(previously in Program Eleven/I: Novas 0.1)
(previously in Program Eleven/I: Novas 0.2)
Jack, still working as an Agent for the Company, continues his search for Susan across multiple incarnations of the Simulation. But time is running out.
And since these things seem to come in sets, I felt like this was a triptych: two halves and a centre. The Moon in the middle; the story on each side.
Like the other three, it was an experiment, with a lot of ambient music. But it turns out I really like this one.
Novas 0.3: The Second Hand Unwinds
01 Memorex – Live Or Memorex? (1982, USA) SUSAN and SYSTEM
Look at me.
Do you like what you see?
Good.
Because it's not me.
It's a recording of *me*!
On new Memorex videotape.
This remarkable tape has been recorded
and re-recorded one hundred times.
But I bet you still couldn't tell
if it was Memorex or me.
Which really isn't me.
It's Memorex!
New Memorex videotape.
Even after one hundred recordings
you'll still wonder:
is it live,
or is it Memorex?
As an Agent of SYSTEM, Susan can probably be rerecorded more than 100 times. But when she wears out, they’ll just have to throw her away.
This ad was infamous in popular culture as well as science fiction. (Series of ads, starting with audio tape, but this videotape one was probably the high point of the cyberpunk Memorex meme). We always got the wording wrong, though: ‘Real or Memorex?’
02 John Cale – Fadeaway Tomorrow (1985, Wales) JACK
They say that every dog has his day
But puppy love was never really my way
Hear your voice. Am I asleep or awake?
Since you're gone
Love that's here today
Fadeaway tomorrow
Love that's here today
Fadeaway tomorrow
Love that's here today
Fadeaway tomorrow
Love that's here today
Fadeaway tomorrow, ooh
Where to go? Should I just stay here or run?
If I'd wings I'd aim them straight for the sun
Who to call? Should I just take a walk?
All the words just add up to small talk
Cause love that's here today
Fadeaway tomorrow
Love that's here today
Fadeaway tomorrow
Love that's here today
Fadeaway tomorrow
Love that's here today
Fadeaway tomorrow, ooh
Love is fickle
Love is true
You can count on memories
They linger on
Love never stays
Here she comes, full of white light and heat
With a walk that could stop the cars in the steet
But love that's here today
Fadeaway tomorrow
Love that's here today
Fadeaway tomorrow
Love that's here today
Fadeaway tomorrow
Love that's here today
Fadeaway tomorrow, ooh
Jack and Susan hit it off in the USSR but she keeps getting wiped. His memories persist, because he’s an Agent. Hers don’t. Every day, she’s a new persona.
John Cale, a Welsh avant-garde musician but part of Andy Warhol’s New York ‘Factory’ Scene including the Velvet Underground, among many other things, is probably the closest to William Gibson’s own musical tastes in any of the music I’ve included. But most of his work just doesn’t connect with me… except for this one song, which sounds like the essence of cyberpunk to me. I could imagine it playing as incidental music in a bar in the movie version of Neuromancer which will never get made.
I’m happy that I’ve somehow been able to earth its charge of deep sorrow and pessimism and jury-rig it into a street-repurposed machine that works for me.
03 Doris Norton – Artificial Intelligence (1985, Italy) SYSTEM and SKYWATCH
Art - art - art
Artificial intelligence
I think Doris Norton is Italian, at least Wikipedia and Discogs seem to think so, though her name’s not particularly Italian sounding, Wikipedia also assigns her to ‘London, UK’, and she was the frontwoman for both Apple and IBM in the 1980s. She married into Italy, though: her husband is the prog rock musician Antonio Bartocetti.
There was certainly a time when it was possible to get Doris Norton and Peter Norton confused, since they both created disks on and for computers. Particularly Doris Norton’s track ‘Norton Apple Software’.
Of all her tracks, I think it’s Artificial Intelligence that’s the most approachable.
Novas: The System dreams.
04 Ian Anderson – User Friendly (1983, England) JACK and SYSTEM
Do we inhabit some micro-space
And interface through wires?
Dance on a printed circuit board
Throw my software to the fires?
My memory is slim
So volatile
But I'm learning
Plug yourself in
Stay for a while
Undiscerning
And on dusty terminals
Finger me lightly do
And QWERTY is the name of love
Printed on the VDU
Cut yourself free
We're all alone communicating
Don't bother me
With arithmetic
I'm waiting
User friendly
That's what I am to you
User friendly
That's what I am to you
To you
I have to break out of here
Trapped in my hardware cell
And come to you as you sleep tonight
Take you back into my hell
Binary joys
And digital sighs
So appealing
I'm one of the boys
And it's only your mind
That I'm stealing
User friendly
That's all I am to you
User friendly
That's all I am to you
To you
User friendly
That's all I am to you
User friendly
That's all I am to you
To you
User
User friendly
User friendly
Jack does not trust SYSTEM at all. Nor should he.
Yes, that’s the guy from Jethro Tull singing about a computer. It was the early 1980s. It’s just what you did.
05 Yuji Nomi – Concrete Road (1995, Japan) SUSAN
konkuritto roodo (concrete road)
concrete road
dokomademo tsuzuiteru (continuing forever)
concrete road
concrete road
mori wo kiri (cutting the forests)
tani wo ume (burying the valleys)
kawa wo koroshi (killing the rivers)
uisuto tokyo (West of Tokyo)
maunto tama (Tamigaku Hill)
umetsukusu shiroi ie (the never-ending white houses)
furusato wa (my home town is a)
concrete road
uisuto tokyo (West of Tokyo)
maunto tama (Tamigaku Hill)
umetsukusu shiroi ie (the never-ending white houses)
furusato wa (my home town is a)
concrete road
konkuritto roodo (concrete road)
concrete road
dokomademo tsuzuiteru (continuing forever)
concrete road
konkuritto roodo (concrete road)
konkuritto roodo (concrete road)
konkuritto roodo (concrete road)
konkuritto roodo (concrete road)
Susan dreams of freedom, of wind in her face and country roads.
This is from the soundtrack of the 1995 Studio Ghibli anime classic, Mimi wo Sumaseba (Whisper of the Heart), which revolves around the John Denver song ‘Take Me Home, Country Roads’, which the protagonist is translating into Japanese because… because Japan loves John Denver since he played there in 1981, apparently.
Why did this find its way in? Because anime is prototypically cyberpunk, I think, because the 1990s was cyberpunk’s second wave, and because though Whisper of the Heart itself isn’t particularly technological, Tokyo is. And this is a Tokyo story that’s deeply entwined with that wistful longing for an escape from technological sprawl that also surfaces in the Wargames song, Edge of the World. And John Denver himself has an interesting New Age and ecological edge about him which parallels the Miyazaki circle, and which also surfaces as cyberpunk’s mirror twin. In this particular take, Denver’s anthem has become a song about the impossibility of ever leaving the city.
Also it just felt right. It’s so very much Susan’s voice at this point.
06 Jeff and Jane Hudson – Information (1981, USA) JACK and SYSTEM
Hey man you wanna know something?
Information is number one
Information baby number one
Information is a smoking gun
Video signal
Computer composite
See the moon, Jupiter two
Mathematics baby won't do
Hey you wanna learn something?
Information babe it's number one
Information
Video screen and a smoking gun
Computer files in Washington
Information babe it's number one
Higher mathematics
Information baby number one
Information is a smoking gun
Computer video signal in Washington
Hey you wanna learn something?
Wanna know all about it?
Mama mama mama mama information
Mama mama mama mama information
Every baseball team that won
Metro news babe so much fun
Information
Information
Information
Hey boy you wanna learn something?
Wanna know all about it?
Metro news
Video signal
Metro news
Neon bar
... in town
Mama information baby number one
Information baby number one
Hey you wanna learn something man?
Wanna learn something?
Wanna know something?
Hey you wanna learn something?
As an Operator, Jack swims in a sea of information from his classified data feed. None of it helpful to him.
When did I hear this one? Surely sometime in the 1980s, again. Somehow. ‘World Trade’, that photo. It’s a catchy tune for a song that’s just words.
07 Cynthia Morrow – History Lesson (1983, USA) SKYWATCH
"We have a launch detection. We have a Soviet launch detection"
"INGS confirmed a massive attack"
"Missile warning, no malfunction"
"Confirmation is high, repeat, confidence is high."
"COBRA DANE, is this an exercise?"
"Negative, this is not an exercise"
Paleozoic
Then mesozoic
Next is cenozoic
Then life as we know it
It's a long line leading to man
Where are they now?
It's a long line leading to man
How do you think it feels to be extinct?
Algae and amoebas
Spiny little fishes
Dinosaurs and reptiles
Probably delicious
It's a long line leading to man
Where are they now?
It's a long line leading to man
How do you think it feels to be extinct?
Swimming diplodocus
Silly brontosaurus
Its legs big as houses
Ruled the earth before us
Giant wooly mammoths
Age of ..
Big
..
It's a long line leading to man
Where are they now?
It's a long line leading to man
How do you think it feels to be extinct?
SKYWATCH keeps trying.
Another Wargames song! Styled as ‘The Beepers’, the musicians/singers on this movie included Cynthia Morrow (who seems to have been a session musician on various film productions) and Yvonne Elliman from the original cast of Jesus Christ Superstar. According to the Youtube comments, it’s Cynthia writing and singing on this song.
08 Spoons – Blow Away (1982, Canada) JACK
Lines drawn in all directions
On sidewalks and country roads
Tracing destinations
Unmapped and now avoided
All imaginary places
We have been
Points marking every day
Pencilled in the calendar
Maps of astronomics
Showed our worlds colliding
We were the last of a dying breed
Fading fast
Blow away
Blow away
Blow away
Just like that
Hours of imagination
Spent alone in empty chairs
Sending messages out
To unknown destinations
Though I really knew where they'd finally land
To be ignored
Blow away
Blow away
Blow away
Blow away
Blow away
Blow away
Just like that
Jack makes an extremely important and probably terminally stupid decision to drop Operator rights.
And this is the song that triggered this playlist. I literally woke up with it in my head, found it was now on Youtube as a single, and the rest followed around it.
Wargames and Spoons point us in the direction of episodes 0 and 1. But here it has a nice climactic feel and a sense of a resolution of a struggle that’s been building as we wrestle with both mortality and nuclear annihilation… time itself. Jack chooses to let his identity blow away in the digital breeze, hoping he’ll find something deeper.
09 Cyndi Lauper – Time After Time (1983, USA) SUSAN
Lying in my bed I hear
the clock tick and think of you
Caught up in circles
Confusion is nothing new
Flashback, warm nights
Almost left behind
Suitcase of memories
Time after
Sometimes you picture me
I'm walking too far ahead
You're calling to me
I can't hear what you've said
Then you say, go slow
I fall behind
The second hand unwinds
If you're lost you can look
And you will find me
Time after time
If you fall I will catch you
I'll be waiting
Time after time
If you're lost you can look
And you will find me
Time after time
If you fall I will catch you
I will be waiting
Time after time
After my picture fades
And darkness has turned to grey
Watching through windows
You're wondering if I'm okay
Secrets stolen
From deep inside
The drum beats out of time
If you're lost you can look
And you will find me
Time after time
If you fall I will catch you
I'll be waiting
Time after time
You said, go slow
I fall behind
The second hand unwinds
If you're lost you can look
And you will find me
Time after time
If you fall I will catch you
I'll be waiting
Time after time
If you're lost you can look
And you will find me
Time after time
If you fall I will catch you
I will be waiting
Time after time
Time after time
Time after time
Time after time
Time after time
Time after time
Time after time
Time after time
Although she can’t consciously recall him, Susan still dreams of Jack. They’re just out of sync, is all.
I think of this song together with Crazy In The Night, Shadows Of The Night, and Because The Night as forming a ‘romantic power ballad’ core that gets at part of Jack and Susan’s relationship. It’s got just enough of that science fiction feel (reputedly inspired by at least the title of the 1979 H G Wells pastiche Time After Time) to feel like it belongs in a cyberpunk world.
Blow Away is Jack’s big song; Time After Time is Susan’s reply.
10 Glen Campbell – Wichita Lineman (1968, USA) JACK (memory wiped)
I am a lineman for the county
And I drive the main road
Searching in the sun
For another overload
I hear you singing in the wires
I can hear you through the whine
And the Wichita lineman
Is still on the line
I know I need a small vacation
But it don't look like rain
And if it snows that stretch down south
Won't ever stand the strain
And I need you more than want you
And I want you for all time
And the Wichita lineman
Is still on the line
And I need you more than want you
And I want you for all time
And the Wichita lineman
Is still on the line
Jack has entered SYSTEM as an Agent. Everything he was is gone.
Okay, so I wanted John Denver, because we had to get out of the city eventually like the end of Blade Runner, but he just didn’t have a song that was quite right. ‘Country Roads’ wasn’t it. Too much twang, not enough buzz.
Glen Campbell though I think is an acceptable John Denver substitute and this song again has just the right science fiction overtone. It feels like snow, and (in whatever form it comes), the looming war will end in snow.
11 Natalie Hoover – Carrying You (1986/Japan, 20??/USA) SUSAN
The horizon spreading wide
Its brightness fills the sky
Why it shines so beautifully?
Because behind it's where you hide
All the yearning that I feel
For the many lights I see
It's all because the warmth that they give
Reminds me so much of you
Let our journey start from here
With a slice of bread to bake
Everything that you need
Is in your bag
All you need to take
My father left for me
This flaming soul I feel
My mother gave to me
This heart for truth I seek
As the world will make its turn
It will hide you as it might
All the twinkle in its eyes
All of the sparkle of its night
As the world will make its turn
It will take you on its wings
One day I know
We'll finally see
On its wings you and I
Let our journey start from here
With a slice of bread you baked
Everything that you need
All you need to take
As the world will make its turn
It will hide you as it might
All the twinkle in its eyes
All the sparkle of its night
As the world will make its turn
It will take you on its wings
One day I know
We'll finally see
On its wings you and me
Susan and Jack face the uncertain future with nothing but their unconscious. They can bring nothing with them from here, not even memories. But they are finally on the same wavelength.
So this is a recent American recording by an anime voice actress of an Internet English translation of uncertain source of the Japanese big end title song from the end of the 1986 Studio Ghibli anime, Tenkū no Shiro Rapyuta (Laputa: Castle in the Sky).
I am so glad to have found this because it is a perfect, beautiful translation of a song that – even without translation – just somehow gets inside your heart. And I suppose it was the path from Fadeaway Tomorrow, through Blow Away, to here that formed the spine of this list.
As an ending point it couldn’t be better because the anime has that Miyazaki theme of deep ecology vs technology and at this moment in the anime we face the promise of a rebooted world.
Here we’re seeing something slightly inverted: Jack’s completed fall into the simulated technological world, but a fall which will very shortly trigger Susan’s rise out. But both the fall and the rise come from the same impulse: a surrender to the same call to transform the system from within. Which hopefully works as a reflection but also a synthesis of the tense, strictly parallel ambigram we started with in The Clouds Run Parallel. It works for me, anyway.
(next in story time: Novas 5.4)
In which Susan and Jack each accidentally break the System and meet each other.
(next in Program Eleven/I: Novas 0.4)
In which Susan and Jack are drawn closer together by the shadow of nuclear war.