Blue Lips and Overmen: Regina Spektor and the Philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche

The following is a paper that I wrote about a year ago for my Modern Philosophy class. The assignment was to pick one of the philosophers that we had studied that semester and apply his thought to a musician, movie, TV show, or other element of popular culture. I was going through my old files and read through it again, and liked it enough to post it here.

Blue Lips and Overmen: Regina Spektor and the Philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche

Philosophy 202              Winter 2011

The music of Regina Spektor, like that of many modern artists, has a decidedly existential character. Her pieces describe the experiences of a single individual, sometimes named, more often not. Oftentimes the individual is an unnamed “I,” which contributes to the existential character of the song and can create an almost solipsistic mood. Spektor's work tends to be abstract and ambiguous, especially in its references to religion.

One example of this existential character is Spektor's piece entitled “Man of a Thousand Faces.” The song starts off describing a very small moment of the man's experience—he is sitting at a table, eating a lump of sugar, and looking at the moon.

Now he sits down at the table

right next to the window

and begins his quiet ascension

without anyone’s sturdy instruction

to a place that no religion

has found a path to or a likeness¹

This particular piece seems to imply a rejection of religion, in the character of Friedrich Nietzsche's assertion that “God is dead.”² The man's meditation takes him to a place where religion cannot reach. Nietzsche asserts that religion is limiting, and that it keeps people from reaching their true potential. In Thus Spake Zarathustra, he writes of priests: “Pretty intellects and comprehensive souls these herdsmen had: but my brethren, what small territories hitherto have been even the most comprehensive souls!”³ For Nietzsche, religion prescribes the territory of the soul. It limits it. And in Spektor's piece The Man of a Thousand Faces, the unnamed man has released himself from these bonds and killed God. He goes to a place “where no religion has found a path to, or a likeness.” For Nietzsche, God is dead because he is no longer relevant to the way people structure their lives. The man of a thousand faces does not find religion relevant to his quiet ascension. He has, in the existentialist sense, realized himself and become an Overman—one who is himself, who is his own. An Overman, Bernd Magnus says, is “the nonspecific representation, the undetermined embodiment if you will, of a certain attitude toward life and the world—the attitude which finds them worthy of infinite repetition.”⁴ To be an Overman is to fully realize yourself in such a way that you would want to live your life all over again without alteration.

Another of Spektor's songs, Blue Lips, has more existential imagery which can be interpreted as describing the development of an Overman. The protagonist of this piece is, yet again, an unnamed “he.” He starts off by meeting faith—

He stumbled into faith and thought

God, this is all there is?

The pictures in his mind arose

And began to breathe

And all the gods and all the worlds

Began colliding on a backdrop of blue⁵

The man finds faith, and he finds it insufficient. It is not enough for him—is this all there is? His own mind begins to take over, and he begins to create his world for himself. And for Nietzsche, this is philosophy. Philosophy is autobiography. In Beyond Good and Evil, he writes: “It has gradually become clear to me what every philosophy up till now has consisted of—namely, the confession of its originator, and a species of involuntary and unconscious auto-biography.”⁶ Further, Nietzsche believes that philosophy is not motivated by the will to know, but to be, to have power, to control the world and make it one's own.⁷ Another excerpt from Blue Lips says,

And all the people hurried fast, real fast

And no one ever smiled.

. . .

And no one saw and no one heard

They just followed the lead

. . .

They started off beneath the knowledge tree

And they chopped it down to make white picket fences

And marching along the railroad tracks

They smiled real wide for the camera lens

As they made it past the enemy lines

Just to become enslaved in the assembly lines⁸

This can be interpreted to be a description of how Nietzsche viewed the world of people in general. Most people are not Overmen—that is, people who are fully themselves and have realized their will to power. Most people are followers, underlings—or, to use Spektor's imagery, assembly line slaves. This is because becoming an Overman is not easy. It requires being hard on oneself; it requires the sacrifice of security. The “they” in the song are not willing to do this. They chop down the knowledge tree and use it to construct white picket fences—fitting representations of the traditional morality that the Overman rejects and goes beyond. They think they are happy, they think they have achieved fulfillment, when in reality they are slaves. They have not realized themselves.

The “he” in the piece however—he becomes an Overman. As the people around him become mindless, unrealized drones, the pictures in his mind awake, and “begin to breed.” His will to power and autobiographical philosophy grow to their full potential, and the song ends with the refrain:

Blue lips, blue veins

Blue, the color of our planet

From far, far away

Blue, the most human color

Blue lips, blue veins

Blue, the color of our planet

From far, far away⁹

Why is blue “the most human color”? Blue is a color we associate with cold, but it is also a color that means life. From space, Earth looks blue because of its water, and water is necessary for life. Without water—without the color blue—there is no humanity, and no Overman. If to become an Overman is to fully realize one's humanity, then it is fitting that blue should be the most human color.

One last example will serve to examine the Nietzschean existentialism that runs throughout Spektor's work. In this piece, entitled “Two Birds,” two birds are sitting on a wire and one wants to fly away, while the other stays safely on the wire. Here again we see a contrast between an Overman and an unrealized person.

Two birds on a wire

One tries to fly away

And the other

Watches him close

From that wire

He says he wants to as well

But he is a liar

Two birds on a wire

One says come on

And the other says

I'm tired

Two birds of a feather

Say that they're always

Gonna stay together

But one's never goin' to

Let go of that wire

He says that he will

But he's just a liar

Two birds on a wire

One tries to fly away

And the other . . . ¹⁰

Here, the first bird is exploring himself and becoming an Overman, but the other is afraid. He does not want to leave his safe, comfortable existence. The piece ends in the middle of a sentence, without saying what exactly it is that the second bird does in the end. The listener, however, can assume that this bird never does fly away like the other one. He watches the first bird closely, perhaps wishing to fly away, but he makes excuses: “I'm tired.”

Throughout Regina Spektor's body of work, a recurring theme is that of the Overman. Some characters in her pieces sometimes explore themselves and find that they have entered, or perhaps created, a world of depth and beauty where they are fully themselves. Other characters remain stagnant, refusing to grow and fully realize themselves. They sacrifice the knowledge tree for a white picket fence, or they choose to remain safely sitting on a wire. Spektor invites listeners to look inside themselves and examine their lives. Which are you—the bird on the wire, or the one that flies?

Bibliography

Lyrics.time: A Lyrics Website. http://www.lyricstime.com/. Accessed April 2, 2011.

Magnus, Bernd. “Perfectibility and Attitude in Nietzsche's 'Übermensch'.” The Review of Metaphysics 36, no. 3 (March 1983): 633-659.

Nietzsche, Friedich. Beyond Good and Evil. Translated by Helen Zimmern. New York: The Macmillan Company, 1907.

Nietzsche, Friedrich. Thus Spake Zarathustra: A Book for All and None. Translated by Alexander Tille. London: T. Fisher Unwin, 1908.

        Endnotes

1 Lyrics.time: A Lyrics Web Site, “Man of a Thousand Faces,” http://www.lyricstime.com/regina-spektor-man-of-a-thousand-faces-lyrics.html, accessed April 2, 2011.

2 Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spake Zarathustra: A Book for All and None, trans. Alexander Tille (London: T. Fisher Unwin, 1908), 118.

3 Ibid., 121.

4 Bernd Magnus, “Perfectibility and Attitude in Nietzsche's 'Übermensch,'” The Review of Metaphysics 36, no. 3 (March 1983), 643.

5 Lyrics.time: A Lyrics Website, “Blue Lips,” http://www.lyricstime.com/regina-spektor-blue-lips-lyrics.html, accessed April 2, 2011.

6 Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, trans. Helen Zimmern (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1907), 6-7.

7 Ibid., 7-8.

8 Lyricstime, “Blue Lips”

9 Ibid.

10 Lyricstime: A Lyrics Website, “Two Birds,” http://www.lyricstime.com/regina-spektor-two-birds-lyrics.html, accessed April 2, 2011.