Now philosophy is invading my analyzation of music... Scary...
There's a song by art-rock group Sleepytime Gorilla Museum called "Helpless Corpses Enactment" that I've been trying to decode. They're one of those groups that are so deeply artistic that their music unveils something new every time. Here are the lyrics:
"The oaks of ald now they lie in peat yet elms leap where askes lay. Phall if you but will, rise you must.
A hand from the cloud emerges, holding a chart expanded. The eversower of the seeds of light to the cowld owld sowls that are in the domnatory of Defmut after the night of the carrying of the word of Nuahs and the night of making Mehs to cuddle up in a coddlepot, Pu Nuseht, lord of risings in the yonderworld of Ntamplin, tohp triumphant, speaketh.
Of all the stranger things that ever not even in the hundrund and badst pageans of unthowsent and wonst nice or in eddas and oddes bokes of tomb, dyke and hollow to be have happened! The untireties of livesliving being the one substrance of a streamsbecoming. Totalled in toldteld and teldtold.
Ascend out of your bed, cavern of a trunk, and shrine!
Vah! Suvarn Sur! Scatter brand to the reneweller of the sky,
thou who agnitest! Dah! Arcthuris comeing! Be! Verb
umprincipiant through the trancitive spaces! Kilt by kelt shell kithagain
with kinagain. We elect for thee, Tirtangel. We
Durbalanars, theeadjure.
A way, the Margan, from our astamite,
through dimdom done till light kindling light has led we hopas
but hunt me the journeyon, iteritinerant, the kal his course,
amid the semitary of Somnionia.
Too mult sleepth. Let sleepth.
The oaks of ald now they lie in peat yet elms leap where askes lay. Phall if you but will, rise you must."
Here's the stinger: The lyrics aren't their own. The text is from various sections of "Finnegans Wake" by James Joyce. And the video (which I've posted below) is somewhat reminiscent of, among other things, "Dr. Heidegger's Experiment" by Nathaniel Hawthorne. I'm sure I'm missing a lot of elements here, but there's a lot here to go on already. Much of the music and text from this CD, entitled "In Glorious Times," seems to deal with the juxtaposition of the Apollinian and Dionysian affects of life and art, and the value of existence in a mortal state.
So ultimately, the song and video are about trying to avoid the ultimate fate (death) and failing to do so; and even worse, speeding up the process. Things are meant to die, and perhaps it's best if they're left that way. Additionally, we see a very Apollinian set of compositional procedures, especially in the duple->triple->sixteenths->quintuple->sectuple transitional phrases, and the gradually increasing meters of the B section of the 'verses.' Thus, they're taking what seems like utter chaos and organizing it very, very technically. I take it as they're trying to theoretically understand death as, as Heidegger would put it, present-to-hand. But the very being of death is much more primordial than that, and any theoretical attempt to 'research' and 'organize' theoretical data about death ultimately results in circular arguments and what seems to be chaos.
Only in the absence of this over-structuralization do we see the true nature of death, i.e. the very end of the song and video. Like in Heidegger's "On Being and Time," the definition of one's Being (Dasein) is only attainable at one's death (the summation of Dasein). However, at one's death, he and Dasein cease to exist. So the song is an attempt to understand the Being of death through the viewpoint of the dead.
And yet the lyrics seem to also cover the other end of the spectrum: they seem to be an incantation for the soul of the dead to rise into/out of the afterworld. There's a sense of spirituality, but just as often at as it seems monotheistic, it also seems paganistic. The text is a duality in itself, especially when the relationships between life and death, and Apollinian and Dionysian are incorporated.
Maybe I'm overanalyzing all this, and there's a lot of missed or barely skimmed over. But I think there's something here, and I'd like to know if anyone else has any input. The video is posted below.
Sleepytime Gorilla Museum - Helpless Corpse Enactment
Somebody describing the group on Amazon once said, "If your IQ is below 130-ish, you probably won't understand their music." I think he's over-exaggerating a little (see Babbitt's "The Composer as a Specialist"), but I'm always happy to find music that requires a lot of deep thinking.
There's a song by art-rock group Sleepytime Gorilla Museum called "Helpless Corpses Enactment" that I've been trying to decode. They're one of those groups that are so deeply artistic that their music unveils something new every time. Here are the lyrics:
"The oaks of ald now they lie in peat yet elms leap where askes lay. Phall if you but will, rise you must.
A hand from the cloud emerges, holding a chart expanded. The eversower of the seeds of light to the cowld owld sowls that are in the domnatory of Defmut after the night of the carrying of the word of Nuahs and the night of making Mehs to cuddle up in a coddlepot, Pu Nuseht, lord of risings in the yonderworld of Ntamplin, tohp triumphant, speaketh.
Of all the stranger things that ever not even in the hundrund and badst pageans of unthowsent and wonst nice or in eddas and oddes bokes of tomb, dyke and hollow to be have happened! The untireties of livesliving being the one substrance of a streamsbecoming. Totalled in toldteld and teldtold.
Ascend out of your bed, cavern of a trunk, and shrine!
Vah! Suvarn Sur! Scatter brand to the reneweller of the sky,
thou who agnitest! Dah! Arcthuris comeing! Be! Verb
umprincipiant through the trancitive spaces! Kilt by kelt shell kithagain
with kinagain. We elect for thee, Tirtangel. We
Durbalanars, theeadjure.
A way, the Margan, from our astamite,
through dimdom done till light kindling light has led we hopas
but hunt me the journeyon, iteritinerant, the kal his course,
amid the semitary of Somnionia.
Too mult sleepth. Let sleepth.
The oaks of ald now they lie in peat yet elms leap where askes lay. Phall if you but will, rise you must."
Here's the stinger: The lyrics aren't their own. The text is from various sections of "Finnegans Wake" by James Joyce. And the video (which I've posted below) is somewhat reminiscent of, among other things, "Dr. Heidegger's Experiment" by Nathaniel Hawthorne. I'm sure I'm missing a lot of elements here, but there's a lot here to go on already. Much of the music and text from this CD, entitled "In Glorious Times," seems to deal with the juxtaposition of the Apollinian and Dionysian affects of life and art, and the value of existence in a mortal state.
So ultimately, the song and video are about trying to avoid the ultimate fate (death) and failing to do so; and even worse, speeding up the process. Things are meant to die, and perhaps it's best if they're left that way. Additionally, we see a very Apollinian set of compositional procedures, especially in the duple->triple->sixteenths->quintuple->sectuple transitional phrases, and the gradually increasing meters of the B section of the 'verses.' Thus, they're taking what seems like utter chaos and organizing it very, very technically. I take it as they're trying to theoretically understand death as, as Heidegger would put it, present-to-hand. But the very being of death is much more primordial than that, and any theoretical attempt to 'research' and 'organize' theoretical data about death ultimately results in circular arguments and what seems to be chaos.
Only in the absence of this over-structuralization do we see the true nature of death, i.e. the very end of the song and video. Like in Heidegger's "On Being and Time," the definition of one's Being (Dasein) is only attainable at one's death (the summation of Dasein). However, at one's death, he and Dasein cease to exist. So the song is an attempt to understand the Being of death through the viewpoint of the dead.
And yet the lyrics seem to also cover the other end of the spectrum: they seem to be an incantation for the soul of the dead to rise into/out of the afterworld. There's a sense of spirituality, but just as often at as it seems monotheistic, it also seems paganistic. The text is a duality in itself, especially when the relationships between life and death, and Apollinian and Dionysian are incorporated.
Maybe I'm overanalyzing all this, and there's a lot of missed or barely skimmed over. But I think there's something here, and I'd like to know if anyone else has any input. The video is posted below.
Sleepytime Gorilla Museum - Helpless Corpse Enactment
Somebody describing the group on Amazon once said, "If your IQ is below 130-ish, you probably won't understand their music." I think he's over-exaggerating a little (see Babbitt's "The Composer as a Specialist"), but I'm always happy to find music that requires a lot of deep thinking.
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