MY COVID-19 SOUNDTRACK, PART 7: BUT THINKING MAKES IT SO

A yellow cardinal spotted in Alabama in 2018. Photo by Jeremy Black.

According to science we don't all see colors the same way. What I call "Cardinal Red" you very likely see as something else on my color wheel. But experience and expediency leads us to agree that the color we see whenever a cardinal flits by is red, even if each of us is in fact seeing a different hue. As abstract as color can be, our perception of it is incredibly concrete. Since we've been old enough to point at cardinals, we've only been able to see them one way because "color," as one scientist put it, "is a private sensation." 

Until it isn't.

That's because colors are also socially constructed. Our brain gathers the evidence it receives from our rods and cones and filters it through the lens of our learned, and often shared experience, or "schema". "Red" is a label created by one human that fell into usage because he or she was able to convince other humans to accept it as a descriptor for things like blood, apples, and cardinals. Someone pointed at a bird, said "red" and it trended on prehistoric Twitter, and that carried on through the ages to the point where identifying color is one of the first leaps of faith we make. As children, we name our colors the way we might name saints: by rote, sight, and for the approval of those judging our development and growth.

So my red is your red, even if objectively we're actually seeing different colors, out of an expediency born of a time when knowing the colors of certain berries meant knowing which ones were good to eat and which ones were poison. We classified, coded; and, because it could be a matter of life and death, collectively agreed to give what our eyes saw a common name. But every so often colors become contentious, and not because of our eyes, but because of our baggage. Trying to decide what color to paint the living room can lead some relationships to ruin. Red and blue have become shorthand for who believes what in America, and who is more or less American as a result. Black and white are loaded with meaning that has consequences beyond their places on or off the color wheel, as this clip from Spike Lee's Malcolm X illustrates:

That seeing red -- in every sense of the phrase -- is rooted in faith more than fact has never been more evident during the Rorschach Test that is 2020. Trump, Biden, Coronavirus, masks, Coke, Pepsi... Each word can draw dramatically different responses depending on the individual beliefs of the person reading those collectively defined words. You stand on what you "know" to be "true" even if truth and knowledge are moving targets.

"YOU BETTER BELIEVE!!!" - DECLAN MCKENNA
"it's all in your head, it's all in your head, it's all in your..."

Whether you like the way he sounds or not, that Declan McKenna can do and has done much musically is as certain as the sky is blue (right?). At 15 his first single "Brazil" was an indie-pop smash. That same year McKenna won the Glastonbury Festival's Emerging Talent competition, becoming a critical darling when other kids his age were prepping for exams. That's not unusual in and of itself. Pre- and post-pubescent pop stars have been an industry staple as long as there's been an industry. But McKenna is not a Tiger Beat teen idol. Much like Lorde, McKenna caught people's attention with his unique sound and wise-beyond-his-years lyrics. "Brazil" was about the corruption plagued 2014 FIFA World Cup, and McKenna has placed the rights of transgender teens ("Paracetamol"), terror attacks ("The Kids Don't Wanna Come Home"), religious bigotry ("Bethlehem"), and the British arms industry ("British Bombs") within the frame of 3-5 minute pop songs.

Skillfully.

I'm impressed by McKenna's talent, but I marvel at his hubris. His latest album, Zeros, was initially scheduled to drop the same week as the new release from The Killers, prompting McKenna to boast to NME, "I personally think I'm going to whoop The Killers." While Zeros was pushed back because of COVID, The Killers' Imploding the Mirage reached number 1 in the UK, outselling the rest of the top five combined. No matter. When Zeros finally did see its release the same week as The Rolling Stones' much anticipated, remastered and expanded Goats Head Soup, McKenna responded with a bit of cheek:

This picture is as much a tribute as a swipe, as discerning Stones fans will recognize the shirt and the pose from this picture of Keith Richards taken during the band's 1975 US tour. In that, McKenna reaches back to a time when touring was possible. While the Glimmer Twins have decades of earned swagger to carry them through the pandemic, COVID has sidelined emerging artists like McKenna, cutting off a vital marketing and revenue stream that threatens the viability of their craft for years to come. That makes McKenna's photo smart marketing as well as good crack. With traditional methods of promotion altered by the pandemic, McKenna and his fans mounted a social media campaign to #getdeclantonumber1. Speaking to Jess Iszatt on the UK's The Record Club, McKenna confessed, “I’m determined to beat The Rolling Stones, which is pretty strange to be saying. You’ve got to go into these things with confidence, even when you’re technically the underdog. I think you’ve gotta have faith. I’ve been blown away by the response, it’s been pretty outrageous the people who have got behind it and how amazing this past week has been. It’s unreal, it’s really getting down to the wire.” And it almost worked. Despite leading heading into the final day, Zeros ceded the top spot to Goats Head Soup, coming just 800 units shy. 

You would think going up against one of the greatest rock and roll acts of all time with an album that many feel successfully channels another would be enough to satiate any 21 year-old's ego. But McKenna is driven by doubt as much as anything else. Zeros is an homage to McKenna's love of 70's glam. It's Major Tom stepping through the door and emerging as Ziggy Stardust. But McKenna wants to be himself more than anyone else, and sitting on Zeros due to COVID has led to some self-doubt. “The most imposter syndrome I’ve ever felt is now,” he told NME. “I’ve just been sitting on an album for a year, and I have had too much time to ask myself questions about the musical direction I have gone in. When you get to that point, you begin to wonder if you are an absolute fraud.” Taken against that comment, and you know the arrogance McKenna wears has more to do with him and less to do with Jagger.

"You Better Believe!!!" is the lead track from Zeros, and it simultaneously affirms and indicts  what's possible if... you do what the title suggests. In "You Better Believe!!!" the success McKenna craves, technology and the consumerism that drives it, and religion and religious leaders all "lose their flavors like gum stuck to our heels." Yet McKenna's response to all of these failures is an emphatic, three exclamation point declaration that, still, "You Better Believe!!!" It's an anthem with sentiments the left and right can get behind, even as McKenna hints that they shouldn't. It's this dichotomy that I'm struggling with at the moment. I'm not sure my red is red anymore, though I know the bird itself exists.

I want a climax to this strange story we're staging, but I feel instead that I'm caught in a looping montage of rising and falling action. If 2020 is our collective rock-bottom, then the protests, the election, the vaccine -- all amplified by COVID -- should cause us to engage in the sort of self-reflection that might lead to the cathartic shift I crave. That hasn't happened. Instead the distance between the people who want America to be great again and those who finally want it to be great for all has further eroded and canyoned before my eyes.  A disturbingly large number of Americans -- including some at the highest levels of government -- believe that wearing masks to combat COVID's spread should be an individual matter. They're willfully blind to the collective good that comes from the inconvenience of wearing a mask. Yet these same people suddenly have eyes for all lives when it comes to people of color.

Photo via Riverfront Times

McKenna ends "You Better Believe!!!" by explaining:

I'm off out to buy a bag of Quavers
And Nike trainers
Comfort you can feel
And you know that it's real because you saw it at the station
God's creation
With a half off summer deal

It's an ending where everything that lifts us up brings us down while everything that brings us down lifts us up. I'm stepping into 2021 with no idea how my movie will end, knowing only that I'm more afraid of other peoples' certainty than my own lack of it. There are ghosts stealing votes in Michigan, where all cops are bastards. Black Lives Matter in DC, where Trump rides clouds of tear gas to church. ​