Why Bother, Bernardo Soares?

Fernando Pessoa looks nothing like Buddy Holly.The lyrics of alt-rock band Weezer are famously dreamy: they helped inaugurate a generation of teenagers who would rather fret and delay than act. Collectively these teens would come to be known as “emo,” short for “emotional”—in other words, a bunch of passive crybabies (not that there’s anything wrong with that). While attending all-female cover band Sheezer’s annual Hallowe’en show at Lee’s Palace last Thursday, I wondered whether fellow dreamer, Portuguese poet Fernando Pessoa, would have liked Weezer’s lyrics.Of course, there’s no way that Pessoa could have ever heard any of Weezer’s songs, which came more than half a century after his death. But in The Book of Disquiet, Pessoa’s landmark work of prose, penned under the pseudonym Bernardo Soares, he records with intimate detail his struggle with alienation and the tedium of ordinary life, feelings that for him can only be relieved through the quiet exercise of imagination. In much the same way, Weezer frontman and songwriter Rivers Cuomo resorts to dreaming in order to relieve the pain he feels from his own alienation, chiefly represented by his inability to communicate with women.In the aptly titled “Why Bother?” Cuomo rejects attempting a new relationship, explaining that he would rather stay home and masturbate than embark on something that will only lead to his being hurt when he is ultimately deserted. And in songs like “Holiday” and “Only in Dreams,” he extols the virtue of imaginative retreat—and describes a physical space for dreaming in “In the Garage.”Weezer is probably at their best in “Across the Sea,” a song which consists of Cuomo fantasizing about a Japanese fan who has sent him a letter. While Cuomo sings that he needs “help” from the letter writer, the song is about restraint. Cuomo recognizes that the person on the other end of the letter can’t really heal him or make him whole, so he satisfies himself through fantasy and by forming a sort of sexual relationship with the letter itself. He sings repeatedly that the letter writer is “across the sea,” affirming not only her physical distance but the impossibility of an easy solution to his personal problems (which are made clear in a stanza attacking his mother).“Across the Sea” resembles Pessoa’s “Letter from a Hunchback Girl to a Metal Worker,” which is written from the perspective of a nineteen-year-old woman confined to her apartment, who spends much of her time staring out a window waiting for a particular metal worker to pass by. The woman is dying of tuberculosis and apologizes frequently to the metal worker for being in love with him and writing him so familiarly, but excuses herself because she knows that he will never read the letter, and that even if he did it would mean nothing to him. The letter is merely a personal comfort, to be clutched to her own chest as if written to her.In later songs like “Beverly Hills,” Cuomo seems to express his understanding that no matter how successful he is, he will remain, ultimately, the same “no class, beat down fool.” But you get the sense that he doesn’t really mean it, that the song’s fascination with old money and superficial ease is based on his belief that his life would be easier if only he were allowed access to what will always remain outside him.The problem with dreaming in Weezer is that it’s always tied to some kind of material or social gain. Most of the songs included in Pinkerton predate the Blue Album. What works in those two albums might only work because it was composed prior to the realization of those early dreams, because in later albums the conceit falls flat. What’s the point of dreaming when you already have everything you asked for? In The Book of Disquiet Pessoa recognizes this inherent fallacy. Dreams only truly “work” when they’re used to deny the self. They can’t fulfill your expectations because they’re only dreams. If you try to make practical use of them you’ll only make yourself sick, as in “Beverly Hills.”For Weezer’s schtick to remain viable after their initial successes, Cuomo might have taken a page from the book of rappers like Jay-Z, whose decision to never stop “hustling” has led to, among other things, the rebrand of the Brooklyn Nets and his recent decision to move into the sports agency arena. But it’s hard to picture someone as sensitive as Cuomo at the head of a multi-platform media empire. A more mature songwriter might have come to Pessoa’s understanding, instead of remaining focused on what they can’t have—always a dangerous move for a wealthy artist singing to a wide audience.But all of this is beside the point. Weezer is what Weezer is, and, as many of their long-time fans are well aware, nothing can change that. Would Pessoa have enjoyed last Thursday’s Sheezer concert at Lee’s Palace? Who knows. But the show featured (with a few exceptions) tracks culled exclusively from the Blue Album and Pinkerton; for a roomful of dreamers, what could be better?