Fleet Foxes - "Helplessness Blues" (Part Two)

So, with the rejection of the empty uniqueness of a pure and "heroic" individualism, the exploration of what other conceptions of the self continues. The "cog in a machine" approach is abandoned not just because of the vagueness evident in its introduction, but because of its determinism and the loss of freedom that that entails.

To illustrate this the next lines explore the idea of a "cog in the machine" by referencing its closest historical analogue in the questions

"What’s my name?
What’s my station?
Oh just tell me what I should do."

The notion of an identity (a name) and a role (a station) that is dictated by some kind of social hierarchy is, of course, an old idea. The cohesion of feudal and tribal societies, for instance, is owed largely to such structures. Against the cold, disenchanted and alienated backdrop of modernity, it may be comforting to hearken back to the time when someone could "just tell me what I should do" and for that to be in itself authoritative.

Part of what I admire about this song is the way that it can entertain these kinds of tempting positions (even if only in the space of a line or two) without embracing them as an easy way out. The song quickly shows why the "cog in a machine"/"tell me what I should do" kind of submission to some kind of external influence is not a viable option:

"I don’t need to be kind to the armies of night
who would do such injustice to you.
Or bow down and be grateful,
and say ‘Sure take all that you see,'
to the men who move only in dimly lit halls
and determine my future for me."

Exactly what injustice is being referred to is not clear, but the idea surely is. While I may have associated this "cog"/"hierarchy" with older values and social structures, that is not to say that it is by any means confined to the past. At the beginning of my previous post I mentioned the sense in which the Fleet foxes are continuing the Folk movement's tradition of protesting injustice, and we can certainly recognize this kind of injustice in the 2008 sub-prime mortgage crisis (and subsequent recession). The moral of this story for any age, then, is that to simply surrender your autonomy along with your individuality is risk losing everything.

What is the answer then? The closest thing to one comes with the second half of the song, which is marked by a distinct change from the strident tempo of the first part to a much warmer, majestically sprawling sound. This difference in sound, from one of searching to one of celebration, reverence, satisfaction, certainly suggests a more tenable position. This position is marked in particular by the replacement of the cog/machine imagery with the organic figure of tending to an orchard:

"If I had an orchard
I'd work till I'm raw.

If I had an orchard
I'd work till I'm sore.

And you would wait tables
and soon run the store.

Gold hair in the sunlight,
my light in the dawn.

If I had an orchard
I'd work till I'm sore."

What works here is clearly the suggestive difference between the cog/machine relationship and the orchardist/orchard. The orchardist (I know it's an awkward word, but what else is there?) is active and self-determining in a way that the cog clearly is not, yet that actively is circumscribed by that of the orchard itself. The reciprocity to be had in this situation is clearly preferably to its lack in either of the initial options provided by the song.

There is a similar movement encapsulated in the lines about waiting tables and then running the store, where the trend is to go from some kind of servitude to autonomy. I am a little dubious about this side of it, however, because the job waiting tables seems like something necessitated by the move to the orchards in the first place. That certainly might mitigate the satisfaction to be had from finally running the store (I speak from experience here).

But of course it is important to keep in mind that this whole section and the kind of reconciliation that it represents, as beautiful as it is, operates under the auspices of a series of "ifs." The beauty of this section is the beauty of a dream or a wish. It is for this reason that I don't want to be too harsh on this section. Normally, as someone who spent a very long and painful week raking blueberries, and who has known plenty of farmers, I am more than a little wary of any attempt to romanticize the kind of backbreaking labour that goes with farming. The persistent recognition that there is a tremendous amount of ache and soreness to that life tempers this, but even more importantly I think that the emphasis on soreness is a measure of the difficulty of the reconciliation projected here. Indeed, this reconciliation might only be possible in a dream, or a work of art like a song, or a movie, as the last line of the song suggests: "Some day I'll be like the man on the screen..."