| Radiohead – Good Morning Mr. Magpie (Morning M'lord) Lyrics | 15 years ago |
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"magpie: used in similes or comparisons to refer to a person who collects things, esp. things of little use or value, or a person who chatters idly." The magpie metaphor encompasses music pirating, the dissolution of the album as art form, and loss of capacity for concentration, contemplation and reflection. music pirating: - "You know you should (buy music) But you don't" -those who illegally download music have "stolen all my (yorke's) magic And took my (yorke's) melody". Stolen not his creative abilites, but rather the music he's created. -"You got some nerve Coming here" People who would never steal tangible goods seem to think its ok to pirate intangible music. Possibly b/c when the stolen good is intangible, moral instincts preventing stealing don't kick in. A musical adress to the pirate is an emotional appeal, an effort to make moral instincts kick in. dissolution of the album as art form, and loss of capacity for concentration, contemplation and reflection: - the magpie metaphor makes sense in light of Richard Foreman's edge.org analysis of information overload: "I come from a tradition of Western culture in which the ideal (my ideal) was the complex, dense and "cathedral-like" structure of the highly educated and articulate personality–a man or woman who carried inside themselves a personally constructed and unique version of the entire heritage of the West. And such multi-faceted evolved personalities did not hesitate– especially during the final period of "Romanticism-Modernism"–to cut down , like lumberjacks, large forests of previous achievement in order to heroically stake new claim to the ancient inherited land– this was the ploy of the avant-garde. But today, I see within us all (myself included) the replacement of complex inner density with a new kind of self-evolving under the pressure of information overload and the technology of the "instantly available". A new self that needs to contain less and less of an inner repertory of dense cultural inheritance–as we all become "pancake people"–spread wide and thin as we connect with that vast network of information accessed by the mere touch of a button." -Magpies collect "things of little use or value", soundbites, tweets, facebook statuses, headlines etc... As such, they're spread wide and thin, they lose capacity for concentration, contemplation, and reflection, their thoughts are reduced to idle chatter. Yorke, like so many of us in the information age, may feel as if information overload has reduced his creative capacity - “stolen all my (his) magic And took my (his) melody”. -“Nerve” could reference neurons and neuroplasticity. That is, the manner in which we ingest information literally reorganizes the structure of our brain. Mediums such as the book promote intense sustained concentration, deep thought etc.. Mediums such as fbook, twitter etc.. promote rapid but shallow information processing. The ethos of the information age is one of songs, not albums. |
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