Radiohead and Philosophy - Brandon W. Forbes [40]
There’s another human voice here, a bit of humanity we can recognize. There’s a community, however thin, that is created when one human being engages the art created by another. And in tragedy, that community gives voice to its fears and reflects on its common vulnerabilities.19
7.
“The Eraser”: Start Making Sense
DAVID DARK
Cities, in Milgrim’s experience, had a way of revealing themselves in the faces of their inhabitants, and particularly on their way to work in the morning. There was a sort of basic fuckedness index to be read, then, in faces that hadn’t yet encountered the reality of whatever they were on their way to do
—William Gibson, Spook Country
it was fun and quick to do. inevitably it is more beats & electronics. but its songs.
—Thom Yorke, description of The Eraser
On the outskirts of every agony sits some observant fellow who points.
—Virginia Woolf, The Waves
As well as evoking the satisfyingly stark chorus of The Eraser’s most popular single, “Black Swan,” the notion of a “basic fuckedness index,” William Gibson’s illuminating phrase, might also speak to the scene portrayed on the album’s enigmatic artwork provided, as we’ve come to expect, by Stanley Donwood. Titled “Gold Cnut,” a trench-coated figure dwarfed by rising tides and storm clouds seems to maintain, for at least a moment, a storm-free clearing by bidding the darkness halt with a raised hand, a gesture of magical command. Whether the gesture is effective or entirely futile is left to the viewer’s interpretation.
Drawn from Donwood’s “London Views” exhibit, the image is based on an anecdote concerning the eleventh-century Viking King of England, Canute the Great, who, it is alleged, once set his throne on the sea-shore and commanded the rising waters to accommodate his comfortably dry robes by keeping their distance. As the story goes, he got soaked. And his epiphany concerning the ocean’s recalcitrance led him to renounce the power of kings (the very concept of kingship) as empty and worthless. To commemorate this moment of clarity, he placed his golden crown on a crucifix and never wore it again. We recall how chaos (most notably the humanly-cultivated kind) will have its way, despite the pretensions of presidents, prime ministers, high-profile politicos, and other self-professed professionals. And the human misery index, predictably on the rise by way of our plundering and profiteering, doesn’t appear to be on hardly anybody’s radar. No note-taking, no foresight, no body counts. Just press conferences, photo ops, and assurances concerning how deeply our elected leaders feel the electorate’s pain. Thus far, we’re on familiar ground. This is the economy according to Radiohead.
But the figure on the album cover doesn’t look anything like a king. A wizard, perhaps, or a detective in the vein of the Phantom Stranger, John Constantine, William S. Burroughs, or a shaman-like Shakespeare’s Prospero who may or may not have the power to hold off the forces of evil in a bozo nightmare. Even if it is a spoof or a self-deprecating image concerning the presumption of the artist (Thom Yorke) who dares to believe himself capable of creating a space in which to proffer a redeeming word amid the static and the noise of an age of “everything all of the time,” the image is nevertheless a heartening one. It could be a broadside, fitting nicely among the annals of consciousness-raising (whether folksy, comic, or theatrical), a little like a nameless man with a briefcase standing in front of a tank. The bardic figure will hazard a sense-making word even if it’s doomed to fail. A lyrical witness will try, yet again, to ring true and to let the chips fall where they may.
If I understand it, this question of what it might mean to be a true witness, a witness that