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an individual as himself, so much as his difficulty in
being at all. The “I” of the song is only a possibility set
against harsh reality. Will Oldham’s ‘honesty’ then is
the clarity of his exile. The various names he adopts is
a natural off-shoot of this.
In this respect, it’s appropriate that Oldham first
became well-known by acting in films, most notably
co-starring in John Sayles’ trade union drama Matewan
(1987). His performance as a teenager caught up in the
brutal repression of a mining union in 1930s America
is startlingly good. Yet no matter how connected his
songs and his acting are, the displacement of identity
central to the actor’s existence is perhaps too limited.
In my experience, actors are less interested in others as
being others full stop. They tend to be indiscriminate,
mercenary and heartless. The self is willingly exiled. It
is not the most appropriate medium for an artist concerned
with the play of self and its exposures, ellipses
and effacements. While Oldham is certainly stagy, it’s
a stage with the trapdoor fully in view.
In a rare interview, Oldham is clear that the movement
between the self and its productions plays a major
part in his writing. Asked if there is anything he does
consciously when writing songs he says
“Doing and not doing. But it’s not that hard cause
that’s mostly the nature of what’s going on, or that’s the
reason for these things to be there. That is the answer
to what makes them occur. The answer is that they
BUY Will Oldham music online from and
are that way. The reason that they become is because
they become what they are. The listening is begun at
the very beginning, at the writing, then it’s continued
in the performing and recording, and then is continued
with whoever listens to it but it isn’t completed … it’s
something that’s never completed.”
“Doing and not doing”: this is basically what it is to
be a human animal. We hold against the “not doing”
because it leads to boredom and melancholy. We half
envy the animal who just lives; who just does. But it’s
still us as not-doing individuals that desires it. One of
the great analysts of modern human nature, Friedrich
Nietzsche spoke of this in 1874:
“Consider the herd grazing before you. These
animals do not know what yesterday and today are
but leap about, eat, rest, digest and leap again: and
so from morning to night and from day to day, only
briefly concerned with their pleasure and displeasure,
enthralled by the moment and for that reason neither
melancholy nor bored. It is hard for a man to see this,
for he is proud of being human and not an animal and
yet regards its happiness with envy because he wants
nothing other than to live like the animal, neither
bored nor in pain, yet wants it in vain because he does
not want it like the animal. Man may well ask the
animal: why do you not speak of me of your happiness
but only look at me? The animal does want to
answer and say: because I always immediately forget
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