October 10, 2003
Broken-Radio
I woke this morning from unsettling dreams to the sound of mournful quacking coming from outside of my apartment. Ducks don’t belong in Queens this time of year. I don’t think they belong here any time of year, but now especially. He must be lost, lonesome, cut adrift, fallen off the migratory path. For some reason I blame Radiohead for this.
They played last night at Madison Square Garden, the first of a two-night stint in the city. I had never seen Radiohead live before, but I like them well enough. They sing songs about alienation that sound like the buzz of closed circuit TVs and empty office complexes. It’s not sad break-up music; it’s you were never together to begin with, and there’s a good chance you’re not really here at all, music. When they sing about love it sounds like the echo of an answering machine message broadcast across the universe and only just now received by the last surviving being on a distant planet.
We had bad seats, way up in the rafters. I was waiting for Angie before the show, and I started chatting with the guy who was sitting next to me. His name was Joe, and he had come up from Washington DC to see the band. He loved Radiohead. Just this year he traveled to Sweden and Germany to see them. But he was no jet-setting scenster; he worked a dull desk job at the Justice Department, lived alone, saved his money, and traveled alone to see them. “They are like the Beatles. I can’t stay away.”
For some reason, the thought of Joe coming all the way up to New York on the bus, alone, at night, to listen to Radiohead, made me incredibly depressed. It seemed almost masochistic: office, to bus, to Radiohead, to bus, to sleep to office, to sleep, to office. I realize now that that is a Radiohead song, and that Joe was the perfect Radiohead fan. Their music is the soundtrack of a man on his way home from a Radiohead concert, leaning his head against a cold window while the rain falls outside, with Radiohead songs running through his head. I asked him what he wanted to hear. “Karma Police, man. If they play Karma police I’ll be happy.”
Radiohead took to the stage and the crowd went berserk. The music started, the lights flashed, a hint of a baseline emerged from the din. There were two long monitors on either side of the stage that flashed collages of the band members. The singer was dancing and for some reason he reminded me of an electrified fetus. The crowd leaned forward and chanted along with him.
You have not been, Payin' attention, Payin' attention, Payin' attention, Payin' attention, You have not been, Payin' attention, Payin' attention, Payin' attention, Payin' attention. You have not been, Payin' attention, Payin' attention, Payin' attention, Payin' attention. You have not been, Payin' attention, Payin' attention, Payin' attention, Payin' attention
The show went on and the crowd roared with recognition at the start of each song, but it was like they were watching a different show than I was. A couple in front of us held one another and sang to each other, lovingly: “When I am king you will be first against the wall.” I wanted to grab them by their hoodies and cry, “what the fuck do you mean? What wall. What king? Why? What’s the point?” but before I could do it the lyrics had permeated my consciousness like a virus and I will eat you alive (4x) there will be no more lies (4x) come on (2x) you think you drive me crazy. It was a loop of meaning, the soundtrack they play in the tubes you sleep in on deep space missions, the marriage of rock and Obsessive compulsive disorder. (repeat 5x)
Towards the end, the band went into a slow number and some of the audience lifted lighters in the air. Something was seriously amiss. Either I do not understand this music at all, or everybody here is fucking wrong. And then it occurred to me that Radiohead had succeeded. I felt completely alienated from music, from the crowd, from meaning. They had successfully turned ennui into rock and roll. All of their art school tricks had worked. It all made sense. There was no meaning, nothing to hold on to, it was whatever you wanted it to be.
When they played Karma Police I looked over at Joe and smiled and he smiled back and sang, “This is what you get (3x) when you mess with us!” The couple in front of us groped at one another and sang “Her Hitler Hairdo, it’s making me feel ill.” I closed my eyes to try and block it out. “For a minute there, I lost myself, I lost myself, For for a minute there, I lost myself, I lost myself.” The stadium was alive with disembodied voices singing along, everybody alone, but fine with that, and I was freaking out and then I had a realization of something I had always known, but never taken the full measure of.
I am never, ever, going to get to see Jimi Hendrix.
This is what they mean when they say the apocalypse has already happened.
This morning, after I woke up, I got out of bed and opened the window and looked for the duck, but I couldn’t see him out there. I turned on the computer, and it buzzed to life like an insect. Risking the wrath of the RIAA I connected to Kazaa and did a search. While the music downloaded I faced the speakers out the window and turned them up so the duck could hear Jimi sing Bold as Love at full volume. Fly south, duck, get out of this town, don’t believe Radiohead, they don’t know what they are saying – it is mathematical, pre-programmed, fake hieroglyphs carved in plaster for a science fiction movie. Take flight and go and be bold as love, duck, just like the axis.
