I was introduced to the band Beauty Pill by Roman Mars on his podcast 99% Invisible. They have this song called “Cigarette Girl from the Future.” For the longest time, when listening, I imagined a movie from the 1940s with a nightclub scene. The Cigarette Girl walks in and out of the scene, she's never the hero of the story, but she's the subject of this song. When the cigarette girl appears, she's both fascinating and dangerous–much like a cigarette.
And then I was in the car listening to the opera channel on SiriusXM and they were playing Bizet's Carmen. Carmen is a cigarette girl from the future. She works in a cigarette factory and she knows that the daily grind of making cigarettes isn't her future. Strange connections.
Check out the cigarette girl, from the future
she's just as bored as you are
the cigarette girl from the future
is even more bored than you are