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The slow movement of the forces which open the album give us a sense of time, a particular time, as it grinds away in the material dawn. These forces are becoming perceptible, taking up their particles, forming into substances, colliding into one another as everything starts to take shape. |
An image of production is building. A transformation of material through the use of force. There is a rhythm, a structure, which is not musical, but which is the synchronized movements of labor. This is large scale production, with the sound of drills, treadles, pulleys, steam whistles, and other errant qualities which escape through the process.
There is also the sound of breathing, almost as though this were the operations of an iron lung, with the bellows of the harmonium acting as a mechanical respirator. We are in a cavern filled with dust. We are miners. We are contracting black lung, emphysema, and other respiratory diseases associated with this production.
This time is the industrial revolution. These are the sounds of an organized labor force: the factory, the mine. A location of mass production which takes up a place on the earth (or in the earth).
The extraction and distribution of resources. The combined atmospherics of the mine, with its cavernous space filled with the sound of treadles and drills, and the sound of the steam whistle, in which the treadles become pulleys used to hoist resources into the haul of a ship. This production is hooked into a market, into a system of exchange.
The song ends with the ground pulled out from underneath, in which the harmoniums take on a floating quality, as though this could all drift away. A large cloud of dust rising up into the atmosphere.
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There is something calculated about The Law of Attraction compared to Vacuum. It does not simply fill a space, it measures this space. What we hear in the opening section is production. We hear the relationship between force and matter, but also those qualities which are errant, which drift out, which escape this relationship, which are produced alongside production; as sound, as pollution, as monetary value. |
The Law of Attraction starts to map out a space, to organize these sensations, and this organization takes place on two levels: the first level is the guitars, the vibration of the strings which gives us the sound of the metal being cut away, all the physical attributes of this scene; the second level is the piano, which provides a means of organizing the narrative, of telling the story of the couple who is trapped in this car.
It is as though the narrator (who has already died), is telling this story to the emergency crew which has arrived on the scene. This is the story of the couple, but the couple has merged with the automobile, and so this story cannot be separated from a mythology of the American landscape in the twentieth century.
The couple becomes the human organs of this machine. And the process of cutting away the body of the car is a means of attracting them, of separating them, in an attempt to rescue a bit of the humanity which has been lost in the mix.
The slowness of the lyrics, with the voice carefully articulating each syllable, gives an even more devastating sense to this image of the couple. The picture unfolds at a rate which is unnerving, just a little bit too gradually, and yet even at this rate we are not prepared for the next detail, the next piece of this image as it is formed. This gives the sense of a slow motion sequence, as though we are able to perceive a death by sudden impact over an eternal span of time.
The narrator speaks to us from this time, this other time in which he tells the story of his death, and where this story is the formation of the couple, merged through violent force like fate.
This is where the story begins, with the couple as the origin. A modern creation myth. The splitting of the atom through a collision of particles.
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A Shallow Stream brings production to the surface. This does not have the same material weight as Vacuum, for the errant qualities are organized on another level. This is no longer a system of treadles and pulleys, of drills cutting through matter, but of receivers selecting out radio waves, in which the errant qualities are organized through electronic means. This is not mining as extraction, but mining as filtration. |
The drift of sound has also increased in that it is no longer grounded, but is hooked into a whole electronic network operating within a broad frequency range. There is a density built up at the surface, and this density buries the song in the mix in the same manner as gold is buried in the earth. We have to sift through the noise to hear this song, this story which is buried in the American landscape.
This is a density at the surface. We have mined out our depth and brought everything to the surface. We have gone from the image of the miner to the image of the prospector. The narrative is one of minerals, of material, and the means by which it is extracted from the earth (in the same manner as the couple is extracted from the car), and how these materials are separated, differentiated from so much dust.
There is a transformation of that which is associated with death (dust) into that which is associated with wealth (gold), for this same dust, which is an irritant to the lungs, and which causes disease in miners, is also that on which a whole economic system is based.
The surface is populated with electrical frequencies, a whole network of transmissions, as particles which float through the air, independently of the material relations of force, and which organizes their own relations, their own system of exchange. The sound of coins jingle in the mix.
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Berlin announces itself with pounding drums and piano, but this immediately cuts off, is overtaken by electronic transmissions which are caught in a circuit, closed off within a time which repeats itself. And then the song begins again, as though no time had passed. |
The piano and drums beat at the earth, stirring up matter, a dust which drifts through the piano melody as though on the wind. The breaking of the old earth in the formation of a new earth of errant qualities. This is the organization of the suburban landscape.
The suburban landscape is a produced reality. A physical place which is constructed out of images (sound, color, climate). What these images produce are events, events which are cut off from time, from becoming and history, where all sensations are combined.
"Time does not pass it disappears somewhere in the middle of these events things simply cease to exist." History is swallowed up in the construction of the present reality.
The interior is larger than the exterior. Capital performs the reversal, gives a subjectivity to material, in a vast hollowing out of the landscape. And that is why the mall cannot be big enough, that is why all malls are the biggest mall in the world. The market needs a complete environment. Capital is a living system.
Whereas the album begins with a hollowing out of the earth, the creation of an interior from which material is extracted, the mall is the hollowing out of the exterior, through which an interior is dug out of the livable space of existence. The mall is the outside, where the environment can be experienced, whereas the rest of the time people are in their cars.
The fall of the Berlin Wall was supposed to create images of the ideal Western Democracy, with its free markets, and its human rights, but these images have been replaced with the common images of suburbia: a vacuousness which is inescapable.
Berlin is about the production of images, but as the construction of a physical space. It is a world which is vulnerable to decay, for no matter how false, or how contrived this reality becomes, it is still a physical, concrete reality. The place needs to be built, even if it is only out of electrical circuits.
There is a strange mixture of pieces and times, with the Eastern European melodies, accompanied by images of suburban capitalism, and then to link these in with the fall of the Berlin Wall. These are separate events rubbing up against one another, separate times, each with its own set of qualities and forces.
The tensions are built, not through musical counterpoint, but through the use of timbres, and the way that different sound qualities relate to one another. Berlin is based on a few simple musical motifs, and the song builds through the use of different timbres. It is the organization of sounds according to their physical forces.
The balance between the separate timbres constantly shifts from one section to another, and this has the effect of changing the dimensions of the space in which these sounds are perceived. It is timbre which dismantles the musical structure while at the same time exploring an acoustical space.
The emphasis is on the physical properties of sound. The beginning of the album should have been enough to key us into this fact: fourteen minutes of sounds which are organized, not according to their musical structures, but according to their external qualities.
When a person uses a hammer, they do so in order to drive a nail, to build something, but in this process they also produce something else, which is a sound, a force which escapes production, and which produces something which cannot be contained, unless, that is, this sound is recorded, or heard, in which case it can be something else again.
This process of construction inflicts a sound of the landscape, and in times of prosperity this sound increases, construction booms, for it is around the real estate industry that the economy of the suburbs is itself constructed. Thus we can measure the health of the economy by simply listening. We can hear the market swallow up the landscape.
A reality in which all sensations are brought under control, where nothing escapes, for errant qualities are are strictly patrolled, and all deviance is immediately corrected. This is a managed environment. The mall. This is the interior which we can hear being built on the outside.
At this point, gold is no longer measured in relation to its material value, but in relation to is conductivity. It becomes a material in the construction of an electrical system of exchange. The circuits are literally paved with gold.
We are dazzled by electrical transmissions.
The guitars act as circuits, taking up the musical structure of the song and converting it into electrical frequencies. The guitars don't even really sound as though they are being played, but as though they are sympathetic objects vibrating to the frequencies of the piano.
The guitars play a passive role, which is to receive signals, and then to convert these signals into electrical frequencies, but the guitars can also manipulate these signals, process these frequencies. And this is where the guitars take an active part, for they don't simply transfer the musical pitches they convert them: this is a transfer of force from one system of organization to another.
This balance between the musical system and the electrical system slowly shifts as the guitars become more active. The guitars are no longer just passively affected by the piano, but now take the song and turn it back against itself, it is as though they were able to store up these sympathies, as a memory of vibrations, and then to release these sympathies as electronic frequencies.
This is what happens at the end of the song, as everything else drops away except for the guitars which turn this sympathy, this stored up energy, against the composition, dismantle the piano and its system of organization by folding two separate sections of the song over itself into a heap of electronic garbage.
It all ends in feedback. There are no more flourishes, just the material of transmission. A burst of unrelated guitar rock (a sped-up recording of Death and Taxes) interrupts this signal, as though the radio dial had been switched. And then the whole system malfunctions, as the transmission goes berserk. An electrical short circuit, the sound becomes sound effect (this is not far from sci-fi, and is similar to the type of noise which would be used to signify alien beings). The main point is that it sounds like a broadcast signal, and specifically that which is designed as a warning -- The Emergency Broadcasting System.
The fall of the Berlin Wall was not so much a symbol of Western Democracy, as it was a sign that the state system of power was in crisis. This is what the song Dismantling the Berlin Waltz is about, not the success of Western Democracy but the success of Capitalism over governmental systems of power (including Democracy).
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Failure begins in a somber tone. A reflection on time, and on mortality. It is the first point in the album which is not cluttered with debris, and the sound of the air duct wafts through an empty room. This provides a respite for the listener, a time of meditation.
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There is an internalization of forces which is brought about by the thought of mortality. The awareness of the world extends to the awareness of death. A time in which everything passes.
The voice has a slightly wounded, almost yearning quality which increases the subjectivity of the narrative.
The overlaid vocals in the line, "an old man holds a dead child..." shatter any contemplation which may have been taking place. These voices break the closure of the opening section of the song, and bring the narrative back out into the world, as the production of history.
The whole structure of the song shifts, there is a sudden release of energy, and just as the piano begins to pick up force, the recording breaks off. We are left with the sound of the ventilation duct as it swells to an anticlimax. The song is reduced to air, that which fills a room. A room which is climate controlled.
This break disrupts the development of any emotion which may have built up to this point, and makes us aware of the recording. We are put at a certain distance from any sympathies which the song may have aroused in us. And thus we are put at a certain distance from ourselves. Though we will need this distance if we are going to be able to tolerate what is about to happen.
The drums rise up underneath the piano, though they do so in a manner which does not support the piano, which does not aid the piano in the development of the song, but which creates a tension, in that the rhythmic pulse of the drums works against the pulse of the piano. These are two separate events existing side by side, in the same meter, but in which the rhythms imply completely different developments.
You can hear the song as it builds toward a climax, though any climax has already been defeated by the break in the tape, and so you are listening in a somewhat analytical frame of mind. And you begin to wonder: How many times can something be murdered? First we have the line "an old man..." which shatters the solitude of the song, and then, just as the song begins to recover, the tape breaks, and now there are drums rising up in the mix, cancelling out the piano and all that has developed up till this point in the song.
What could possibly happen to destroy whatever else remains of human emotion? The question is answered by the introduction of the horns.
We move onto the outside. We are on the playing field. It is half-time during the football game, and the band is in full swing. This is not a music which is about sensitivity, but which is about rallying the nationalistic sentiments.
The song develops this break, and the recording starts to become more complex, to take this obvious unreality and give it weight. This whole section is very muscular with its driving rhythm and its galloping piano, and then the marching band (jock music) overtop.
The horn section actually helps to lessen the impact of the songs's climax, for the arrangement is a contrivance, it is a climax of falsity, of posturing, it is less trying to become more, and which does become more, in that the march is nationalistic, and the high school is pride, and you can hear the colors, you can taste the revenge, sweet as always. We are caught up in the pomp.
There is a self-consciousness to this section. It sounds deliberate in a manner which helps it to mean something more. The playing is sincere. It does not come off as imitation. It takes this falseness seriously.
This is not a parody, but captures the true force of the music. The horns convey that which is underneath the fanfare. This is the experience of being in the marching band. There is a genuine pride. And the horns do not shy away from being expressive, even at the cost of sounding dumb.
The piano is swept up by the horn section, driven by the rhythm, and after the theme is stated, there is a point where the trombone comes in with the type of slur which would usually lead into a solo, though it simply repeats this figure twice, without developing it at all. This trombone is doubled by guitar, which imitates the trombone through bending the notes. This adds a level of artificiality, and freezes this gesture as a pose.
In the place of what would have been a trombone solo, there is a drift of metallic dust. A release of sparkling debris into the atmosphere. This gives us the sense that things are out of place.
The voice comes back in, and takes up a function which is closer to the horns, for one cannot recapture that contemplative tone of the first half of the song. It is as though the voice doesn't belong in this section, as though the narrator is trying to articulate himself, but that his language is swept up in the flow of the music, and thus comes across as unintelligible garble.
This line is then picked up by the horns, which only seem to emphasize that the vocals were out of place, and that this is really a horn section, but it also has another effect, in that the horns have become more human, more expressive, and it is as though one has graduated from marching band to jazz band.
Something happens to the narrator during this section, and it has to do with the character of the horns, which have become more human, and this opens up a subjectivity within the music. This subjectivity allows for the narrator to contrive his own history, not a history which is his own, but which is of his own making, and thus to bring those forces which are not taught in high school against all pomp and circumstance.
The narrator achieves this through articulating the violence of human history, and of bringing this history into the song with enough force to topple a grandstand. This is a force against nationalism. This is the mythological line whose origins we glimpsed in The Law of Attraction.
The song unravels all its artifice and we end up at the point where we started, with the piano in a room. The somber tone being all there is left to ponder.
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There are abortions all through the album. False starts. Such as the break in Failure, or the opening figure of Berlin breaking off into noise only to start up again after a brief release of electrical frequencies. |
In contrast, God's Clinic is the most seamless song on the album. Its production is clinical. The guitars produce the sound of stainless steel instruments. And there is a precision to the changes, to the shifts in rhythm, which mimic the exactitude of an operation well performed.
The force which has built up in Failure, with the narrator's ability to contrive a history, to gather forces against institutional systems of power, is carried over into God's Clinic.
The narrator has learned how to formulate a history. The narrator has learned how to fight. It is not as though the narrator has learned from his failure, but that he has learned failure, the strength of being in the minority, and of being against historic forces. The narrator has come to embrace his own unpopularity, and to operate from the outside, at the risk of being despised. The narrator has had a taste of evil.
The narrator summarily dismisses Western Religious Orthodoxy. This is not a subject on which he wishes to dwell, there are other matters which need to be attended to. And it only takes him a minute and a half to condemn two thousand years of history. It is as though he had passed a priest on the street, said what needs to be said, and then moved on. The narrator is getting something out of the way, an issue which can neither be ignored, nor dealt with any meaningful way.
Abortion is such an issue. It is like talking about whether people should have anal sex or not; it just isn't an issue with which we need to concern ourselves, and yet, to not have a position on the issue is to take a position, for if you believe that it should be up to the individual, and that it is really none of your business, then you are basically pro choice.
What the narrator chooses to do is to approach this as a problem of morality, and to tell all those priests to go back from where they came, to crawl back into their own subjectivity, their own sick dream which has been perpetuated on the world.
This song is an invective. A personal point of view which is extreme. And this represents a shift in the narrator's position in the world. This is the point where the narrator becomes active. In which a meditation on history becomes an attack against those systems of power which control history.
What is an atheist? If one believes in God, and that Christ is the son of God, then one is a Christian. This is based on a system of belief. But if one does not believe in this system, does this lack of belief constitute a system of belief? Just because one doesn't accept a given system of belief, this does not mean that one has taken a position.
The narrator is not engaging in a discourse. This is a direct chastisement of religion, and of the beliefs in our head. The narrator's position on this issue is absolute. There is no room for discussion. The narrator is not sharing his views for other people to dismiss or accept, the narrator is saying "Fuck You."
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The clinical precision of the guitar ringing out at the end of God's Clinic is carried over into A Hate Which Grows along a line of feedback. This is like a rupture of thought, that which escapes from the extreme negativity of God's Clinic. This feedback merges with the mental drift of the piano. |
There is something at once soothing and disturbing about this section, that is, until this feedback articulates itself into a voice. For you can no longer enjoy this dissonance as it washed over your senses, now you have to deal with this dissonance as content. It doesn't matter what this voice has to say (though you can make out a few words about "revolution"), for it is the quality of this voice with reveals the content.
This voice is articulated out of dissonance, breaking through the feedback to utter a few words before falling back into static. This communication is being transmitted through a faulty circuit. And it is the quality of this connection which is the voice. The voice is inseparable from its medium of transmission.
This section opens us up onto an interior, but it also extends to the global networks of communication. This voice could be from any other place, any other time, and yet it exists now, in this context.
This context is subjective.
The sound of chirps, and other high frequency blips, rise as though a swarm of insects were approaching. This sound is difficult to locate, to get a sense that what we hear exists within a physical space.
These chirps and blips become more electrical, more artificial, as they increase in volume. The electrical misfirings of the circuits pass through the entire subjective network.
The voice is overtaken by the sounds of this malfunctioning machine. A breakdown which is almost angelic in its high frequencies which hover in the air. This sound completely fills the interior and floods the whole communications system.
This is a subjectivity without a subject. A dissonance of thought which cannot be articulated into language.
An electronic piano transmits a signal through this field of misfiring circuits. This is a shift in subjectivity, which brings the focus down to a local level. This piano is a subject. It is something to follow. And it picks up the line of the voice, continues the drift of thought.
The piano plays a short chord progression over and over again. This opens up a meditative space. A solitary thought passing through this lack of subjectivity.
Then there is another level of construction, as the high pitch of the cymbals mixes with the electrical bursts providing a rhythm to the upper frequency range. This gives a musicality to the random bursts of sound. At the same time the guitars, which are on the recording with the cymbals, also rise, and as they do this smooths out the sharp attack of the electrical bursts.
The misfirings are absorbed in the sonority of the guitars, and then they fade out of the mix. The mode of listening shifts, and now one is inside a physical space. There is an acoustical dimension to the sound. We are not listening to a rock band, we are listening to the room in which a rock band is playing.
After only a short span of time, when one has finally settled into the deep sonority of the music, the electrical misfirings return. At this point we hear the differences between these two sounds: the rock band, which is the recording of a room; and the electrical misfirings, which is the sound of a faulty connection. The misfirings do not exist within a space, they are a sound which is patched into the circuits. A sound which only exists within the electrical circuits.
The rock band abruptly cuts away, and this has the effect of pulling the space out from behind the electrical misfirings. This is a system in crisis. A breakdown without a world in which to break down. This is pure subjectivity. The neuro-electrical circuits on fire.
This time the rock band returns with a groove. A rhythm locked into place, gradually pushing forward at a steady rate. The space of this sound completely overtakes the electrical misfirings which dissipate into the air.
There is finally something for the listener to grasp onto -- a steady rhythm filled up with sonorous material -- but this certainly isn't to last for long. At first you hear the glint of pianos, a whole field of pianos ringing out, and this is not immediately recognizable, it is perceived as a blur, though you sense something familiar, and just as you lean in to get a closer listen, and just as you recognize the song, a different song comes to the fore, and the hall of Dismantling the Berlin Waltz mirrors drops out of the mix.
This has the effect of getting the listener's close attention, for just as you have leaned in, actively picking your way through the mix, these words are sung directly into your ear. The intimacy of this exchange makes the brutality of the lyrics all the more effective.
This has all taken place on the inside. Growing on the inside. But the inside is also growing. The interior expands with the proliferation of the subjective networks.
An experience which is no longer simply the narrator's but which has become historical. The experience is negativity.
The narrator tells of the story of hate, bringing this negativity down to the level of direct exchange were it can be shared with the listener. This closes off the circuit.
The relationship of one to the other.
Though this exchange is direct, its means of expression is electronic. The language needs to pass through circuits in order to transmit and receive information. Language needs a communications system: a larynx, tongue, lips, microphones, frequency bands....
This is like a replay of the opening of the song with the piano and voice, but whereas in the opening of the song the voice was transmitted through a faulty circuit (the line of feedback which drifted out of God's Clinic), here the voice is clear, and what the narrator has to sing is unmistakable.
The narrator is able to express this negativity, to articulate that which has been growing on the inside, that which was washed up in the flood of information which overloaded the circuits. The narrator achieves this through hooking up a local circuit, by closing off communications within a direct exchange.
These are not the lines at the end of Failure, where the narrator had to develop an athletics of thought strong enough to counter nationalistic forces, nor is it the invective of God's Clinic, where the narrator had to develop an ethics powerful enough to counter religious forces. This is an opposition which is brought down to the local level.
What the narrator has learned is that hatred has to become personal, that it has to be shared directly, that it is most effective when whispered into the listener's ear.
Though these words are designed to offend, this is nonetheless a positive statement, an expression of liberty on the part of the narrator. This is a brutal ethics which does not take a position within accepted discourse. The language includes more than what could be thought of as a philosophical position, for to speak of the rape of the Statue of Liberty as an expression of one's aspiration for liberty is blasphemous, and yet this act would also be the fullest expression of liberty: to take liberties with liberty. What could be more liberating?
What is so disturbing about these lyrics is that the violence takes on such a physical sense, and even borrows a phrase from the news media, "beat her about the head and face," which is commonly used to describe incidents of domestic violence.
There is a merging with the feminine which is catastrophic. A violent collision as in The Law of Attraction. Though here the law has evolved. These are no longer the basic forces of geo-physical desire. This is a desire pushed into the upper architecture.
What is being violated is not woman, but the image of woman as a historical symbol of liberty. This is actually a lashing out against the dominant culture and the majority. This is a minority line of attack, for it takes up the most unpopular position while at the same time acting in a manner which is positive. This is assertive behavior.
The narrator tapes into a lineage. A genealogy which has been cut off from official history. A force which develops alongside, underneath, in opposition to organized systems of control.
The narrator becomes positively evil.
The Berlin collage overlays language as though it were graffiti on a wall. A means of oppression becomes a medium for expression. This gives the song Dismantling the Berlin Waltz a meaning which is only implied in its title.
This meaning is useful here, in that it links the negativity with dissent. This evil is an ethics. It is a positive undertaking. The narrator is writing the unofficial story.
There is an irony to the line, "things simply cease to exist," in that this is a recording which is being played back. Time does not pass, it is repeated. The transitory nature of time which the line expresses is preserved on tape.
Time can be made to pass again. Time can be overlaid onto itself. There is a memory. A history. A lineage which is constructed.
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The narrator has been waging a war ever since the end of Failure. He has been testing the world, seeing what he is capable of, and these actions against, these revolts, come off so easily, almost too easily. He tells the holy invalids to crawl back into their heads and die, and then he turns around and rapes the Statue of Liberty, but up till this point he has been alone in his endeavors, there is nothing for him to share, his opposition has no relation, is cut off from an ability to organize anything more than passing elements. |
The Reenactment introduced the couple as the transition point from the historical narratives to the personal narratives.
The death of the historical subject is brought about by the subject taking up these historical relations within the private love of the couple, and by personalizing these forces which are impersonal, pushing these forces to the point that the structure begins to crack. What cracks is the subject, there is a breakdown, yet what survives is also the subject, where it is the historical narratives which have fallen asunder, and now the subject finds itself transformed within a new set of relations which are determined by the personal narratives.
The narrator is no longer alone in his opposition and can turn his attention to more elaborate acts, acts which could rival history on its own scale. The couple set out to reenact the great events of history, starting with the crucifixion.
This crucifixion is not a hoax, unlike that other crucifixion. This isn't just some costume play, this is a play to the death.
This delusion is taken all the way to the point of its materialization, which means that the narrator is going to die, not in order to become Christ (this is not a song about the "martyr complex"), but in order to close this event off within the privacy of their love. This is the selfishness of someone who wants to make the crucifixion their own.
The attempt to reverse time, to go back to another time, was a failure in Failure, for one was still dealing with a material reality, with physical laws, with events which have already passed, but in The Reenactment this is much different, because we are not dealing with physical materials, but with the materials of history, with narratives, and stories.
One does not need to reverse the physical laws of nature, but to simply reenact the events, and if one wants to put oneself in the leading role, it may take a large dose of arrogance, but it can be easily accomplished. There is an arrogance to love, and the couple has a feeling of superiority.
The couple gives a confidence to the actions of the narrator, whereas what had come before just seemed to be chance encounters. The couple is a persona all its own independently of the narrator. This is what it is to be in love. To have this love be a separate being. A certainty outside of yourself. A fate which you are willing to accept without hesitation.
There is a tenderness to this description of love, and it possesses the heightened awareness of touch, and of gesture, which one experiences when they are in love. It is this focus, this awareness, which gives the song force, which allows the couple to follow through with this act.
The choir opens up a space within the upper architecture. It is the event achieved. And the narrator rises up to heaven. This song doesn't end with the reenactment of the crucifixion, one has to also reenact the ascension.
But before the ascension is complete, a low voice comes in, to pull at the narrator's heels, to give a gravity to this event, and this low voice is aligned with machines, with the piano's force, with the amplified power of the rock band which rolls in like a tank and just obliterates this little passion play.
This is the narrator's height, but it is also his damnation, and it is as though the narrator damned himself, as though his ascension was only contrived so that he could bring the whole thing down.
There is a vast scattering of debris, fragments of passion, desires, which rub up against one another in a static electrical field. A drift of materials which seem to be taken from anywhere. Parts which have lost their function, and which aimlessly wander through this in-between world, this purgatory.
The oboe, unlike the other parts in this mix, retains some of its function, which is that of the wandering thought; the long drawn out melody. And though this melody is cut off, though this is but a segment of the oboe's line, it still functions as a melody by becoming the focus of the listener's attention.
This melody is not only cut off from its linear development, it has also been replicated. The oboe plays a repeated figure stretching out over time at regular intervals.
The whole field is constructed of repeated figures, each of which has its own time, and these times each have their own rate. The separate parts remain the same (they are fixed within their internal relations), what changes are their relations to one another. It is though the shifting balance of parts, in which each part rubs up against the other parts within the ebb and flow of the mix, that time develops.
This is a field of parallel recurrence. The parts are like circuits closed onto themselves which contain the information necessary for their own replication. These are not separate parts of a whole, as though this is a composition made of interrelated functions. These are sounds whose internal relations are their own, while their relations to the other parts are purely external.
The parts are not random, it is just that we are listening to them from the outside. These are the external relations of sound. This is why the oboe cannot develop its melody, for it drifts through a field of other drifting parts which do not organize their separate functions into a whole.
This is the transition point in the album. The time between the historical narratives and the personal narratives. The narrator, through his alliance with the feminine, was able to take on the historical narratives, and to push them to their limit, to force the machinery of history, of the State, and of the Church, to explode.
This was achieved through personalizing the historical narratives to the extreme, by bringing history into the privacy of their love, and by making real that in which they did not believe. The couple made the crucifixion take place, so as to rescue this event from historical speculation.
This is the state of the narrator in that time between: after everything has fallen away, yet before a new way of living has been constructed. The point where something really great didn't quite happen, in which a height was reached only to lead to a downfall. The narrator is wavering in this between, in this semi-consciousness, as though resting in a hospital bed after a nervous breakdown.
The contrast between the unabashed idealism of the song and the present state of emotional limbo gives these materials an added weight. These sounds do not float, they drag. What you hear is the resistance. The grind of the material.
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Frozen is the program of therapy which one goes through in order to fully recover from a breakdown. It is the process of putting one's life back together, of taking these preformed materials, these already assembled parts, and building oneself a new personality. |
The lyrics are an amalgam of psychological phrases, as though this is a session on a psychiatrist's couch. This is somebody who has gotten to know their personality, who has taken up the work of the personality, over the course of their therapy.
It is hard to even recognize the narrator at this point, he is hidden behind this language, and the therapy has become his personality. It is not as though he is becoming more healthy, but that he is learning how to act the part of a healthy person. And yet there is also a creativity, and a sensitivity, which is not devoid of insight, but this is all taken up within the learning process, in which one is able to study oneself, in order to improve upon their performance.
There is a closure to the personal narratives, and in this section the closure seems all the more complete because of the solitude of the narrator, after just having experienced love at its height, and now to be confined to a program, in which one's life is concerned only with itself.
This is an interior devoid of privacy, for the therapeutic relationship is based upon a communication which has to express everything, in which nothing is held back on the part of the patient. This is the basis for the talking cure (though it can also take up other materials than speech).
The song is structured like a psychological test, where the patient is given a set of parts and is asked to assemble them. This is not much different than what has been going on throughout the whole album, with the structuring of the music conveying the mental state of the narrator, but here the focus is much different, for instead of operating within a historical field of action, now the narrator is sitting in a room playing with blocks while he is being studied by doctors.
A closure in which everything is revealed. This is the relationship between the psychiatrist and the patient.
Frozen is put forward as the cure for the psychosis of the couple. But psychosis cannot be cured (as Freud pointed out), so it first has to be converted into neurosis. In order to accomplish this the personal narratives have to internalized, one has to be given a conscience.
The couple did not act out of conscience, they acted out of force, and their movement was outward. The personal was not personalized, it did not take up this second level of identification which is possession. Their privacy was something dark which drove them, something which they did not share, but which was inseparable from their love. They did not experience their delusions delusionally, but lived them literally, and this is what made them psychotic.
Up till this point in the album there has been a darkness, something hard and impenetrable, about the narrator, but now this has turned to depression, and what was evil, a gradual development of negativity personified, has become just another person with problems: evil has been reduced to something common.
What does the narrator convey to us through this song, as we take the place of the psychiatrist observing the patient's progress?
There is a strange looseness to the whole flow of the song, which is metrically precise, but where the beat kind of hangs in the air, without a lot of forward propulsion. The music seems to be anticipating something, though it does not seem to know what this something is.
There is a force which escapes in small flourishes, such as a quick drum roll, or a bass figure. The guitars spit out electrical frequencies which give a sense of agitation, but which aren't overt expressions of angst. There is a quiet nervousness to the song. A general discomfort, in which the narrator doesn't have the energy to do anything about his situation.
There is a naturalness to the playing, which draws no particular attention to itself. It is as though the song is a base onto which the narrator is asked to build. There are two levels of construction which exist independently of one another, but which are capable of affecting each other.
The vocals are constructed from readily available materials. They are simply plucked from the air of the therapeutic space which is dense with language. But the musical constructions are more difficult, for here the narrator has to get at physical forces, which are somewhat repressed in this setting. At first he floats the trumpet out into the song, and it finds sympathy with the guitar which swells like a raw nerve. (This line from the trumpet to the guitar is similar to the transition from the guitar chord at the end of God's Clinic into the line of the psychopath's voice in A Hate Which Grows, but the forces in Frozen are less physical, and exist under more controlled circumstances.) This is the sound of a wound being healed. The sensation of ice on a burn.
The vibrations of this nerve guitar agitate the structure of the song, giving it an instability, though the song is able to absorb this agitation, to incorporate it into is structure. The structure of the song is structuring, and is able to accommodate expression, to absorb anything.
This when the narrator decides that he is really going to play this game, and some of that subversive spirit which we had previously come to identify with the narrator breaks through.
This break is articulated through a piano figure. A child plays a few notes and then runs off. There is a mischievousness to this figure which comes out of nowhere and then departs. A figure which is loosely related to the structure of the song, but which the song cannot absorb, for this figure belongs somewhere else. And yet, because of its simplicity, its delicacy, this figure does not disrupt the flow of the music. This is a sound in passing. Though before it can pass, before this door can be closed, something more elaborate, ridiculously elaborate, has to be constructed. The narrator grabs the child by the arm, seizing upon this opportunity.
The narrator takes the route of complexity, with a dense overlay of instruments played in unison. A line which seems impossible to repeat, but which is the sound of repetition, replication. The playing of this part is somewhat stiff, mechanical, and does not take up expression as its means of communication. What this part communicates is structure, a purely abstract solution to the problem of abstraction.
The narrator takes the game even further. He pushes what is most impersonal about the personal narratives. Elaborates the falseness of this therapy. This part is like an offshoot, a genetic aberration, which is born from the song, but which takes up a mutant line of replication.
There is nothing shy, or tentative, about this construction, which reflects a boldness on the part of the narrator who has decided that this game is kind of boring, and that something drastic needs to be accomplished. This conveys a spirit which we thought had been lost in the narrator, though here the field of battle is completely different, and it is no longer historical symbols which the narrator confronts (such as the Statue of Liberty), but purely abstract codes.
This section is similar to the horn section in Failure, and thus is useful in drawing distinctions between the historical narratives and the personal narratives.
The horn section in Failure erects a state edifice. It expresses itself through a nationalistic language. But it also develops this language, articulating a counter-history in the final stanzas which reverse the flow of events, and which brings the whole structure down. This is a historical battle,. and it is waged through the organization of physical forces. In this context language is physical, and it is full of meaning.
The density of the arrangement in Frozen is the narrator's own. It is the only way of building up these forces which are abstract, and which only have meaning within the therapeutic setting. Here meaning is not as concrete, it is open to interpretation, and this makes it much more difficult to counter the organizational power of the personal narratives. Whatever the narrator does will be interpreted in a given way, and thus even if he revolts against the therapeutic system of control it will only be seen as an expression of infantile rage.
The narrator has to operate outside of narratives, outside of stories, and deal with the means of exchange, the communications system which is set up within the therapeutic circuit. This is why the narrator's construction is so dense, in that he needs to make the abstract as concrete as possible, so as to give his thought a physical force.
This arrangement is the narrator's own, and is not constructed as a means of organizing the separate elements, of bringing the structure under control, but of inserting a blast of disorder, tightly organized disorder, into the therapeutic circuit.
Through the personal narratives, the narrator is able to express himself freely, but the world in which he is allowed to express himself has been cut off from the outside. Thus he may be able to produce something which is interesting, and which shows how far he has come in his therapy, but which has no effect beyond its immediate world.
Though we may have broken from the centralized organizations of the church and state, this does not mean that we have escaped organization systems altogether.
This ability for order to operate in real time, without differentiating given forces into functions of a whole, but where the whole is in progress, and order is performed in the moment, also allows for a construction which is radical, in that it can open up other times which are not ordered or ordering.
Though within the closed relationship of therapy everything is absorbed, even the most radical constructions, which can be organized as they arise, to become part of the process, a process which is organic. The personal narratives operate within the flows of energy and force, unlike the historical narratives which are imposed through law.
It is as though nothing happened, as though one where waking up from a dream, but waking up inside their own head, where it can all make sense, where it can all be put back into place, but this place does not exist, anymore than the past exists, and one moves forward into this false image of self.
This falseness is no longer the representation of a people, or a nation, the falseness has been brought down to the personal level. We are able to organize our own lives, to invent ourselves. We are no longer swept up in events, for the world has become a flow of passing images. The world has become completely interiorized, privatized, and yet this privacy is not our own, but is made up of the preformed materials of self expression through which we articulate our own recovery.
What ties the historical narratives and the personal narratives together is that they are both expressions of the falsity of organized reality. It is this organization which is false, whether this organization is historical or personal. And this is what the arrangements draw attention, that they are only decorative, that they are overlaid onto events as a means of gaining control.
The level of control is all that has changed, and it is no longer a matter of controlling a people as a group, but of gaining control at the individual level, where people are allowed a greater freedom of self expression, but in which the expression is closed off within the confines of one's life. We are all entitled to our own opinions.
The narratives have become personal, we are dealing with our own lives, because there is no history, there is no way for us to have control over events, for events have been prepared for us in advance.
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The notes from the piano float out into the middle of nowhere. A space which has been completely vacated, not empty, but emptied, as though what had previously existed was no longer. There is a suffering which is unrecognizable, a feeling of loss for what one had not known. And yet there is a strange yearning, as if one is in search of what it is they do not know, and the high notes on the piano sound like sonar, with their sharp blips, though this sound finds nothing which to measure, there is no coming back. |
Then the voice is floated out into this space, but it cannot find a place to rest either, and it wanders through all that has been lost. The voice is in search of a melody, try its hardest to organize a coherent line, but to no avail. It sounds as though the voice does not have enough strength, as though this is the narrator in a state of semi-consciousness, awakening from the dream of Frozen.
The piano has a distant quality, as though it were a sound overheard, something which drifted through the open. The song builds on this errancy of the piano, takes up this drift, the specific qualities of force released from the piano, and builds on them, constructs an architecture out of this nowhere. Desert Song is the elaboration of nothing.
The production operates through constructing different spaces, constantly changing the acoustical setting, not through organizing a space in which sounds will co-exist, but by combining these sounds as separate spaces, as separate acoustical occurrences, each with its own resonance. A method of structuring which has more to do with the acoustical properties of sound than it does with the relations between different frequencies.
This sensibility to sound has been prevalent throughout the album, but it seems that it is in Desert Song that this sensibility becomes the very logic of the song itself.
This desert is real, and it is also the mental state of the narrator. The manic energy of Frozen has been lost, though the production is more complex, in that it explores subtle relations between sounds, merging separate qualities, and not just adding new parts to the musical structure. This is a method of listening which pays close attention to the acoustical properties of sound, in which what is brought together in the composition are not fixed frequencies, but qualities of space.
It is this layering of different spaces, and the way in which composite spaces can be formed, which is how the narrator deals with his own confinement, for his therapy is one which teaches him how to change his environment through altering his own subjectivity.
This is the narrator taking up the process of his own therapy, operating the machinery of subjectivity, and while we see him moving further down this road of controlled mental behavior, we also see how these same techniques can be used toward a creative end.
Desert Song is the further process of clearing all away, of erasing one's history, and of starting over again with a clean slate. The personality doesn't need a childhood, in fact, the childhood is negative, our parents didn't know how to train us properly, and so we are retrained by our psychologists.
This is the point where the personal narratives have been completely internalized by the narrator, and this at once opens up a new awareness, a new strength, while at the same time running the risk of closing off the narrator within himself.
The pop chorus at the end builds, as though a renewed hope had come over the narrator. There is an aspiration rising up in the voices, which for the first time in the song start to unify this space, to pull the separate parts together into a unified emotion which will transcend the material. And just as the voices begin to achieve this, the song is dispersed into particles of vocal dust.
These are not voices, these are vocal qualities, pieces of voice which drift through the open, without articulation. And if they express anything, it is a pathetic weakness, for the sound which they produce is closer to moaning than it is to singing, as though these were the voices of the damned. The voices of the banished.
The absence of language in the song has now become the absence of the voice itself. These voices depopulate a space, they are the sound of what is not there, creating a drift of space, in which it is the unity of space which dissolves.
The voices are dissemination, as they fall away from themselves, mixed with static, and other bits of material, frequencies devoid of power, without strength, or dynamic of will, all they can do is drift through a wash of white noise.
The high ring of the cymbals is buried in the density of static, and you can hear that these cymbals are ringing, but you can also hear that you can't hear these cymbals ringing. There is a density of recordings which partially cancels out the sound of what is recorded, so that a quality of the cymbals (a specific quality, in this instance the highest partials) is lost through overlaying recordings of the cymbal.
This build-up of base density, this white noise, is the sediment which makes up the new earth. A network of electrical transmissions along which coded material is passed: images, sounds, statistics, capital; anything which can be recorded and processed.
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The machine is turned on. A wind machine. The sound of a fan clicking with each revolution of the blade. This machine stands in contrast to the harmonium at the beginning of the album, where the pumping of the pedals was necessary in order to give the keyboard the force of sound. This machine is electrical, and it is just a matter of sending a bit of electricity to the motor which turns the blades. |
The distinction is that the pumping of the harmonium was necessary for the production of sound. A sound produced alongside production, as the sound of production added to the sound produced. Whereas the Leslie is just on, hooked into an electrical circuit. It is not a sound produced in the production of sound (the Leslie isn't being played), it is just another density added to the white noise. This is the hum of the machine on stand-by. A residue of sound.
Another machine is turned on. This machine transmits a song. The reception is poor, and the static which is produced mixes with the whir of the fan. This build-up of density gives a dissonance to the song which is otherwise quite lyrical and delicate "The old man is buried in the clouds," just as the song is buried in static hum. This is similar to A Shallow Stream, where the prospector is buried in the mix. Though here the materials are different; this is no longer the physical elements of the earth, but the electrical frequencies which fill the air, the night, the sky.
This is a third level of value: starting with the materials which are excavated from the earth, and then the conversion of these materials into capital which is circulated through an economic system, and now to have this capital converted into images as corporations buy up the heavens, evict God, and fill this space with their logos.
This is a build-up of transmissions. A world which is built on transmissions of electrical codes, information, capital (it is all the same thing), and it hooks up a system as great as that which was ever erected by the church and the state. Here it is not the narrator who has defeated God, but the corporations. Capital could accomplish what the narrator could not, which is to overthrow the metaphysical system. This is a song of post-history.
The couple returns, though this time at a distance, barely a thought, drifting through this space of memory, of all that has passed before. A song on the radio, broadcast over a weak frequency, barely able to break through the surface.
There is a mental static. Deep within his state of recovery the narrator can only dream of subversion, of doing anything other than what is in the schedule. This is the sound of only partially listening, the equivalent of a blur in our peripheral vision, and that the song is only in one channel increases this sense of something just outside of our perceptive field.
This is not a music construction of parts, which are organized into functions, but in which whole sections of sound are laid over one another, so that you have to listen through the hum of the Leslie, and through the static of the radio transmission, in order to hear the song Metaphysical.
This forces you to listen even more closely, to be able to get a sense of the sound, the quality of the voice and the piano, to distinguish the musical and expressive qualities from the white noise. Though, just as with the couple who were trapped in the wreckage of The Law of Attraction, here too, the story of the couple cannot be extricated from the machine.
This is a song of love conquers all, but whereas the couple had previously engaged in a fight against history, now they are taking up battle in the post-history of the media age. The couple is fighting against the future, against what is surely to be our fate: Satellite billboards in the heavens.
There is no image more symbolically perfect than that of corporate logs floating in the cosmos. And it is against such perfection, against this certainty, that the couple wages battle.
But whereas the couple adopted the artifice of history in their reenactment of the crucifixion, here they have to fight directly against the machinery which produces images. The battle is against images, against the imagination, and the future, all of which are moving in the direction of greater mediation.
To have a song such as this broadcast over the radio would seem scandalous, and would appear to be a threat to the media, but the media is not afraid of a critique for it does not operate on the level of discourse. The media controls information, which is much different than engaging in communication.
If there are no historical narratives, then there can be no historical action. All action has become personal. We all have our own stories, and the couple's story has become just another bit of sentiment broadcast over the radio.
The frequency band is the new strata of the earth. A build-up of density which fills a space with electrical impulses. The transmission has become more physical; adding its own base, its own ground, while the earth has become less physical; set adrift, mixed with all sorts of images and other sensory materials.
This creates a dissonance. And even when the song is over, after the radio clicks off, the hum of the Leslie continues. You do not hear this sound, you feel it, as a pressure in your left ear.
The transmission of sound is dependent on a physical world. And this is true of all transmissions. There is no pure communications, no telepathy. The transmission needs a molecular base through which it can pass.
This molecular base has become saturated with vibrations. The world is abuzz with frequencies.
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Exit is a refrain of Frozen, but all the creativity of the latter has been drained from the narrator, and what we are left with is the structured reality of the rehabilitated patient. There is not a trace of extravagance in the narrator's voice as he speaks of his pain. The narrator has learned to accept reality. The struggle has been taken out of him. |
The narrator has fully internalized the personal narratives, brought them into his own consciousness, and has been cured, successfully prepared to lead a healthy productive life.
This is the release of the narrator into the world. A world in which he has been trained to survive, has developed the instincts necessary to make a life for himself, to fulfill his personal desires, to become a professional.
The song breaks off into radio frequencies. A dispersal of music and voices, in which the complexity of the metrical relations in Frozen have now been replaced with a density of electrical transmissions. This is the new earth onto which the narrator steps.
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The Family Business begins with the sound of the mouth drum. There is something humorous about the appearance of this sound, especially after just hearing this attempt to organize white noise into listenable material. Here is something recognizable, something which we can grasp onto, and yet it is fulfilling a different function than we would commonly associate with the mouth. This is not speech, this is rhythm. The mouth is imitating a drum, and this sounds rather silly. |
The artificiality of the mouth drum extends to the vocals. It is as though the mouth drum is mocking what the narrator says, as though the mouth drum were adding a "blah blah blah" behind the lyrics.
The mouth produces content, and it is impossible to listen to this as drums without giving it a speech function, without listening to this as something expressed verbally.
The mouth produces not only a rhythm, but a language, a kind of gibberish, which is like a commentary on the narrator's speech. So much bullshit keeping rhythm. He is smooth.
This brings the focus onto the mouth. A close-up of the mouth. As though one is studying what someone says, scrutinizing the articulations of the lips, looking for the hint of a smile, or any other expression which might reveal the narrator behind this voice.
The voice does no crack, but expresses an unwavering optimism. He speaks to his wife admiringly, in a tone which is loving. What comes through, in spite of all the falseness, is that he really does love her, and that he does not want to hurt her, but only to be honest.
The tracking of the falsetto hangs in the air as a glowing expression of how he feels toward his wife. "You're my profession." And he can't say it enough. He wants her to know how much he loves her. To him there could be no greater compliment.
This idealism is not dealt with sarcastically, nor with cynicism, but with irony, for the voice does not waver, and there is a straightforwardness to the delivery which is completely sincere. This allows the narrator to say what must be said, and to be honest with his wife, using his new skills of interpersonal communication.
The professional resolves the personal through the adoption of behavioral techniques. It is the construction of a healthy personality. Whereas the historical narratives are in need of all sorts of madness and irrationality, an explosion of forces which make great things happen, the personal narratives limit what can be achieved by setting their sights no higher than success.
The goal is to be successful in a world where all means and ends are controlled. This is what pragmatism has been reduced to: the most effacious route. The professional does not operate on a general set of principles, but according to given procedures which are adopted as personal skills.
The corporation provides a model for interpersonal relations. A constant flow of memos in a space which is controlled by policy, and by endless meetings, which do not differ all that much for encounter groups, or focus groups, or other experiments in the science of human management.
The use of the title, The Family Business, makes a link between the religious institution and the corporate institution. It is the profession of faith, and honor, and all that goes into the development of a social or religious institution, but it shifts this allegiance over to the private institution of the corporation.
This shows how the personal narrative operates within a world which is corporate, where there is a convention of language which is followed, but there are no fixed rules such as doctrine. Thus the husband is able to have an affair, as long as he is open about it with his wife. The song could be a memo left on her desk.
The most depressing aspect of the song is that he feels as though he has to confess, which brings that which has escaped back into the relationship, transforming his desire into transgression and guilt.
What even makes it more depressing, is that the most positive aspect of the song is not that he is telling her the truth, but that he has had the affair, that there is something outside of the relationship, and that this break in the closure of the relationship represents hope.
This is an argument in favor of the affair, and against any honesty, but as a criticism of the narrator, in that he has to limit the women to these functions (wife as profession, mistress as hobby) according to his own sense of productivity.
The narrator rationalizes his affair in order to justify the fact that he operates in his own self interest. Through this rationalization he comes to sincerely believe that this is for the better overall, and it is in these terms that he explains the affair. He makes this explanation as rational as possible because he does not want to hurt his wife, and in order to avoid hurting her, he has to be less than honest with her.
This rationalization of his own self interest (that this is for the better overall) is, paradoxically, in his own self interest. This is the big lie of positivism, which cannot confront its basic contradiction, that one's own interests are not the interests of others.
The positivism of the voice which sings, "you're my profession," is at once a command and a praise for obeying this command. He is at once telling his wife that she is his profession, and also praising her for her willingness to conform to this role. It has the quality of a pet name, as in "you'll always be my little pumpkin," but instead he is saying, "you'll always be my little profession."
The fact that one's personal life can be organized in such a professional manner, rationalized in a tone of voice which is unwaveringly positive, is what makes this song so disturbing.
But what is most disturbing is that the narrator's only failure is his honesty, that he does not pursue this hobby as his own independently of his wife, that he feels compelled to apologize for, or to simply explain, his behavior, and that if the narrator had acted within his own self interest, without consideration of others, something positive could have taken place.
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It is as though we have been listening to the narrator reason with his wife while the rock band plays in an adjacent room. We hadn't noticed this before, so intently were we focused on the narrator's mouth. |
The door to this room is opened, but what we hear is this room at another time, or another date: a two-minute segment of January thirtieth, nineteen-ninety-four.
This is the only track on the album which is comprised of a single recording. This track does not have a title because it is not constructed as are the other tracks. This track is that which was recorded on 1/30/94. The title is a label. This label is part of a system for cataloging tapes so that they can be referenced.
This points out the means by which the album is constructed. That it is built from a library of sounds. Sounds which are produced, dated, and then shelved away until they become useful in the construction of a composition. The composition exists in another time. It is a time composed of these other times.
The album ends by stepping out of this composition. What we are hearing on this track is the production of sound as raw material. This material is time. Duration. And the sounds produced are the physical qualities which makes this time perceptible.