Spektors of Doubt

I warn you in advance that this is a long one, so if you're gonna be of the tldr set, just go fuck off... with love. Anyway, here it is, but one thing: yes, I did mean to spell it "reder;" why would take a post even longer than this one, so make of it what you will for now.


A verbal experiment need not be merely that; common sense seems to say there's nothing that restricts a clever turn of phrase to being merely that. bleh, that's a load of crap--what Spektor means by "the consequence of sounds" is not entirely clear: if the apposition holds, then it would be "the consonants and vowels" - if it even is an apposition. the principle by which Spektor moves from one thought to the next in "the consequence of sounds" (the song, not the line) is more an appropriation of hip hop flow than it is strictly logical or narratological. in a flow, the mc uses any of numerous phonological links more reminiscent of music to enjoin thoughts into sequence. rhyme, assonance, consonance, caesura, theme and variation, all are tools by which the mc moves from one thought to another, often joining logically unrelated images thru a mere affinity of sound. the success of a flow is marked less by the degree to which it makes sense and more by the seeming ease with which the mc enjambs various phrases. of course, the flow is anything but easy: the poet puts every word where she wants it, and the seemingly illogical relations that may result are anything but unintentional.

The phonological affinity that exists between "consonants" and "consequence" could lead a reder to believe that Spektor could have put these two lines together merely for this reason, but its use as a refrain would argue against that. what should I make of it, though, as an apposition. one possibility: that language is a consequence of the exist of sound. the human mind has a need to make language of seemingly random stimuli. at the heart of our experience of sound is a persistent desire for it to mean something, and when such meaning is not obvious, we take what sounds we have and turn them into voices. as Basho said:

静かさや岩にしみいる蝉の声
ah, the quiet... penetrating the rock, the voice of the cicada

Cicadas are insects, of course, and as such do not have voices per se (though, to be fair, the word koe is used in Japanese both for human voice and the various sounds of animals); they make sound by shaking their butts, or, in science speak, vigorously vibrating certain loose sections of their abdomens.

What Spektor's apposition (if it is one) says is the human brain cannot just let sound be. "the consonants and vowels" are what go along with sounds, to use a more etymological sense of "consequence." consonants and vowels (by my reding the most basic units of language) are not so much the natural result of sound as something coeval. Spektor is not necessarily saying something we don't already know - that sound does not exist meaningfully outside of human perception - but she does so lyrically. in this lyric mode meaning is not obvious and is subject to the machinations of the reder. ironically, then, this is also part of what she is saying.

taken a step further, the lyric flow can be used to produce words that, lexically speaking, are not, in fact, there, much in the same way a skilled musician can produce polytones on an instrument like the bassoon. the extra notes aren't technically there, which is to say the musician is not using the finger position by which they are normally played, but because of the way in which a particular note is played, the listener hears those additional notes. according to the liner notes, two lines of "Edit" should read:

you don't even have good credit
you can write but you can't edit

Which seems simple enough, if incomprehensible, but when Spektor sings the last of those two lines, she holds the nasal in "can't" and lets the terminal stop fall on top of the word "edit." upon first and subsequent listens, the lines rede to me as "you can write but you can't debt it," which makes much more (logical) sense given the preceding line. the whole song is merely a repetition of the following.

white lines on your mind
keep it steady
you were never ready
for the lies
you don't have no Dr. Robert
you don't have no Uncle Albert
you don't even have good credit
you can write but you can't edit

Once again, I've used the word mere a bit too easily, because the repetition of these lines is precisely what produces the verbal polytones to which I alluded earlier. as the song reaches its end and becomes increasingly frantic, the line "for the lies" merges back into the beginning of the song producing the string "for the white lines on your mind." that the common idiom "white lie" already exists in English only helps to buttress the overlap Spektor creates here between white lines and white lies. the phrase "white lies" is not actually in the song, but to an extent the reder can be forgiven for putting it there.

White lines = blank lines? what does it mean to have empty lines on your mind? what is an empt line to begin with? I think it's obvious Spektor doesn't think "your" mind is blank. a white line is a possibility, a something in a nascent state. it may have form, it may have rhythm, but it doesn't say anything meaningful. a white line is a persistent possibility that relies less on itself to produce meaning than it does on "you." the funny thing is Spektor doesn't have much faith in "your" ability to turn that possibility into something: "you can write but you can't edit." the logic that underlies this judgment seems to be the same as Virginia Woolf's; without a certain degree of financial stability, "you're" in no position to effectively edit anything.

"All I could do was to offer you an opinion upon one minor point—a woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction; and that, as you will see, leaves the great problem of the true nature of woman and the true nature of fiction unsolved. I have shirked the duty of coming to a conclusion upon these two questions—women and fiction remain, so far as I am concerned, unsolved problems."

-Virginia Woolf A Room of One's Own

While I may not have any idea to whom Dr. Robert alludes - nor am I going to bother to look - anyone who spent their childhood in comic books knows who Uncle Albert is--wait, that's Uncle Alfred... nevermind. the point is the names have the aroma of patronage: "you don't have a rich uncle to borrow from, even the bank won't lend to 'you.'"

Without anyone to borrow from, what exactly can "you" make? Spektor still believes "you" can make something ("you can write") but she doesn't believe "you" can remake anything ("but you can't edit"). "you" can read, but "you" can't rede.

The lies, then, white or not, for which you were never ready, the remains of those who came before "you," stay forever beyond your grasp, remain a mere possibility just as the "white lies" somehow remain forever beyond the song.