Today, rap is a platform on which poetry comes alive. This form makes poetry relevant to the 21st century people, the “post-literates.” McLuhan substantiated his ideas by pointing out Finnegans’ Wake, where Joyce “celebrated the tearing apart of the ethos of print by radio, film (television) and recording,” arguing that the author could “easily see that Goebbels and his radio loudspeakers were a new tribal echo” (72). Rap music, and Aesop Rock‟s output in particular, can be seen as an individual‟s reaction to the world of modern technologies and the life in a crowded city. One can actually see some parallels between Aesop Rock‟s music and the work of the Modernists. His eclecticism and the way he constructs dreary textual landscapes might remind one of T.S. Eliot‟s “The Waste Land.” His insistence on the visual can be seen as close to how Ezra Pound strove to compose poetry according to his Imagist manifesto. Looking at “The Yes and the Y‟all” written down in a prose form, with the short exclamations between prolonged sentences and the abridged, practical syntax of these musings, makes me see in it some similarities to Joyce‟s streams of consciousness. What comes to one‟s mind is the musicality, wordplay, humor and attention to details, an absurd realism. “Nickel Plated Pockets,” framed by the phrase “walking to the store with a pocket full of nickels,” looks to me like a post-9/11 New York hip hop version of Leopold Bloom‟s journey for pork kidney. Joseph DiPalo suggested that the sound of Aesop Rock is a product of the information era, and the artist himself acknowledged that he was inspired by “movies, moving imagery and visual stuff.” “I don‟t want to say I was raised by television but to a degree I was,” Bavitz said (Aesop Rock 2007). 1.3. Visual Thinking and the Music of Language I think it is interesting to see how the visual surfaces in Aesop Rock‟s music, all the way from the inside to the outside world: as a metaphorical thinking process, as an intricate description of visual environments and as an artistic interest. He described in an interview with Jonathan Dick: “I love lyrics that are dripping with imagery and tangible references. I try to write detailed stuff that makes a listener want to stick around, similar to how the right painting might make someone stare at it for a long time.” The second aspect of this relationship is how Bavitz sees the social side of visual arts and music. For him, visual arts are more of an individualistic endeavor, he has always been “more attracted to the solitude of visual arts,” 10 while music for him “has always seemed like a more social event.” He says: “I‟ve been attempting to treat my music more like I‟m drawing at my home, lately” (Aesop Rock 2016). Focusing on the visual in an auditory medium might strike one as counterintuitive. Despite that, paradoxically, when it comes to a depiction of a visual thinking process, spoken language might actually be a better fit. As Rudolf Arnheim observes, “pictorial montages show their seams, whereas the images produced by words fuse into unified wholes” (253). During the writing of this thesis, I tried to see Aesop Rock‟s lyrics as an attempt to reproduce human thinking patterns in a musical format. How our minds work, however, seems to be one of such fundamental issues that it eludes a convincing, simple definition. Aesop Rock elaborated on his thought processes and the way he composes the lyrics in an interview with Vijith Assar: I just write notes all day on my phone, and when I write songs it becomes a patchwork of these smaller notes that I had, mixed with stuff in the moment. To me, it seems more realistic to my thought process when things feel a little scattered in the lyrics. Being disjointed is not that abstract of a thing when I think about how my brain works – I feel like it‟s almost more realistic. That‟s how my brain works. I have a mission for the day, and I try and complete it, but my brain kind of pinballs around. I think it‟s more abstract, in a way, to go out of your way to put all that into some order. (Aesop Rock 2012b) In McLuhan‟s visual/aural dichotomy, the former represents the mathematical, orderly and linear way of thinking dominated by the left brain, the latter is a more organic, intuitive type of reasoning that activates both hemispheres. This might support viewing rap as poetry that returns to its oral roots, however the “visual thinking” that Aesop Rock exhibits in his lyrics is definitely non-linear and unpredictable, perhaps therefore demonstrating a natural way of human perception of the world. For clarification, I shall follow Arnheim‟s contention that “visual perception is visual thinking” (14) and that “the cognitive operations called thinking are not the privilege of mental processes above and beyond perception but the essential ingredients of perception itself” (13). Arnheim criticized the “prejudicial discrimination between perception and thinking” (2) and bemoaned the “unwholesome split which cripples the training of reasoning power” (3). I see it as a call for an inner unity parallel to McLuhan‟s ideas about the aural world reconnecting the “split brain.” The “wholesomeness” of these approaches, I believe, can be felt in experiencing poetry as a piece of music. This may be illustrated by research of Brandt, Gebrian and Slevc, who put forward a hypothesis that language should be described as a 11 “special type of music.” They argued that “musical hearing and ability is essential to language acquisition,” as shown by the parallel progress in this areas in children. While in adults speech and music processing tends to be dominated respectively by the left and the right brain hemispheres, “newborns show largely overlapping activation to infant directed speech and to instrumental music,” and even in adulthood “both types of stimuli [recruit] a bilateral frontal- temporal network” (4). It is fascinating to see that language, poetry and music seem to share a common root not only when we take a historical perspective at the development of humanity: the aforementioned neurological findings indicate that this is also the case for each of us individually. 12 CHAPTER 2 THE LINEAR SONGS 2.1. An Artist’s Dream and Nightmare (“No Regrets” and “Rings”) The songs “No Regrets” from the 2001 album Labor Days and “Rings” from The Impossible Kid, released fifteen years later, can serve as a good starting point to a study of Aesop Rock‟s lyrics. Both are probably among the most accessible songs that he has ever written. “No Regrets” is a fictional story about a reclusive visual artist, Lucy. “Rings” is an autobiographical song about Aesop Rock‟s personal regrets concerning his not pursuing a career in visual arts. Both songs deal with growing up as an artist and the importance of following one‟s passions, but they tackle these subjects from different perspectives. The songs also underline the rapper‟s fascination with visual arts. The three verses of “No Regrets” are snapshots from different parts of life of its protagonist, Lucy, who is a visual artist. Each verse begins with Lucy‟s age, her current life situation and her artistic interests. At the beginning, she is a tabula rasa: “City- / Born into this world with no knowledge and no regrets.” Later, her development is described as “trading in” one thing for another: blue barrettes and yellow chalk for long locks and charcoal sticks, followed by a head rest and arthritis in her old age. The regularity in the description is strengthened by the repetition of “And she / Drew,” after which comes an enumeration of the subjects of her artworks, which serves to show how prolific she is as an artist. A contrast is introduced in the last verse, depicting her final day in a nursery home: “And she / Drew no more. Just sat and watched the dawn.” This might symbolize an acceptance of her situation – dawn is a new start, a hope. She is at the end of her life, yet she is still deriving pleasure from admiring the view. She seems to have spent every moment of her life on drawing, at least until she is physically capable of doing so. At 7 “she covered / Every last inch of the entire sidewalk” with chalk, at 37 she makes charcoal drawings of people, at 87 she feels fine just looking at her works and admiring the sunrise. The encounters she has with other people are very brief. She politely refuses most people‟s inquiries into the nature of her work: “always / Said “hello” to passers-by, they asked her why she passed the time / Attaching line to concrete, but she 13 would only smile.” In another instance, she turns down a neighbor‟s offer to socialize: “Said „Lucy, wanna join me for some / Lunch?‟ Lucy would smile and say „I‟m busy, thank you much.‟” She apparently had one meaningful relationship in her life, with a man named Rico, although they were meeting each other “only once or twice a week on purpose” and their conversations seemed to have focused on art: “they‟d / Connect on Saturdays to share the pictures that they drew.” Her character traits resemble those of the people on the autism spectrum, yet they are definitely not depicted as something that negatively affects her own well-being or that is symptomatic of a disorder. Her dedication to her “special interest,” to use the psychological vocabulary, is unflinching. She is depicted as socializing exclusively with a person with whom she might exchange inspirations. Her social life is limited, but it satisfies her: she “found it suitable, and she liked it that way.” This is obviously an idealized depiction of an artist‟s life. It is tempting to see her as someone who a younger Aesop Rock aspired to be like, and to see “Rings” as a later reflection on how his life actually turned out. When asked in an interview with Erikson Corniel how the chorus from “No Regrets” relates to him personally, he answered: “The song was a story about somebody else. It‟s nice to think that way and try to approach life that way, but it doesn‟t ever fully really work that way. Sometimes it‟s a dream, sometimes it‟s a bit of a nightmare” (Aesop Rock 2015). The next song I will analyze examines the relationship between art and life from a more down-to-earth, autobiographical perspective. “[Rings] is about my failed endeavors as a visual artist and feeling some regret for slowing down on my studies in that arena” (Aesop Rock 2019), the musician explained. The first verse is about drawing, the second is about painting, but they follow the same pattern: at the beginning of each the speaker admits that he “used to draw” and he “used to paint,” he describes the joy that it brought to him, and later how for different reasons he abandoned this passion. Both verses are symmetrically separated into sections by means of deictic pronouns. The short couplet at the beginning of each verse is a moment of self-realization from the first person perspective. Then, the speaker reminisces on his younger self, describing himself from a third person perspective. This underlines the distance between the present and the past. The lyrics simultaneously describe the act of creation and the meaning it had for the speaker: 14 […] it was Soothing, moving his arm in a fusion of Man-made tools and a muse from beyond, even If it went beautifully wrong, it was tangible Truth for a youth who refused to belong, The objective quality of the drawing did not really matter to the speaker, the very act of carefree creation allowed him to express himself, it gave him a relief from anxiety and a sense of identity – it was a way of tapping into something mystical, something “from beyond,” by means of “man-made tools.” This supernatural theme is continued in the second verse: You can‟t imagine the stars that align when a Forearm starts foreshortening right, or a Torso hung on a warping spine, in Proportion reads as warm and alive The sheer joy of creating a painting, recreating perspective and proportion on canvas, is like “stars that align.” We can see the speaker‟s fascination with the effect that creating art has on him: when he succeeds in creating an aesthetically pleasing painting, he feels as if the whole universe was put into a harmonious order by some unknown, unimaginable power. Then, the narration switches to the second person, which introduces a sense of urgency – both sections start with the phrase “You can‟t imagine…” It marks the highest point in excitement about art, which is cut short by various other occurrences in life: being formally educated by the “capable few” and distractions such as work and, ironically, making music. Then again there is a switch to the first person narration, as the speaker switches his focus to the causes of his failure as an artist, confessing his own perceived lack of determination and insecurity. Anaphora is used here, with the speaker enumerating his errors. I left some seasons eager to fall, I left some work to bury alive, I let my means of being dissolve, I let my person curl up and die, The last sections identify anxiety as the cause of the speaker‟s inertia. This feeling is underlined by the musician‟s rapid vocal performance. The last line serves as a transition into the chorus. 15 Eating up his innards an unfeasible anxiety, has Brutally committed to relinquishing his privacy, Aligning with the trials of the anti-Midas Nap on the back lawn, look up in the sky, it‟s… The “nap” in both verses may stand for the speaker‟s inertia, but it may as well hint that the chorus is about dreaming. It tells a similar story as the verses, but in a more condensed and surreal way. Pure visions of shapes and colors are cut short by a nightmare that seems to convey a fear of judgment. Shapes falling Out of the fringe, all Heart though we would‟ve made Cowardly kings, they will Chop you down just to Count your rings Perhaps it is a description of the society, which kills the inner child in every person and judges them by materialistic standards – how many rings, jewelry, belongings, they have managed to collect. One can also sense a fear of aging and being judged for trying new things at a certain point in life. If one looks at this from an autobiographical perspective, as Aesop Rock himself suggests, it is quite surprising that he should feel as a failed artist, since he certainly achieved success as an independent musician. Despite that, he may feel that by focusing on music, which gave him financial support, he let this visual passion of his die out. Whether it is his own judgment (which the pronoun “we” may suggest in the previous line: “All heart though, we would have made / Cowardly kings” – as if this self-doubt is a side effect of sensitivity) or the judgment of people around him, it is as devastating as being chopped down. These voices of “cowardly kings” are like fear masked as rationality, providing reasons for not following passions and governing over peoples‟ lives. It is hard for him to admit that he used to draw because he still feels this passion inside of him, but he rationally sees that as something that is gone – he will not achieve such a level in visual arts as he could have if he decided to focus on it as a young person. Fortunately, the listeners can feel this passion channeled into the music of Aesop Rock. 16 2.2. Coming-Of-Age of the MTV Generation (“ZZZ Top”) The next song I will analyze is “ZZZ Top” from the 2012 album Skelethon. It can be described as a text playing with the device of ekphrasis – it tells the stories of three teenagers finding a sense of identity in belonging to a subculture, and, more specifically, vandalizing their environment with symbols they associate with. The first character is a rock fan, who scratches “Zoso,” a symbol of Jimmy Page from Led Zeppelin‟s fourth album, into his school desk. The second person writes “Zulu” on his shoes. This comes from the “Zulu Nation,” an organization formed by Afrika Bambaata, one of hip-hop pioneers, in order to spread positive values in black communities; the character in the song was specifically inspired by a detail from the cover art of the single “Renegades of Funk” by Bambaata. The last character uses lipstick to write “Zeroes,” the name of a punk band, on a door of a bathroom stall. The title is an allusion to the band ZZ Top, whose aim was to be at the very bottom of any alphabetical lists – here, the three Z‟s stand for the symbols the youth create. They have different issues, but making these symbols gives them a sense of empowerment and identity. These lowly acts make them feel elevated. As in “Rings,” the structure of the song is very regular. Each verse is dedicated to a different character. The introductory couplets set up the main focus of the song. They begin with “Somebody in a cultivated moment of […]” after which comes a feeling that drives each of the characters: distress, distrust, resolve. The characters rebel, respectively, against their school, their family, and the music establishment. At the beginning, they are described by means of the singular “they,” which delays unraveling any details about the protagonists, but the very first word, “somebody,” underlines the fact that at the moment the characters feel that they have an identity. The second lines‟ beginning is: “Composed themselves enough […]” The word “composed” puts the focus both on the visual composition of the symbols as well as the protagonists‟ composure when making them. This self-affirming effect of marking one‟s presence with symbols seems to be the main premise of the song. The song is full of vivid imagery describing both the appearance of the protagonists, which is an important part of their identity, as well as the process of creating their symbols. At about two/thirds into each verse, the process is described letter by letter: 17 Watch, capital “zed,” slowly maneuver the “o,” “s” is the most Difficult to control, finally “o,” into the eye of the goliath you go, Oops, capital “zed,” radical “u” in the cut, truly to beautiful “L”oser it up, “u” and he done, collateral damage a future alum, Snatch!, capital “zed,” terrible “e” in vermillion red, gimme an “R,” “o” and a slippery “s,” over a web of the shittiest bands, The first character is distressed in school for unknown reasons. Here, his carving is like a pebble in the eye of Goliath – the school, or educational system. The concluding part of the verse indicates that music and schooling are for him like two opposite vectors of his personal development: “Lecture at a faster rate than class was making him develop / Backwards, it would appear you‟ve spelled out all the answers.” The plethora of different kinds of music that inspire him overpowers the backwards drag of the rigid schooling, and it gives him a direction in life. In the second verse, there is an interesting depiction of the youth‟s efforts to recreate real cover art of a music single. The character tries to recreate details from the comic-styled artwork, carefully rendering the perspective and adding such nuances as motion lines; the final effect is presumably less than perfect, but it succeeds in taking aback people around the teenager – possibly it is about his family, the word “strip” suggesting a strip of land, or a household, whose inhabitants are ridden with “social neurosis.” This verse seems to be mostly about the character‟s rebellion against his family and finding a creative outlet in order to find himself. They was tryin‟ to do the buckle font from “renegades of funk,” in a 3D frame of exploding brick, and whiz-lines for the locally motion sick, beyond Gross but evoked a host of “oh dip” where a social neurosis owned the whole strip, Later there is almost a cinematic sequence focusing on different details of the character writing on his shoes. The poetic lens first focuses on the flashlight that the boy is holding, presumably working in darkness to avoid alarming his mother. It moves to the chiseled tip of the marker he uses; the ink coming out of the marker is described metaphorically as venom being milked out of a snake. Then, the boy‟s way of holding the 18 marker is humorously described as a “pistol grip.” Finally, the work takes shape, and the image is translated onto the boy‟s shoes – from “milled vellum to scissor kick.” The metaphorical imagery seems to be inspired by action movie clichés, which fits the type of narration introduced here. It suggests that the protagonist has been influenced by this genre and evokes the rush that the boy feels secretly doing something forbidden. Flashlight, chisel tips, milked venom, pistol grip, Images relocated from milled vellum to scissor kick, The final three lines of the second verse constitute a simile consisting of metaphors with multiple layers of meaning: “Analog, and he finds, animated colors on a / Page, like synthesized cultures on a stage.” The first part refers to the character‟s drawings, or his graffiti. It is seen as a visual counterpart to the music. Afrika Bambaataa and the Soulsonic Force, who are referenced profusely in the verse, used to wear outfits on stage that combined elements from various cultures, as seen in the music video for “Renegades of Funk.” They visually “synthesized cultures on a stage.” Their music was driven by synthesizers. Another viable interpretation for this fragment is that the second line is actually about looking at bacterial cultures through a microscope: a stage is a part of the microscope where the observed specimen is placed. The boy is as engrossed in making and studying his art as a scientist is at work. This mirrors the defiance of the character who rebelled against school in the first verse. Again, something that is not highly regarded by the society is depicted here as a serious activity that drives the young protagonists‟ personal development. In the last verse, Aesop Rock again puts much effort to convey the canvas and the actions of the adolescent fan of music. When the teenager looks at the stall, he is “scoping every dog and pony previously scrawled with a / Festering hate for the gum drop edge.” This kind of a reconstruction of idiomatic expressions is quite a frequent device for Aesop Rock; here, it conveys both the meaning associated with the phrase “dog and pony show,” as well as all the demeaning associations the teenager has with the other bands, comparing them to dogs and ponies. The character marks his presence with a lipstick‟s heavily contrasting “vermillion red” on “a web of the shittiest bands,” the collection of names on the door. One more characteristic of the song that should be underlined is its heavy intertextuality. Beyond, of course, the symbols that the lyrics revolve around, the lyrics are filled with allusions to the bands, songs, and even the appearance of the musicians that the 19 adolescent protagonists are fans of, as well as some eclectic references that the lyrics of Aesop Rock frequently contain. To illustrate this, the first verse references Jimmy Page‟s “technicolor Telecaster” guitar and Led Zeppelin‟s song “When the Levee Breaks,” but the carving of “Zoso” with a switchblade knife that the protagonist stole from his brother “who‟d / Branched off into ninja stars” is described in a line that puts together Julius Caesar‟s sword from Geoffrey of Monmouth‟s History of the Kings of Britain with a character from the long- running Peanuts comic strip – a teacher, with whom one of the schoolchildren was in love: “Like Crocea Mors in an arcade drop claw gouging a valentine for Miss Othmar.” This kind of writing definitely steeps the song in the cultural reality it describes and makes unusual connections between different cultural symbols and traditions. The song is also produced by Aesop Rock. Even musically, the song transcends genres: its BPM of 72 is unusual for rap music, which is usually composed in around 90 beats per minute. Between the slower and faster fragments of the song, the rapper switches between the long lines and splitting his bars into two, maintaining the feeling of urgency in the song. Sonically, the song relies on guitars and real drums; Aesop Rock, however, splits and digitally arranges these instruments in the manner of a hip hop producer. In this chapter, I have presented examples of Aesop Rock‟s texts that are grounded in a particular reality – they sketch out fictional characters and have a clear storyline. We could see how Aesop Rock structures his songs to tell a cohesive story, how he divides his songs into verses that show different shades of similar problems. In the next chapter, I will discuss the second group of the musician‟s works: the non-linear songs. 20 CHAPTER 3 THE NON-LINEAR SONGS 3.1. “To Pick Apart the Day” (Labor Days) McLuhan disapprovingly remarked that “everything in life after the Greeks was reduced to the uniform and the homogenous, Swift‟s island of Laputa,” where “thought had to have a beginning, a middle and an end” (69). The non-linear style of Aesop Rock certainly stands in contrast to that, showing an arguably more organic approach to writing. By non-linear, I mean that which is not based on cohesive storytelling, but rather that which produces impressionistic poetic collages. Such songs are like collections of intricate images circling around a certain topic. It is hard to grasp everything from top to bottom, but when listening to his songs, I frequently find myself contemplating some particular fragment that has managed to create an interesting image in my mind. This way I unveil image by image, until I am able to get the gist of these chains of thoughts. The allure is in the fact that with a linear story, once we understand it, it gets embedded in the memory in a more or less rigid manner, but somehow the non-linear songs of Aesop Rock manage to conjure up different images and interpretations with each and every new listen; the songs are often too packed with imagery to take in and sequence everything in order over the course of a several-minute long song. What adds to this density is the fact that he frequently switches between slang and formal language and that he juxtaposes allusions from completely different sources. This might strike one as incoherent. I would argue, however, that the mind does not discriminate between the sources of what it perceives as connected. To a degree, our memory is a sum of what we have experienced, and, indeed, the modern artists‟ influences stem from extremely various sources. Labor Days is described as a concept album about work (Mentzer 2005), and this theme is definitely prominent in several songs on the album, such as “Labor,” “One Brick,” or “9-5‟ers Anthem.” I believe, however, that this label stems more from the title‟s influence on the audience than the songs‟ content itself, as there is definitely much more to this collection: among others, “No Regrets” comes from this album. In this subchapter, I pick out fragments from three different songs from the album: “Daylight,” “The Yes and the Y‟all” and “Battery.” I discuss how Aesop Rock describes urban life with the perceptual sensitivity of a 21 visual artist and how he enriches his lyrics with eclectic symbolism, mostly concentrating on imagery coming from the Christian tradition. One key to interpreting an Aesop Rock song lies in the chorus of “Daylight,” one of his most popular, although by no means one of the most accessible, songs: “All I ever wanted was to pick apart the day, put the / Pieces back together my way.” The aim is to show the external world as processed by the individual, characterized by a fragmentation of memory and idiosyncratic sequences of thoughts. “Daylight” begins thus: Put one up for shackle-me-not clean logic procreation. I did Not invent the wheel I was the crooked spoke adjacent. While the Triple sixers lassos keep angels roped in the basement, I Walk the block with a halo on a stick poking your patience. Y‟all catch a 30 second flash visual. This is perhaps best approached as a string of loosely associated images which blend one into another. The first four lines are based on circular objects: shackles, a wheel, a lasso, a halo. This can spark further associations: when we hear “wheel” after “procreation,” a biological life cycle might emerge; the speaker presents himself as outside of it, a broken part of the machine. Saying “triple sixers” instead of just “devils” might make us see the physical resemblance of the number 6 to the following “lassos.” “Clean logic procreation” are the effects of logical thinking. If we parse “shackle-me-not” (which is a reference to a skateboarding video by this title) as an adjective, this would mean that the logic brings freedom. If we see “shackle” as a verb, the meaning is opposite. The interpretation might vary with each listen, just as one might over time change their preconceived notions of the advantage of rationality over intuition and vice versa. The speaker calls himself “the crooked spoke adjacent,” presenting himself as an outcast, an untrustworthy person, as opposed to the logical inventor. He is not a holy man, but with his “halo on a stick” he has both feet on the ground, he remains free, as opposed to the “angels roped in the basement.” “Poking your patience” is teasing the listeners, who at this point is more likely than not to be flabbergasted by what they have heard. The fifth line is uttered past the thirty second mark of the song, which is a standard timespan of a TV advertisement; “flash visual” referring to both the brashness of television and the rapidly changing imagery in the song. This kind of writing does not seem to provide one correct way of interpretation. It is up to the listener to connect the pieces: once one is interested in getting something out of the song, the possibilities are amazingly broad. I doubt I have even come close to exhausting the 22 viable possibilities for interpretation of this fragment, which consists of just five lines. With the exception of “No Regrets,” which I have analyzed in the previous chapter, Aesop Rock maintains this dense style throughout the whole Labor Days album. Another song from this release, “The Yes and the Y‟all,” seems to be a kind of an artist‟s manifesto – depicting the hardships of being a creative person, but also a drive to live a meaningful life. The song has some fitting examples of the “visual thinking” I have been elaborating on earlier: […] My stilts truly personify this Urbanite flea circus we urchins murk in on daily. I Catapult brain opera past basic. Tear my own Face off in the finale; stick around, it‟s ill. Diabolical prodigal son spill grimace. If you had one more Eye you‟d be a Cyclops, which explains missing the premise. Here the speaker assumes the roles of performers: first a circus entertainer, then an actor in the opera. The “urbanite flea circus” is a metaphor of the city. The performer – the artist – is in the spotlight, shedding light on the life, although in a not particularly refined manner of a clown, and the “we” suggests that he does not see himself as someone above the audience. “Murk” can mean “darkness” or “murder.” The members of the audience – the city dwellers, “urchins” – are in the darkness, not knowing each other and fighting. Later we move into a “brain opera,” which is presumably a metaphor for the kind of art made by the speaker, as well as an allusion to Todd Machover‟s interactive art project “where art, technology and science [merged] in a journey of music exploration” (Brain Opera). The speaker‟s face is a mask, which he shall only remove “in the finale” – presumably upon his death. Shakespeare‟s “All the world‟s a stage” might come into mind. This is extended in a grotesque manner in the following line, where the “grimace” is “spilled” by the “prodigal son” – is his face melting, or is he crying? In the latter case, breaking down in public might be akin to losing one‟s face. Perhaps the speaker says that he is overwhelmed by his role in the spotlight and does not believe in his own worth by referring to himself as a “diabolical prodigal son.” The biblical character rehearsed his speech before returning to his father; before he was able to deliver the whole of it, the father interrupted him to organize the “music and dancing” and celebrate, since the son “was dead and is alive again.” On the other hand, ironically enough, I might have misinterpreted this, because perhaps the speaker is referring here to the listener: in this case, he seems to be saying “do not cringe at what I say; you would understand if you had an imagination.” Later in the song there is a very vivid sequence that utilizes anaphora, homophones and synecdoches: 23 […] I‟ve seen Friends bow to needles. I‟ve seen needles bow to records. I‟ve seen Bows break. I‟ve seen God bow and make the clouds shake. I‟ve seen the Proud break. I‟ve seen a lot for a blind soldier who Tattooed a cityscape on skin to blend in. […] The repetition of “I‟ve seen” emphasizes the subjectivity of perception. Notice how the rhythm of the lyrics puts the objects in focus, but between the stressed nouns, it is all tied together with the persona of the speaker, the observer. The musician flips the meaning of the words in consequent lines: a needle of a syringe becomes a needle of a record player, the verb “bow” becomes a noun. Music might be seen as a way out of a bleak life of addiction. The spelling of “bow” suggests a part of a ship, evoking an image of a storm, in line with the apocalyptic imagery that is resplendent in the song. If we hear it, instead, as “boughs,” we might imagine trees broken by thunderbolts. The power of nature humbles the proud. The last line is a very visual metaphor for, I think, the homeless in cities. “A blind soldier” might stand for a crippled war veteran. His “cityscape tattoo” means that he is invisible, or ignored, by other people. The ambiguity of “I‟ve seen a lot for a blind soldier” suggests that either the speaker portrays himself as one, being obliged by whatever forces to fight – keep on creating art – but lacking the means or direction in doing so, or that he relates to this incapacitated person, trying to see “for him” – as if he, the visual artist, was an opposite of the “blind soldier.” The theme of homelessness, city, and similar biblical allusions are also present in “Battery” from the same album, which seems to revolve around the need to find purpose in life in spite of transience of everything. The fragment: “When the / Flame fades consider my flat line a soldier sample” again describes the speaker as a “soldier,” referencing his creative passion. The following fragment portrays dreams in a similarly surreal way to the “blind soldier” metaphor – as a painting on the inside of the speaker‟s eyelids. […] Waterfall, bricklayer, Pincushion crawl out. There‟s smoke in my iris but I Painted a sunny day on the insides of my eyelids so I‟m Ready now. What you ready for? I‟m ready for life in this City and my wings have grown almost enough to lift me. The city seems to be coming to life in the morning and its dwellers “crawl out.” “Waterfall, bricklayer, pincushion” seems to be a description of an average citizen we pass on 24 the street: someone with an alcohol problem (“waterfall”), who silently endures the pains of life (“pincushion”), yet partakes in the building of the society (“bricklayer”). The “painting on the iris” seems to represent dreams of the speaker. Dreaming empowers the speaker; it is a way of coping with adversity in life, the smoke that gets into his eyes. In the second verse, the speaker seems to want to become a Jesus-like figure, a spiritual leader. His high self-image is destroyed towards the end of the verse. Followers of religion seem to be equated here with followers of celebrities, but at the same time the speaker seems to praise the power of human spirit, which ceaselessly tries to reach something immortal and perfect, despite its inevitable transitoriness. Hearts part ocean scapes just to watch the starlet unfold. It‟s like Sketching a circle in the dirt with a pointed stick knowing the Wind will kill it someday, still it calms my burning wits for now. […] The first line refers to Moses. It seems to argue that people are willing to believe in miracles just to be able to follow a leader. The second line seems to refer to the death of Archimedes, who was said to have been killed by a Roman soldier while sketching a circle in the sand, saying: “Do not disturb my circles!” (Death of Archimedes). The circle stands for perfection. The person sketching this circle knows it is transitory and its perfection is only an idea, or a symbol, yet it is still something that he needs to pursue – it “calms his burning wits for now.” Note the continuity of the “circular” symbolism that began in “Daylight:” […] I fed „em bedlam diluted in Limelight „till that rookie boogie graduated hostile. Now the Vehicle is grandeur and it veered over the median the Second my halo ran out of helium. Demoted to Thorn crown. Talk about numbskull. I was born bound to a Stencil called symmetry but my energy‟s a rental. The speaker seems to be an artist figure who reflects with disgust on his past works. He sees himself as someone “feeding bedlam diluted in limelight” to his followers – confused nonsense on a stage. “Rookie boogie” seems to be a derogatory description of rap – once the speaker grew as an artist, it started to generate negativity for him (“graduated hostile”). He viewed himself with grandeur, until some event left the speaker‟s ego shattered – perhaps a moment of self-realization, or a mental breakdown. Compare the carefree quality of the “Daylight” excerpt, with the speaker “walking the block with a halo on the stick,” and this image of the flat-out tired artist, whose “halo ran out of helium.” His saintly self-image 25 shattered and proved to be an illusion, with a painful “thorn-crown” in its place. He feels like a “numbskull” – both like a fool, and like Jesus crucified. The last two lines convey the speaker‟s innate drive to create art, hindered by exhaustion. In the conclusions to both verses of the song, the speaker focuses on the character of a homeless man who “makes a rusty trumpet sound like the music that angels make.” Again, this conveys sensitivity towards the excluded members of the society. However, in line with the apocalyptic theme of much of the album, the final lines of the song point out a more complex interpretation. […] I wanna be Something spectacular on the day the sun runs out of batteries. Attach my fashion to the casualties of anarchy. Save my nickels up to buy that homeless man a brand new horn, then Sit up on his crate as a witness to beauty born like This... This recalls the Apocalypse of John and the seven angels sounding their trumpets. The homeless man can be interpreted as one of the angels foreshadowing the end of the world. There is a feeling of vanity in all earthly items and an irony in the notion of saving money on the day of the apocalypse. I would like also to point out that after each verse there is an interlude with horn samples. This is an example of synergy between the musical and the lyrical aspects of the song, where both elements interplay with each other for a deepened artistic effect. I hope these short excerpts and analyses managed to convey the quality of the lyrics on the album. This is by no means a thorough examination of the whole of “Labor Days” – such an undertaking would require a work of a much bigger volume – I have just shown one facet of this gem of an album. Among other things, I think my analyses have shown the musician‟s complicated attitude toward Christianity. This will be further explored in the following sub- chapter. 26 3.2. “Final Answer – Not to Be” (“Leisureforce”) The last piece of writing that I would to analyze is the first verse of “Leisureforce,” the opening track from the album Skelethon. It is an extraordinarily rich and unique description of the inner struggles of a person undergoing some kind of mental distress. The musician suggested that the song is about leading an isolated lifestyle, and the title is supposed to sound like the name of a “superhero team with the superpower of chilling” (“Behind Skelethon”). It is a humorous way to describe the song, and the song itself is definitely far from being a grave self-contemplation, but this should not deter the listener from taking a closer look at its amazingly complex structure when it comes to its metaphorical imagery and the eclectic symbolism. The song seems to tell the story of an individual‟s escape into isolation, his internal struggle and descent into the depths of mental disturbance. There seem to be two intertwining levels of reality in the speaker‟s narration: the surface level, which in the first verse barely ever manages to shine through the darkness of hellish imagery, is the “real life” of the protagonist, barricaded from the world in his apartment. The more figurative imagery describes his inner struggles using various allusions and symbols related to hell and death from various cultural sources: modern pop culture, Christianity, ancient mythology, philosophy. Indeed, one of the possible ways of interpreting the verse is to see it as a struggle between two systems of thought, a philosophy and a religion, which coexisted in the Roman Empire in the first centuries of the Common Era: stoicism and Christianity. Ronald Palmer, whose Looking At Philosophy… inspired me to view the song in the light of these two systems, briefly looks at their main similarities and differences. Stoicism and Christianity “share the doctrine of resignation, the disdain for attachment to earthly things, and the concern with conforming to the will of divine Providence” (Palmer, 99). The stoics, however, differed from the Christians mainly in their lenient approach to suicide and a more acquiescent approach to the structures in power. Palmer provides citations from stoics that represent this approach using similar images. Epictetus said of suicide: “If the smoke is moderate I will stay: if excessive, I go out” (267). In Meditations, Marcus Aurelius phrased it thus: “The house is smoky, and I quit it” (523). While many Christians, and Jesus himself, became martyrs for opposing Roman persecution, Seneca, the most famous representative of stoic philosophy, quietly accepted the Emperor Nero‟s order to commit suicide and opened 27 his veins in a bathtub. The individual described in the song seems to be put in a similar kind of a predicament. He seems to be trying to cope with reality by looking into these moral systems for help, but instead, he finds further agitation in their contradictions. After all, in the modern times, less and less people identify themselves as unyielding followers of one particular dogma; we are a synthesis of various systems, collecting fragments of wisdom to build our own idiosyncratic worldview. I believe Aesop Rock‟s writing represents this in a unique poetical form. Postcards from the pink bath paint leisure as a Cloaked horse through a stained-glass Saint Peter, The “pink bath” in the first line of the song might stand for three things – a literal bath of pink color, where the speaker indulges in idleness, or one of two more ominous pictures: the speaker commits suicide in the vein of Seneca, and the water is colored pink, or he bathes in blood diluted with water, a vampiric trope, which fits the theme of isolation. Why are the “postcards” representing the “leisure” in this scene compared to a “cloaked horse through a stained-glass Saint Peter?” I believe this is an ironical statement, as all three possibilities I have considered here might be seen as being against the Christian way of living. Saint Peter is the gatekeeper of heaven in Christian tradition. When the cloaked horse (perhaps another allusion to the Apocalypse) smashes the image of the saint, it seems to symbolize blasphemy, triumph of power over religion or spirituality and a loss of hope in redemption after the earthly life. The protagonist will be prohibited from entering heaven in all three scenarios the first line seems to suggest: either because of the sins of sloth, suicide, or murder. An extended process of dying and coming back to life is shown in the following part of the verse, which is perhaps inspired by Tacitus‟ account of Seneca‟s death: he was unable to swiftly pass away after slitting his veins multiple times and drinking poison, and finally perished when he entered a warm bath. Hack faith healer, cheat death to the very end, Cherry wooden nickels on his specs for the ferryman X, o, zodiac, a pentagram expo, Pet cemetery in electric fresco, What follows is the speaker‟s departure into a state of being on the verge of two worlds, the worlds of the living and the deceased. It is as if even in the afterlife he has troubles with succumbing to supernatural beliefs. Both “hack” and “cheat” are words from the computer-related jargon. Excepting the possibility of the speaker wanting to physically assault 28 the “faith healer” – as if “hacking” him to pieces – we may infer that the speaker tries to evade the inevitable by means of logic or science; he tries to “cheat” death just as he can prove that a “faith healer” is a fraudster. The next lines are about the speaker fooling Charon (“the ferryman / X, o”) – the “executive officer” of the boat transporting souls to the underworld. The “cherry wooden nickels on his specs” are the speaker‟s counterfeit Charon‟s obols, silver coins placed on the eyes or the mouth of the deceased as a fare. The line “X, O, zodiac a pentagram expo” refers back to the first line and puts the literal “postcard” in focus. The speaker writes his final farewell, which begins conventionally, with “hugs and kisses,” but then he immediately clarifies this – such a combination of words probably alludes to the Zodiac killer, the pseudonym of an unidentified serial killer who operated in the United States in the 1970s and corresponded with the police using cryptic messages, signing them with a “ ” symbol – a rotated and combined XO. What follows is a “pentagram expo” – a pentagram is probably the most prevalently recognized today for its use in modern occultism and as a symbol of the Church of Satan, established by Anton LaVey2. We can imagine this postcard and trace the progressively worsening mental state of the speaker, who begins writing his farewell to the world of living conventionally, then reinterprets it as a sign of the murderer, and then proceeds to draw a “pentagram” exposition, probably filling the rest of the card with the satanic symbol drawn in various styles, like doodles of a disturbed middle school pupil. Then again, if we combine the two latter symbols, “zodiac, a pentagram expo,” we are left with the speaker‟s dismal perception of the night sky, as if he were looking up and trying to combine the stars into constellations, but instead they all formed pentagrams. “Pet cemetery in electric fresco” combines a popular horror fiction reference with some Gothic imagery and a painting technique. Pet Sematary is a novel by Stephen King, whose plot orbits around the notion of coming back from the dead. In the novel, characters buried beyond the “pet sematary” came back to life as evil. Perhaps “fresco” can be interpreted in its archaic meaning of “freshness” of the night, as in the speech of Satan in Matthew Prior‟s “Hans Carvel:” 2 Aesop Rock‟s song “Acid King” from his 2019 album, Malibu Ken, made in collaboration with producer Tobacco, among other themes, explores the public fear against Satanism in the 1980s USA and its connection to heavy metal music: “More Anton LaVey than Saint Michael / … / […] fly with the pentagram pilots.” It is based on a real story of Ricky Kasso, a teenager fascinated with Satanism and related imagery, who gruesomely murdered his friend while being under the influence of drugs. This happened in Northport, New York, the village where Aesop Rock was born and raised. 29 I cannot ſtay Flaring in ſun-ſhine all the day: For, entre nous, we helliſh ſprites, Love more the freſco of the nights; We can imagine some kind of a clandestine ritual of bringing the dead back to life. “Electric” can mean electrifying, or with a thunderstorm in the background, or literally done by means of electricity – doctor Frankenstein‟s chosen medium. “Fresco” is a technique of painting on wet plaster, which here becomes something akin to a Promethean sculpting of man in clay – “fresco” would here depict this Frankenstein-like figure of the speaker as an artist who creates monstrosities. “Abaddon” is most likely used here in the Old Testament sense of an underworld, or a bottomless pit the speaker is at the threshold of. Abaddon threshold flash-forged in the galley, With undead orcs pulling oars through the algae… Next, there is again a hellish scene taking place on a ship, with a “forge,” and “orcs pulling oars through the algae.” “Orcs” are mostly imagined today as fantasy creatures as devised by Tolkien, but this word‟s history goes back to Old English and Beowulf. Its meaning is unclear, but it seems to have related to a hell‟s inhabitant or an infernal god – it was most likely a borrowing from Latin “orcus,” meaning “underworld” or “afterlife.” A galley is a ship propelled by oars, but also a kitchen on a ship or aircraft. On the most literal level, the speaker may currently be in the kitchen of his apartment (moving from the bathroom) and this is a description of what is going on in his mind. “Flash” is the left-over material at the edge of a mold in forging. Perhaps the speaker is making food in what is to him like “hell‟s kitchen:” Smash cut to a smoke-bombed quarantine Guards like “All signs correlate with sorcery.” It‟s more a dormant cell of valor as awoken by the Smell of sordid power and defecting shortly after… After a short instrumental interlude, the events seem to move to the speaker‟s bedroom, his hideaway, the “smoke-bombed quarantine.” “Smash cut” is an unexpected transition between scenes in movies – we briefly move from the protagonist‟s mental self- flagellation to his sudden realization of the shabbiness of his whereabouts. On a literal level, of course, this room might be filled with cigarette or marijuana smoke produced by the idle inhabitant. A “smoke bomb” might recall an action movie prop or a weapon in a first-person 30 shooter video game, but I am also tempted to connect it to the previously cited Epicureus‟ and Marcus Aurelius‟ symbol of a troubled situation in life that justifies a suicide. A “smoke- bombed quarantine” would suggest that the speaker is sick, in any sense of this word, and he was put into isolation by some outside forces. Perhaps he poses some kind of a threat to the society. The stoics could leave the “smoked house,” but the speaker here is quarantined – for some reason (perhaps a Christian upbringing) suicide is not an option for the speaker, and he is unable to escape this situation. The “guards” in the next line are probably any housemates, perhaps including the speaker‟s mother (introduced in the ending of the second verse), who are bewildered by whatever “sorcery” is happening inside the room. The speaker explains that “it‟s more a dormant cell of valor” – a cell can mean both the hermit‟s room and a part of his body, as if the two were a merged organism. The following lines seem to describe an almost catatonic-like scenario, where the speaker remains “dormant,” unless approached by “sordid power” – presumably, the pressures of society. One might suppose that for the speaker, anybody might be like Nero, who ordered Seneca to commit suicide. Fist bump dry land, brackish, cat nap 15, back to swiss-cheese the flagship, Uh, blue in the menacing grip of a Day for which you‟re manifestly unfit Again, we return to the imagery of the painful journey. A fist bump is a friendly gesture, but the speaker exchanges it with dry land, evoking an image of a person stranded on an uninhabited island. The speaker seems to be having serious troubles just getting by from one moment to another. He naps for fifteen minutes, and then he goes back to “swiss-cheese the flagship.” He literally has a snack – a decent Emmentaler, apparently – but figuratively he is fighting again with the hell-bound orcs on the galley. Swiss-cheesing would be shooting at the flagship with a machine gun and making holes in it, a scene that might have been inspired by classic Disney cartoons. This is further enhanced by the changed delivery of the final line of the verse and a switch-up in the music. Most of the verse is relatively free-flowing, but the meter of the last two lines: “Uh, blue in the menacing grip of a / Day for which you‟re manifestly unfit” consists of regular dactyls. The musician also isolated the drums for this last part of the verse, which beat out a rigid rhythm underneath the words, sounding indeed like a machine gun. The stress on the last syllable makes the ending sudden, and the phrase “manifestly unfit” sounds almost like a court‟s sentence. This sums up the whole story up to 31 this point – it is about being mentally disturbed to the point of being unable to cope with daily life. While the first verse is about the speaker‟s tear between being alive and dying, functioning in society and retreating, at the beginning of the second verse he seems to have finally made his decision – “Final answer „not to be‟, „not to be‟ is right! Next / Question – to build winged shoes or autophagy.” I see this as a description of a person who is unable to live in the society, and he is faced with two choices – either he will become an artist and dedicate himself to honing his craft, which is represented here by building winged shoes, or he will destroy himself. The speaker chooses the productive first path, and the rest of the song is a more or less humorous description of a life of a reclusive artist – a semiautobiographical theme which goes all the way back to the early works of the musician, although explored in a vastly different manner. The humor is present in such lines as “Patently adhering to the chandelier at key-in-door to / Usher in the understated anarchy of Leisureforce.” The first line suggests that the speaker is guarding his privacy to the point that he is glued to the key ring in the door – and he has so many keys that it forms a “chandelier.” Alternatively, we can imagine that when he hears that someone is turning a key in the door to open it, he jumps up with fear on the chandelier hanging from the ceiling, like Tom from Tom and Jerry. By closing himself from the outside world, he “ushers in an understated anarchy of Leisureforce.” This again suggests a kind of evacuation from the forces that rule the world and establishing an enclave of art and anarchy in one‟s apartment. All in all, in my opinion, this is one of the best pieces of writing that Aesop Rock has ever created. The sheer richness of imagery, the firm grasp on multiple meanings of words: all of the poetic elements here are astonishingly complex. In this chapter, I have written about songs that are separated in time by over a decade. We can see that the musician‟s style has evolved considerably, the syntax of the lines being more regular than on “Labor Days,” yet when it comes to the figurative aspect of the writing, it is at least as rich as his previous musical endeavors. 32 CONCLUSION Let us go back to the musician‟s interview with Joseph DiPalo, where we could learn that Aesop Rock‟s music is treated by some as “random and nonsensical.” To a certain degree I could argue with the former adjective; the lyrics are as random as the world around us is. I think, however, that the notion of these songs being “nonsensical” has been disproven by me in this thesis. To say that they “make sense” would be an understatement; my overview of several of the musician‟s texts has shown that he has been consistently exploring similar themes throughout his career and, in spite of his lyrics‟ density, the sheer range of the interpretative possibilities is highly rewarding to the curious listeners. The main premise of this thesis has been to look at rap as poetry. The musician, however, prefers to distance himself from this label: I didn‟t go to school for this stuff. It wasn‟t like I was going to be giving out writing on paper for someone else to analyze. Those weren‟t the things that turned me on. I was writing on paper so I could rap it over music. That was my form and how it was going to be delivered. … There have been times where I‟ll donate lyrics to a book or something and it‟s like, you can put this in there but it‟s not a poem, it‟s lyrics to a song. In my opinion, there‟s somewhat of a difference. I feel like literature might be more the shi-shi gallery and I‟m more a graffiti guy. People might say that what I do is poetic, and it‟s cool, I appreciate that, but it‟s somewhat frightening. Because now you hold this label of being a poet or a writer and I don‟t know if I‟m qualified to do that properly. (Aesop Rock 2007) What we see here is not a distancing from poetry per se, but from the popular perception of poetry among the public. Adam Bradley accurately describes this in the following way: “most people associate poetry with hard work; it is something to be studied in school or puzzled over for hidden insights. Poetry stands at an almost unfathomable distance from our daily lives, or at least so it seems given how infrequently we seek it out” (xii). He cites the poet Adrian Mitchell: “Most people ignore poetry because most poetry ignores most people” (xiii). Was not poetry originally a way of tightening the bonds in society, a social art, a pleasurable activity? In today‟s world, this function is carried out by rap because poetry, as it is publicly perceived, has lost this quality and has become separated from the average person. A conclusion that comes into my mind is the apparent need to try to deflate the connotations of the word “poetry,” and, at the same time, to be receptive to poetry happening 33 outside of the traditional, literary, and elite, circles. As a result, such talented wordsmiths as Aesop Rock will not have to worry whether they are “properly qualified” to bear the label of a poet. 34 WORKS CITED Primary sources: Aesop Rock. “Battery.” Labor Days, Definitive Jux, 2001. Aesop Rock. “Daylight.” Labor Days, Definitive Jux, 2001. Aesop Rock. “Leisureforce.” Skelethon, Rhymesayers Entertainment, 2012. Aesop Rock. “Nickel Plated Pockets.” Daylight EP, Definitive Jux, 2002. Aesop Rock. “No Regrets.” Labor Days, Definitive Jux, 2001. Aesop Rock. “None Shall Pass.” None Shall Pass, Definitive Jux, 2007. Aesop Rock. “Rings.” The Impossible Kid, Rhymesayers Entertainment, 2016. Aesop Rock. “The Yes and the Y‟all.” Labor Days, Definitive Jux, 2001. Aesop Rock. “ZZZ Top.” Skelethon, Rhymesayers Entertainment, 2012. Aesop Rock. The Living Human Curiosity Sideshow, Definitive Jux, 2005. Malibu Ken. “Acid King.” Malibu Ken, Rhymesayers Entertainment, 2019. Secondary sources: Aesop Rock. “Aesop Rock Interview: His Best Song, Struggling to Be Happy With His Career.” By Erikson Corniel. YouTube, 12 Aug. 2015, uploaded by DJBooth, www.youtube.com/watch?v=x_hduf2lm0U. Accessed 10 Jan. 2019. Aesop Rock. “Aesop Rock Premieres „The Impossible Kid‟ and Explains How It‟s a Re- Creation of „The Shining‟.” By Jonathan Dick. Noisey, 25 Apr. 2016, www.noisey.vice.com/en_us/article/65z8yx/aesop-rock-the-impossible-kid-interview- stream. Accessed 20 Oct. 2018. 35 Aesop Rock. “Behind Skelethon: Leisureforce,” uploaded by Rhymesayers Entertainment, 26 Jun. 2012a, www.youtube.com/watch?v=MnyuUel8D94. Aesop Rock. “Graffiti or Vermeer?” Interview by Joseph DiPalo, Guernica, 12 Sep. 2007, www.guernicamag.com/graffiti_or_vermeer/. Accessed 8 Jan. 2019. Aesop Rock. “Q&A: Aesop Rock Worked Harder Than Ever for Sixth Album, „Skelethon.‟” Interview by Vijith Assar. Rolling Stone, 10 Jul. 2012b, www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/qa-aesop-rock-worked-harder-than-ever- for-sixth-album-skelethon-249544/. Accessed 8 Jan. 2019. Aesop Rock. Song by song breakdown of The Impossible Kid. Facebook. www.facebook.com/AesopRockWins/posts/1018915581491122. Accessed 10 Jan. 2019. Arnheim, Rudolf. Visual Thinking. University of California Press, 1969. Bradley, Adam. Book of Rhymes: The Poetics of Hip Hop. Basic Civitas Books, 2009. Brain Opera Vienna. www.opera.media.mit.edu/bovienna/indexnew.html. Accessed 12 Jan. 2019. Brandt, Anthony, Molly Gebrian, L. Robert Slevc. “Music and Early Language Acquisition.” Frontiers in Psychology, vol. 3, 2012, www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3439120/pdf/fpsyg-03-00327.pdf. Accessed 8 Jan. 2019. Camp, Bob. “Renegades of Funk,” Afrika Bambaata, Tommy Boy, 1983, cover art. Colby, Barrington. Led Zeppelin IV. Led Zeppelin, Atlantic, 1971, cover art. Daniels, Matthew. Updated: Rappers, Sorted By Size Of Vocabulary. 20 New Rappers Added, Hand-Illustrated. 30 Jul. 2014, www.mfdaniels.tumblr.com/post/93313634355/updated-rappers-sorted-by-size-of- vocabulary-20/. Accessed 13 Oct. 2018. Death of Archimedes. Sources. NYU Mathematics. www.math.nyu.edu/~crorres/Archimedes/Death/Histories.html. Accessed 18 Mar. 2019. 36 Emerson, Ralph Waldo. “Shakspeare; or, the Poet.” Representative Men: Seven Lectures, Project Gutenberg, Aug. 2004, www.gutenberg.org/files/6312/6312-h/6312-h.htm. Accessed 12 Nov. 2018. Epictetus, Discourses of Epictetus, trans. P. E. Matheson, in The Stoic and Epicurean Philosophers: Epicurus, Epictetus, Lucretius, Marcus Aurelius, ed. Whitney J. Oats, Modern Library, 1940. Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, trans. G. Long, in The Stoic and Epicurean Philosophers. McLuhan, Marshall. “Visual and Acoustic Space.” Audio Culture. Readings in Modern Music, edited by Christoph Cox and Daniel Warner, Continuum International Publishing Group, 2004, pp. 67-72. Mentzer, Robert. “That‟s What He‟s Saying?” Chicago Reader, 17 Feb. 2005, www.chicagoreader.com/chicago/thats-what-hes-saying/Content?oid=917995. Accessed 18 Mar. 2019. The Nobel Prize in Literature 2016. NobelPrize.org. Nobel Media AB 2019. www.nobelprize.org/prizes/literature/2016/summary. Accessed 14 Apr. 2019. Ong, Walter. Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the Word. London, Methuen, 1982. Palmer, Donald. Looking at Philosophy: The Unbearable Heaviness of Philosophy Made Lighter. 4th ed., McGraw-Hill, 2005. Prior, Matthew, “Hans Carvel,” in The Poetical Works of Matthew Prior, vol. I, London: W[illiam] Strahan, 1779. Rose, Tricia. Black Noise: Rap Music and Black Culture in Contemporary America. Wesleyan University Press, 1994. Sheffield, Rob. “Why Bob Dylan Deserves His Nobel Prize.” Rolling Stone, 13 Oct. 2016, www.rollingstone.com/music/music-features/why-bob-dylan-deserves-his-nobel- prize-127381. Accessed 12 Nov. 2018. The Zeros. Don't Push Me Around (Rare & Unreleased Classics From '77), BOMP!, 1991, cover art. 37 APPENDIX FULL SONG LYRICS 38 NONE SHALL PASS [Verse 1] Flash that buttery gold, jittery zeitgeist Wither by the watering hole, what a patrol, what are We to heart huckabee art fuckery suddenly? Not enough young in his lung for the waterwings? Colorfully vulgar poacher outta mulch like “I‟m „a pull the pulse out a soldier and bolt.” Fine. Sign of the time we elapse when a Primate climb up a spine and attach. Eye for an eye by the bog life swamps and Vines, they get a rise out of frogs and flies, so when a Dog fight‟s hog-tied prize sorta costs a Life, the mouths water on a fork and knife, and the Allure isn‟t right. It‟s gore on a war-torn Beach where the cash cow‟s actually beef. Blood turns wine when it leak for police like That‟s not a riot it‟s a feast, let‟s eat. [Hook] And I Will remember your name and face on the Day you are judged by the funhouse cast. And I Will rejoice in your fall from grace with a Cane to the sky like “none shall pass.” [Verse 2] Now, if you Never had a day a snow cone couldn‟t fix, you Wouldn‟t relate to the rogue vocoder blitz, how he Spoke through a no-doz motor on the fritz, cuz he Wouldn‟t play roll over fetch like a bitch, and 39 Express no regrets, though he isn‟t worth a homeowner‟s Piss to the jokers who pose by the glitz. Fine. Sign of the swine in the swarm when a King is a whore who comply and conform. Miles outside of the eye of the storm, with a Siphon to lure and a prize and award, while Avoiding the vile and bazaar that is violence and War, true blue triumph is more, like Wait, let it snake up outta the centerfold, let it Break the walls of Jericho. Ready? Go. Sat where the old cardboard city folk swap Tales with heads like every other penny throw. [Hook] [Sampled interlude] I‟m not trying to trick you. You‟ve got a lot of nerve. I‟m not trying to trick you. I‟m trying to help. [Verse 3] OK woke to a grocery list. It Goes like this: duty and death. Anyone object come stand in the way, you could Be my little snake river canyon today, and I Ran with a chain of commands and a jet pack Strap where the back-stab lands if it can. Fine. Sign of the vibe in the crowd when I Cut a belly open to find what climbs out. What a bit of gusto he muster up, to make a Dark horse rush like enough‟s enough, it must „A struck a nerve so they huff and puff, „til all the King‟s men fluster and clusterfuck, and it‟s a 40
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