By Akash Jaggi
Aurum Staff
Lately, the album that has been on repeat the most for me has been Sparklehorse’s It’s a Wonderful Life. I think it is one of the most emotionally diverse albums produced in recent history. It ranges from intensely melancholic, to exuberant joy, also with some aggression, frustration and folk bad-assery. Actually, if you listen to it on low-volume, it sounds calming due to the predominance of the vocals, though at louder volumes there is a lot more conscious chaos separate from the vocals.
Though it can be a bit of a roller coaster, the album will leave you in moments of nostalgia that befit scenes like a sunset, or a field of wild animals or a long drive through some isolated town. It technically belongs to the Indie genre, but the interesting range of instruments used on the album gives it a very classical feel. Linkous’s instrumental dexterity makes him an equivalent to the musical genius of Prince. Another reason to pay tribute to Linkous is because of his tragic suicide in March of this year. The album was written in the context of a near-fatal overdose on drugs, many years before his actual suicide. Considering this and the overall tone of the album, his suicide seems hardly unexpected. Mark Linkous came from a family of coal miners, and purportedly sought music as an escape from his potential career. In no way am I encouraging students disenchanted with their job prospects to see Linkous as a heroic and tragic idol. But, I do think his behavior speaks to a very potent problem in modern society. The problems of globalization have been well-put by sociologist at the University of Coimbra, Boaventura de Sousa Santos: “According to Franz Hinkelammert, the West has repeatedly been under the illusion that it should try to save humanity by destroying part of it…If there is terrorism, this is not due to the violence of the conditions that generate it; it is due, rather, to the fact that total violence has not been employed to physically eradicate all terrorists and potential terrorists. This political logic is based on the supposition of total power and knowledge, and on the radical rejection of alternatives; it is ultra-conservative in that it aims to reproduce infinitely the status quo. Inherent to it is the notion of the end of history…At all these moments, a death drive, a catastrophic heroism, predominates, the idea of a looming collective suicide, only preventable by the massive destruction of the other. Paradoxically, the broader the definition of the other and the efficacy of its destruction, the more likely collective suicide becomes. In its sacrificial genocide version, neoliberalism is a mixture of market radicalization, neoconservatism and Christian fundamentalism. Its death drive takes a number of forms, from the idea of “discardable populations”, referring to citizens of the Third World not capable of being exploited as workers and consumers, to the concept of “collateral damage”, to refer to the deaths, as a result of war, of thousands of innocent civilians. The last, catastrophic heroism, is quite clear on two facts: according to reliable calculations by the Non-Governmental Organization MEDACT, in London, between 48 and 260 thousand civilians will die during the war and in the three months after (this is without there being civil war or a nuclear attack); the war will cost 100 billion dollars, enough to pay the health costs of the world’s poorest countries for four years.” (Santos, Collective Suicide?)
‘The end of history.’ Sounds like a powerful concept. Some people still think the world might end in 2012. The story of Linkous confirms Santos’s argument culturally and may serve as a reminder for people in the natural resource industry to commit to the idea of a future utopia. It doesn’t seem to be verifiable by science however, which is why many evolutionary biologists are totally opposed to the trajectory of sociology. From paleontology, geology and biology we can generally grasp that there were successive movements in evolution, precipitated by ice ages and evolutionary adaptation over millions of years. According to most historians of science, evolution is probably the most important generalized theory in science after Bacon’s scientific method and Newtonian physics. An example of a book written on exemplary periods of evolution (the ‘Cambrian explosion’) that fits into the general theme of the article is by Stephen Jay Gould and is entitled Wonderful Life.
I have not actually read the book so I can’t say much about it. But, I do know from a Google search that it was titled after the film, It’s a Wonderful Life, directed by Frank Capra (1946). The film was based off of a short story called “The Greatest Gift” by Philip Stern. A review by Kurt Wise, a student of Gould, says, “Wonderful Life is primarily a discourse on what Gould calls the contingency of evolutionary history. If the evolutionary “tape” were played again, there is no way to predict what would happen–and no reason to expect that humans would have existed. In other words, chaos theory may also fit evolutionary history, just as it does cloud growth, planetary orbits and scores of other events of an apparently orderly nature.” I think these ideas are most worthy of exploration if the science can give the populace optimism or a framework for change. It could also serve as an example of scientific anti-historicism, or the concept that trying to rewrite a record of what has happened that has led to today as mostly an act of storytelling that ignores specific factors of ‘causation’ and instead cements acts of devastating political calculation as intellectual evidence for academics.
The film is set in a situation where the main character is pondering committing suicide on Christmas Eve. This fits well in the context of Mark’s recent suicide and makes us wonder whether he had been planning the event all along. If he really wanted to cheese on us and his self-righteous album title, he should’ve waited until this month. Just kidding. Besides, the American Film Institute rated it the number one most inspiring film of all time. Maybe watching it will also give a glimpse into the idea of ‘contingency’ and fit it into our modern conceptions. I don’t know but, if you want to buy me a Christmas gift, the latter two items are on my high priority list.
Graphic from http://www.amazon.com/Its-A-Wonderful-Life/dp/B000SX89OS/ref=sr_shvl_album_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1291107668&sr=301-3)
