“Wealth” (Talk Talk)

Mark Hollis, in full organ hymn mode, seeks the “wealth” that is a “sacred love,” and asks the gods or the fates to “take my freedom” in exchange. It is certainly true that the freedom-of-being cannot be squared with accumulation of any sort (its register is loss unremitting, and not gain).

But to therefore seek freedom-from-being, and in the name of some half-baked romance. . . . Well, such talk is cheap.

“C.R.E.A.M.” (Wu-Tang Clan)

C.R.E.A.M.: “cash rules everything around me.” Laid back, groovy sample goes round and round, demonstrating no exit from the money nexus. All sides of town the “New York Times-side” or, better, the Wall Street Journal-side. Inspector Deck: “Living in the world no different from a cell.” Late in the track, the sample pauses, opening a hole. Escape route implied but can only be conceptualized from the within (no outside position for too easy moralizations….cf. The O’Jays’ “For the Love of Money”).

“Funkentelechy” (Parliament)

Funk’s not about freedom of speech since that enterprise is grounded on the possibility of future dividends (or “possible funkability” funded by “high finance”). Rather, funk is always fully realized and can “be scored everyday”; and it’s surely not “domestically produced” or given, but a given, free of charge. More succinctly, funk is a predisposition without a constitution and an affirmation of a possible being decoupled from sovereignty. This would be the freedom which can never be granted or purchased, and the dissolution of any (self)governance is premised on everyone “hav[ing] change for funk” or, more directly, untethering pleasure from self-care.