Tiny Screens

January 8, 2013 1:17 PM

I was driving around one night a couple of months ago in S.F.'s Mission District, trying to figure out directions to pick up a friend at a book club reading, when the "revolves" variant of the lightbulb joke went through my head and left this lyric

We look so real when we appear on the map
We blink and we ping and we zip and we zap
Our icons stand out against the black
some of us get trashed and don't make it back

We stare into tiny screens
and watch our city revolve around us
because the map is not the territory
stakes are small and so is the glory

We drop down into settings to make it all fit
We post our status with pathos and wit
Filter our thousand words so they look well lit
but if there's no product then tag we must be it

We hope our charge will last the whole day
That the contract upgrade will be all they say
We point with our cursor click with our finger
Fidget in our seats to try to make the feelings linger

posted by allaboutgeorge (4 comments total) 3 users marked this as a favorite

Lovely. I could totally hear Elvis Costello covering this.
posted by Devils Rancher at 5:05 PM on January 9, 2013


Yeah, this has a fantastic vibe to it. You've captured a late-night, circular, revolving feeling for sure.
Love the staggered kind of call-and-response harmony.
posted by chococat at 6:19 PM on January 10, 2013


I just stumbled on this........and that's often the best way to discover great stuff. Elvis Costello covering this I can dig. But even more so - Robert Wyatt. Ultra cool - love it.
posted by MajorDundee at 3:39 PM on January 12, 2013


Yeah, vibe like crazy. Very nice.
posted by cortex at 12:56 PM on January 27, 2013


« Older Live and Learn (posted for discussion)   |   Elizabeth The Great Newer »

You are not logged in, either login or create an account to post comments