Some Dance To Remember, Some Dance To Forget

I'm listening to Hotel California by the Eagles. What a great song, from the achingly slow, 53-second bass intro to the haunting, colorful lyrics. It is a terrific song, a classic, a wonderful and mysterious short story.

Like all good writing, great songs elicit powerful, emotional images, and remind us of who we are, or should be. Who does the words "she got a lot of pretty, pretty boys she calls friends," make you think of? Someone in the news, or someone in your past, perhaps?

Could there be a more simple, evocative description of human loneliness than "some dance to remember, some dance to forget," or the helplessness many of us endure than "and she said, we are all just prisoners here, of our own device"?

Where in literature is there, in so few words, such an accurate depiction of the seeming futility of life than, "they stab it with their steely knives but they just can't kill the beast," or the more potent "you can check out anytime you like, but you can never leave…"?