While in one of my mid-life nostalgia tours through 80's rock videos the other evening, I stumbled upon an old favorite, the Talking Heads video for Once In A Lifetime. Under the influence of perhaps one too many Cinco de Mayo margaritas, I had a sudden insight: the lyrics were covertly Lovecraftian! More specifically, I've decided the song is being sung by the protagonist from Shadow Over Innsmouth, after his assumed return to his ocean family.
Preposterous you say? Damn right it is. Yet, with tequila and some imagination, consider the following excerpted lyrics from the song, with story excerpts in the brackets:
And You May Find Yourself Living In A Shotgun Shack
And You May Find Yourself In Another Part Of The World ["I was celebrating my coming of age by a tour of New England - sightseeing, antiquarian, and genealogical"]
And You May Find Yourself Behind The Wheel Of A Large Automobile ["In a few moments a small motor-coach of extreme decrepitude and dirty grey colour rattled down State Street.."]
And You May Find Yourself In A Beautiful House, With A Beautiful Wife ["In 'forty-six Cap'n Obed took a second wife that nobody in the taown never see - some says he didn't want to, but was made to by them as he'd called in"]
And You May Ask Yourself-Well...How Did I Get Here? ["Gathering from the grocery boy's map that the best route out of town was southward"]
Letting The Days Go By
Let The Water Hold Me Down ["Thar's whar it all begun - that cursed place of all wickedness whar the deep water starts. Gate o' hell!"]
Letting The Days Go By
Water Flowing Underground
Into The Blue Again ["All in the band of the faithful - Order 0' Dagon - an' the children shud never die, but go back to the Mother Hydra an' Father Dagon what we all come from "]
After The Money's Gone ["Everybody was in a bad way them days. Trade fallin' off, mills losin' business - even the new ones"]
Once In A Lifetime
Water Flowing Underground.
Same as it ever was...
Water Dissolving...And Water Removing ["They had all kinds a' cities on the sea-bottom, an' this island was heaved up from thar. Seem they was some of the things alive in the stone buildin's when the island come up sudden to the surface"]
There Is Water At The Bottom Of The Ocean
Carry The Water At The Bottom Of The Ocean
Remove The Water At The Bottom Of The Ocean!
And You May Ask Yourself
What Is That Beautiful House? ["Yes, there's a hotel in Innsmouth - called the Gilman House..."]
And You May Ask Yourself
Where Does That Highway Go? ["You could take that old bus, I suppose," he said with a certain hesitation, "but it ain't thought much of hereabouts. It goes through Innsmouth - you may have heard about that - and so the people don't like it.]
And You May Ask Yourself
Am I Right?...Am I Wrong? ["It was in going over the letters and pictures on the Orne side that I began to acquire a kind of terror of my own ancestry."]
And You May Tell Yourself
MY GOD!...WHAT HAVE I DONE? ["From that day on my life has been a nightmare of brooding and apprehension nor do I know how much is hideous truth and how much madness."]
Time isn’t holding us, time isn’t after us
Time isn’t holding us, time doesn’t hold you back ["An' this is the important part, young feller - them as turned into fish things an' went into the water wouldn't never die. Them things never died excep' they was kilt violent."]
Letting the days go by ["We shall swim out to that brooding reef in the sea and dive down through black abysses to Cyclopean and many-columned Y'ha-nthlei, and in that lair of the Deep Ones we shall dwell amidst wonder and glory for ever."
So there. And if these lyrics aren't enough, go watch the original video. David Byrne spends the entire video bowing down in worship, jerking spasmodically as if a metamorphosing, appearing very near insanity, while making arcane gestures with his hand and forearm. He's dressed in a suit and bow-tie, circa 1920 fashion. The background is flowing water, or it's lousy 80's CGI equivalent. There are numerous miniature versions of him swimming out into the ocean. At the end of the video, Byrne appears suddenly out of costume, singing the last verses of the song in profile, with a dark background. Now, freeze the video at 3:30. At that point, Byrne's expression, and even the shape of the shadow on his cheek, are eerily similar to those in a photo of HPL which anyone can locate with a simple image search. How much more evidence could one ask for, short of a sunken city rising to the surface?
I have to admit, I've become a bigger fan of this song since my, um, "insight"!
Any other suggestions regarding covertly Lovecraftian songs?
