| Ozomatli – Cut Chemist Suite Lyrics | 18 years ago |
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"we take it back, like chiropractors" ...genius. |
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| Radiohead – Videotape Lyrics | 18 years ago |
| I think the whole Faust thing is almost certainly relevant to the album, although I haven't listened enough to have a very clear idea. I still think that Kundera's idea of lightness and weight is a relevant way of thinking about the song, though, even if it's not what Thom Yorke had in mind. Bartbr02, what you say is so tenuous. Firstly, there's nowhere near enough quotable evidence in the song lyrics to back up what you say, and secondly I don't believe Thom Yorke would ever have such a strict narrative idea to a song. His lyrics create general feelings, explore ideas, create fleeting situations. To think of it as telling a story in the way that you describe is in my view completely wrongheaded. | |
| Radiohead – Videotape Lyrics | 18 years ago |
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I'm just writing as this comes to me now. Also, the videotape idea, the idea of something being recorded for posterity forever, is something that very strongly resonates with the Kundera idea of weight. Just wanted to add that - wish there was an edit button. |
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| Radiohead – Videotape Lyrics | 18 years ago |
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The last line is interesting. Think about the meaning of it for a minute. The claim that a day is the "most perfect I've ever seen" is a fairly big one - in fact, there's no way that any day of a life could so clearly stand out like that due to any peculiarities in the "normal" aspects of life. Rather, it seems to me, that this day is so perfect precisely because it is the day of the persona's death (because this song is clearly about death), the only true perfection that he can achieve. So this song is ultimately a final resolution. There are a few things this song reminds me of: Firstly, in Milan Kundera's book, "The Unbearable Lightness of Being", he puts forward the idea of two polar opposites, lightness and weight. The idea of weight is arrived from the idea of eternal recurrence, that everything that happens once happens an infinite number of times. If this is the case, then everything has an infinite significance. It has "weight". Conversely, something which is a one-off event, that never recurs, is completely free and insignificant, it has "lightness". Now, throughout the book these ideas are explored in rather broader metaphorical contexts, and the concept of weight is linked essentially to ideas of fate and inevitability, and lightness is linked with the opposite. How does this relate to Radiohead? Well, to me the idea of the "most perfect day" resonates strongly with the idea of weight - the persona's death has weight, and so this is the only even of significance in his life. Also, the song is heavily characterised by repetition that suggests a kind of eternal ebb and flow, which is what first put me in mind of Kundera's idea. The second thing this song reminds me of is some of the poetry of Philip Larkin, in the sense it gives of being able to just catch a glipse of eternity. In particular, the last stanza of the poem "High Windows": "Rather than words comes the thought of high windows: The sun-comprehending glass, And beyond it, the deep blue air, that shows Nothing, and is nowhere, and is endless." |
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