Bigmouth Strikes Again

Think Tank #47

So, I’ve started listening to The Smiths. I can’t get enough. The song that hooked me was “Bigmouth Strikes Again,” off of their album The Queen is Dead.

The song is so clever. The subject matter is relatable—in fact, Bigmouth Strikes Again could be the name of my autobiography.

But a few less ‘readily accessible’ lines from the song really caught my attention:

Now I know how Joan of Arc felt
As the flames rose to her Roman nose
And her Walkman started to melt

Brilliant. Before listening to this song, I didn’t know much about Joan of Arc apart from her sainthood, but after a quick Google search I realized how brilliant it is.

Aside from the utter absurdity of Morrissey comparing his own inability to keep his mouth shut to the plight of a French military hero turned martyr, the singer actually mentions the ‘link’ Joan of Arc had to God.

For some context, Joan of Arc was alive during the Hundred Years War between France and Britain which was fought between the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. She was a great military commander, leading France to a number of victories, and blah blah blah.

I skimmed through all that stuff, but the ‘gist’ is that she was a really brave gal. She dressed up in men’s clothes and led the army, allegedly changing the course of French history in the process. There’s an alleged link between these victories and the French Enlightenment.

The really interesting part of all this is that as she was doing this, Joan of Arc was obeying a voice inside of her head, which she referred to as God.

In “Bigmouth Strikes Again,” Morrissey references this as Joan of Arc’s “Walkman” and later her “hearing aid”—a little detail that I think is fantastic.

This story is so ubiquitous—it repeats itself everywhere! In places completely independent from one another. It almost seems too pervasive to not be true.

I talk all the time about Socrates. Socrates listened to his ‘daimon’: the name he gave to the voice inside his head that influenced him to expand the minds of the people of Athens and, later, to die rather than renounce his beliefs. Sound familiar?

If any of these people were alive today, we’d probably call them schizophrenics. Back then, they were heretics.

The world’s never been too kind to martyrs, has it? Well, obviously. If it were, they wouldn’t be martyrs.

However, a startling percentage of historical figures that have endured for centuries have martyred themselves. There’s power in the act of choosing one’s principles over one’s life. Perhaps that’s why the ‘little voice’ that talks to these brilliant people always compels them to do it.

Everyone loves a martyr, once their martyrdom is complete.