Fortunate Son - Pere Ubu

I hear voices in my head

That’s me

My voice

The problem with crazy people

They don’t recognize that voice as their own

One person you don’t want to be alienated from is yourself

That’s got to cause problems

My favorite voice speaks from under the lamplight

Of a roadside diner

In the urban sprawl of Los Angeles

Some time in the 40s

Something like a Jim Thompson novel

I like to speak from other places that don’t xist

Waiting in line at a Dairy Freeze Whip

On a bayou outside Houston

Insid the ghost ruins

Of the cities of my Martian ancestors

At the end counter table of the Waffle House

With the view of Walden Pond

I was just there

A man about my age comes in

For lunch with his granddaughter

He punches in Fortunate Son and Layla

On the jukebox

I’m looking out the window

Thinking about America

And I start to cry

So I pay the waitress for his meal

And tell her not to say who it was

But she does

And he comes out to thank me

Thanks for playing the songs I answer

You like Eric Clapton?

he asks

I think about what to say

It takes a moment

It’s a good song I say

Places that don’t exist have something in common

They’re real

Places that do exist aren’t so real after awhile