{"id":800,"date":"2023-08-25T12:13:11","date_gmt":"2023-08-25T12:13:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/gabriel.town\/blog\/?p=800"},"modified":"2023-08-25T12:13:11","modified_gmt":"2023-08-25T12:13:11","slug":"neon-bible","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gabriel.town\/blog\/2023\/08\/25\/neon-bible\/","title":{"rendered":"Neon Bible"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\u201cSee that silver shine\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Arcade Fire\u2019s debut album Funeral<\/em> ends with the soothing image of a backseat<\/a> nap. \u201cI like the peace in the backseat \/ I don\u2019t have to drive, I don\u2019t have to speak \/ I can watch the countryside, I can fall asleep.\u201d But where Funeral <\/em>is driven by the urge to soothe, to speak honestly, to build new worlds in the wake of disaster, the band\u2019s second album Neon Bible<\/em> is driven by frustration and fruitless attempts to escape a self-destructive surveillance state.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI don\u2019t want to see it at my windowsill\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019ve revisited Neon Bible <\/em>these past few weeks as a way to process my own reactions to the invasion of Ukraine and *gestures at everything.* The album has a bit of a prophetic quality both in its tone and its uncanny representations of today\u2019s world. The lyrics of opening track Black Mirror<\/a><\/em> call upon the powers of a darkened scrying glass to \u201ctell me where them bombs will fall,\u201d and several lyrics throughout the album call directly to front-of-mind issues. For instance, here\u2019s a few lyrics from my top track, Windowsill<\/a><\/em>:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

I don’t wanna live with my father’s debt
You can’t forgive what you can’t forget
<\/em>I don’t wanna live in my father’s house no more
\u2026
Set me free! What have you done to me?
I can’t breathe!<\/em> I can’t see!
World War III<\/em>, when are you coming for me?
Been kicking up sparks to set the flames free
The windows are locked now, so what’ll it be?
A house on fire, or the rising sea?<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

When I listen I hear our nested crises, I hear Eric Garner and George Floyd, I hear Putin\u2019s warped reference to \u201cdenazifying\u201d Ukraine<\/a> and am reminded that my genitalia leaves me eligible for a military draft. I hear Greta Thunberg\u2019s speech and the Bronx apartment fire and catastrophic climate change. Neon Bible<\/em> has often been a kind of sacred text or scrying glass to me, a way to reflect my own thoughts and gain some internal insight.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On these recent listens I think about whether the album\u2019s characters believe escaping their dystopias is futile, or if they even want to escape. In the band\u2019s first album<\/a>, the characters \u201ccrawl out the chimney\u2026 and forget all [they] used to know\u201d while their parents cry. But in Neon Bible<\/em>, despite repeatedly declaring \u201cI don\u2019t want to live in my father\u2019s house no more,\u201d the speaker locks windows and anxiously awaits fire or flood. They seem too afraid or possibly too comfortable in the house they despise to actually leave it behind. Even the refrain of \u201cI don\u2019t wanna see it at my windowsill\u201d speaks to a threat that looms in the distance, causing pain and suffering elsewhere.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is the sinister nature of the world Neon Bible<\/em> reflects. Folks either set a Ukrainian flag to their profile picture or critique others for doing so while proposals to expand military budgets in the United States<\/a> and here in Ireland<\/a> sail through without critique because we don\u2019t want to see it at our windowsill. We Minneapolitans and New Yorkers march for Black lives over months and then grumble as a re-elected Jacob Frey and a newly-elected Eric Adams cite rising crime<\/a> in order to double down on racist policing. Why is it easier for me to focus on how war exacerbates the climate crisis than the immediate death and displacement it causes in Syria, Palestine, Ukraine, and elsewhere? As the voice from The Well and the Lighthouse<\/a><\/em> chides, “You fool, now that you know your end is near \/ You always fall for what you desire or what you fear!”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201chold a mirror up to the world\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

To return to the backseat: cars are common in Arcade Fire\u2019s discography,<\/em> symbolizing both freedom and our dependence on engines of violence. At the end of Funeral, <\/em>the protagonist laments \u201cI\u2019ve been learning to drive my whole life,\u201d but still prefers to take the backseat and go along for the ride. In Neon Bible<\/em>, cars promise escape and urge the listener to \u201ckeep the car running\u201d<\/a> while waiting to flee. But in a fossil-driven world, the escape of the open road is illusory; even behind the wheel you\u2019re along for the ride. The album\u2019s actual escape instead lies in \u201ca place where no cars go<\/a>\u2026 between the click of a light and the start of the dream.\u201d It isn\u2019t a place one can physically enter and it’s one to which we must all venture alone, but unlike the promise of the car it represents a genuine – if fleeting – escape from a fear that feels like a desire.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cSee that silver shine\u201d Arcade Fire\u2019s debut album Funeral ends with the soothing image of a backseat nap. \u201cI like the peace in the backseat \/ I don\u2019t have to drive, I don\u2019t have to speak \/ I can watch the countryside, I can fall asleep.\u201d But where Funeral is driven by the urge to… Continue reading Neon Bible<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[14,18,16,20],"class_list":["post-800","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-digestable","tag-democracy","tag-energy","tag-environment","tag-music","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gabriel.town\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/800","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gabriel.town\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gabriel.town\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gabriel.town\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gabriel.town\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=800"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/gabriel.town\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/800\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":801,"href":"https:\/\/gabriel.town\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/800\/revisions\/801"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gabriel.town\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=800"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gabriel.town\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=800"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gabriel.town\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=800"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}