Kamera

SONG: Kamera
ALBUM: Yankee Hotel Foxtrot
TRACK: 2

A neat trick of the opening line "I need a camera/to my eye" is that it doesn't specify whether the narrator is peering through the camera's viewfinder, or whether he's got the lens pointed at his own pupil. If the eyes are windows to the soul, taking a picture of your own eyes should give you a true, objective image of your inner self. It will remind you "which lies [you've] been hiding". This song's narrator needs just that - he's lost touch with himself, and he regrets the disconnection.

Not only that, but he feels far removed from his family, his home, and his own history. The sense that he's left everything behind is clear in lines like:

I'm counted out
And no one knows how far
I've driven in the dark
With echoes in my heart

These "echoes" are the voices calling from his past, and they play a vital part in the song. He feels them reverberating in his heart, and he knows the key to regaining his identity is not in figuring out which lies he's been hiding, but "which echoes belong". A camera is appropriate here, too: memories of our past are preserved in photo albums and scrapbooks, and life without those keepsakes can seem like a "war/where memories distort".

The chorus ties everything together in three lines:

"Phone my family" - his plea to reconnect with his lost past
"Tell 'em I'm lost on the sidewalk" - his separation has left him alone and adrift in an unfamiliar city
"And no, it's not okay" - pretty much sums up how he feels about it.

Musically, this song is crucial within the context of "Yankee Hotel Foxtrot". The smooth guitar strums and conventional drumbeat take the edge off the noisy, weird, abstract sounds of "I Am Trying To Break Your Heart", and they open up the album's "pop" side. Also, I love the irony of pairing a happy melody with the lyrics "No, it's not OK". And Wilco scholars should appreciate all the transformations this song has gone through (like the rocking, distorted version in the documentary I Am Trying To Break Your Heart).

As for the letter "K" in the title? I think it's just a silly, arbitrary thing, like "The Lonely 1" or "Nothing'severgonnastandinmyway(again)" or "Walken". Wilco's got a weird sense of humor.