Hiroko Kasahara “Moichido Love You” (flashback to January 1996)
Peabo Bryson and Regina Belle “A Whole New World” (flashback to December 1992, this version has Lea Salonga singing the woman’s part instead)
Toad the Wet Sprocket “Little Heaven” (flashback to August 1992)
Tiffany “All This Time” (flashback to June 1988, but more illustrative of June 1998)
Elliott Smith’s “I Didn’t Understand”, Ben Folds Five’s “Evaporated”, and Tiffany’s “All This Time” are not exactly the most uplifting set of songs, but it didn’t spin me down the usual downward spiral of depression. What it did evoke was this sense of completely misunderstanding the past 15 years of my life. In some ways, I feel like destiny passed me by, and I’m living some sort of shadow life. In other ways, I feel like I completely misunderstood my destiny, and I’ve been wishing for things that were never meant to be, and now here I am, reluctantly awake from my fantastic dreams.
I think it might’ve been Sirius, the dog star, in the southern sky that lit my way tonight, like a beacon, brighter than the ambient glow of the urban sprawl before me, but I only have a faint grasp of celestialography, so I could be wrong.
Ten days until the sun finally halts its retreat and finally stands its ground. Twenty days until the year’s end, leaving me wondering about the future, and whether it’s even worth wondering at all.
The problem with driving down to San Diego with only my iPod as my companion is that I can get lost in the random music that it plays, dragging me through my memories, many of them dark and bitter. The following is not necessarily exact, but it serves as a rough guide.
Vienna Tang “Harbor”
hauntingly echoing my deepest desire, although perhaps something that will never come to pass in this lifetime.
Semisonic “Singing in My Sleep”
on the connector ramp from the Glendale Fwy southbound to the Golden State Fwy southbound, bringing back faint memories of nine years ago after leaving the Bay Area in defeat, and resigning myself to at least a year in limbo in L.A.
Hooverphonic “Cinderella”
past the junction of the Golden State Fwy with the Pasadena Fwy, on the way to the East L.A. Interchange. The rhythm of the song at first makes me think of “Bettie Davis Eyes” by Kim Carnes. Maybe this could be inspiration for a mashup.
Amina “Hilli”
speeding through Irvine, past the El Toro Y, making me think of something that might have been composed by Nobuo Uematsu for the theme of some imaginary town in some as-of-yet undrafted installment of Final Fantasy
Aaliyah “Journey to the Past”
as I wound my way through Laguna Niguel, remembering faint memories of ten Decembers past, and my heart not didn’t so much break, as it did just dry out. And still I dream of home.
Hooverphonic “Battersea”
through San Clemente. The lyrics are faint, leaving haunting traces in my mind.
Nelly Furtado “All Good Things (Come to an End)”
through Camp Pendelton. This song has captured my mind ever since I heard it for the first time this summer, and the answer is quite simple, and quite bitter.
Frou Frou “Hear Me Out”
probably either Oceanside or Carlsbad by this time.
Feist “Secret Heart”
probably Encinitas or Solana Beach. Reminding me of how so many words have died stillborn in my heart, freeze dried by despair, evaporated by helplessness.
Sunny Day Real Estate “Song About an Angel”
going past the merge, heading south on the 805
S Club 7 “Never Had A Dream Come True”
southbound on the 805 past La Jolla, through Clairemont Mesa, to the connector ramp to the southbound 163. This song always kills me, dragging me through the last ten years, and sticking a dagger right in my half-rotting, half-dessicated heart.
Anggun “On the Breath of an Angel”
exiting the 163 to Friar’s Road, remembering that even with the mess I could’ve turned everything into, she still saves me with her friendship.
It was pretty much ten years ago when I realized that my life would definitely not have a “happily ever after” ending. It’s not that I would necessarily live a tragic life, though. I mean, everyone has their regrets and failures that haunt them for the rest of their lives, right? At least that’s what I tell myself whenever I start feeling sorry for myself.
The more that time passes, the more it becomes apparent that the way things went down was inevitable. The moment came, I was tested, and I was found sorely wanting. I wasn’t meant to be the one, and that’s the way the cookie crumbles.
And yet, somehow, everything that has happened since seems to be an echo, a reverberation from that time long gone, and even this far out, I can’t seem to completely break free of my self-destructive patterns. It’s as if from that moment on, I was doomed. I was damned.
I thought, “Oh God, my chance has come at last!”
but then a strange fear gripped me and I just couldn’t ask
—The Smiths “There is a Light That Never Goes Out”
I wonder how many years must go by before I must accept that my hope has run out. How many years must go by before I can just thrown in the towel, call it quits. Some things were never meant to happen.
Some are like water, some are like the heat
Some are a melody and some are the beat
—Alphaville “Forever Young”
I think, sometimes, of the curse of The Flying Dutchman, doomed to wander the seas until the end of time, never able to reach the shore. Or of Coleridge’s doomed Ancient Mariner, or perhaps the Wandering Jew. Bill Murray in “Groundhog Day.”
But I’m still hedging my bets. I also think of Schmendrick the Magician, cursed to never age until he learns the secrets of magic, and reaches his full potential. Maybe, still, maybe, I’ll meet a unicorn, and maybe even someone like Molly Grue, and while the story won’t necessarily end happily ever after, maybe I can at least find my way home again, and at least have some sort of peaceful end.
And it came to me then that every plan
is a tiny prayer to Father Time,
as I stared at my shoes in the ICU
that reeked of piss and 409.
—”What Sarah Said” by Death Cab for Cutie
I’m continuing to read S. narrative of her time spent working in the ICU and I am flung back to my own time in that hellish pit of despair. I did my own ICU intern month around this time of year, and looking back at my blog entries at that time, I barely wrote anything at all. Mostly because I was living in the ICU the entire month, and the only reason I would go home would be to sleep and shower.
But the only times I managed to vent my sadness and frustration actually bracketed that month of pain.
Despite the suffering and the death I was confronted with every day, I managed to stay mostly narcissistic, thinking about nothing but my own misery, although peripherally aware that, as bad as it got, at least I wasn’t sick.
(Rule #4 from “The House of God”: The patient is the one with the disease. Or, as my senior in psychiatry said back when I was a 3rd year medical student, “At least you don’t have lymphoma.”)
The madness continued, as I found myself marooned in the Bone Marrow Transplant Unit, blindsided by Death almost every day, floundering and flailing like a drowning man, as I tried to actually take on cancer, and failing miserably.
For better, or for worse, I made it through somehow without needing a psychiatric hospitalization. I’ve had to face death again on more than a few occasions, but I don’t not if I just got used to it and stopped caring, or it really got easier.
Don’t get me wrong. I still have my regrets. But I can honestly say I tried my best, to not let my patients suffer needlessly, and to send them peacefully on to whatever comes next.
I learned that there is actually such a thing as a good death. To be as pain-free as possible. To tie up all the loose-ends. To say goodbye, without grudges, without too much regret.
At least I can say I tried my best.
But we do a lot of things in those cold sterile rooms that make no sense whatsoever. But you still have to do them.
Even though you knew they were going to die, that you could almost pinpoint it to the hour—even though you knew they were going to die, because you were the one who was purposefully pulling out the tube, and letting nature take its course, at the behest of the family members, or at the behest of the patient, who was able to record their final wishes before they slipped into that awful twilight unconsciousness of grave illness—even though the monitors display quite clearly that the patient is not breathing, that the heart has stopped pumping—you still have to go in there and listen for sounds that you know you won’t hear.
He’s dead, Jim
—Bones from “Star Trek”
I’ve gotten really good at stating the obvious.
Even when you know they’re dying, and there’s nothing you could possibly do to stop that downward spiral, you still have to start chest compressions on and crack the ribs of someone whom you haven’t been able to contact the loved ones of, and whose last desire before slipping into unconsciousness was for us to do “everything that could be done.” Never mind that her veins are filled more with bacteria and pus than with blood, and the bacteria are so resistant to treatment that you might as well be giving her sugar water instead of antibiotics. Never mind that when your heart stops while you’re in septic shock, that you ain’t doing anyone any favors by bringing them back, with their brain all turned to mush by the lack of oxygen, and the bacteria basically eating away at gray matter.
Never mind that, for all intents and purposes, you basically killed her when you stuck that tube down her throat and put her under, because there was no way she could breathe with her chest 75% filled with incurable tumor no matter what you did, and at the rate they were growing, her heart and lungs would be completely wrecked by cancer in 48 hours.
Never mind that the surgeons have tried for four weeks, and now you’ve tried for another four weeks, and even though she was completely awake and alert and communicative, you couldn’t pull that tube out of her throat, and all it seemed that you were doing was prolonging agony, and why do I feel evil for being relieved that we finally let her go? Am I just rationalizing?
Never mind that he had been all ready to go home when disaster struck, and a vessel burst within his gut. His brain died a little that day, and probably died a little more as we flogged him back to what you could technically call life, but after that he just sat there, writhing in delirium, and maybe there were a few moments when he could see his daughter clearly, but for the most part he was convulsing uncontrollably, untouchable by anything we tried.
I don’t know. Thinking back about all these cases—all these people—many of whom I never knew when they were just like me—laughing, talking, playing, working—was it enough?
I guess I’ve been through enough to know that no one is ever going to be able to answer that question for me.
‘Cause there’s no comfort in the waiting room.
Just nervous faces bracing for bad news.
And then the nurse comes ‘round and everyone lift their heads,
but I’m thinking of what Sarah said:
That love is watching someone die.
—”What Sarah Said” by Death Cab for Cutie
As I shot down the I-5 listening to my iPod, this song came up, bringing up memories from my first year in college, way back in 1994-1995
To quote Mos Def, “A lot of things have changed. A lot of things have not.”
But the song is [“You Gotta Be” by Des’ree][1], and the most vivid memory is hanging out at the Berkeley Marina, and gazing at the hills to the east, and the Campanile towering in the distance.
We used to go to the marina to get away from campus, and sometimes we’d fly kites.
you gotta be bad
you gotta be bold
you gotta be wiser
you gotta be hard
you gotta be tough
you gotta be stronger
you gotta be cool
you gotta be calm
you gotta stay together
all I know all I know love will save the day
As far as past Septembers have gone, this one has definitely gone better than most. Two weddings, a beer festival, visitors from afar. I managed to stave off depression as well as I could, despite being haunted by specters from the distant as well as the not-so-distant past.
If I could guarantee that life remained fixed within these parameters, if I could guarantee not having to suffer terribly again, maybe it would be enough. But there’s now way to do that.
I’ve given up hoping for anything more, though, so I’m not sure how to make sure I can continue to navigate the inevitable bumps and potholes.
I feel like a lot of loose ends are being tied up in my life lately. I don’t know whether to be relieved, or to be sad. Or whether to be wary of the future. Every time life comes to one of these pauses, one of these lacunae, it seems that everything goes to shit.
But I’m trying to be positive. Not psychotically optimistic, but realistic. The surest thing about luck is that it will change, and just because bad things have happened to me doesn’t mean that bad things will always happen to me.
We stride towards the future ever careful. But walk forward we must.
My roommate from med school got married today. (I seem to be going to a lot of weddings lately.) And I saw M again after a long time. I think the last time I saw her was two years ago, and we sort of lost touch after a rather strange and arduous several-day conversation back in February 2006 that I failed to document, and that I sometimes start pondering but then quickly stop because I already know without asking that there aren’t any answers, and what’s the point a year and a half out when the (putative) opportunity is long past?
We actually hung out quite a lot. Compatriots in the struggle of life. Of course, she has always seen me as a brother. Or at least an adopted cousin. That usually puts the nail in the coffin on these thoughts, but then she says things that make me do double-takes, and if I blink, the moment passes, and I’m left with this unsatisfying feeling of imagining the whole episode. It’s like jamais vu.
In any case, I’m here, she’s there with her boyfriend, and that’s that.
Life is too short as it is for regret, and I’ve been preparing myself for a lifetime of involuntary celibacy anyway. Besides, desire leads to suffering, and Buddha only knows that I’m ready to stop suffering.
What was classic is that as I pulled out of the parking garage, Lionel Richie popped up on my iPod, and ”The Only One” started playing. I really dig this song. It’s rooted deep in my psyche because my dad used to play his album over and over again until the cassette tape finally snapped, and it sort of rekindles a nostalgic feeling of “home.” Or something. If someone happens to turn on the Infinite Improbability Drive in my vicinity and somehow I end up getting married, this song is definitely going to be played somewhere. Or I’ll sing it to my bride in front of everyone. Or something sufficiently cheesy like that.
We’ve all been changed
From what we were
Our broken parts
Smashed off the floor
Someone turn me around
Can I start this again?
—The Editors “Smokers Outside the Hospital Doors”
So S (of whom I’ve written a few things here and there) got married on Saturday. Strangely, it didn’t seem like it had been all that long since she first hooked up with her now husband, but four years is a pretty long time.
I find what transpired in those few months before she left for the Bay Area somewhat strange, and still a little confusing, but it is what it is, and the likelihood of traversing that pathway has long ago dropped to zero.
In a half-comatose daze, I drove myself over to Lindbergh Field before the sun was even up, and somehow got myself to the proper terminal. I contended with TSA, and plopped myself in front of my gate. I watched an Indian (South Asian) family deal with their 2 year old daughter running around all over the place. Eventually, they called my boarding group. I found myself a seat and soon passed out, waking up some 20 minutes south of San Jose.
I don’t particularly remember my rationale for showing up in the Bay Area nine hours before the wedding, and seven hours before I could check into my room. Be that as it may, I had to kill some time and found myself wandering the streets of Milpitas.
It’s rather odd. My aunt used to live in the South Bay, and we would come to her house almost every summer, as far back as when I was five years old. That house on Hillview Drive was kind of a fixture of my childhood, more so than our old house in Echo Park, even. I’ve had quite a few good memories of summers there. The best was when our cousins from the East Coast had come out to visit L.A., and we ended up on a 12 hour quest to the Bay Area via U.S. 101, stopping in Santa Barbara and Solvang before finally making it to Milpitas. Somehow, my cousins thought it would be fun to throw spitwads at cars passing by in the middle of the night. They exhausted several boxes of tissue paper which ended up on the driveway, much to my aunt’s consternation.
One of the most funny episodes was when they decided to pelt a semi-truck. The impacts caused the trailer to reverberate, and it freaked the driver out enough that he actually got out of the cab to check out what the hell was going on.
There was also my last summer there, in 1998, after graduating from college, in my vain attempt at securing employment and actually starting a life out there. I ended up leaving in August, in defeat, in more ways than one. It’s pretty bittersweet. Even now, I don’t like to think about it too hard, because there’s always the possibility of finding myself in yet another downward spiral.
But I remember the endless Starcraft sessions. And riding my bike all over Santa Clara County, from Fremont to San Jose. I mean, it wasn’t an entirely bad time at all, really. Although I doubt I would want to relive those moments again.
But my point was this: I felt like I was wandering around my old neighborhood, nine years after all that shit went down, nine years after my aunt ended up leaving the Bay Area. Even here, there are ghosts. Shadow memories that spring up like boobie traps. The lazy summers of my childhood. The four years I spent at Cal. The moments I managed to steal from my exile in the Midwest, surreptitiously coming out to visit the Bay. Even that month I spent with A+E.
Odd that nearly a decade after the fact, there is still a possibility that I might give it another shot in the Bay.
Even this far out, I have no idea where my fate will lead me.
Or self-fulfilling prophecy, depending on how you look at it, I suppose. It all depends on who exactly reads my blog, I suppose.
Enough of being cryptic.
I think—I think—I’ve snapped out of it.
This episode of insanity reminds me of Frodo Baggins’ fate after he fulfills the task of destroying the One Ring. Every year on the anniversaries of his wounding on Weathertop, and the destruction of the Ring in Mt Doom, he basically loses it. (I found an interesting article that deconstructs why Frodo needed to leave the Shire and go to Aman, analyzing things in terms of PTSD.)
Except there have got to be a few Septembers where I didn’t go nuts. OK, maybe I did my brooding last year in August, and the year before that, I had my episodes while on vacation. Hmm. The year before that I thought I was relatively OK. I mean, I was exhausted and moderately physically ill from my first ward month at the Childrens’ Hospital, but I recovered reasonably well during my vacation. Two years before that, as a third year in med school, I did OK. Sure, it was in the aftermath of another disasterous outcome, but, hey, what are you going to do?
Fine. I guess Septembers are just bad for me. I blame the fact that school starts in autumn. So there.
There’s got to be a way to be able to think about the past and not go mad.
To imagine that one could have done better may be more tolerable than to face the reality of utter helplessness.
1995: Deep wounds. Ugly scars. And then: new, unfounded hopes and unfulfillable wishes. I learn a secret that, in the end, fucks me up bad, but which I am bound by honor to keep. (And would the outcome really have changed if I had betrayed it? Except for the damnation of my soul?)
TLC “Waterfalls” (A piece of advice that I didn’t follow when it may have helped me)
4xample “I’d Rather Be Alone” (The beginning is set in Union Station between Downtown L.A. and Chinatown, across the street from the site of the first settlement.)
Terry Ellis (of En Vogue) “Where Ever You Are”
3T “Anything” (Here is where this blog’s protagonist goes berserk. For the next three years twelve years and counting)
4PM “Sukiyaki” (Applicable to more than one of my pathetic stories about my life)
I’m not really sure what triggered this strange mood of mine. My mind wanders back to the end of my college days, unearthing a lot of bittersweet memories. (And do I even have any memories that just have the sweet and not the bitter?)
Even though iTunes makes managing music pretty painless, I think there is still something to the art of making a mixtapemix CD mp3 playlist. Not quite as challenging as actually mixing perhaps, but I think some of the principles are the same.
In any case, back to 1997:
Boyz II Men “4 Seasons of Loneliness”
Janet Jackson “Every Time” (Bah, I can’t find a decent version of the video on YouTube)
Laurnea “Can’t Let Go” (D’oh! Not on YouTube. Not sure what this looks like because WMP doesn’t really work on my Mac)
It was 1996 when I first heard this song, on the island of Tablas, in the province of Romblon, awaiting a plane to take us back to Manila.
I still think of that fleeting moment on the edge of the sea, just her and I,
and I wonder if I could’ve said the right things, or not said anything at all
I remember the flight from Manila to San Francisco, and the dark velvet of the night sky. It felt like I was actually in outer space, floating amidst the stars.
If I ask the sky for a miracle, would it be wrong? But that miracle never came true.
The original is by Rivermaya, but I couldn’t find a good video with them in it. This is a fan-made video for a version that is a duet between Yeng Constantino and Jay-R.
Pangarap ko’y
My wish:
makita kang
to see you
naglalaro sa buwan.
playing on the moon.
Inalay mo
You offered
sa aking ang
to me
gabing walang hangganan.
the never-ending night.
Hindi mahanap
We will not find
sa lupa ang pag-asa.
on earth, any hope.
Nakikiusap na lang.
We can only plead.
Himala,
A miracle,
kasalanan bang
is it a sin
humingi ako sa langit ng
if I ask heaven for
isang himala?
one miracle?
Kasalanan bang
Is it a sin
Humingi ako sa langit ng
if I ask heaven for
isang himala?
one miracle?
Pangarap ko’y
I wish for
Liwanag ng umaga
the brightness of morning
Naglalambing
that caresses
Sa iyong mga mata
your eyes
‘di mahagilip
We will not catch sight
sa lupa ang pag-asa.
on earth, of any hope.
Nakikiusap sa buwan.
We’ll ask it of the moon.
Himala,
A miracle,
kasalanan bang
is it a sin
humingi ako sa langit ng
if I ask heaven for
isang himala?
one miracle?
Kasalanan bang
Is it a sin
Humingi ako sa langit ng
if I ask heaven for
isang himala?
one miracle?
And even if I could, I wouldn’t dare turn back the clock to try and undo my decisions that led me down this path.
I see it now. Even if I got caught in a temporal loop like in “Groundhog Day”, I don’t think I could ever get things right.
And I guess it was her wish, her miracle, that came true.
This is the original version of the song, sync’ed to a video featuring the lead characters of Final Fantasy VIII: Rinoa Heartilly and Squall Lionheart.
And even then, her visage haunted me, in my dreams and in my waking moments. Even in her absence, she was there. And I was lost and forsaken, and didn’t know where to go. I still don’t.
She is like a star, flying further and further away from me, leaving this black emptiness of night between us, this chasm that I could never cross, growing wider and deeper with each passing day, until even her light will not reach me
Oh, sure, everyone knows “Creep” and “High and Dry” and “Fake Plastic Trees”, but Radiohead didn’t capture my consciousness until OK Computer came out. In retrospect, this album helped define the existential angst of my senior year in college. It is the simplest and one of the most enduring of my memories from that year, reminding me of working on {m}aganda magazine (interesting, when did the curly-brackets become intrinsic to the name? I credit JRM)
Tempus fugit, indeed. So now it’s been 10 years since OK Computer first came out. Each song is carefully etched into the inside of my brain. Most vividly are the memories of this album that came from the early ‘00’s, when Kid A and Amnesiac came out. The seeds of these two albums were born in their predecessor. Despite all the new material, I still listened to OK Computer fervently.
I watched Radiohead perform at Shoreline Ampitheater in the San Francisco Bay Area (was it 2000? 2001? Is it really that long ago?) But memories of cities are all jumbled up in my mind: L.A., S.F., Chicago, NYC, Miami, San Diego, Sacramento.
The most easily accessible are the memories of travelling either by train or car down to S.D. to visit my sister. It always seemed to be February. The sky was the indistinct grey that reminds me so much of OK Computer’s cover. Easily my most favorite song, “Paranoid Android” captures the ennui and alienation of being an outsider caught up in the maelstrom of the Hollywood lifestyle. This is the dark side of L.A., often ignored by the city’s boosters, but revelled in and frequently mentioned by the city’s detractors. (I don’t think it’s an accident that L.A. is the setting of the future dystopia depicted in “Blade Runner”.) It also captured my loneliness and sense of being abandoned as I slogged through a depressive episode. And I can’t help but think of Marvin the Paranoid Android from The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, a robot with major depressive disorder.
Has it been 10 years already? While I’ve somehow ended up sort-of where I wanted to be, I definitely took some unexpected ways to get here. If I had a time machine and could meet my younger self, I doubt I’d have any wisdom to offer that would allow myself to avoid any of the unpleasant experiences I could’ve done without. I’m not really sure that I’ve learned anything practical about life, really.
In any case, there are two tribute albums available for download as (mostly) mp3s (A track or two are AACs, I think)
It hasn’t always been this way, I think. But there is a trend [2001][2002][2003][2004][2005][2006]
I think I just need to stop.
Time to stop holding onto things I have no reason to hold on to, and time to find the paths that are worth treading.
But the whole reason why this popped into my head is because of this mashup of Joy Division and Missy Elliot entitled ”Love Will Freak Us” (rediscovered via the Hype Machine on Timedoor), which is naturally composed of “Love Will Tear Us Apart” and “Get Ur Freak On.” Missy’s infectious hit broke out that summer of 2001 (another hit by Timbaland, who’d’ve thunk it?) reminding me of sultry, sweltering nights spent in Manhattan, but I didn’t find this mash-up until around 2004, I think. I have this isolated memory of wandering around the Loop and the Mag Mile in Chicago with my iPod on. I don’t even remember where the hell I was going.
I could spend hours scour the net for mashups and other bullshit. Who needs a life when you’ve got an internet connection?
The last time my sister graduated, I was seriously in love with S. While in the back of my head I suppose I always knew it wasn’t going to work, I had been doing a good job ignoring that particular fact. Naturally, when I got back to Chicago, everything went to hell, and I went into a patented downward spiral.
This is what you get for believing in fairy tales, and trying to fly by wishing.
So four years (!?) have passed, and I am perhaps much more cautious and much more jaded. I have no illusions at this point. But strangely, I am more hopeful. For what, I don’t know. The horizons are pretty damn wide-open, and while I’m starting to get used to the idea of eternal loneliness, there are still a few shattered fragments of my heart that refuse to die.
Dum spiro, spero. There is still hope while I breathe.
I tell you, my life has been divided up in four year blocks for so long, I don’t know what I’m going to do with myself after finishing residency. Once again, the trajectory of my life remains to be determined. Am I going to stay in San Diego? Will I finally end up in L.A. once and for all? Will I actually make it back to the Bay Area, even if it’s only for a year or two? Or will I end up somewhere completely unexpected? Chi-town? NYC? Alaska? Hawai’i? New Mexico? Canada? Old Mexico? Buenos Aires? Reykjavik? Taipei? Bangkok? Katmandu? Who knows?
I can imagine a roulette wheel spinning round and round somewhere. Where do I lay down my chips?
Driving back from Harrah’s on the Rincon tribal lands, my iPod suddenly popped up ”Wichita Lineman Was a Song I Once Heard” by the KLF. (The KLF?!?) This immediately took me back to my childhood, when I couldn’t go to sleep without the radio on, and the station I would listen was the easy listening station. It used to be called KJOI 99, but now I think it’s Star 98.7. Crazy.
I am a lineman for the county.
And I drive the mainroad.
Lookin’ in the sun for another overload.
I hear you singing in the wire.
I can hear you thru the whine.
And the Wichita Lineman,
is still on the line.
I know I need a small vacation.
But it don’t look like rain.
And if it snows that stretch down south,
won’t ever stand the strain.
And I need you more than want you.
And I want you for all time.
And the Wichita Lineman,
is still on the line.
I totally rediscovered the KLF when I found out that they were followers of Discordianism, which is essentially a quasi-religion centered around the worship of Chaos. Now that’s a religion I can stand by.
