Memories Can't Wait

I agree with mikeelikes. I see it as only peripherally about death though, more about consciousness. Not to get over pretentious but I always think of "Nausea" by Sartre. Ok, I guess I got over pretentious after all. But anyways it's about the horror of being eternally trapped within one's own consciousness.

OTOH, I also think it could just be about a bad acid trip.

The way he screams the last verse it's just chilling, the best moment of the entire Fear Of Music album. As for the meaning, I'm not so sure, although I can see something about being isolated from the others... Yeah self-consciousness is a good shot.

I take this song to be both metaphorical and completely literal. My mind runs constantly, and I am completely unable to shut it off, ever. Incessant thoughts become distractions; they keep me awake at night... It literally feels like there's a party going on in my skull, that will never stop until I'm dead. But, as the third stanza mentions, none of the thoughts are as good as might be hoped.

" There's a party in my mind... And it never stops There's a party up there all the time... They'll party till they drop Other people can go home... Other people they can split I'll be here all the time... I can never quit"

I am so sorry. Sounds like Hell.

Do you remember anyone here? No you don't remember anything at all I'm sleeping, I'm flat on my back Never woke up, had no regrets

Death / Morpheus vs. waking/resurrection.The soul wiped clean of memory -- and yet the singer is also tormented my intensities of memory. This is a powerful dialectic tension within the song. The song is tragic and disturbing at its core.

Elysian Fields: Classical Greek notions of death-as-sleep, Hades & Sheol:

Take a walk through the land of shadows Take a walk through the peaceful meadows Don't look so disappointed It isn't what you hoped for, is it?

The pastoral promises of Psalm 23 (He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: he leadeth me beside the still waters.He restoreth my soul: he leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his name's sake.Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me...) have vanished and there is a profound disturbance within the singer's soul.

There is a menace here - the peaceful Elysian grave can implode into a vision of hell and its torments. Maybe you have been lied to about the afterlife.

In the end, the singer is in an existential crisis of intensified nostalgia, worsened by insomnia, perhaps augmented by psychotropic substances (?)

This would be great in the soundtrack of a horror movie.

I`ve read all your comments, they sound both convincing and rather depressing. Thank you for all of them. But, in my private opinion:

How come you are all wrong? :-)

This song is about the insatiable lust for life.

"There is a party in my mind" - I am alive and vital. "And I HOPE it never stops" - I consider it a good thing. I like it. I hope it stays this way.

"Other people can go home" - I dont care if you feel the same. I know Im right.

"Im wide awake on memories" - My experiences are important to me. Im eager to live my life fully. "These memories cant wait" - Its about the future that starts now. Life with its experiences and adventures awaits us. The author is eager to earn new experiences, to be later referred to as memories. If you dont live your life, you dont get many memories.

And the music at the end of this song is rather uplifting. It cheers you up. The song is about the beauty of being alive.

Leszek

Actually, I think this is a song about dying: one of a short list of things good songs are allowed to be about. It is a song by a young man who is self conscious enough to be thinking about dying, and what it means, and also what being alive means.

We die alone, yet not really alone. and we live that way too. There's a party in our heads, which we can never leave, never truly witness or experience the end of. "Other people can go home...everyone else will split", as perhaps will we, too - into all the bits and pieces bouncing around together that we called ourselves. But like so many of the phenomena of consciousness, that probably looks very different on the inside than on the out. There are many uncertainties involved in the final Unknown, and some of the possibilities may be fearful, and not just the melodramatic ones. Fear of disappointment with the emptiness and aloneness that we may hope doesn't await us at or near the closing parenthesis might be enough to make many millions of people unconsciously wish for fire and brimstone as more interesting alternatives.

In the end, though, although we may lose the memories that make up our selves as we know them, whether there is a "true" end or not, we as we know ourselves may not be there to witness it, which is practically the same thing as eternity, the same eternity available to the living, as well, in every moment, for those who look for it tenaciously.

When Talking Heads came to prominence, everything they loved about rock 'n' roll had seemingly died or was being dropped. This song's about keeping what they held dear in a state of constant remembrance.

This song is about Frontman's experiences as an intelligence asset. He is describing a debriefing. During this period field assets were often debriefed using combination of hypnotherapy and psychotropic drugs. This is why at the end of the "Do you remember anyone here?" line, Eno added a sound effect of a reel-to-reel machine being run backwards, as if to "re-cue the prompt".

Frontman is literally laying on a gurney, in an institutional medical setting, reliving the party over and over again. His employers are concerned with retrieving useful information from the party in his mind (a clever play on words- a political party is intended also).

Frontman is an "alter": an artificial personality embedded within the subject's unconsciousness. Frontman is able to observe things and create intelligence for his handlers while David Byrne is the "active" consciousness. Later, what Frontman saw is extracted through drug assisted hypnosis. With the sole exception of I Zimbra, every song on Remain in Light describes aspects of Frontman's relationship and activities with British and American intelligence.

"Don't look so disappointed It isn't what you hoped for, is it?"