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Defiance, Ohio - Oh Susquehanna! Posted Wednesday, March 26, 2008 07:58 PM by AnonymousReply
Rich,
In our last class you made a comment about our favorite spot of nature to play in as little kids. My favorite spot was McCullough Park near where I grew up. Anyways that concept immediately made me think of this Defiance, Ohio song.
We walk at the paths at the banks of the mighty Susquehanna, with our feet made muddy by your tributaries that trickle their way to the Chesapeake. It's like we follow I-83 down to harbor cities with strip malls and tar-mac, people swirling and teeming. It seemed so exciting, but now it seems like such a blight.
I grew up near Kentucky's Mt. Zion Road and all that was there was some old cemetery. All I wanted [was] to be able to walk to the store. Now I don't live there but there's too many stores, some apartments, and a Sunoco. And I wonder, what did they do with the bodies?
Oh, Susquehanna!
And I miss that place behind my house where I hiked and climbed and played, where I ditched this noisy century or just hid out from the decade. M-I homes thought it could stand to be updated, forced it all into a grid until it looked like the funny pages.
With every trace of life, it seems, confined within a frame, the faces move from day to day but the strips all look the same. And the punchlines are resoundingly unfunny for those trapped in this architecture of easy money.
And it feels like this could all come to no good. The kids who populate these cul-de-sacs will never know what stood beneath those cookie cutter houses: fields and streams and woods. They'll sit in cars and wait for mom to drive them out of this boring neighborhood.
-Matt Gozel
Chuck Ragan - It's What You Will Posted Tuesday, March 18, 2008 01:10 PM by AnonymousReply
I think this song is somewhat thematically connected to ideas we've been talking about in class. Enjoy.
Here are the lyrics:
We are the common not filth and disgrace. You were no better if you saw it that way. Lock up your scapegoats, shut out the lights. Lock up your secrets, give your skeletons the keys.
We will never be what you want the world to be. You'll never have a glimpse of what true love can see. Mind the world that's dying, it isn't yours to kill. Look around, it's what you will.
Yeah, we are the blue, so strong and confused. Tracking down dusty roads, finding what we lose. Dancing with the causalities; spirits of the wars, shedding a few tears for the beggars and the whores.
We will never be what you want the world to be. You'll never have a glimpse of what true love can see. Mind the world that's dying, it isn't yours to kill. Look around, it's what you will.
Maybe there's a mutiny rising with the sun. Come shed some light on the damage that was done. Maybe it's an army or a sleeping four year old, resting from a hard day of armyin' the cold.
We will never be what you want the world to be. You'll never have a glimpse of what true love can see. Mind the world that's dying, it isn't yours to kill. Look around, it's what you will. Look around, it's what you will.
