“Only a Fool Would Say That” (Steely Dan)

A modern-day gunslinger in a Stetson (LBJ?) announces that with his weapon he can produce “a world become one” “where all is free.” Hard-working, everyday Joes feel the pull of this tuneful argument: after all, who wants to be told the opposite—that the world will always remain divided against itself, and that freedom cannot be universalized? And it seems quite reasonable that some old-fashioned “murder,” liberally distributed, would do the globe a lot of good, and at least move things in the right direction. From Korea and Vietnam to 21^st century drone strikes, a certain idealism makes “fools” (and not holy ones, but just plain ordinary fools) of us all.

“Could It Be Magic?” (Barry Manilow)

Begins with metaphysics, and ends in a command to be subsumed completely, or a wish to be subsumed. Echo chamber chorus threatens totality. Extreme violence of idealism.

“The Slider” (T. Rex)

Asserts that T. Rexian surrrealism/nonsense has nothing to do with hippy/drug consciousness (“I could never understand…..”). The latter is always a form of transubstantiating idealism, which occludes (turning the “wind” into a “ball of love,” for example); the former–a.k.a. “sliding,” enacted here as a ride down the strings, while choogling in slo-mo—is a strategy of defamiliarization in order to expose (here, a boundary figure, such as a “door,” and institutions, as in “all schools are strange”).