Nothing But Flowers
NOTHING BUT FLOWERS
Among the most fascinating features of industrial capitalism is the evocative shadow it can cast in its wake. It is a sense of pervasive melancholy felt when human beings inhabit a place, utilize its available resources, and move on. Something akin to this feeling can be found in the Cardiff Fork of Big Cottonwood Canyon. Situated approximately thirteen miles southeast of Salt Lake City, the area saw heavy mining use through the 1960’s. Once an enormously successful ore mine, today the area sits quiet and vacated. Tailing piles situated west of the Cardiff Mine serve as the first dramatic reminder of its brief, but prolific, history of human use. Near the mouth of the mine (now littered with forgotten debris), a massive ore bin and various wooden trestles have fallen into silent disrepair, dilapidating incrementally with the slow combination of time and solitude. The site evokes uneasy emotions and hypothetical imaginings of a world without us.
A similar impression of impending loss pervades the song “(Nothing But) Flowers” by the Talking Heads. Principle songwriter, David Byrne, uses his lyrics and music to envision the decay of modern society and the return to a pastoral setting that has seen heavy use as a trope in Western narrative. However, instead of allying with the peace, balance, and serenity frequently found in the pastoral “middle landscape,” Byrne instead uses modern cultural touchstones to critique commonly held pastoral assumptions. This in conjunction with the visual imagery utilized in the music video for the song generate an overall feeling of impending loss that resonates strongly in the face of continued environmental degradation which has only deepened since its 1988 release. But while the song ultimately attempts to act as a call for social and environmental awareness the mixed messages it employs rely on a number of assumptions worthy of critique in their own right.
Throughout its narrative, “(Nothing But) Flowers” places its singer in a hypothetical pastoral landscape. The song begins with an invocation of "two fools in love" standing in a Garden of Eden, both seemingly at peace (and place) in the world. This has tones of classic pastoralism as defined by Greg Garrard. Garrard explains that the predominant theme of the classic pastoral trope relies on placing human beings and human concerns in harmony with nature. A key tenant of the pastoral situates nature as an intrinsically valuable “other,” and not necessarily a place existing solely for human use. The trope has seen consistent use and reshaping throughout Western narrative but the nature it presents tends to be one in static balance and harmony. The opening lines of the song present a place where humans and the environment appear to be coexisting in such a balance. This superlative setting has deep roots in the Western cultural imagination, and one could argue there is even a superseding of the Biblical Garden of Eden pastoral narrative as the characters in “(Nothing But) Flowers” kill a rattlesnake so “they’ve got something for dinner.” The setting is further fixed when we find out that there are no longer cars or factories, but rather their hollow shells which are being reclaimed by nature in the forms of “mountains and rivers.” However, we soon discover that not all is well in this new Garden, and Byrne’s first critique of this “idealized” lifestyle comes after a paratactic repetition of “nature reclaiming culture” imagery when he states “if this is paradise, I wish I had a lawnmower.” From this point forward the emphasis in the lyrics begin to explore the undesired loss of consumer goods and technology as well as the singers inability to make sense of this new world.
Byrne plays with this valuation of consumerism in the opening lines of the second verse through the use of metaphor. The singer states that “years ago, he was an angry young man” who found solace by pretending to be a billboard along the side of a highway. This verse works effectively to evoke a clear sense of place (presumably the highways of North America). The loss of an interstate system and car culture that acted to connect the country in a profound way is further critiqued when he informs us that the “highways and cars were sacrificed for agriculture.” The dissonance felt by this loss is almost painfully sounded out with the lyric “I thought that we’d start over, but I guess I was wrong.”
Through the use of sound and lyric the song the Talking Heads further present this mixed message motif about the loss of technological culture and a return to a forced pastoralism. The band employs a diverse set of world music instruments and rhythms, perhaps with a suggestion that the loss being discussed is global in its scope. Another noteworthy use of sound comes with the constant lyrical refrain “you got it, you got it” after each paratactic list, which strategically invokes (and re-invokes) the theme of nature reclaiming the physical ground that human culture once stood upon. This incantation of words feels extremely reminiscent of Western advertising in which the sole focus is placed squarely on you (the consumer) and your immediate gratification. It has an interesting rhetorical effect alongside the use of specific brand names (such as Pizza Hut, Dairy Queen, and 7-Eleven). On the surface it would seem that the main sense being conveyed is unwanted loss, but other creative efforts by Byrne (in song, film, and print) show him to be fairly sardonic, and if this is indeed the intention behind his repeating of the “you got it” lyric and brand names a case could be made that he is in fact critiquing the “low” Western culture whose loss is being bemoaned by the speaker. Instead of mentioning products of our cultural landscape that would seem worthy of preserving (Western medicine, sanitation, increased educational opportunities, etc.), he instead laments the loss of microwaves, cherry pies, and chocolate chip cookies. The sense conjured by these products is of the quick, easy, and processed. This is a prime example of the somewhat mixed message being conveyed by Byrne to illuminate the social and environmental awareness issues he wants to address.
Evidence that the true aim of the song is to inspire an ethic of awareness comes in a critical lyric when the speaker states “as things fell apart nobody paid much attention.” The rhetorical impact of this line is amplified by an ongoing motif in the music video that sees the overlaying of various statistics on the screen that provide supporting empirical evidence that the world around us is indeed falling apart while people fail to pay attention and act on it. The implication of the line presents a human being who is lost in both time and place. While the return of the pastoral has forced a closer association with nature, reflection on the culture that was sacrificed for it has him admitting that he is unprepared for this new reality (possibly because of an overreliance on the very products and services he is lamenting the loss of). This is summed up in the final lines of the song when he states “don’t leave me standing here, I can’t get used to this lifestyle.” His disconnection from the natural world coupled with the convenience of Western Culture has literally left the speaker unprepared to manage life in this new landscape. However, by tying back to the image at the beginning of the song (of “two fools in love” in the Garden of Eden) perhaps Byrne is making a comment on the importance of community and our interpersonal relationships. Perhaps when our society fails and a new world order is invoked it will be the cultivation of these relationships that will steer us through the inevitable pains of forced culture change.
But at the same time that “(Nothing But) Flowers” strives to develop an ethic of awareness there are several core assumptions implicit in it that are worthy of further analysis and critique. Core among these are the anthropocentric viewpoint of the singer and his valuation of human life on Earth. The subtext of the song places humans squarely as the prime figure on the planet and the losses he laments are purely human in their scope. There is no mention of other biotic communities that may in fact benefit from a lessening of the impact placed on them by current ways of living in Western culture. This anthropocentric stance also brushes against the grain of deep ecology and other ecocentric environmental theories which focus more on a critique of the underlying assumptions and issues that helped create the “lost” situation presented in “(Nothing But) Flowers.” From a more ecocentric position it could be argued that the singer would be far better equipped to look forward toward creating a brighter future than pondering the losses of the past.
Similarly through the use of specific symbols, metaphor, and brand names Byrne situates the singer specifically in a North American context thus limiting its potential impact on a larger world audience. This seems in direct conflict with the sonic motif utilized throughout which relies on several distinct world music sounds combined together in a global pastiche. And with North America/Western Europe serving as the setting a criticism can be made that Byrne doesn’t fully grasp the environmental and social justice issues he is seemingly interested in critiquing. The core attitudes and assumptions that have historically underpinned the human/nature binary were born in the European Enlightenment and found full force in the North American and Western European cultural landscapes. The costs and benefits of perceiving the world through the lens of this dualism are diverse and complex but it can be reasonably argued that these fundamental assumptions have created a situation where all non-human life is viewed as raw material for human exploration and use. It can also be argued that Western cultural attitudes and assumptions have established the framework in which a rapidly ascending science (and its accompanying technology) are not necessarily informed and governed by a larger moral ethic focused first and foremost on our responsibilities to the planet. Thus, the seeds of destruction that have born fruit in Byrne’s garden were sewn by the very culture whose loss is being lamented in the song.
Another debatable dualism established by Byrne is the marked contrast between the high marks of civilization he doesn’t mention and the lower cultural artifacts that are scattered liberally throughout the song. As stated earlier it is unclear if he is exploiting the parts and products of populist culture to make a critique of their quality (and ubiquity), but by employing such a mixed-message scheme he risks making it inaccessible (and ultimately off-putting) to those who aren’t in on the joke. This in turn risks undermining broad acceptance of the larger awareness message threaded throughout and causes one to ask if his direction is really the best way to affect real world action and change.
This leads to the issue of the context in which this song was written. Appearing on the 1988 album Naked it is an artifact from a world that is both fundamentally similar and radically different from the one we currently inhabit. While it was written in an era of environmental awareness it can be argued that the depths of that awareness were still being explored at the time of its creation. A case in point is the threat of global warming which had little framing in the public imagination prior to Bill McKibben’s 1989, The End of Nature. Would the song still have a casual attitude on the lost highways and cars if the long-term threat of their CO2 emissions had been more widely known and publicized at the moment the song was written? Furthermore, if “(Nothing But) Flowers” appeared in an even more contemporary context it is not difficult to imagine it having room to include devastating critiques of our modern lifestyle. Reflecting back on the key lyric “as things fell apart nobody paid much attention” how much more persuasive would the rhetoric be if instead of lamenting the loss of Twinkies, Pizza Huts, and Dairy Queens his list incorporated organic products, Whole Foods, and energy efficient cars (all consumer products with a built in promise to assuage guilt over environmental degradation, but whose real world, profit-driven motives are potentially more suspect and open to review). Of course, such a critique would lean heavily on an ethnocentric worldview and its core tenant of identifying and attacking the basic underlying assumptions held in Western society that place human beings and human concerns as preeminent. And as demonstrated, this is not necessarily an attitude in step with the one held by Byrne.
Returning now to the caved-in mouth of the Cardiff Mine, standing in the ruin of the place provides a lucid example of how human history exists on a continuum.The norms, values, and actions of the present are not necessarily those of the past or the future.Through science and technology our world has seen rapid change in a relatively short period of time, and a central role of art in this modern context is to not only provide critique and challenge normative thoughts and assumptions, but also offer insights for imagining the future.Clearly David Byrne and the Talking Heads have an opinion and critique on modern society to offer in “(Nothing But) Flowers,” and through the use of lyric, music, and visual imagery in the music video the message conveyed is one of imminent cultural loss and dramatic environmental reshaping.The song contains a call for an ethic of awareness that is likely to continue gaining traction in the face of our deepening environmental crisis.However, while the song is well intentioned and ultimately attempts to act as a call for social and environmental awareness the metaphors, imagery, and mixed messages it relies on are loaded with a number of assumptions that should not necessarily be taken at face-value and are absolutely worthy of analysis and critique in their own right.
SOURCES
Garrard, Greg. Ecocriticsm. New York: Routledge, 2004.
Hay, Peter. Main Currents in Western Environmental Thought. Bloomington: Indiana
University Press, 2002.
Keller, Charles R. The Lady in the Ore Bucket. Salt Lake City: University of Utah
Press, 2001.