Radiohead and Philosophy - Brandon W. Forbes [113]
Like Camus’s two absurd characters, we must accept absurdity. For, “the absurd man, when he contemplates his torment, silences all the idols” (Sisyphus, p. 123). Our constant consciousness of our struggle is the very thing that makes it less horrifying. We don’t compare our destiny to one more preferable. Instead, we continue our quest for meaning and live with the futility of this search. We persist in our mechanical lives, persist in our struggle to find the meaning to it all. And we can then embrace the world’s irrationality, and live our lives without reservations. Refusing to hope for something better, refusing to escape, we know that (although it is irrational) life is what we make of it. Like Sisyphus and Meursault, we come to love our alienated existence.
This is where Camus departs from OK Computer. For—lyrically speaking—Radiohead often focus on the escape Camus denounces. Yorke wants to take flight; he wants to be taken away on a spaceship; he wants to grow wings. The meaninglessness this technological world has to offer is too much. He isn’t ready to revolt by engaging this absurdity; he’d rather try to escape, or long for escaping, even though he knows it’s impossible. There are no spaceships, really, and by the time “No Surprises” comes around he seems quite resigned to a quiet life that merely minimizes, but does not escape, any realizations or existential crises life may hold from here on out.
Phew, for a Minute There, I Lost Myself in Technology
OK Computer may begin in a similar, alienating place as Camus, but it ends elsewhere—or so I thought before I added another crucial element to the discussion. What about the music, the actual “sound” of Radiohead? Once we include such a discussion, things get more complicated and ambiguous. Yorke’s words suggest a wish to leave behind the alienating and dangerous technological chaos. But, the sounds Radiohead adopt only pull him right back into it.
Especially compared to the less treated guitars and drums of the first two albums, these tracks are loud, electronic, technological, and strangely addictive. “Airbag” takes us into the technological world immediately. The sound is hard, frightening, and lacerated by drummer Phil Selway’s brittle, electronically distorted drums. Even the songs that do have natural, acoustic foundations (the piano in “Karma Police” or the soothing guitars of “The Tourist”) are saturated with technological treatments, interjections and interruptions. The original human voices recorded on Jonny Greenwood’s mellotron, for instance, on “The Tourist” sound menacing and garbled, not unlike the voice in “Fitter Happier.” The result is sometimes beautiful, too. “Climbing Up the Walls” is hypnotic and gorgeous (despite the screaming) and makes me want to listen to it again and again.
Technology is at home here, which is why Radiohead seem to move in two directions, existentially speaking. They hate the technological world. They feel separated from it, and yearn for escape. But, they’ve also become a part of it (or it’s become a part of them). Their music is technological. And they weren’t pulled into this involuntarily (by aliens, say, who demanded they start using computers and synthesizers). Yorke & Co. plainly chose these sounds. And they chose, for OK Computer, to embrace technology in a big way. So how can they want escape from technology while simultaneously becoming a part of it?
This puzzle is not only a problem for understanding OK Computer. This turn to technology also seems to put Radiohead more at odds with Camus. Why? Because Radiohead