Abstract

This essay takes the risk of a formal adventure – both on and off the page – in order to do justice to the specificity of the event, the particular Saying, named ‘song.’ Written by ear to be heard it has been explicitly composed for oral presentation to perform the ‘truth’ it tells. Taking Joni Mitchell’s rendering of ‘Answer Me’ as its inspiration and point of departure, reference, and return, and drawing on the work of and intellectual tradition associated with Nietzsche, Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty, Lacan, Irigaray, Nancy, and Derrida, for example, the essay explores the power of popular song in the spirit of song itself. Neither music nor philosophy, neither poetry nor prose, but something in between: mousikē-philosophy/philosophy-mousikē.