Dandy Warhols – "We Used to Be Friends" (2003)

A long time ago

We used to be friends

But I haven’t thought of you lately

Yesterday’s 2 or 3 lines was about the Armistice that ended World War I almost exactly one hundred years ago.

I had planned to follow up with another World War I-related post.  But then I noticed today’s date.

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At first glance, the lines from today’s featured song that are quoted above seem straightforward enough.  But upon further review, the meaning isn’t quite so clear.

Let’s begin with the first line.  What exactly do you think “a long time ago” means?   

If you’re a clock, time is an objective phenomenon.  (A second is a second, a minute is a minute, and so on.)  

But a clock can’t tell you what “a long time ago” is – that’s a much more subjective thing.  (If you’re riding a very scary roller coaster, two minutes seems like a long time.  But when you’re on vacation, two weeks seems to fly by.)  

I think most people would say that something that happened five years ago happened a long time ago.  

But I have vivid memories of certain events that happened five years ago.  They don’t feel like they took place a long time ago.

Funny how that works.

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If you “used to be friends” with someone, you presumably are not friends with that person any more.

That means either that the two of you are enemies – or that the two of you are indifferent to one another.  I’m guessing that many more ex-friends are simply not friends than enemies. 

If you used to be in love with someone, it’s likely a different story.  I would bet that few ex-lovers are truly indifferent about one another.  (If you are, maybe you weren’t all that in love in the first place.)  

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What are we to make of the last line quoted above – “I haven’t thought of you lately”?

“Lately” is no more capable of being objectively defined than “a long time ago” is.  So there’s an element of subjectivity here.

But more importantly, the lady – or the gentleman – doth protest too much, methinks.  

I won’t speak for you.  But if you hear me say that I haven’t thought of someone lately, you can bet the farm that I’m thinking of that person all the time!

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I don’t think the lines above are meant to be taken literally.  For one thing, I think that the singer and the person he is singing to were more than simply “friends.”

If you ask me, what the singer of today’s featured song really means is that while it wasn’t all that long ago that he and the woman he loved split up, it feels like it was – and that even though their relationship has ended, he still thinks of her all the time.

The lyrics quoted above are an example of what the Greeks called antiphrasis – that is, saying the opposite of what you mean for rhetorical effect.

In other words, the lyrics are ironic.

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Today’s featured song, “We Used to Be Friends,” was released in 2003 on Welcome to the Monkey House, which was the Dandy Warhols’ fourth studio album:

“Welcome to the Monkey House” is also the title of a 1968 short story by Kurt Vonnegut.  Here's how Wikipedia summarizes the plot of that story:

In the not-so-distant future, a criminal mastermind named Billy the Poet is on the loose and on his way to Cape Cod.  His goal is to deflower one of the hostesses at the Ethical Suicide Parlor in Hyannis.  The world government runs the parlors and urges people to commit suicide to help keep the population of 17 billion stable.  It also requires that the hostesses at these establishments be virgins on the basis that this makes the idea of suicide more appealing, especially to middle-aged and older men.  The government also suppresses the population’s sexual desire with a drug that numbs them from the waist down (but does not render them infertile, as that is seen as unethical and in violation of the religious principles of many).  This drug . . . was originally developed by a druggist who had been offended when, on a family outing to the zoo, his group were confronted by the sight of a male monkey masturbating.  

You younger folks out there will find this hard to believe, but people used to take Kurt Vonnegut’s writing very seriously.  (I’m not kidding.)

Click here to listen to “We Used to Be Friends.”

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