Radiohead and Philosophy - Brandon W. Forbes [72]
Why It Really Hurts
Why then, if any attempt is bound to fail, if there are always obstacles (others and their devices) and the temptation to go too far (cutting the kids in half, calling for a lynching), why should he even try to be something else? Why should they even try to make it work? The answer is on the other side of the coin: there’s more than the absurdity of their situation, which is described by the rules that are being forced on them and by their lack of understanding. Alongside this feeling of absurdity there is a tension, just like in “Exit Music.” Here, Thom Yorke or Romeo is speaking for himself in relation to others, and particularly with Juliet. But there, as soon as he becomes aware of those who would impose their rules and wisdom onto him, he turns against them and starts speaking for a “we,” which sometimes includes a particular other, and sometimes includes a larger group of people.
In other words, as soon as he realizes that his condition is not inescapable, but is imposed on him by people he can pinpoint, and more importantly that he can change this condition, he revolts against them. It’s only then that he can overcome the hesitation expressed in “No Surprises”: there’s the unhappiness, the job that kills him, the traces of the past that haunt him, and all of it is blamed on the government, who don’t speak for us because they disregard all this suffering. And so instead of taking down the government, he leaves things as they are—since there really are no surprises, there’s no need for alarms.
There’s a deeper reason why he has no time for the government, even for the head of state who calls for him by name. It’s the suspicion that nothing good would come out of interacting with them and that “luck could change” for the worse. In fact, he’s on a roll already. He doesn’t say that he’s standing on the edge, but that we are. We’re standing there together, where we only have each other. He’s our superhero and he needs our help. He needs to be “killed” with love, as it has happened before, to make his day glorious, to pull him out of the air crash, of the lake, of everything bad that can happen.
Those who are excluded, against whom he’s revolting, are heads on sticks. They have no depth, no reality, no self. They’re ventriloquists who hide something—shadows at the end of his bed, menacing because they have no reality. They’re marionettes, who are being handled by someone else (presumably the ventriloquists). They are flies and vultures, or big fish waiting to eat him—carnivores waiting to take their knives out. There is the “Gucci little piggy,” but also the little piggies from the nursery rhyme who are also pigs from Animal Farm feeding the other animals to keep them content and to maintain their own privileges.
In interviews, Thom Yorke has spoken of businessmen (about “Knives Out”) and bosses (about “Karma Police”). Those “others” who make up the rules also appear as cannibals in “Dollars and Cents”: they will crack your soul but not your head, they’ll make you as empty as they are, forcing you to live in a “cloud cuckoo land” instead of the sky of moon and stars of your fantasies; they’ll make you put on a show, and feed you to the lions regardless—or worse yet, they’ll let your bodies float in a muddy river instead of the river leading to the moon. In all these cases, there is an appeal to the “us” or “we” that stand opposed to the others. His revolt