Song About A Film Based On A Song Title


 

The original song, You Go To My Head, was written in 1938 and was covered many times over the decades. It's one of the most standard of Standards.

A few years ago,  I watched a film based on the same title, about a woman who was involved in a rollover accident in the Moroccan desert, was concussed and got long-term amnesia. She was picked up by an architect who was working in Morocco building houses for people. He had also built a house for himself–a very minimal house–very Corbusian–just a white stucco structure, which I really liked. I had never seen a film that was shot in Morocco–totally gorgeous. The screenplay was almost stupid and characters wooden, but the cinematography was interesting, shot in Morocco with Guilhem Eustache's Fobe House as a set. All natural lighting. I saw lots of David Lynch influence. 

What was particularly interesting as a corollary was that a person who had been concussed and has memory loss is sort of like an artificial intelligence or a robot, where they have to relearn the world. There was a scene where she’s walking around the area and verbally labeling things: “house”, “car”, “palm tree”, and so on, so as to reconstruct her memory and to create a mnemonic for re-learning her way around. There’s another scene where she’s having a dialogue with who she thinks is her husband because he’s implanted that idea in her and she’s just going along with it, sort of like a pet (Kitty), and she says something like, “I don’t know who I am, but I’m confiding in you to tell me who I am because you’re my husband.” So he constructs this really nice profile of her–she’s artistic, she’s a good dancer, she’s very beautiful, and she’s buying it. But then she asks, “What’s the dark side?” The takeaway was that’s how an AI would have to be built–by asking those kinds of questions, and you can construct an AI however you want–that you’re their spouse. I think that’s coming in the future, and is already here to some extent.

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The lyrics are based on the dialog from the scene where Jake and Kitty are having a discussion about who she will be.

You go to my head  
Who knows me better than you?  
You create your own world  
That feels right  
  
You'll get to be your blank slate  
You'll get to be whoever you want  
You like to dance  
(I like to dance)  
  
You go to my head  
It's what you said  
  
You'll get to be your blank slate  
You'll get to be whoever you want  
I like to dance  
(You like to dance)
 

Dialog: 

I'd really like to find out who I truly am

Who knows me better than you?

Finding the kitty that disappeared

You're sweet and good-natured

You like to dance

You create your own world--like a cocoon

That feels right!

Your really do know me don't you

What about the bad stuff?

What do we fight about?

You'll get to your blank slate and get to be whoever you want to be

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