I recently stumbled on a song from 1988 by the Talking Heads, called (Nothing But) Flowers. It’s hard to believe I would not have heard this song before. It caps off the “Best Of” album, after all. But, to be fair, a sampling of the album reveals that 8 of the 18 songs are unfamiliar to me. So, maybe it never hit my ears.
Anyway, listening as if for the first time, I’m captivated by the song. Although it’s not perfect, it hits themes that few songs do. What I’ll do is quote all the lyrics and intersperse comments. I’ll put my interpretive slant on the piece, which may or may not accurately reflect the intent of its creators. So it goes with these things. Sometimes the original intent isn’t even all that important or sacred. In this case, I don’t sense I’m far off the mark, but just want to be clear that I do not claim to have perfect knowledge of the creative intent, nor am I trying to achieve such.
Attributions
The lyrics that follow come from Musixmatch; Songwriters: David Byrne / Tina Weymouth / Jerry Harrison / Yves N’jock / Chris Franz; (Nothing but) Flowers lyrics © Index Music Inc., Index Music, Inc.
Ready?
Here we stand
Like an Adam and an Eve
Waterfalls
The Garden of Eden
We start at “the beginning” of humanity—at least according to the story of the Abrahamic traditions. Skipping a literal interpretation of two so-named individuals (note the “Like”), these words evoke a simple, idyllic time. A paradise. Who doesn’t love that notion? We are led to imagine the state before “The Fall.” Daniel Quinn makes a compelling case that the “fall” was out of the grace of our original ecological context and into agriculture, which I summarize in A Religion of Life.
Two fools in love
So beautiful and strong
The birds in the trees
Are smiling upon them
It’s a community of life. Life is both beautiful and strong. Members of modernity imagine those who came before as fools: knowing nothing of importance. But they knew love! This stanza gets at the relationships, cooperation, and mutual respect that serves as an engine for the community of life. All good, here. Then modernity rears its head:
From the age of the dinosaurs
Cars have run on gasoline
Where, where have they gone?
Now, it’s nothing but flowers
These few short lines span millions of years, during which modernity is a fleeting blip that dissolves into deep time. This one section captures the essence of both the song and our long journey. Had it started with “Since,” one might object to the insinuation that we’ve been using cars for 65 million years. But since it’s “From,” it’s addressing the question: where did fossil fuels come from? From the distant past.
Anyway, I have often mused about the stories trees will tell each other in hundreds of years: “Remember that strange little period that only lasted a century or so when metal boxes hurled past our feet on ribbons of smooth fake rock—long since broken up and reclaimed by the forest?” “Yeah, that was weird.” In several short millennia, not much will be left of modernity. Nothing but “flowers.”
There was a factory
Now, there are mountains and rivers
You got it, you got it
The song presents a number of examples of modernity’s fading bastions, giving way to elements of nature that have stood the test of time, and are almost certain to dominate landscapes after modernity’s fragile scraps have disintegrated.
We caught a rattlesnake
Now, we got something for dinner
We got it, we got it
A typical “westerner” recoils at the thought of eating a snake: never something one finds on the menu. But nature is opportunistic. If something falls in your lap, why not? This bit of the song contributes to its shock value: a whole different world awaits.
There was a shopping mall
Now, it’s all covered with flowers
You’ve got it, you’ve got it
Sounds lovely.
If this is paradise
I wish I had a lawnmower
You’ve got it, you’ve got it
Okay, this is where David Byrne, in my telling, switches narration to that of a typical modernist response, making fun of the knee-jerk reactions characteristic of our ugly present-selves. The modern impulse is to reject the natural (as beautiful as it might be), impose order and control, and transform the landscape into an impoverished shadow of its former, messy glory—all so it fits more easily in our cramped craniums. If beauty is in the eye of the beholder, modern humans suck at beholding.
Years ago
I was an angry young man
I’d pretend
That I was a billboard
Standing tall
By the side of the road
I fell in love
With a beautiful highway
Here, we have another jab at ridiculous modern sensibilities. We train people in our society to think algorithmically, like robots. Many aspire to a sort of technological perfection (where “perfection” means stripped down to a form comprehensible to meat-brains). We fall in love with our technologies. We call our rectilinear artificial world beautiful. We are in love with modernity, and it’s a little weird. It has to stop.
This used to be real estate
Now, it’s only fields and trees
Where, where is the town?
Now, it’s nothing but flowers
More loveliness. Notice the ironic understatement in use of words like “only” and “nothing but” for what is truly marvelous. In fact, “nothing but” appears parenthetically in the song’s title. It’s also a phrase used by philosophical idealists, who (on tremendous authority?) can’t abide the notion that our sensations might have a lowly material basis, and be “nothing but” atoms, their arrangements, and interactions. What authority speaks otherwise? “Only” the humble universe. “Nothing but” is meant to demean a materialist stance, but in so doing breezily skips over an ocean of unfathomable complexity that our brains simply aren’t materially constructed to handle. It’s a revealing admission of—and squirming over—our forgivable, inevitable ignorance. But I digress.
The highways and cars
Were sacrificed for agriculture
I thought that we’d start over
But I guess I was wrong, hey
This is where the song takes a narrower view than how I might have framed it. But, hey, close enough. The view I subscribe to is that the seeds of modernity lie in the initiation of grain agriculture. This is where our quest for control took root, leading to our perceived separation from nature and our sense of superiority. Many maladies accompany the agricultural route (e.g., see the River post).
But the second half of this passage expresses surprise that when modernity failed, we didn’t just ramp it back up—instead taking a simpler turn. I can’t rule out that the simpler turn will have agricultural elements—in fact it very probably will. But any way of living that persists into the long term likely can’t share much in common with the totalitarian practices we’ve applied to agriculture these last 10,000 years.
Once there were parking lots
Now, it’s a peaceful oasis
You got it, you got it
Peaceful oasis sounds rather nice. The parking might be terrible, but it seems like a fine trade—especially if no one has a car.
This was a Pizza Hut
Now, it’s all covered with daisies
You got it, you got it
Not selling modernity too well, huh?
I miss the honky tonks
Dairy Queens and Seven-Elevens
You got it, you got it
Now we have the reappearance of our modernist commentator, lamenting all those perks. This is a natural reaction, but what’s the point of liking something that is based on a lie and carries destruction? If something can’t exist in long-term ecological sustainability, actively promoting a sixth mass extinction, then it’s best to come to terms. Go ahead and shed the tears, but we don’t have the option of preserving our Likes without the raft of associated Dislikes.
And as things fell apart
Nobody paid much attention
You got it, you got it
This one is fascinating. A natural reaction of billions of modernists alive today is horror and panic at a terminal diagnosis for modernity. It’s all they/we know. But perhaps this is the future version of an “Okay, Boomer” sort of symptom (perhaps Okay, Z’er, or Okay, Alpha). If the migration away from modernity is gradual enough, it will all seem rather normal and acceptable to the new generations walking the earth. The hissy-fits will have died away, literally. Maybe we do take it in stride. Lots to ponder, here.
I dream of cherry pies
Candy bars and chocolate chip cookies
You got it, you got it
Our meddlesome modernity advocate is back. Who doesn’t enjoy these things?! It’s fun to list our Likes, isn’t it. I recommend crayon as a medium.
We used to microwave
Now, we just eat nuts and berries
You got it, you got it
Sounds right to me. You got it. In fact, the repetition of “You got it” (and variants) might be interpreted as: yes—we all still do “have it.” Deep down, we’re still the creatures we evolved to be, and still have latent instincts honed by millions of years—ready to practice and nurture.
This was a discount store
Now, it’s turned into a cornfield
You got it, you got it
Okay, back to my objection that “cornfield” is not necessarily our future path. But the general sense is still intact: artificial constructions give way to more natural forms (Life).
Don’t leave me stranded here
I can’t get used to this lifestyle
A final, panicked protest from our modernist, who will never accept that they had it all wrong, and were shaped for a distorted, transitory phase of life on Earth. So it might go for billions of people. It’s hard to change, and to accept that the life to which we have become accustomed has shortchanged us and the entire community of life in the long run.
The Actual Song
There’s also music. It’s surprisingly upbeat and catchy. David Byrne’s distinctive voice is best showcased when he asks “Where,” and also on “Seven-Elevens.” The video is also worth a look. Various Do-the-Mathy stats are flashed up (may need to hit pause to absorb some) highlighting various absurdities and tragedies. It’s clear we’re coming from a similar place: modernity is doing something very wrong, here.
Anyway, this bit of musical appreciation was not my usual sort of post, so I hope it goes down well. It does highlight for me the power of music and song at moving worthy thoughts in a memorable way. We have a knack for remembering musical verses. It makes me wonder if I should invest some time in that direction, but I predict I would suck at it—which you may have noticed is a recurrent theme lately in my description of human aptitudes (myself included).
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I do enjoy your writing and this is quite fine as well. I find myself pondering musical lyrics quite a bit and their critic of our place in time. Some minstrels seem to have a thirty thousand foot view.
Creating songs or playing them in a group performance is a deeply educational practice. Often, each word contains its own microcosm of meaning and is an important empathic and narrative message in the practices of indigenous peoples. It was an interesting style and a great read. 🙂
Really enjoyed your thoughts on this song. I remember thinking similar thoughts about this song in 2007 when I was first beginning to awaken to the nightmare we are inflicting upon the Earth; I ended up doing a project and short presentation on it for a course I was taking at the time.
Awesome! Glad I'm not the only one who found it to be significant enough to write about it!
Thanks for the recommendation! I hope I can return the favour. I've just finished reading Kurt Vonnegut's 1985 book Galapagos, which touches on many of the same themes.
It seems a lot of creatives were thinking the same thoughts even as far back as the mid eighties. It's a shame we didn't pay more attention.
You can go back almost as far as you like: Limits to Grown in 1972; Malthus (pre-fossil-fuels) over 200 years ago. I gather that many Indigenous Americans reacted to European settler habits saying something like "well, that'll never work, long-term. What are they thinking?" But yes, we did seem to lose the thread for a few go-go decades, there.
Somehow thinking about Daniel Schmachtenberger's obligate technology. Similar pressures and resources seem to produce similar results: disconnected civilizations popping up in different parts of the world (including N and S America). Is it clever humans seeking dominion through agriculture via selective breeding or are those "winning" species like wheat and dogs cleverly bending silly humans to their will? What is cause and what is effect or are action and reaction just an eternal dance with evolution in charge.
Quite like Talking Heads – after watching the video the parody of modernity is somewhat more clear. To me it seems to be about the dissonance between being in and loving modernity while also recognizing it's a suicide pact.
My song choice along these lines from around the same time would be Toy Matinee's "Last Plane Out".
I do like this kind of post. I have a couple of 'go-to' songs with I'd like to think collapse-appropriate lyrics. I suspect most people can add one or two.
The first is Heaven's Hung in Black by Wasp, I treat it as like a message/plea fro Gaia to humans even though originally it's about the casualties at Gettysburg.
The other is Babylon by Hannah Aldridge.
Both available on Youtube, I can post the lyrics if people feel the urge.
Hey Mark:
i liked your reference to W.A.S.P. Their lead singer had his 15 minutes of fame in the best scene of "Decline of Western Civilization, Part II" where he jawbones with his ma around a swimming pool.
I'm sure Tom Murphy would enjoy that one (if he hasn't already seen it.)
I'm familiar with the song in terms of its musicality but confess I never paid much attention to the lyrics, so thank you or giving me this new appreciation as well as everything else I am learning from you and taking to heart. (From Alex Leff's — Human Nature Odyssey — proud and doting aunt Claudia 🙂 )
I'm very pleased that Alex has an aunt who is taking this stuff in! Seems like no chance any of my aunts would; or uncles, or cousins, or even immediate family—into the younger generations.
Thank you, Tom. And I'm pleased to say that Alex's parents (my brother and sister-in-law) feel/think the same way, i.e. that modernity is unsustainable. And they've turned their "lawn" into a meadow and my brother is an environmental consultant very involved in ecological restoration. So it's a "family affair."
For "cornfield," think Hopi.
When the industrial revolution was taking baby steps, Oliver Goldsmith wrote 'The Deserted Village' highlighting what we will lose.
Thanks Alex, I actually I have this CD, as I really like the Talking Heads. ( I have five of their CDs). I'll have to pay more attention to this song. How are you doing? It's been bitterly cold here. 10° below zero this morning. Take care and keep in touch my friend.
Thanks Tom! Wonderful piece.
There are certain songs that just seem to really hit the mark. For me, I’ll always remember “Let the Franklin Flow” by the band Goanna that was released during the protests against the Franklin Dam project in Tasmania. The song still sends shivers down my spine and makes me immediately think and feel in my heart how precious and magnificent the wilderness is. Worth a listen!
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=tIQjm5zuJ5I
Great song. Awesome lyrics. Brilliant commentary and analysis. Just what we need right now with dum and dummer running things.
[Edited down for brevity as courtesy to readers, keeping key points; apologies that it's still very long]
Hmm…I'm a bit reluctant to comment as I have a fair bit of sympathy with the spirit of the lyrics and don't wish to be too down on Talking Heads or their fans, but I do have a few problems with this…
The first one (which applies to all discourses advocating a return to simplicity) is that of inconsistency (between the stated aim and the process). Watching a YouTube video of their performance, one does not see flowers, or even the sort of instruments that might have been available to our pre-industrial (let alone pre-agricultural) ancestors. Instead one sees electric guitars, keyboard, drums, mikes and amplifiers, loads of wires, not to mention lighting, semi-synthetic clothing etc. etc. [Everything we do] is completely embedded in modernity with its six-continent supply chains and its reek of hydrocarbon combustion. OK, so the question then is, can one use the tools of modernity to dismantle modernity – rather, that is, than simply letting modernity run its course (and, almost certainly, implode)?
Secondly, the historical pre- or primitively agricultural world had a human population in the low millions. […] Given the environmental degradation which has occurred, it seems pretty unlikely that our post-modernity population would be much above that, which means that one is looking at the loss of 99% of our current numbers. […] Now, if one looks at this dispassionately, say from the perspective of Gaia, God, the wise transcendent galactic intelligence etc. one would have to ask oneself, why keep this 1%? […] Wouldn't it be safer (from the point of view of life as a whole) to go down the complete extermination route: why eliminate 99 and not 100%? In other words, to take the same view towards humanity as humanity took to say, smallpox?
OK – so we are not a dispassionate galactic intelligence: we are humans with a certain bias towards the continuation of humanity – even if living in a vastly different context to our current one. Can that bias be sufficient to favour 1 over 0%? […] In other words, I'm just not sure (despite the lyrics), that the survival of several million hunter-gatherers (even "enlightened" hunter-gatherers with a smattering of Shakespeare, Bob Marley and quantum mechanics) is going to be motivational.
My main concern however, is that the survival (or otherwise) of some portion of humanity is a bit by the by. The song brings to my mind the images of the Golden Country in 1984 – the putative idyllic land in which Winston and Julia could escape the clutches of the Party (read modernity). Maybe the Golden Country exists? Maybe not? Maybe it could be reconstituted in a future world? Maybe having it as a dream is of some value? Regardless of the answers, that is not where the focus of the novel lies – that being within the Ministry of Love. While the entropic processes of modernity vitiate attempts to construct long-lived totalitarian regimes, the collapse itself will undoubtedly unleash all manner of horrors, both "natural" and manmade, and if civilisation's armour of denial is to be pierced, it will be in the teeth of these horrors.
There are probably more appropriate lyrics, but for the moment I'd go with Marianne Faithful's search for oblivion. (Sister Morphine)
This is framed as if someone will decide whether humans go extinct, weighing the pros and cons. We don't know what will unfold—beyond control—but I can be pretty sure that if humans survive for many millennia more, it must be (by definition) in an ecologically sustainable manner in a "nothing but flowers" fashion. The Pizza Hut and shopping malls cannot be part of a lasting story.
Your criticism of Talking Heads is perhaps fair, certainly in the context of the way that Tom translates the song. However, in my head, the song is not from the vantage of two different persons, but the juxtaposition of Byrne himself – a desire to go back to something more natural, whilst pining the modern. A battle in his own mind. Thus, the modern synthesisers and electronic equipment fit perfectly. Perhaps an a-capella verse would have resonated there, demonstrating the back and forth nature of his thoughts, as he grapples with what might become.
Either way, a thoughtful post Tom, thanks.
I guess this is off-topic, but have you read this book, Tom ? I just read a review of it. I haven't read it.
https://www.amazon.com.au/We-Will-Not-Be-Saved/dp/1472289242/ref=sr_1_1?crid=2WBSPKYO7HXR8&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.FDumV8yOK0YGmKw2pzxI5dDRIPeBA8LgJWo5aSjTdcijEii-IvY3EPzJ2tXKlCC2jRbOADxX1dBP7LJDOZN2IDQBCTx2hAuVZlGCy1Vr5mYzWiFVQgU5y4be3bcgxJ-lF-_VjYllvaLFMGAbhenAYQB2aU3TE9efcdm8VRFOH0hdnoR1717lOSLKVNj2ZxH1WJ9S2ilGOLuM-Lnip3rh_BUS3ztlYBaFselK9vnp9Kc.zsVweaZQMMR6osKTVWQ6gzmkxE7JewijR_bfTaH44yA&dib_tag=se&keywords=we+will+not+be+saved&qid=1739569283&s=books&sprefix=we+will+not+be+saved%2Cstripbooks%2C1100&sr=1-1
Was unaware, but just put it in my library queue (long wait). In the U.S., it was published under the title: We Will Be Jaguars.
👍 to the analysis Tom.
I wonder what David Byrne was thinking, in detail, when that was written, many years ago ('88?)?
Came across this as well, FWIW:
https://www.science.smith.edu/climatelit/nothing-but-flowers-by-talking-heads/
(And, tangentially, what could be better than a Talking Heads song that also includes the inimitable Johnny Marr [Smiths] and Kirsty MacColl] )
"Daniel Quinn makes a compelling case that the “fall” was out of the grace of our original ecological context and into agriculture."
I see the Adam and Eve story more as a description of the point (much further back in time) when we became "conscious".
When we stopped living in the moment/reacting to our environment in "real time" and becoming aware of the future. Of the past.
When we began to see patterns in the world.
Patterns in sounds (language, bird song)
Patterns in behaviour (of eachother and of other animals)
Patterns in the landscape.
Plus the ability to have abstract thoughts.
To recognise our emotions and give them abstract form.
To see the marks that an animals feet make and to be able to make the connection with the animal that made them. This leading to making abstract marks to represent complex thoughts or objects/animals.
Once the cognitive leap was taken, there was no going back.
The "fall" was the point when we could no longer live without the constant stream of consciousness.
And it is relentless/unending.
Ignorant bliss in the garden of eden was lost forever.
Conscious thought has been a powerful tool but it doesn't give us peace.
The majority of Talking Heads songs have story's that put in the context of the thoughts of an individuals own mind whilst listening have multiple
coherent interpretations of the lyrics. The warnings they were singing to us have sadly gone largely unacknowledged by any who had the influence to pull back the reigns of the world that's severely suffering from exhaustetion humans are continually and seemingly without remorse nor desire for another ride beyond today.