Saturday, February 21, 2004
(10:12 PM) | Adam Kotsko:
The Sky Turns Green
Previously, I analyzed the Radiohead song "Exit Music (For a Film) vis-à-vis John Keats' "Eve of Saint Agnes." (Sidenote: in searching for that previous article, I noticed that all comments for posts not on the current page have been erased. I don't know what happened.) Today I'd like to use this break in my monastic existence in order to say a few words about "Where I End and You Begin", track six on their new album, Hail to the Thief. It is my opinion that the apparently obscurantist lyrics of this song are in fact capable of being deciphered and full of meaning and relevance.
I reproduce them here from the Green Plastic Radiohead site:
there's a gap in between
there's a gap where we meet
where i end and you begin
and i'm sorry for us
the dinosaurs roam the earth
the sky turns green
where i end and you begin
i am up in the clouds
i am up in the clouds
and i can't and i can't come down
i can watch but not take part
where i end and where you start
where you, you left me alone
you left me alone.
X' will mark the place
like parting the waves
like a house falling in the sea.
i will eat you all alive
i will eat you all alive
i will eat you all alive
i will eat you all alive
there'll be no more lies
there'll be no more lies
there'll be no more lies
there'll be no more lies
Before an analysis of the lyrics proper, it is necessary to situate them in their musical context. After a haunting, ethereal opening, the song enters into a bassline and drum beat that will remain essentially unchanged throughout. The first two stanzas represent a musical grouping, with relatively subdued delivery; the second pair of stanzas are musically an intensification of the first two. The fifth comes after a brief instrumental interlude and represents the most Thom Yorke-ish singing in the song, and the final two repetitive stanzas are basically a part of the instrumentation that brings the song to a close. With that basic framework in mind, we can proceed to lyrical analysis.
there's a gap in between
there's a gap where we meet
where i end and you begin
and i'm sorry for us
the dinosaurs roam the earth
the sky turns green
where i end and you begin
The first stanza twice repeats that "there's a gap," occurring "where I end and you begin." One naturally wonders whether this gap is a normal and healthy "space" that is reputedly necessary for every relationship or whether it represents something more sinister, and the second stanza answers that question. He is "sorry for us," because that gap is where "the dinosaurs roam the earth," ancient history that is only identifiable by its ruins. The gap is where "the sky turns green," where some kind of solid foundation is expected but only thin air can be found. Nothing can be built where I end and you begin. No moorings can be found there.
i am up in the clouds
i am up in the clouds
and i can't and i can't come down
i can watch but not take part
where i end and where you start
where you, you left me alone
you left me alone.
These next two stanzas call into radical question the very possibility of a relationship. He is "up in the clouds" and cannot come down, because, as we have already seen, there is only more sky where the ground should be. The gap in between may very well be an extension of himself, an obstacle that is internal and at the same time seemingly beyond his control. He "can watch and not take part," and he blames that on the withdrawal of the other, who "left [him] alone" (repeated). Their encounter has already been described as unspeakably ancient (taking place during the age of dinosaurs, before the dawning of human history) and as productive of sorrow, but at the same time as elusive and destabilizing -- indeed, one wonders where he ever got the idea that there was a "you" who began at all, where he got the idea that the green-colored air was ever anything but more of himself.
X' will mark the place
like parting the waves
like a house falling in the sea.
"X will mark the place" -- but that would require ground, which is not in evidence -- "like the parting of the waves" -- evoking a biblical miracle of liberation from slavery -- "like a house falling in the sea" -- the loss of all security and self-identity in a sea of chaos. The water plays a role of both salvation and destruction, but strangely, the destruction comes after the liberation. Does he have any idea what it would be like to stand in that space with the other or to encounter the other? Since this is a pop song, the relationship would normally be interpreted as a heterosexual romantic one, but it would appear that there's no such thing as a sexual relationship. (Has Thom been reading Lacan?)
i will eat you alive (4x)
there'll be no more lies (4x)
The last two stanzas, a repeated subtext sung along with the bassline, represent despair. "I will eat you alive" -- I will absorb you, I will not allow you to continue to exist as "you," but only as another part of me. "There'll be no more lies" -- but also no possibility of communication. The speaker will know everything, but be completely alone, and until the other intrudes upon him through a miracle that would simultaneously be the loss of everything he understands as himself, despair is the only possibility. Finally, he has provided words to the bassline that has run unceasingly through the song, the subtext to all the other lyrics.
there's a gap in between
there's a gap where we meet
where i end and you begin
and i'm sorry for us
the dinosaurs roam the earth
the sky turns green
where i end and you begin
i am up in the clouds
i am up in the clouds
and i can't and i can't come down
i can watch but not take part
where i end and where you start
where you, you left me alone
you left me alone.
X' will mark the place
like parting the waves
like a house falling in the sea.
i will eat you all alive
i will eat you all alive
i will eat you all alive
i will eat you all alive
there'll be no more lies
there'll be no more lies
there'll be no more lies
there'll be no more lies
To be understood properly, the song must be heard again, the second time with the knowledge of the ending, and thus of the underlying theme, in hand. The ethereal opening makes sense as the space of the encounter, the space where we meet, the period when dinosaurs roam the earth. The consistent self, represented by the bassline with its despairing "lyrics," represents the foreclosure of the possibility of encounter. I look for the place where I end and you begin -- but wherever I go, there I am! I can't return to the ground of an encounter and must instead remain floating in the realm of foundationless, cloudlike ideas, consoled only by memories and resentments of dubious origins. Echoes of the opening occur, though, even at the very end, promising the impossible possibility of another encounter, another meeting without the gap, a meeting where the threshold of the house of self has been demolished, cast into the sea, and self and other are in unmediated communion.
What can we learn here? Is this an "adult" position, or more romanticism (as in "Exit Music")? Has Thom Yorke ever truly left behind the adolescent obviousness of Pablo Honey? Can the gap in between, which is apparently just "more of me," be perceived instead as a threshold, open in a gesture of perpetual hospitality? Is it possible to mediate between the miracle of the coming of the other and the maintenance of a stable self?
If Radiohead, so emblamatic of a sophisticated, nearly post-rock sound, with apparently nonsensical lyrics, can be shown to be operating still at the level of adolescent hearbreak and rebellion, what are we to think of the rest of the field of musical endeavor? Has the concept of adulthood or coming of age been abandoned entirely in the postmodern era, in favor of a perpetual adolescence that cannot envision a way of relating to the other that does not represent complete self-destruction? Or is Radiohead remaining faithful to the adolescent origins of rock music while gesturing toward something more truly subversive? If not, why not? If so, then is that something good?
For the time being, these must remain open questions in every sense of the word -- they open onto the whole field of rock music and indeed of contemporary culture in all its parts.
