Andy Warhol & Five Years (David Bowie)
Andy Warhol looks a scream/Hang him on my wall/Andy Warhol, silver screen/Can’t tell them apart at all.
Andy Warhol blurred the line between commercial “low” art and “high” art with works such as his painting of Campbell’s soup cans and a video he made of himself eating a hamburger. Bowie references this in the chorus to Andy Warhol as well as the idea that a human life can be a work of art.
Bowie is likely inspired by Friedrich Nietzsche as well as Warhol in comparing Warhol’s life to a work of art. Nietzsche’s idea of the Übermensch inspired several Bowie songs. Nietzsche wrote in The Gay Science that “We want to be poets of our life – first of all in the smallest most everyday matters.” As someone who didn’t believe in the objectivity of moral values, but who was even more opposed to total nihilism, connecting meaning and aesthetic values is necessary for Nietzsche. Foucault, a great admirer of Nietzsche, follows the idea of a meaningful life being one that is artistically crafted as a poet crafts a poem.
Narrative value theory is the coming together of several ideas about the meaning of life, primarily Foucault’s interpretation of Nietzsche’s idea of being “poets of our life” and Wolf’s idea of “subjective attraction meets objective attractiveness.” Developed by American philosopher Todd May, under narrative value theory someone is living a meaningful life if they are subjectively engaged in their life and it embodies a “narrative value” (such as courage or subtlety). Unlike under Wolf’s theory, there is no imperative to engage in a meaningful life and you only have to engage in your life, not in the objective element of its meaningfulness, but otherwise they are similar. The basic idea of narrative values comes from conceiving of one’s life as a narrative, if the theme of that narrative is meaning-conferring then that theme is a narrative value. Narrative values are also aesthetic values, not moral values. Both of these aspects of narrative value theory link it to Nietzsche’s ideas.
And all the fat-skinny people/And all the tall-short people/And all the nobody people/And all the somebody people/I never thought I’d need so many people.
The singer realizes how much his values are built on the existence of humanity. In our daily lives, we generally don’t care about humanity in general. We might be respectful towards those we don’t know, and despair at their harm, but it is our loved ones that we reserve our greatest concern and grief for. However, the singer’s greatest despair is found here, not when he mentions his mother later, but when he discusses the death of literally everyone. His contradictory statements show this; no individuals or even groups have the attributes of fat and skinny or tall and short, he’s not talking about anyone(s) in particular.
I think I saw you in an ice-cream parlor/Drinking milk-shakes cold and long/Smiling and waving and looking so fine/Don’t think you knew you were in this song.
Any pleasure from fulfillment from drinking a milkshake seems like it would be independent of any system of values or outside situation. Yet when “you” seem perfectly content to drink your “milk-shakes cold and long,” Bowie’s singer not only doesn’t join you in finding contentment but finds it ridiculous. He simply cannot believe it, it doesn’t seem possible.
There is a story from A Confession by Russian novelist Leo Tolstoy which fits this scenario. In the traveler’s story, a traveler is wandering and is attacked by a wild animal. They escape into a well only to find a dragon at the bottom, who will eat him. He grabs onto a branch, safe for now, but a black mouse and a white mouse start eating the branch. He cannot leave because the beast is still above him, but if he stays his branch will be eaten away and he will fall into the dragon’s mouth. He finds some drops of honey on the branch and begins to lick them. He receives some pleasure from them, but his inevitable death prevents him from fully enjoying the honey. This is supposed to represent human life, ending inevitably in death. Bowie’s singer finds it simply unbelievable that “you” are able to fully enjoy the honey, your milkshakes, despite the dragon, in this case humanity’s inevitable death.
A girl my age went off her head/Hit some tiny children/If the black hadn’t a-pulled her off/I think she would have killed them.
With the revelation that humanity is ending, people are panicking and descending into “apathy and anomie.” Apathy is a lack of interest or concern while anomie is a lack of regard for social norms. This fits the theory of American philosopher Samuel Scheffler. Scheffler believes that individual human lives are meaningful only if they have a legacy and are part of ongoing human progress. He believes if the world were going to end, we’d care more about our loved ones, everything would seem less important, and human society would fall apart as we abandon social values and norms. He also thought we wouldn’t be able to fully enjoy anything. Bowie’s song perfectly fits Scheffler’s theory
American philosopher Harry Frankfurt disagrees with Scheffler about the foundation of meaning in our lives. He believes that some activities are just intrinsically meaningful, like solving puzzles, and these would be unaffected by the end of humanity. Other activities are extrinsically meaningful, they gain significance because of how they contribute to our place in the legacy of humanity, these would lose their meaning. Other activities have meaning both intrinsically and extrinsically, such as creating a cure for cancer, and these would lose some but not all of their meaning.
American philosopher Susan Wolf is also more optimistic than Scheffler. She believes that humanity will initially abandon social norms but that the death of humanity will eventually be accepted and society will ultimately continue until the end. In fact, she thinks we’ll treat all of humanity as if it were a dying loved one, caring more from each other and devoting ourselves to that. She also has her own theory of the meaning of life which isn’t based on legacy, so under Wolf’s view we can still have meaningful lives even if humanity is ending. She does agree with Scheffler, however, that in the face of doomsday we won’t be able to have happy lives.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P4sANPkk3ys | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IWm03wYBTbM | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ejr9KBQzQPM
In The End (Linkin Park)
Whether you’re a fan or not, you’ve definitely heard of a band named, Linkin Park. Linkin Park’s nu metal/nu rap/alternative rock sound became extremely popular during the music video era and continues to be popular to this day. Their first album, Hybrid Theory, was released in the early 2000’s and topped the Billboard 200 album chart in 2003. Following the success of Hybrid Theory, Linkin Park produced more albums and became one of the most well-known bands of the new millennium.
Hybrid Theory is an album that defined Linkin Park’s style. This album contained a wide variety of songs that showcased their musical prowess. One of the most notable songs on Hybrid Theory is called “In The End.” “In The End” currently has over 135 million plays on Spotify, over 175 million plays on YouTube, and is the second most played song in all of Linkin Park’s live performances.
“In The End” conveys a very pessimistic message about human life. The idea that death undermines meaning in life is represented throughout the song. Lead singers, Mike Shinoda and Chester Bennington, sing about the passing of time through the lyrics,
Time is a valuable thing/Watch it fly by as the pendulum swings/Watch it count down to the end of the day/The clock ticks life away.
These lyrics explain that life is not infinite and that time continues ticking away forever. We must value the time we have in life before we inevitably die. Recent theories on the meaning of life state that it is important for humans to spend the time that they have in life by engaging in meaningful projects. Philosophers such as Susan Wolf and Todd May believe that meaning in life comes in part from engaging in life projects. Wolf, however, believes that life projects must be successful in order to be meaningful while May believes that the meaning comes from being actively engaged. Wolf thinks that even if you have engaged in life projects throughout your whole life, they must be successful. Yet Linkin Park disagrees with Wolf in their song “In The End.” They sing,
I tried so hard/And got so far/But in the end/It doesn’t even matter.
Not only do these lyrics explain that this life was successful, but they also state that at the end of a life it doesn’t matter what successes were accomplished. If in the end it doesn’t even matter what was accomplished and that death truly deprives life of meaning, why strive to achieve anything? Why try so hard? Why fill your life with difficult life projects? This is a question that many philosophers tried to tackle. Leo Tolstoy writes in his story, “The Confession,” about a tale of a traveler. This traveler finds himself in a difficult spot. In an attempt to escape a beast, the traveler jumps inside a well and hangs onto a branch so that he does not fall to the bottom. While inside the well, he discovers that there is in fact a dragon at the bottom of the well. The situation is bleak, but the traveler remains clinging to the branch. To make things worse, there are two mice nibbling at the base of the branch that the traveler holds on to. Inevitably the branch will fail and the traveler with be forced to face the peril of the beast or the dragon. As he looks around though he finds dripping honey from one of the leaves on his branch. The traveler reaches out to get a taste of the honey, which symbolically represents the pleasure in life. As he begins to recognize that there is ultimately no way out of the situation that he is in, he starts to realize that the honey is just a temporary distraction which in turn makes the honey not as pleasant. The traveler then determines that there is no point in clinging to the branch anymore because the honey is no longer pleasant to him.
I feel that this story directly correlates to the message that Linkin Park is conveying in their song, “In The End.” Linkin Park agrees that death deprives life of meaning in the same way that Tolstoy writes that pleasure in life doesn’t matter because death is inevitable. They both explain that in the end it doesn’t even matter.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eVTXPUF4Oz4
Norwegian Wood (The Beatles)
Introduction to Norwegian Wood
In early 1965, an English band called Beatles released their sixth album “Rubber Soul”. “Norwegian Wood”, which came from this album was milestone for the pop music, and was acknowledged as “world music” because of the that linked to non-western music to western music with the melding of guitar and sitar elements. Although this song was very short, it vividly showed the Beatles passion, energy, and devotion to rock music in a smoky, descriptive way.
This song begins with undulating rhythm, and build a mysterious ambience through its acoustics, then the opening line comes in with bitter tone of the singer:
I once had a girl/ or should I say/She once had me.
Then the harmony was broken in a matter of seconds, as the singers’ resentment toward this mysterious woman transformed the illusive ambience into curious one.
She showed me her room/Isn’t it good, Norwegian wood?
Here, the Norwegian wood was not simple a concrete scene, but some of symbol of ambiguity between the singer and the woman in an implicit way. It was more about inference rather than description.
She asked me to stay and she told me to sit anywhere/So I looked around and I noticed there wasn’t a chair/I sat on the rug, biding my time, drinking her wine/We talked until two and then she said, “It’s time for bed”
Humorous as it sounded, the singer built the bridge with opening line to tell us it was just a lie, or at least was only one-way affection that the singer toward the woman. Finally, the cruel words came out:
She told me she worked in the morning and started to laugh/I told her I didn’t and crawled off to sleep in the bath.
The singer’s expectation was like the glass broken into pieces with crisp sound. She was mulling all his insecurities in an implied teasing way. Moreover, the singer was like a baby, who, without the ability to fight back, crawled his body with complex feeling, and who ends his night miserably in the bath. Hence, the Norwegian Wood is also called The Bird Has Flown which indicated her departure not only to work, but probably forever from the singer himself.
A Look at the philosophy in Norwegian Wood.
Generally speaking, the first half of description of lyrics can be considered to be a metaphor for our lives. We are born with uncertainty and endless curiosity toward this world, represented by the undulating rhythms in the song. As times goes by, our dream for our lives grows stronger, and we think we are able to handle anything together. As our fantasies toward our ambitions, the metaphorical woman, grow stronger, that we couldn’t help ourselves to thinking that “she” is the meanings of our lives. However, later on we would realize that any concrete ideas we had in the past were entirely shattered down by the aloofness of the world. In other words, we likely are controlled by an invisible hand which we are effortless to fight back even we think we are mature to do so. Finally, this sort of view lies on a theory that “life is misery overall” by Tolstoy.
She asked me to stay and she told me to sit anywhere/So I looked around and I noticed there wasn’t a chair/I sat on the rug, biding my time, drinking her wine/We talked until two and then she said, “It’s time for bed”
Tolstoy’s main idea is he thought there is no god, and universe is salient, and no one would give us meanings, and all of beautiful things are just the placebo to help us get through the life whose essence is misery. However, this idea would be rejected by the Beatles life story. “None of the Beatles was formally trained, but this fondness for mystery and offbeat humor in rock counts as the best education they ever could have gave themselves.” (Tim, 2002) That is to say, there is at least something we can do either from others’ instruction like education or we learn by ourselves to achieve meaning. We may be not able to answer how our overall lives could be defined as meaningful, but in a short period of time, yes we can. Just like first lyrics of Norwegian Wood, although it comes from painful personal experience, the memory of this experience can be precious. At least, singer and her once shared something that only belongs to them in that moment.
I once had a girl/ or should I say/She once had me.
Moreover, it obviously was the inspiration for the musician, and musical style where we could say it is meaningful.
Other thoughts about this situation comes from book called Norwegian Wood by Murakami Haruki. Murakami is a Japanese novelist who was inspired by Norwegian Wood by The Beatles, and wrote this book based on these lyrics. However, in the book, Murakami resolves this meaningfulness puzzles simply by depicting the story where the “singer” give up all of his affections toward “her”, and fall in love with someone else. His main idea is that “one is also the meaningfulness of someone else, after knowing that kind of suffering and pains would make one mature that one should not let others down especially for those who love you deeply.”
However, his explanation is not ideal, at least for me. True, we may be meaningfulness to some person like our parents, our loyal families, even our true friends, but it is kind of strange if we give up ours to meet some sort of objectivity standards of others. For instance, I want to be a good son, then I should study hard, and raise stable family by my parents’ view. Or, I want to be a responsible man in this society, then I should follow any companies laws that by my colleagues’ standards. However, where was “Singer” part to put in, the subjective but most important part? According to Susan Wolf, she claimed that every meaningfulness is grounded on subjective engagement to meet objective attractiveness: “ a person’s life can be meaningful only if she is gripped, excited, interested, engaged……one must be able to be in some sort of relationship with the valuable object of one’s attention-to create it, protect it, promote it, honor it, generally to actively affirm it in some way or another.” Just like the singer, he felt insulted by her. He crawled off in bath, and went through a tough night. He was depressed, and she mocked his naive thought and affection toward her. In order to protect his insecurity, he said: “she once had me.” Despite this suffering, we could still consider his personal experience in some sense to be meaningful. The singer and the woman share a same moment in which only belonged to them. They were engaged in talking and laughing even just in a short period of time. You may say although she caught his attention, she was not objective attractiveness as she is a live person. I don’t know, however, if the singer emotionally hard to forget, it would be more or less meaningful to him. That’s why he wrote this song to commemorate what real life brought to him. Lastly, I will put the last lyrics of Norwegian Wood as premise for my conclusion.
And when I awoke I was alone, this bird had flown/So I lit a fire, isn’t it good, Norwegian wood?
Wasn’t meaningful that the singer told everybody that he was insane about love which is objective as it we all share with?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XtHkW97AJk8
When I’m Gone (Eminem)
Eminem is one of the greatest rappers of all time that can rap about his personal life and have people relate. One of his most popular songs When I’m Gone is known for his lyrical play and how his life has meaning. Within the whole song he makes points towards his narrative value of intensity and how it contributes to his meaningful life of a rapper, but his daughter sees his life as not meaningful because of how she sees him of leaving the family for the rap.
Have you ever loved someone so much/You’d give an arm for/Not the expression, no/Literally give an arm for?
This is how he shows his narrative value of intensity and uses half of the first verse for showing he loves his daughter and would do absolutely anything for her because of how intensely he loves her.
I keep havin’ this dream,/I’m pushin’ Hailie on a swing, she keeps screamin’, she don’t want me to sing/”You’re makin’ mommy cry, why, why is mommy cryin'”/”Baby, daddy ain’t leavin’ no more, Daddy you’re lyin’/You always say that, you always say this is the last time/But you ain’t leavin’ no more daddy, you’re mine”
This shows how he is intense for his job of rapping and how he uses his intensity to always rap and go to shows to get money for the family. But his daughter only sees intensity of him leaving his family and making it seem like he doesn’t want to spend time with his family.
I hear a applause, all this time I couldn’t see/How could it be, that the curtain is closin’ on me/I turn around, find a gun on the ground/Cock it, put it to my brain, scream Die Shady! And pop it/The sky darkens, my life flashes/The plane that I was supposed to be on, crashes, and burns to ashes/That’s when I wake up/Alarm clock’s ringing, there’s birds singin’/It’s spring and Hailie’s outside swingin’/I walk right up to Kim and kiss her tell her I miss her.
This shows that his life is deprived of meaning if he kills himself due to when he dies he thinks of how he has to kill himself since the meaning of his life isn’t what he wants it to be. The meaning isn’t what he wants it to be and it doesn’t have any meaning after he dies only when he is there.
And when I’m gone just carry on don’t mourn,/Rejoice every time you hear the sound of my voice, just know that,/I’m lookin’ down on you smilin’/And I didn’t feel a thing so baby, don’t feel no pain, just smile back.
These lyrics he says if he dies just know he did everything to get her to have the best life through his rapping career and even though he might be gone just make the best of what he gave her in all the intense love for the family and rap career. Also that when he dies he doesn’t want to be forgotten and deprived of meaning if he dies.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kguRNaAO8oc
Rings (Aesop Rock)
Aesop Rock is a modern day, alternative rapper who was formally trained in the visual arts. In his song, “Rings”, he expresses regret at letting his passion for creating art through drawing and painting fall by the wayside because of the pressures and distractions of everyday adult life. While he does not explicitly name specific philosophers, he does make statements that could be describes as applying to a specific philosophy.
You can imagine a rush that ensue/When you get three dimensions stuffed into two/Then it’s off to a school where it’s all that you do/Being trained and observed by a capable few
At the beginning of the song, Aesop Rock describes the value that he finds in not only making art, but in learning about art from those who are considered experts. This pursuit can be traced back to Aristotle’s philosophy about some activities being inherently valuable. The rush in making art can be related to developing a concrete, cohesive philosophical theory, and going to an institution to learn how to make art in a formal manner can be related to discussing, debating, and learning about philosophies and theories from some of the great minds of philosophy. Also, in this vein, making art and expressing creativity is inherent to being human, and sets us apart from animals, and is therefore a valuable objective to work to achieve.
Back in New York, five peeps and a dog/In a two bedroom doing menial jobs/Plus, rhyming and stealing and being a clod/Distractions free to maraud/I left some years a deer in the light/I left some will to spirit away/I let my fears materialize/I let my skills deteriorate/Haunted by the thought of what I should have been continuing/A mission that was rooted in a twenty-year affinity and rickety condition with an ID crisis
These lines describe Aesop Rock’s abandonment of his lifelong passion for art because of pressures to work and the mundane tasks that distracted him from pursuing his passion. Looking back on these times, he expresses regret that he did not pursue his artwork, which resulted in his skills declining as they went unused, and resulted in his life becoming irreversibly intertwined with the rat race, a consequence that he had always feared would result from succumbing to societal pressures. These lines speak to Bradford’s philosophy that downshifting away from pursuing this endless cycle of mundane tasks to pursue a passion can make for a truly meaningful life.
Routine day with a dirt cheap brush/Then a week goes by and it goes untouched/Then two, then three, then a month/Then the rest of your life, you beat yourself up/I left some seasons eager to fall/I left some work to bury alive/I let my means of being dissolve/I let my person curl up and die/Eating up his innards in unfeasible anxiety is brutally committed to relinquishing his privacy aligning with the trials of the anti-Midas.
In these lines, Aesop Rock shows that he gave up on the narrative values of creativity and determination that he had hoped to exhibit throughout his artistic career. This speaks to the importance of these values, and the richness that they lend to life as described by May, and shows that the abandonment of these objectively appealing values detracts meaning from life. This lack of meaning is presented by intense regret and the feeling that an integral part of a person’s being has been dissolved or died, leaving the person with an empty, hollow, unfeasibly anxious feeling. This hollow feeling he experienced led to the association with this anti-Midas figure where everything he touches turns to shit. This consequence is not objectively appealing, and therefore, according to May’s theory, is inherently not a meaningful way to live.
I’m getting sick and tired of never understanding/Where is the truth you promised?!
At the end of the song, there is an audio clip in which a voice cries out in desperation for truth and understanding in life. This is uncannily similar to Nagel’s description of the absurd, which is the stark contrast between our personal need for meaning and reason from the universe and the universe’s stoic, silent, unwillingness to reveal any of these truths to us. This absurdity gives Aesop Rock this hopeless, lost feeling in his search for a more meaningful existence.