Slim Aarons showed us that we all strip down in public, even when we think we’re hiding behind the most accredited social decorum agreement. I was watching videos on YouTube and the acoustic version of A-ha’s “Take on Me” showed up. The audience was made up of women over forty, with children, reminiscing about their youth with a mixture of rapture and melancholy. They sing the lyrics, every verse they effortlessly remember. The song is a myth, a chimera. That’s why it recalls something good and pure; myths are always perfect. It’s a boy who disappears in a day or two… the perfect boy. By the algorithm, the next one is Sabina, already old, in one of those self-aggrandizing concerts before his biographical death, when the other one has already happened. The song is “Y sin embargo,” a tale of betrayal, how he has lovers but always comes back home. In the video, the girls barely mumble the lyrics, and they’re right. It’s curious how behaviors and truths are out there in plain sight. Evolutionary psychology has described how, across civilizations, men and women’s responses to certain questions are the same. When women are asked what the most serious problem in a marriage is, the answer is the man falling in love with another woman, and secondly, the man having a sexual relationship outside of that marriage. When men are asked, things change. The most serious problem for men in a relationship is the woman having sexual relationships outside of marriage. Falling in love is something that is relegated to a secondary role. Why? The woman is the one who raises the family—a revolutionary statement today—and while she cares for the family, her situation is more vulnerable; she needs a man who is 100% committed to providing and protecting. For men, the only assurance that the family they are fighting for is theirs lies in complete sexual fidelity. Girls don’t sing Sabina’s song.
By the whims of the algorithm, the next song is “Fast Car” by Tracy Chapman. A very sad and famous song, remembered mainly for its chorus. It talks about a fast car that promises new beginnings, like John Wayne trotting on horseback toward the horizon. It also describes the sense of belonging and becoming someone. It’s curious that the difficulty of being “someone” is a problem for adolescents and young adults, a time when one begins to define oneself through one’s own decisions, through what one says no to. The sense of belonging, of fitting in somewhere, is a feeling that comes from within, of being spiritually aligned with oneself. However, we spend half our lives externalizing that belonging: “They don’t understand me, I don’t fit in…” It’s someone else’s fault. This song has a terrible fifth verse.
“You got a fast car/I got a job that pays all our bills/You stay up late drinking at the bar/You see your friends more than your kids/I always hoped for something better/I thought maybe together, you and I would find it/I got no plans, I ain’t going nowhere/So get in your fast car and keep driving.”
The song ends exactly where it began. Social psychology has described how social class contributes to shaping the thinking, emotions, and actions of individuals. The most disadvantaged classes perceive that uncertainty, vulnerability, and threat are beyond their control. Therefore, they think that what happens to them and their own actions are influenced by uncontrollable external causes. In this context, and using behavioral approximation theory, the repetition of situations in different generations of families can be explained as learned behaviors. Tracy Chapman sings that you end up at the same place where you begin. Von Keyserling already said “ the shortest path to oneself leads around the world”
I don’t know what YouTube’s algorithm will bring me… but it’s certainly something that has already happened.
References
Once upon a Time by Slim Aarons, 2003
A Wonderful Time: An Intimate Portrait of the Good Life by Slim Aarons, 1974
The Shortest Path by Manuel Leguineche, 1978