dear son.mp3

Greenie and I watched a documentary in Terrorism this afternoon, a film about ordinary people in Iraq. One scene that struck me was an artist, a painter, sitting in front of his work and talking about a woman he'd seen, an old woman holding the remains of her son in a bag and telling him that his father had died, his sister had gotten married, his brother bought a store. The man looked straight at the camera and said, "It was like she'd crossed the threshold of tears. She couldn't feel anything."

The bell rang and I walked outside and wrote the first verse of this song. I finished it on the bus.

Dear son your sister married last month
to the boy she liked before the war.
Your brother finally saved enough
to buy his own store.
Dear son I'm sorry to say
your father died yesterday.
His last word were
"No more to endure."

Dear son another bombing today
as they've been bombing us all year.
Dear son it's hard to recall
when we didn't hide in fear. Read more »

Lyrics: me. Lead vocals: me. "Ooooo-oo-oo"-ing: me times two, thanks to Audacity. Percussion: me, tapping on the lid of a metal breadbox.

You believed in fairies
and you showed me where they lived
in little houses made from twigs and grass.
I’m sure they’re long gone now
crushed and blown away.
I know now that these things can never last.

I’m sure you think that I’m a bitch
and I know I think the same.
I still wonder what went wrong
but I think that I’m to blame.
I want to ask you if you’re happy
with the way you chose to go.
But we’re no longer speaking
so I guess I’ll never know.

I pass you in the halls,
keep my gaze straight ahead.
I can no longer see the girl I knew.
I know I went away
and I know that things have changed.
But I still want to ask:
What happened to you?
What happened to you?

You used to whisper in my ear
secrets only for me to hear.
And you know by now that I never told.
But even friends forever soon gets Read more »