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By Root 967 0

singing along. We can literally deliver the lines of the tragic characters, and to that extent become the characters in a more immediate, visceral way. This doesn’t mean we’re “pretending to be” those character or literally “play acting.” But we are finding ourselves in these characters and recognizing our own lives in their stories. Think about what it’s like to sing along to “Karma Police”: “I’ve given all I can, its not enough”; “for a minute there, I lost myself, I lost myself ”. When you’re immersed in the song and singing along, who is the “I” that you’re singing about? Is it a character in a song, or yourself? If the song works, that line starts to blur. And that melding of ourselves with the characters is part of why we feel the way we do; by identifying with the speaker’s situation we share in the associated emotions. “I lost myself . . .,” indeed: the listener “loses himself ” in the character, and the character in turn gives voice to precisely the experience of losing oneself—perhaps in sorrow, or anxiety, or in feeling the weightlessness of one’s own existence.

Something like this happens inside the slow, meditative sadness of “How to Disappear Completely.” Even if you’re not literally singing along, it’s hard to engage the song without identifying with Yorke as he sings, “I’m not here, this isn’t happening.” You can quickly get caught up in his mood, as you can (again) in “Fake Plastic Trees,” when at the emotional climax of the song shifts from the third to the first person. The music swells and the character speaks in his (or her) own voice: “My fake plastic love, I can’t help the feeling I could blow through the ceiling . . . it wears me out, it wears me out, it wears me out, it wears me out.” As the music grows quiet and Yorke’s voice comes to the fore, we are invited to sing along, and to feel along as well: “If I could be who you wanted, if I could be who you wanted, all the time.”

This Just Feels (and Sounds) Like Spinning Plates

So far we have focused on the lyrical content of Radiohead songs. We’ve said relatively little about the music itself. We’ve also emphasized tragedy’s ability to evoke negative emotions in us, but have said little about how exactly catharsis works. Surprisingly, Aristotle himself doesn’t discuss catharsis at length in the Poetics where he discusses tragedy. In his Politics, however, Aristotle discusses the role of music in education, and he notes that listening to music can be one source of catharsis.

Music, he says, is pleasurable to people of all ages and characters—it’s something “naturally sweet” to human beings.16 One way to describe this natural sweetness is to say that music conveys energy to us, and there is something pleasant about that energy. Here, then, is one clue for solving the opening puzzle: even if the lyrics of Radiohead songs are dark and “unhappy,” those lyrics are combined with a music that is energetic and “naturally sweet.” Music moves us, sometimes literally (think of dancing, or even unconscious foot-tapping). And whatever else may be involved in the listening experience, it feels good to be moved.

Aristotle also holds that music can mimic human character and emotion. Lyrics aside, rhythms and melodies themselves can represent anger, courage, temperance, and other experiences. Moreover, when we hear the music, our souls are changed to conform to the feelings it presents to us. As Aristotle says, “everyone who listens to representations comes to have the corresponding emotions.” The music itself embodies the emotions, and in so doing brings about the emotions in us. The music conforms us to its image.

Think of “Climbing up the Walls,” probably the scariest song Radiohead has yet created. The music is saturated with fear and heavy, lumbering desperation. These emotions begin with the opening drums and distorted bass line alone, even before words are spoken. And as Yorke sings, even without knowing what is being said the sounds themselves grow slowly toward a frenzy and panic. It takes an act of will not to feel these emotions when they are