Let's reproduce the lyrics of Raul Seixas' song Ouro de Tolo (Fool's Gold), analyzing them from the point of view of psychology and psychoanalysis.

Fool's Gold, Raul Seixas and Lacan's Ghost

Traditionally, the expression " fool's gold "This mineral, which has a shape composed of multiple hexagons reminiscent of a gold nugget (as well as its golden color), received its name for deceiving several miners in search of wealth in the so-called "gold rush" that affected the central region of Brazil (the "Minas Gerais") in the 18th century.

However, "Fool's Gold" is also the name of a very famous song by Raul Seixas which everyone can sing, but doesn't know its name. After all, the expression "Fool's Gold" doesn't appear once in the melody.

You can hear the song in this recording: Ouro de Tolo (Raul Seixas), recording available on Youtube.

Let's go to it, before seeing how it can help us understand a very important concept, that of "ghost" by Jacques Lacan:

"I should be happy

Because I have a job

I am the so-called respectable citizen

And I earn four thousand cruzeiros a month

I should thank the Lord

For having succeeded in life as an artist

I should be happy because I was able to buy a 73 Beetle.

I should be happy and satisfied that I live in Ipanema

After being hungry for two years

Here in the Marvelous City

Ah! I should be smiling and proud

I want information to enroll in the Psychoanalysis Course .

For having finally won in life

But I think this is a big joke AND somewhat dangerous

I should be happy that I got everything I wanted

But I confess abashed that I am disappointed

Because it was so easy to get and now I wonder 'So what?'

I have a lot of big things to conquer

And I can't just stand there

I should be happy that the Lord has granted me the Sunday

To go with the family to the zoo to give popcorn to the monkeys

Ah! What a boring guy I am that I don't find anything funny

monkey, beach, car, newspaper, toboggan

I find it all a drag

I want information to enroll in the Psychoanalysis Course .

It's you looking in the mirror

Feeling like a big, fat idiot

Know that you are human, ridiculous, limited

Who only uses ten percent of his animal head

And you still believe you are a doctor, priest or policeman

That you are contributing your part to our beautiful membership

I am the one who does not sit on the throne of an apartment

With gaping mouth full of teeth, waiting for death to come

Because far away from the flagged fences that separate backyards

On the calm summit of my seeing eye sits the sonorous shadow of a flying saucer"

Who was Raul Seixas and the success of this song

Born into a middle-class family in Salvador (Bahia, Brazil) in 1945, he had contact with rock'n'roll in his early school years thanks to the knowledge and opportunity to learn English at the Colégio Interno Marista. After a few attempts in the 1960s, Raul Seixas became a national success in 1973 with the record "Krig-ha, Bandolo!", where the song "Ouro de Tolo" was the flagship.

At the time, to vehicles such as the Folha de S. Paulo (June/1973) and Revista Amiga (July/1973), Raul declared that the final verse would have all the inspiration, that is, that he would have had an afternoon meditation where he would have seen a flying saucer in Barra da Tijuca, located in Rio de Janeiro, on January 7th of the same year. As the years went by, music critics saw consequenceslarger for these statements.

Opinions about the song Fool's Gold

In 2018, André Barcinski, commemorating the 45th anniversary of the song, considered by him the masterpiece of Brazilian pop, in his blog, says that "the first thing that impresses in "Ouro de Tolo" is the counterpoint of the placidity of the music with the violence of the text.

The song is a sweet ballad, which Raul poisons with destructive lyrics about the mediocrity of the dreams of the average Brazilian citizen (...) Each time one rereads the lyrics of "Ouro de Tolo" one finds nuance and mystery: how about the verse " I should be happy that I got everything I wanted "?

If Raul got everything he wanted, why was he still unsatisfied? What epiphany made him change his mind? And what about the autobiographical allusions to the harsh period he spent in Rio ("hunger in the Marvelous City"), after coming from Salvador to work in a recording company? It is also curious that Raul says he had "success in life as an artist", when none of his previous records had sold anything. That's RaulIronizing Raul."

Of course we may like its melody or even the sarcastic humor in these lyrics, but part of its "truth" can be understood by psychoanalysis. After all, "Fool's Gold" is perhaps one of the best songs ever written about the logic of fantasy that Jacques Lacan described well in the idea of "ghost".

Lacan's Ghost and the Raul Seixas song

In the construction of the logic of fantasy before Seminar 11, explaining the questions of desire and its objects, Jacques Lacan presents us with a matema (an algebraic expression that would explain the workings of the unconscious) that he calls "phantasm".

This matema is composed of the subject divided by desire (represented by a $), a link (represented by a rhombus ◇ ) and the "small object a" (represented by a small a). This "$◇a", the phantasm, would show the relation of the subject with his object of desire (which, in turn, is a small semblance of the Other), indicating a tenuous and elusive link. After all, as the popular saying tells us, "theThe neighbor's grass is always greener.

Thus, Raul Seixas in "Fool's Gold indicates this dance of "little objects a" for a divided subject (the lyric "I" of the song) where none of them causes true satisfaction. The advance of "little objects a" is so large that it goes from the most banal ("being happy with a job") to the most surreal (the vision of the "sound shadow of a flying saucer").

The song "Fool's Gold" indicates this desire that is achieved, but never enjoyed. Curious that this also happens with pyrite, the mineral that inspired the name of Raul Seixas' song.

After all, it has been proven that in many pyrites, besides iron disulfide, there was also gold. There was gold, just not in the quantity desired by the miner. Just like us when we get an object of desire, but it wasn't everything we wanted...

This article about the song Ouro de Tolo (Raul Seixas), interpreted through psychoanalysis, was written by Rafael Duarte Oliveira Venancio ([email protected]). He is a writer and playwright, psychoanalyst and psychotherapist, teacher and mentor. He is a post-doctoral fellow at the School of Communications and Arts at the University of São Paulo (ECA-USP), and holds a PhD in Audiovisual Media and Processes from the same institution. His theater and radio plays have been staged in three languages in three countries, with fiction and reimagining as his most frequent themes.metadramaturgy, the history of soccer and other sports, and philosophical and psychoanalytical storytelling.