The Ears of Delaware?

I know you won't believe it, but I envy and admire the fierce devotion and blind, Nuremberg-rally-like pride students and alumni of the University of Texas feel towards their school. Since I attended a college where the most notable accomplishment was burning down the local Bank of America ("we're really sticking it to the Man...oh crap, I just torched the money my folks sent me") in a fit of anti-Vietnam pique, at my alma mater there wasn't a lot of brand loyalty. We didn't have a catchy slogan or hand sign, save the omnipresent middle-finger salute (see "sticking it to the Man" above).

What creeps me out is the UT school song, "The Eyes of Texas." As ubiquitous as the stultifying Austin humidity, this song is heard and sung literally hundreds of times a day. And it's just strange.

For one thing, the tune is based on "I've been working on the railroad," which is itself one of the most surreal little folk ditties ever penned ("someone's in the kitchen with Dinah, strumming on the old banjo." Holy crap, it's like a scene from a David Lynch film.) one wonders why that tune. Was Nick nack paddywack or Hot Cross Buns already taken? I guess there is some advantage to basing your college song on a melody accessible to infants.

Look at the lyrics: "The eyes of Texas are upon you, all the livelong day." Where do I start? The Orwellian-nightmare scenario that transforms an entire state into one big nursery-rhyme singing security camera, or the bizarre anthropomorphizing that gives sensory organs to a geopolitical construct? Every time I hear this lyric--which is really frequently--I'm afraid to step outside, for fear of accidentally stepping onto a gazing eyeball. And "livelong day..." Who uses language like that other than your grandpappy?

Next line: "The eyes of Texas are upon you, you cannot get away." It sound like we're singing an anti-shoplifting warning. At this point in the song, I'm already starting to whimper, so disturbing is the thought that I cannot escape from the omnipresent visual scrutiny that the state has conspired to evolve.

The ode to ocular fascism continues: "do not think you can escape them, at night or early in the morn," which leads me to think that perhaps the eyes are crepuscular and active mostly early in the morning or late at night, which makes sense, as the daytime temperatures in Austin demand a siesta from late morning through early evening. So: there's hope--plan one's escape for midday, when the infernal eyes are closed.

Of course, let's not forget that the lyricist at this point actually just fell back to his or her source material, the kid-friendly "Railroad," which also, by the way, includes the inscrutable line "I've been working on the railroad, just to pass the time away." Hey, I'm bored...I think I'll kill some time with some back-breaking, dangerous, ultimately futile, and poorly compensated labor.

Fine, UT, you got me. I'm wearing the shock collar, I'm pacing against the invisible electric fence, but for how long? "'Till Gabriel blows his horn." Ok, this is just hubris, pure and simple. The University is just over a century and a quarter old and suddenly we're in Biblical, epochal time. By then the state will have, no doubt, evolved additional sensory organs and possibly limbs as well, and will be able to migrate at will.

Hook 'em, horns indeed.