"For I have known them all already, known them all:--
Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons,
I have measured out my life in coffeespoons;
I know the voices dying with a dying fall
Beneath the music from a farther room.
So how should I presume?"
T.S. Eliot, from The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock


Now. Before I go ruining it, it's a song by the Crash Test Dummies. Before you will ever feel the whole impact of this song, you will need to appreciate the poem, or at least the verse of the poem from which the song takes its title and theme.

Conversely, long before you will have the capacity to understand T.S. Eliot's intensely moving (and also mobile, and also agile) meditation on aging, you will have been a young person, and easily enamored of jangling acoustic guitar. A funky baritone singer, and--could it be?--an accordion and an organ in the background, will only pull you in deeper. You will get caught on the catchy poppy hook, on the thumping, upbeat bass guitar line.


you will probably sing along, but that's good. right when you think you really like the happiness of the song, the ominous lyrics will make you sad, and you will go back and re-read the love song of j. alfred prufrock and you will smile when you hear it again, because crying is not quite the right reaction.
What is it that makes me just a little bit queasy?
There's a breeze that makes my breathing not so easy.
I've had my lungs checked out with X-Rays;
I've smelled the hospital hallways.

Someday,
I'll have
a disappearing hairline;
Someday,
I'll wear
Pajamas in the daytime.

Time is when the day is like a play by Sartre,
When it seems a book burning's in perfect order.
I gave the doctor my description;
I've tried to stick to my prescription.

Someday,
I'll have
a disappearing hairline;
Someday,
I'll wear
Pajamas in the daytime.
Whole afternoons
will be measured out,
measured out, measured with coffeespoons,
and T.S. Eliot.

-=%bridge%=-


Maybe if I could do a play-by-playback...
I could change the test results that I will get back.
I've watched the summer evening pass by;
I've heard the rattle in my bronchae.

Someday,
I'll have
a disappearing hairline;
Someday,
I'll wear
Pajamas in the daytime.
Whole afternoons
will be measured out,
measured out, measured with coffeespoons,
and T.S. Eliot.
...Afternoons
will be measured out,
measured out, measured with coffeespoons,
and T.S. Eliot.

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