Previously I posted here about my soft spot for Glen Campbell’s Wichita Lineman. On further reflection it occurred to me that one of the reasons it resonates so strongly with me as an adult (having first fallen for it as a young child) is it embodies a romance of the (American) open road.

In my youth I was lucky enough to fulfil my adolescent dream of driving across North America (east to west) and travel back (west to east) via Greyhound.

Looking back on those memories I can barely detect the boundaries delineating the reality of it from the dream of it. Such is the unreliability of the mind when it comes to certainty about anything. Perhaps it is in this liminal zone, prone to suggestion, that our unconscious emerges unbidden presenting us with desires and aversions of which we were previously unaware or had forgotten.

Wasn’t it Jung (of course) who once said:

What you resist persists.

Ever so slightly obsessed with Wichita Lineman by Glen Campbell at the moment.

I first heard it as a little kid and it’s haunted me periodically ever since.

It popped up unexpectedly on the radio the other day and it gripped me again, as it always does.

I have no idea why it feels so emotive. It’s not the kind of music I listen to and yet it gets me every time.