Reflections on Radiohead's "Videotape"

The title of this blog is an allusion to William Wordsworth's Preface to Lyrical Ballads as I am prone to “spontaneous overflows of powerful feeling.”

Lately I’ve been doing laps on Radiohead’s In Rainbows album, and the song ‘Videotapes’ has been eliciting some seriously powerful feelings. Bear with me while I give you some backstory and try to stitch it all together. It’ll take a second, but I’ll get there! (You should click the link and listen to the song now. The former link was broken so had to include a "live" version. Personally I like the recorded one on the album better so track it down if you can!).

First of all, some of my siblings and I have a habit of “seeing” ski movies set to certain songs, and for me this is one of them. This is not an adrenaline-pumping, heli-dropping, cliff-hucking free fall- into- the-Great-White-Pow, followed-by-2,000-vertical- feet-of face-shots, video.

Literally I visualize a lone skier slowly skinning up the approach of a ridge or drainage, surrounded by nothing but vastness and solitude. Maybe it’s snowing; it’s at least a little overcast. Yeah, I don’t even think it’s windy. Still. Calm.  Step, after step, after step, after step and as persistently as the chords of this song the skier incrementally makes his way towards the goal, which is the summit.

Next and much more encompassing, this song reminds me of death. Not in a bad way, I can literally imagine it being played along with a photo montage at someone’s funeral and it is beautiful.

When I'm at the pearly gates

This'll be on my videotape

My videotape

My videotape

When Mephistopheles is just beneath

And he's reaching up to grab me

This is one for the good days

And I have it all here

In red blue green

In red blue green

You are my center when I spin away

Out of control on videotape

On videotape [x6]

This is my way of saying goodbye

Because I can't do it face to face

So I'm talking to you before it's too late

No matter what happens now

I shouldn't be afraid

Because I know today has been the most perfect day I've ever seen.

Dang, that is some painfully beautiful prose. The opening lines, “when I arrive at the Pearly Gates,” and other lyrics like, “This is my way of saying goodbye because I can’t do it face to face… Not matter what happens now I shouldn’t be afraid,” could be referring to death in a very literal sense, or another finality perhaps more metaphorical.

 Lyrics like, “When Mephistopheles is just beneath me and reaching up to grab me,” and “You are my center when I spin away out of control on video tape” reference struggle, the challenge of staying the course and reaching the final destination undeterred. The song is definitely about life review, whether by stages or in whole.

Though it is relatively simple without a lot of bells and whistles I think I read that this song did not come easily for Radiohead, that after hours and hours of studio time what they were aiming for continued to evade. A few of them remained late into the night one evening diligently cutting away all the fat until they finally arrived at the sure, steady final composition. It’s like all that struggle and effort was infused into the song—how like so many seemingly simple things in life the finished product was a bear to arrive at—and it makes me love the song more.

  

Ok, after a most superficial overview here are a few reasons “Videotape” has recently struck a nerve with me:

A few weeks ago I attended an evening candle light mass being offered for a girl who had tried committing suicide. Mass was not held specifically for her, but considering the circumstances the already somewhat somber ambiance of the softly glowing sanctuary was amplified.

In the homily the priest spoke about the darkness we are all subject to and that oftentimes it is those that love the deepest that conversely feel this darkness the most. That sometimes it just becomes too much —there is so much chaos, so much death, so much ugliness in the world he said. Like the song “Videotape” we spin away from center, out of control. 

He also warned everyone against the dangers of being presumptuous—apparently there had been confusion and at the time the girl’s life literally hung in the balance. Do not presume death for her this night, do not presume life. Do not presume Hell, do not presume Heaven, he warned us all.

Could she not find her center when she spun out of control? Did the long slog of life just become too much? Or did that hungry Mephistopheles finally catch her foot and pull her under? We can’t presume.

Over the last year or so I’ve been volunteering at a hospital. Just once a month I bring the Holy Eucharist to people in the main hospital and hospice. First of all I HATE hospitals, or at least I did at the onset of this whole endeavor. Cube that, and that’s how I felt about hospice. I hated how I could feel the sickness all around me, practically tangible, ready to invade my healthy system. I hated (and still do) how much hand sanitizer I have to use.  I also wasn’t sure what to say or how to be around these ailing persons—trying to bring solace to complete strangers in their most vulnerable state is tough. What words of wisdom or advice can a vital body provide someone standing on the threshold of the unknown or just really sick and feeling crappy?  

Visiting each month however has been mind-blowing and transformative. I’ve encountered people experiencing the whole spectrum of suffering. Patients have told ME jokes or been chipper as ever while others have cried or just stared at me exhausted and hopeless. I’ve reluctantly entered rooms with scary signs on the door containing bold letters and lots of exclamation marks, demanding all who enter to suit up in gowns, gloves, and masks. Pretty much every time one of these rooms is on the list part of me secretly hopes the patient will refuse, but oftentimes they don’t. Once I get in there I’m ashamed of my selfishness and amazed by the braveness and hope of the person inside. I’ve seen the human desire for community at its finest by being invited to senior living facilities for coffee or lunch but really for companionship.

  

 Yes, I’ve been packin’ Jesus, but I’ve also been bringing conversation, a listening ear, sometimes a joke or two or even just the feeling that he or she is worth being visited. While I’ve been the bearer of good things so often I’ve walked out of the rooms—and the hospital overall—with so much more than when I entered.

In hospice I have really been humbled—usually a word monger, I’ m suddenly speechless. What advice or comfort can I offer—good luck? Get There?  See you on the other side? No, none if that is right. But I don’t feel bad, and now I don’t feel like I have to say anything really. Once I went in and prayed with a woman that I recognized from a previous visit to the main hospital by her long, talon-like cherry red acrylic nails and painfully swollen and bruised arms. She had an oxygen mask on and couldn’t speak, but her eyes let me know she was aware of my presence and intent, and with what feeble strength she had left she attempted to make the sign of the cross. This lady is getting ready for a JOURNEY, was all I could think.

Over the last five years I’ve also had a family friend that is slowly but surely being eaten alive by cancer. For years his health constantly swung on a pendulum between stability and severe deterioration. Not too long ago he was fit enough to work or do chores (he is the epitome of a handy man and subscribes to the “if you don’t use it, you lose it” mentality), but then just before Christmas persistent and debilitating hip pain landed him in the hospital where it was discovered that his hip was in fact broken and he had to have surgery installing titanium rods in his femurs like Wolverine. He and his wife spent Christmas with my family and he thankfully seemed to be doing well, so we planned a spaghetti dinner at my house. The next time I saw him however was not over a bowl of Bolognese, but rather back in the hospital, because once again the cancer had activated.

About a month ago I visited him in the hospital.  His wife had gone home for a much needed break and I came solo. I think all my experience in hospitals lately made me better at visiting him. Not that it was easier or that I was in any way able to perform, frankly it was just the opposite. I had hardly anything to say to him, but didn’t feel compelled to fill the room with worthless chatter for the sake of sound or so we could dance around the reality of the state of his health and its eminent downward progression.

Small talk exhausted itself quickly. He was not interested in watching TV. Between the uncontrollable tremors in his legs and constant nausea reading was definitely out of the question. In the short time I sat with him every minute seemed drawn out and heavy with suffering. Nights must be excruciating, I thought. Not only is he not interested in distracting himself or being distracted, I don’t think he’s capable of it. He is acutely aware of his suffering every second of every minute. I don’t think he was chronicling the experience away as his “most perfect day he’s ever seen,” but I gotta’ believe he was processing something.

Just a few days ago this family friend entered hospice, coincidentally I found out on my volunteering day. Before entering his room the nurse told me that he is pretty much miserable when awake, so while I could try rousing him a little I shouldn’t try too hard. He was asleep when I entered and I let him stay that way. Again—what words could I possibly have for him? Instead I just sat. I thought about his life and life in general and the End.  

I recently started a study wherein Pride and Humility arecontrasted —Pride being where we are so wrapped up in ourselves--our own plans and agenda with our head in the clouds and our perspective caved in on ourselves. Humility on the contrary is from the Latin word ‘Humus,’ which means ‘earth or ground,’ and is basically the Virtue of a reality check and being grounded in what is real, what matters. In my own day-to-day grind I deal with so many intangibles, theoretical concepts or things that ultimately do matter, but not quite as much as the in-your-face struggles these people are confronting—life or death, chronic illness, difficult decisions about ailing spouses or loved ones. 

These visits always induce a personal inventory and review of where I’m at in life and why and always help me reintroduce a little perspective to my own struggles or challenges.

  

Of course encountering physical death or the process of dying brings mortality top of mind. But I think I’m working on processing a whole different kind of death right now too.

We’re in the midst of Lent. Like Advent, Lent is a season of waiting, preparation, and anticipation. Contrary to Advent however it has a more somber tone (minor key?). We fast; we are quite and go into ourselves more. We are essentially preparing for death. I mean, we’re waiting for Easter and Eternal Life, but in order to get there we have to go through the Paschal Mystery, we all have to die. And we need to die a lot. We need to die to our desires and our selfishness, our egoism, and our Pride in really big ways and thousands of tiny ones every day.  One way we do this is through self-reflection and review. Like Videotapes.  

We are nothing if not a society that loves self-reflection, or maybe a better term is self-endorsement. Between sites like Facebook or YouTube and the use of smart phones we are obsessed with photo-documenting and broadcasting every moment of our lives—especially the highlights—so that we might advertise them to others in high-def, “in red blue green”. And when we all kick the bucket we probably will see something like an Ultimate Timeline, or Videotape as Radiohead says, scrolling before us.

“This is one for the good days, and I have it all here in red blue green” the song says. You can just imagine those definitive snap shots of happiness, laughter, doing something crazy.

But what about all the other days? What about those ones where we all spin away out of control? Or the ones that seem so mundane and commonplace? Through Humility—and apparently backcountry skiing—we can all stay grounded enough to include those days in the Life Review too.

I think we are all on a journey, aiming for a set destination. Whatever route we take is not good or bad, it just is. We may not get there the way we initially planned—every day we are presented with numerous potential rout options. One decision and therefore one step at a time we all solidify our own trails. Completing them takes work—you could choose the path of least resistance and settle for a flat, bland, literally vista-less life. Or you can tackle the grueling ascents to reach exhilarating peaks. Some of our roads will be harder than others, and I don’t know why.  The topography of life shows us that what goes up often comes down, so don’t forget about those sometimes dark or other times peaceful valleys. It won’t be easy but it won’t all be hard either.  

 Ultimately we must all complete this journey alone. Like the solitary ski tourer I imagine, or that girl who either lived or didn’t and is either in Heaven or isn’t, like all those sick strangers I meet each month, or my family friend who could literally pass away any day now, like Jesus Christ himself, we’re all going to have to figure out our way of saying goodbye and we’re all going to have to confront the content in that Videotape.