Radiohead and Philosophy - Brandon W. Forbes [71]
Yet this is not the voice that dominates the album. Besides the android’s voice, a human voice emerges to sing about an alien, about the wish to be someone else, something completely other than the human being he’s supposed to be. This wish comes from the experience of feeling like an android, of being uptight, of being locked from understanding himself, unable to communicate with others. Seeing the world from an alien’s perspective would allow him to be at peace with this distance. Having the experience of seeing the meaning of life from the point of view of outsider, he could even be happy with being ignored or shut away.
In fact, he does see humans as aliens do. He sees others like bugs in the ground, “starting and then stopping.” He sees their emptiness, their disappointment. Yet even then there’s hope, because as a bug he sees himself grow wings (just as he saw himself abducted, just as the android sees himself king). He longs to be hysterical and useless, because being useful and serious—as he’s trying to be and as it is being asked of him—is the problem in the first place. Trying to see everything—as an alien might—would overwhelm his sense and make him blind to anything.
“Karma Police” talks about others—Yorke in an interview alludes to “bosses”—who buzz like fridges, who don’t quite sing in tune with him, and who don’t even try. He gives them all he can, he does all he can, but that’s not enough to get him off the hook. More and more will be asked of him despite his objections. It’s not who he is that matters to those who threaten him if he “messes with us.”
There’s a tension between these two images and roles, the android he’s trying to be in order to conform to the rules of society, and the alien he wishes he was. This same tension also takes place on the level of relationships, as in the fear of divorce that emerges in Kid A and Amnesiac. The narrator is the one, at first, asking to be released, leaving everything and admitting that the kids will be “cut in half.” But there are things that are kept quiet, that aren’t said outright, that are barely audible to us in the last part of “Morning Bell.” Fighting, divorcing and metaphorically cutting the kids in half—all of it could be prevented if only if these things could be understood. But it’s his fault he’s not being understood as he’s already out the door “walking walking walking.” As the song progresses, we see that “clothes are on the lawn with the furniture,” completely exposing the conflict within the home to the world, despite the efforts to keep up appearances: “the lights are on but nobody’s home.” With such painful revelations “Morning Bell” arrives at the conclusion that all that can be done is a request for release.
Kid A closes with “Motion Picture Soundtrack” and we can see Thom/Romeo trying to get back to Juliet’s arms. He asks for her help despite that fact that he thinks she might be crazy. He wants to stop using the wine, sleeping pills, cheap sex, and sad movies that distance himself from her. Those are all lies that he’s being fed, but his dreams remain. He’ll see her in the next life and they will reunite once all these lies have vanished.
The closing track of Amnesiac is thematically similar: Thom/Romeo is in trouble with his only friend, the one he’s afraid to