"No Phone" ~ Cake from “Pressure Chief”
No phone No phone
I just want to be alone today
No phone no phone
Ringing stinging
Jerking like a nervous bird
Rattling up against his cage
Calls to me thoughout the day
See the feathers fly
No phone No phone
I just want to be alone today
No phone No phone
No phone no phone
I just want to be alone today
Rhyming chiming
got me working all the time
Gives me such a worried mind
Now I don't want to seem unkind
But god (it's such a crime)
No phone No phone
I just want to be alone today
No phone no phone
No phone No phone
I just want to be alone today
No phone no phone
Shaking quaking
Waking me when I'm asleep
Never lets me go too deep
Summons me with just one beep
The price we pay is steep
I've been on fire
And yet I've still stayed frozen
So deep in the night
My smooth contemplations will always be broken
My deepest concerns will stay buried and unspoken
No I don't have any change but here's a few subway tokens
No phone No phone
I just want to be alone today
No phone No phone
No phone no phone
I just want to be alone today
No phone no phone
No phone No phone
I just want to be alone today
No phone No phone
I was listening to Cake’s “Pressure Chief” album today on the tram and realized that this album expresses the anguish and lamentation that living in our current times can bring with it and which Kenneth Gergen sees as the death throes of an old construction of the self. Gergen, a social psychologist, tracks the dissolution of the cohesive and unified self in his book “The Saturated Self”. What is happening to the unified self, you ask? Well, for Gergen the answer lies in the technological environment that bombards us with stimuli and potential relationships. Two hundred years ago people could grow up and die without ever leaving a 20 mile radius. There were a finite amount of relationships one could have (given the lack of mobility and new people one might meet) and one knew one’s obligations within those relationships. This is contrasted with the amount of relationships one can enter into now given the technology that we have. For example, I am in Romania making new friends and teaching a class because I got on an airplane, yet I can still talk to family and friends back home on the phone or by email or by blog. I am even “teaching” a class on-line because technology allows me to stay connected with students and I could, if I so desired, get on the internet and “chat” with various and multiple people from around the world.
For Gergen, the now infinite (apparently) amount of relationships we can enter into because of technology “saturates” us and creates a multiplicity of self-experience, a fragmenting of the self if you will. Gergen calls this “multiphrenia” and contrasts this with the construction of the unified and cohesive self during the modern time period. What people have been used to is a solid and singular sense of self-experience which allows one to “believe” that there is a true and knowable essence to one’s self. With technological saturation, however, all this is thrown up for grabs and one begins to question whether there is a “true” essence to one’s self. It is through the music of Cake that I began to reflect on the pain and anguish of this transition and the impact of technology on us. On “Pressure Chief” one can hear and feel the existential awfulness of the effects of technology on human relationships and ourselves. What I find interesting is that Cake seems to make this into a moral question for us to reflect on, “is all of this technology a good thing for humans?” and seem to answer it in the negative. Gergen, on the other hand, does not seem too concerned (at this point in the book) about the morality of it all. In fact, he seems to celebrate this deconstruction of the old, as the new construction of the self opens up possibilities for new understandings of reality (this makes it sound too linear, when in actually the new realities of technology construct a new sense of self which feeds back into our sense of reality). The question for us in this class, is similar to Cake’s question, “is technology good for us?” and “is multiphrenia something to be celebrated?”. At this point, give “Pressure Chief” a listen to and experience the deep existential concerns that are brought up. Perhaps this would be a good backdrop to reading Gergen…a reminder that some folk’s celebrations are other’s despair.
6 comments:
Here's another song that I thought of after reading your post...enjoy:
Why do you love me?
Why do you need me?
Always and forever
We met in a chat room
Where love can fully bloom
Sure the World Wide Web is great
But you, you make me "salvavate"
Yes I love technology
But not as much as you, you see
But I still love technology
Always and forever
Shaking quaking
Waking me when I'm asleep
Never lets me go too deep
My deepest concerns will stay buried and unspoken
I think these lyrics point to one of the biggest issues with the expansion of technology. Our relationships have become so transient, that it becomes difficult to put your full trust in someone. We can be constantly in contact with people and constantly be connected to the world, but, at times, we are never truly connected. In the past, a pesron was a part of the community and knew that they could be "themselves" because the community would not abandon them. Nowadays, it is harder to be that open with people because of the availability of a relationship with someone else. The concept of trust takes on a new and deeper meaning, because if we can find that person, it becomes that much more meaningful.
I hope this makes sense, and it doesn't sound like rambling :-). I just think this song speaks to the problems with developing meaningful relationships in a world of technology that promotes transient friendships.
Thanks for your thoughts Krysti! You bring up a paradox that technology seems to bring with it...the more relationships we have (or have potential to have) the greater the tendency to be superficial in those relationships. What do you think this dynamic is about? Is it a reflection of the lack of time being "saturated" with relationships brings? Or is it something else? I am interested to hear your (anyone's) thoughts on this.
Don't worry about my removing your comments...I only do that to myself apparently...I'm still trying to figure this out! :-)
Something that Krysti's comment made me think about was the way that being over-exposed to superficial relationships allows us to pretend that we are living. She said that it is difficult to put our trust in someone. Perhaps that is because it is so easy to decieve ourselves into thinking that our superficial relationships are meaningful. Coupled with this is the thought that our society does not count small meaningful relationships as a virtue. This is a part of what community is, but technology has no time for community. This another way that I can see how we are more human and more "ourselves" in a community with real relationships.
Has anyone else noticed the irony of talking about this over the internet?
There is some irony there for sure...but what I am wondering about is if technology can kinda work in this situation because we have already established "practices" in community together (e.g. talking in class, hanging out in my office, going out to eat, etc.)and can use technology as a "temporary" augment for the distance in an already established relationship?
But there is certainly a temptation to let technology take the place of relationships or to only be "real" when there is technological distance. One observation I have mulling about is how open and intimate students can be on facebook or blogging, yet I don't see them displaying that type of openness or intimacy in face-to-face relations...thoughts?
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