Here are two song lyrics by Jay Farrar to ponder:
"Cahokian"
I will wait for you in the green, green spaces,
Wearing our post-industrial faces.
Side by side sit the trashpile twin
And the eleventh century ceremonial center
Of the Misissippian.
With the calender of the sun,
A people undone.
Ceremonial mounds in the backyards and towns,
That's the way it turned out.
A city built up on the other great mound torn down,
That's the way it happened.
A culture on the run,
They vanished in the sun,
The Mississippian.
Forward and on we go,
Building our mounds out of control,
Full of our finest throwaway things.
The new Mississippians,
Under a smog-choked sun,
Waiting to be undone.
"Feel Free"
Take the bridge over nothing
To where it's cooling down
In the sainted ville where everybody's working.
Look away from the dyed-in-the-wool,
Turn up the non-profit radio, and let it all sink in.
Getting by on the status quo,
Worse before but there's still a hard road to go.
Breathe in all the diesel fumes,
Admire the concrete landscaping,
And doesn't it feel free?
The world is gonna burn up four million years from now
If it doesn't happen anytime soon.
Cruel and unusual all around.
Window of opportunity to uplift the spin that's down.
Cropping up and digging in,
The final plateau no longer seems like a burden
Breathe in all the diesel fumes,
Admire the concrete landscaping,
And doesn't it feel free?
2 comments:
"Cahokian" is one of my favorite Farrar tunes.
That huge trash pile off of I-70 is pretty symbolic, as Farrar relates.
One of my favorite lines from a Son Volt tune is also this:
Take away this Columbus Day.
No more bones on display.
Black Hawk never had a say,
Just taken out of the picture.
It's an astute commentary about how Indians were written out of our history by "progress," even though Black Hawk's War was a pretty significant event here in the Midwest at that time.
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