"Our Sad Demise"
"I just hope, if I move people and they listen to some
thing and they get a shiver down their spine, then I've ful
filled my function. If I make them think about something,
about their lives and about the way they relate to other hu
man beings, then that's an added bonus."
"Our sad demise"
on the contemporary lyrics of Roger Waters' latest solo albums
Peter Gelleri
ELTE BTK DELL, 8 Nov 1993
Perhaps the most difficult thing in life for a university
student is when it comes to finding out the first sentence
of an essay to be written on art. This is even more so if
the student, too bold and ambitious, wants to say something
NEW, in other words, he or she wants to add something ingen
ious to what other people share about a particular topic.
This can be achieved in two ways: one can plunge into the
past desperately fishing for interpretations, hidden
allusions, and anything else which have not yet been dis
covered by a number of generations of laborious scholars;
the other way is simpler but obviously less secure: that is
to concentrate upon very recent works that have not as yet
been ranked and given firm places in our collective literary
consciousness owing to their freshness and their usually
puzzling and idiosyncratic nature.
People do not read poems these days. Some say poetry is
dying out, some others believe geniuses are no longer born,
and everybody who seems (or wants to seem) concerned about
literature keeps complaining about a kind of global
extinction. Yes, this is partly true, we do not read poems
very much.
We listen to music instead.
And when we listen to music, we get the lyrics as well.
It is like going back to the roots. In ancient times the
text of a song and the tune itself were inseparable. Al
though later on these two constituents became artificially
set apart and, as a result of this long process, what today
we think of as music and poetry have evolved, we are now
heading for a modern era in which words and melody unite
once again making up a brand-new and very popular genre also
referred to as "pop" and "rock". Millions of people are ex
posed to it twenty-four hours a day. We listen to it at
home, in the car, at the office, in restaurants, everywhere.
It may be enough to examine the words of just a cd-ful of
songs to notice that there are generally two types of recur
ring themes. According to a Newsweek article, "In the ab
sence of a true pop mainstream, in which listeners of dif
ferent stripes could find shared wisdoms, these two camps -
one brutal, the other unrealistically gentle - momentarily
define the pop landscape. They don't speak the same
language."
From this point of view, one may rightly conclude that the
new genre is much less valuable than poetry was until recent
times, the former being oversimplified and lacking in mani
fold topics and expressiveness. Indeed the artistic quality
of contemporary lyrics is very often mediocre if not poor,
there are, however, some exceptions which must not be thrown
out with the bath water. One of these outstanding exceptions
is Roger Waters.
Roger Waters is unique in that he avoids standardized
patterns. He has his own style, the most characteristic fea
ture of which, even though his albums comprise of several
songs with different titles, is that the lyrics are always
based upon one pivoting idea, they are built round one sym
bolic thought, therefore there is hardly any point in scru
tinizing the songs separately, rather they should be looked
at as verses in a collection of poems formulating one
masterpiece. As Roger Waters put it "It's my need to make
sense of it that provides the theme."
As far as the plot is concerned, it is generally very in
tricate with several flashbacks and subplots running paral
lel with the main idea. Roger Waters frequently applies a
sort of stream of consciousness technique, consequently
there is a great number of enigmatic allusions in the words,
which presupposes an extensive knowledge of human history
and culture on the listener's part. Direct and indirect ref
erences range from the Bible to American TV shows, and
strangely enough, this melange of seemingly unspecified bits
and pieces that come up in the lyrics does not result in
disarrangement but creates a whole and conveys something
which has the power of a flawless argumentation, something
that we assume as being true and absolutely authentic. As a
result, we are moved by this exciting totality.
A very important point that clearly characterizes and
gives prominence to Roger Waters' works in terms of lyrics
is the eloquent usage of symbols and images. From this point
of view, almost all the actions can as well be regarded as
having symbolic references producing extra layers of
meanings.
The more we get into it, the more confusing we find it. So
we had better stop at this point, and see how come these
albums, just like any other good pieces of art, are capable
of establishing communication with us, or, simply, what they
tell us about our world.
Pros and Cons of Hitch Hiking (1984) is probably the most
personal album compared to subsequent ones. First person
singular dominates the whole text, and it is about a struggling
persona desperately trying to find solutions to love,
life, and existence. It is typically very much symbolic.
"That particular lyric was written within the terms of
reference of a microcosm of a man and a woman in bed together
on their own, you know," said Roger Waters about PCHH, "so
to take it into the larger arena of the way we all view the
rest of humanity."
Another basic symbol is the action of hitch hiking. This
is a renewal of a hoary and rather common-place allegory,
i.e.. life symbolised as a highway along which people walk
watching the others passing by, furthermore it implies a de
sire for change and new challenges, which is also typical of
human nature.
PCHH starts with a complex scene including both ordinary
(men, wife) and mystical characters (Hells Angel) and in
which a surgeon asks for a drill apparently to trephine a
skull, a man is having a nightmare, and people are travel
ling somewhere, all at the same time.
The persona is seeking for safety and happiness, but there
is a constant inability to establish "real communication"
with people he loves. The excerpt that the man reads out
for the little ones can be seen as a kind of ironic self-
portrait. It is even more tragic as the man is admitting in
capability to his own children:
Eeyore the old grey donkey stood by the side
Of the stream and he looked at himself in the water
"Pathetic" he said, "That's what it is"
The desperate attempt at leaving "the city grime" to live
off the land or, as it were, hiding away from civilisation
turns out to be a complete failure, obviously this is not
the solution. So the lonely persona, totally disillusioned,
hits the road again and starts hitch hiking, and he even
thinks about committing suicide. ("Why prolong the agony all
men must die")
The last part is very thought-provoking. Roger Waters
starts whit what at first sight appears to be just a hotch
potch of images, but he ends up pondering over philosophical
matters. This pattern, very well-known in rhetoric and
poetry, never fails to work.
The last song, entitled The Moment of Clarity, goes back
to the beginning with a man and a woman lying in bed
together.
Here is what Roger Waters said about this part: "We all
recognize those moments of clarity when they happen, you
know. And we all understand their quicksilver nature" ...
"We know there's something more to the way the human mind
works that looking to the bottom of the sheet and seeing if
we made a profit or a loss. Because we've all walked in from
dreams and felt that we've made a connection that is more
meaningful than that. So, I do not know."
In addition, it is also possible to see the moment of
clarity as the very moment when we manage to establish com
munication with a particular piece of art, i.e.. when,
through identification and understanding, catharsis takes
over for a second.
Three years after PCHH another album, Radio Kaos (1987)
was released. Having a somewhat simpler structure it implies
many new references, one of them being telecommunication,
which on the one hand may help us get closer to one another
by means of understanding and compassion, on the other hand
it is being abused and does a lot of harm to people, espe
cially children:
"Who is the strongest, who is the best
Who holds the aces, the East or the West
This is the crap our children are learning"
There is a misjudgment of values, and Roger Waters puts
the blame on telecommunication for its alienating and dehu
manizing effect. People do not really care what and who they
see on TV as long as it is fascinating.
Billy, apparently a vegetable, is a symbolic character
sent to America and unable to "adjust to the cultural
upheaval" in the States; he is homesick, and perceives the
chaotic world through chaotic radio waves which he is able
to receive in his head. His big joke makes people think
and feel again as they did back in the good old days. "In
extremes perceptions change".
Radio Kaos also differs from PCHH in that it brings poli
tics into focus revealing the fact that people no longer
have control over big issues and they are entirely submitted
to the decisions of "the powers that be".
Nevertheless Radio Kaos is about an instable world in
disarray, the last song hints at optimism in the sense that
as "the tide is turning" mankind still has a chance to put
things right. People, touched by a real feeling of humanity,
light candles everywhere. Perhaps this is also a moment of
clarity.
The last image depicts harmony and long-awaited world
peace:
"Now the satellite's confused
'cos on Saturday night
The airwaves were full of compassion and light
And his silicon heart warmed
To the sight of a million candles burning
Oo, oo, oo, the tide is turning"
The latest album, Amused to Death (1992), does not readily
lend itself to scrutiny, probably because it incorporates a
large number of allusions and associations. "A lot of the
lyrics I write now" explained Roger Waters, "I write direct
ly onto tape by putting some music down on a track and then
going into the studio and running the tape singing directly
without thinking too much about what it is."
And indeed this man has something to say about the world.
As there are so many possible interpretations, let us just
concentrate upon the bare bones. There is something wrong
with the world. Warfare has not ceased, what is more, wars
are like combat video games and casualties like pure numbers
on flickering screens. People will do anything in the name
of God, and God himself, as a matter of fact, stands for
men's will. God wants and gets everything he wants, and the
last thing he wants is change for the better, that is to put
an end to war, famine, and all the other shameful blots of
human race. By the way, mankind is symbolised by a monkey
that leaves Eden but remains to be a confused observer of
the world in which "it all makes perfect sense expressed in
dollars and cents, pounds shillings and pence".
There is no real improvement. We are just sitting by our
television sets, and all we need is entertainment. We have
been conditioned to it. Somebody dies on TV, and who appeals
for sympathy? How even cares? As we all know, hundreds of
people die on TV every day either in crime stories or in
news coverage. And it is all for amusement.
"Little black soul departs in perfect focus
Prime time fodder for the News at Nine"
"But that's okay see the children bleed
It'll look great on the TV"
The WWI story of Bill Hubbard told by the old man is not
just to give a frame to the structure of ATD. The old man
feels guilty and he keeps asking himself whether what he did
in the past was right or wrong. And this self-questioning
also applies to the lyricist as well as to listeners and
readers.
ATD, unlike Radio Kaos, delineates a pessimistic percep
tion of human destiny. The world has no second chance, so
the sad conclusion is that human race is bound to get off
the stage, for it does not at all seem to be able to realise
what is going on. This is an apocalypse a la Roger Waters
with a pinch of dejected sarcasm:
"We oohed and aahed
We drove our racing cars
We ate our last few jars of caviar
And somewhere out there in the stars
A keen-eyed look-out
Spied a flickering light
Our last hurrah
And when they found our shadows
Grouped 'round the TV sets
They ran down every lead
They repeated every test
They checked out all the data on their lists
And then the alien anthropologists
Admitted they were still perplexed
But on eliminating every other reason
For our sad demise
They logged the only explanation left
This species has amused itself to death
No tears to cry
No feelings left
This species has amused itself to death
Amused itself to death"
thing and they get a shiver down their spine, then I've ful
filled my function. If I make them think about something,
about their lives and about the way they relate to other hu
man beings, then that's an added bonus."
"Our sad demise"
on the contemporary lyrics of Roger Waters' latest solo albums
Peter Gelleri
ELTE BTK DELL, 8 Nov 1993
Perhaps the most difficult thing in life for a university
student is when it comes to finding out the first sentence
of an essay to be written on art. This is even more so if
the student, too bold and ambitious, wants to say something
NEW, in other words, he or she wants to add something ingen
ious to what other people share about a particular topic.
This can be achieved in two ways: one can plunge into the
past desperately fishing for interpretations, hidden
allusions, and anything else which have not yet been dis
covered by a number of generations of laborious scholars;
the other way is simpler but obviously less secure: that is
to concentrate upon very recent works that have not as yet
been ranked and given firm places in our collective literary
consciousness owing to their freshness and their usually
puzzling and idiosyncratic nature.
People do not read poems these days. Some say poetry is
dying out, some others believe geniuses are no longer born,
and everybody who seems (or wants to seem) concerned about
literature keeps complaining about a kind of global
extinction. Yes, this is partly true, we do not read poems
very much.
We listen to music instead.
And when we listen to music, we get the lyrics as well.
It is like going back to the roots. In ancient times the
text of a song and the tune itself were inseparable. Al
though later on these two constituents became artificially
set apart and, as a result of this long process, what today
we think of as music and poetry have evolved, we are now
heading for a modern era in which words and melody unite
once again making up a brand-new and very popular genre also
referred to as "pop" and "rock". Millions of people are ex
posed to it twenty-four hours a day. We listen to it at
home, in the car, at the office, in restaurants, everywhere.
It may be enough to examine the words of just a cd-ful of
songs to notice that there are generally two types of recur
ring themes. According to a Newsweek article, "In the ab
sence of a true pop mainstream, in which listeners of dif
ferent stripes could find shared wisdoms, these two camps -
one brutal, the other unrealistically gentle - momentarily
define the pop landscape. They don't speak the same
language."
From this point of view, one may rightly conclude that the
new genre is much less valuable than poetry was until recent
times, the former being oversimplified and lacking in mani
fold topics and expressiveness. Indeed the artistic quality
of contemporary lyrics is very often mediocre if not poor,
there are, however, some exceptions which must not be thrown
out with the bath water. One of these outstanding exceptions
is Roger Waters.
Roger Waters is unique in that he avoids standardized
patterns. He has his own style, the most characteristic fea
ture of which, even though his albums comprise of several
songs with different titles, is that the lyrics are always
based upon one pivoting idea, they are built round one sym
bolic thought, therefore there is hardly any point in scru
tinizing the songs separately, rather they should be looked
at as verses in a collection of poems formulating one
masterpiece. As Roger Waters put it "It's my need to make
sense of it that provides the theme."
As far as the plot is concerned, it is generally very in
tricate with several flashbacks and subplots running paral
lel with the main idea. Roger Waters frequently applies a
sort of stream of consciousness technique, consequently
there is a great number of enigmatic allusions in the words,
which presupposes an extensive knowledge of human history
and culture on the listener's part. Direct and indirect ref
erences range from the Bible to American TV shows, and
strangely enough, this melange of seemingly unspecified bits
and pieces that come up in the lyrics does not result in
disarrangement but creates a whole and conveys something
which has the power of a flawless argumentation, something
that we assume as being true and absolutely authentic. As a
result, we are moved by this exciting totality.
A very important point that clearly characterizes and
gives prominence to Roger Waters' works in terms of lyrics
is the eloquent usage of symbols and images. From this point
of view, almost all the actions can as well be regarded as
having symbolic references producing extra layers of
meanings.
The more we get into it, the more confusing we find it. So
we had better stop at this point, and see how come these
albums, just like any other good pieces of art, are capable
of establishing communication with us, or, simply, what they
tell us about our world.
Pros and Cons of Hitch Hiking (1984) is probably the most
personal album compared to subsequent ones. First person
singular dominates the whole text, and it is about a struggling
persona desperately trying to find solutions to love,
life, and existence. It is typically very much symbolic.
"That particular lyric was written within the terms of
reference of a microcosm of a man and a woman in bed together
on their own, you know," said Roger Waters about PCHH, "so
to take it into the larger arena of the way we all view the
rest of humanity."
Another basic symbol is the action of hitch hiking. This
is a renewal of a hoary and rather common-place allegory,
i.e.. life symbolised as a highway along which people walk
watching the others passing by, furthermore it implies a de
sire for change and new challenges, which is also typical of
human nature.
PCHH starts with a complex scene including both ordinary
(men, wife) and mystical characters (Hells Angel) and in
which a surgeon asks for a drill apparently to trephine a
skull, a man is having a nightmare, and people are travel
ling somewhere, all at the same time.
The persona is seeking for safety and happiness, but there
is a constant inability to establish "real communication"
with people he loves. The excerpt that the man reads out
for the little ones can be seen as a kind of ironic self-
portrait. It is even more tragic as the man is admitting in
capability to his own children:
Eeyore the old grey donkey stood by the side
Of the stream and he looked at himself in the water
"Pathetic" he said, "That's what it is"
The desperate attempt at leaving "the city grime" to live
off the land or, as it were, hiding away from civilisation
turns out to be a complete failure, obviously this is not
the solution. So the lonely persona, totally disillusioned,
hits the road again and starts hitch hiking, and he even
thinks about committing suicide. ("Why prolong the agony all
men must die")
The last part is very thought-provoking. Roger Waters
starts whit what at first sight appears to be just a hotch
potch of images, but he ends up pondering over philosophical
matters. This pattern, very well-known in rhetoric and
poetry, never fails to work.
The last song, entitled The Moment of Clarity, goes back
to the beginning with a man and a woman lying in bed
together.
Here is what Roger Waters said about this part: "We all
recognize those moments of clarity when they happen, you
know. And we all understand their quicksilver nature" ...
"We know there's something more to the way the human mind
works that looking to the bottom of the sheet and seeing if
we made a profit or a loss. Because we've all walked in from
dreams and felt that we've made a connection that is more
meaningful than that. So, I do not know."
In addition, it is also possible to see the moment of
clarity as the very moment when we manage to establish com
munication with a particular piece of art, i.e.. when,
through identification and understanding, catharsis takes
over for a second.
Three years after PCHH another album, Radio Kaos (1987)
was released. Having a somewhat simpler structure it implies
many new references, one of them being telecommunication,
which on the one hand may help us get closer to one another
by means of understanding and compassion, on the other hand
it is being abused and does a lot of harm to people, espe
cially children:
"Who is the strongest, who is the best
Who holds the aces, the East or the West
This is the crap our children are learning"
There is a misjudgment of values, and Roger Waters puts
the blame on telecommunication for its alienating and dehu
manizing effect. People do not really care what and who they
see on TV as long as it is fascinating.
Billy, apparently a vegetable, is a symbolic character
sent to America and unable to "adjust to the cultural
upheaval" in the States; he is homesick, and perceives the
chaotic world through chaotic radio waves which he is able
to receive in his head. His big joke makes people think
and feel again as they did back in the good old days. "In
extremes perceptions change".
Radio Kaos also differs from PCHH in that it brings poli
tics into focus revealing the fact that people no longer
have control over big issues and they are entirely submitted
to the decisions of "the powers that be".
Nevertheless Radio Kaos is about an instable world in
disarray, the last song hints at optimism in the sense that
as "the tide is turning" mankind still has a chance to put
things right. People, touched by a real feeling of humanity,
light candles everywhere. Perhaps this is also a moment of
clarity.
The last image depicts harmony and long-awaited world
peace:
"Now the satellite's confused
'cos on Saturday night
The airwaves were full of compassion and light
And his silicon heart warmed
To the sight of a million candles burning
Oo, oo, oo, the tide is turning"
The latest album, Amused to Death (1992), does not readily
lend itself to scrutiny, probably because it incorporates a
large number of allusions and associations. "A lot of the
lyrics I write now" explained Roger Waters, "I write direct
ly onto tape by putting some music down on a track and then
going into the studio and running the tape singing directly
without thinking too much about what it is."
And indeed this man has something to say about the world.
As there are so many possible interpretations, let us just
concentrate upon the bare bones. There is something wrong
with the world. Warfare has not ceased, what is more, wars
are like combat video games and casualties like pure numbers
on flickering screens. People will do anything in the name
of God, and God himself, as a matter of fact, stands for
men's will. God wants and gets everything he wants, and the
last thing he wants is change for the better, that is to put
an end to war, famine, and all the other shameful blots of
human race. By the way, mankind is symbolised by a monkey
that leaves Eden but remains to be a confused observer of
the world in which "it all makes perfect sense expressed in
dollars and cents, pounds shillings and pence".
There is no real improvement. We are just sitting by our
television sets, and all we need is entertainment. We have
been conditioned to it. Somebody dies on TV, and who appeals
for sympathy? How even cares? As we all know, hundreds of
people die on TV every day either in crime stories or in
news coverage. And it is all for amusement.
"Little black soul departs in perfect focus
Prime time fodder for the News at Nine"
"But that's okay see the children bleed
It'll look great on the TV"
The WWI story of Bill Hubbard told by the old man is not
just to give a frame to the structure of ATD. The old man
feels guilty and he keeps asking himself whether what he did
in the past was right or wrong. And this self-questioning
also applies to the lyricist as well as to listeners and
readers.
ATD, unlike Radio Kaos, delineates a pessimistic percep
tion of human destiny. The world has no second chance, so
the sad conclusion is that human race is bound to get off
the stage, for it does not at all seem to be able to realise
what is going on. This is an apocalypse a la Roger Waters
with a pinch of dejected sarcasm:
"We oohed and aahed
We drove our racing cars
We ate our last few jars of caviar
And somewhere out there in the stars
A keen-eyed look-out
Spied a flickering light
Our last hurrah
And when they found our shadows
Grouped 'round the TV sets
They ran down every lead
They repeated every test
They checked out all the data on their lists
And then the alien anthropologists
Admitted they were still perplexed
But on eliminating every other reason
For our sad demise
They logged the only explanation left
This species has amused itself to death
No tears to cry
No feelings left
This species has amused itself to death
Amused itself to death"