Peridyd's Progress

Problems with Difficult Art and Difficult Music (Dreams Walking in Broad Daylight...)

This is a topic I've been avoiding writing about for sometime precisely because it's so important, and yet so difficult, an issue for me personally. What are the boundaries between popular culture and serious art? What happens when artists try and straddle the two? Does a popular artist have a responsibility to be "accessible" to a mainstream audience, or do they have a right to "narrowcast" their message? As a way of beginning a conversation about this issue, I'd like to contrast two versions of a song that has consumed quite a bit of my attention. The Talking Head's "Burning Down the House." First, a highly accessible version, concert footage taken from their 1984 full-length film, Stop Making Sense.

Clearly a great band in peak form, having great fun flexing their musical muscles in front of a few thousand of their closest friends. When it's performed the piece seems utterly accessible.

But now let's take a look at those lyrics:

Burning Down the House

Watch out you might get what you're after
Cool babies strange but not a stranger
I'm an or di na ry guy
Burning down the house

Hold tight wait 'til the party's over
Hold tight we're in for nasty weather
There has got to be a way
Burning down the house

Here's your ticket pack your bag; time for jumping overboard
Transportation is here
Close enough but not too far, baby you know where you are
Fighting fire with fire

All wet hey you might need a raincoat
Shakedown dreams walking in broad daylight
Three hun dred six ty five de grees
Burning down the house

It was once upon a place sometimes I listen to myself
Gonna come in first place
People on their way to work say baby what do you expect?
Gonna burst into flame

My house s'out of the ordinary
That's right don't want to hurt nobody
Some things sure can sweep me off my feet
Burning down the house

No visible means of support and you have not seen nothing yet
Everything's stuck together
I don't know what you expect starring into the tv set
Fighting fire with fire

Setting aside the possibility that Byrne's suffering from what I call The Horse with No Name syndrome (in honor of what I consider some of the worst lyrics in pop music history) based upon his excellent track record with other fine songs like" Listening Wind" and "Life During Wartime," one has to ask whether or not he's being intentionally obscure.

I remember a day when I was in an art appreciation class as an undergraduate and the professor was showing slides of the Baroque period. He proclaimed to the class that all paintings depicting women on swings were about sex. Period. And I remember thinking that if he was to be believed (and he probably was), that it might be handy to remember that and to acquire a few more visual vocabulary words.

What vocabulary does one need in order to understand the Head's piece? Houses, parties, cool babies, fire, transportation, luggage, etc., all collide in the piece, and, while we're hard at work trying to answer the questions it poses, just how does one burn down one's house when one is all wet and needing a raincoat? Everything unrelated, resisting our comprehension. Perhaps the original video released for MTV will tell us more?

Well yes and no. While potentially resolving some symbols (the house in question clearly could be meant to represent Bryne's persona), the video introduces more signifiers (the ballroom, child as monkey on one's back, etc.) that collide with those that the song's lyrics introduce, and in turn collide with one another without ever giving us a sense of what they might or even probably signify. And what the hell is one to make of those white lines going up Bryne's nose and mouth at the end? Is this really a not-so-subtle allusion to a drug experience? That might resolve the "fighting fire with fire" motif that's repeated so often.

Then again, maybe not....

So, despite hints, clues, cues, and leads as to what the song/video might mean, one never gets comfortable in any "reading" of the work. Is it deferral of meaning that's really intended here? If so, to what end this deferral?

And what do we make of popularity of such an obscure lyric and video? I was a frequent MTV watcher at the time this came out, and as I recall the video was on heavy, heavy rotation. Is the point to make visible the obscurity and rub our noses in it by virtue of its sheer popularity?

As you can see, I may have more questions than answers, but I think it's important for us to wrestle with these issues. Though the examples I picked are from the '80s (and seemingly ancient history), it would be easy to come up with some contemporary examples of the same phenomenon.

What's gained by this free wheeling signification game?