They taught me how to be logical. Bastards.
I’ve been listening to some classic oldies by rock dinosaurs Supertramp and I’m not ashamed to admit it. Much.
One of their most famous songs is The Logical Song (1979). Listening to it just a few moments ago, I realised how relevant the words are.
Take a listen for yourself…
You don’t know the words? Here ya go…
When I was young
It seemed that life was so wonderful
A miracle, oh it was beautiful, magical
And all the birds in the trees
Well they’d be singing so happily
Joyfully, playfully watching me
But then they sent me away
To teach me how to be sensible
Logical, responsible, practical
And then they showed me a world
Where I could be so dependable
Clinical, intellectual, cynical
There are times when all the world’s asleep
The questions run too deep for such a simple man
Won’t you please, please tell me what we’ve learned?
I know it sounds absurd but please tell me who I am
Now watch what you say for they’ll be calling you a radical
A liberal, a fanatical criminal
Won’t you sign up your name? We’d like to feel you’re
Acceptable, respectable, presentable, a vegetable
Oh, take it, take it, take it, yeah
At night when all the world’s asleep
The questions run so deep for such a simple man
Won’t you please, please tell me what we’ve learned?
I know it sounds absurd but please tell me who I am
Who I am, who I am, who I am…
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Does that resonate with you? For me it is a song about the depressingly familiar road map we all follow in life.
The innocence and joy of childhood pummelled by an education system hell bent on creating malleable and employable citizens.
Those citizens are then sent out into a world of suspicion and fear, their brains numbed into believing it is better to fit in than to stand out.
A world where freedom of speech is allowed, right up to the point you say something controversial, and where you can be criminalised for speaking your mind.
The song is over thirty years old, but the relevance remains. Back then the song predicted a society where we are all just numbers. It seems we haven’t been able to break the cycle in that time. Creativity is still frowned upon in school if it doesn’t fit with improving results. Ask at your next parents’ evening how your child is performing in singing, or gym, or painting. You will get a blank stare.
There is an over-arching emphasis on economic contribution. Go to work. Pay your taxes. What you have left can be spent on the various trappings of modern life, further driving the economy in the same way worker bees drive the hive.
And, just as 30-odd years ago, we are free. Free to do what we are told, free to speak out so long as it isn’t against the war on terror or the war on poverty or the war on inequality.
As I finish this piece, it seems the whole world possibly is asleep. I never did “get” time zones. But I’m not a simple man. The questions run deep but we’ve been asking ourselves them for so long, they’ve become a well known litany. Will this song still be relevant in another 32 years?
I pray to my own personal got that it isn’t.
I was inspired to write this ad hoc piece purely on the basis of listening to one song. Ask me tomorrow and the song will be different. Is there a song which sums up your views on life? Does this song have meaning for you?
(Logical Song performed by Supertramp, written by R. Davies and R. Hodgson)
I still love this song.
It is a great tune!
I like to think that the kids school isn’t so driven that non-academic areas are ignored. For a start, the whole of year 4 have been learning the ukulele recently. I guess the system pushes them to drive for the results.
When I was at school, I did well academically. However, the amount of recognition I received, other than when it came to prize-giving at high school, was minimal compared to those who were talented musically or were good at sport. They were mentioned in school assemblies and praised extremely regularly in public.
So, maybe things are worse now than then? I dunno really.
I’m not saying non-academic subjects are ignored, just that the system focuses on a very narrow part of the spectrum. Why shouldn’t creative subjects be given equal weight? Who is to say the ukelele isn’t as valuable a skill as any other?
I love that song and it still makes me sit and think whenever I hear it.
Just to throw a song into the mix, another oldie I’m afraid: Abba’s Slipping Through My Fingers really moves me and forces me to think about the day my little girl will be all grown up.
I don’t know that one. Her Up North is the Abba expert in this house. I’ll check it out though. A song on the same theme is Wide Open Spaces by Dixie Chicks, about a daughter leaving home for pastures new.
Thanks for commenting
http://waterbirthplease.wordpress.com/2011/01/17/music-i-want-my-kids-to-listen-too/
Wow, how very moving… Thanks for sharing that.
It doesn’t sum up my views on life but but I would like to be reincarnated as the guitar solo from We’re Not Alone by Dinosaur Jr! Better than coming back as an ant or something like that.
Another song I’ll have to check out. If nothing else, this post is expanding my musical horizons.
Blimey – Supertramp. Memories. I knew all of those words. I often wonder about my kids who obviously have no life as they know all the lyrics to the strange songs kids listen to these days. Then someone mentions Supertramp, or Stairway to Heaven, Bohemian Rhapsody or some other weird song and I realise that kids of any generation must just have really good memories!
I would have said “Take a Look at my Girlfriend” was there most famous song, but it’s the only one that’s ever played on the radio over here.
Breakfast in America! Great song too, and a great LP. See what I did there? Referred to it as an LP? Oldie me.
That takes me back! i must reacquaint myself with Supertramp; I used to love Dreamer & I had at least 1 album of their’s.
It’s really like that? That’s terrible; you have to have a balance.
It also doesn’t make sense economically either. The UK leads the world in creativity: in music & comedy especially but also in art, film, TV. Look at our actors in American film & TV for instancce. It’s 1 of the things that makes Britain great &, as an immigrant, that I most love about the UK.
And this stuff makes money. That seems very dumb. Let’s hope it changes.
Great post
Thank you, sir. I guess it should be a thing of national pride to be at the forefront of the creative arts (even though we celebrate it so cringingly – cool Britannia?). Even then, it is very much the “industry” side of things.
I DO like the fact that Brit actors go Stateside and show the Yanks how it’s done tho.
I meant to respond to this yesterday but forgot!
Your post raises so many questions and wider issues, I couldn’t possibly mention them all here.
I agree with Kate here – people who are good at sports or more creative either with art or music did receive more recognition than those who are good academically. I remember the time my mum got a phone call from my sister’s headteacher at primary school asking her to ‘go up to the school around lunchtime’. My mum was terrified, wondering what on earth my sister had done. When mum got there, she was met by the headteacher and taken into the assembly hall where the entire school was seated, and there at the very front on stage was my sister with her cello, playing music she’d written herself. She was 9 years old.
I’d never been asked to perform my science in front of the whole school!
And just look at the sheer sums of money that successful people in the arts or sport command. Absolutely millions of pounds! You’d never get a scientist or teacher earning such amounts.
So if anything, while I agree it’s perhaps not as encouraged at school as much as it could be, the potential rewards of success in these fields is far greater than anything else.
An interesting viewpoint from the academic side of things. And yet, in the papers we read how the government wants more emphasis on sciences and abstract academic stuff to push Britain out front in innovation and technology.
As for sport and music etc. I’m sure there are rewards to be had, but for a very small minority. Many Olympians struggle to get funding, a situation which other countries can’t understand.
Society + Age make for great homogenisation (I may have just made that word up). The radical teenager is gently polished by life into a middle of the road guy hosting dinner parties whose friends politely listen to his “radical” spouting.
It’s important to keep in touch with our childhood (the first verse) but also to watch for the time when we’re “Acceptable, respectable, presentable, a vegetable”.
Great song, great blog, thanks.
Thank you sir! You’ve perfectly captured the essence of what I was trying to say. And homogenisation is SOOO a word! And a good one!!
Very deep Garry!
)
I have to say I always thought Pulp’s Common People summed things up quite well. For me anyway. In the 90′s as a stoodent. Social inequality and the difference of views on both sides.
Or maybe it’s just good to dance to.
One of the two.
Aye, going to Uni in Durham on one side you had incredibly wealthy students (I wasn’t one of them!) and then the surrounding pit villages which were and probably are still in an awful state. And yes it’s great to dance to but can’t manage doing a nerdy split kick any more without straining something
I’ve never danced to Common People… and won’t be trying any time soon
Good song though and a true story too innit?
Bit late to this one , sorry! I loved it -that is such a brilliant lyric and my kids couldn’t believe it when I pointed out that the Scooter version was based on it. Been there done that as usual!
Will post on my blog on this subject (link to you of course) as it really does stir memories. My fave lyric is probably Undertow by Genesis from around the same time as your choice. Bit prog rock but poetry…
Undertow is a great song! Look forward to your post