Here we stand[1]We had recently ran a long-form essay about how vanishingly rare it has been over the past hundred years to encounter a genuine utopia in pop culture—that it’s pretty much Star Trek and that’s … Continue reading
Like an Adam and an Eve[2]Per the most sacred rituals of the Temple Endowment, are we not all placed in the same position? That is, are we not all symbolically Adam and Eve, preparing to inherit this world the Lord hath … Continue reading
Waterfalls
The Garden of Eden[3]And are not the covenants we make in the Temple Endowment ceremony intended to prepare us to return to the Garden of Eden as well? But here is the clever interrogation proffered by the Talking Heads: … Continue reading
Two fools in love[4]The lyrics here cleverly sets up your expectations to be inverted later. Are we not rooting for these two fools in love here? But ye have not yet understood just how foolish they really are yet.
So beautiful and strong
The birds in the trees
Are smiling upon them
From the age of the dinosaurs
Cars have run on gasoline[5]Allusion to the fact that the gas in our cars is harvested from dead organic matter tens of millions of years old, dating back to the dinosaur age. We take something that took unfathomably long … Continue reading
Where, where have they gone?
Now, it’s nothing but flowers
There was a factory
Now, there are mountains and rivers[6]Initially, this sounds like an unqualified good! Especially for anyone who has ever lived in or passed through Utah, the thought of the mountains and rivers returning to their pristine beauty before … Continue reading
You got it, you got it
We caught a rattlesnake
Now, we got something for dinner[7]First hint in the song that what we are hearing here is not some Solar Punk heavenly vision, but a post-apocalyptic account of how the Earth recovers after all human civilization collapses.
We got it, we got it
There was a shopping mall
Now, it’s all covered with flowers[8]Malls were still in their hey-day in 1988; nowadays, in the age of online shopping, the dead and dying shopping malls that litter the face of America really would be better replaced with fields of … Continue reading
You’ve got it, you’ve got it
If this is paradise
I wish I had a lawnmower[9]Cain, the first murderer, and child of Adam and Eve, had killed his brother Abel because he wished to inherit and control his flocks. A lawnmower may be much more innocuous than literal murder, but … Continue reading
You’ve got it, you’ve got it
Years ago
I was an angry young man[10]How many of us were angry and rebellious in our youth against the wicked ways of the world, only to grow up and conform to the exigencies of commerce and wealth-production like everyone … Continue reading
I’d pretend
That I was a billboard[11]My word, the billboards that crowd the I-15 in Utah! When I used to live there, I never got over the immense frustration of having that sublime view of the Wasatch Front continually blocked by the … Continue reading
Standing tall
By the side of the road
I fell in love
With a beautiful highway
This used to be real estate[12]In 1831, when the Church was scarcely a year old, Joseph Smith called to repentance the Saints newly gathered to Independence, Missouri (near the original site of the Garden of Eden, mind you), due … Continue reading
Now, it’s only fields and trees
Where, where is the town?
Now, it’s nothing but flowers
The highways and cars
Were sacrificed for agriculture[13]But then, wasn’t agriculture sacrificed for the highways and cars in the first place? Where went all the orchards that made the desert bloom as a rose in the Utah Valley, sacrificed for … Continue reading
I thought that we’d start over[14]And we will! The course of the Lord is “One Eternal Round.” The question is not whether we can ever transition the Earth back to its paradisaical glory, but only if we will be able to … Continue reading
But I guess I was wrong, hey
Once there were parking lots
Now, it’s a peaceful oasis[15]In a Celestial Order where God and Angels are able to descend directly out of divine conduits and Pillars of Light, there will be no need for cars–and hence no more need for parking lots.
You got it, you got it[16]It is Labor Day weekend, wherein we were originally intended to honor the sacrifices our striking great-grandparents made to give us a better world. Seriously, so many of the very basic worker … Continue reading
This was a Pizza Hut[17]A once-popular pizza chain that has been in decline since 1988; in fact, per some recent news articles, it has only been by embracing their “retro,” ’80s-coded past, that certain … Continue reading
Now, it’s all covered with daisies
You got it, you got it
I miss the honky tonks
Dairy Queens and Seven-Elevens[18]Another example of the song’s narrator yearning for the things of this world, rather than seeking the things of a better. We would consider it ludicrous to miss Seven-Elevens while in the … Continue reading
You got it, you got it
And as things fell apart[19]Oblique allusion to William Butler Yeats’s 1922 poem “The Second Coming” (which we as Latter-day Saints are supposedly waiting for):
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere … Continue reading
Nobody paid much attention[20]Do you seriously think you will miss any of this anyways? How many brands and stores and companies have gone defunct just within your lifetime–your Kmarts and Radio Shacks and … Continue reading
You got it, you got it
I dream of cherry pies
Candy bars and chocolate chip cookies
You got it, you got it
We used to microwave
Now, we just eat nuts and berries[21]We used to eat processed foods, now we eat genuinely whole foods? That is some Stockholm Syndrome indeed for our self-destructive habits.
You got it, you got it
This was a discount store[22]The stores and sellers will be swept away in the last day, per Revelations 18:11: “And the merchants of the earth shall weep and mourn over her; for no man buyeth their merchandise any … Continue reading
Now, it’s turned into a cornfield
You got it, you got it
Don’t leave me stranded here
I can’t get used to this lifestyle[23]See again Mormon 9:4, “Behold, I say unto you that ye would be more miserable to dwell with a holy and just God, under a consciousness of your own filthiness before him, than ye would to dwell … Continue reading
References
| ↑1 | We had recently ran a long-form essay about how vanishingly rare it has been over the past hundred years to encounter a genuine utopia in pop culture—that it’s pretty much Star Trek and that’s it—hence it behooves us to present any other examples we might stumble across! And we do indeed have one more in “Nothing But Flowers” by the Talking Heads, the final single off their final album Naked in 1988 (and which also closes out their sole Greatest Hits collection). The track should be of especial interest to those of us essaying to be Latter-day Saints, since it describes the world that we are all supposedly looking forward to: when, per the Tenth Article of Faith, “the earth will be renewed and receive its paradisaical glory.” |
|---|---|
| ↑2 | Per the most sacred rituals of the Temple Endowment, are we not all placed in the same position? That is, are we not all symbolically Adam and Eve, preparing to inherit this world the Lord hath prepared for us? |
| ↑3 | And are not the covenants we make in the Temple Endowment ceremony intended to prepare us to return to the Garden of Eden as well? But here is the clever interrogation proffered by the Talking Heads: what if you’re not prepared to re-enter, because you have after all loved not God but the world and its vanities? As Moroni himself laments in Mormon 9:4, “Behold, I say unto you that ye would be more miserable to dwell with a holy and just God, under a consciousness of your own filthiness before him, than ye would to dwell with the damned souls in hell.” This Talking Heads track, then, is a tongue-in-cheek examination of what that might actually look like. |
| ↑4 | The lyrics here cleverly sets up your expectations to be inverted later. Are we not rooting for these two fools in love here? But ye have not yet understood just how foolish they really are yet. |
| ↑5 | Allusion to the fact that the gas in our cars is harvested from dead organic matter tens of millions of years old, dating back to the dinosaur age. We take something that took unfathomably long aeons to produce and burn it all to cook the earth in less than a couple centuries, assuring our extinction as sure as the dinosaurs. Oh, how we yearn for the Lord to come and cleanse the earth of our sins and pollutions–both literally and figuratively–and redeem us from our own short-sighted selfishness! But are we really prepared for what that would look like? Are we even trying to? |
| ↑6 | Initially, this sounds like an unqualified good! Especially for anyone who has ever lived in or passed through Utah, the thought of the mountains and rivers returning to their pristine beauty before the Kennecott Copper Mine smothered us in smog and inversion should fill us with hope and joy! But at what cost? And how few of us are prepared to pay it? |
| ↑7 | First hint in the song that what we are hearing here is not some Solar Punk heavenly vision, but a post-apocalyptic account of how the Earth recovers after all human civilization collapses. |
| ↑8 | Malls were still in their hey-day in 1988; nowadays, in the age of online shopping, the dead and dying shopping malls that litter the face of America really would be better replaced with fields of flowers instead–save that Amazon and its ilk produce even more consumerist garbage than the malls of yore. It turns out that the price to finally renew the earth unto its paradisaical glory, will force us to choose God over Mammon–the Hebrew word for wealth. And that frankly is not a choice most of us are willing to make, is it. |
| ↑9 | Cain, the first murderer, and child of Adam and Eve, had killed his brother Abel because he wished to inherit and control his flocks. A lawnmower may be much more innocuous than literal murder, but it is still representative of our desire to control this earth–exterminating its biodiversity in the name of a flat, comformity-ridden lawn–rather than cultivate it. |
| ↑10 | How many of us were angry and rebellious in our youth against the wicked ways of the world, only to grow up and conform to the exigencies of commerce and wealth-production like everyone else–largely because we were forced to? |
| ↑11 | My word, the billboards that crowd the I-15 in Utah! When I used to live there, I never got over the immense frustration of having that sublime view of the Wasatch Front continually blocked by the most obnoxious billboards I’ve ever had the displeasure of driving by in my life. |
| ↑12 | In 1831, when the Church was scarcely a year old, Joseph Smith called to repentance the Saints newly gathered to Independence, Missouri (near the original site of the Garden of Eden, mind you), due to their “spirit of covetousness” that had led them to buy up all the cheap land and then flip it at extortionist prices to the later, poorer Saints who couldn’t get there first. This of course is solid real estate investment advice; but the practice is an abomination before the Lord, and our mass tendencies to treat this Earth as real estate opportunities rather than the home of the entire human family is part of what disqualifies us for the kingdom. |
| ↑13 | But then, wasn’t agriculture sacrificed for the highways and cars in the first place? Where went all the orchards that made the desert bloom as a rose in the Utah Valley, sacrificed for car-friendly subdivisions? The same thing happened in California—Orange County used to be where they actually grew oranges, not crowd all arable land with housing developments—and Utah has not been wiser than California. Why is it so hard for us all to imagine another way of living? |
| ↑14 | And we will! The course of the Lord is “One Eternal Round.” The question is not whether we can ever transition the Earth back to its paradisaical glory, but only if we will be able to withstand it when it comes. |
| ↑15 | In a Celestial Order where God and Angels are able to descend directly out of divine conduits and Pillars of Light, there will be no need for cars–and hence no more need for parking lots. |
| ↑16 | It is Labor Day weekend, wherein we were originally intended to honor the sacrifices our striking great-grandparents made to give us a better world. Seriously, so many of the very basic worker protection laws we take for granted in America today—minimum wage laws, Workmen’s Comp, overtime pay, etc.—literally cost people their lives to bring about. This is a bloody history we have all actively and strenuously worked to erase from public memory, such that nowadays Labor Day now is just the unofficial end of summer, and has been for decades. “You got it” indeed, and have since forgotten all about it. But the Savior Himself prophesied that things hidden will one day be declared from the housetops; and the sacrifices of our great-grandparents will be remembered and honored once more, just as the heaven they sought to establish on earth will finally be bright to pass. |
| ↑17 | A once-popular pizza chain that has been in decline since 1988; in fact, per some recent news articles, it has only been by embracing their “retro,” ’80s-coded past, that certain Pizza Hut franchises have been able to thrive again. And it will indeed be nostalgia that saves us all, ironically! But only the ultimate nostalgia of all: for the Earth in all its original, paradisiacal, Celestial glory. If you’re going to go nostalgic, then you have to go all the way. |
| ↑18 | Another example of the song’s narrator yearning for the things of this world, rather than seeking the things of a better. We would consider it ludicrous to miss Seven-Elevens while in the Celestial Kingdom; but how many of us willing to make that Great Divorce in this world? As Brigham Young once declared, “No one supposes for one moment that in heaven the angels are speculating, that they are building railroads and factories, taking advantage one of another, gathering up the substance there is heaven to aggrandize themselves, and that they live on the same principle that we are in the habit of doing….No sectarian Christian in the world believes this; they believe that the inhabitants of heaven live as a family, that their faith, interests and pursuits have one end in view: the glory of God and their own salvation, that they may receive more and more….We all believe this, and suppose we go to work and imitate them as far as we can.” |
| ↑19 | Oblique allusion to William Butler Yeats’s 1922 poem “The Second Coming” (which we as Latter-day Saints are supposedly waiting for):
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere The ceremony of innocence is drowned; The best lack all conviction, while the worst Are full of passionate intensity. |
| ↑20 | Do you seriously think you will miss any of this anyways? How many brands and stores and companies have gone defunct just within your lifetime–your Kmarts and Radio Shacks and Toys’R’Us and so on and so forth? How often do you think of them? How much do you actually miss them when you do? Why then cling to them still? |
| ↑21 | We used to eat processed foods, now we eat genuinely whole foods? That is some Stockholm Syndrome indeed for our self-destructive habits. |
| ↑22 | The stores and sellers will be swept away in the last day, per Revelations 18:11: “And the merchants of the earth shall weep and mourn over her; for no man buyeth their merchandise any more.” |
| ↑23 | See again Mormon 9:4, “Behold, I say unto you that ye would be more miserable to dwell with a holy and just God, under a consciousness of your own filthiness before him, than ye would to dwell with the damned souls in hell.” |