Returning the Bones and Random thoughts ...
Returning the bones and random thoughts ... it is funny how things come around again. Several years ago I read an article in “Nature” (could have been “Science”) magazine about politics, Native Americans and their dealings with archeologists and anthropologists. Essentially, they characterized digs as nothing more than grave robbing and required the return of bones, etc. … and in all honesty, I agreed.
That would have been roughly in the mid-90’s when I read the article and soon after that, I started putzing around with lyrics. Like many of us here, I too have piles of half written and unfinished projects and those lyrics got thrown into one of those piles. Part of the reason for abandoning the song idea had, at least in part, to do with the fact that at the time I was a 30’s something (just turned 49 two weeks ago), middle class type guy living in the NJ suburbs and I was having a hard time reconciling that I was attempting to write about the plight of a people in the first person with my place in life (if that makes sense).
In any event, the abandoned, incomplete and completely un-wordsmithed lyrics (it actually took me awhile to find them buried in piles of crap in the garage) are at the bottom of this post and obviously need work but I am throwing them out there because of this really bazaar article I read yesterday about a Viet Nam war era doctor who kept a macabre war memento … the arm bones of a Viet Cong soldier he had amputated.
http://www.foxnews.com/wo...to-vietnamese-soldier/ The doctor found the original owner of the arm and he returned the bones.
Misc. ideas for verses lyricsMy people suffer injustice and hatred
Our wisdom is lost to your sword
You’ve brought disease, booze and the guns
Tools to exploit your control
Human and bison are butchered and slaughtered
Bloodied lands’ got no soul
The bones and remains, fragments of culture
Our legacy is lost to your world
Chorus ideaDriven from the earth
Hear the moans
Share with us the smoke
Return the bones