I wanted to make me a flag from the first row of wagons,
to make me a flag from the line of a keel.
I cut Jefferson stars and started to hang them
in the dark of a night I thought we'd never fill.
So good night and farewell, ye sweet Tennessee ladies,
good night and farewell, ye sweet ladies of Maine.
We must do what we want while we can
so when morning comes down
we can do what we must once again.
But I made me a flag from the streaked cheeks of children,
I made me a flag from the welts off a slave,
I made stars from the eyes of the dead and the nights
of the men that killed them made thread black as the grave.
So good night and farewell...
Pour me a drink of the distance and silence
you find at first light on American roads.
Sit with me a while, 'cause this love and this violence
I cannot understand them and they're all I know.
My grandfather he made a flag out of Westward,
my father he made him a flag out of Stone,
and I don't have a flag, but I would leave my daughters
stars and stripes broad and bright enough to make a home.
So goodnight and farewell, ye sweet Tennessee ladies,
good night and farewell, ye sweet ladies of Maine.
We must do what we want while we can
so when morning comes down
we can do what we must once again.
This makes me real nervous. Sounds like you're singing about, like, IDENTITY, and that it may actually have roots in a place that is partly geography, but largely political. I am having serious Tea Party heeby jeebies about this, but I also have such a big soft place in my heart for Woody Guthrie that I sorta want to like this. Is this a FOLK song? How risque.
ReplyDeleteDude.
ReplyDeleteThe song, to the extent I would know, is trying to make the flag more actively rather than accepting someone else's story about what it is and what it means. I don't mean to underscore the importance of national identity, only to work with it. I love the idea, believe in the idea of an identity that comes from domestic patterns which come in turn from the nature of a particular place. But I haven't much had that experience; so there I is; and I'm talking out of that. And so many other people have had some version of that experience but not noticed it; accepted instead someone else's version of the flag. It's what's done in a place, as well as the place itself, isn't it? And as much as that, it's what finds its way into words and images that have political heft. Although I don't completely like the word 'political' for this sense; the word 'identity' seems like an important one. One to keep warm in the hand for constant refashioning, to try to be really accurate about. But you may be excused of course from liking the song.
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