Why Helplessness Blues Is the Most Important Song of My Generation
“Helplessness Blues” is the “Blowin’ in the Wind” of our generation. It sums up the spirit of people our age in a way that’s so winsome that it can be hard to analyze or explain. It could be an anthem for former Occupy Wall Street kids, for the normcore, for social-media-happy self-marketers, for post-college non-starters, for up and comers, for any one of my peers. But, unlike “Blowin’ in the Wind,” it not only asks question — it offers meaningful answers. Let me show you how.
A few quick ground rules:
- This is nerdy over-analysis.
- I’m not saying that any of this is necessarily what Robin Pecknold meant when he wrote the lyrics … I’m saying this is how it hits the ear of a member of his generation.
- This really is pretty nerdy and over-analytical. If you’re good with that, read on.
PART 1: Self
VERSE 1:
“I was raised up believing I was somehow unique
Like a snowflake distinct among snowflakes
Unique in each way you’d conceive.”
Who among us wasn’t raised on exactly this phrase? He uses the phrase “somehow” unique … we weren’t told why we were special — just that we were special, and it was good to be special and unique and us and no one else. That’s what we heard.
“And now after some thinking,
I’d say I would rather be
A functioning cog in some great machinery
Serving something beyond me.”
Here, Pecknold rejects the view of self that we all grew up with. Better, he says, to have purpose than to be a snowflake. We see this spirit in everything from green campaigns to entrepreneurial enterprises to the the appetite for movements. Kids my age want to be part of something that matters. Here’s the problem:
“But I don’t, I don’t know what that will be
I’ll get back to you someday soon, you will see.”
We want purpose, but we don’t know where to find it. We feel helpless (a la Helplessness Blues) to lay our finger on that Great Thing that we should be caught up in.
This outlines a fundamental shift in the view of self away from the “self-actualization” concept prevalent since the 70’s. This a new view of “me” for a new generation. We really don’t want to be “unique” if it’s going to mean that we’re floating alone. We’re starved for community, for a big picture that’s worth seeing, and when we look at ourselves, we don’t see it.
Part 2: Society
After looking at himself, Pecknold turns to look at society for an answer. If you want to be part of something bigger, you’d hope you could find it in the systems set up around you by those who came before.
VERSE 2:
“What’s my name, what’s my station?
Oh, just tell me what I should do.”
This could be taken ironically or sincerely — or both. I hear it as a plea for identity. “Tell me who I am and what I’m supposed to be doing here.” I’ve felt, if not spoken, these words to the air multiple times in my short life. Self-definition is what our parents handed down to us. “You can be anything!” they told us. Now, we find that exhausting. We’re looking around for a mentor, a structure, to give us purpose.
But…
“I don’t need to be kind to the armies of night
That would do such injustice to you
Or bow down and be grateful
And say, ‘Sure, take all that you see’
To the men who move only in dimly lit halls
And determine my future for me.”
Here, there’s a rejection of both the “militant” right and the “socialist” left. I see this in myself and my peers. Most of us have no interest in being Democrats or Republicans, unless there’s a way to shape that movement into something more free-thinking, less bumper-sticker driven and angry. As much as we want to be told what to do, we don’t want to blindly follow masses of unkind men into the errors of generations before us.
This represents a shift from the utopian hopes of the 60’s, where the idea was that we could build a society on love. The singer doesn’t seem to be concerned with building a perfect society. He rejects both major camps of society, and finds himself in hot water. The problem is summed up in these next lines:
“And I don’t, I don’t know who to believe
I’ll get back to you someday soon, you will see.”
Who is this “you” the song keeps referencing? We’ll get to that in a minute. The point is, as much as it would be convenient to look to society for answers to our questions, society in America is locked rigidly into red and blue camps that don’t fit our desire to think, invent, and help. Who should we believe? Tellingly, Pecknold doesn’t say, “We should believe ourselves & be true to our hearts.” That’s what we were told in the 90’s. Instead, he keeps widening his gaze, from self, to society, and then to the world at large, looking for an answer.
Part 3: External world
Like anyone else looking for answers and not finding them, the singer now scraps the default answers and goes back to basics, starting at the only thing he knows for sure.
VERSE 3:
“If I know only one thing, it’s that everything that I see
Of the world outside is so inconceivable,
Often I barely can speak.”
The only thing he’s sure about is that the world is complex, confusing, and beyond him. This is, again, a major shift from the humanist rationalism that’s dominated logical thought since the Enlightenment. In a few words, he’s admitted that he’s too small to comprehend it all, when for centuries man has been saying that the world is fundamentally graspable. Again, a philosophical groundshift. My generation isn’t interested in, or even believers in, knowing everything about the world. It’s inconceivable. So how do we respond?
“Yeah, I’m tongue-tied and dizzy
And I can’t keep it to myself.
What good is it to sing helplessness blues?
Why should I wait for anyone else?”
My generation has the most ability to speak of any generation ever (I’m looking at you, smartphone-posted status messages & livestreams sharing every waking thought through every moment of the day), but we don’t have anything meaningful to say. Or if we do, we’re lost in the noise. What good is it to talk at all?
Take this article, for a moment, if I may be meta. I’m operating under the presumption that maybe 30 people will start reading this post and maybe 5 will finish it. Of those 5, one of you might agree with me and think this song is amazing. Two might think it’s an amazing song, but suggest my conclusions are all wrong and take the time to tell me why. (Please do so, by the way, I’d love to hear your thoughts!) The other two might read my entire post but still disagree altogether with its amazingness and go listen instead to some underground band I’ve never heard of and tweet to their social networks about why those songs are the REAL zeitgeist-anthems. I, like everyone else, have no authority. I’m just tossing my shingle into the tornado of voices that is the Internet. What good is it? We all do it, but why are we talking/singing/waiting for anyone else?
Deep breath.
Pecknold has talked now about major shifts in the conception of self, society, and existence from what I’ll call the “pre-postmodern” generation. (I don’t know what we are. Someone told me we’re not postmodern, we’re post-post-modern, or meta-modern, or re-modern, but the whole thing gets a little prefix-silly at some point.) Now, his vantage point takes a shift. Instead of repeating himself as he’s done before, he turns on the dime of these two lines:
“And I know, I know you will keep me on the shelf.
I’ll come back to you someday soon myself.”
He’s starting to get away from answers altogether and focus even more on the “you” to whom he’s been singing this whole time. And who is the “you?” (Told you we’d come back to that.) “You” is what “you” always should be. “You” is the person the singer loves.
Epilogue/Answer
The music changes, and this part of the song is what makes it the most important song of my generation — an anthem instead of another piece of the navel-gaze pie. In these next lyrics, Pecknold walks backwards through the ground he’s just covered, finding a meaningful existence, society, and self. Check this out:
“If I had an orchard, I’d work till I’m raw.
If I had an orchard, I’d work till I’m sore.”
Here’s Pecknold’s ideal external world. Instead of a dizzy, confusing place, he imagines an orchard. Talk to anyone from my generation about the idea (abstractly) of working an orchard. The concept of physical, manual work, done with your hands, the effects of which can be directly seen and measured without any comments, retweets, or publication deals, is immensely satisfying.
Millennials have been laughed at in the media as lazy do-nothings who don’t know what they want except the world handed to them for free. In actuality, they/we want to be able to see a direct result between what we do and what we have. We want that analog experience, and a big part of the feeling of #occupy was crying out for a simplification of life experience, with power being taken out of the hands of an invisible few and put into the hands of everyone.
Play this song for someone, and then ask them what their orchard is. What do they wish they could go and do? What simple thing do they dream of? All of us kids have that orchard we’re thinking of, whether we realize it or not. Mine is living by the sea, riding around a small coastal town on a Puch Magnum, and writing a book.
“And you would wait tables and soon run the store.
Gold hair in the sunlight, my light in the dawn.”
Here’s is Pecknold’s ideal society. He’s shrunk down the entire world into the one person that matters — instead of society, in fact, Pecknold wants community. He wants to live meaningfully with a person who means something to him. Their ambitions don’t have to be large: they can just work together and be one another’s light in the dawn.
This is what kids of my generation are looking for, like any other generation. We want that person. Notice how they don’t have to work on the same thing (he’s in an orchard, she’s waiting tables/running the store). But they’re together in the morning, companionable and supportive. Community and small, meaningful purpose are what the singer dreams of.
“If I had an orchard, I’d work till I’m sore.
If I had an orchard, I’d work till I’m sore.”
And now, for the total kicker … the singer’s ideal self:
“Someday I’ll be like the man on the screen.”
The man on the screen in film and TV has two simple qualifications. (1) He knows what to do and (2) he does it. That’s what we really want, us kids. We want to know what to do and then do it instead of wringing our hands and singing helplessness blues for anyone else.
That’s why this song is an anthem. It’s a call to find your orchard and your light in the dawn, and to pursue them. Your ambition, your purpose (your “machinery” with its “something beyond you”) don’t have to be grandiose. They just have to be real. They just have to be worth pursuing with the grit of the man on the screen.
“Helplessness Blues” is the anthem for my generation, putting into words things that we’ve felt for so long, but never been able to say.
Or maybe it’s just an anthem for me.
