I was driving back to my apartment from campus yesterday when I heard a song on the radio called “Once in a Lifetime” by the Talking Heads. I know I’ve heard it in passing before, but I never really listened to the lyrics since they are sort of hard to hear if you don’t know what is being sung and the jumbled sound is catchy enough that you sort of don’t care. Well, I was intrigued and came home to look up the song and lyrics since I didn’t even know the song’s name.
Well, on its face, the song is mostly narrated from the vantage point of a guy looking back on his life. “You may find yourself with a beautiful house…a beautiful wife…and you may ask yourself, well, how did I get here?” Then it has this chorus that talks about water holding you down and running underground and money being all gone. I’m still not convinced that the song is anything more than just an attractive refrain that was fit with some mid-life crisis lyrics that younger people can also like because it might warn about slowing down to appreciate stuff in life that might pass you by quickly. Sort of like you’ll never know what hit you because it only happens “once in a lifetime.”
But then I got to reading some of the interpretations - I love it when a song is controversial and sets off as many salvos as an abortion or affirmative action debate. Apparently a number of people think this song is about being gay and not coming to grips with it until after you have already settled into the life of a “normal” guy who gets a beautiful wife. Okay - interesting, but moreso for me because it jogged me into remembering that I had had a dream that very night about my family knowing two gay lawyers that were a couple and invited us to their house and well, we took advantage of their hospitality by eating all their luxury food and using their sauna. Yeah, it was strange and possibly the first time that I can recall dreaming about anyone being gay.
I had a point - I’ve become very introspective, more than usual - as law school has come to a close. I think it is just about how interconnected everything is. I used to take it as a glitch in the matrix-type situation when I’d have a dream about something and then hear a similar song and then overhear a conversation about it all within a couple hours. Perhaps it was something scientific or related to butterfly wings causing tsunamis with everyone just sort of catching the vibe of a thought on an algorithmic pattern that threads through society. Now maybe I just think it is because things are so closely related in life that you can’t help but stumble onto repeated concepts multiple times a day with the key to noticing them dictated by whatever topic or idea catches your eye first.
Brace yourselves. I think this blog is going to have a number of rambling posts like this as law school winds down. But that’s the point of a blog, right? Bloggers are trying to capture all the things that are happening “once in a lifetime” to prevent that moment in the future where you suddenly wonder how you got that “large automobile” or why “the money’s gone.” That’s why I blog about law school anyway…so I remember why the money’s gone and I’m paying interest on it for the next 30 years.
-jd
