I've been thinking of writing up some formal thoughts on two music videos. With regards to my commentary on both of these, there is a good deal more going on in the songs and videos than I will mention. They are art, and I could never hope to fully detail their contents. I don't claim to have anything like a definitive understanding of the artists' intent with their work. I believe all listeners share enough experience to be worth some discussion. With regards to both artists, go check out all their stuff. To quote High Fidelity, "It's really fucking good."
Human, by Dodie:
The lyrics to Human:
I wanna pick you up and scoop you out
I want the secrets your secrets haven't found
Paint me in trust
I'll be your best friend
Call me the one
This night just can't end
Oh
Will you share your soul with me?
Unzip your skin and let me have a see
Paint me in trust
I'll be your best friend
Call me the one
This night just can't end
Oh
Oh, I'm so human
We're just human
Lean for me, and I'll fall back
You'll fit so nicely, you'll keep me intact
Paint me in trust
I'll be your best friend
Call me the one
This night just can't end
Oh
I want to give you your grin
So tell me you can't bear a room that I'm not in
Paint me in trust
I'll be your best friend
Call me the one
This night just can't end
Oh
Oh, I'm so human
We're just human
The lyrics to My Name is Human:
Okay
I'm feeling the way that I'm feeling myself
Fuck everyone else
Gotta remember that nobody is better than anyone else, here
(Do you need some time to think it over?)
Look what they do to you
Look what they do to me
Must be joking if you think that either one is free, here
Get up off your knees, girl
Stand face to face with your God
And find out what you are
(Hello, my name is human)
Hello, my name is human
And I came down from the stars
(Hello, my name is human)
I'm ready for love and I'm ready for war
But I'm ready for more
I know that nobody's ever been this fucking ready before, hey
(Do you need some time to think it over?)
So figure it out or don't figure it out
I figured it out
The bigger the river (the bigger the river)
The bigger the drought (the bigger the drought)
Get up off your knees, boy
Stand face to face with your God
And find out what you are
(Hello, my name is human)
Hello, my name is human
And I came down from the stars
(Hello, my name is human)
Fire world, I love you
Fire world
I'm up off my knees, girl
I'm face to face with myself
And I know who I am
(Hello, my name is human)
I stole the power from the sun
I'm more than just a man
(No longer disillusioned)
(I'm not asking questions)
('Cause questions have answers)
(And I don't want answers)
I came down from the stars (so I'll take my chances)
(And what are the chances)
(That I could advance)
(On my own circumstances)
(Said "what are the chances?")
Hello, my name is human (and what are the chances?)
(I don't want your answers)
(I'm not asking questions)
(So you keep your answers)
And I know who I am (so you keep your answers)
(I'm not asking questions)
(I'm taking my chances)
I find some notable contrasts between the two songs and videos. Obviously the musical styles are drastically different with Highly Suspect's use of distorted, tube amplified guitars and pointed, aggressive lyrics against Dodie's gentle harmonies and indie acoustic, whispered verse, love song vibrations. Also it jumped out at me that Dodie uses very minimalist make-up, and in some of her other videos, I suspect none at all. Compare this to Johnny Stevens' body tattoos, gaudy apparel, piercings, time consuming hair and general air of 'LOOK AT ME'. I find this to be an interesting gender role reversal. The overall color tones of the sets, costuming, camera angles and panning, all play into these starkly different approaches of organic and neutral against highly artificial and visually aggressive. I find each complements the associated music extremely well.
Then there are some similarities in the way in which the songs change meaning in the context of the corresponding videos. To listen to Dodie's Human without the visual, or just to read the words, there is just a love song. Humans are feeling animals, it is human to fall in love and be super curious about another human. But then in the video, the object of Dodie's affection is a construction. It plays into the question of where human connection is real or manufactured. It reminds me of such explorations as the world of Data in Star Trek, The Next Generation, the question of the rights of people with sufficient brain damage to have capacity below lab rats, and the extent to which we can compare a text based friendship abroad with an in-person friendship (especially as automated bots are fooling more people for longer periods all the time).
I am no longer in regular contact with the person who shared that video with me, but I was able to take an old recording of their voice, sing a harmony over it and sync the tracks. Listening, I was reminded of this video. Manufactured human connection. We never harmonized that way. It wasn't real. But it sounded real. It would be hard to detect the forgery, you would have to know a thing or two about analyzing recorded sound. Just as automated conversation programs are getting harder to catch, as their caches of natural sounding responses grow and their algorithms dive deeper into what components of a passage of text make it 'flow' with another.
Similarly, My Name is Human, to just hear it or read the lyrics, is just a pointed rock song about the nature of human existence. 'Get up off your knees, stand face to face with your God, find out who you are...I came down from the stars.' Humans are natural things, derived of stardust. We grapple with our nature. In the face of something bigger, we fall to our knees. Here again, the video brings in robotics, sets a contrast of human from the stars and manufactured human. Can a robot stand face to face with its God? Again, Data did face his creator. Robots are being trained to identify those who made them. We're a few major breakthroughs away from anything worrisome, but the questions and potential are there.
I find it remarkable that two songs that deal so heavily in the concept of humanity, but such different aspects of it, both chose in their visual component to set a contrast with humanoid robots. Neither song on its face deals with the boundary cases of humanity in comparison with hyper-human approximations like Data or advanced AI conversation engines. Neither in their verses ask the question of how something made always seems to fail to measure up to something born.
I'm face to face with myself. I know what I am. I ate poison to destroy death running around my body. I have stripped away every part of myself that I did not want or found unwholesome and rebuilt myself to my imagination's specifications. I've stared into the abyss of myself. This aspect of me strides triumphantly while listening to Highly Suspect loudly in my headphones.
I want to give you your grin. I know of myself that I can't be whole without another. I don't currently have a life partner and I feel like a two-legged stool sort of tilted up against a wall of antidepressants and working towards a better future for myself...or something like that. I can never feel the presence of God except through the conduit of deep human connection. That part of myself listens to Dodie and lays quietly.
I am Human.
-Ian Hogan, PhD
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