Wednesday's Emotional Setup: Fog
Or, a short Discourse on Will (with Reference to Schopenhauer) and Ineffability
11:08 pm.
I think all creative people, or at least the good ones, are fairly aware of their themes. Well, themes, motifs, recurring phrases, etc. The more I explore my love of music (1), the more I notice these tiny bits of theory, and the more I'm convinced they connect up in some way.
The latest recurring theme I've noticed, popping up in either the written works themselves or at least my thoughts around them, is the idea of yearning. Something I read recently, and I cunningly didn't keep this in my quotation file even though I remember thinking I should, said something I believe to be very true, something to the effect of "love is not the fulfillment of yearning". Very true.
Which brings us to the will. Schopenhauer, in a move that Nietzsche prompty co-opted decades later, said that the essential structure of what we are is will. In fact, for Schopenhauer (2), will is quite literally all there is. Well, will and representation.
See, if you think about will for a second, you realise that if that's all there is there must be something else going on as well. In order for will to exist, it must be thwarted. Willing does not lie in having something but in getting or (more to the point here) wanting it. If I will my hand to pick up that sandwich, my will in this case ends as soon as I've got it. I can't will to obtain it anymore - it's happened.
So for Schopenhauer, will doubles back on itself as representation (i.e. what we consider the real world) to keep itself in check and so existing. Of course, Schopenhauer was a bit of a pessimist (or was he? I'm not sure, but he at least seems that way to many of us now), so from there he points out that this constant snuffing of the fulfillment of will, and thus desire, is why we're so miserable: that's the structure of existence!
But leaving aside Schopenhauer for the moment, this is why love could never be the fulfillment of yearning. Yearning lies not in having or even getting something, but in that desired object's absence, even (in more powerful, complex and what I would say are higher forms or yearning) the knowledge that possession of the yearned-for is impossible. Love is not the fulfillment of this lack and the knowing of this lack, but the obviation of it. Love consists of a negation of yearning. If you yearn for someone (or something) and you then get it, most people very quickly cannot remember what the yearning is like. It is just not no longer present, it erases itself from you.
On some level to say that a love song or similar song of desire is yearning is almost tautological. The performance of the song or suitable simulacrum thereof will never coincide with the obviation of yearning. It may be, in very rare cases (like, say, the end of Say Anything) that such a performance may lead to the desired result, but what difference does this make to the song? None at all. Although it is theoretically possible for the lovesong (3) to fulfill the desires of others, even if it could have those desires in any meaningful way.
At the same time, even if the song could avoid this problem, there is the question of the simulacra of the performance (4). It's stuck in time, just as any given performance of the song is stuck in the time it's performed in. Even if the song was going to otherwise somehow achieve the resolution it craves, it would still be stuck having the result happen outside of it and not to it. Even if such a result was to happen in the middle of a performance or playback of the song, it wouldn't happen to the song, it would either disrupt or ignore the song.
But this is on the ontological level. One the aesthetic/text/subtext levels, of course, a given song may be more or less yearning that others to sometimes huge degrees. Although I do bring up the ontological "yearningness" or your average song (5) because I do believe it's important, it's this other level of feeling I'm referring to in most reviews.
I do think songs that exhibit yearning on this more emotional level are (done right, of course) pretty important. I think that quality of unfulfilledness is a basic structure of our existence, as well as art's, and so I think it's powerful when we experience art that projects that back at us.
Take, for example (and at long last), the subject of today's entry, the radiohead (6) b-side 'Fog' (from the 'Knives Out'). The more I write about music, the more I despair of describing it in words, but here's my try:
It's four minutes and two seconds long and starts with a low digitised rumble. These weird sticky electronic percussion and a calm bass part and a twinkling barely-there keyboard come in. They maintain for a minute, and Thom Yorke sings for a while. When the second verse starts, a particularly fragile tambourine and some slow drumming starts. It builds to the refrain, when the guitar comes in. After the singing and the refrain stops, the song goes on for another eighty seconds, beautifully. The lyrics are as follows:
There's a little child
Running round this house
And he never leaves
He will never leave
And the fog comes up
From the sewers
And glows in the dark
Baby alligators
In the sewers
Grow up fast
Grow up fast
Anything you want
It can be done
How
How
Did you go bad?
Did you go bad?
Did you go bad?
Some things will never wash away
Did you go bad?
Did you go bad?
As with many of the best yearning songs I've heard recently (funnilty enough, a song called 'Cockeyed Cookie Pusher' by a one-man band called, heh, Fog, is the other one that springs to mind), the lyrics don't really read like the sort of thing you might imagine after reading my description. But again, the magic is in the delivery; Yorke's delicate vocals and the regret and want in the did you go bads is absolutely beautiful. And the How / How is, of course, crucial. I like most of the b-sides of this era, but this one in particular should have been on an album. 'Fog' isn't just one of my favorite radiohead songs, it is in my opinion one of the best songs ever. I don't particularly expect others to agree, but my own faith on this point is currently unwavering and the repeated listens it's taken to write this column haven't dulled it any.
And of course, its true impact is ineffable. Moreso than some other recent songs I've called yearning, I can at least point in the direction of what 'Fog' might yearn for (innocence? certainty? revenge?), but I can't tell you it. The fact that before I looked up the lyrics there were times I thought he sang did you go back or would you go bad or any combination of those permutations only heightens the ineffable part of this song.
And now, as promised, a brief word on that term (although I am getting close to done, promise):
Far too many people, I think, take ineffable to mean inexpressible. Well, obviously not - obviously what I get out of this song is expressible, or I wouldn't be getting it. Even the definition at dictionary.com is a bit lacking, I think:
"Incapable of being expressed; indescribable or unutterable."
The post-semicolon part, certainly. But to make this definition true, all it would take would be to add "in language" to the first sentence. The second part fits even better with that. But modern Western sensabilities are so used at this point to expression, and even though, being confined to language that it is assumed that if something is extralingual it is somehow less, and somehow incapable of transmission.
Now, I'm not saying everyone else is getting what I get out of 'Fog', but I am saying it's possible. It also doesn't matter, as since it is ineffable unless we discovered some means of communicating without language, or at the least _above and beyond_ language.
Ah, but this is what music (and other art) does. There is something extralingual in 'Fog', and every other song, that I get. As with the meaning of the linguistic part of the song, we may get different things out of it, but no-one doubts that the text exists - why doubt the other? I know when I hear music there is something else going on. It is being communicated to me in an ineffable way. But since I can't tell you what it is, it often gets discounted.
I feel like I'm replowing the same ground here, so I'll stop. That probably needs some clarification, but that must wait until another time.
-----
(1) Which is the same thing as saying "the more I write about music".
(2) I'm doing this off the top of my head, so apologies for any violence I'm doing to his position.
(3) Keeping in mind that we here use that term to identify many songs that do not have to do with "love" in the conventional sense, as songs about God, or drugs, or many other topic work in the same way.
(4) Note that I'm not arguing here that the live performance is the song in some way the recorded is not, or vice versa. I think the truth is more complex than that, so complex that I can't really answer what part of the song is the work of art.
(5) I say "average" because although I think this ontological structure applies to all songs, I am willing to concede exceptions if people can come up with them. To believe that this occurs in all songs regardless of narrative/"feel"/whatever, of course, requires the presupposition that all songs are lacking something in some way. Right now, that's a belief I'm happy to suscribe to, and would extend outwards to all art.
(6) I keep meaning to clarify this somewhere, and here's as good as any: Some bands like having irregular capitalization. Most I ignore, preferring to have my Winamp playlist look pretty uniform. There are exactly two bands I leave the capital first letter off, as they do in much/most of their art: radiohead and low. radiohead because they were my first love, and low because it fits them too well (and they are one of my great musical loves, of course). Now, of course, both bands have been using capitals with greater frequency, but I'm keeping it this way for a while yet.
11:08 pm.
I think all creative people, or at least the good ones, are fairly aware of their themes. Well, themes, motifs, recurring phrases, etc. The more I explore my love of music (1), the more I notice these tiny bits of theory, and the more I'm convinced they connect up in some way.
The latest recurring theme I've noticed, popping up in either the written works themselves or at least my thoughts around them, is the idea of yearning. Something I read recently, and I cunningly didn't keep this in my quotation file even though I remember thinking I should, said something I believe to be very true, something to the effect of "love is not the fulfillment of yearning". Very true.
Which brings us to the will. Schopenhauer, in a move that Nietzsche prompty co-opted decades later, said that the essential structure of what we are is will. In fact, for Schopenhauer (2), will is quite literally all there is. Well, will and representation.
See, if you think about will for a second, you realise that if that's all there is there must be something else going on as well. In order for will to exist, it must be thwarted. Willing does not lie in having something but in getting or (more to the point here) wanting it. If I will my hand to pick up that sandwich, my will in this case ends as soon as I've got it. I can't will to obtain it anymore - it's happened.
So for Schopenhauer, will doubles back on itself as representation (i.e. what we consider the real world) to keep itself in check and so existing. Of course, Schopenhauer was a bit of a pessimist (or was he? I'm not sure, but he at least seems that way to many of us now), so from there he points out that this constant snuffing of the fulfillment of will, and thus desire, is why we're so miserable: that's the structure of existence!
But leaving aside Schopenhauer for the moment, this is why love could never be the fulfillment of yearning. Yearning lies not in having or even getting something, but in that desired object's absence, even (in more powerful, complex and what I would say are higher forms or yearning) the knowledge that possession of the yearned-for is impossible. Love is not the fulfillment of this lack and the knowing of this lack, but the obviation of it. Love consists of a negation of yearning. If you yearn for someone (or something) and you then get it, most people very quickly cannot remember what the yearning is like. It is just not no longer present, it erases itself from you.
On some level to say that a love song or similar song of desire is yearning is almost tautological. The performance of the song or suitable simulacrum thereof will never coincide with the obviation of yearning. It may be, in very rare cases (like, say, the end of Say Anything) that such a performance may lead to the desired result, but what difference does this make to the song? None at all. Although it is theoretically possible for the lovesong (3) to fulfill the desires of others, even if it could have those desires in any meaningful way.
At the same time, even if the song could avoid this problem, there is the question of the simulacra of the performance (4). It's stuck in time, just as any given performance of the song is stuck in the time it's performed in. Even if the song was going to otherwise somehow achieve the resolution it craves, it would still be stuck having the result happen outside of it and not to it. Even if such a result was to happen in the middle of a performance or playback of the song, it wouldn't happen to the song, it would either disrupt or ignore the song.
But this is on the ontological level. One the aesthetic/text/subtext levels, of course, a given song may be more or less yearning that others to sometimes huge degrees. Although I do bring up the ontological "yearningness" or your average song (5) because I do believe it's important, it's this other level of feeling I'm referring to in most reviews.
I do think songs that exhibit yearning on this more emotional level are (done right, of course) pretty important. I think that quality of unfulfilledness is a basic structure of our existence, as well as art's, and so I think it's powerful when we experience art that projects that back at us.
Take, for example (and at long last), the subject of today's entry, the radiohead (6) b-side 'Fog' (from the 'Knives Out'). The more I write about music, the more I despair of describing it in words, but here's my try:
It's four minutes and two seconds long and starts with a low digitised rumble. These weird sticky electronic percussion and a calm bass part and a twinkling barely-there keyboard come in. They maintain for a minute, and Thom Yorke sings for a while. When the second verse starts, a particularly fragile tambourine and some slow drumming starts. It builds to the refrain, when the guitar comes in. After the singing and the refrain stops, the song goes on for another eighty seconds, beautifully. The lyrics are as follows:
There's a little child
Running round this house
And he never leaves
He will never leave
And the fog comes up
From the sewers
And glows in the dark
Baby alligators
In the sewers
Grow up fast
Grow up fast
Anything you want
It can be done
How
How
Did you go bad?
Did you go bad?
Did you go bad?
Some things will never wash away
Did you go bad?
Did you go bad?
As with many of the best yearning songs I've heard recently (funnilty enough, a song called 'Cockeyed Cookie Pusher' by a one-man band called, heh, Fog, is the other one that springs to mind), the lyrics don't really read like the sort of thing you might imagine after reading my description. But again, the magic is in the delivery; Yorke's delicate vocals and the regret and want in the did you go bads is absolutely beautiful. And the How / How is, of course, crucial. I like most of the b-sides of this era, but this one in particular should have been on an album. 'Fog' isn't just one of my favorite radiohead songs, it is in my opinion one of the best songs ever. I don't particularly expect others to agree, but my own faith on this point is currently unwavering and the repeated listens it's taken to write this column haven't dulled it any.
And of course, its true impact is ineffable. Moreso than some other recent songs I've called yearning, I can at least point in the direction of what 'Fog' might yearn for (innocence? certainty? revenge?), but I can't tell you it. The fact that before I looked up the lyrics there were times I thought he sang did you go back or would you go bad or any combination of those permutations only heightens the ineffable part of this song.
And now, as promised, a brief word on that term (although I am getting close to done, promise):
Far too many people, I think, take ineffable to mean inexpressible. Well, obviously not - obviously what I get out of this song is expressible, or I wouldn't be getting it. Even the definition at dictionary.com is a bit lacking, I think:
"Incapable of being expressed; indescribable or unutterable."
The post-semicolon part, certainly. But to make this definition true, all it would take would be to add "in language" to the first sentence. The second part fits even better with that. But modern Western sensabilities are so used at this point to expression, and even though, being confined to language that it is assumed that if something is extralingual it is somehow less, and somehow incapable of transmission.
Now, I'm not saying everyone else is getting what I get out of 'Fog', but I am saying it's possible. It also doesn't matter, as since it is ineffable unless we discovered some means of communicating without language, or at the least _above and beyond_ language.
Ah, but this is what music (and other art) does. There is something extralingual in 'Fog', and every other song, that I get. As with the meaning of the linguistic part of the song, we may get different things out of it, but no-one doubts that the text exists - why doubt the other? I know when I hear music there is something else going on. It is being communicated to me in an ineffable way. But since I can't tell you what it is, it often gets discounted.
I feel like I'm replowing the same ground here, so I'll stop. That probably needs some clarification, but that must wait until another time.
-----
(1) Which is the same thing as saying "the more I write about music".
(2) I'm doing this off the top of my head, so apologies for any violence I'm doing to his position.
(3) Keeping in mind that we here use that term to identify many songs that do not have to do with "love" in the conventional sense, as songs about God, or drugs, or many other topic work in the same way.
(4) Note that I'm not arguing here that the live performance is the song in some way the recorded is not, or vice versa. I think the truth is more complex than that, so complex that I can't really answer what part of the song is the work of art.
(5) I say "average" because although I think this ontological structure applies to all songs, I am willing to concede exceptions if people can come up with them. To believe that this occurs in all songs regardless of narrative/"feel"/whatever, of course, requires the presupposition that all songs are lacking something in some way. Right now, that's a belief I'm happy to suscribe to, and would extend outwards to all art.
(6) I keep meaning to clarify this somewhere, and here's as good as any: Some bands like having irregular capitalization. Most I ignore, preferring to have my Winamp playlist look pretty uniform. There are exactly two bands I leave the capital first letter off, as they do in much/most of their art: radiohead and low. radiohead because they were my first love, and low because it fits them too well (and they are one of my great musical loves, of course). Now, of course, both bands have been using capitals with greater frequency, but I'm keeping it this way for a while yet.
