the NachtKabarett

All Writing & Content © Nick Kushner Unless Noted Otherwise

Along with February 14th, Coma White is another recurring element in the Triptych which is a highly debated and largely misinterpreted aspect of it. In Mechanical Animals and The Triptych, Coma White is represented as a girl, the love interest of Manson. But though the representation is of a girl it's only a personification of the metaphor that Coma plays in the life of this story's protagonist. Manson himself has stated that Coma is not literally a woman but is a personification of an ideal of perfection, an unobtainable entity which we forever pine after and seek to make tangible but forever out of reach. It's a concept which the representation of which, though illustrated as a girl, is interchangeable with all that we use to numb and pleasure ourselves with: drugs, sex, religion, TV,etc. It's these very things which we use to attempt to bring us closer to this state of perfection to make us happy, these things that we believe bring us closer to "god", that liberates us but in reality does nothing but make us numb, inebriate us and make us more and more mechanical. Where in order to survive and function a "fuel" is needed: inject our veins or snort some powder; fuck to heighten our emotions; getting off voyeuristically in front of a screen at the misery of others; have the assurance that there's a higher power that makes you better than everyone else or at least being "one of the Beautiful People" to just look like you are, all to make life seemingly worth living. But this contentment instead makes us automatons in need of another "hit" in order to survive. Mystics claim that the orgasm felt during sex for a mere few seconds is a brief but dulled glimpse of the experience of being one with god, yet god is perpetually out of reach and "a number you cannot count to." So we use these methods and crutches to try to reach this perfect intangible state being but instead bring us further and further away from it because these things are a synthetic and induced happiness, as well as completely temporary, where the constant need for them makes us more like soulless machines.

In Mechanical Animals and the Triptych, Coma is Manson (or ADAM's) pursuit of love, his ideal who is fragile and beautiful, the one he needs in order to survive, the pursuit of which makes his life worth living. Everyone has that same ideal; finding that perfect person, getting married and everything will be magic and infinite bliss as opposed to the reality of growing bored with each other and divorcing after an indefinite period of time. Mechanical Animals acts as a dual-sided concept album. On one side is the innocent and sensitive aspect of ADAM or Manson and the other is his public persona, Omega, the doped-out over-the-top rock star singing hollow anthems about drugs and sex. In this chronology, ADAM has become corrupted and impressionable born again as Omega, turning into a Mechanical Animal himself where, "In the end I became them" (which Manson recites on the album's hidden track that can be heard when inserting the disc into a computer). The innocent and sensitive aspect chronicles and reveals another dimension to Omega, his internal conflict and his search for his Coma White. It was in his quest for Coma which in part corrupted him and turned him into Omega, taking the convenient and synthetic route, the substitutes for the real object. (For more on this storyline of Manson's Triptych refer to this article's sister writing of Valentine's Day / February 14th on The NACHTKABARETT). The album's artwork illustrates this point with the narcotic infused imagery to the hidden quotes which all appear predominantly in the Omega aspect of the album to illustrate this internal conflict with himself.

In this search, the grand and final realization is: when ADAM/Omega realizes what he's become, "one of them", a Mechanical Animal, "as hollow as the 'O' in god," an icon in the city that worships Dead Stars, selling out his revolution and "cutting off his fingers trading them in for dollar bills." But he also realizes that this state of perfection really is an unobtainable entity that doesn't exist in this world. Coma White is a "maniqueen of depression" like the Man Ray photo, 'Tears,' above which served as an influence for the photo of Coma. It isn't a real woman in the photo but a mannequin, an illusion made to look like reality, a grand lie and a tease.

The above are lyrics to 'Coma Black' from Manson's following album, Holy Wood; the song which is the "counterpart", so to speak, of 'Coma White' within the story outlined within the Triptych albums. It is at this point when, with the realization that who he's become, the person he thought he always wanted to be with those he always wanted to be like, is a result of a lifelong search of a happiness and ideal that doesn't actually exist, is when he realizes that the only way to save himself is to destroy what he created, his lifetime of work based on a lie. Omega's moment of realization of who he is and what he must now do: Coma Black.

See also COMAWHITE.com in the HIDDEN SITES section which the URL was hidden in the Mechanical Animals booklet. Note the pages containing images such as SEX, GOD, TV, etc are the same synthetic crutches as outlined above.