Patrick Stickles screams this absurd recognition in many of Titus Andronicus’ songs like in ‘No Future Part III: Escape from No Future’, over a cavalry of guitars: ‘And now there’s a robot that lives in my brain he tells me what to do/I can’t do nothing without his permission that wasn’t part of the plan’.
And ‘This strange/plan is random at best’ sings Doug Martsch (Built to Spill) in ‘Strange’ over Quasi’s famous Rocksichord sound,…strange, it is indeed.
The Flaming Lips claims the same realistic truth in ‘Worm Mountain’ with chants and monstruous distorted bass: ‘When you try/You will see/When you fail/You will be/Up on the mountain/But down in a hole/Only nature/Has control.
Bad Religion shouts it clear and high in ‘No control’: ‘We have no control, we do not understand/You have no control, you are not in command/You have no control. We have no control/No control. No control. You have no control.’
How many times should we repeat it, how many songs have to tell you the same thing?
‘We work our jobs/Collect our pay/Believe we’re gliding down the highway/When in fact we’re slip slidin’ away’, Paul Simon already said it, it’s just a delusion, when in fact we are just falling till the end.
Nature has all the control, that is what neurobiologists tend to think now, and it is not because we feel that we have free will that we actually have it. But we really want to think there is such thing as freedom of choice, freedom of action, and we live our life as if it was a given, because what else can we do?
And we can always pretend and play it ironic like Arcade Fire in ‘Ocean of noise’ with symphonic tunes and an arrogant and rebellious attitude: ‘An ocean of noise/I first heard your voice/Now who here among us/Still believes in choice?/Not I’
Or play it soft and resigned like Grandaddy with eerie vocals and bitter-sweet keyboard: ‘In truth I say/I’m OK/With my decay/I have no choice/I have no voice/I have no say/On my decay/I have no choice/so I’ll rejoice’…did he just say he will choose to be happy because precisely choice does not exist?