The passage below is the perfect example of what sleep deprivation does to the mind. This actually dates back to a couple of months ago, but the topic came up recently when I was having dinner with some friends of mine, so I thought I'd dust it off and put it up here (for people to scoff at).
So, I know it has only just hit bookstore shelves (I found a review copy of it at work --- on the discard pile -- and read it), but in Chuck Klosterman's new book, "Killing Yourself to Live", he goes into great detail about how he feels that the sequence of Radiohead's Kid A (originally released on October 3, 2000) is eerily prescient with regards to the events of September 11, 2001. He's not suggesting that Thom Yorke is some sort've Nostrodamus, but this seemingly crackpot theory definetely made me want to listen to the album again.
From Chuck's text....any spelling mistakes are my own.....
The first song on Kid A paints the Manhattan skyline at 8:00 A.M. on Tuesday morning; the song is titled "Everything in Its Right Place." People woke up that day "sucking on a lemon," because that's what life normally feels like on the Manhattan subway; the city is a beautiful, sour, sarcastic place. We soon move onto song two, which is the title track. It is the sound of woozy, ephemeral normalcy. It is the sound of Jonny Greenwood playing an Ondes Martenot, an instrument best remembered for its use in the Star Trek theme song. You can imagine humans walking to work, riding elevators, getting off the C train and the 3 train, and thinking about a future that will be a lot like the present, only better. The term KID A is Yorke's moniker for the first cloned human, which he (only half jokingly) suspects may already exist. The consciously misguided message is this: Science is the answer. Technology solves everything, because technology is invulnerable. And this is what almost everyone in America thought around 8:30 A.M. But something happens three and a half minutes into "Kid A". It suddenly doesn't feel right, and you don't exactly know why. This is followed by track three, "The National Anthem"
This is when the first plane slams into the north tower at 470 mph.
"The National Anthem" sounds a bit like a Morphine song. It's a completley different direction from the first two songs on KID A, and it's confusing; it's chaotic. "What's going on?," the lyrics ask. "What's going on?" It gets crazier and crazier, until the second plane hits the second tower (at 9:03 A.M. in reality and at 3:42 in the song). For a moment, things are somber. But then it gets more anarchic. (Reader's Note: You might want to consider playing KID A right about now, since I'm not always so good at explaining shit like this). Which leads into track four, "How to Disappear Completely." This is the point where it feels like the world is possibly ending. People try to convince themselves that they are not there. People keep repeating: "This isn't happening". People are "floating" (read: falling) to the earth. We are told of strobe lights and blown speakers; there are fireworks and hurricanes. This is a song about being burned alive and jumping out of windows, and this is a song about having to watch those things happen. And it's followed by an instrumental piece without melody ("Treefingers"), because what can you say when skyscrapers collapse? All you can do is stare at them with your hand over your mouth.
Time passes. It's afternoon. KID A's side two, if you have it on vinyl. Action is replaced by thought. The song is "Optimistic, " a word that becomes more meaningful in its absence. It has lyrics about Ground Zero ("vultures circle the dead"), and it offers a glimpse into how Al Qaeda members think Americans perceive international diplomacy ("the big fish eat the little ones, the big fish eat the little ones/Not my problem, give me some"). Track seven, "In Limbo" is about how the United States has been shaken out of its fantasy, with "nowhere to hide," finding only "trap doors that open, I spiral down"......
">
He goes on, but you get the general idea. You should really check it out yourselves if you're curious, but I thought I'd share some of it here.
Also, I have to say, I wasn't really all that hot about Kid A upon its release. I was freelancing at the time for an ill-fated "teen-oriented" website (`cos, y'know, who better to write for teens than me, eh?) called I-Stash (don't look for it, it's long gone), and I reviewed this album. I wish I could find what I wrote, but in a nutshell, I was basically pretty lazy in my description (which may have had more to do with spacial limitation than any disdain I may have harbored for the album at the time). I listened to it dutifully for reviewing purposes, and then filed it away until --- well, until last week, I suppose, when Chuck's suggestions prompted a new listening. I have to say, it's much better than I initially remembered.
Alright, bear with me on this one....this is where it gets a bit strange.
So, there I am: overnight shift. I finally get a chance to spin Kid A in its entirety, as synched up with Klosterman's admittedly half-assed outline of it mimicing the events of September 11. For some reason, during my overnight shifts in the dead of night and in the first light of the early morning, I so often think back to the events of that day, going so far as to trawl the `Net for conspiracy-theory sites or footage etc. It's like picking at a scar, I can't explain it. Like many New Yorkers, I suspect, I am still drawn to recapture the disquieting state of alarm that those events conjured.
In any case, there I am, tracking Kid A and attempting to match up in my mind the course of that fateful day as Chuck depicts it. In doing so, I'm flipping through the exhaustively complicated booklet that comes with Kid A (I'm not talking about the "hidden" booklet under the disc tray either, but rather the booklet that comes sheethed within the translucent front of the jewelbox. This website featuring the album artwork might help you follow along with this next part.
Open the booklet. The front is the front cover (featuring the crudely drawn mountains and the album title). The second two paged feature: on the left: another mountainous scene, dwarfed by an indefinable white figure that towers over little red cubes and menacing figures with big teeth and Mickey Mouse ears. On the opposite side, what looks like a drab landscape. No hugely defining characteristics to describe. Turn this page.
On the second two page, there is a flap on the left hand side that, if opened, depicts a nother mountainous landscape. Don't bother with that. On the right side, is an ambiguous design on translucent grey paper. Turn the page.
On this pairing, on the left hand side (on the translucent grey paper) is what looks like a hallway framed with stalagmites. On the right hand side is some geometric design over a crude landscape. The colors are black, grey and light brown. Turn the page.
On the right hand side of this paring, we see a group of figures (their backs to us) looking at what looks like a giant iceberg or possibly a wave. On the opposite side is just more of that same ice/wave imaery
(with a splotch of red in the lower left hand corner).
Stay with me, there's a point to all of this.
Turn the page again.
On the left hand side of the booklet, ther is an ambiguous picture of what looks like a landscape from a birds eye perspective with lots of grey and black geometric shapes. On the other side is another indefineable illustration on that same grey, translucent paper. Turn the page.
On the next pairing, on the left you have the other side of the grey, translucent page....on the RIGHT side there is a flap that opens. OPEN THAT FLAP .
Open the flap to its fullest extent. Over four colored panels, there is depicted what looks like a distressed landscape, followed by a black panel featuring liner notes
ON THE COLORED PANAL IMMEDIATELY TO THE LEFT ON THE LINER NOTES PANEL
there is a vague but discernible image of two oblong, rectangular blocks. One sports an antenae like spire from its top, while the other seemingly is hemorrhaging a swathe of fiery oranges and reds, as if it either ablaze or bleeding. To my mind, this image looks eerily similar to the Twin Towers.
Basically, I'm talking about the image to the far right here.
It's a bit small, but you should get the idea. Anyway, yes, it was late. Yes, the power of suggestion is a potent one, but indulge me and take a look at this design and tell me what you see.
The idea of syncing Kid A with 9/11 is absolutely moronic. Not only does it not fit but if you think How To Disappear Completely is about "being burned alive and jumping out of windows" you're doing it wrong.
Posted by: Tom Piltoff | July 08, 2008 at 02:52 PM
I was wrong. I only see one flaw in that series of paragraphs, and realize now that I am the one that is absolutely moronic.
I'll shut up now.
Posted by: Tom Piltoff | September 27, 2008 at 07:35 PM
If you follow the link to where it shows the kid a artwork... scroll down to "Episode 15". The bear on "CNN" is saying some symbols.
Straight up, one of them is 9/11.
Holy shit.
Posted by: justin | February 10, 2009 at 08:15 PM
This is probably not true but it doesn't really matter it is still interesting. Of course, Yorke could have been aware of Iraq's displeasure with USA and predicted that they'd do something like a kind of revenge or it was simply coincidence, anyway, as I said, it's interesting.
The artwork where there's people standing with their backs to us watching ice bergs, I think that's about the global warmth that Yorke has been active with and lines in Idioteque confirms it too "ice age coming/this is really happening". The people standing there might be a resemblance of world leaders just watching global warmth happening, doing nothing.
Posted by: Fredrik | October 17, 2009 at 03:33 PM
Interesting stuff, really is. I myself suspect 9/11 was a inside job and that feeling has only got stronger by the years as more info comes out...at best it was allowed to happen. A friend said to me when we were watching this go down on TV that operation of this magnitude could only be oorganised and pulled off by CIA and Mossad, I feel so too.
Posted by: Inside Bilderberg | October 23, 2010 at 10:28 AM
I knew Radiohead were assets of the secret state from the beginning.
But actually, no. What's more interesting to note and it may be an expansion of this, is Thom Yorke's late 90's obsession with 'Michael K', a supposed author who, like a sister project, 'Luther Blissett', is most likely a collaborative project. (With Blissett, this is explicit, with K, it is tricky).
One of the more notable outcrops of K-dom came in 2000 when a long-winded series of emails circulated from 'Michael K' which, among other things, were very het up about oil adventures of America abroad. the author/character in the emails (aka the kmails) is using tantra and drugs to communicate or channel 'the gaiascript' which he says is becoming political. These crazy, cranky emails were pretty disturbing at time and pretty far out at all others (as well as being viciously and hilariously compelling).
A bootleg compilation of them came out a few years later, but my name and Thom's (amongst many other culture-heads known and obscure) were in the recipients-list for many of them.
THEY were VERY eerily prophetic of 911 and Michael K, towards the end of the sequence (at which time, the US is hung up on the recounts) is telling us that the 'gaiascript' which has been with him has moved, guided by him, to Texas.
The book is very rare as is all of the Michael K stuff and this is what makes it compelling and slightly sinister. I know TY is a big fan because I asked him about it at a signing. This is the first time this stuff has been pointed out to me but I offer that connection in the hope someboy knows a little more.
As I understand it, 'Michael K' first appeared as a print-era spectre in the early 90's and is well-known in other orbits including that of The KLF.
Posted by: Barney London | December 13, 2010 at 02:11 PM
This proves once and for all that Radiohead was behind 9/11.
Posted by: Rich Tweeter | December 15, 2010 at 02:39 AM
Fredrik wrote:
'Of course, Yorke could have been aware of Iraq's displeasure with USA and predicted that they'd do something like a kind of revenge'
This has to be the most moronic thing I've read on the internet in 5 years.
Iraq had NOTHING to do with 9/11. Saudi Arabia had EVERYTHING to do with 9/11.
Posted by: DmitriNoi | December 15, 2010 at 11:45 PM
This has got to be the most retarded excuse for a conspiracy theory I've ever encountered. And what's up with editing people's posts? If people want to dis you, well hell, you put your shit up publicly, so you asked for it. Deleting what people post and then replacing those posts with your own lies, with the intent that anyone reading it should think that those lies were the original post... that's just weak. Ok have a nice day.
Posted by: Elias | December 19, 2010 at 06:19 PM
Hmmm. Can't say I know exactly what you're talking about. For a start, this post is about five years old. Secondly, it's not my theory, it's Chuck Klosterman's. Thirdly, I haven't deleted any comments, let alone replaced them with any "lies." You'll have to elaborate.
Posted by: Alex in NYC | December 19, 2010 at 09:09 PM
Secrets and lies!
Posted by: Jo | December 20, 2010 at 10:08 PM
I think you can consider a theory like this without having any interest in the "truth" of it. The thing about great art is that it is applicable to many, many people on a personal level and can be applied to individual situations without being in any way connected to them. It's why listening to an album, reading a novel or poem, or looking at a painting can be interesting again and again. Maybe Kid A was written for 9-11 just like it was written for me or for the millions of other people who relate to the music on a personal/emotional level. It can help illuminate an event and aid in the human process of synthesizing a traumatic experience. It doesn't have to be a campy hoax, if you think about it all genius works persist and help us understand the world.
Posted by: Claret | December 27, 2010 at 12:29 AM
The problem with that, Claret, is that simply 'feeling' something doesn't make it worthy of consideration. You have to back it up with what exactly about the piece actually gives that interpretation. I mean, bloody hell, I could feel that the Birdie Song is a personal account of the loss of my goldfish faithfully documented in musical form, but unless I can back that up with relevant evidence from the work, it's just another stupid idea.
Case in point, this silly theory. It shows a complete misunderstanding of lyrics ("It has lyrics about Ground Zero ("vultures circle the dead") - no clear link), concepts ("How to Disappear Completely...This is a song about being burned alive and jumping out of windows" - picks on one line and forms a wildly inaccurate intepretation), and any information and ideas put forward by band members. And let's not forget the guided tour of the album artwork that leads to a vaguely oblong shape that is suddenly the twin towers being bombed.
It's all very well to say that a genius piece can mean many things to many people at different times, but even the ambiguous piece still has to offer some evidence for an interpretation. You can't just make stuff up with scant support and call it an interesting theory, because it's not. It's misguided. This whole thing smacks of someone who came up with the idea and concluded without even properly thinking about or listening to the album, then went through afterwards picking out quotes they thought sort of matched it out of context (though even here they struggle). It's just annoying. Diverse opinion is great, but there's such a thing as bad opinion.
Posted by: Adam | December 28, 2010 at 11:49 AM
To be fair, the theory that Pink Floyd's DARK SIDE OF THE MOON synching up with the visual proceedings of "The Wizard of Oz" is no less silly, and that's still an intriguing concept. Lighten up, Adam.
Posted by: Alex in NYC | December 30, 2010 at 12:30 PM
Wow this was pulled straight out of somebody's butt. Grasping at straws for conspiracy theories, like most do when discussing 9/11. It was a horrible tragedy, but one NO ONE could have predicted it. If they had, the twin towers would still be standing and the terrorists would have been imprisoned and/or executed.
Anyway, this band is British. Even if the government had intentionally allowed it to slip under their radar, why would these guys be involved in any way.
Posted by: nakeeya | January 27, 2011 at 06:05 AM
Any believers of this are retarded. Next, you're gonna say that Taylor Swift's "Love Story" is a foretelling of the coming of the Antichrist. You people need to stop sharing one brain cell between you, and learn to be less fucking ignorant. For those of you that will waste time arguing with me, don't bother. Your world is "ending" on December 21, 2012. So be prepared.
Posted by: Jason | February 16, 2011 at 06:06 PM
Shit...listen to love story backwards...holy christ its scary! Bloody ducking antichrist shit, I tell you! No, just kidding. I agree^^
Posted by: Jilly | February 17, 2011 at 12:41 AM
^^Submitted by an avowed Pokemon freak. Hey, thanks for all the rude posts, kids.
Posted by: Alex in NYC | February 17, 2011 at 07:34 AM
Maybe those who plotted 9/11 were Radiohead fans! That seems far more logical than Thom Yorke predicting the future or him and his band being in on the event. That is to say if there is any actual conclusive substance to these accusations.
Posted by: dan | February 17, 2011 at 03:28 PM
True lies
Posted by: ana | March 04, 2011 at 03:00 AM
http://youarenotsosmart.com/2010/09/11/the-texas-sharpshooter-fallacy/
Read this ^^^. Do it now.
Posted by: Kieselguhr Kid | March 06, 2011 at 03:15 PM
one of the pieces of artwork that radiohead's visual artist Stanley Donwood uses in Kid A is called "Trade Center" and can be seen here:
http://www.slowlydownward.com/kida5.html
Posted by: dmt4 | March 24, 2011 at 11:40 AM
Oh wow. You people have really lost it after 9/11 haven't you?
Posted by: Paranoid Android | April 16, 2011 at 04:18 AM
Its a long held travellor beleif that folk of "cafte" eye have 2nd site whether the know or like it or not. Just a thunk! SNAFU
Posted by: Jesus H Abdullah-Solomon | May 23, 2011 at 04:32 PM
I actually put Kid A in my discman (remember, the first iPod was still a month away on 9/11/2001) because the album was the only thing that captured the strangeness of the day for me. Weird.
Posted by: Dan | September 10, 2011 at 12:50 AM