The Signifier by Cloud Ruins
The precarious dance of the cognitariat continues.
The chain-gang, having been freed from given duty, liberated... to signify nothing. Sisyphus's day off?
In this folk modality, Cloud Ruins re-imagines The Drunken Sailor as an unemployed signifier, given over to the whims of nihilistic non-sense and the resultant scenarios of such a situation.
The signifier's decoupling from the signified is akin to the status of workers finding themselves facing increasing automation, and the inevitable need to refashion life without recourse to the dead security of tedium, i.e., of work as life's core foundation. This is, of course, coupled with financial precarity and the stresses incured. This, itself, is the core problematic that stares us down, we cognitarians caught in the financial crosshairs of this unprecedented moment.
Our song follows the poetic transformation of language and money, falling apart and heaping up, heaping up on the high altar where everything burns, as the dead Gods writhe in agony. Once again, Cloud Ruins paints the scene and finds solace in the technocratic rubble of The Age.
Tracklist
| 1. | The Signifier | 2:42 |
Lyrics
LYRICS:
What shall we do with the signifier?
Unemployed and up for hire,
What shall we do with the signifier?
For meaning, we’re in mourning
Words like a wire bendin’ in the fire
Signification’s a blazing pyre,
Words like a lyre plucked by desire,
While Hermes plays the drover.
The bane of the chain gang’s clang’s a null pointer (x3)
At the end, my friend, there’s nothing.
In a tizzy with the dizzying stock, she downsizes (x2)
Prithee, market, don’t drop! She downsizes,
Holdin’ fast to dyin’ money,
She’s a wee bit clingy, eh? [Laughter]
Decree a neology for world war three(x3)
A goad-dressed euphemism, Hey!
A scant chant can’t recant what it symbolizes
No hierophant can supplant such guises
The canto, strewed across a thousand plateaus
Sing it again, when Finnegan rises!
What shall we do with the signifier? (x3)
For meaning, we’re in mourning. (x1)
Bath in simulation, shave with Occam’s razor(x3)
When dumb is the new normal.
A pleonasm won’t shake the spasm
When a weaker speaker squeaks a tongue-tied tantrum
Squeeze in a breeze to coax the chasm
Before all’s gobbled up by Google.
What shall we do with the signifier? (x3)
For meaning, we’re in mourning. (x1)
At the behest of a Turing Test, your blood rises, (3x)
The Long Bet’s yet undecided.
In a knapsack a claptrap gap metastasizes,
Into a whirlwind that rescinds what it vocalizes,
Hear ye, clearly, revocable rises,
Down, down, the word capsizes.
Toto, in a grotto barks a spark, for Plato,
A bestiary to digest our zeitgeist, but barely.
The situation’s hairy so, stay frosty, baby,
Keep your good eye on the sundry.
A B-tree extending to infinity,
An endless search in a data sea,
No set to contain the missing search key
Keep searching, lad, keep searching (3x)
Credits
Lyrics, Vox, Bass, Synth, mixing, etx. - David McFarlane
Lyrics from second stanza inspired by (A) Gary Genosko's Baudrillard and Signs: Signification Ablaze and (B) Jean Baudrillard's Symbolic Exchange and Death
Other influences:
James Joyce, Marshal McLuhan, Alan Turing, Hermes, Data Structures, The Market, Deleuze, Esoteric Doctrines, William of Occam, Wizard of Oz, Reboot...
License
All rights reserved.
Cloud Ruins is a symbolic offering to The Cloud. The ruins are here and now, not merely to come in post-apocalyptic fantasy. As the Cloud grows, so do the ruinous remains.