#however absurd

What about the time we met? Well, I suppose that you could say that we were playing hard to get Didn't understand a thing But we could always sing

I feel like there’s not enough discussion of this verse as a whole. On the surface, the “playing hard to get” line might seem like a simple reference to whole "pretending not to care" attitude they both had at the begining, like when John sent Pete Shotton to ask Paul if he wanted to join the band (instead of asking him directly), and Paul weighing the offer with a cautious “I’ll think about it.” I'm pretty sure that’s what Paul might say if someone asked him about that line. But it’s clearly deeper than that. The line that comes after, “we didn’t understand a thing” suggests there was something more going on that they couldn’t articulate at the time. So music became their love language, ("but we could always sing"), the way they expressed emotions they couldn’t (or were afraid to) name.

Something special between us When we made love the game was over I couldn't say the words Words wouldn't get my feelings through

I see this verse from However Absurd as the more unfiltered version of that same theme expressed in Here Today. It explores a similar tension: a “game,” a "playing hard to get" dynamic, which ended once actual intimacy began, all while the difficulty of fully communicating these feelings lingered. And maybe this continued until that night in Key West, when, as Paul said, ‘there wasn't any reason to keep it all inside’; they finally gave a verbal release to the love they had previously expressed only through songs (which is why we really need to pay attention to the love songs they wrote before mid 1964, like Just Fun, If I Fell, I Wanna Hold Your Hand, etc.), even if they had already been physically intimate before.

"We got drunk and started to get kind of emotional, you know, ‘Oh, you were great when you –– I love that.’ We started [and] it all came out. On the way to that, there was a lot of soul-searching. We told each other a few truths. ‘Well, I love you. I love you, man. I love that you said that. I love you.’ And we opened up."

Ears twitch, like a dog,

Breaking eggs in a dish.

Do not mock me when I say

This is not a lie

Hi anon, I’m so glad you’re enjoying my silly little blog <3 And thank you for the ask! However Absurd is one of my favorite songs of Paul’s solo catalog and I’d love to talk about it!

I’ll do my best to avoid parroting what’s already been said on the subject, and on that note, I do recommend these analyses: this post by @thewalrusespublicist and this Rabbit Hole from Beautiful Possibility by Faith Current. They come to slightly different conclusions, and as such, I think it’s valuable to consider both interpretations. I’m certain I’ve read others as well, but tbh I am feeling too lazy to dig for them right now. Please consider this an open call: if anyone recommends other analyses, please do point me in the right direction.

(A disclaimer that is likely unnecessary if you follow me: I believe this song is explicitly about John and will proceed accordingly, but I encourage you to consider other takes!)

Okay, moving on.

The most significant hallmark of However Absurd is its surreal imagery and dream logic— obviously, it’s an embrace of the absurd. At the moment, I’m mostly thinking about what absurdism *does* for the song, what it makes possible.

In my interpretation, the absurd is what allows meaning to exist without explanation, justification, or even legibility. This is essential, bc Paul is not uncertain about what he feels, but he struggles to express it: “I couldn’t say the words / words wouldn’t get my feelings through.” What’s absurd here is that the breakdown in communication leads to persistence rather than silence: “So I keep talking to you.” Address continues even when language falls short.

That continued address is especially charged when considered in relation to John and the historical context of 1986. John is no longer a living interlocutor, yet the song is structured around speaking TO someone rather than ABOUT them. And this is, I think, where queer time comes into play. The relationship the song documents does not follow a developmental arc in which love ends, is mourned, and becomes situated in the past. Instead, it endures through repetition and affective return. Absurdism provides a framework in which this endurance does not need to be understood as productive or forward-moving. It simply is.

The lyrics explicitly resist developmental time, too. “Custom made dinosaurs / too late now for a change” juxtaposes singularity with extinction and belatedness. “Custom made” implies specificity (this is something irreplaceable) while “dinosaurs” and “too late now” acknowledge irreversibility. “Everything is under the sun / but nothing is for keeps” articulates the tension between what is at once ephemeral and eternal, where impermanence does not negate impact. Though the relationship no longer exists in a traditional sense, it continues to exert force affectively. Absurdism allows these two states to coexist without resolution.

And the chorus, “however absurd it may seem” functions as a kind of anticipatory framing. Paul acknowledges that this continued intimacy, this ongoing address, will seem irrational. But if the attachment is already declared absurd, then its refusal to conclude is no longer a failure of sense, it’s the condition under which the song operates.

So However Absurd functions according to the logic of love existing outside of linear time; it’s temporally noncompliant. Paul’s relationship with John is neither fully past nor properly present, and absurdism is what makes the sustained inhabitation of that relationship possible. Notably, the song itself doesn’t really end so much as fade away, implying continuation rather than closure. There is the sense that the address continues beyond the song, as love exists beyond death in an affective present tense, *because* Paul keeps talking.

There’s a sort of ‘Walrus’ intro to this track, but of course any time you play that style on piano it evokes that. It’s a style I know and love. The lyrics on this song are a bit bizarre, but then again they make a kind of sense, a strange kind of sense. But then I find that things in life don’t always make sense, they’re not always conveniently wrapped up with a little sticker that says ‘This is very sensible!’ Sometimes they are completely absurd, which is what the song is about. In the middle section it explains itself a bit, less surrealist: ‘Something special between us… Words wouldn’t get my feelings through… However absurd it may seem.’ That’s taking off into ‘The Prophet’ by Kahlil Gibran – there’s a line of his that always used to attract me and John, which was ‘Half of what I say is meaningless, but I say it just to reach you’. So it’s that kind of meaning to ‘However Absurd’.

I'm like violently ill over it and Faith isn't even holding my hair, so rude. It's a masterpiece. The kick to my non existent balls that was the However Absurd drop, even though I could see it coming.

Hi anon!

I've never thought about it before but you're right I don't talk about his songs much, even though I love them and have a lot of opinions (shocker lol). To be honest, a big reason is I just haven't been asked!

Saying that, of all the ones to ask about...

However Absurd is like the one ring from LOTR to me. I keep that thing hidden in a drawer in the back of my mind despite its always there lurking: an enigma, a puzzle, an unresolvable question. I take it out sometimes to stare at it and it stares back at me, mocking me with its bloody egg dish. It knows that my take on their dynamic is 'queerplatonic but blurry' and it knows that it raises so many questions that make me doubt everything. It does not care, it delights in toying with me.

But as with all questions from my lovely anons, I'll try my best to give some form of coherent thought! The one good thing about the Pound is Sinking's eviler twin is that Paul did give us something to go off:

“‘Absurd’ was another thing you start off and think ‘Ooh no, that’s too Beatley, so I won’t do it.’ So I resisted it for a little while, but… it was a good system then, why ignore it now?.. .There’s a sort of ‘Walrus’ intro to this track… It’s a style I know and love. The lyrics on this one are a bit bizarre, but then again they make a kind of sense… In the middle it explains itself a bit… ‘Something special between us… Words wouldn’t get my feelings through’. That’s taking off into The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran – there’s a line of his that always used to attract me and John, which was ‘Half of what I say is meaningless, but I say it just to reach you.’”

Paul McCartney, 1986

So, just from the quote alone, we have the following information:

The lyrics are meant to make sense, even if done in a surrealist style

The middle section is the key to everything

The feelings and emotion connect to the phrase that both he and John enjoyed. This phrase is about trying to reach someone even if you can't express yourself properly

The music and theming is nostalgic to late 60s Beatles

Looking at the lyrics with these points in mind, I'm pretty certain one can decipher a basic outline or meaning to the song, however the following is just my interpretation:

However Absurd - Analysis

Ears twitch, like a dog, Breaking eggs in a dish. Do not mock me when I say This is not a lie.

From the off, we are introduced to the themes of unclear communication and vulnerability. If you've seen a dog at dinnertime, they perk up at any suggestion of food. The scrape and crack of eggs against a dish is a sharp sound that a dog's hearing would pick up on. Whatever's being said is enough to grab the attention of the person, but they, like the dog, cannot fully comprehend the meaning. Does the sound mean something for them? Is it for their owner? All they know is the sound is there.

Then the core vulnerability of the song, the fear that the person they are trying to open up to won't take it seriously. This indicates that the person might not accept that the singers feelings are possible or true. The denial suggests either the subject's dim view of the singers emotional depth towards them, or that the singers feelings are out of the ordinary/unexpected.

It's funny thing, half serious, With our hands on our ears. Living dreams with mouths ajar, Wide awake, we go to sleep.

Again, the joke that isn't a joke, the thing that the singer can't outright say.

Now we move to the seemingly current state of play. Our hands on our ears' is reminiscent of the 'speak no evil, hear no evil, see no evil' monkeys. Is this a western or eastern interpretation of the monkeys? Is the singer and the subject (or general society?) refusing to let negative thoughts in, or refusing to hear the truth? Then the 'living dreams' vs 'wide awake' going to sleep dichotomy. There is something absurd and dreamlike about the life both lead that leaves them a little slack-jawed, overwhelmed perhaps by the insanity of their lives. If we were to put Paul into the narrative for a moment, the wide-awake dreaming would makes sense for someone whose dreams are so vivid and waking life so strange, perhaps there's a sense of escapism there. If the first stanza introduces us to the situation of uncertain communication, the second stanza gives us the context of a strange dreamlike existence wherein the singer and the subject avoid the uncomfortable truth, whatever that truth may be.

However absurd, however absurd It may seem. However absurd, however absurd It may seem.

Something special between us, When we made love the game was over. I couldn't say the words, Words wouldn't get my feelings through, So I keep talking to you

This section is supposedly the key and it's quite a bombshell key. This section reveals that the song is nonsensical to reflect that the singer cannot express themselves properly. They keep trying but what they feel is beyond words, or at least, beyond what the singer is able to express in words because crucially, they 'couldn't say them'. Another key point is that this is the only section where the past tense is used. In this framing, the making love was the inciting incident that lead to the current stalemate. What's intriguing to me is if you were to take this in any way autobiographical is that in other songs like Let Me Roll It and in interviews/general anecdotes, Paul expresses that he uses sex as a cover for real emotions and it's his easiest and potentially meaningless (?) form of expressing affection. Paul is very much a sex-first ask and talk about anything later (or never). So why would the game be up if he had sex with someone? It's Paul, he flirts with literally every woman that moves. Why would it even have taken a while to have sex or it be a crossing the threshold moment if its his first port-of-call? These are questions that I will come back to at the end.

However absurd, however absurd It may seem. However absurd, however absurd It may seem.

Custom made dinosaurs, Too late now, for a change. Everything is under the sun, But nothing is for keeps

'Custom made dinosaurs' is an unusual phrase, who are the dinosaurs and who made them? Did they turn themselves into has-been dinosaurs through their own personal issues or are the dinosaurs the people around them? That dinosaurs are perhaps best known for being extinct lends yet another meaning to 'nothing is for keeps'; it's too late to change things between them either because the dinosaurs are too set in their ways ... or because they're dead. The singer and the subject could have had it all, everything under the sun, but they couldn't keep it, either because what they had or the other person is no longer here.

However absurd, however absurd It may seem. However absurd, however absurd It may seem.

The final refrain. Normally the chorus connects a song together but here its doing double duty by reinforcing the central meaning of the song. The singer will keep talking to the subject; no matter how nonsensical, no matter how meaningless, they will never stop trying to reach them.

Overview of the song

So in a rough translation of the song: The singer keeps trying to reach someone, to tell them something that the singer feels too afraid to speak of and that the subject might not believe to be true. Whatever the truth is is either preposterous to the subject or is framed in a funny/light-hearted way that gives the singer an 'out' emotionally. The pair lived/live in a half dream-like reality which renders them unable to communicate their feelings or allows them to avoid them. Whatever the situation, this fragile peace/ignorance was ruined when the pair consummated their relationship and things were never the same, exacerbated by the continued difficulty of the singer to convey their feeling. The last two stanzas are a sad contradiction. They had the potential to have everything and they squandered it and it's now too late to go back or change anything BUT the singer will keep trying, no matter how absurd the attempt is.

So, what the hell to make of it?

Well, I mean...well. Like I mean ... it's the timing of the mid 1980s, it's the similar theming to another song confirmed to be at least partially about John ('This One') as well as the sentiments expressed about John in several interviews/'Broad Street', the nostalgic reminisces to the late 60s and most of the presentation of the relationship and living in a dream-like world. I mean come ON. And yh, if this song was taken to be entirely autobiographical and entirely about John then yes, the middle section is explosive. There's no two ways about it. Hidden in the last track of one of Paul's albums is the revelation he and John had a romantic relationship and that they slept together.

But there are a few problems with this viewpoint that make me hesitate. The first is the fundamental issue of taking songs as a 1-1 autobiographical account of events as that's just not how songwriting works, especially not how Paul's writing works. Songwriting is often autobiographical but not necessarily in an 'this is x from my real life, I love x. Here's a song entirely about x. Yay for x'. A lot of songs are like that true, but in many cases it's more a 'this is x from my real life that has inspired feelings. I'm writing a song about those feelings and inserting them into a song about a fantasy relationship with y. As it's a fantasy I can also pull feelings from my other real life relationships with Z and Q. Therefore the song is inspired by X but contains elements not applicable to X as the relationship has been fictionalised.' A perfect example is 'Don't go jumping into waterfalls' which started out as feelings of protectiveness Paul had towards his children but then morphed into a romantic song. Even if he was heavily inspired by John and their late Beatles work, it doesen't rule out the relationship depicted in the song being made-up or based on other relationships throw in as well.

Adding on to this is Paul's own words in interviews and general response. This is probably better in another post but, hell its my blog and I'm just going to say it: to my mind there has been nothing Paul has ever said that has indicated that his relationship with John ever got to having sex. Have some of his interviews, comments and song lyrics about John come across as blurring the boundary between platonic and romantic? Yeah, especially the 'if I was a girl' and 'confessing all our past affairs' and 'last mistake' malarkey. But most of these come across as Paul grappling with something he himself does not quite understand/has yet to come to terms with. Paul has also been quite emphatic about his love for John being brotherly and there have been no rumours of Paul being bisexual outside of his relationship with John. Am I willing and open to believe Paul is perhaps concealing something? Yes in theory, but I would need a lot more evidence than what has currently been laid out.

It's this contradiction that has me in such a bind about However Absurd. For my reading of the current evidence to work, I have to believe that the song was only partially inspired by John or by something else we don't know about (which itself is plausible, we read into songs what we know, especially if we don't have the full picture). In addition, I also have to believe that the weirdness of sex as a 'no turning back' moment despite that not being how Paul works at all in his relationship with women is due to it being a made up circumstance. In that reading, I have to ignore how confessional and weirdly specific it all seems and the sense that the emotions and circumstances are being concealed. Then there's the feeling that whoever the middle section of the Pound is Sinking is about is also the subject of this song. That's nothing but my gut talking but this feels like a continuation of that song and if that is the case, then there was a real life muse for both.

On the other hand, if I just throw caution to the wind and say 'yep, this is a confession' I have to chuck out most of what Paul has said in both public and what we know he said privately over the past 50 or so years. Am I willing to do that for a line in an highly ambiguous, potentially at least partially fictional song? No, that would be poor reasoning. But that doesen't mean everything sits right with me.

Guest post by @the-paper-apricot

In 1986, Paul spoke to his fan magazine, Club Sandwich, about tracks on the album Press to Play, among them the song ‘However Absurd’:

The lyrics on this one are a bit bizarre, but then again they make a kind of sense… In the middle it explains itself a bit… ‘Something special between us… Words wouldn’t get my feelings through’. That’s taking off into The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran – there’s a line of his that always used to attract me and John, which was ‘Half of what I say is meaningless, but I say it just to reach you.’

Source: The Paul McCartney Project.

Gibran’s works, especially The Prophet, have remained in print since their appearance, but seemed to have a particular flourish of popularity in the 1960s and 1970s. My parents, like so many young people of their generation, were devoted readers of his romantic-spiritual books in their English translation, and I devoured the books in my teens. So I returned to the books to find the words that so appealed to John Lennon and Paul McCartney.

It was a fair guess that the words appeared in The Prophet, Gibran’s most famous work, but in this instance Paul has misremembered. The line is actually in a book called Sand and Foam.

At the beginning of John’s White Album track ‘Julia’, he sings:

Half of what I say is meaningless / But I say it just to reach you, Julia

The origin of that line, recalled by Paul in his Club Sandwich interview, we can read here on page 11 of Sand and Foam:

Later in the song, John’s lyric continues drawing upon Gibran:

When I cannot sing my heart / I can only speak my mind

These words are adapted from the line halfway down that same page, Gibran writing that “when Life does not find a singer to sing her heart she produces a philosopher to speak her mind.”

★

Sand and Foam is a book of aphorisms, and ideas follow, one to the next, without any commentary. The couple of pages on either side of these lines on page 11 are dense with ideas about speech, withholding your words, sharing yourself in meaningless talk, sharing yourself in silence.

On the very next page is a line that I think corresponds to ‘However Absurd’.

The line on page 12 reads:

“The voice of life in me cannot reach the ear of life in you; but let us talk that we may not feel lonely”.

In ‘However Absurd’, Paul sings:

I couldn’t say the words, / Words wouldn’t get my feelings through, / So I keep talking to you… However absurd, however absurd… It may seem.

When I parse Gibran’s line in relation to the song ‘However Absurd’, I understand it as my voice can’t reach your living ear any more, but I must talk to you regardless. It’s difficult to avoid the supposition that the ‘you’ Paul addresses is John, especially since he himself drew attention to their joint affinity for Gibran’s thoughts. Musically too, the song evokes John and their work together in The Beatles, particularly in the sonic disintegration after the climax, recalling the end of Tomorrow Never Knows.

More broadly, it echoes Gibran’s idea, also expressed in John’s ‘Julia’, that some meaning will get through, despite absurd or seemingly nonsense talk.

★

I said that this passage of Sand and Foam is dense with related thoughts, so let’s look at the preceding page too. At the bottom of page 10, is the first half of the thought that is resolved at the top of page 11 (above), immediately prior to the line that opens the song ‘Julia’.

In full then, this idea reads:

“The reality of the other person is not in what he reveals to you, but in what he cannot reveal to you. Therefore, if you would understand him, listen not to what he says but to what he does not say.”

We might imagine what a fresh, appealing recognition this would be for the two men when they first read it. It fits very well with Paul’s explanations of John’s character, explanations demanded with tedious frequency by journalists since Lennon’s death – that is, that the real John isn’t necessarily the spoken part. And that he knew the unspoken part so intimately. To paraphrase: I know him, I’ve listened to the unspoken part.

I’ll close this post with a line from page 13 of Sand and Foam. Considering their deep mutual comprehension, it’s tempting to think that this idea must have likewise appealed to John and Paul. It seems almost written for them:

“It takes two of us to discover truth: one to utter it and one to understand it.”

Notes.

1. Kahlil Gibran was a Lebanese-American poet. For a useful introduction to his life and work, try this article.

2. Donovan released a haunting song with the title ‘Sand and Foam’ in 1967. I haven’t been able to discover if the title was directly influenced by Gibran’s book of the same name. (Donovan fans please enlighten me!) The song appears on the album Mellow Yellow, the recording sessions for which Paul McCartney attended, contributing handclaps, basslines and, fittingly enough, giggling sounds. Donovan of course played music with The Beatles in the informal, half-secluded setting of Rishikesh in the early part of 1968. It was during this time he shared his fingerpicking guitar style with John, who soon put it to memorable use, in ‘Julia’. Gibran’s popularity at the time means it’s quite possible that their reading matter was similar. Donovan’s ‘Sand and Foam’ is here.

3. After a quick search of antiquarian and second-hand booksellers, it appears that Heinemann, London were the sole English publisher of Gibran’s books at this time. The Heinemann edition belonging to my parents was reprinted throughout the 1960s: I can’t know if this is the edition read by John and Paul. They could of course have picked up an American edition. The page numbering is bound to be very similar though, if not identical.

—-

This builds off a concept that the server started discussing sometime in March 2022 -- the idea that Paul considered himself John’s domestic partner and that this was a desire or interpretation Paul had about their relationship in light of his various interviews where he said he wanted to take care of John. Paul being who he is, he could only imagine this in the context of touring as the Beatles which was safe for them because they were had privacy in hotels and the context of touring meant no one examined that John and Paul were essentially living together, along with George and Ringo. This dynamic would be special for Paul as he finally got to take care of John the way he always wanted but only in the context of being a part of The Beatles.