Native Son (song)

...this song (Native Son) was one of the first two I ever wrote...looking back I realize that it was in `88 that I strung up the guitar I had, learned some chords - and I was off!...the following year (making this song over 20 years old...fuckin' A!) I wrote this song and a little ditty called The Game and it's been downhill ever since - Ha-ha! both tunes came very easily, this one was probably written in about an hour and by god, NOTHING in my life ever came quite as automatically although elsewhere on this blog is a song that was written in about 25 minutes one night (i won't say which one)...in retrospect, I was corrupted early in life by the ease with which my first two songs came and it led me to think songwriting didn't seem so tough (and maybe it isn’t...for some) - i have many, many songs so achingly close to completion, it's always the case where if i can just find that one line or lyric that will elevate it to...poetry...my problem, as I see, it is that I love Dylan and Springsteen so much and listen to their music so often (both, daily, like medicine) that any song in comparison seems, oh...I don't know...crappy?...but what the fuck!...I’m engaging in the timeless practice of "speaking to the universe" and whatever may happen in this giant, ever-expanding universe, there is only one song called Native Son (well, that's not true, there are several out there, ha-ha!!) but there's only one written by Larry the (aspiring) Cree superhero...I damn near recognize the innocence in the clichéd lyrics that make it precious to me and it never changes that I am moved and find something entirely mystical about creating, conjuring something…out of nothing...as I’ve mentioned before, this blog may be entirely an exercise in ego if that's what the reader wants to think but as of this writing only about 400 visits have come down and each time I add or edit counts as one, so, it's more like I’ve had about 250 visits, no sensible person is trying to get famous buy posting simple songs on Freeblogger - get real!...but hey man, I'm a songwriter, poem maker, word wrangler extraordinaire and what could be more romantic an idea that writing a poem or a song even?...as a matter of fact, it’s ballsy!...onward, and thanks fer stopping by…whoever you are…


NATIVE SON

words and music by Larry Nicholson


I was born of the earth
Like my brothers those whom came first
Now I live in a city of steel
some days I forget how I should to feel
My grandmother’s grandmother lived in the days
Where the nation you lived was something to praise
But happened to our love for the land?
Now all that we care is to meet the demand…

Some days I walk through the streets of this place
I see once proud people laid out in disgrace
I’ve heard it said we deserve what we get
We’re useless and lazy, unworthy and yet
If someday you could through my eyes
You’d have understanding you might realize
If you always believe what you see and you hear
There will come a time when we’ll all disappear

I was born the native son
Till the end of time my spirit will run
Say what you like but nothing’s more true
Than I am no better but no worse than you
It’s taken some time but now I can see
Who it is that I’ve been and who I can be
And I’ll be…I will be free…

I hope wisdom will come from days that have passed
And I hope that of my kind you won’t see the last
It’s a time where matters most is what sells
We think we know all but we don’t know ourselves
The measure of a man’s not the car that he drives
It’s how affects another man’s life
There are ones who can see and will understand
we’re all brothers in spirit if not on the land

I was born the native son…


© 2010 Champsteen Publishing