CleverDonkey.com …Musings, Commentary, Opinions, and Drivel

You probably wouldn't remember, I probably couldn't forget

Today I was sitting in the car in the car wash listening to tunes, and I heard an old favorite – “Jungle Love” by The Steve Miller Band, from 1977.  The song sounds kind of pop-y and like a confection, but the lyrics have, to me, always been more poetic and abstract than the tune and the refrain.  Here are the lyrics, as best as I can decode them (leaving out the refrains):

I met you on somebody’s island
You thought you had known me before
I brought you a crate of papaya
They waited all night by your door
You probably wouldn’t remember
I probably couldn’t forget
Jungle love in the surf in the pouring rain
Everything’s better when wet

But lately you live in the jungle
I never see you alone
But we need some definite answers
So I thought I would write you a poem
The question to everyone’s answer
Is usually asked from within
But the patterns of the rain
And the truth they contain
Have written my life on your skin

You treat me like I was your ocean
You swim in my blood when it’s warm
My cycles of circular motion
Protect you and keep you from harm
You live in a world of illusion
Where everything’s peaches and cream
We all face a scarlet conclusion
But we spend our time in a dream

Now, I’ve only seen a few random episodes of the TV show “Lost”, but during the leadup to the recent finale my daughter was home from college catching up on episodes so that she’d be ready for a finale viewing party, so I got some summary information about the show, the characters, the plot, the show structure, etc.

And I have to say, based on my limited information about the show, the lyrics above sure seem to evoke the vibe of the series.  Specific examples include this lyric:

I met you on somebody’s island, you thought you had known me before

Which almost seems like almost a one-line summary of the series.  Everybody is flashing forward and backward, into and out of parallel universes, vaguely remembering or forgetting each other.

And this one:

You treat me like I was your ocean, you swim in my blood when it’s warm

They are on an island surrounded by water, regularly in the ocean trying to escape or move between islands, spilling a lot of blood in the process - so much that you might say they were…swimming…in it?

Then there’s this one:

My cycles of circular motion protect you and keep you from harm

Isn’t that the crux of the show, every X number of minutes somebody has to go down the hatch and push a button or something, and in doing this repetitive, circular process they are protecting everyone and keeping them from harm?

And then the final lines:

You live in a world of illusion
Where everything’s peaches and cream
We all face a scarlet conclusion
But we spend our time in a dream

Sounds like “world of illusion” is a correct description of the island, “we all face a scarlet conclusion” could mean that everybody dies, and “we spend our time in a dream” seems to accurately describe what it must be like for the characters, at least as I understand it.

So, I’ll put it to you Lost fan(atic)s out there – do you see any parallel between these lyrics and the show?