I was living in the Bavarian Wood when this album came out. In some areas they might have still brought the mail on horses. REMAIN IN LIGHT partly soundtracked my life in the hinterland. Drug therapy with adults at the end of the world. At least that I’ve told before. I’m a looper. I knew from the two earlier Eno-produced Talking Heads albums that David Byrne was a specialist in dream-inspired imagery that easily suggests lost souls, neurotic townies. But when they produced the album, they were in a studio on the Bahamas with no deadlines and a lot of heat around.
Skilled in undermining any linear story-bound logic, you never know exactly what it’s all about. In that time they, too, studied African polyrhythms and African music theory. They read books. And they learned quickly. One of the mysteries of masterpieces of the pop history: you don’t have to study years and years on a conservatory, to make inspirations work. In this case Jon Hassell was a helping hand, and the „mad scientist“ in the background, the magician with a big bag of living knowledge.
In all the years I have listened to that record, and this song, it was always a song about ego-dumping. Disssolving the routines of defining your own ego. May happen in mental illness, in meditation, in deep listening, in the Outer Hebrides. (Listen to the sounds & words of „A Man Wakes Up“ of the Eno/Hyde-collaboration „Someday World“, it covers similar territory of alienation and fulfilment!)
In „Born Under Punches“ this kind of ego-dumping is wrapped in motives that suggest fever, paranoia, danger, tropical heat, unrelentless yearning, inner peace, kind of mini-satoris. Hope. Love of life. How’s that? Another trick of the magicians involved. The Known/Unknown territory. A weird mix of strongly contrasting emotions (states of mind) that inspires any form of stop making sense immediately. Liberating. The Bahamas, Africa, come to Europe. It happens every day now. Just go outside. And let the song creep under your skin.