Friday Tunes: For the Workforce, Drowning

This week’s installment of labour themes in popular culture is “For the Workforce, Drowning” by Thursday. This song is about the alienating nature of modern work (“without a name, just numbers, on the resume stored in the mainframe, marked for delete”). There are themes of death, whether of the body or the soul (“dressed for the funeral in black and white”).

The song nicely captures the sense of desperation many workers face (“please take these hands/throw me in the river/don’t let me drown before the workday ends.”). When I worked in a cube farm at the WCB doing pointless work with no privacy and often nothing to do—just waiting for the day I could finally, blessedly quit—the days seemed endless.

Interestingly, the singer draws attention to the intergenerational nature of alienating work:

Now we lie wide awake in our parents beds,
tossing and turning.
tomorrow we'll get up
drive to work,
single file
with everyday
it's like the last.
waiting for the life to start, is it always just always ahead of the curve?

In effect, the commodification of labour (wherein we have to sell our labour in order to survive) creates an enduring class experience. While perhaps the minutiae of the experience changes over time (e.g., my dad killed time going for coffee; I kill time facebooking), our lack of control over what we do (and the attendant meaninglessness of much of our work) remains constant.



Falling from the top floor your lungs
fill like parachutes
windows go rushing by.
people inside,
dressed for the funeral in black and white.
These ties strangle our necks, hanging in the closet,
found in the cubicle; without a name, just numbers,
on the resume stored in the mainframe, marked for delete.

[chorus]
please take these hands
throw them in the river,
wash away the things they never held
please take these hands,
throw me in the river,
don’t let me drown before the workday ends.

9 to 5! 9 to 5!

and we're up to our necks,
drowning in the seconds,
ingesting the morning commute
lost in a dead subway sleep.

Now we lie wide awake in our parents beds,
tossing and turning.
tomorrow we'll get up
drive to work,
single file
with everyday
it's like the last.
waiting for the life to start, is it always just always ahead of the curve?

[chorus].

just keep making copies
of copies
of copies
when will it end?

it'll never end, 

'til it gets so bad
that the ink fills in our fingerprints
and the silhouette of your own face becomes the black cloud of war
and even in our dreams we're so afraid the weight will offset who we are
all those breaths that you took have now been canceled in your lungs.
last night my teeth fell out like ivory typewriter keys
and all the monuments and skyscrapers burned down and filled the sea.

save our ship
the anchor is part of the desk
we can't cut free,
the water is flooding the decks
the memo's sent through the currents
computers spark like flares
i can see them.
they don't touch me,
touch me.

please someone,
teach me how to swim.
please, don't let me drown,
please, don't let me drown.

-- Bob Barnetson