Livin' In The Future notes
"When I first started writing this song, it was supposed to be
about the future. But it took me seven years to finish it. So at best,
it's about the present. I'm sure Jean Dixon has days like that too.
(from John Prine Live - transcribed by John Lyon)
-from the anthology: I always liked phrases like "jumpin'
Jehosaphat!" and "great Caesar's ghost!" Also, I had
this vision that if you drop a cat out of a window, it's supposed to
land on its feet. But if the cat doesn't, does that mean that the cat
had problems at home? Did it have suicidal tendencies? But the idea I
had came from Parade magazine in the Sunday papers. When I was growing
up, it seemed like once a year some guy would write a story about how
this is the way your city is going to look in 20 years. And the only
city that ever looked like that was Seattle, and they built all that
for the World's Fair. None of the other places had monorails. Instead,
everybody's standing in soup lines or looking for jobs."