Once in a Lifetime

Once in a Lifetime is the song Peter hears in his head as he returns to the house he shares with Eva. Its contrast between an apparently beautiful domestic life and the bewildered question of how one got there gives musical form to his growing alienation from his home and circumstances.

The Refrain in Peter’s Mind

Eva is asleep on a stretcher beneath a parasol, her legs drawn up and her hands clasped around her belly. Peter slips into the house as though it belonged to strangers. Against this scene, the song’s lines evoke a beautiful house and wife before turning to the question of how the speaker arrived there. The contrast makes the refrain a pointed accompaniment to Peter’s unease rather than a celebration of domestic happiness.

Eva, the Song, and Rejection

The song also carries an unwanted personal association for Peter: he remembers that Eva used to love David Byrne, and resents the Talking Heads intruding into his thoughts. He wants the song gone, even as its question articulates the disorientation he cannot dismiss. The gap between Eva’s former affection for the music and Peter’s present hostility gives the refrain an intimate edge; it belongs to their shared history as well as to his private state.

Home as a Source of Estrangement

After the refrain, Peter looks at the neatly made bed and knows he will not sleep. He describes the house as oppressive and concludes that it has brought misfortune from the beginning, linking it to the loss of their child and to hostile new neighbors. His conviction that they must leave the Randstad and find an older house with a soul extends the song’s question into a judgment on the life he has built: the beautiful-house image offers no security when home itself feels wrong. Once in a Lifetime thus connects a recognizable lyric to Peter’s sense of dislocation, while his rejection of the music reveals how little comfort he can accept from a song associated with Eva.