I wrote this song a couple weeks ago and, after posting a very rough acoustic version and getting some feedback in a songwriting forum I sometimes hang out in, I decided to try to put together a fuller, combo version.
I had posted this briefly last week but thought twice about the performance and some of the instrumentation so I pulled the post and reworked the song.
If They Could Put You in Jail for Dreaming
Now, here is my confession
I’m the guilty one
I knew just what I was doing
and now look at what I’ve done
there isn’t any mystery
about just who’s to blame
the saddest little crime in history
has been added to my name
If they could put you in jail for dreaming I’d never see the streets again I’d be lying in my cell
telling stories to myself
and dreamin’ bout what might have been
I stole a chance for happiness
then drove it into a ditch
I stole the secrets of hate and love
then I forgot which was which
If they could put you in jail for dreaming...
I know my biggest crime
is something I did not do
it’s a shame and a sin I didn’t
follow that whim
and steal away with you
It’s still preachin’. With all that entails. Maybe it’s because I’ve been spending so much time listening to country, mountain, and rural gospel lately. They ain’t afraid of no preachin’….
Anyway, when the phrase “This used to be America”* came to my lips the other day (in one of those listening-to-the-news-too-much rants my cat is getting used to) I sat down to write what I hoped might be some classic agitprop… I don’t think I actually got there… and I wasn’t actually going to let this out of the work folder but, I dunno, I listened to it this morning and thought, shoot, I’m feeling this. I’m feeling it right now.
When the general once in charge of the US war on — excuse me, in — Iraq calls that catastrophic misadventure a “nightmare without end” — I figure there’s some wiggle room for a little Monday morning jeremiad from an aging, disillusioned US businessman (that would be, you know, me.)
This used to be America, you know.
But we could still be who we know we should be… This Used to Be America
This used to be America This used to be the land of the free This used to be the United States but nothin’s like it used to be
we put ourselves in the hands of fools
threw our birthrights away
put the bottom line at the top of our world
let the god of greed hold sway
it takes 200,000 bullets
to kill one enemy
that what the DoD numbers say**
if you don’t count peripheral casualties
Americans don’t torture
We don’t kill recklessly
thats what the man in the white house says
that’s how we want it to be
but it’s gettin’ pretty hard to believe
blowback’s a bitch
but how could we know?
though our experts kept telling us so
we fed the tiger we got by the tail
and now we just can’t bear to let him go
This used to be America This used to be the land of the free but I swear it’s not too late for the United States we can still be who we know we should be
** DOD – Department of Defense; this figure of 200,000 bullets for every enemy death in Afghanistan and Iraq is based on US Department of Defense estimates of enemy soldiers killed and the amount of ordnance used in training and combat. Yes… one FIFTH OF A MILLION BULLETS for every enemy soldier killed. Of course, this does not count “peripheral casualties” — for which estimates range from about 25,000- 30,000 (more than the number of enemy killed — this is the US government’s estimate) to as many as a 100,000. Of course, that does not include those who died unnecessarly from malnutrition, privation, and other war-related causes which some well-grounded studies have suggested range from 500,000 to one million extra deaths.
As I wrote in January of 2006, when this song first appeared in A Year of Songs, it’s the third song I wrote — and considered a real song, as opposed to one of the several score of pretty awful early attempts. What can I say — I grew up writing free verse… no rhyme, no meter… lots of self-indulgence. It takes a while to get into the very different discipline of songwriting. Or it did for me.
Anyway, this tune’s maybe a little long on portentuous vagueness — though I was clearly shooting for evocative mystery.
But, believe it or not, it’s all more or less grounded in actual events. Where the song says, a man said you were the queen… well, that’s exactly what someone said about the young woman the song addresses. To this day, I really don’t know what he meant.
And that blinding, shining, white light? Well… someone stole it.
I called your name
when I was afraid
but you were upstate
and you didn’t come
though I thought you might
there was a time when I’d play any game
just to be alive
there was a time
long enough to wait
time enough to wait
time enough to bring it back
and stash it away
a man thought you were the queen
did not mean a thing
but I thought it did
and if you were the queen
I wondered
and I wondered
how you kept it hid
and how did you steal
that shining light
how did you steal that blinding light
how did you steal that shining light from me
how did you steal that pure white light from me
(C)1972, 2007, TK Major
