Spring Break Thoughts

As I was driving home for spring break, the song Gasoline by Halsey came on, and some of the lyrics made me this of the class. The lyrics go, “And all the people say you can’t wake up, this is not a dream. You’re part of a machine, you are not a human being. With your face all made up, living on a screen low on self-esteem, so you run on gasoline. I think there’s a flaw in my code. These voices won’t leave me alone…”. These lyrics made me think of a few different things we have discussed in class. The first is Donna Haraway’s cyborg manifesto. In this, she said that we are all so close to technology that we are all becoming cyborgs. This made me think the song was about how close we all are to technology and how it has become a barrier between actual human interaction.

Another way I related it to the class was in the part where she mentions living on a screen. Although this probably isn’t what she had in mind, I thought of an episode from Black Mirror where all the people lived in this place where they all had sims. Their sims would interact and go places and do things, but the actual people would either stay in their tiny room, on their stationary bike to earn currency or clean. Their life was completely virtual. The only actual physical thing they had was food. Everything else was like a Wii game.

I was curious as to what her meaning behind it was so I looked it up. As it turns out Halsey suffers from bipolar disorder. A lot of the lyrics pertain to her struggle with that. She has probably been referred to as insane throughout her life. She probably tries to cope with it through humor while also asking if anyone else suffers like her. These points become obvious when reading or listening to the lyrics of the song. The contents of the class gave the song a completely different meaning, which I thought was interesting. When I heard it I figured it was about people acting or feeling like machines. I don’t think I ever would have guessed it was about a bipolar disorder even though it makes sense now.