The song “Wheels” by the Flying Burrito Brothers on their 1968 album "Gilded Palace Of Sin" LP has been haunting me for some time now. It is one of the more recent encounters with music that caused me to initially began thinking about music as a means of questioning our politics in the present as I attempted to provisionally explore in the previous post. They are in fact directly related in many ways, the byrds overlapped with the flying burrito brothers and later wholly incorporated this song’s composers Hillman and Parsons as significant contributing members over their multiple configurations. In the prior post I outlined the structure of contradiction in a byrds song at once an expansive liberating space that is repeatedly interrupted, constrained forcibly and tamed by a countrified slide guitar ridden chorus. Here we find another, nearly opposite use of precisely the same instrument to insert expansive dimensions into a typical song structure.
It opens with what can only be described as bare, bar room temperament: a brittle tremolo guitar, dry tinny snare, and a rubbery cardboard sounding bass lead us into a “honky-tonk” piano-lined room where two harmonizing voices sing, one close, one slightly distant, with a slippery slide guitar adorning the corners of the first verse.
“We've all got wheels to take ourselves away/ We've got the telephones to say what we can't say/We all got higher and higher every day/Come on wheels take this boy away”
The democratic imagination of a collective “we” narrated here is defined by means of transportation, telephones, and stuff that makes you higher and higher. These are the foundations of the postwar image of freedom: vehicular escape, mediated communication, and infinite self-administered pleasure. A ceaseless rite of passage never completed that forever postpones “our” transmission from boyhood is wrapped in the cloak of the timeless honky-tonk of a long lost folk authenticity. But the chorus disrupts this repetition of deferral and displaced subjectivity inhered in the confines of a mediated honky-tonk with the linear expanse of the road. Although distant, the end of the road is always present in the linear expanse of lines of flight afforded by the wheels that will take this boy away, like the angels of death themselves. “We're not afraid to ride/We're not afraid to die/ So come on wheels take me home today/So come on wheels take this boy away”
The fearlessness of the choruses’ collective we suggests a subject full of certainty in the face of limitless uncertainty, it is a subject differentiated from the verses’ subject by a decisive recognition of the profound limitations of their own eternal escape. The piercing of the song space by two resonating notes of a distorted slide guitar’s open strings sustaining a lone note embodies this decisive state of both limitation and freedom, a state produced by the collective we’s confrontation with its death as it permeates the very conditions of their freedom. That is, in the resonating sustain of the two notes born in the wake of the linked verbs to ride and to die we encounter a world at once infinite and finite, a contrary form of possibility and constraint which calls into being a “we” whose wheels are the sole means of their becoming, their angel of hope and death all rolled into one. Between their ride and their death, punctuated by the resounding drones of fuzz distortion “we” must decisively submit to their wheels having abandoned all fears as well as the fraught distractions of a ceaseless escape that has reached its limits; the wheels embody both discrete worlds of verse and chorus, and are thus the transport between these realms. This chorus repeats instrumentally and the interaction between these contours of possibility and constraint between two worlds plays out in the exchanges of the instruments leading ultimately to a return of the honky-tonk world played by the conventional country slide guitar and insistent piano.
From there, the second verse ambiguously attempts to align these separate worlds with a single subject who faces their death with a joined fatalism with faith to plead their wheels to transform him at last into the deferred manhood: “Now when I feel my time is almost up/And destiny is in my right hand/I'll turn to him who made my faith so strong/Come on wheels make this boy a man” This turn to the spiritual through the material produces a deep contradiction between the liberating and confining functions of the wheels which differently embody each world of verse and chorus. At the same time, in both realms, they increasingly become the only means of salvation for both collective and singular subjects. The chorus returns as the mediation of the timeless individual versus community opposition and that resigned, decisive collective subject, which now includes all individuals capable of inserting themselves into the “I” of the second verse. “We're not afraid to ride/We're not afraid to die come on wheels take me home today/ come on wheels take this boy away/come on wheels take this boy away.”
I could go on with these contrary forms of mechanical escape and liberation tangled up in the image of wheels but want to instead come to the point of my encounter with this song. While not the first “road song” by any means, this song about wheels contains many of the contradictions from which the present was born and in particular, identifies a very concrete set of political limitations active in the present.
The interstate highway network legislated into being under pressure of the auto-makers in 1956 would have by 1968 been largely completed. (see en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interstate_Highway_System for a brief overview of this network)
The wheels of this song in fact seem to represent the profound shift in the spatial-temporal dimension of the American landscape and the contradictions the highway system brought into being. Most importantly these lyrical wheels belong to a new we of a political subject linked through a interstate road system and a landscape increasingly oriented towards this new scale of exchange. The degree to which we can trace the material foundations of the so-called party of “strength” and its martial logic through this particular form of wheels is the degree to which we can locate our own possibilities and limitations in opposing them in concrete ways. That is, quite literally by encountering the contrary form of wheels brought into being at the same time as a new spatial-temporal scale inscribed upon the landscape throughout the 1960’s, we can uncover the conflicted origins of a present all the more submitted to the wheels which this song hailed as our angels of salvation and death. This is not a question of a new language, nor of a new set of values but identifying within these materials present everywhere a space of leverage that can offer us a better understanding of the present. If we can locate the places and times when and where the “politics” of the present have come into being, those who oppose the right need not merely find better counter-slogans, but can perhaps begin to displace their practices of inequality with practices that undo those inequalities. I am using very general terms here again to emphasize the need to think both beyond and through the politics given to us by a deeply mediated world (a world of politics indistinct from the politics of news channel hair stylists and make-up technicians). Our own strong valuations of “equality” will never being able to engage the practices of inequality until their material foundations are confronted with opportunities for all to take part in their undoing.
Song link in comments
6 comments:
http://www.mediafire.com/?3w5n1kfzho2
http://www.mediafire.com/?3w5n1kfzho2
What does this mean: "If we can locate the places and times when and where the “politics” of the present have come into being, those who oppose the right need not merely find better counter-slogans, but can perhaps begin to displace their practices of inequality with practices that undo those inequalities."? What are the practices of inequality that you're thinking of? What are some practices that could undo those inequalities? I don't think anyone is arguing that the left just needs nifty new counter-slogans, and I think there are lots of good ideas out there for undoing some of the inequalities fostered by our current economic and political system. I could name what I think some of these good ideas are if you'd like. What are you thinking of, though? Also, what do you mean by "locating the places and times..." Do you think we need a better historical understanding of the present moment? A better theoretical model? What would that consist of? Again, I don't really feel that what's needed is more analysis of this sort (I feel there's plenty of that already), so much as better policies, better actions, better efforts to persuade people to support what I feel are the right positions.
How about this: "Our own strong valuations of “equality” will never being able to engage the practices of inequality until their material foundations are confronted with opportunities for all to take part in their undoing. " Again, you've lost me (I assume you mean "be" not "being" above, right?). I feel like I a general sense of this sentance, but have no idea at all what it's actually referring to.
I guess I'll address the rest of this comment to both your's and DM's posts from today as they both, while being very interesting, annoy me for similar reasons. These posts are pretty representative of what I don't like about most of the cultural studies writing I've been exposed to, in that they combine very interesting analysis of pop-cultural phenomenon with often ridiculously grandiose and exaggerated claims of political relevance/importance for that phenomenon. There's been so much written over the last twenty-odd years about how Madonna, or Drum'n'bass, or one subculture or another has some unheralded radical or subversive potential that challenges the capitalist order, or the patriarchy or whatever and creates the possibility of a postmodern politics and so on, and yet...where has any of that gotten us? I think that subcultural or pop cultural activities can be great windows into analysing and describing where a society is at, where it's values, fears and contradictions are, but I don't see any of it as offering a model or substitute for an engaged politics that can confront the very real challenges facing the world today.
I don't think I'll try to develop this idea too much here, but I think that, while there's obviously an aesthetic element to politics, and probably a political element to all aesthetic activity as well, the two are separate realms with different goals and different ways of evaluating success or failure.
Another gripe I have is that both of these posts is that they're such "meta" arguments, that is, they say the left needs a "better understanding of the present" "practices that undo inequality" or "symbols that are rooted in place but are capable of transcendence as well" without providing any suggestions or clues as to what those symbols, practices or that understanding might be. They're arguing about what should be argued for, rather than just arguing for it. If you think that the left needs X, then tell me what X is and persuade me that that's what is needed.
Lastly I'm curious, how, if at all, does it affect your arguments here if I don't particularly care for either band mentioned? What if I have a very different intrepretation of their music?
My parents had some Flying Burrito Brothers records. I listened to most of my parent's records, but never the FBBs, probably because I thought their name was stupid, and their cover art not really that cool. I like burritos, but who wants to listen to a band that sounds like burritos? Not even making the burritos fly could save such a band.
So, I'm glad you've given me the opportunity to see what I've been missing, TC. And your reading of "Wheels" added to my appreciation of the song.
I'm afraid I have to agree more or less with most of TN's gripes (no surprise, that) about your hyperbolic and thickly figurative language, and the concern that a nice piece of music criticism is rarely a very effective way of making a political point or moving things forward. I'm going to try to stick with it and see if I can find a way to engage with it, though; it's just a totally different ball-game from what I'm used to.
First, I really enjoyed Trancritique's post. Like A, I have a FBB record on my shelf, but have never listened to it. Maybe I will now.
However, as much as I like reading this sort of thing I also agree with tigrenoche that the arguments developed near the end of the post are unclear. It seems like you are moving towards an important idea but it needs to be articulated in more concrete terms for the rest of us to really engage with it. The quotes that tn highlights probably need the most clarification.
In terms of tigrenoche's comments on cultural studies, I'm not sure if Transcritique and I were really doing the same thing with our respective music related posts. To some extent my post on The Rats does make the argument that a subcultural musical form has subversive potential. You are probably right that this type of argument can be made about virtually anything, particularly once you accept the link between values, aesthetics, and politics. However, I am also trying to use The Rats as a specific and concrete example of the importance of using locally relevant symbols in order to convey values. In this sense, I am not making a "meta" argument but pointing to a specific strategy that could be usefully employed by the left and using a concrete example to illustrate my point. I'll try to take up both of these issues further in relation to the Rats post, as A appears to offer a similar critique.
I see TC08's post as doing something very different. Nowhere does he claim that the Flying Burrito Brothers are at all subversive. Rather the discussion of music appears to be a rhetorical device used to illustrate some very abstract ideas. While we all seem to think his ideas could use more illustration, certainly the presence of the FBB example is helpful.
It would be great if tigrenoche would elaborate on his claim that the worlds of aesthetics and politics have separate goals. Given that this has been an ongoing theme in this blog it seems that it would be worth your time to support this argument.
Finally, I don't think it really matters if you don't like a particular band or if you interpet a song differently.
I apologize for my perpetual use of vague language. In this case it was a result of an attempt at a gernalization of language, which particularly towards the end of the post had perhaps lost any clear referents. This was somewhat intentional although I do not want to keep forcing you guys to have to be such patient readers just to make sense of this crap. When I write like this, it is usually processing several ideas at once and I end up excreting some vague stuff that satisfies my selfish desire to refer to multiple things at once, which unfortunately, in my case, tends to produce bad writing in other words. Certainly better writers can do this without sacrificing clarity, I just tend to loose track of the reader’s point of view and go for broke on abstraction. That said, I do enjoy getting critical responses on which points go awry and what the hell am I trying to say. While we still need to confront the aesthetics vs politics opposition started in the more recent post, I think this post does point out an intermediary ground where silly hippy songs and material reality collide. That is, although we may desire separate aesthetic and political realms, and a separation of public and private spheres from which to evaluate both, these separations have been eradicated by capitalist modernity and its aftermath. These remain mythological divisions that linger on into the present as historical images of what used to be called bourgeois societies. The sons spaces I addressed here and the previous post are those which embody another foundational rift (most generally, but not exclusively between freedom and constraint) which I am arguing are the origins of the present. The political spectrum of the present is defined by a common linguistic space that I think is still bound by the ‘60’s moment. Each mainstream position can be mapped as an attempt negate this past moment (the right) or its revision (the moderates) or its resurrection (the left). In this post I further returned from tracing this rift within the song to the changing built environment, and the forms of political subjects these spatial-temporal transformations brought into being. In an unstated way, these transformations have analogous forms in our recent past, most strikingly “the information super highway.” The demand to identify the when and where of politics in the present is not so much a demand for better analysis, but for an awareness of the complex ways the material practices of inequality function. I have to go now, but will return to a definition of these practices and their possible counter practices (they already exist, they don’t need me to invent them) at another time.
Transcritique - I hope that you do get back to us on articulating the "possible counter practices." For the most part your analysis here and in the original post is relatively clear. The links between Wheels, mythic understandings of technology, space, and history, and the political right have been outlined quite well. However, it is still unclear what the relationship is between this type of analysis and a specific form of action.
Post a Comment