radiantbaby | man in the machine...

"man in the machine; or why jack white is always welcome for tea"
a short editorial i composed out of boredom on my lunch break...

Man in the Machine;
Or Why Jack White is always welcome for tea
an editorial

Jack White.

A simple name for a man more complex than he may let on. He’s an enigmatic figure, playing on the mysterious perceptions that we - his audience – have of him. Still, in that very same complexity, he is still deceptively simple.

Yes, I find it interesting how, in this day and age of people racing to make things more flash and multi-layered, that a man has leveled the playing field by breaking everything down to the bare essence of what music truly is. Wheeled in by Jack and some of his contemporaries, there is a Deconstructionist wave that is sweeping through this business of music, a backlash rearing its head against the technology-fraught sounds of many of the bands and singers that have defined the mainstream over the past few years. It’s a backlash that is rearing its fangs against these bands and singers that are often not even about creative expression (many do not even write their own lyrics or music), but instead about merchandising themselves as a product. Who could blame this revolution of sorts from happening really? I mean, I look at much of what is being shoved down our throats as mainstream and I think – “Where is the heart in this? Where is the man in the machine?”

Don’t get me wrong, I am not saying that I haven’t gotten enjoyment out of some of this music, such as the lush soundscapes created by band like Radiohead. On the other hand, it’s really hard to derive much deep emotion from such music. There is a deliberate attempt by the band to distance the listener and the crux of the song, a sort of detached human quality that is a far cry from dragging you through the mud of your own despair. You feel from it, but it is the lack of feelings from it that really create the atmosphere.

Jack White’s songs run contrary to this device, his songs instead force you to look good and hard at yourself. He opens wounds that you’d hoped healed long ago, yet helps you see the beauty in that darkness. He’s the boy who broke your heart, yet he is also the boy who’d lend an ear to all of your problems. He’s the one that you watch from afar, yet he is also the one who may shyly be watching you from afar as well, perhaps even tortured by his inability to communicate with you.

Jack is indeed many things to many people. To me, he is the voice of my feelings, filling the sound of his records with all of my countless woes and heartbreaks. He is this because he channels his own emotion through these songs, immediately drawing our empathy. He wears his heart on his sleeve, split open for all of us to see and, for some, take a stab at. Jack then becomes the personification of our pain, a role he seems to take on with surprising ease.

I suppose we’ll never know how much of his songs are based on his own life experience and how much is fictional blues, but I guess it doesn’t matter. It’s Jack and his simplicity, his expression of what we hold close to ourselves, that draws us to him like a moth to a flame. He is the man in the machine; the humanity in a world in love with technology.