What is vertigo? Fear of falling? Then why do we feel it even when the observation tower comes equipped with a sturdy handrail? No, vertigo is something other than the fear of falling. It is the voice of the emptiness below us which tempts and lures us, it is the desire to fall, against which, terrified, we defend ourselves.
It might be a long stretch to link this quote from Milan Kundera's The Unbearable Lightness of Being to the Pulp record whose album cover adorns this text. Even so, since I first heard Different Class, I have been enthralled by it without being able to pinpoint the reason for that. It is definitely not altogether out of my musical tastes - not at all actually - but I hardly ever attach so much meaning to what is essentially and primarily a collection of pop songs as I did and still do with this particular album.
But when I read that carefully plotted out sequence of words I referred to above, it hit me what it was that spoke to me exactly. Jarvis Cocker is basically the embodiment of this very voice of emptiness for me, his songs are full of the sort of fucked-up situations that are bound to destroy everything good about life, but still have this unexplainable appeal.
For example, in I Spy, he wants nothing more than the husband of his mistress catching them at it, he longs for this big confrontation if only to force a change in his life, not caring whether the outcome of it is good or bad.
Towards the end of the proceedings here, the realization of the complete emptiness of it all, of the never ending cycles that make up life, is even more apparent. Is this the light of a new day dawning? A future bright that you can walk in? No it's just another Monday morning, we'll do it all over again.
And we will. There is no escape from patterns, just as there is not one escape granted on this whole record, not one chance to catch a break. When our protagonist falls in love on F.E.E.L.I.N.G.C.A.L.L.E.D.L.O.V.E. he complains about wrong-time-wrong-place and, in Sorted for E's and Wizz, in the middle of a field of acid-happy people all he can think of is the comedown. It seems, just like Kundera, Jarvis too cannot bring himself to bear the unbearable, the lightness of being. The victory of the desire to fall over the desire to live without burden, in other words, and I've come to conclude that I too carry this desire and that is probably why Different Class is so unbelievably dear to me.
