Song Description

College Freshman goes to get drunk in Canada.

Lyrics

I got a terrible pain in my temple
And my stomach hasn't settled down
It's eleven o'clock in the morning
In this little undergraduate town
Five minutes ago I arrived here
But I almost didn't come at all
I made it down the steps to the station
After a trip to a stall.
Thank God that God has given me Canada
Where I can let go of my mind
Last night I hopped across the border
With some others of my kind
I'm losing my memory of your texture
I lost the color of your hair
And from the speakers there's a sound that is spilling
That's as harsh as I can bear.

I took a fairly strong dose
I went comatose
How heavenly I was feeling!
I put the keys in my car
Ringing electric guitar
And in a minute the engine was squealing.

I sped along the long, wooded highway
And the road began to curve
I could hear the shouts of people behind me
And I had a crisis of nerve
My eyesight saw a sheet of cold purple
Of alternating dim and sharper tones
I heard what seemed to me to be your whisper
As if spoken through a telephone
My eyelids arose and I looked back
There stretched out a streak of shooting white lines
My companions kept moving their fingers
And their voices intertwined
I turned myself to face myself forward
And the world stood still
The car slowed to a stop on the shoulder
And I was physically ill

My friend started to drive
My nausea showed me I was alive
The smell sauntered out of the window
I lost track of the time
Pictures flashed before my spinning mind
And when I next awoke we were home.

I've begun to sleep less than in high school
Since last year, when I arrived in Maine.
I can't bear to look inside a deep mirror
And I'm worried about my brain.
I would pen a little note to California
If I could still my shaking hand
And I'd recall to you the first time we'd spoke
After that practice of my former band.