We Didn't Start the Fire (vers. 3)

Fall Out Boy has made a very cringe cover of Billy Joel's "We Didn't Start the Fire," the original itself already a piece of canonical cringe. But that's not what it sounded like to me at 8 years old, when it first became a massive hit. At the time, it was like reading Pynchon and DeLillo combined: a complex web of esoteric 20th-century lore I would have to spend years decoding. This was, of course, because I knew almost zero history yet. 

Plus, it was a list song, and I really liked those. Another was "It's the End of the World as We Know It" by R.E.M. They were really in the same category. "Starkweather homicide, children of thalidomide." That could have just as well been some of Stipe's impressionistic mumble-jumble. I didn't know what any of that stuff was; I thought it said, "Start with a homicide, turnin' up the little mind." 

I thought it might be fun to re-do Fall Out Boy's redo, but instead of doing a shot-by-shot remake with new and less photogenic actors, I would try to recreate that sense of esoteric parataxis I felt originally. My version is both more personal and universal than Fall Out Boy's; it departs more drastically from Joel's version and references it more specifically; its zeitgeist straddles both eras, rather than trying to be the nostalgia of the present moment; it forms a secret history of the same, but is one that is not to be trusted, which is mere honesty.

I've been teaching myself piano, but it remains to be seen whether this tune has enough gas for a third fire.

Robert Anton LaVey, Borges, Burroughs Barthelme;
Al Hubbard, L. Ron Hubbard, Old Mother too;
Pizzagate, Gladio, Mad Men, Michel Foucault;
Bernays, Burzum, Borat, Billy Jo-el Boogaloo.

Fight Club, Brave New World, They Live, Gilmore Girls,
Bill Nye the Science Guy, and The Catcher in the Rye
Spielberg, Kubrick, Agents in the Matrix
Neuromancer, Tiny Dancer, Twilight Language, goodbye

[Chorus]

Zodiac, Leo Strauss, Lewis Carroll, Mickey Mouse
Sex magick, Chaos magick, magick with a “k”
Atom-Waffen, Antifa, Megadeth, Metallica
Zionism, Mugwump jissom, Mormon CIA

Epstein, Weinstein, Ed Kemper, Ed Gein
Yaweh, Wotan, Michael Jackson, Peter Pan
Alan Moore, Alan Watts, Tesla, Tavistock
Wolverine, Cyclops, Hippies were a psyop

[Chorus]

Age of Aquarius, Dr. Hilarius,
Hassan Sabbah, Black Sabbath, Sabbatai Zvi
Red Army Faction, Neoreaction
John Dee, Crowley, Ayahuasca, LSD

Jack White, Jack Black, Jack Parsons, Kerouac
HP Lovecraft , HG Wells, Octopus, In-Q-Tel,
Age of Horus fun, admiral Morrison
I feel Black-pilled, I just read programmed to kill.

[chorus]

Hand of Death, Manson, "Stranger in a Strange Land"
Bowie, Berlin, Baphomet, Esalen
Schizo-phrenia, British Beatlemania
Crispin Glover, Zizek, Francis Edward Dec,
4-20, 88, Hell’s Angel’s, Heaven’s Gate
JFK – CIA, what else do I have to say?

[chorus]

Uri Geller bending spoons, Freemasons on the moon
Nambla, Roy Cohn, Evola, adrenochrome
Twin Peaks, Twin Towers, The Thalidomide Kid
End the Fed, Paul is dead, no-one heard a word I said

MK-Ultra, PKD, Uncle Ted Kaczynski
Rockefeller, Rothschild, Jimmy Saville Oscar Wilde
Artichoke, Fukuyama, Monarch, Gematria
Infotainment, Infowars, I can’t take it anymore