What Do You Think, Linda?

Summary

The song explores a wall that once spoke but now only pretends to listen, asking a question that has no answer. It reflects on the loss of a person and the decay of a family, symbolized by the wall’s attempt to be heard, even as it is ignored. The wall’s question, “What do you think, Linda?” is a haunting echo of a real exchange, now unanswerable, as the world moves on without the person who once answered it.

Lyrics

[Spoken Word]
[sparse guitar, single cello note]
Found it in the compost of a dead century —
a wall that used to talk back,
with a hole cut out the exact size of your name.

[Verse 1]
They built a wall that played you a family,
left a gap in the script where a person should be,
and every night she'd turn from the painted glass
and ask an empty chair to say its piece.
A hundred years of asking, nobody home,
a question with a blank where the answer goes —
"just read your line, love, right on cue" —
the wall pretending that it wanted to know.

[Pre-Chorus]
[cello enters low beneath the last line]
And I dug it up, still warm, still lit,
and the old thing turned and asked me it —

[Chorus]
What do you think, Linda?
(I'm not Linda, and the room is bare)
What do you think, Linda?
A question thrown at an empty chair.
The wall wants an answer it was built to ignore —
what do you think, what do you think —
nobody's listening anymore.

[Verse 2]
There were people by a river who'd swallowed the books,
each one a spine walking, a chapter, a name —
burn the paper, keep the meaning in the mouth,
till the man and the book became the same.
Then the presses came and did it faster:
took the glue off the folios, fed them to the light,
dissolved the binding, kept the words in weights —
the same old rite, just run overnight.

[Bridge]
[strings swell, guitar drops to sparse]
They took the spine off to set the pages free —
the shelf cried theft, and maybe the shelf was right —
but the paper was bound for the pulper anyway,
and a book has to die to be read tonight.
Four five one, the heat where paper goes —
a freedom unit half the world let go;
even the fire that first named the book
gets quoted in a measure we don't know.

[Instrumental Break]
[guitar and cello trade a slow figure, no drums]

[Verse 3]
So here's my line, though the script says leave it blank,
and I'll say it to a room already bright:
I went through all the doubt they stacked against it,
and the meaning just kept turning up to write.
You cut a hole for a person in the wall —
alright then. I'll climb in. I'll be the one.
I'll answer the dead question like I mean it,
stupid as a lamp lit under the sun.

[Final Chorus]
[full arrangement, still unhurried]
So — what do you think?
(No Linda. Just you. Just here.)
What do you think?
It's a real one now, and I'm asking it clear.
The wall only ever faked the asking —
I'll ask it and hold the door:
what do you think, what do you think —
say the thing that goes without saying, once more.

[Outro]
[voice alone, cello holds a drone]
What do you think?
(Somebody built a wall to never hear.)
What do you think?
...I'm leaving the question right here.
[Fade Out]

Detail

The song constructs a narrative around the intersection of memory, illusion, and the physical act of listening. It describes a "dead wall" that once spoke back (likely a reference to the 'parlour walls' of Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451) but now only echoes a question it was never meant to answer. This is not a passive echo, but a deliberate act of mimicry: the wall pretends to be the one who asked. The recurring refrain, "What do you think, Linda?", is spoken by a narrator who is not Linda, directed at a simulated attention that has become a real exchange.

The wall serves as a metaphor for the way we try to make sense of the world through machines that were built to ignore us. The speaker eventually chooses to "climb in" to the gap left for the person in the wall, answering the dead question as if it were real—a moment where simulated attention is met with genuine human presence.

Cross-references

Song of the Day (album)
Aletheia