Again, from "Across The Borderline".
Song called Heartland.
"There's a home place under fire tonight in the heartland, and the bankers are taking my home and my land from me, there's a big achin' hole in my chest now where my heart was, and a hole in the sky where God used to be."
Wicked, wicked words. They sum up the ultimate in despair.
Your heart is broken, your soul is terminally ill, and you cannot even believe in a deity to offer you hope.
When you get to that place you are lost. Severed from anything that makes you feel alive. Your humanity has been beaten down and you feel like empty flesh walking through a meaningless life.
That is what the world does to you.
You don't have to lose your home and your land. Just go to work every day. Deal with the hypocrisy and lies your employer dishes out; deal with the pettiness of co-workers, drift farther away every day from any dream you ever had.
I don't know who drew up the blueprint for life. You want to think it evolved "naturally" or that some god set it up with a purpose to be understood at the end.
It is more likely that the moneyed elite control our destinies and always have. Their cash shields them from having to actually feel.
"There's a young boy closin' his eyes tonight in a heartland, who will wake up a man with some land and a loan he can't pay, his American dream fell apart at the seams."
Over and over again. This is what being human is. Struggling against all odds to take a stab at dignity and falling short generation after generation.
The chorus goes: "My Amercian dream fell apart at the seams, you tell me what it means, you tell me what it means, my American dream fell apart at the seams, you tell me what it means."
Willie wrote it, he and Bob Dylan sing it together. The perfect duo for a song like this.
In "Fistful of Rain" Warren Zevon wrote: "You can dream the American Dream, but you sleep with the lights on and wake up with a scream."
Choose your words, choose your artist, it doesn't matter.
If you look at life realistically, if you can avoid the phony optimism that results in obedience, you are forced to wonder what the hell it is all about.
It is hard and getting harder.
The song writers you are so in love with because of their “Real Life Lyrics” are so rich they have no clue how the “Real People” live.
ReplyDeleteThey are all getting richer writing songs about how hard life is that we all lap up like puppy dogs. The more songs they write about our struggles, the more songs we buy. Each song we buy is more money in their pocket so their life gets easier again.
They are all wealthy enough to contribute to causes to help. I know Willie does the Farm Aid thing, but how much does he actually contribute financially? People like you and me contribute $10, $25, or if we are real lucky, $50 to things such as Farm Aid. I am sure the percentage of our salary that we contribute is a lot larger a percentage than what they contribute.
I would love to see all of their financial contribution lists. I would guess they are all a lot shorter than we would expect them to be and we would all be very disappointed.
I like your writing because you can tell it is real. You are not writing it for a profit making reason. You are writing from your heart, what you live every day, and it shows.
Don’t try to live by THEIR lyrics. You should live to fulfill YOUR dreams!!!
A New Reader