One More Robot Learns to Be . . .

Great tune by the Flaming Lips off their outstanding 2002 album, Yoshima Battles the Pink Robots. The throbbing bass line ascends and descends under ethereal keyboards and rippling sound effects weaving together over the techno beat. It makes me think of human beings and emotion and love; how some people are like cold machines the way they treat themselves and others, and how people, like the 3000-21 robot model in the song, can awaken, change, feel and love.

One More Robot
Unit three thousand twenty one is warming.
[It] makes a humming sound . . . when its circuits duplicate
Emotions . . .

And a sense of coldness detaches . . .
As it tries to comfort your sadness . . .

One more robot learns to be . . .
something more than a machine . . .
When it tries the way it does . . .
makes it seem like it can love . . .

'Cause it's hard to say what's real . . .
When you know the way you feel . . .
Is it wrong to think it's love . . .
When it tries the way it does?

Feeling . . . a synthetic kind of love.
Dreaming . . . a sympathetic wish.

As the lights blink faster and brighter . . .

One more robot learns to be . . .
something more than a machine . . .
When it tries the way it does . . .
makes it seem like it can love . . .

'Cause it's hard to say what's real . . .
When you know the way you feel . . .
Is it wrong to think it's love . . .
When it tries the way it does?