Daisy Jones and The Six: Blind Light

“Living is easy with eyes closed.” ― The Beatles

Same old rock ’n’ roll story. The drinking, the drugs, the loneliness. The words of Billy Dunne echo in your mind, under the Californian sunset, Fleetwood slowly creeping its way into your ears with a whiskey on hand, you think to yourself "What a day, a life, what a series of events have it been! "No way of knowing how we got here or how we got out, we just look at us at that very moment.

Daisy Jones and the Six encompasses the vibe I have just described. Yet this does not undermine the fact that it deals with so many details in lowercase. It holds so much promise, gives so much trust, helps you believe, and gets immersed in intense faith to leave you just light and blind. I take it a mission to lead the way into the blind path of rock and roll as a Fleetwood Mac fan, cinephile but most importantly as a light heart seeker (you will get what I mean)

Quick Summary: 4 youngsters with not really anything but unbelievable talent and a love for rock and roll from Pittsburgh start a complicated music journey and are joined by a free-spirited female key player and a foolhardy feminine lead singer figure to be enlightened and darkened by cliche rock artist lifestyle from drugs to love triangles to depression to the old age reflections of the memories back in the day.

Well, at the end of the day, it was a story about blind faith and broken trust with hearts on the strings and in the beat of the drums.

Before you start: the writing is shaped in the way Honeycomb song's lyrics (figure out your why)

Baby, baby, baby

Don't we all start everything as babies, even the old man meeting their grandchild; isn't he also a baby? Clueless of the outer world, with innate instincts on how to position ourselves in space, no information present in mind, simple creatures who have to trust. The story starts off in the crib of a baby, a small-town rock band trying to be born into the world of rock n roll: 3 friends Graham, Eddie, Warren, and the big brother, the mentor, the lead of the group Graham's brother Billy Dunne. It is almost impossible to overlook the slowly crippling tension on how it is all going to turn out from the very start ; a tale that has been told so many times before. The documentary style, the outfits, the camera angles, the music, the family traumas; all very familiar. Obviously, parallel to our Pittsburgh story the woman that carries the weight of the show in her free orange hair, our Daisy is also being represented in the screen as a time-lapsed coming of age and personality-defining story. This does not add on that much of an originality, does it? The same old montage, same old oppression and rebellion, same old talent blossoming under storms... However, this correct vibe, previously told but a comfortably familiar story and predictable performances give us babies starting the show a value to keep us going through this ride: trust. It might be a smart idea to start with something so interesting to blow minds but if you watched any cinematic product closely it is not hard to notice that each movie starts based on trust; something familiar even if the situation is absurd, some ground laying, some silence for a baby to sleep in. The beauty of this show comes from getting our trust to see how it can turn into love, which will end up turning into faith and destroy it all.

I do not know who I am

We set the scene, we picked our babies from their peaceful sleep, and we trusted the show for its familiar Californian sunlight. Now, what? Now we fall. This heading is specifically devoted to Billy Dunne, who is not only the lead singer portrayed by Sam Claflin but also the milestone of tracking how trust progresses; at least one side of it which will be completed by his twin flame, Daisy. Who is Billy Dunne beyond the man who falls in love and out and in, beyond his mistakes, beyond his destiny to become like his father, beyond his talent... He is the trust that bursts into flames of faith. What do I mean? We will get there. Let us first examine his character through the performance and the way he writes songs because in the end the art is the artist's broken pieces of essence. The most eye-catching thing about Billy Dunne is his constant facial pressure that always manage to keep the audience at the edge of their seats. Sam Claflin did an enormously good job depicting the look of a madman; staying always unpredictable, never possible to catch yet there is that constancy in the way that he trusts nothing but longs for the trust to blindly get bound by the faith of all for a single person. Until he meets Daisy, the madman look he carries in his eyes never flicker, always so deep so grand so painfully staggering in the dark. A careful audience shall ask rightfully "Are you forgetting about Camila, his daughter, his bandmates, and especially his brother?" No no, I did not forget anything. These are his sources of light, pure light. No madman is satisfied with light, what really drives him is the unbreakable tie he has with dark which will present itself as Daisy. This longing for the dark and this encompassing blindness is thoroughly reflected through his songs before and after Daisy. The songs were about ways of showing him light and that it was precious to look for, before Daisy. Yet after her, it was the direct embrace of darkness he has within and always will have. This made his music with her grand because humans do not care for things to be hoped for in art, they care for things to get their desperate pain re-injected into their souls. However, no connection with dark is ever just one-sided. A madman never knows who he is but his lover in the dark always asks him "Do you know who you are."

Do you know who you are

"Do you know who you are, Billy Dunne?" asks Daisy Jones one day, every day. The show makes it quite obvious from its very title that Daisy Jones will be separate from yet immersed in the band at the same time throughout the watching experience. She is bound to the band with an "and" yet she is free with all her soul, songs, screams, fights, and orange bangs. One of the things I especially admired about the show is the way they kept Daisy's storyline parallel to the montage of the main band. Without keeping it as a sideline, they kept the genuine nature of her promising contributions to people she has not even met. I guess this effect is also sustained by the fact that the actress, Riley Keough, being the biological granddaughter of Elvis Presley; it is seen in her performance that she is in fact born with music within. What makes this character a serious case on its own is her addictive personality tendency inherited by her mother's eternal rejection of her. We see from the beginning of her journey as a singer-songwriter, she is exploited in any single way by the people in the field she wants to rule. She makes this shield of recklessness around her and loses her meaning to find them in her songs. The only thing that is grounding her outside her toxic addictive tendencies is her songwriting, her light. What makes Billy Dunne and Daisy Jones not a good couple from the beginning and a chemistry whirlwind later on is this collision of Daisy's light and Billy's dark creating everything: the balance so unstable that it can burn into flames at any flicker.

Now where do we stand

It is a fact that the show is built on the relationship between Daisy and Billy. But to clearly see the story or where do we stand amidst the fight of blindness and seeing, we have to delve into the multiple relationship web of the band and Camila. The chemistry can be enough to carry a show but it is not enough to write a story. There are a couple of relationship dynamics that maybe do not move the show but show us where do we stand.

Camila- Billy

Camila is the first love, the caregiver, the mother, the wife, the forgiver, and the supporter; she is everything a person needs but never wants. I guess she was one of the most significant elements of the show that helped the viewer thoroughly breathe instead of being too tense when watching. She is indeed the person the story is made for by her daughter at the end which was a tender and beautiful detail to imprint the story more than a show, an experience. Billy and Camila are not a high chemistry romance, but they are the reason Billy can find his way through the dark. Camila is not the blinding light in Billy's darkness, she is sunrise. She is calm, she is at peace.

Karen- Graham

Now, the indispensable yet cliche factor of all storylines: side romance. Of course, there is way more to these characters than their romantic affiliation but I prefer to go from their presence as a whole and how it could have been improved in my eyes. Side romance sells because not always and not all of us long for great stories but the ones that have not been paid much attention to that we see as potentials, things to discover in our fairytale minds. Karen; our free-spirited, cold-hearted, sensitively masculine, and wildly talented keyboard player. Graham; our supportive, insanely sympathetic, highly empathetic, underrated guitarist brother. Their love is so pure, so natural, so young and so chemically potent. Yet there is a major problem, it is just there to be there. Side loves should stay as side loves but that does not mean they need to be thrown at our face and taken back once the Daisy and Billy thing spirals. Both characters had so much life to them but their relationship was too potentiated and too quickly brushed off.

Warren-Eddy

Now this is one of my favorite duos throughout the whole show not because they are my favorite characters, I mean if they are to anybody I highly suggest they to rethink their choices; out of respect. But what makes them so good is their view of the band, obviously Daisy and Billy being busy with carrying the show on their backs along with their problems they could not provide any perspectives on the band. Warren being super pragmatistic and Eddy being ultra non-deterministic builds the show and the timeline in which the group collapses into musical notes and forgotten late-night laughs.

Making a good thing bad

At this point in the show and this blog post, we are very capable of the general scene plus what is so wrong with the characters and relationships within that scene. So beyond where do we stand, how did this good thing (or seemingly bright thing) turn into a bad thing or darkness? And is light and dark always good and bad?

The show and the book are built on love. Chaotic love between main and side characters, peaceful and forgiving love of a woman for her husband, burning love for the music, love big enough to let the other person go... It started with love for Daisy; because her mother didn't love her enough she found some obsessive love language for herself which reflected in her life positively and negatively in so many ways. It was similar to Billy and the band, they all got into business because of immense love for the music they wanted to be part of. In movies and shows there is much more to it that me and my brother write in our blog posts but our job is to help you to see a movie not watch it; watching is a personal experience. In this show, there is no space for us or the characters to see anything. We are blinded. We are in faith and Billy, Daisy, Camila and all others are all in faith this road will take them somewhere somehow. This is not how real life works tho, it is easy living with eyes closed until you realize when you open them there is nothing left to see. Faith in love is dangerous, it is not darkness but it is a blinding light. Trust in love is grounding, it is tripping in darkness but it is seeing. When Daisy gives her speech in the last concert before singing Honeycomb Live for the last time, she says that love should be peaceful and it should be light. She is correct it should be light, light in weight. But it should be dark, dark enough to give you space for making something good stay good. In the end, it has never been good vs bad or light vs dark; it was always walking safely in the dark vs wide open eyes turning blind.

Taste of Honeycomb

We have seen the story, grew up and apart from the characters. As a final word, we need to mention why this show was nominated for 9 Prime Time Emmys and won sound and costume awards. Well, the answer lies in the ingredient of honeycomb: honey. And the honey comes from the golden hair and voice of Stevie Nicks, the sweet guitar sounds of Lindsay Buckingham and John McVie, the viscous songwriting of Christine McVie, and of course the great bee Mick Fleetwood. With their moving fashion, revolutionary songwriting, iconic looks, burning gossip, and infinite rumors Fleetwood Mac is one of the biggest inspirations behind the show and book. Taylor Jenkins Reid, the author, was first inspired by the band when she saw them perform in the 1990s. As a passionate fan of everything related to Fleetwood Mac and Stevie Nicks; I must say the show does make you feel quite full of interest while watching the reminiscence of a music that formed you, that made you a Sister of the Moon. However, I must also admit that the songs are not even near the ones this group produced in the 70s. Yet even as an inspiration and starting point, they serve great influence to the atmosphere of the show.

Important Note: Fleetwood Mac's 70s aka Nicks-Buckingham Change was really captured, the original John Green led band is a whole piece of dessert on its own.

If you felt the rock and roll of the show and want to get into the Fleetwood Mac Verse here are my recommended songs:

Further Reading:

Daisy Jones & the Six Was Inspired Not Only by Fleetwood Mac

https://slate.com/culture/2023/03/daisy-jones-six-fleetwood-mac-broken-social-scene.html