Friday, May 6, 2011

Heaven and Hell and Bitzer

"Heaven is a place where nothing ever happens" this is the chorus to a song by the Talking Heads. 

Heaven for David Byrne who wrote the song, sounds an awful lot like Professor Davis' description of Bitzer rhetorically free world. 

The lyrics in full are:

Everyone is trying to get to the bar.
The name of the bar, the bar is called Heaven.
The band in Heaven plays my favorite song.
They play it once again, they play it all night long.

Heaven is a place where nothing ever happens.
Heaven is a place where nothing ever happens.

There is a party, everyone is there.
Everyone will leave at exactly the same time.
Its hard to imagine that nothing at all
could be so exciting, and so much fun.

Heaven is a place where nothing ever happens.
Heaven is a place where nothing ever happens.

When this kiss is over it will start again.
It will not be any different, it will be exactly
the same.
It's hard to imagine that nothing at all
could be so exciting, could be so much fun.

Heaven is a place where nothing every happens.
Heaven is a place where nothing every happens.

What is so interesting, at least to me, is how nothingness can be described so differently.  Is it a heaven, where as Byrne says  "Its hard to imagine that nothing at all could be so exciting, and so much fun".  Or is it as Professor Davis and the movie Groundhog Day suggest, a hell. 

I don't know the answer, and this post is really just an exploration of the idea, but at times like these (the end of the semester) I am inclined to think of nothing as heaven. Good old relaxing nothingness sounds a lot better than end of the semester cram stress fest.   I wonder if I will feel differently tomorrow when the semester is over. Or "it will start again"

1 comment:

  1. Yes, indeed, if nothing happened there would be no exigences and with no exigences, there would be no rhetoric. Actually sounds like it would be fun, not boring. Exigences are hard to address. Liked your integration of song lyrics into your blog post. Very creative idea.

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