listen to the song here: https://soundcloud.com/joel-crow/buried
I will not fall, like over-ripe fruit, into your hands.
If one of us stalls, it does not then mean the other will stand,
so pound your shoe, you little boy!
Will envy and hate divide our state, the haves and have-nots?
Will there be revolt like a thunderbolt? Or slow drop-by-drop, dividing our Republic here?
Will all democracy disappear?
Khrushchev, Khrushchev, so confidently you said you knew.
Oh, Khrushchev, Khrushchev. Your prophecy came but only half-true.
Do you want the full truth?
We will be buried, we all will be buried in dust.
We'll be forgotten, we all will become what we must.
And our finest freedom fighters will go the way of all men,
but Freedom, Freedom will live again!
So you sing with the voice of the people, the complete collective agrees
to downsize the successful to keep the feeble on their knees!
So you ostracize! You cut down to size! A perfect-people machine!
A distressing dystopian scene!
But you are the voice of the people? Well, the future sounds different to me.
Khrushchev, Khrushchev, all of your cities, and all of ours, will be rubble.
Khrushchev. And all of your sons, and all of ours, will soon wield the shovel.
And we will be buried in dust, because we must.
And our finest freedom fighters will go the way of all men.
But freedom, precious freedom. Freedom will live again!
I wrote this song, it must have been almost a year ago now, and all that time William and I have been attempting to reconcile the very different sounds of piano and electric guitar into an audible track. It's been slow-going, as we've both been very busy. But if we receive enough positive feedback, I'm sure we'll be able to turn out more songs very quickly to complete this project. I've already written several songs for the purpose, hopefully some of them will be usable. We're already planning to use the song Legalized Infanticide, a song I wrote several years ago, as it has a similar heavy sound. You can read about that song here: http://crowlyricjournal.blogspot.com/2013/04/legalized-infanticide.html
And you can listen to it here: (link coming soon)
This song includes many references, some rather obscure, so I'll do my best to briefly explain. It's largely centered around the threats and assurances of Nikita Khrushchev, the leader of the Soviet Union during the Cold War. He reportedly told Ezra Taft Benson, during a private meeting, that slowly but surely Communism would overtake Capitalism. That with slow doses of Socialist policies we would become just like the Soviet Union. "You will fall, like overripe fruit into our hands." he said. The much more famous line he shouted during a public meeting is the one that the chorus of this song is drawn from, "We will bury you!" It's the same idea, Khrushchev persistently believes and proclaims that Communism will bury Capitalism, that freedom of the individual will be buried for the sake of the collective.
This song is my answer to that claim, and many still today claim it. Many are convinced that our country is traveling along a teleological road, where the future will always be more righteous than the past, hence such phrases like "the wrong side of history." Of course the unspoken assumption in that phrase is that future historians will definitely have a stronger moral code than we do today, but history itself shares a different perspective. Some of these revolutionaries, who are convinced that we can form a society based on Communism that, unlike ever other Communist society that's ever existed, will not end with the deaths of many innocents, some of these revolutionaries believe it will come like a thunderbolt, a violent coup of our government. Others, like Khrushchev, and like our current president, believe it will be a slow drop-by-drop. The government begins with socialized medicine, and from there stems our complete dependence on their plans for us. The current situation looks very bleak for freedom indeed.
However, I do not believe that Communism will bury Capitalism. I believe that they both will be buried. We all will be buried in dust, in time. And no matter how tyrannical the government becomes, Freedom will always live in the hearts of men. Those of us who value Freedom will fight for it, and we will all die and be buried, but Freedom will always live again. If Communism does overtake this country, it will not be the Communism Khrushchev had in mind. Or if Capitalism reemerges in all its former glory, it also will be a new brand of Capitalism. Perhaps not something better or worse, but certainly something different. Never will we construct a system on this earth so perfect that it will not spoil with time, wood rots and gold corrodes, but in time they both will be long gone.
When this country has become a mere shadow of its former magnificence, perhaps no other country will ever again rise to the same level, where the Freedom of our hearts is enshrined in law so that the leaders' hands will be tied from building barricades against the fulfillment of dreams and opportunities of the common citizens (the leaders' motives may be nefarious, or may be for the common good, but it comes to the same result). Maybe no other country will praise Freedom again, as we have done, and if that's the case, then the loss is great indeed. But whatever the future holds, we should throw our fists into the air together and be empowered by the knowledge that in our children's hearts, and in our grandchildren's hearts, Freedom will live again.
