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..."

Fleet Foxes - "Helplessness Blues" (Part One)

Back in its heyday folk music was all about protesting injustice, so it shouldn't be surprising that the Fleet Foxes, a band with folksy inflections to their baroque pop creations, would write the closest thing to a protest song I've heard in awhile. (Of course, I'm not exactly on the lookout for protest songs, so I'm no authority on such things).

Anyway, the Fleet Foxes' song "Helplessness Blues," released last year and therefore just a little before the Occupy movements got off the ground (and in the middle of the "recovery" from a recession) is a great song that reflects the spirit of that movement.



As we shall see, some of the song is centered around economic issues, but it also goes much deeper than that to question some of the central elements of the modern ethos of which the woes of capitalism are only a part. The song opens with a reconsideration of an extreme notion of individuality:

“I was raised up believing
I was somehow unique,
like a snowflake distinct among snowflakes,
unique in each way you’d conceive."

What is immediately apparent in these lines is the emptiness of this conception of uniqueness: being "somehow" unique says about as much here as being "unique in each way you'd conceive." Each form of "uniqueness" is essentially an empty vessel that has to be filled by real content. found in life in order to be really meaningful. This real content is part of the world that we share with others-the actions, relations, and roles, i.e., the things that we care about and that occupy our time in daily life. Even the distinctness of snowflakes from each other depends upon the overarching similarity of what each shares as a snowflakes (a fact alluded to by the repetition of the word "snowflake" in the line). Likewise, the fact that this song begins as an account of what the singer was raised up to believe, his being raised suggests that any individuality to be had is tempered by the actions and ideas of others

Despite the emptiness of this kind of uniqueness, this conception of it underwrites a lot of our culture's deeply held beliefs about individuality and originality. Indeed, the middle line about "a snowflake distinct among snowflakes" reminds me of something I often heard when I was younger (and would likely hear again if I spent more time around children): adults would tell children that each of them was unique; like snowflakes, no two are identical. This was, I believe, meant to make them feel good about themselves as if their uniqueness was a great achievement worth being proud of (so was everyone else's apparently). The falseness of this idea is evident from the fact that many of the most boring and irritating people I have ever met were people who considered their originality their finest quality-rarely have I ever heard uttered so many formulaic and uninspired declarations as from the mouth of an "original."

While the historical nature of every human life means that we are undoubtedly unique and irreplaceable (contra Beyonce, who reveals a certain callousness in her song "Irreplaceable") in a basic sense, I would hardly rank uniqueness among the most worthy of human qualities. Mere uniqueness cannot hold a candle to courage, intelligence, or humour, for instance. The conception of individuality that puts some form of uniqueness and originality ahead of all else as the defining quality of a person fails to recognize the greater importance these others, perhaps because they do not pertain solely to the individual, but lead outward.

For these reasons the song turns and rejects this individualism in the space of the same verse:

"And now after some thinking
I’d say I’d rather be
a functioning cog in some great machinery
serving something beyond me."

On the one hand, this represents a radical step forward, a rejection of individualism so extreme that it seems to fall into its opposite, some kind of blind and mechanical determinism or collectivism where nothing is anything but a piece of something larger. But on the other hand, it is only a half-step, as the singer is not fully committed to this position at all: it comes to him as the result of thinking, and exists in the form of a preference or a desire, not as something already realized in his life. Furthermore, as with the individualism of the initial lines, there is a lot of vagueness to this position, as we are left with "some great machinery" that is "something beyond me"-not exactly the stuff of great passions and the grand ends of life. Even my recourse to such a vague sentence as the one that contains the words, "nothing is anything but a piece of something larger," to describe it suggests that this position is perhaps not much of improvement. The yearning to be part of something larger, to be connected with the world as a whole, is there in an inchoate form, but it has yet to be realized adequately in thought, much less in action. This is why the song takes its first really dramatic turn, introducing the harmonies for which the Fleet Foxes are famous, as well as making explicit the confusion signified by all of the vagueness and indeterminacy of the earlier lines: " But I don’t, I don’t know what that will be,/ I’ll get back to you someday, soon you will see.”

The Posies - "Please Return It"

Disregarding the issue of my writing style in general, am I a terrible blogger? Most assuredly. Updating will never be one of my strong points, and when anything from a terrible heatwave to a pressing deadline looms, goodbye blogging. But the weather is cooler now so here I am with a song from one of my favorite bands, the relatively unknown 90s band from Seattle called The Posies. Lyrical brilliance, amazing melodies and harmonies to go along with those lyrics, and an excellent fusion of sweet pop and post-punk make them a real joy to listen to. This song, "Please Return It," showcases all of the above.



I think the key to understanding this song is to grasp the situation as it is laid out at the beginning of the song when Stringfellow (although Auer joins in throughout the song) sings: "Like a letter, / I just sent it, / please return it, / just forget it." If you have ever been in the grip of a really strong emotion and been compelled to put it into writing (a love letter or a really angry letter come to mind as the paradigmatic instances) and then sent that letter to its intended recipient, and then regretted sending it, I think you can understand the feeling behind this song. In particular there's that time of absolute helplessness after that letter has been sent but before it's been read that this song is about: the feeling of having totally exposed yourself to another and being unable to cover that up again.

Although this feeling is perhaps best captured by that experience with the letter, it corresponds to a much broader range of things than just that, which is why they (and, as I've mentioned, it tends to be a they--the harmony is especially significant here, although I'd have to do more work tracking it to make something more out of it) sing: "When we live the life we live, / it's never ours completely, / not completely." A certain amount of one-sided vulnerability is inevitable in most if not all human interactions, and this is why they catalog a number of different "imbalances" that require a "returning," capturing a surprising range of life: a movie (back in the days of Blockbuster video), a style (something unique that can be stolen which feels like a real violation), a favor (see, not all of them are necessarily bad, although favors can cut both ways), a glance (again, this can be fairly ambiguous), a servant (or server-referring to restaurants or tennis I guess), and a sewer (some things that we throw away we don't want back, but may not have a choice in the matter). The most psychologically acute of these instances, however, has to be the lines: "When you let me live my life, / you didn't do it completely / you were discreet. / Like the year I spent comparing me to you / Please return it." I don't think I have ever seen a more succinct evocation of the way we can lose ourselves to the judgments of other people, to foreign and inappropriate ideals, all by ourselves.

Of course, the real kicker here is that we have to be vulnerable, that the very possibility of legitimately two-sided interactions (the possibility of an "up-side" to all of these downsides) always has the potential to be one-sided. This is not a cheery thought, but it represents a truth that is not without its consolations: at the very least, "In the certainty of friendships you can ask / Please return it / Bring the balance back to you / in returning."

Neko Case - "This Tornado Loves You"

In honor of the New Pornographers album "Together" that has recently come out (and which I think is excellent) my first actually music related post might as well be about something related.In this case I would like to discuss Neko Case's "This Tornado Loves You" off of her latest album, "Middle Cyclone."

Thematically, I think that the strongest reading of this the song is that it is about an obsessive, violent, and ultimately narcissistic love, something that the tornado is a perfect image of: with its spinning it forever circles only itself, and destroys everything in its path by drawing them into it. Fittingly, the physical shape of the tornado forms an "I" and, instead of dwelling on the beloved, this "love song" consists almost entirely of statements about what the tornado has done, or feels, etc.-everything is dragged into the compass of the tornado, presumably because that is what love is to such a being. The final moments of the song, where Case sings "This tornado loves you..." over and over again, perfectly embodies this repetitive circling of a mentality that, while appearing to be directed at another, is only as a form of self-relation.
I think the strange form of the title (which these last swirling lines repeat) captures this meaning quite well. If the tornado is the speaker here, then it seems odd for it to refer to itself as "This tornado." The phrase "I love you" has a pretty standard subject-verb-object structure, and so does "this tornado loves you," except for the fact that the speaker is "this tornado" and is thus referring to itself in the third person. This only happens in the title and in these swirling lines, everywhere else the speaker uses the first-person. I imagine that by referring to itself as "This tornado" it serves to make "I" and "tornado" identical with each other, suggesting that indeed these two things (selves and tornadoes) are practically interchangeable in terms of what they do. The difference between the first and the third person is ultimately collapsed, which is to say that the difference between the "I" and everyone else except for the resistant, beloved "you," is not recognized (hence the devastation). And presumably once the tornado possesses the beloved that difference will disappear as well-and so much the worse for the beloved.
Why introduce the difference in the first place if it is eventually to be collapsed? Apparently (from my very quick google research into the shallows of amateur psychology), while they generally tend to overuse the first-person to refer to what they have done, think, etc. and to draw attention to themselves, narcissists will use the third person to speak of their emotions and experiences as a way of distancing themselves from them. It is a defensive mechanism that works in the interests of the appropriation of all otherness-it is the way the tornado maintains its a strict control over its dispersal. We can see how this plays out in the song by looking at the two other repetitive sections of the song, the first where Case sings "till you stop it, stop it, stop it, stop it, stop this madness." Here the tornado is clearly stuck on the fact that it actually experiences any resistance at all, which it can only interpret as madness. The second time the tornado is also struck on a particularly confusing element of this problem, the fact that loving another actually makes one vulnerable. The tornado can admit the experience of this vulnerability, but cannot think it through: "cause I miss, I miss, I miss, I miss...." Only the tornado's experience of missing the beloved comes through, the tornado can move beyond this feeling to the independent object that causes it only with great difficulty and in a qualified way: "how you'd sigh yourself to sleep when I'd rake the spring tide (?) across your sheets." At this point the tornado can only admit to missing the gratitude the beloved gave for the tornado's actions. Seen in light of these issues, the phrase "this tornado loves you" is the terrifying resolution of this whole "problem," a perfect articulation of the tornado's final perspective.
As the above already indicates, this narcissism is completely unable to comprehend how love, much less any form of real mutual recognition, actually works, and can only conceive of the whole situation in the most twisted, instrumental form. It is all about trying to manipulate or force the other to do what the narcissist wants them to do. In those final moments when Case's singing of "This tornado loves you" swirls around, it is punctuated by cries of "What will make you believe me?" While that particular expression is commonplace enough in itself so as not to raise suspicion, given what goes on in the rest of the song the force implied in making someone believe something takes on a more sinister cast. At the very least it shows a remarkable lack of psychological insight insofar as forced belief (or love) is not the kind of belief that we really value. Related to this is the fact that the tornado sees the solution to this problem to be that the beloved merely has to come to believe in its love shows how one-sided this all is: I'm sure that in cases like this the beloved has no trouble in believing that the tornado is in love (or some twisted version of it), but that probably only makes the experience more terrifying.
Oh yeah, the song is also filled with images of death and destruction that only confirm these "diagnoses"-but really, this post has surely gone on for long enough, so I don't want to beat this dead horse for so long that I end up in tornado territory myself.
I don't know if such post lengths will be typical or not, but you can see why this one took awhile to finally get around to.