tuesday 19 July 2005 04:15 GMT + 1
Zurich, Switzerland
For the past couple of days I’ve had a terrible ear infection. I wasn’t bothered all of the time by it, but when it flared, it was an inferno. The infection would come and go without warning, without anything triggering it that I could consciously sense.
It was aggravating and pleasant at the same time. No, I’m not a masochist.
This was one of the worst cases of an ear worm infection that I had ever had.
I had the first attack a few days ago. I was walking to the tram stop outside of my hotel here in Zurich, and I suddenly remembered and began hearing a lovely melody in my head. At that time I couldn’t remember anything besides the melody, but I could swear that it was a violin. I kept jogging the melody around, trying to pull out the name of the song, the artist, or at some lyrics, but something distracted me on my way to wherever I was going and I forgot about it.
I was hit again last night when taking some pictures of the decorated teddy bears that are all over Zurich. With this attack, I got some semblance of the lyrics floating alongside the melody, but they weren’t anything that I could remember and look up later. I just remembered echoes and not the words themselves.
I had my player with me, so I began going through artists who I thought it might be: Bob Dylan, The Strokes, the Napoleon Dynamite and Garden State soundtracks, all stuff I had been listening to recently. None of those had the damn song that kept floating in and out with the worm attacks.
The worm started crawling again at dinner tonight. Again I was getting only the vague almost-lyrics, and still tying them to nothing concrete. I let it go and finished my meal.
I haven’t been sleeping very well on this trip, sleeping odd hours on the weekends, and waking up randomly in the middle of the night, unable to go back to sleep. It’s three in the morning as I type this. I was hit again while lying awake. This time something came to me: a W. I looked at the player’s list. Ween? No. Weezer? No no no. Wilco? Yes! That was it. I knew it before even finding the song that I had finally cured myself. It was just a matter of pressing the skip button until the melody that had been haunting me for days flowed into the earphones.
I must have been doing something else when I had listened to the album last. I wasn’t paying attention to the music, and was unconsciously put at risk to infection. You’ve got to remember to practice safe music listening.
“Jesus, etc.”
Yankee Hotel Foxtrot
Wilco
Jesus, don’t cry
you can rely on me honey
you can combine anything you want
I’ll be around
you were right about the stars
each one is a setting sun
tall buildings shake
voices escape singing sad sad songs
tuned to chords strung down your cheeks
bitter melodies turning your orbit around
don’t cry
you can rely on me honey
you can come by any time you want
I’ll be around
you were right about the stars
each one is a setting sun
tall buildings shake
voices escape singing sad sad songs
tuned to chords strung down your cheeks
bitter melodies turning your orbit around
voices whine
skyscrapers are scraping, your gravelly voice
is smoking
my cigarettes are all you can get
turning your orbit around
our love
our love
our love is all we have
our love
our love is all of God’s money
everyone is a burning sun
tall buildings shake
voices escape singing sad sad songs
tuned to chords strung down your cheeks
bitter melodies turning your orbit around
voices whine
skyscrapers are scraping, your gravelly voice
is smoking
last cigarettes are all you can get
turning your orbit around
last cigarettes are all you can get
turning your orbit around
last cigarettes are all you can get
turning your orbit around