Just after dawn the birds wake each other up.
On Sundays, very early, you could sit in a certain spot in my old backyard, with a leafy canopy above you and the vine covered garage and overgrown yard before you, with the gentle sound of the little fountain* in the background and, for a little while, forget you were in the city. Kind of.
*Not the pond in the picture but the source of the background audio in the improvised guitar instrumental below.
Long Gone Sunday
(C)2007, TK Major
It’s a truism oft-cited by motivational speakers and their ilk that walking is the process of falling forward with our weight on one foot and then suddenly shifting the other foot forward to catch ourselves… over and over. This is, of course, intended to show that there is no progress without risk, no movement without somehow defying gravity, if only momentarily.
Whatever.
At a certain point you get somewhere, even if the somewhere is right back around where you started from… but you’re wiser for the journey. Yeah… sure. Wiser and back on square one… having passed Go, having spent the 200 dollars you collected and maybe some rent from that place on Park Avenue you lucked into and then lost to the bank.
I wrote this song before I’d passed Go the first of many times… but I could see the shape of things and I kept looking for an out. The fairy tale option, maybe. The magic piece that would make the puzzle something you could hang on the wall and then somehow enjoy in contented satisfaction. There were some that almost looked like they might fit… but in the end, the jigsaw puzzle ended up scattered…
I knew it would never end up looking like the picture on the box…
Carrot
previous versions
Monday, November 28, 2005
Thursday, May 31, 2007
lyrics
Carrot
In the course of events
I’ve seen my goals hanging just like a carrot in front of my nose
In the struggle for those higher attainments, hell,
I’ve been to the top
and I’ve seen the drop on the other side
And I don’t care if your money’s no good
I don’t care if both your legs are wood
I don’t care what your ma says to do
Just come away with me
It takes time to get where you want to go
and its never quite the same when you get there
but that doesn’t stop me cause there’s still a couple things
I’d like to try with you and you never can tell
it might work out all right
You can sit and talk about life all day
as much as you can talk your questions wont go away
it’s a conversation that leads me to say
just come away with me
I’ve been burned before
and I’ll get burned again
I guess that’s the same for everyone
I know what I need
I know what I want
I know what I get —
they don’t always correspond
You can sit and talk about life all day
as much as you can talk your questions wont go away
it’s a conversation that leads me to say
just come away with me
(C)1974,2007, TK Major
New Song Alert!
Preachin’ democracy…
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
lyrics
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
(C)2007, TK Major
** 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.
It was the Nixon Era and I was young and angry and I knew this wasn’t a very good song but I was young and angry and it was the Nixon Era.
I present it here because maybe neither I nor the nation have really learned that much…
They Own the Judges
previous versions
Tuesday, December 27, 2005
lyrics
They Own the Judges
they own the judges
they own the congress
they own the papers
and the magazines
they own the cops
they own the armies and
they think that they own
you and me
they own the doctors
they get rich from our suffering
they own the churches
and the sinners inside
they own the colleges
the print-outs of knowledge
they own and use history
to their own ends
they own the farms
they own the farmers
they own the factories
and the workers lives
they own the gangsters
and they run the wores
they own Vegas
and the gamblers trapped inside
they move in the shadows
of presidents and corporations
the means of production
in a handful of hands
you can’t live without money
they enslave us with wages
they pull the strings
that make you and me dance
(C)1976, 2007, TK Major