Album cover video:

The final set of lyrics on Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots appears on the penultimate track, “All We Have Is Now.” Wayne Coyne uses the device of a time traveler to drive home a point about life – all we have is now, so we need to live for the moment.

The time traveler, as it happens, is a future version of the singer. He’s come back to tell “himself” and his current partner that they’re not going to last. Sort of a cruel thing! None the less, it drives home the point that they have to seize the day.

In late 2010, I was explaining to a bunch of my then-Junior high school students that they were going to need to come up with Senior quotes for the yearbook. I told them that, every year, young couples would address each other in the yearbook and, every year, those same young couples would break up before the yearbook was printed and have to live with those quotes.

Its fascinating, because the student couples were simultaneously aware that this was likely true, but unable to do anything about it. Its like they knew they were in temporary relationships, but the desire for it to be something longer overwhelmed their common sense. I understand – it would have for me when I was their age, too.

None-the-less, there’s a kind of beauty in that lack of cynicism (realism?). Coyne captures a touch of it in this song.