This
plaintive phrase is the center and anchoring
lyric of one the best (
IMNSHO) tracks produced by the
electronica/
dance acts
The Chemical Brothers. The song which bears its name can be found at track 10 on the
album Dig Your Own Hole.
Where do I begin? is distilled dance frenzy, starting with a catchy and repeating tonal loop in two parts. There are only four phrases in the lyrics, looped on top of the melody. They are sung in gentle tones by a siren that I most desperately want to meet in person some day, if only to ask her to sing me these lines gently while I shake off the night before-
Sunday morning I'm waking up
Can't even focus on a coffee cup
Don't even know whose bed I'm in
Where do I start? Where do I begin?
If you were in mine, my dear, please, turn to me and ask that, in the same clear tones-
The song follows the trail of waking up, as it indicates. I occasionally use it to soundtrack my morning. The beginning is softly intrusive, insistent loops. The lyrics, present from forty-three seconds in to four minutes ten (out of six minutes fifty-one seconds, on my copy) are the repeating questions that bother one in the morning, from sitting up with hand to forehead to finally allowing ones' feet to take the strain as full, modern human upright posture is achieved.
As the aforementioned coffee kicks in, the lyrics increase in chorus and intensity, although there's not enough actual brainpower to change their content...this carries one over to the time when the full, jangling dischord of the world just can't be avoided any longer (about four minutes forty-eight seconds in) and the final minute-plus is sharp, thrumming noise as the harsh reality bleeds into the last few cotton-wrapped dark corners of the brain- God, I wish it was Sunday...
...and we're out the door.