don't tell your mother

'don't tell your mother' is a relatively unknown song by the sundays, but in my view it is one of their best, and it helps to further the discussion about shiki and williams. while williams' red wheelbarrow poem is a sterling example of the ugly face of american affirmationism, i am not convinced that shiki's alternative is the most admirable aesthetic pinnacle. shiki is far from being my favorite poet in the japanese tradition, because most of the time his strictly descriptive emphasis is pretty without being truly affecting. and beyond that, i don't think that what i called the 'subtractive background' of the poem is present in quite the same way today. of course, it is present, but our relation to it is different.

the subject of 'don't tell your mother' is a fairly standard carpe diem theme; its originality and success (the latter being far more important) lies of course in the way it expresses this theme. the verse, after the lines 'it's time to learn not to work so hard/or not at all' wheels rather unexpectedly into a memento mori chorus, 'how will we know when the end is nigh/on a day much as any other.' this chorus about death is in fact the bounciest and most elated part of the song.

now, if shiki's cockscombs poem represents the continuing flourishing of life against the background of the imminent death of the poet, 'don't tell your mother,' which, again in my view (which, since this song is largely unknown, is probably not widely shared), puts both the flourishing and the disappearing in one place. the aesthetic is not, however, 'dionysian'--this word is overused in aesthetic analysis to a truly alarming degree. it is joyful in a much simpler, less nietzschean way. the singer doesn't feel herself dying, she simply knows that death is coming, could come at any moment, but in the joyful excitement of the present, this inevitable death, the inevitable nihilation of the present, becomes itself a matter of indifference, or even, in the surge of the moment, another spark for enjoyment. there is no wagnerian pain, no harmful desire for the unattainable, and none of nietzsche's pain/pleasure of the woman giving birth. and there is also none of the empty calm of meditation.

one of the central insights underlying taoism and buddhism is the problematic nature of success and hope. success always implies the possibility of failure and our inability to fully control whether we succeed or fail. similarly, hope implies fear. both leave us dependent on things outside of ourselves, which we cannot control. spinoza criticizes hope for the same reason. happiness that results from successes won through struggle will always bear a little of the taint of its origins. happiness that results from the liberation of failure is similarly tainted, always threatened by the imminent return of the project and the negativity of its origins. 'don't tell your mother' succeeds where bataille fails because it is both hopeless and joyful at the same time.