Radiohead and Philosophy - Brandon W. Forbes [70]
This One’s Optimistic
One of the main features of the story of Romeo and Juliet is longing. It appears lyrically in “Exit Music” in lines like “sing us a song to keep us warm” and musically in the quiet spaciousness of the first half of the song. In contrast, the second part of the song reinterprets this longing into a source of revolt and confrontation. At the origin of this revolt, there’s a desire for something better than the life put in place by the rules and wisdom of others, the longing to be together, and a yearning for warmth instead of the chill that’s coming over them. Yorke’s delivery evokes despair and hope simultaneously: the story may end in death or it may lead to escape, but either way the revolt is still worth pursuing.
This paradox, where we try to attain things we know will have very little probability of actually achieving, was explored by the French thinker Albert Camus in his book The Myth of Sisyphus, published in 1940. In Greek mythology, Sisyphus was punished for showing contempt for death through his attempts at living passionately. Because of this rebellion, he was condemned by the gods to roll a giant rock uphill until he reached the top. And each time he finished, the rock would roll back down, forcing him to start again. This work was meant to be useless—that was his punishment.
Camus thought that Sisyphus was most interesting at the moment when, from the top of his mountain, he saw his rock, far at the bottom, finally stop rolling, and paused before heading back down to start over: by actively deciding to try again, by becoming conscious of the absurdity of his attempts, he overcomes his condition. Like the options evidenced in Yorke’s delivery in “Exit Music,” Sisyphus can walk down his mountain in despair, or he can do it in joy. By accepting his futile efforts as his only reality, he becomes master of the destiny that was forced on him, and his continual uphill struggle becomes enough to make him happy.
Absurdity is a state of mind, a malaise we feel when we face the world: it has to do with the feeling that maybe it just isn’t worth it. The question Camus raises in The Myth of Sisyphus is whether or not life is worth living: for him, the first problem of philosophy is suicide. Some people choose death because life isn’t worth living; others put themselves in danger and are killed for the ideas that they have decided make life worth living.
We don’t have to go as far as Camus, but we can see how the story of Sisyphus frames his question about the meaning of life. We haven’t chosen to live in the first place; our existence is imposed on us, just as Sisyphus’s punishment is imposed on him. In the end, it won’t amount to very much. Why bother, then?—this is the feeling of absurdity. Why go through the motions of getting through our days, of pushing our rock up a mountain, when we know we’ll just have to do it all over again, that tomorrow’s only going to bring the same suffering? One answer is this: because maybe that’s not all there is. There is a happiness we can claim through absurdity by deciding to make our situation, whether good or bad, into our own.
What You’ll Get when You Mess with Us
This theme of the absurd is present throughout Radiohead’s work. What they ask at the very beginning of OK Computer is whether or not it’s worth trying to change our situation. “Airbag” tells us about surviving an accident and being born again—this time, with a mission. This near-death experience makes Yorke turn back toward others, toward his past. But it also reverberates throughout the album as the temptation to simply let go in face of the absurdity of any effort.
Two images in OK Computer illustrate the absurdity and the malaise of despair