La Ligne Blanche

Lyrics

[Intro] Just the hum. The glow from the dash. Green numbers holding steady at seventy-five. My hands are on the wheel, but they are not my hands. [Verse 1] Interstate 80, Nebraska flat. The world outside is just a theory. A blur of fence posts counting a rhythm I don't hear. The engine is a mantra. The tires are a chant. The real work is being done somewhere else. By someone else. A ghost in the machine, and the machine is me. [Chorus] La ligne blanche. The white dashed line. It unspools the miles. It swallows the time. I am the passenger in my own body. My eyes are open, I see the road. But there's no one home to record the show. Just the autopilot's grace. [Verse 2] G. W. Williams wrote it down in '21. 'Road hypnosis.' He saw the trance in the steady drone of the early cars. A hundred years later, the road is smoother. The trance is deeper. I made the small adjustments. A slight correction for the wind. A tap on the brake for a distant red light. The NTSB calls it automaticity. I call it letting go. Trusting the spinal cord, the muscle memory, the quiet part of the brain that knows the way home. [Chorus] La ligne blanche. The white dashed line. It unspools the miles. It swallows the time. I am the passenger in my own body. My eyes are open, I see the road. But there's no one home to record the show. Just the autopilot's grace. [Bridge] And then, a flicker. A change in the engine's pitch. The exit sign for Kearney. How did I get here? Omaha was twenty miles ago. Or was it an hour? The tape is blank. A clean white slate. A gap in the film where I was still living. Who drove those miles for me? [Outro] The ghost returns the controls. My hands on the wheel are my hands again. Heavy. I check the fuel gauge. I check the clock. The white line keeps running. Running into the dark. And I have no memory. No memory at all.