Glimpses of Recognition: The Mountain Goats--"Against Pollution"

Thinking about recognition in "The Ballad of Bull Ramos" got me thinking about another moment of recognition (or in this case, non-recognition and the hope of recognition) in another Mountain Goats song, "Against Pollution":

The song seems to be a confession of sorts: it tells the story of someone working in a liquor store who, when someone tries to rob the store with a gun, shoots the would-be robber in the face. The song itself seems to be an attempt to work through the experience, and in particular, to sort out whether (or more likely, to what extent) he should feel guilty for what he did. Certainly the circumstances help to justify the act as self-defense from a legal and moral sense. But even if the act was justified, even if it was the right thing to do (or at least not unequivocally wrong), it was still not a good thing to have done, even despite the fact that that the whole thing was largely out of one’s control. There are tragedies of all sorts in the world, ones where there is no good outcome, and no one escapes unscathed or as good (or morally sound or clean or pure or whatever terminology you want).

Especially given the biblical content of the song (the terminology of pollution, the praying on the rosary at the Catholic church, and the passages drawn from the bible about the last days and seeing through a glass darkly) I think this kind of guilt by association is the pollution that is at issue in the song's title, although it is ambiguous whether the title means the song is actually against the idea of pollution/guilt or if the song is rather meant to be the singer's struggle against pollution. I'm not sure if an analysis of the song can clear that up, but it certainly sheds light on what is at stake in each, and in the course of the analysis we can see how recognition functions as a certain kind of ideal in it. 
 
So to begin with the shooting incident, it is worth noticing that the song actually runs through it twice with subtle differences. This running through it multiple times makes sense as a way of trying to make sense of the whole thing--we run these types of things through our minds over and over  to try to understand them, often telling them with slight variations until we get to the point where the story becomes one we can live with, or, to put it another way, we can recognize ourselves in. This can be an ambiguous process: it may just be until we get to a version of events self-serving enough for us to live with, and sometimes it may be until see if from the right angle so that we can understand it and fit it into our sense of what the world is like--or adjust our sense of the world accordingly. This is also part of the function of confession: by telling the story to another, we submit our actions to their judgement in the hopes of being vindicated, i.e., being recognized, by them.
Here is the first telling:

When I worked down at the liquor store
A guy with a shotgun came raging through the place,
Muscled his way behind the counter,
I shot him in the face.

It's pretty factual, it simply recounts setting A, action B, and reaction C. Compare that to the second telling:

A year or so ago I worked at a liquor store
And a guy came in,
Tried to kill me,
So I shot him in the face.
I would do it again, I would do it again.

The second telling connects the incident to a specific(ish) time in the teller's life ("A year or so ago"), gives the robber a far more threatening and directed intent ("tried to kill me"), and frames his own reaction in terms of that threat, thereby justifying it ("I would do it again, I would do it again"), but perhaps even more importantly, incorporating it into the fabric of his life. 

The first telling leads to a seemingly spontaneous desire to go down to the Catholic church, where the teller spends 45 minutes praying the rosary (a penace typically given after confession, thereby making it seems like ). The repetition of the rosary is reflected in the repetition of the story, and the need for confession/absolution (one leading to the other, hopefully) is of course linked to the church. 
 
Indeed, the speaker seems to imagine absolution as a form of full and mutual recognition, which is itself an event of apocalyptic, biblical proportions: 

When the last days come
We shall see visions
More vivid than sunsets,
Brighter than stars
We will recognize each other
And see ourselves for the first time
The way we really are

What is interesting is that the second "I would do it again" from the second telling then immediately transitions into this, so its hard to tell if this "I would do it again" is meant to simply be a second affirmation for emphasis, or if it is actually meant to be "I would do it again when the last days come," implying that the act is ultimately justified in the cosmic scheme of things, such as in the reckoning in Revelation 20:12, or perhaps more like what gets described in the I Corinthians 13:11 for the element of interpersonal knowledge and recognition that comes from it:

"Charity never faileth: but whether there be prophecies, they shall fail; whether there be tongues, they shall cease; whether there be knowledge, it shall vanish away. For we know in part, and we prophesy in part. But when that which is perfect is come, then that which is in part shall be done away...For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known." (The Simon & Schuster Living Literature edition of the KJV 1146)
 
This famous passage (which the Mountain Goats also directly quote in “Love Love Love”--“love” being a synonym for “charity,” although the latter is more specific when it comes to the translation of the Greek term agape in the passage) undoubtedly lurks behind this moment of finally recognizing each other as we really are, rather than being limited by the endless stream of merely partial knowledge that normally makes up our world and our personal relations. Another related passage comes from the1^st Letter of John (3:2):

"what manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon us, that we should be called the sons of God. Therefore the world knoweth us not because it knew him not. Beloved, now are we the sons of God, and it doth not yet appear what we shall be. But we know that, when he shall appear, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is." (1216)

The idea throughout these biblical passages is that the ultimate goal is to be able to fully recognize and love each other, and I think what the speaker wants is this recognition to exist between himself and the robber (that is who I think the “we” is in this song). Without a heaven or an end of the world this kind of recognition is ultimately unachieveable in this case (the robber is surely dead after being shot int he face), but it is easy to see how religious feelings get summoned up in an attempt to come to grips with the desire for such a resolution. It is a complicated moral situation, one in which recognition plays an ambiguous but crucial role.

Glimpses of Recognition: The Mountain Goats' "The Ballad of Bull Ramos"

The concept that I wish to pursue an examination of across a pair of Mountain Goat songs is a philosophically laden one: recognition. As the word literally says, re-cognition is not just a matter of cognition, of thinking something for the first time, but of some kind of thinking-over of something that we already know but perhaps in a higher-order or fuller fashion like when we come to recognize something as true. This sense is particularly relevant to the social meaning of the term: when we recognize someone we know from a crowd, for instance, it's not like picking one object out from a series of others, but of affirming a prior relationship based upon the knowledge (at least to an extent) of who that person is, i.e., their identity. Connected to this sense of recognition and social identity is the way that we also speak about it in terms of the attribution of some kind of status to one's identity. So when we say that we want recognition for something, what we mean is that we want some particular act or achievement, along with whatever social status they are supposed to bring, to be explicitly connected to our identity. 

The song that began my reflection on this matter is "The Ballad of Bull Ramos," which is about a wrestler who was long classified as a heel, but the song itself is a celebration of his life and spirit, as the uplifting music itself attest. 

As for the details of his life, Bull Ramos did actually buy and run a car wrecking yard, so that part is all accurate, as are his famous generosity and the bits about his later health problems. The picture is paints of him is far removed from that of the bull-whip wielding heel; instead, the energy of the song reflects the vitality that seems to have infused his life inside and out of the ring. In this regard the song is really about giving him the recognition that he deserves, a task that much of the album it comes from, Beat the Champ, is devoted to doing for wrestling in general by revealing the human content of wrestling and of the enjoyment of it.


I think the most touching part of the song--its emotional core--comes around 1:25, after he's laid up by a piece of glass on the floor of the shop:

And the doctor recognizes me
As the operating theatre grows dim,
"Aren't you that old wrestler with a bull whip?"
"Yes sir, that's me, I'm him."

All of the weight of this entire song, with its documentation of not just a career but a life, bears down on the one word, "recognizes"  and the kind of status-giving that it implies. In the case of Bull Ramos, I think there is a certain validation in being recognized by the doctor. The fact that a serious professional could have been so influenced by his performance to recognize him so many years later serves as a particular validation of his career. You can hear this in the way that Ramos addresses the doctor as sir as well as his triple affirmation of his identity ("Yes sir, that's me, I'm him"). It's a touching moment that is a testament to The Mountain Goats' songwriting ability. In the next post I'll follow up with the next Mountain Goats song, "Against Pollution."