HOME NEWS TOUR SET LISTS FORUM ABOUT CONTACT

Distantly In Love

by Jimmy Buffett

from the album One Particular Harbour

Lyrics

Pay phones all were ringing
As the crowd went roarin’ by
Lovely dancers swaying to an island lullaby
Beside the southern ocean taking stock of what’s to be
Writing you this letter that you’ll probably never see

But I can’t help but be
Ruled by inconsistency
Not unique just distantly in love

Tried to phone from Paris thinking
Things could be arranged
Me and you could rendezvous
But I found your number changed
So I drove to San Remo where
The crazy painter dwells
And toasted our old photographs
Still up there on his shelf

But I can’t help but be
Ruled by my antiquity
Not unique just distantly in love

I can’t be the one to fill
Your times and all your places
I can’t be the one to fill
Your blanks and empty spaces

I heard it from a friend of ours I saw in Timber Bay
That you had a new lover who had Stolen you away
That could be be the reason that I never got in touch
And may present slight problems
If he loves you half as much

As I who can’t help but be
Ruled by my antiquity
Not unique just distantly in love
You know I who can’t help but be
Part of my own philosophy
Not unique just distantly in love

Jimmy’s Note:

Distance and love; this sounds like an oxymoron. The song was written on the beach of Huahine as I watched the sun drop into the Pacific Ocean. Love songs have never been easy to write. Somehow pain and regret seen to be the only things that can trigger my feelings, and songs are the only way to say what I feel-but once your feelings become a song, they don’t belong to you anymore. They belong to all those people who identify with them.