Everything All of the Time 1 comments

By Joel Hartse

"Perhaps above all else, ["Idioteque"] captures the philosophical essence of Radiohead—oblique existentialist lyrics that nonetheless unmistakably suggest confusion, helplessness and menace, wedded to a song structure that similarly refuses to offer solace, comfort or explanation."
—Joshua Love of Pitchfork Media, on naming Radiohead's "Idioteque" the #8 best song of the decade.

I. As a music critic myself, I can get on board with most of Love's adjectives. I am not sure he is right about helplessness.

II. Several weeks ago I visited my grandfather, who is 92 years old, in Arizona. We visited the Shrine of St Joseph of the Mountains in the tiny town of Yarnell. Each of the stations of the cross at the shrine includes a quote from Psalms. “I’ve always had trouble with the Psalms,” he said. It is surprising to hear something like this from your staunchly Christian grandfather. “All that stuff about wanting destruction for your enemies.” Yet it is also comforting, to know that someone with the wisdom and experience of years feels tension in devotion. I was immediately struck at how much better his statement sounded than it the alternative: pretending the Psalms don't mention bashing people's brains out. I'm not saying I get it, but I don't want to hide from it, either. Who's in a bunker? Who's in a bunker? I have seen too much. I haven't seen enough.

III. There is another student in my graduate program who has similar interests to mine—we’re both studying, in part, the results of the worldwide spread of the English language. Which, by the way, is no longer interpreted Kipling's celebratory colonial way—thank God we’re spreading civilization and Shakespeare—nor even in a triumphantly liberal “the world is becoming flatter and more democratic and we can all communicate” way. Lately it feels more like a “there’s no escape from the dominiation of a single language and culture threatening to transform everything in its path into a combination KFC/Pizza Hut staffed by Disney characters singing Britney Spears songs where businessmen have meetings (in English) on their iPhones about price fixing and building factories on wetlands" kind of way. Mobiles working. Mobiles chirping. Take the money and run. Take the money and run. Take the money.

“Suddenly, I feel like everything we're doing is worthless,” my classmate said to me as we were leaving a seminar. I know what she meant.

IV. A friend called last night to tell me about a child he didn’t know he had. He fails to understand, is perhaps even more baffled than I am, how such a reality could have remained hidden for so long. A call, a summons to the hospital, the ultrasound heartbeat, relentless and real. Alive. We're not scaremongering. This is really happening.

V. Radiohead released a version of "Idioteque" on I Might Be Wrong: Live Recordings, recorded in their hometown of Oxford in 2001. The audience sing-a-long is, frankly, disturbing—like a perversely inverted gospel choir. And I don’t know why I find this song so hopeful, but I do. Maybe it is because when I hear ten thousand people singing it, I hear the sound of humanity awake. Because “Idioteque” is never not playing; it's always everything all of the time.

VI. We didn't pick the song, but we have a choice: we can sit hunched over in front of our laptops in the dark, listening to it on YouTube, miserable and alone, or we can dance, in fear and trembling, to the unending beat, with everyone else. I’ve never really liked dancing. But I’m thinking the sooner I start, the better.