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Submersion, Subversion, and Syd: The Madcap Laughs and Barrett between Nietzsche and Benjamin

BRANDON FORBES

 

Of the many stories about Syd Barrett’s dismissal from Pink Floyd in 1969, two in particular stand out. Before one of his final shows with the band, Barrett, evidently dissatisfied with his appearance, mixed some of the pills he was on at the time with some styling product and coated his unkempt hair with the concoction. As the Floyd churned through their set later on that evening, the heat from the stage lights caused the pills to melt, covering Barrett’s face with the waxy residue of the mixture while he played on, seemingly oblivious to his transformation. As many observers claimed afterwards, it appeared as though his face melted off during the performance, disturbing both band and audience.

The second incident occurred after Barrett had been relegated to a “behind the scenes” songwriter for the group, banished from the stage no doubt for his many bizarre behaviors. During one of the practice jam sessions, Barrett brought a new song to the group entitled “Have You Got It Yet?” To the perplexity of the band, Barrett changed the chord progression and rhythm each time they attempted to play through the number, virtually creating a new song with each take. The group, unable to turn the song into a reproducible composition, eventually put down their instruments in bewilderment. It was one of the last times Barrett ever played with the band as a whole.¹⁶⁰

Are these merely two sad stories of a man in the midst of a mental breakdown? Maybe. But a closer look at Syd Barrett’s two solo records, released in 1970 after he had been banished from the band, places them in a different light. By engaging some of the philosophical ideas suggested by both The Madcap Laughs and Barrett, and keeping these two incidents in mind, we can see a connection between Barrett’s solo records and the work of German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) and German social critic Walter Benjamin (1892–1940).

Late Nights at the Apollo

Nietzsche’s The Birth of Tragedy is a many-layered work, incorporating philosophy, philology, history, dramatic criticism, and music criticism. Since its publication in 1872, it has spawned a library of criticism. Important for our discussion of Syd Barrett are Nietzsche’s ideas concerning the opposing mythical forces of Apollo and Dionysius, and not so much his complicated arguments regarding the evolution of Greek tragedy and the operas of Richard Wagner. Indeed, all of Nietzsche’s arguments in Birth of Tragedy seem to build themselves on the relationship between the concepts of singularity and multiplicity and of individual and group, concepts which he associates with Apollo and Dionysius. These concepts also appear in Barrett’s erratic, yet passionate work on The Madcap Laughs and Barrett, where the idea of submersion in the wily intoxicating powers of Dionysius (at the expense of Apollo) seems to be at play.

An excellent example of Barrett’s submersion into this dynamic between singularity and multiplicity comes with the famous B-side from The Madcap Laughs, the stirring “Opel.” Released on a compilation of the same name in 1988, despite the fact that it was recorded in 1969, “Opel” presents us with an example of Barrett’s fanciful storytelling as metaphor for his own slow withdrawal from the world of individuality. “On a distant shore far from land,” Barrett sings, he lives in a “dream in a mist of gray.” His reality seems to be overcome with a sense of distance from normality, as his mind lies where “warm shallow waters sweep shells.” The final two minutes of the song drive this withdrawal home, as Barrett eerily opines in a series of confessions that “I’m trying / I’m living / I’m giving ... I’m trying to find you.”

The sound of Barrett’s slightly out of tune, jangly guitar strumming as it meets with these haunting confessions highlights his alienation, his distance from the people he can no longer find in his former, confident notion of self. In effect, the “warm, shallow waters” are submersing him into the primal unity of Nietzsche’s Dionysius. But before we discuss the power of Dionysius, we need to engage Nietzsche’s concept of Apollo, where the singularity and individuality Barrett seems to be losing in “Opel” are defined.

For Nietzsche, Apollo and Dionysius represent “the opposed artistic worlds of dream and intoxication.”¹⁶¹ It is Apollo, most well known as Greek god of the sun, who symbolizes the dream world of prophecy and appearances found in the plastic arts of sculpture, painting, and architecture. While we may think of the wild unconscious world of dreams as having similar effects to that of intoxication—a world where, as Barrett’s “Octopus” relates, kangaroos can shout and grasshoppers can play in a band—Nietzsche is thinking differently. It’s not the nonsensical elements in the dream world that oppose Dionysian intoxication, but the fact that these elements, like the plastic arts, are appearances. In other words, images in a dream are just that—pictures and representations of the world which, absurd though they may be, represent phenomena, and therefore connect the individual to the world around him or her through observation. These Apollonian appearances, like the sun, can overpower vision through static beauty, leaving the viewer in awe of his or her surroundings.

As the “image-creating god”(1, p. 21), Nietzsche argues, Apollo represents the principal of individuality, or principium individuationis, that allows a person to distinguish him or herself from the world. This Latin phrase is borrowed from German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1860), who used the term to identify how individuals can exist among the overwhelming multiplicity of existence. Nietzsche uses an example from Schopenhauer’s tome The World as Will and Representation to connect Apollo’s role as image-creator to the principle of individuality: Just as a lone man in a boat tries to steady himself as he is rocked about by the terrible magnificence of the waves around him, so too does the individual attempt to bulwark him or herself against the terrifying images of the surrounding world.

A similar theme is at work in Barrett’s song “Late Night,” the final cut on The Madcap Laughs. In this haunting song, replete with slide guitar and an earnest delivery from Barrett, the memory of a lover’s eyes pulls the singer away from the realization that “inside me I feel / alone and unreal.” It seems as though this vision distracts Barrett from the painfulness of his own growing alienation. For Nietzsche, Apollo represents this very escapism that can be found in observation. In other words, the frightening realties of existence, of being alone and doubting your place in the world, can be avoided by focusing on a “pleasurable illusion”(3, p. 29) like the eyes of Barrett’s imagined lover. Nietzsche offers the popularity of the Olympian gods with the ancient Greeks as an example of the power of Apollo’s “pleasurable illusion.” Zeus and his fellow gods, Nietzsche posits, were seen as joyfully reigning over the cosmos in a humanlike manner which the Greeks could identify with their own existence. Nietzsche argues that these anthropomorphic gods represent the best form of theodicy, that is, the best way to explain suffering in a world created by divinity. Thus, the gods themselves must endure humanlike life, having dreams and desires and not always being able to realize them. Importantly for Nietzsche, this Olympian pantheon stands opposed to the older, darker myth of the Titans, who had a “divine reign of terror”(3, p. 28) identified with violence and suffering that was not as easy to stomach by a people too influenced by the powers of Apollo.

Lost in the Dionysian Wood

Embracing this role of suffering in the world is one of the greatest differences between Apollo and Dionysius. Where the beautiful imagery found in the material arts of sculpture and the prophetic powers of the Olympian gods assured many Greeks of their own individuality, it is Dionysian intoxication, Nietzsche says, grounded in the primal power of music, that submerges the individual into “a higher communal nature” (1, p. 23) that is at one with the true realities of the world. Nietzsche spells out the collapse of the principium individuationis this way:

Either under the influence of the narcotic drink of which all men and peoples sing in hymns, or in the approach of spring, which forcefully and pleasurably courses through the whole of nature, those Dionysian impulses awaken, which in their heightened forms cause the subjective to dwindle to complete self-oblivion. (Birth of Tragedy, 1, p. 22)

This losing of the self sounds strikingly similar to Barrett’s own story, where heavy drug use helped exacerbate an existing schizophrenic condition, sending him to teeter on the edge of “self-oblivion.” Yet Nietzsche insists that such a move is necessary to awaken the Dionysian impulses that lie in the intoxicating power of music and a mythic understanding of nature, impulses which allow the creation of art. In fact, Nietzsche goes so far as to claim that “only as an aesthetic phenomenon are existence and the world justified to eternity” (5, p. 38). And this justification can only begin if the individual allows him or herself to become submerged in the primordial “unity as the spirit of the species” (2, p. 26), a move that unleashes a powerful creative force.

But what, exactly, is Nietzsche getting at by this concept of a “unity” behind the human species? Again turning to Schopenhauer, Nietzsche uses the idea of the will as something much more than a name for what is behind making a decision. The will is, in fact, the force that lurks behind all appearances in the world. It lies behind the façade of all phenomena as the “thing-in-itself”—a category Schopehauer borrowed from Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) who distinguished sharply between phenomena encountered by the senses and (according to Kant) the unknowable things in themselves underneath. Nietzsche, following Schopenhauer, identifies these noumenal, underlying realities with the will, and then attaches his notion of Dionysius.

This power of the will, and of Dionysius, is most evident in the intoxication of the dithyramb, a hymn that was sung in Dionysius’s honor among many sects in pre-Socratic Greece. Nietzsche claims the dithyramb best reveals the unity of the world, the true essence of reality. “In the Dionysian dithyramb,” he writes, “all the symbolic faculties of man are stimulated to the highest intensity” (2, p. 26) and this “symbolism of music utterly exceeds the grasp of language, because it refers symbolically to the original contradiction and pain at the heart of the original Unity” (6, p. 42). In this way, art becomes genuine and justified only in so much as it owes its origin to the Dionysian dithyramb. And the Dionysian dithyramb owes its origin to the primal power of the unifying will.

The power of Dionysian music, then, lies in its ability not only to stir the artist to great heights, which Apollo could do using the dream-image, but in the fact that through the dithyramb, the artist is submerged into the reality of human suffering that collects all individuals in the unity of the mythic past and thereby makes contact with the eternal. What Nietzsche means by the eternal is no doubt the “unmediated language of will”(16, p. 89) which brings about the music of “Dionysian rapture” (17, p. 91). Music is the expression of the artist submerged in the world of Dionysian intoxication, a world where, “in spite of fear and compassion, we are the fortunate living beings, not as individuals, but as a single living being, with whose joy in creation we are fused” (17, p. 91).

Barrett seems completely submersed in the Dionysian dithyramb throughout both his solo records. On “Octopus,” fantastical natural imagery meets nonsensical phrasing as Barrett implores the listener to “please leave us here” to “close out eyes to the octopus ride.” Then, addressing himself to this “us,” he announces, “Isn’t it good to be lost in the wood?” Clearly, Barrett desires to be left in the confusion of lost subjectivity, swallowed up by the primordial wood and submerged into the Dionysian world of this “octopus ride.” The straining of his vocals on the chorus seems almost a ritualistic prayer to Dionysius, emphasizing his desire to be submerged in this mythic power.

On the fourth track on Barrett, entitled “It Is Obvious,” this loss of individuality seems just that. Over a weak organ and a bouncy acoustic guitar line, he sings:

Reason, it is written on the brambles, stranded on the spikes . . .
Growing together, they’re growing each other
No wondering, stumbling, fumbling
Rumbling minds shot together,
Our minds shot together.

Not only is reason left caught in the thicket like an outer layer of clothing, shed in a hurry to the call of dithyrambic music, but individual minds are unified, growing into an intoxicated union. Again, the self and the beautiful appearances distinguished by Apollo are discarded in favor of the power of will found in Dionysian dithyramb. It is this Dionysian power, “with its original joy perceived even in pain,” that is “the shared maternal womb of music and tragic myth” (24, p. 128).

Treading the Sand of Subversion

If the idea of Dionysian submersion reveals the creative power behind Barrett’s art, the reception of this art by the public reveals the subversive nature of Barrett’s solo albums. When we first think of subversion and Syd Barrett, the social and cultural subversion of the counter-culture movement of the 1960s, better known as “sex, drugs, and rock ’n’ roll,” comes to mind. The counter-culture aimed to subvert received social traditions and cultural norms regarding, among other things, sexuality, politics, drugs, and civil rights. In conjunction with the counterculture social movement, the technological advances in film and sound recording bolstered the explosive economic power of capitalism in the West as TVs, movies, and records became staples of mass consumer culture. This technology encouraged the counter-culture movement itself, incorporating elements of the movement’s criticism into popular music and film. Whether or not this incorporation thereby negated the subversive character of the original movement is a question that lies at the heart of Barrett’s work.

A great example of Barrett’s early indulgence in the subversion of the counter-culture underground is found in the video for “Arnold Layne,” the 1967 single that was Pink Floyd’s first real hit. In the video the band is shown meandering across a windy beach with a male mannequin in female attire, and its quirky production, which includes both backwards footage and fast-forwarding, is non-linear and comically absurd. These visual images, nontraditional even in the way they are filmed, go with Barrett’s playful lyrics to tell the story of a cross-dresser locked up for stealing women’s clothing from drying lines. Talking about the subject of transvestites through popular music was unheard of at the time, and “Arnold Layne” clearly embodies Barrett’s early subversive tendencies. With the later release of The Madcap Laughs and Barrett, Barrett’s work can be seen as expanding these subversive tendencies into a philosophically nuanced critique of both the ideological and the economic foundations of late 1960s and early 1970s capitalistic society.

Walter Benjamin’s essay “The Work of Art in the Age of Its Reproducibility” is helpful for understanding what Barrett was doing on these albums. Composed in spurts throughout the late 1930s, the essay seeks to radically critique the capitalistic implications of technology and art. Benjamin was a socialist and cofounder of the radical Frankfurt school of criticism. Like his colleagues, he was horrified by the violent rhetoric and bold imagery of fascism that had emerged in the 1920s and 1930s. This “aestheticizing of political life,” he said, was inherent in the fascist movement and could lead only to war (4, p. 269).¹⁶² His hope behind writing “The Work of Art” was to create a socialistic critique of art’s technological reproduction to help the masses see through attempts at aesthetic manipulation by both capitalists and fascists. Benjamin died in 1940 while trying to escape the fascism he argued against so vehemently. But “The Work of Art” has lived on and helps us make sense of Barrett’s subversive sensibilities.

A Long, Cold Look at the Aura and Authenticity

Consider Benjamin’s concept of the aura. Originally derived from the Greek term meaning spirit or breath, he defines the aura as the uniqueness or singularity of a particular piece of art. The aura can be “the here and now of the work of art” which marks it indelibly as a “unique existence in a particular place” (4, p. 253). But it can also refer to “the unique apparition of a distance, however near it may be” (4, p. 255), an idea Benjamin illustrates with a mountain range on a summer afternoon. “To follow with the eye,” he says, “a mountain range on the horizon or a branch that casts its shadow on the beholder is to breathe the aura of those mountains, of that branch” (4, p. 255). In other words, the overpowering presence of singularity in an experience—not just viewing a painting on a wall or experiencing a concert, but approaching nature itself—can capture its aura.

Another way Benjamin analyzes the “here and now” of the work of art is by its authenticity. This is “the quintessence of all that is transmissible in it from its origin on, ranging from its physical duration to the historical testimony relating to it” (4, p. 254). This quintessence, or essential nature, of the work of art emerges, then, in the work’s history, including “the changes to the physical structure of the work over time, together with any changes in ownership” (4, p. 253). Think of Barrett’s interlocutor in “No Good Trying” who owns a “sequin fan” and is trying to hide it from Barrett’s gaze. If we imagine that this “sequin fan” was created by an artisan in the nineteenth century, and has been owned by various persons up until the character in the song, we begin to get a picture of what Benjamin means by authenticity. Unlike, say, the fan that Barrett could go buy at the corner supermarket which has been manufactured at a plant, the sequin fan of the song’s unknown owner owes its creation to a specific individual and has changed hands over the course of time. Its aura encompasses the tradition of its existence, which has a unique origin in a specific point in time and, because of this history, it cannot be duplicated.

Compare that, Benjamin says, to products of modern capitalism, in which industrialization, the assembly line, and mass production take away the uniqueness of art’s origin. Of course, Benjamin acknowledges, “the work of art has always been reproducible” (4, p. 252). Replicas of art and religious icons have always been reproduced to a certain extent as a way to make money throughout history—the history of forgery attests this much. But what distinguishes the capitalist mode of production is that it is specifically technological. Machines have become the reproducers of these works of art, not trained apprentices or artisans as in the past. Photography, sound recording, print reproductions, and cinematography all have contributed to the technology of reproduction that

detaches the reproduced object from the sphere of tradition. By replicating the work many times over, it substitutes a mass existence for a unique existence. And in permitting the reproduction to reach the recipient in his or her own situation, it actualizes that which it reproduces. (Benjamin, 4, p. 254)

Thus, the sequin fan Barrett could buy at the supermarket, while having none of the imagined authentic tradition found in the one owned by the character in “No Good Trying,” can still be recognized by the masses as art, despite the fact that perhaps a million more identical fans exist. Andy Warhol’s pop art is a great example of this logic as it was played out concurrently with Barrett’s.

This example hits upon an important point for Benjamin when thinking about the reproduction of art under capitalism, namely, the mode of perception of the masses. Thrown together by a common experience as workers within a capitalistic economy, Benjamin argues, two desires have driven the masses to participate in the market of art’s technological reproduction. With their desire to “‘get closer’ to things spatially and humanly” and “their equally passionate concern for overcoming each thing’s uniqueness,” the masses have embraced the “transitoriness and repeatability” of the reproduction of the work of art over its “uniqueness and permanence” (4, p. 255). In other words, the destruction of the aura “is the signature of a perception whose ‘sense for sameness in the world’ has so increased that, by means of reproduction, it extracts sameness even from what is unique” (4, p. 256). Playing on Barrett’s lyrics we can now say that, according to Benjamin, there’s “no good trying” to find singularity in mass production, especially in art—the aura is “long, long gone.”

If It’s in You, Reproduce It for the Masses

The aura may have disappeared, but Benjamin does not argue for the destruction of machines or opine for the “good ole days.” He acts the part of the realist—society cannot go back because there has been an irrevocable paradigm shift in the mode of production. He argues that though the “cult value” of art in ancient to early modern times, that is, the mystery of its unique aura, has been destroyed by the rise of technology, the result has been a kind of liberation. “Technological reproducibility emancipates the work of art from its parasitic subservience to ritual” (4, p. 256), he says, because art is no longer enshrined in holy secrecy and has become a tangible reality for everyone, regardless of class.

Thus, for the late 1960s fans of Pink Floyd, phonograph technology meant that the sounds of the countercultural revolution could be distributed to, and heard by, everyone with access to a record player or a radio—not just those lucky enough to go to UFO or elsewhere and experience Pink Floyd’s concerts firsthand. “As soon as the criterion for authenticity ceases to be applied to artistic production,” Benjamin emphasizes, “the whole social function of art is revolutionized” (4, p. 257). Instead of ritual, art can now emerge from the social and political space opened by mass technological reproduction. In this light, viewing “Arnold Layne” or listening to Barrett is a social event and a political experience made possible by a technology predicated on mass dissemination of art in commodity form.

What capitalism has done, Benjamin points out, is made everyone into a critic. As he puts it in regard to film camera, “the newsreel offers everyone the chance to rise from passer-by to movie extra” (4, p. 262). Each person can not only see themselves as becoming a part of a work of art, they can see themselves as a critic of that art, as well. Capitalism has also made everyone, at least potentially, an artist—much as the way Syd Barrett encountered the Beatles on radio, records, and film, and was inspired to write music himself. Technology allows art to engender art and opens up possibilities for social and political subversion by its wide-spread dissemination.

For Benjamin the socialist, however, this democratization of art and criticism leads to the crucial question I mentioned earlier. All this is made possible by an industry devoted to reproducing and distributing art purely for economic gain. And, any socialist would recognize, this results in unfair exploitation of those responsible for creating the commodities, even if these commodities are recognized as art, since capitalists keep the surplus value created by workers as profit for themselves. How then can countercultural art remain subversive once it has been incorporated and commodified within the overarching capitalistic system? In other words, is there anyway that Barrett’s solo records, despite their manufactured distribution to the masses, are more than just a sell-out?

Yes. For while The Madcap Laughs, and even Barrett for that matter, are commodities marketed by the record industry, they have qualities that challenge the overarching logic of radio and record sales. While Barrett’s record label saw his solo career after Pink Floyd as a way to capitalize on his eccentric cult of personality, the actual realization of Barrett’s art is hardly a radio-friendly way to move units. The second half of The Madcap Laughs stands out here since Barrett’s approach to recording is a far cry from Top-40 polish. On “She Took a Long Cold Look,” the microphones capture the sound of Barrett turning pages of lyrics in the background as he stutters through the acoustic strumming. “Feel” features much of the same struggling chord changes and fluctuating tempos, but it is “If It’s in You” that goes the farthest in challenging the very idea of recorded songs as commodities. After featuring some studio banter at the start, including a brief false start, the track features Barrett beginning to sing the first verse again, but stopping in mid-howl, his voice sharply breaking out of tune. By the time he gets to the third verse, he replaces his stream-of-consciousness verbiage with the strangely compelling repetition of “yum, yummy, yum,” seemingly forgoing the need for precise diction.

Here is where Benjamin’s concept of the aura can be seen as having its largest subversive appeal, albeit somewhat at Benjamin’s expense. With the bizarre recordings on The Madcap Laughs, we can see this record not just as an attempt by the recording industry to exploit the creative capacity of a man on the verge of a mental breakdown, but rather as an exploration into the possibilities of re-engaging the aura in mass form. In this light, the studio banter, false starts, and off-key harmonies can be seen not as merely pitiable moments in Barrett’s life captured for profit, but as essential moments of authenticity rife with possibility for political change. It is not Barrett’s non-sensical lyrics or his compelling childish melodies that serve as the highest subversion (though they do challenge social norms) but rather the fact that Barrett’s songs are committed to tape in their rawest form that offers the greatest critique of the capitalistic system.

Piper at the Gates of Dawn has a subversive character to it, also. But it is produced in such a way that radio-friendly singles easily present themselves. The raw, lo-fi moments throughout The Madcap Laughs disrupt this pop-song commodity formula specifically by re-introducing Benjamin’s aura, by making the songs audibly inseparable from Syd himself, and those events—the turning pages, the false starts, the forgotten lyrics—that mark their authenticity. This gives the aura a fighting chance to reach the masses, despite its technological reproducibility, and subvert the market system in which the songs are commodified.

Benjamin argues that the aura is gone for good in our age of mass reproductions, but that doesn’t apply to Barrett and similar artists. For the reproduced art itself reminds the listener of the grittiness and realness of the aura, which in turn suggests the reality of the listener’s social and economic position. So this fundamental challenge offered to the capitalistic aesthetics of polished, marketable art by Barrett’s eccentric records remains aligned with Benjamin’s hope that technology and art would challenge traditional forms of class dominance.

“The Madcap Laughed at the Man on the Border”

When that bizarre mixture of pills and hair product created the illusion of Barrett’s face melted off during a live performance, the truth behind that illusion was Barrett’s losing his individuality as he submerged into the Dionysian, unifying power of music. For Nietzsche, this tragic moment of the loss of self is actually an internal necessity for the creation of aesthetically justified music. It is only in Dionysian submersion that the pain of existence can emerge in the form of a rapturous dithyramb, the creative, joyful power of which is captured in Barrett’s solo records.

As our discussion of Benjamin’s “Work of Art” suggested, Barrett’s gritty recordings, replete with false starts, loose song structure, and off-key singing, serve the same purpose as the forever changing song “Have You Got It Yet?” By utterly refusing to be isolated and commodified, it challenged the very idea of commodifying music, much as The Madcap Laughs challenges the convention of the radio-friendly record. And since, as Benjamin points out, technological reproduction allows them to be disseminated widely, these challenges of Barrett’s art may engage listeners far and wide, over and over again, laying the groundwork for subversive political possibilities of which we can only speculate.

There’s a line in “Octopus” on The Madcap Laughs where Barrett chants that “the madcap laughed at the man on the border.” While this no doubt served as the inspiration for the album’s title, it offers a fascinating image of Barrett as both submersed in madness and laughing subversively at this man on the edge. On the edge of what, Barrett doesn’t say. But it’s easy to imagine this border not only between sanity and insanity, but between individuality and subversion. Submersed in Dionysius and subverting social norms, the Madcap still laughs.¹⁶³