Radiohead and Philosophy - Brandon W. Forbes [100]
Having analyzed the phenomenon of alienation, however, we’ve run headlong into a rather nasty bind. Alienation arises from our absorption into the world; this absorption, meanwhile, is a symptom of inauthenticity, of giving ourselves over to the role society provides us. This inauthenticity has two (mutually reinforcing) consequences: first, as “tranquilizing,” inauthenticity carries with it the delusion that authenticity is unnecessary. In other words, inauthenticity carries with it the illusion that it is not the source of alienation. Second, to be inauthentic and absorbed in the world is to empty oneself; our alienated state thus also carries with it the feeling that we have no power to be otherwise, that “it’s inevitable, inevitable, it’s a soul destroyed.” Part of being alienated, we might say, is an inability to determine exactly what’s wrong; the other part is the impression that we couldn’t change things, even if we did know. “Dear sir, I have a complaint/can’t remember what it is/doesn’t matter anyway” (“Stop Whispering”).
Placing Radiohead’s early work back into the context of the early 1990s “loser/slacker zeitgeist,” we can perhaps see where so much of the angst comes from. The pent-up frustration of grunge seems the most natural of reactions to an experience of alienation, the certainty that something is wrong coupled with the equal certainty that it cannot be changed. And at its worst, grunge had a tendency to slide toward nihilism (either the active nihilism of suicide, which ended authentic grunge in April of 1994, or the passive nihilism of “if you can’t beat ’em, join ’em,” which saw grunge slide into mainstream pop after about 1991, under the unintentionally ironic banner of “alternative music”). But Radiohead has never been a nihilistic band. In addition to the problem of alienation, Radiohead offers us a solution. Or, I should say, two solutions, an early solution on Pablo Honey, and then a rethinking of this solution that moves from OK Computer into Kid A.
Back to Save the Universe
Radiohead’s first solution to the problem of alienation is a romantic solution, and one that reveals their debt to the punk scene of the late 1970s. It’s stated most clearly in the refrain to “Anyone Can Play Guitar,” perhaps the only truly optimistic song on the entire album:
And if the world does turn and if London burns,
I’ll be standing on the beach with my guitar.
I want to be in a band when I get to heaven,
Anyone can play guitar and they won’t be a nothing anymore.
The first line picks up on the apocalyptic imagery that runs through the album: destruction, inevitable doom, “You and me and everything caught in the fire / I can see me drowning, caught in the fire,” as the opening track, “You,” puts it. Fire, decay, and Armageddon flag world-alienation here—complete world alienation. The first line of the chorus sees this as a possibility: if the world does turn, and if London burns, that is to say, if we should prove able to hit rock-bottom, and experience complete and total alienation.
But why hit bottom? This sounds like nihilism, except that the second line offers us a promise: should alienation reach its completion, things will not in fact end. Instead, the narrator vows, “I’ll be standing on the beach with my guitar.” On the other side of complete devastation is a heaven where the narrator declares his/her intention to “be in a band.” What’s going on here? In Heidegger’s lecture series, The Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics: World, Finitude, Solitude (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1995), he asks:
Why do we find no meaning for ourselves, i.e., no essential possibility of being? Is it because an indifference yawns at us out of all things, an indifference whose grounds we do not know? Yet who can speak in such a way when world trade, technology, and the economy seize hold of man and keep him moving? And nevertheless we seek a role for ourselves. “What is happening here?” we ask anew. Must we first make ourselves interesting to ourselves again? Why must we do