To the Other's Side (Songs With Metaphysical Claims In)

The content of folk is fundamentally metaphysical. Our failure to recognize this is primarily due to our own abysmal ignorance of metaphysics and of its technical terms. . . . The true folklorist must be not so much a psychologist as a metaphysician, if he is to 'understand his material'.
- Ananda Coomaraswamy

On Spotify Here

1. Black and Gold - Sam Sparro

(the fear of reductionism)

Cause if you're not really here
Then the stars don't even matter -
Now I'm filled to the top with fear
But it's all just a bunch of matter
'Cause if you're not really here
Then I don't want to be either...

2. Do You Realise? - Flaming Lips
(unreality of time/mortality)

You realize the sun dunt go down/
It's just an illusion caused by the world spinning round.

3. Childlike Faith In Childhood's End - Van der Graaf Generator

(existentialism: song of a scientific human trying, trying...)

Frightened in the silence-

frightened, but thinking very hard,
let us make computations of the stars.



4. Imagine - John Lennon
(sappy materialism)

above us only sky.



5. Everything Leonard Cohen ever wrote
(downbeat aesthete)

6. I Found A Reason - Velvets
(empiricism and also Hegelian geistery)

Oh-hoh I do believe you are what you perceive
What comes is better than what came before.

7. On A Good Day - Joanna Newsom

(Determinism/Structuralism)

Our nature does not change by will

8. Help - Beatles
(Panpsychism, if you believe this guy)



9. Talk To Strangers - Saul Williams
(social Nietzscheanism)

Talk to strangers when family fails
And friends lead you astray
When Buddha laughs and Jesus weeps
And it turns out God is gay
...But this ain't for the underground
This here is for the sun;
A seed a stranger gave to me
And planted on my tongue.
And when I look at you
I know I'm not the only one

10. Submarine Bells - The Chills
(also salvation via peers; the gaze of the Other)

I can watch in wonder as your gaze shifts past my shoulder
Just a glimpsed abyss that flashes at me.
I know deep-down-hidden in you, submarine bells chime
Gold and groaning, sunlit toining, submerged sound sublime.

11. Wish You Were Here - Pink Floyd

(Again: the void-defeating raft, friendship. Also perceptual doubt.)

We're just two lost souls
Swimming in a fish bowl,
Year after year,
Running over the same old ground.
What have we found?.



12. Only - Nine Inch Nails
(the opposite; solipsism, Dread)

None of this really matters anymore
Yes, I am alone, but then again I always was
...There is no you, there is only me
There is no fucking you, there is only me..




13. My Body Is A Cage - Arcade Fire
(stonecold dualism)

My body is a cage that keeps me
From dancing with the one I love -
But my mind holds the key"

14. Help Me Make It - Sammy Smith

(moral nihilism)

I don't care what's right or wrong [and] I won't try to understand

Let the devil take tomorrow; tonight, I need a friend

15. Beautiful - Christina Aguilera

(aesthetic relativism)

14. Superstition - Stevie Wonder
(rationalism)

When you believe in things
That you don't understand,
Then you suffer



16. Anthem - Rush
(objectivism. Aye, the bad kind.)

Live for yourself, there's no one else
More worth living for
Begging hands and bleeding hearts will
Only cry out for more.

17. "Is That All There Is?" - Peggy Lee
(to 'be' "philosophical" about things)

'And when it was all over I said to myself, "Is that all there is to a fire?"'
'And when I didn't die I said to myself, "Is that all there is to love?"'

18. Where Next, Columbus? - Crass

(Relativism, Ludditism; progress as arms race to the bottom)

Marx had an idea from the confusion of his head,
Jung had an idea from the confusion of his dream,
Sartre had an idea from the confusion of his brain,
Einstein had an idea from the confusion of his knowledge,
Jesus had an idea from the confusion of his soul"

19. Come Clean - Hilary Duff
Cause perfect didn't feel so perfect
Trying to fit a square into a circle was my life, I defy"
(logical possibility(!))

20. Substitute - The Who

The simple things you see are all complicated

(Underdetermination of theory by evidence.)

21. Otherside - Doors
(Huxleyan expansion bullshit; reality attached to via getting fucked)



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COURTESY OF JAMES' BROV

The meaning of the world lies outside the world"
- Silver Jews, "People"
(Carnap's rejection of metaphysics.)

Everybody's talking but nobody's listening"
- Dizzee Rascal, "Do It"
(Heidegger's concept of 'idle talk'.)

I'm no longer human- i've become an investment"
- Wiley
(Marxian concept of capital fetishism.)

I'm barely scratching surfaces here.

SONGS WHICH SOUND LIKE THEY'RE GOING TO BE METAPHYSICAL

1. The Future's Not What It Used To Be

2. Only You (And Only You Alone).

3. Life's What You Make It

4. What I Must - Devo

5. Where Is My Mind - Pixies