To Whom Do We Owe Mercy? On Joe’s I Wanna Know
Stress and faith are the topics of an alleyway feud of soon to be departed lovers at the opening of Joe’s I Wanna Know music video.
Joe, drenched in denim ink, top down, approaches a barely newly single woman, and offers a listening ear, alcohol, and his number. He, starkly different, in how he reassures her with “give me a call anytime,” n therefore, successfully courts our leading lady. But in all Joe’s attempts to be suave, he maintains an earnestness n personally I wanna know if it’s for punani or lust or love at first sight. All three options are horseshit to me.
At first, I do believe he’s in it for the sex. Our single lady, laid out on a white bed, in black lace, as he sings about her being a knockout therefore Joe needs to know what turns her on. It’s not until we wind into the second verse, when Joe makes clear that her previous man didn’t know how to care her like he can. N still I admit I am bit confused as to how he can say this so confidently about a woman he’s met in an alley at bare minimum 12 hours ago. So let’s enter a fourth option to the chat: perhaps she is a projection, a hologram of who he seeks to love, of someone he once loved, and this woman is merely the container for him to shape an ideal into.
Joe claims he is the concerning type and yet they sit in his home, on the couch, his knees firmly planted to the ground, hands rooted into his thighs, and this allegedly delicately fragile woman dangles off his arms, leans into his neck. For a split second, she is an accessory to his concern, she is not the recipient of his concern. Meanwhile, in this split second, his real concern reveals itself: watching himself, on a television screen, singing the same song.
So, now I ask: is Joe singing to himself n trying to convince himself of worthiness? Does he view this woman is a vehicle for him to receive love? As Joe croons I wanna know, the couple encircles each other on the television - almost similar to a matador with a bull - yet it’s more gentle. Yet there’s still something slightly off putting, you know? The way two people can keep a distance, maintain eye contact, before the split second decision of choosing between embrace or defense. Or in other words faith or stress. or in other words: Mercy.
In my opinion, despite the kissing, the type of pact between these two has yet to be made clear until she opens the door to a room with him in black leather, her in hot pants to match, and him begging, to a woman, he again, barely actually knows, singing, “tell me what I got to do to please you, baby anything you say I’ll do.” Has Joe actually done anything to show, through his actions, that he does care about what our bad bitch wants or needs? If we watched this video without sound, without the lyrics, I mostly see a self concerned man and woman as: accessory. N if that is the case, how is this any different than what a mother means to most men? A well of reassurance, care, without needs of her own, who remains silent.
So: fifth option: desperation and love are often confused for each other. But that doesn’t change my favorite part: where Joe finally admits to a curiosity that extends beyond the physical, that extends beyond what he perhaps pridefully overestimates of himself, but instead offers a careful wish: to journey through her mind. To exhume her suppressed emotions. Maybe what we are actually witnessing is sexual attraction becoming something deeper like an impatient yearning for intimacy and time is a barricade. But… that sort of immediately gets fucked up when during Joe’s second go around of begging, he dances in a trio, in black and white, and yet again this has nothing to actually do with our leading lady. Yet again. This has everything to do with Joe. And somehow the closing scene is the ecstasy, the almost orgasm, of him and her drenched in a rain room kissing.
So hear me out I think this is a song about a man who wants to convince himself of being a worthy lover. I think this is a slow jam hype song to overcome the fear of rejection so let’s deliver this gentle plea instead. And I have no feelings about any of it, this is an observation of a man who wants companionship. But leverage too? He centers wanting her to know everything about him and yet we know nothing of Joe except a performance of who Joe wants us, the spectator, to see him as.
So I’d like the petition a new music video. One where a lover, is sitting in a dark navy bedroom, curtains drawn, and they are on the precipice of deciding whether or not to crack open the quarry of brokenness in front of an audience of one: me. About the past. About who broke their heart before. My petition is that: I wanna know is a song where two people lay their swords down. Remove the blade from the jugulars as if to say, I am going to give you the thing that kills me, if you want to know so badly, I am going to show you the map tracing my blood to the endless wound my last lover left inside me. The cost of buying into forever. But the thing is:
I Wanna Know is not about fucking. It’s not about lust. It’s not even about love at first sight. It’s about the trenches of conflict, of being at the gates of a familiar hell or heaven, and determining how are you going to decipher openness. It is somewhere between being hastily eager and discerningly avoidant about the promise of another chance at giving your self over to someone new. It is asking: to whom do we owe mercy to?
If Mercy is the surprise of recognizing one is being perceived under a watchful interior or exterior gaze. Then in such vulnerability is the potential to be shamed, humiliated, abused, or killed; in that vulnerability also comes the potential to be accepted, reassured, respected, and treated with dignity. It is under the umbrella of love and hate but exists in an outward wilderness. Mercy cannot dwell in polarity because it is a byproduct of relating, it is an act of witnessing.
Mercy is the split second decision in which I either become your enemy or a fantasy but petition for a secret third option: me, as a beloved opponent you struggle alongside n struggle as in: how do we maintain the container of relating to remain tender?
N these types of conversation appear one sided in Joe’s I Wanna Know, but to me, these are opportunities for a call and response between two people deciding if they will let doubt swallow them up. I wanna know is beyond performance. Beyond playing understudy to insecurity taking up so much space that it’s almost operatic. It’s so dramatic. But instead. I wanna is know is about what type of forgiveness can you hold onto for yourself, and another? What kind of worthiness can we surmise n say “let’s do it again, yeah let’s do this shit all over again.” I think I wanna know forever, n I don’t mean that in the traditional marriage kind of way, but rather in that: I can acknowledge forever is subjective and even impermanent, n I can bottle that forever up in a couple years or a couple decades or a couple minutes - the choice is up to our pitiful hearts.
So. Petition for I wanna know as a music video where I blink back tears n say yeah Imma lay myself between both your thighs, your lips, and the secrets you’ve attempted to erase, n I’m bare, body censored over the gritty parts, but not the grittiest part which is me saying I have a need, will you not see that as a complaint? N you meet me there, eye to eye, face to face, n say same, n offer the same kind of yearning. The same kind of action. The same kind of care. It’s terrifying to admit the worst things we have ever done or what we have let someone do to us but I’ll go first: If you wanna know, the worst thing goes both ways in which I became a ransacked village, a river of quarters, and an island of lonely for the sake of an idea - which is love is there if I pretend it is.
Louise Bourgeois, page 10 of “The Trauma of Abandonment” - in unmarked archive are.na
So if you wanna know, this is the best promise I got: when I see love imma name it, when I see its absence, I will call its shape into the room, and that does not mean I will disappear myself like I have done before. That does not mean love cannot make a return nor will I forget to catch its echo. N If you really wanna know. There was one time, when I was sick, and the person I thought I would grow old with, almost let me die, and truth be told, if you wanna know, that happened multiple times, and so here is the worst thing, I didn’t raise a dagger, I didn’t raise my fist, I lost my voice. Rendered soundless.
If you wanna know I must hold my rage close, even if it is quiet blade against my hips. Here is the tension between stress and faith: I want you and I wanna know you reverberates in sync and bounce off the strings of a violin playing softly in my bedroom. It pierces the bubble oozing in fantasy and projections we made for ourselves and the past creeps in N it’s all so unsexy - this crossroads of choosing what is familiar vs. taking refuge in the unknown.
So. Final Petition: for I wanna know to be like Song of Solomon when Mother Toni says, “you wanna fly, you got to give up the shit that weights you down.” What I am asking is: will we know ourselves enough to understand when it is time to take flight beside each others singed wings and call that opportunity?
References:
Joe - I Wanna Know
Toni Morrison - Song of Solomon
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