RIP. MIX. RAGE.


an ipod protest song.

On a five-hour drive home this afternoon, the iPod got an especially vigorous high-speed, hard-rockin', road-trippin' workout. The selection started out low-key and dead-on, shuffling up a nifty little mix of songs and artists almost perfectly attuned to a crisp, sunny late-summer day. But by the time we'd reached the Ft. Littleton exit, its mood and tunes had turned. It was feeling fiery, fiesty, full of all sorts of protest vim and political vigor, propelling us through the big red center of the state with all the big blue rock and roll it could muster. Lines, verses, choruses, bits and snatchs of lyrics, began leaping and singing out at me, creeping, curdling, coalescing, creating a kind of radical running commentary that caught deep in my ears and rattled loud in my head. As the songs and miles flew by, their seemingly random rages began to merge and morph and mix, as if, by the force of their rhythms and the weight of their own angry matter, they could give voice and shape to some new iPod-fueled protest song.

When I got home and finished unpacking the car, those words and notes were still there, almost fully, perfectly formed, rocking and rolling around my brain as they had been all day. They called me. They compelled me. I sat down, closed my eyes, opened my mind, and listened. This is what I heard:

IT'S MORNING IN AMERICA

I woke up this morning
And none of the news was good
Death machines were rumbling
Across the ground where Jesus stood

Shit so thick you could stir it with a stick
Free Teflon whitewashed presidency
We're sick of being jerked around
Wear that on your sleeve

Some folks inherit star spangled eyes
They send you off to war
But when you ask 'em, how much should we give
They only answer, more and more and more and more

I don't need your civil war
It feeds the rich while it buries the poor
You're power hungry, sellin' solidiers
In a human grocery store

And through the range finder over the hill
I saw the front line boys popping their pills
Sick of the mess they find on their desert stage
And the bravery of being out of range

'Cause all these dreams are swept aside
By bloody hands of the hypnotized
Who carry the cross of homicide
And history bears the scars of our civil wars

It's a war on war
It's a war on war
It's a war on war
There's a war on

You're gonna lose
You have to lose
You have to learn how to die

I beg to dream and differ from the hollow lies
This is the dawning of the rest of our lives
On holiday

Induction, destruction
Who wants to die in a war?

Yeah, the question is vexed
Old man, what the hell you gonna kill next?
Old timer, who you gonna kill next?

The sun came up with no conclusions
Flowers sleepin' in their beds
The city cemetery's humming
I'm wide awake, it's morning.

Posted: Wed - August 24, 2005 at 05:14 PM          

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