The Past Is A Grotesque Animal by of Montreal actually touches on a lot of existentialist themes. From the opening lines:
The past is a grotesque animal and in its eyes, you see
How completely wrong you can be
Karl Jaspers suggested that one of the ultimate situations all human beings experience is to be inexorably involved in guilt (The Way to Wisdom, 1954). As the lines suggest, the past can throw a shadow over the present if you let yourself get stuck staring into it.
The sun is out, it melts the snow that fell yesterday
Makes you wonder why it bothered
Albert Camus famously identified the absurd as the meeting place between the absence of answers the universe provides and our yearning for that very information in The Myth of Sisyphus. Why does life keep existing the way it does, what is the point? Questions like these are closely related to what bothers Antoine Roquentin in Nausea, even though the emphasis on superfluousness in Sartre's novel is absent in this song (which makes sense as the book is more of a philosophical reaction).
I'm flunking out, I'm flunking out
I'm gone, I'm just gone
But at least I author my own disaster
At least I author my own disaster
It's downright impossible not the recognise the existentialist emphasis on self-agency and self-authorship in this verse. It brings to mind the ending of The Stranger, which sees an attempt by Mersault to come to terms with the indifference of the world towards humankind.
Things could be different, but they're not
Oh, oh, things could be different, but they're not
Another one of the ultimate situations described by Jaspers in The Way to Wisdom is the realisation that our lives are affected by chance. No matter what we do, some events will be out of our control. Sartre identifies this with the emotive term despair in Existentialism is a Humanism, ''[w]hen Descartes said ‘[c]onquer yourself rather than the world’, what he meant was, at bottom, the same—that we should act without hope.'' In other words, whatever we do, things outside of our control will be able to thwart our designs. Sartre's suggestion is to commit yourself to action, even without hope, as there is 'no reality except in action' (in the words of Warburton).
Though our love project has so much potential
But it's like we weren't made for this world
Though I wouldn't really want to meet someone who was
The identification of love as a project, is, at its roots, very existentialist. But potential is not reality, as Sartre points out, and it does not lead to resolution. Possibility and choice will eventually involve disappointment, this is Kierkegaard's insight in Either/Or, and talking about the potential of something that did not work out is a way of experiencing the regret that accompanies what eventually ended up as reality. The further two lines echo the feeling of abandonment that accompanies our abandonment in the world, we are not made for it, nor it for us, but perhaps this can lead to a realisation that this is an essential part of being human. Hence the suggestion that he wouldn't want to meet someone was made for this world, they'd belong to something that feels alienating to him.
Let's just have some fun
Let's tear this shit apart
Let's tear the fucking house apart
Let's tear our fucking bodies apart
Let's just have some fun
A common reaction to meaninglessness can be an outright rejection of responsibility. There is a desire to escape the weight of anguish, despair and abandonment (or the ultimate situations described earlier). But just as this verse doesn't last, so this attempt at escape must be temporary, every attempt to author a temporal space free of the situations that define our experience must eventually collapse.
I find myself searching for old selves
While speeding forward through the plate glass of maturing cells
I'm just gonna quote Kierkegaard here: '[i]t is perfectly true, as philosophers say, that life must be understood backwards. But they forget the other proposition, that it must be lived forwards.' Looking backwards to understand our current position will not cease the activity that currently involves us. The march of time is without pause. As Jaspers said, even 'if their momentary aspect changes and their shattering force is obscured,' I must eventually come to face with realisations such as that 'I must die' (The Way to Wisdom,1954).
Project your fears onto me
I need to view them
See there's nothing to them
I promise you, there's nothing to them
Echoes Jaspers demand for a dialogue of Existenz where complete openness is pre-requisite for ever coming close to understanding the other, but also (reveals) an inner desire to shield someone from the pain of experience.
And none of our secrets are physical
None of our secrets are physical
None of our secrets are physical now
These final lines can be read in several different ways. It could either mean that there has been a loss of physical intimacy, being that they no longer share physical secrets, or it could mean that physical understanding is not enough, and they have secrets from each other that are non-physical. I think the latter reading makes more sense in comparison with the verse quoted above. It is not enough to know someone physically. As Jaspers points out, the subject of Existenz can not be understood by treating it as an object, it is not enough to know every physical fact about someone (and their life) to truly know them. The realisation of this is often accompanied by an onerous melancholy.
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