While struggling character by character through a particular difficult assignment for Chinese docs class today in Cafe Gata Rojo this afternoon, I got suddenly and completely carried away by a fascination with a song playing in the cafe called Common People (iTunes link), originally by the group Pulp. In this case, it was performed by the bizarre but unusually effective combo of William Shatner’s spoken voice (Yes, that William Shatner) and Joe Jackson singing. Nothing terribly original or deep in its contents, but I guess I was in a thoughtful mood today. The song is about a extremely wealthy woman who “loves learning” and says
“I want to live like common people,
I want to do whatever common people do,
I want to sleep with common people,
I want to sleep with common people,
like you.”
The song tells of her failed attempt to truly experience life as a “common person” partly because she can never experience the mental state that accompanies a life severely limited in opportunities by financial and other restraints.
But still you’ll never get it right,
‘cuz when you’re layin’ in bed at night,
watching roaches climb the wall,
if you call your Dad he could stop it all.
Her desire to bridge the unbridgeable is not appreciated by the “common people” either,
‘cuz everybody hates a tourist
Especially one who thinks
It’s all such a laugh
And the chip stains’ grease
Will come out in the bath
You will never understand
How it feels to live your life
With no meaning or control
And with nowhere left to go
You are amazed that they exist
And they burn so bright
Whilst you can only wonder why
I especially love that first line, “‘cuz everybody hates a tourist, especially one who thinks it’s all such a laugh.” Isn’t this something all of us who have been “tourists” of other cultures and communities either as students, anthropologists, or as scholars, are guilty of at some time or other? When we stand on the outside, feeling so detached, but unknowingly tied to something we think we have left behind, we can find so much we see to be silly or comical.
While I was prompted to think about cross-cultural experiences, the same goes for the cross-class element emphasized by the song and the deep contradictions of the politically active intellectual. I’m reminded of the Japanese intellectual historian Victor Koschmann’s summary of Sartre’s take on the intellectual’s inevitable contraction of Hegel’s “unhappy consciousness,” which he says is ultimately a “perpetual inner conflict between what the intellectual is—a petit bourgeois—and what he or she aspires to, which is truth and human emancipation.” (see his essay “Intellectuals and Politics” in Postwar Japan as History for more on this)
I like that song too (especially the “‘cuz everybody hates a tourist” line).
You should check out the other songs on that album. Some others are really enjoyable too (although you might not find philosophical links for all of them). I suspect Ben Folds has more to do with the listenability of this album than Shatner. :)
The album was available for listening for 2-3 weeks last year, and it’s a good thing “Common People” is the 1st song, so that I’d listen to the rest. Actually, the whole thing is surprisingly decent, but this song’s the best in my opinion — and very effective.
I personally think Shatner DOES have something to do with the listenability. For the most part, he’s gotten over himself, giving this album an authenticity and genuineness I’d never thought possible from him. It’s truly what I’d love to hear from a man at his age, and as what’s likely to be his “signoff” in the recording industry.