Earlier I mentioned my interest in creative artifacts that do speculative realist work, as well as my tempered fondness for the lurid lists of objects that litter Graham Harman's work.
The other day another example fell into my lap as I was listening to the Seriously Sinatra channel on satellite radio in my car (seriously, there's a channel for it). The song that played was Antonio Jobim's bossa nova classic "Águas de Março" ("Waters of March"). Even if its broader theme might be the passing of life into death, the song is really just a list of things: "a stick, a stone, a sliver of glass, a knot in the wood, a trap, a gun...", a litany of the objects we ignore as we selfishly obsess about how the elements afflict our human lives.
Here is the original, in Portuguese, sung by Jobim and Elis Regina, followed by the English version, which was also written by Jobim. (I've chosen Art Garfunkel's rendering, only because the video has better visual aids):
As long as we're talking about objects and "The Waters of March," here are two other, more unusual versions of the song.
The first is also very much about objects, the incredibly charming "TJ's Song," a bossa nova homage to the grocery store Trader Joe's, set to the tune of "The Waters of March":
Second, a somewhat less object-oriented Coca-Cola ad from 1985, which declares "It's a kick, it's a hit, it's a Coke, Coke is it." (And for my Heideggerian readers, also note the centennial broken-tool version of the Statue of Liberty at :13.)
All offer interesting examples of two things: first, how lists of objects themselves, without much further explication, can do the philosophical work of drawing our attention toward them with greater attentiveness. And second, how aesthetic objects can serve as philosophical apparatuses that deliver such effort.