What the greatest 60's band has to say on 'lack'.

Looking back I noticed that three out of my four blog posts have been about movies. This makes it seem as though I do nothing but watch movies. However; contrary to how it may seem I do many other things in my free time. It occurred to me that I should find something other than movies to write about. One thing I enjoy doing other than frequenting Parkwood 18 in St. Cloud is listening to music. One of my all time favorite bands is a band that originated in the 60’s (no, not the Beatles). The band is called The Moody Blues and to me they are the greatest band the 60’s produced. No offence intended to any Beatles fans :). My favorite album by them is Days of Future Passed, their second album, released in 1967. On it they teamed up with the London Festival Orchestra to create an album that goes through a whole day in song, starting at dawn and ending at night. On both the first and last songs of the album there are parts of a poem, written by Graeme Edge, drummer and song writer for the band.

The poem is about night time and the transition from night to day. It is fairly short so I will put the whole thing on here rather than a link:

Cold hearted orb that rules the night
Removes the colors from our sight.
Red is grey and yellow white,
But we decide which is right.And which is an illusion?
Pinprick holes in a colorless sky,
Let insipid figures of light pass by,
The mighty light of ten thousand suns,
Challenges infinity and is soon gone.
Night time, to some a brief interlude,
To others the fear of solitude.
Brave helios wake up your steeds,
Bring the warmth the countryside needs.
...
Breathe deep the gathering gloom,
Watch lights fade from every room.
Bedsitter people look back and lament,
Another day's useless energy spent.
Impassioned lovers wrestle as one,
Lonely man cries for love and has none.
New mother picks up and suckles her son,
Senior citizens wish they were young.
'Cold hearted orb that rules the night
Removes the colors from our sight.
Red is grey and yellow white,
But we decide which is right.
And which is an illusion?

As I was driving back from my spring break trip I was listening to this album and once again struggling to decide what to write about for my blog. But as I was listening to the words in the poem I noticed how it examined lack, or more specifically the relationship between ‘lack’ and ‘have’. Lines 16 to 21 all focus on differences between people: people who have youth vs. people who are old, people who have love vs. people who do not, etc. this then reminded me of our discussion in class about how we define ourselves and how one way is by what we are not. This poem hits on that exact relationship or method of self definition. As Jacques Lacan said in The Agency of the Letter in the Unconscious "I think where I am not; therefore I am where I do not think." In other words, I think about what I am not and therefore I am the things I don’t think about. In terms of the poem, when the senior citizens wish they were young they are focusing on what they are not (young) and they are what they are not thinking about (old). The ‘lonely man’ cries for love, thinking about what he does not have/what he lacks—love—while being/having what he is not thinking about—loneliness. In the same way we often seem to go through life ‘thinking where we are not’. We are defining our existence through what we are not rather than what we are; because for everything you are there is a whole list of things you are not.

After I started to look closer at the poem I also noticed another relevant part. The line “Night time, to some a brief interlude, to others the fear of solitude” made me start thinking of what Lacan said about the unconscious. The same signifier (night time) is to some nothing more than an interlude between days, but to others it brings out the fear of being alone. Lacan would say that this difference has to do with eh persons unconscious—made up of experiences, fears, desires, random thoughts, etc—and would work to help them become aware of their unconscious through psychoanalysis in order to better understand themselves and why the same signifier makes them feel this way instead of that way.

Finally, I started to think of other Moody Blues lyrics and how they might pertain to Lacan. After giving it some thought I realized that the song ‘Nights in White Satin’ (also off Days of Future Passed) is also defined by lack. I won’t put up all of the lyrics because it is too long, but here is the link to them. In the song there are lines like “Nights in white satin, never reaching the end, letters I’ve written, never meaning to send”, “Beauty Id always missed” and “Just what I’m going through, they can understand” are all about lack—lack of beauty, lack of end, lack of understanding and so forth. Just as ‘I Can’t Get No Satisfaction’ was dictated by what the writer lacked, so is ‘Nights in White Satin’ dictated by what the writer lacked. As I said before, so much of how we see and define ourselves is dictated by lack, what we are not, ‘where we do not think’. This is not necessarily good or bad, simply an observation on how society defines itself. An observation that Lacan says in key to unlocking and understanding the unconscious.