* This article evolved out of a short e-mail to Mr. Terzis. Cover photo: Untitled by Syed Sadequain, 1966.
I was running prom-related errands with a friend. We entered through Bloomingdale’s. It was completely empty of people; all of the racks were full of designer clothes, unsold. On the walls were screens playing provocative ads for perfume and clothing, flashing in bright white lights.
Overhead they were playing this sort of clubby dance music that you might hear at a fashion show. The floors were covered in large, checkered black-and-white tiles that seemed to stretch beyond my vision into infinity, giving the illusion of some hellish, never ending labyrinth of gaudy clothes and chemical perfumes.
Albert Camus’ description of the banality of post-industrial society reminded me of that experience. I think what makes modern society so bleak is its foremost dependency on profit, work, and personalization. The need to constantly cater to the buyer creates a giant vacuum between the producer and the consumer. The store wanted me to believe I was in some hip fashion house in France or Belgium. Yet its pervasive vapidity promptly defeated the illusion.
When my friend was at the checkout in another store, he was on his phone watching a video while the cashier rang up his stuff. Then, when it was my turn to pay, I didn’t want to be rude and stare at my phone, but it was very uncomfortable just standing there, waiting patiently for the transaction to go through. But what am I to say to the cashier? There is nothing in common between that person at the register and myself, other than our shared interest to earn and spend money. Earn, spend. Earn, spend.
And was it more concerning that my friend could only find stimulation vicariously, through the entertainment occurring on his phone; or that my everyday interactions are strained by an attempt to unplug myself from that addiction? There is no artisanship in our world. Only a machine of our own making.
Lyrics from “Harry’s House / Centerpiece” by Joni Mitchell, 1975
Battalions of paper-minded males Talking commodities and sales While at home their paper wives And their paper kids Paper the walls to keep their gut reactions hid Yellow checkers for the kitchen Climbing ivy for the bath She is lost in House and Gardens He's caught up in chief of staff
The song is a layered criticism of the modern, “nuclear” family. You have the businessman who brings home the bacon and masks his fragile ego through his position at work. The wife, she tends to the house (with Joni perhaps alluding to The Yellow Wallpaper) and fashions her kids to her liking. “Paper” changes meaning throughout the stanza, from money to wallpaper, but it’s understood to represent a universal blankness, a pervasive meaninglessness that permeates from person to person in society. Who passes on the dollar turns in a meaningless object for something perhaps a little more meaningful to themselves, but still a simulacrum of true happiness. Funnily enough, Joni references Bloomingdale’s at the start of this song, the store through which I entered the mall:
Yellow schools of taxi fishes Jonah in a ticking whale Caught up at the lights in the fishnet windows Of Bloomingdale's.
The symbolism of the fish, coupled with an allusion to the Biblical story of Jonah, contributes to the vast emptiness of the city which Joni has created. How easy it is, she remarks, for fish to find themselves trapped in consumerist traps! Indeed, when sailors cast their net, they doesn’t necessarily catch the most gullible fish, nor the least agile. They catch every fish within reach. The beguilement of price tags, of meaningless products, affects everyone. Money suggests a way of curing an internal emptiness.
Lyrics from “Kiss Another Day Goodbye” by David Kauffman & Eric Caboor, 1984
Evening came in the T.V.'s glow I played on my guitar One last song couldn't get my sins forgiven But it showed me who we are And now baby here we are sitting by the water And I'm singing you this song All about my day and how I did remember That our love is strong That our love is still strong.
Listening to Songs from Suicide Bridge, you get the same empty feeling—yet, an empty feeling behind which there’s a flicker of hope. In 1984 Caboor and Kauffman communicated the importance of small things in making existence more bearable. Though “Kiss Another Day Goodbye” is a song about depression, it conveys a greater purpose to life. Despite the coldness of solitude, we can always look to things like music and love as sources of beauty. However pessimistic its outlook, Songs argues that human connection can sometimes be our last, most invincible source of refuge.
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