Too, pointing towards the future helps Frank validate the length of the song. Moreover, we understand Frank’s motives from the first half of “Pyramids,” where he sings: “ We’ll run to the future, shining like diamonds.” From the beginning, Frank is alerting us to the majesty of “Pyramids,” how it expands upon a tragedy with real-world imagery and glimmers of hope. Frank is merely the vessel, and he empties himself to the best of his abilities to allow the Cleopatra narrative to be fluid and pure.
Here, Cleopatra owns her body-she owns her history. Frank’s aim with “Pyramids” is to, as much as a man can, return the power men siphon from women back to their rightful owners. He seems to say Cleopatra understands the pithy desires of man and knows how to bend them to her will-to her benefit. Frank does not levy pity on Cleopatra, does not weigh her choice of labor on any moral scales. We cannot escape the male gaze, but we can applaud Frank for giving our Cleopatra agency as she moves from past to present. We cannot escape the fact that Frank is a man looking at a woman. There is, of course, the complication of desire. Frank attempts to note how desire and strength weave together to create something timeless and irreverent. The supposition here is that Cleopatra can never really die, much like desire can never really die, much like Black women themselves are eternal.
Frank could have concluded the song there, but he chose to continue the history of Cleopatra, of the Black woman. After the first half of the song, our Cleopatra dies as she does in myth, by the bite of a poisonous serpent. Instead, Frank chose to sew two halves together to make one astounding whole. “Pyramids” could have been released as two complementary songs on channel ORANGE.
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