Laurie Anderson - The Geographic North Pole lyrics

The summer of 1974 was brutally
Hot in New York
And I kept thinking about how
Nice and icy it must
Be at the North Pole and then I though
"Wait a second, why not go?" You
Know, like in cartoons
Where they hang "gone to the North Pole" on
Their door knobs and they just take off

So I spent a couple of
Weeks preparing for the
Trip: getting a hatchet, a
Huge backpack, maps, knives, sleeping
Bags, lures, and a three-month
Supply of bannock, a versatile
High-protein paste that can be
Made into flat bread, biscuit's or cereal

Now I had decided to hitchhike
And one day I just walked
Out onto Houston Street, weighed down
With seventy pounds of gear
And stuck out my thumb

"Going North?" I asked the driver as
I struggled into a station wagon

After I got out of New York
Most of the rides were trucks until I
Reached the Hudson Bay and began
To hitch in small mail planes
The pilots were usually
Guys who'd gone to Canada to avoid the draft
Or else embittered Vietnam vets who never
Wanted to go home again either way
They always wanted to show off
A few of their stunts
We'd go swooping low along the rivers
Doing loop-de-loops and Baby Hueys
And they'd drop me off at
An airstrip "There'll be another
Plane by here couple of weeks
See ya! Good luck" i never did make it all
The way to the geographic
Pole it turned out to be a restricted area
And no one
Was allowed to fly in or even over it i did
Get within a few miles of
The magnetic pole though
So it wasn't really that disappointing

I entertained myself in the evenings
Cooking or smoking and watching the
Blazing light of the huge
Canadian sunsets as they turned
The lake into fire

Later I lay on by back looking up at
The Northern lights and imagining
There'd been a nuclear holocaust
And that I was the only human
Being left in all of North America
And what would I do then?
And then, when these lights went out
I stretched out on the ground
Watching the stars as they turned around
On their enormous silent wheels

I finally decided to turn back because of my
Hatchet i'd been chopping some wood and
The hatchet flew out of my hand on
The upswing and I did what
You should never do when this happens: I
Looked up to see where it had
Gone and it came down fffooo just
Missing my head and I thought
"My God! I could be walking around here with
A hatchet embedded in my skull! And I'm
Ten miles from the airstrip! And nobody in
The whole world knows where I am"

Daddy, Daddy, it was just like you said
Now that the living outnumber the dead
Where I come from, it's a long thin thread
Across an ocean, down a river of red
Now that the living outnumber the dead

Speak my language