As recent online feedback suggests, there are “pseudo intellectual ramblings found within The Reflector’s opinion sections.” Radiohead, as always. A Cigarette. And Jerusalem: The Capitol of Heaven. This is a story about all of these things. It means something to me. I want it to mean something to you. Now, let me ramble.
I have an uncanny obsession with the English band Radiohead. For those of you who don’t, no worries. It’s not quite up to par with Oxford’s creepy obsession of the Manning family. In any case, I want to tell you something. Amnesiac is in all probability my favourite Radiohead album. I can’t deny telling you that I find myself listening to it more than Kid A, and I know that might seem blasphemous to some of you pretentious Radiohead fans.
What would it be like to be completely immersed in fire? To stand in it? The sound of what that would feel like is how Thom Yorke has described Amnesiac. It’s threatening and fatalistic in countless ways that the other albums aren’t, but it makes me feel empowered rather than helpless. Recorded in the same sessions that produced Kid A, certain Radiohead fans refer to it as the “b-sides” or “Kid-B.”
But I think the album should be considered separately. For me, Kid A always equates to a calm, vigilantly pensive happiness with a message of enduring freedom. In contrast, Amnesiac reflects an insensate feeling, uttering emotions of perplexity, resentment and suspicion while questioning our lives with our future and current conditions spun in apprehension and ambiguity.
I should also tell you I sometimes foolishly and stupidly think (I am just using these two particular adjectives to appear politically correct and portray the idea that I have been effectively turned away from cigarettes, or have I?) smoking a cigarette is quite romantic and, in fact, a true expression of freedom, especially knowing it’s many consequences. So on Sunday night, when I decided to try a cigarette while riding around looking at the stars and listening to Radiohead’s “Pyramid Song” and “You and Whose Army,” you can only imagine the ramblings going through my head. (And although they might be a waste of your time, I’d like to share them with you in the format in which they came to me.)
I couldn’t help but to wonder why so many people detested Amnesiac when it was at that moment so valuable to me. It has to be their most underrated album, suffering unjustly from having come too soon after Kid A. Does the same thing apply in my articles? Is it all really just all rabble, rabble? How does anything come to have significance?
What were the walls of Jerusalem worth to Saladin? Nothing. Everything. Nothing because the walls, the houses, the rubble, all materialism, meant nothing. Everything because so many men gave their lives for the city. Almost anything of value has so because we humans have placed value in it. It is obvious we should not put value on so many things which are truly worthless, but are there things in this world that indeed do have undeniable intrinsic value? I think so – but what are these things? And even if we know what they are, how valuable are they?
Truth has intrinsic value, but what if a small lie can do more good than the truth will? Is this a logical fallacy? Am I just a hopeless victim of post-modernism? Only the truth can bring about the ultimate good. Is that correct? Maybe. Doesn’t it all depend on how you define what truth is? What a lie is?
Maybe comprised in what it means for something to be true is also the idea of moderation of sensitive information? I say all that to say, if something like truth, which we know has value, must be carefully examined and properly implemented, what does that say about things that have no value, which in addition, we make valuable with our own corrupt free will? Think about how dangerous that is!
And just how the cigarette I smoked out of curiosity and freedom can if I’m not careful enslave me, so can anything in which I unnecessarily place value.
I have the capability to be such a negative person. My faith in people is so dismal. But it all derives from the patterns of self. Even the smallest glimpse of failure in another human multiplies my cynicism tenfold, while the countless good I witness does almost nothing to bolster my faith in people.
A noose is slowly tightening around my neck. They say Thom Yorke never smiles. That is why when he counters the world by saying, “Come on, Come on / You think you drive me crazy, well” and responds by a call-to-arms, saying, “You forget so easy / We ride tonight” until there is “nothing to fear and nothing to doubt,” I feel like I have found something true, something valuable, something that I wanted to share with you.
But hey, maybe these songs are just leftovers of Kid A. Thom Yorke doesn’t care or even think about what his songs might mean. I’m just an idiot who fell for his marketing scheme. That’s what is wrong with me! While all my friends were listening to “Satellite” by Dave Matthews and I was burning them Silver Side Up albums by Nickelback, I was listening to Kid A and Amenesiac.
My food cost $6.66 the other day. Should I not submit this? I’m crazy! And you can thank me for inadvertently advertising for big tobacco by describing it almost positively earlier and mentioning it again now in this sentence. If just one person starts smoking because of me, blood is on my hands. What an arrogant thought, Julio! No one reads this anyway.
Julio Cespedes is a junior majoring in biological engineering. He can be contacted at [email protected].