Neil Diamond and the Deaf Chair

This post will be neither a discussion of chair history nor specific chair design, nor even a chair sighting. Instead, we shall tackle the essence of the chair. The unbearable chairness of being, if you will. (Am I always this lame? Answer: Yes.) Take it away, Neil!

I am, I said
To no one there
And no one heard at all
Not even the chair
I am, I cried
I am, said I
And I am lost, and I can't even say why
Leavin' me lonely still

- Neil Diamond, “I Am… I Said”

I first came across the lyrics of Neil Diamond’s 1971 hit song “I Am… I Said” in humour writer Dave Barry’s Book of Bad Songs. “‘And no one heard at all / Not even the chair’ – not even the chair?!” I was reduced to giggles at the thought of the chair deliberately refusing to listen. Being an ignorant and incredulous child, it took my mother some persuading to convince me that a) Neil Diamond is not only a real singer, but a famous one and b) this song was a hit, and a critically acclaimed Grammy-nominated one at that. I was duly chastised.

Diamond sings about being torn between New York City and LA; Rolling Stone calls “I Am… I Said” an “existential anthem.” Sasha Frere-Jones of The New Yorker comments that Diamond’s song writing is “like the pleas of a love-struck man from another place—perhaps a small Eastern European city—who has an unusual gift for melody but who grew up not speaking English.” The infamous chair line is singled out: Frere-Jones diplomatically calls it “a typically opaque lyric.”

Oh, cruel chair! Are you, too, deaf to my pain? The design of a chair typically fits a single individual – providing relief and support to even a stricken and solitary person. To have a chair shun you is truly rejection and loneliness. Diamond appeals to no specific incarnation of chairness, but rather, to the abstract chair, the Platonic chair, the chair that is the very essence of chairness.

Ontological profundities! Diamond is asking questions that probe the anlage of being. What is the nature of the self? What is the nature of the self when one asserts one’s own being? What is the nature of the self when one asserts one’s own being if the world and the quintessence of the chair turn their backs upon you?

And one final question:

If a Neil Diamond cries “I am” and no one hears him, not even the chair, does he still make a noise?

(Answer: Hey, I guess that’s why we have a song.)