Earlier I mentioned my interest in creative artifacts that do speculative realist work, as well as my tempered fondness for the lurid lists of objects that litter Graham Harman’s work.
The other day another example fell into my lap as I was listening to the Seriously Sinatra channel on satellite radio in my car (seriously, there’s a channel for it). The song that played was Antonio Jobim’s bossa nova classic “Ãguas de Março” (“Waters of March”). Even if its broader theme might be the passing of life into death, the song is really just a list of things: “a stick, a stone, a sliver of glass, a knot in the wood, a trap, a gun…”, a litany of the objects we ignore as we selfishly obsess about how the elements afflict our human lives.
Here is the original, in Portuguese, sung by Jobim and Elis Regina, followed by the English version, which was also written by Jobim. (I’ve chosen Art Garfunkel’s rendering, only because the video has better visual aids):
As long as we’re talking about objects and “The Waters of March,” here are two other, more unusual versions of the song.
The first is also very much about objects, the incredibly charming “TJ’s Song,” a bossa nova homage to the grocery store Trader Joe’s, set to the tune of “The Waters of March”:
Second, a somewhat less object-oriented Coca-Cola ad from 1985, which declares “It’s a kick, it’s a hit, it’s a Coke, Coke is it.” (And for my Heideggerian readers, also note the centennial broken-tool version of the Statue of Liberty at :13.)
All offer interesting examples of two things: first, how lists of objects themselves, without much further explication, can do the philosophical work of drawing our attention toward them with greater attentiveness. And second, how aesthetic objects can serve as philosophical apparatuses that deliver such effort.
Comments
marcegoodman
Mention should be made of the late Susannah McCorkle’s bilingual version of “Waters of March” for which she revised and tweaked the standard English lyrics. McCorkle’s version, which became her signature song, grows in poignancy when one considers the haunted (to borrow from the title of her biography) quality of her life.
http://www.last.fm/music/Susannah+McCorkle/_/The+Waters+of+March
Leon Wieseltier’s beautiful remembrance of McCorkle may be found here:
http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2001/06/04/010604ta_TALK_POSTSCRIPT
I suppose it’s not simply a coincidence that part of McCorkle’s English lyrics may be found as an epigraph for a chapter in this book:
http://books.google.com/books?id=L41-0-SEIVwC&pg=RA1-PA814&dq=jdeveloper+spear
Asher Kay
“how lists of objects themselves, without much further explication, can do the philosophical work of drawing our attention toward them with greater attentiveness.”
I sometimes wonder if, just like there’s no way to focus on everything, there is no such thing as a “correct” or “final” ontology. Maybe ontologies are ways of making us attentive to the things we’ve lost sight of. If so, ontologies would be essentially historical — they would surface and re-submerge based on our philosophical needs.
Marcelo Stein de Lima Sousa
Ian, your surprising post made me think. Think like a Brazilian. I did not resist and offer you some thoughts about your post.
“Waters of March” celebrates the end of summer, when the rains wash all and bring an air of renewal for the heavy summer in the Southern Hemisphere. It also celebrates the beginning of the year for Brazil, since only after the Carnival “we started to work.” It is as if the waters refresh our heads to face a new year.
I believe this song is related to the Object-Oriented Philosophy in some points. First, you correctly mentioned, is the list of objects. Objects that in the new year go through a process of renewal. But they are not static objects, they are things immersed in processes. And they certainly make an aesthetic universe that weaves the place where the Brazilians live.
Second, I think this list is a summary of what Harman says it is one of the difficulties of Latour’s ontology: a summary of the changes occurring in the alliances at the network. At the same time that it displays some of the actors who take part of the life of Brazil, it shows how a flow or fluid (or a different topology) help to reconfigure everything to a new year. It is the “promise of life” of the song. It is a new atmosphere to the place where we live. Perhaps this is a possibility to be explored in OOP.
(At http://www.iit.edu/~chilnic/aguasdemarco.htm you can see the original lyrics plus a literal translation and Jobim’s English version of the song.)
marcegoodman
Marcelo,
The comma at the end of your link leads it astray.
Here is the corrected link.
http://www.iit.edu/~chilnic/aguasdemarco.htm
Ian Bogost
Marc, thanks for providing the additional links, both at top and just above. I’ve also fixed the link in Marcelo’s post to avoid any confusion.
Marcelo, everything you say about the song is right, and indeed it seems Jobim tried to genericize the lyrics considerably in his English version, stripping them of much of their Brazilian specificity. I think that specificity makes the song even more object-oriented, as I think you are also noting, thanks to that specificity.