RUN/DON’T YOU RUN WHEN YOU HEAR THE SIRENS CALLING
INTRO
The pandemic was a time when the dichotomy between mobility and non-mobility, between those who are un/safe at home and those who are un/safe on the run became more visible than ever. Starting with how two outstanding artists met during this period in an empty opera house to put two of their songs together, this essay discusses sirens, the sea, mythology and police brutality. Although they may seem unrelated, poetry and media technology tie all these concepts together.
The British singer Jorja Smith and the German rapper OG Keemo turned their songs «Blue Lights» and «216» into a heart wrenching medley for which they were accompanied by the German WDR Funkhaus Orchestra. Both songs are concerned with police violence. In Smith’s «Blue Lights», young lives are in danger when in close proximity to the police. Aware of the illegitimacy of this endangerment Smith starts with a «don’t you run, when you hear the sirens coming/cause the sirens not coming for you» (Jorja Smith 2018). As the song goes on, the tragedy unfolds, and, in the end, the singer is stuck between the call to run, and the injustice of having to do so.
OG Keemo’s track «216» is written from the perspective of those whom Jorja Smith expresses care about. He speaks of state brutality against black youth in Germany. He raps about trauma, resistance, allyship and solidarity. The pandemic and the tragic events of 2020 brought Jorja Smith and OG Keemo together and in the aftermath of the murder of George Floyd, Smith drops the ambiguity of «run/don’t you run» to express the horrible reality of having to run. She «when you hear the sirens coming», and has OG Keemo add «Lauf!» (German for run).
SIRENS
Jorja Smith and OG Keemo refer to the sound of the police. At least since Foucault's analysis of the police, we know that the police is a force that is supposed to protect the nation-state with its specific inner order, and in which the hypocrisy of the modern state is inscribed (Foucault 2007: 407ff). There is obviously a line between life worth protecting and life not worth protecting, drawn by the state against its own constitution.
In 1819, around the time Foucault is referring to, the French engineer Charles Cagniard de la Tour invented an acoustical machine that produced a strident sound. In reference to the singing sea creatures of Greek mythology, he named his machine «siren». Police sirens descend from Cagniard’s siren. The real sirens, those from Greek mythology, are best known from Homer’s Odyssey.
In book 12 of Homer's epic, Odysseus stays with the enchantress Circe on Aeaea island and asks her for advice for his further journey across the sea. Circe tells Odysseus how to continue on sea: «So listen, I will give you good instructions;/ another god will make sure you remember./ First you will reach the Sirens, who bewitch/ all passersby. If anyone goes near them/ in ignorance, and listens to their voices,/ that man will never travel to his home,/ … Use wax to plug/ your sailor’s ears as you row past, so they/ are deaf to them. But if you wish to hear them,/ your men must fasten you to your ship’s mast/ by hand and foot, straight upright, with tight ropes./ So bound, you can enjoy the Sirens’ song. But if you beg your men to set you free,/ they have to tie you down with firmer knots.» (Homer 12:35-54: 302-303).
Odysseus takes Circe’s advice. As the ship approaches the dangerous passage, he plugs the ears of his companions. He however, allows himself to be tied to the mast, and his ears remain free, for a short time, he suspends his power of command over his companions qua command: «… And she says/ that I alone should hear their singing, Bind me,/ to keep me upright at the mast, wound round/ with rope. If I beseech you and command you to set me free, you must increase my bonds/ and chain me even tighter’» (Homer 12: 161-167: 306). Odysseus alone is able to hear the sirens' song. And, indeed, he pleads, and is consequently tied tighter to the mast by his men. It is Odysseus' power of disposal over the technical means of time that enable him to enjoy the song of the sirens. He is the ruler of the wax and the ship, he puts things in their place, and he rises to the mast and puts his companions to the oars.
There is a short story by Franz Kafka in which he retells the story of Odysseus and the sirens. Here, instead of listening to the sirens, Odysseus chooses to put wax into his ears. As there is nobody to sing to, the sirens remain silent. Odysseus – not able to hear their singing or its absence – still thinks they will sing (Kafka 1991). There are many ways to interpret Kafka’s narrative, and many have done so. What I am drawing from in this essay is the ambivalence and interdependency of silence, the ability to sing, the prerequisite of wanting to listen and the need to be heard.
OG Keemo raps about police sirens on land: «Say, who's protecting us from the people who should be protecting us?» (OG Keemo/Jorja Smith 2020, author’s own translation). Jorja Smith uses metaphors of waves and floods, to refer to the inherent violence of auditory media technologies (ibid.). They both refer to exposed life within racial capitalism (Robinson 2000).
The racialized and endangered subjects that Smith and OG Keemo sing about, are - in terms of their vulnerability - not different from those whose lives are lost in the Mediterranean. While the nation states of Europe claim to both «protect» their borders and uphold the myth of «humanity» (Kohpeiß 2023: 91ff), countless lives are lost at sea. Lives of people who died in the hope of finding refuge. Lives that could have been saved. As in the Odyssey, it remains clear that those in charge of the technologies are those withholding power.
In the Odyssey, the sirens sing: «Now stop your ship and listen to our voices./ All who pass this way hear honeyed song,/ poured from our mouths. The music brings them joy,/ and they go on their way with greater knowledge,/ since we know everything the Greeks and Trojans/ suffered in Troy, by gods‘ will; and we know/ whatever happens anywhere on earth» (Homer 12:185-191: 307). Whether Odysseus heard the song about «whatever happens anywhere on earth», yet, after reading Kafka we cannot be certain anymore. The question remains if we (as in the bourgeois subject) are able to hear the songs of the sirens or if we have wax in our ears.
RUN/ DON'T YOU RUN
OG Keemo does not refer back to his title «216» in his lyrics. The song offers no further information on these numbers and to my knowledge «216» is not a common code in hip hop culture. Turning to the internet, I found two hints on what this could mean. 216 could be an «angel number» with a somewhat broad understanding of affirmation and self-trust. The other hint, more worldly, refers to § 216 StGB, which is the German penal code. It stands for killing on request («Tötung auf Verlangen«). In § 216 StGB the killed subject and its killer are accomplices. This is mostly applied in the context of assisted suicide. It is clear that OG Keemo’s track is not about the penal code in a literal sense. However, «216» might be a radical statement on the consequences of trying not to run or not to resist. The visuals offer more clarity.
In the video we see the artist wearing a marine officer’s uniform. He is now part of the system and still he gets murdered by white men in the following scenes. His dead doppelgänger is his undressed self. In the closing scene of the video we see the officer leaving the crime scene. It seems as though he has taken part in his own killing. The ambiguity which is hidden in the content of § 216 StGB carries over into the poetics of the song.
The history of racism, capitalism, and modern technologies are deeply connected to each other. Furthermore, the rise of modern-day capitalism cannot be thought of without discussing the historical impact of seafaring (Campling; Colas 2021). Whether the deadly end is on the Mediterranean Sea or on the streets: when people call for help and are not heard; when sea rescue fails; when push-backs come instead of refuge, these histories are entangled. On sea, and on land.
Hear/don't hear. Run/Don't run. Tell me when to do what.
OUTRO
Everything that is written here is a repetition of things that have been stated countless times before. It is a repetition of suffering which becomes fixed qua repetition. The catastrophe is always already inscribed in the sound of the sirens. There is also no way out of the ambiguities we live in. Yet how we listen to the sirens and what we take from their songs, is up to us. By remembering and retelling history, we can build new narratives. We need new narratives of the sea: narratives in which media technologies and poetologies can stand in a complex or even conflicted relationship to each other, for the boats to be sailed for everyone; quoted as a slight variation of Édouard Glissant’s famous quote: «We know ourselves as part and as crowd, in an unknown that does not terrify. We cry our cry of poetry. Our boats are open, and we sail them for everyone» (Glissant 2010: 9). We need narratives in which «run/don't you run» does not equal mere survival . We need the sirens to sing. We do not need them to come for anyone.
REFERENCES:
Foucault, Michel. Security, Territory, Population. Lectures at the Collége de France. Ed. Michel Senellart. Trans. Graham Burchell. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009.
Campling, Liam; Colas, Alejandro. Capitalism and the Sea: The Maritime Factor in the Making of the Modern World. London/New York: Verso books, 2021.
Glissant, Édouard. Poetics of Relation. Trans. Betsy Wing. Ann Arbor: Michigan University Press, 2010.
Homer. The Odyssey. Trans. Emily Wilson. New York/London: Norton, 2018.
Kafka, Franz. «Das Schweigen der Sirenen». In: Sämtliche Erzählungen. Ed. Paul Raabe. Frankfurt am Main: Fischer, 1991, p. 304-305.
Kohpeiß, Henrike. Bürgerliche Kälte. Affekt und koloniale Subjektivität. Campus: Frankfurt am Main, 2023.
Robinson, Cedric J. Black Marxism: The Making of the Black Radical Tradition. Chapel Hill/London: The University of North Carolina Press, 2000.
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