemy, (no surprise there), as well as a host of both literary and filmic allusions.

I’m going to begin this response in an atypical way, (at least for me) by attempting to decode the work’s most explicit signs, symbols and references. In doing so, I hope to tease out the more ephemeral, layered interactions which are at play within it. The alchemy, in other words, by which this incredibly effective work was given form. To explore its essential elemental make-up, while also attempting to retrace the hand of the master, and the many unique twists and complications which they have imbued it with. While I would normally avoid such a direct or by-the-numbers reading (I don’t want this to be ‘The Alchemist Ending Explained, 10 Hidden Easter Eggs You Won’t Believe’) I find myself unable to set aside the work’s more overt arcana of expression just yet.

Firstly, in regards to the Tarot, I was able to spot the Five of Cups, The Star, and The Tower. The Five of Cups represents loss, despair and loneliness, with different meanings for both the upright (regret and negative emotion) and inverted (self-forgiveness and catharsis) positions. The Star represents one’s core essences, as expressed through the duality of conscious and unconscious, or senses and spirit; normally depicted as a woman pouring out two jugs, one on land and one into water. The Tower in turn represents destructive or earth-shattering revelation, as depicted by a high tower being torn apart by flame, lightning, or other natural disaster.

On the alchemical side, we have, beyond the tile itself and a cross-fading montage of Shelley-esque lab imagery, the alchemic symbol for Saturn, as well as a lyrical reference to bones made of brimstone. Within alchemy, Saturn represents both the beginning and the end of a journey, as well as of the alchemical process itself. It is seen as a gateway between the temporal body and the immaterial soul, or (popping up yet again) between the conscious and unconscious mind.

Brimstone, also known as sulfur, on the other hand, represents everything from heat and masculinity, to expansion and dissolution, to the very soul itself. It has also taken on later Christian associations to hell and the devil. Fire and brimstone and all that. Interestingly, and possibly not by coincidence, within the Tarot deck The Tower traditionally follows The Devil.

The music video’s literary and film references are likely the more noticeable and accessible, (I mean, what kind of nerd would have already had tables of alchemical symbols saved on their laptop?) but are still worth pointing out. The original film version of Frankenstein is of course very prominent, with its saturated black-and-white laboratory and crackling lightning-filled sky. That said, the underlying themes of the work skew closer to the original novel, in which the monster is far more than a stitched together creature with a child’s mind.

The Invisible Man also deserves inclusion here, both the novel by H.G. Wells, and the 1933 film adaptation. Another mad scientist work, the titular invisible man actually turns his experiments on himself, and in so doing reveals the many sinister facets of his true nature. While several later adaptations of this work exist, some of them quite good, only the original keeps the invisible man himself squarely in the role of protagonist, despite his increasingly nefarious deeds.

There are other softer symbols besides these, such as the use of toga-like garments, high gothic windows, apothecary drawers, repeated candle motifs, and so forth. But these symbols, like the more major arcana mentioned above, are never presented flatly or head-on within the work. Alchemy is more than a simple recipe after all, the mere placing of ingredients next to one another. Instead, we see repeated interactions, subversions and complications within and between these many signs throughout the video.

The Five of Cups for example, includes both upright and inverted chalices on its face. The Star depicts a figure with only a single vessel, rather than the traditional two. The doctor runs in terror before the creation of the creature on their slab, rather than after. It is the model who grows old and withered while the work of art made in their image becomes younger and purer. Again and again, these powerful signs and genre staples are turned on their head, and complicated in new ways. Perhaps most potent of all is contained within the lyrics, which, to paraphrase, describes the song’s subject as having bones forged from brimstone. The material foundations of their body, crafted from the very embodiment of the immaterial soul.

Over and over we see these acts of self-negation, and the breaking down of the body, cross dissolved against the equally present gestures of self-creation and rebirth. It isn’t merely the addition of different symbolic parts, the crude fashioning together of an exquisite corpse, but rather the dialogue which exists between these baser elements. A re-activation of them, fueled by the fires of their own dissolution.

Where foolish old Victor, and his later inheritor Herbert West sought to create, The Alchemist seeks to embody. Where, in those lesser doctors’ timidity, they brought forth monsters they could not hope to understand or control, The Alchemist instead boldly inserts themself into the formula, in order to become the ‘monster’ already inside. It places itself upon the slab, with all the cruel administrations there entailed, and emerges, through fire and lightning and hell itself, as its truer essence. Not free from the fear and misunderstanding of the larger world, of course, but free at least from the lesser traditions which once bound it.

It has taken the mad scientist, the inventor, the alchemist, as well as each of their respective passions, and, just like the signs and symbols which pervade the work, it has rendered and reduced them, and then carefully titrated them together into something new. Replaced stitches and neck bolts and syringes of green goo with the lyrical interplay of a far more nuanced form of invention. Mad science as the realization of the self, rather than the creation or mastery of the other.

In short, this work is far more than the sum of its parts. A formula too potent, too essentially human, to exist on paper alone. Life and death, man and woman, dissolution and creation, self-loathing and self-forgiveness; none of these can contain the true nature of The Alchemist or the discussion it houses within its reanimated form.

Alchemy is more than a simple recipe after all. And so too is Queerness.