Whereas Part 1 was a relatively straightforward and logical expression of the Arcade Fire’s thesis, Part 2 goes in a metaphorical and emotional direction. Part 1 was grounded in a real-world narrative, often taking place in contemporary locations and settings. Part 2 is grounded in mythology, specifically the myth of Orpheus. That isn’t to say that Part 2 does not express a truth. Take note of the dichotomy of truth in Greek philosophy between ‘logos’ and ‘mythos’. The Greeks held that knowledge or truth could be captured by reason in mathematical or rhetorical terms. At the same time, it could also be expressed in mythology, through metaphor and symbolism (though I don’t know if they actually used words like metaphor and symbolism). Myths were akin to religious dogma – they were written to communicate something important about society, and different versions shared characteristics and a general narrative. But, like many religious stories, they were not intended to be taken literally, and they often contradicted each other. So in Reflektor, we see two different attempts to present a truth about the nature of imagery and reality, each succeeding in its own way.
In case you didn’t already know the myth of Orpheus, I’m giving a summary here instead of sending you off on a quest. Feel free to skip to the first song if you are already familiar with it. Well, once upon a time, in a land far away from here, there was a rad dude named Orpheus. He probably had some godly lineage or another, as most mortals central to Greek myth are, but truth be told I can’t remember and it isn’t really relevant for the story. So anyway, we have this guy Orpheus, and he is a musician. Orpheus isn’t just a musician though – he is the greatest mortal musician of all time, rival to even Apollo himself. When he plays people, the denizens of nature, and even magical creatures come to listen. The gods are big fans, and holy lineage or not, Orpheus is favored by the gods for the beauty of the music he creates. Orpheus frequently takes advantage of his skill to his own benefit, but he doesn’t do anything all that awful or noteworthy and honestly if I were a huge celebrity I’d use my status to get free shit every day. He’s basically the world’s first rock star. One day, Orpheus is playing down by a river, enjoying the sunshine, when out of the thicket emerges a beautiful naiad named Eurydice. Enticed by the music, the river nymph came out from hiding to meet Orpheus. Not surprisingly, they fall in love and are soon wed. Their wedding was huge (some say so big as to make gods jealous; a foreboding thought) and happy. Time passes quietly, but one fateful day Eurydice is strolling by the river she loves when a son of Apollo (I forget his name) is smitten with her and chases after her. As she flees, Eurydice encounters a snake (some say spurred by a jealous Apollo, whether jealous of the wedding or Orpheus’s mad skillz) that bites her and leaves her with a fatal wound. Orpheus is racked with grief, and resolves to solve this problem the same way he always has – with music. Orpheus descends into hell itself, carrying only his lyre, and pleads with Hades and his wife, Persephone. At some point he also plays a lullaby for the three-headed guardian of hell, Cerberus the dog. Probably some other stuff too. But anyway, he tells the gods that he can play them a song so moving and beautiful that they will agree to grant him a special exception. Orpheus pulls it off, moving Persephone who then persuades Hades. Hades agrees on the condition that Orpheus must lead the soul of Eurydice out of hell without laying eyes upon her. Orpheus is thrilled when he hears the voice of Eurydice, but he obeys the god’s command and leads her to the tune of his lyre. Nearing the exit Orpheus, who is full of confidence and excitement, turns to gaze upon his beloved. Of course, he does so a bit too early, and he catches a glimpse of her sad, translucent face just as she fades away, never to be seen again. And that’s it – Greek myth doesn’t have explicit morals like fables. Stuff just goes down in the world, good or bad. If you’re wondering what happened to Orpheus, it is said in later myths that he ended up terribly sad, then (possibly) a sad and surly drunk, and his last day ends with him getting beheaded (I think as an accident?) and his head floats down a river, singing one last sad song. Yikes.
2:1 “Here Comes the Night Time II”
If you recall, this song is a second version of a song from Vol. 1. This reflective pairing introduces a more figurative and non-linear reinterpretation of the ideas in Vol. 1. Where “Here Comes the Night Time” dealt with a literal darkness in a blackout, the second version deals with the metaphorical darkness of death 1 The song begins in medias res, with the death of Eurydice having already occurred. This time around, the line “Here comes the night time” refers to grief and death. Orpheus laments the coming of night in repetition. A common event in myth is the invocation of suicide or self-harm in response to an external tragedy. Orpheus declares that he has hurt himself, presumably by allowing himself to love Eurydice as much as he did, and yet at the same time failing to protect her. His grief brings him low in a profound sadness that shuts out all his friends. Orpheus is (understandably) pessimistic in his pain: “[It] feels like it never ends, here comes the night again”. In depression, life is reduced to a series of negative experiences that feel interminable; a procession from one grievous experience to another. At the same time, death is a reminder that life (despite seeming far too long in this moment of suffering) will certainly come to an end. This is a common theme in myth, e.g. The Labors of Heracles or The Illiad. Even the greatest of men, the favored sons of Zeus, cannot escape death forever.
The next verse is a reflection of the first, the subject changing and glancing back at Orpheus. Here is Eurydice, feeling the grief and separation in Orpheus as she begins to pass into the next realm. The whole song in its simple, repetitive nature can be taken as a lament, another element common in Greek myth. It is not, however, a logical procession of events in narrative form. “Here Comes the Night Time II” makes it apparent that the focus of Vol. 2 is the emotional, not the rational.
2:2 “Awful Sound (Oh Eurydice)”
At this point, Eurydice has breathed her last, and Orpheus is begging her to return. He desperately makes a case for their relationship and its continuance. Despite his positive intentions, Orpheus’s words end up sounding like a eulogy. He talks about growing up together in a “small town” where Eurydice was always running (seeking?) and now Orpheus wishes she would stop running and let him “be the one for you [her]”. Orpheus sees Eurydice as unique; different from her peers even at this early stage- “ I know you can see things we can’t see.” He pledges to be by her side, even if he can’t always understand her. But, it’s too late. “…when I say I love you, your silence covers me.”
If you have the lyrics and you’re reading along, you might be getting some weird vibes here. Literally speaking, the myth of the song is diverging from the myth of antiquity so that Orpheus is somehow able to speak directly to Eurydice. This a clue to an alternative interpretation of the metaphorical theme of Vol. 2. Where Vol. 1 was a thematic building of romantic unity, Vol. 2 is the dissolution of that unity. What if the “death” in Vol. 2 isn’t Eurydice dying, but the relationship between Orpheus and Eurydice dying? It seems to fit with the lyrics so far – the first song is impassioned grieving at the moment of rejection, the second song is the beginning of desperation felt by a spurned lover attempting to maintain their dying relationship. These examples of relationship events become more obvious in later tracks.
Orpheus tells Eurydice she is only sleeping, and that death is like a frozen sea (the stalled movement of the living). He tells her to “break free”, to put her pain on him, so she can breathe once more. Orpheus blames some external entity, saying “I know there’s a way we can make them pay.” Perhaps Orpheus sees the desire of Eurydice to leave him as something that can’t be a product of her own volition? Orpheus cannot process his break-up, and so instead blames some fictitious other, some bad idea that has put Eurydice to sleep (reversion to the mode of mainstream culture/suppression of emotion in 1:4). He wants to lift that burden so she can see him once more and things can go back to how they ‘should’ be. Simultaneously, “they” could be the blind forces of nature, betraying one of their own. As a naiad, Eurydice is a component of nature more than a resident. She is a small, but real embodiment of natural power, a spirit of the river. That a creature within her own realm killed her could be construed as betrayal. Whether real or imagined, Orpheus proposes revenge when childhood memories won’t do. Orpheus also invokes angelic imagery: Eurydice flies, and makes an awful sound when she falls.
When Orpheus says they “met on a stage” while attempting to revive Eurydice through recollection of the past, he makes another reference to Vol. 1: the wearing of masks. Meeting on a stage is akin to meeting in the course of a performance, that is in the concealment of everyday living. Perhaps Eurydice is in a ‘Darkness of the Soul’ situation where she has come to reject her true self and question all her decisions (or maybe Orpheus just thinks she has).
The song concludes with what I’ve honestly always thought was nonsense. In my research I noticed some lyric sites actually end up omitting the last couple lines. Turns out, those nonsense words are actually a very meaningful and pertinent reference: “Damballah Wedo – Ayida Wedo” are the names of two Haitian deities, a husband and wife. Damballah Wedo is the creator of all life and ruler of the intellect. He was once a serpent, but he shed his skin to bring life to the planet through water. Ayida Wedo is his serpent wife, the goddess of fire, fertility, and rainbows. There is a lot to unpack here:
1) The myth is a callback to the Haitian theme of Vol. 1
2) Damballah and Ayida are a couple analogous to Eurydice and Orpheus who possessed the wisdom to come together and create something real. The snake is often a symbol of wisdom (including in Nietzsche!). Though they each represent oppositional parts of nature (what is permanent, and what is fleeting), they come together and are of the same essence. Also interesting is the notion that while Damballah sheds his skin and becomes more human-like (overcoming oneself through the application of wisdom in creativity), Ayida retains her snake form (containment of wisdom within oneself through the rejection of change).
3) Ayida is also the goddess of snakes, a reference to the downfall of Eurydice, as well as the fact that Eurydice is of the same substance as what destroyed her (pure nature). Also to the fact that there is a divide between Eurydice-Orpheus.
4) Reference directly to Greek Mythology, specifically the antagonistic dynamic between Zeus and Hera. Eurydice was killed by the son of Apollo, and Apollo was the son of Zeus, but not Hera. Perhaps a bit of one-uppery on Mount Olympus.
2:3 “It’s Never Over (Hey Orpheus)”
We come back to the traditional myth, but instead from the perspective of Eurydice. Skipping the descent into Hades, the song picks up with Orpheus about to lead Eurydice back out. We get to hear her respond, and the song begins with Eurydice imploring Orpheus, who is excited and enraptured knowing that she is returning to him, not to turn around until the journey out is over. French lyrics make their return (not surprising since they only appear when a woman2 is the speaker): De l’autre côté de l’eau/ Comme un écho. I translate this as “[You’re] on the other side of the water, like an echo.” You’re probably familiar with the River Styx, the final barrier between the worlds of the dead and the living that even the gods could not cross without permission. She senses something about this returning that isn’t quite right – that Orpheus is like an echo, something released that is now returning unbidden, but lesser than what it was before. Maybe Eurydice isn’t “deceived” at all – she broke up with Orpheus by her own free will. An echo is like a relieving of a past experience, but it is only a pale imitation. She knows that what has already happened (like a relationship at its conclusion) can never be relived. She is following Orpheus, for now, (perhaps in an effort to rekindle love lost) but even at the outset of their journey back, she seems regretful and more concerned with sparing Orpheus’s feelings. She reminds him that this might “seem so important now” but that he will “get over” it, and in so doing the experience of their relationship will gain meaning “then you will remember/ why it seemed so important then”. Also that, in a sense, “It’s never over” that is, nothing can remove the indelible experience that their relationship occurred, shaping them both. But nothing can bring it back, either. Life continues moving forward no matter what, even after the individual dies.
There is a beautiful moment where the two are talking over each other without responding to what the other has said. I’ll start with Eurydice, who sounds distant, disembodied, and downright haunting in both French and English. (Sadly, it looks like a lot of lyric sites omit the French, so I will reproduce everything in its entirety):
The underworld, an endless wave
An afterlife behind the gate
Tu dis que c’est la fin du monde (You say it’s the end of the world)
C’est ton silence mon eau profonde (Your silence is my deep water)
We stood beside a frozen sea
I saw you out in front of me
Reflected light, a hollow moon
Oh Orpheus, don’t turn around too soon
Eurydice is describing the underworld (the state of the world postmortem with respect to their relationship). Eurydice sees it as an endless, all-enveloping movement away (the expanse of near infinite opportunities in freedom) through a gate that proscribes their meeting again. But whereas Orpheus sees the afterlife as the end of the world, she sees it as an absence and a silence in deep darkness. Eurydice seems cold and, well, lifeless in response to the passion Orpheus has shown in retrieving her, pointing to regret or hesitance. But Eurydice is still committed to the course. Though she is troubled by the echo-quality (the reflected light, the hollow moon that is the image of Orpheus in the frozen sea), all she ends up telling Orpheus is “don’t turn around” as a way of reassuring herself.
Orpheus, however, can barely contain himself, repeating “Just wait until its through!” He asks if Eurydice can see him, and his love gushes out in a borderline obsessive line: “I will sing your name, ‘til you’re sick of me.” Their stances towards each other seem to be drastically different. Orpheus also takes the opportunity to respond to Eurydice’s hesitance, particularly her comment above that was basically ‘hey, when we are old we will all look back on this with a better perspective and value what was for what it was.’ Orpheus engages with her comment by twisting it. He takes Eurydice’s hesitance to re-engage and makes it all about his attempt to convince her to be with him – That when she is old, she will remember he always said he would be there for her, even after she was lost. His “It’s never over” is obviously different, because he does not grasp that she is not talking about their relationship, but life itself. I don’t like to attribute morals or purposes to myths, but maybe this is one of the truths of the original myth of Orpheus: That an attempt to act against the natural order of things, to reclaim what is essentially irreclaimable (like a deceased loved one) is foolish and futile because it misunderstands how reality works. Whether by death or breakup, a relationship was a unique, intangible unity existing in a specific moment in time – once gone, it is lost forever. But for now, Eurydice is going to try out the familiar stereotype and ‘make this work’ – she is following Orpheus, but sadly states “Oh Orpheus, it’s over too soon.”
2:4 “Porno”
Orpheus has now turned around 3 and for the first time in his life, his songs have failed to effect the change he wants to see. In that moment, when Eurydice sees Orpheus as he is rather than in the reflection of the sea, her own memories and images are replaced with the presences of the real and immediate; she knows their love is gone forever. But Orpheus, frustrated and undaunted, does not give up. Instead he retreats to a new position built on empty, trite arguments. Orpheus does not realize that Eurydice isn’t deceived at all – she is acting in the freedom of her own wisdom and self-direction. “Porno” is a song where Orpheus hypocritically accuses Eurydice of indulging superficiality without realizing he is reducing Eurydice to a two-dimensional stereotype.
“You take the makeup/ off your eyes/ I’ve got to see you/ hear your sacred sighs” – Orpheus thinks that she is still hiding, that she is just trapped in her mask, which is a direct denial of her full capacity to choose.
“You say you’re over it, but I know [you]” – Orpheus presumes to think on her behalf, to tell Eurydice that her judgment is skewed or somehow invalid. He knows better how she should live her life. He thinks it’s romantic that no matter how she “screams” and “cries” he won’t leave her, which comes across as genuinely creepy, but is what he must see as love and loyalty.4
“Every man that you know/ would have run at the word go/ little boys with their porno/ Oh, I know they hurt you so/ they don’t know that we know/ never know what we know” Orpheus is insulting her suitors by calling them horny, vacant teens who look at her like a sex object; the could never have the depths of feeling and loyalty that Orpheus feels. Other men are superficial, but he knows the real her. Their relationship, their special wisdom is a “cup that overflows” in a world ruled by the plebs (“this is their world…”). But in truth Orpheus is frantic and wounded. He expresses this insecurity in a moment of self-awareness – “makes me feel like there’s something wrong with me”. But Orpheus immediately loses his insight once more:
You say love is real [that is, not an image like in the rest of the world]
Like a disease [Love does come over you, but he doesn’t realize how close he is to the truth. Love is like a disease – you can’t choose when you fall in love, and you can’t choose when you are cured]
Come on, tell me please…
Wait
With that, Eurydice is gone.
2.5 “Afterlife”
If Porno is about the highly emotional confusion brought on by the realization that a relationship is really over, then Afterlife is the darkness that must come after (like an afterlife, see?). Orpheus, who has lost the woman he loved, the woman he mistakenly invested with his purpose in life, must now grieve all over again. This time, not for Eurydice, but himself. The Orpheus from that time must die, so that someday a new one with a greater understanding of life, purpose, and love might emerge.
“Afterlife, oh my God, what an awful word/ after all the breath and the dirt and the fires are burnt.” Remember the dancing in the streets from Vol. 1? Well if that was a relationship, then what comes next is just aftereffects, images, and a mess.5
Parties are, like relationships, greater unities of people that are fundamentally impermanent. Once a party ends, all that’s left are memories. That party can never be re-experienced.
Referring back to the beginning of Vol. 2, Orpheus falls into lament through repetition. He cries out “Can we work it out?” though he already knows the answer to this – “Afterlife, I think I saw what happens next.” Despite his pain, he is beginning to sober up and finally realize the truth. All that is left of his relationship are his increasingly dim memories “… just a glimpse of you, like looking through a window or a shallow sea.” He still, perhaps reflexively, thinks in terms of both of them together “Where do we go from here?” but the response is just his memory of Eurydice’s words “When love is gone, where does it go?” He realizes that his attempt to artificially revive their relationship was a failure from the start, for it “had nothing to do with life.” What is the answer to the question, where does love go? It’s just gone. More specifically, “It’s just an afterlife with you.” Orpheus accepts the wisdom Eurydice attempted to impart upon him. It isn’t the end of the world, even if it is a death. He accepts that all that is left of their relationship are memories, images that are warped and reflected in the mind until they no longer resemble the reality of what once was, lost forever.
2:6 “Supersymmetry”
This song is like an epilogue, the “Where are they now?” of a break-up. It also does a cool melody mash-up where some hooks from other songs are mixed together but all played in reverse. I think the best way to understand “Supersymmetry,” unfortunately, requires some basic understanding of what supersymmetry is. My rudimentary explanation is that in a world of complete supersymmetry, every quantum particle would have a supersymmetrical partner. The partner is identical in every respect except spin. This theory is widely considered to be a failed theory – the real world does not exhibit supersymmetry. So too, do our memories not perfectly match reality, differing only in their substance. Knowing that, but then repackaging it through the eyes of Orpheus, he is reflecting on his own failed view of image and the real. He sees that the supersymmetry between his memories and reality is not accurate – “I know you’re living in my mind, but it’s not the same as being alive.” Orpheus describes a year of escapism as he fled from conflict with his own diminishing memories, convalescing in the pages of books. In the present he doesn’t seem much happier, but he does seem more accepting. He desires to see things that aren’t related to Eurydice, “I want to feel the seasons passing/ Wanna feel the Spring”. He knows his memories are ultimately an expression of himself and his own pain in the wake of their breakup: “It’s been a while since I’ve been to see you/ I don’t know where, but you’re not with me/ Heard a voice like an echo/ But it came from me.”
The song continues on, becoming increasing abstract and distant. Life continues on, beyond the realm of individual experience. The flourishes of old songs create something new, while evoking scattered bits of past experiences. We can be reminded by what is familiar, but love is never relived.
Notes
- As art, you can decide how literal/metaphorical the lyrics are. I am self-aware enough to know I am probably contradicting myself, but all views are valid now that the author is dead.
- or perhaps to indicate an important relationship between Joan of Arc, who in the last volume insisted she was not her own image, and Eurydice.
- Recall Hegel’s experience of the Other from Part 1.
- He also uses the term ‘line’ as in phone line when describing their communication: “I’ve got to find you before the line is lost.” There’s even a hint of a Matrix-inspired modem sound affect. I think there is a double meaning here; the line that is connecting them over Styx, and the line of communication between them as they attempt to rekindle their love. Perhaps Styx is like a kind of relationship purgatory? It is the distance couples take when they are taking some time off away from each other.
- I am also strangely reminded of a poem that appears in Akira Kurosawa’s Hidden Fortress:
The life of a man
Burn it with the fire
The life of an insect
Throw it into the fire
Ponder and you’ll see
The world is dark
And this floating world is a dream
Burn with abandon.