InsaneJournal

Current mood:	furious
Current music:	You figure it out...

A Persistent Earworm for the Last Few Weeks
The song is "Where Ya Gonna Run To" by Redgum. Lyrics below the fold. File available here at sendspace (2.31MB, .wma format)

Mother and child playing on the lawn
It's a middle class home on a Sunday morning
And the mother says, son, where ya gonna run
Where ya gonna run to now?

I just jumped bail on a dope bust mum
And I'm saying goodbye and then the drug squad come
And in the name of the law
They punch him in the jaw
Where ya gonna run to now?

A long white car out of Tullamarine
A government member to the Carribean
And a man with a broom
Yells across the room
Where ya gonna run to now?

Will you have to tell lies when the kids ask you why
The horizon's a blanket of gloom
When the battle lines draw
Which way will you turn

Terania Creek's got a dozer track
And we'll never ever get Lake Pedder back
A director and a graph
And a million dollar laugh
Where ya gonna run to now?

Enrich the oxide out of Port Pirie
And the toxic gases they won't even see
But where ya gonna go
When the North wind blows
Where ya gonna run to now?

And your loungeroom is screening Nationwide
And you've just given blood to the bank
And the books on your shelves
Are a measure of all that you've earned
Will you have to tell lies when the kids ask you why
The horizon's a blanket of gloom
When the battle lines draw
Which way will you turn

Shake me, wake me, tell me it's a dream
I've got a B-52 on my TV screen
And a man in a tie
Pointing to the sky
Where ya gonna run to now

Mother and child playing on the lawn
It's a middle class home on a Sunday morning
And the mother says, son, where ya gonna run
Where ya gonna run to now?

I get the second-last verse running through my head quite a lot lately - particularly when I'm reading about things like the rioting in London, and the way the USA is turning out. I grew up under the shadow of the Cold War, and the terror of the Reagan years, when it seemed I wouldn't make it to thirty. I'm forty now, and I wonder whether fifty is on the horizon. It seemed to be this time last year. This year? I don't know - and that makes me angry, terrified, and sad. Angry, because things were supposed to get better. Terrified, because I don't know that they will. And sad, because I'm not the only one who believed things were supposed to be better, and I'm not the only one who is probably feeling betrayed because they aren't.

There's nowhere to run to. I just have to make my stand here.

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