The Lost Room
Writers - Tennant/Lowe
First released - 2023
Original album - Lost (EP)
Producer - Pet Shop Boys
Subsequent albums - (none)
Other releases - (none)
Chris and Neil wrote this song during the period 2014-2015 along with others that found their way onto Super, and it very nearly made it onto the album itself before they determined that it didn't fit well into the album's more upbeat overall mood. Neil suggested at that time that it would somehow appear later as a "bonus track," although precisely when and how wouldn't be revealed until December 2022. At that time it was announced it would be released as the lead track on the EP Lost, issued as a bonus with their fan publication Annually 2023, scheduled for April 2023.
Chris once referred to its style as "techno," although he also noted that they recorded more than one rendition, including what he describes as "a jazz version." In Neil's words it's "an extremely dark song" based on the 1906 novel The Confusions of Young Törless by the Austrian author Robert Musil (and the 1966 German film based on it, Young Törless), about how boys bully each other in an Austro-Hungarian military school around the turn of the last century. It was this darkness, apparently, that rendered it inappropriate for Super.
Indeed sung from the perspective of a boy at a military boarding school, the lyrics tell of how he and his schoolmates are taught "to be hard" in an environment marked by "cruelty" and "tyranny." He writes to his mother for emotional support, but she only responds that "it's important to be brave." His father, meanwhile, is "far away in a corner of the empire" in service to the nation, probably either military or diplomatic. The young narrator manages to find some small respite—but only small—in "the lost room" of the title, "our hideaway [where] we would play the strangest games that any boy might like to play," words that might but doesn't necessarily carry sexual implications; Neil has said that "the lost room" is a room where boys are tortured by other boys. But it's not at all clear from the song itself whether this "lost room" is purely an actual, physical place or may also be a metaphorical, psychological one. Whatever the case, there, in the darkness of that room, "candles flickered, casting shadows on the monsters and their prey." Of course, this monster/prey dichotomy is the stuff of both childhood fantasy play and real life as he absorbs his brutal lessons of "how survival of the fittest meant destruction of the weak."
Toward the song's conclusion, the narrator—presumably the boy now grown to manhood—casts his perspective backwards to his childhood and then forward again, visualizing his "future, as time would tell"—in other words, now his present— where "running riot under orders would create a living hell." That is, he's living the hellish life of the soldier for which his school days were preparing him. Cast emotionally, psychologically, and morally adrift, he utters the song's final words: a twice-repeated, deeply poignant "Lost—mother, I'm lost."
Annotations
- As noted above, Robert Musil (1880-1942) was an Austrian author whose unfinished novel Der Mann ohne Eigenschaften ("The Man Without Qualities"), three parts of which were published in the 1930s, is widely regarded as among the most influential novels of the twentieth century. His first novel, Die Verwirrungen des Zöglings Törless ("The Confusions of Young Törless"), which inspired this song, was published in 1906. A highly philosophical writer, Musil's work was banned by the Nazis after his native Austria was annexed by Germany in 1938, at which time Musil and his Jewish wife fled to Switzerland, where he died in exile several years later.
- "Candles flickered, casting shadows on the monsters and their prey" – One of my site visitors astutely pointed out that this line can be interpreted not only literally—actual shadows cast by the candles in the room—but also figuratively in that the things being done in that room may cast moral and/or psychological "shadows" on the boys in their later lives as they come to regret their youthful actions.
- "In a corner of the empire where we never shall be slaves" – The "empire" referred to is the Austro-Hungarian Empire, also popularly known as Austria-Hungary, a dual monarchy (its constitutional monarch was both Emperor of Austria and King of Hungary) that existed from 1867 to 1918. One of the great powers of Europe during its brief existence, it was geographically the second-largest nation in Europe, excelled in that respect only by the Russian Empire. It ruled over a large and diverse population of constituent nationalities. While the ruling Austrians and Hungarians weren't Slavic, most of those other nationalities were, including Czechs, Slovaks, Serbs, Croats, and Bosniaks, among others. The words "Slav" and "slave" are etymologically linked, which means that the "never shall be slaves" reference may be something of a pun—though possibly a quite unintentional one. (Of course, that raises the question of whether an unintentional pun is actually a pun at all.) Following its defeat in the First World War, the empire was dissolved into a number of smaller states.
On the other hand, one of my site visitors has pointed out "never shall be slaves" directly echoes a line from the chorus of the patriotic British song "Rule, Britannia!" the lyrics of which were composed in 1740 by Scottish poet James Thomson:
Rule, Britannia, Britannia, rule the waves
Britons never, never, shall be slaves
Given that the British Empire also had far-flung "corners," it's possible that Neil is extrapolating the Austro-Hungarian Empire setting to what would be to him a more culturally "familiar" British experience. At the very least, his use of the words "never shall be slaves" may be derived in part (if not wholly) from "Rule, Britannia!"
Yet another site visitor, however, has observed that the Nemzeti dal, a popular national song of Hungary (not the same as its national anthem, "Himnusz"), the lyrics of which were composed in 1848 by Hungarian poet and patriot Sándor Petőfi, includes at the end of every verse the lines "Esküszünk, hogy rabok tovább/Nem leszünk!" (translated "We vow, that we won't be slaves any longer!"). So that, too, may be the—or at least an—inspiration for this multi-faceted line of the PSB song.
- survival of the fittest – A phrase popularized following its use in the 1896 edition of Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species. Darwin had borrowed the phrase from English sociologist-philosopher Herbert Spencer, who coined it in his 1864 Principles of Biology. In a remarkable bit of intellectual cross-pollination (so to speak), Spencer came up with the phrase only after having read an earlier edition of Darwin's book. It came to be a fundamental concept of what would eventually be known as "Social Darwinism," the now widely discredited notion that the successes or failures of people in society are determined by the same laws of natural selection, as promulgated by Darwin, as plants and animals—which is precisely how it's used in this song.
- "never turn the other cheek" – The narrator's schooling was dominated by this direct refutation of one of the core tenets of the teachings of Jesus as expressed in his Sermon on the Mount: "You have heard that it was said, 'An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.' But I say to you, Do not resist the one who is evil. But if anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also" (Matthew 5:38-30, KJV). Such a philosophy of pacificm would be anethema to the Social Darwinism drilled into the boys at a military academy.
List cross-references
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