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letra de korea - ani difranco & utah phillips

[intro]
i have just left your fighting sons in korea
they have met all tests there, and i can report to you without reservation
they are splendid in every way

[verse]
ever since the kids have been little they’ve always known that i vanish from their lives periodically
and, um, they never really had any idea what it is that i do
what do i do anyway?
if i don’t know why should they?

we never traveled together at all
(since the kids have been little they’ve always known that i vanish from their lives periodically
and, um, they never really had any idea what it is that i do)

brandon, the fourteen year old, he got to travel with me during the summer
but we got a chance to talk to each other as adults
you know, as adults instead of just father and son
we left boston, we were heading up to the left bank cafe in blue hill, maine
and brandon, just above marblehead, turned to me and he said
“how did you get to be like that?”
it’s a fair question
i knew what he meant, but he didn’t have all the language to say exactly what he meant
what he meant to say was
“why is it that you are fundamentally alienated from the entire institutional structure of society?”
and i said, “well i’ve never been asked that, you know?
now don’t listen to the radio and don’t talk to me for half an hour while i think about it.”
so we drove and talked
we were on highway one because it was pretty and close to the water
got up to the maine border and there was a picnic area off to the side, with some picnic tables
it was a bright, clear day
so i pulled into their parking lot and sat down at the picnic tables
and i said, “now sit down, i want to tell you a story, cause i’ve thought about it.”
we sat down, and i said, “you know, i was over in korea.”
and he said, “yeah, i’ve always wondered about that
did you shoot anybody?”
and i said, as honestly as i could, “well i don’t know
but that’s not the story”
i said, “listen to what i’m telling you
i was up at kutamari gap there by the imjin river
there were about 75,000 chinese soldiers on the other side
and they all wanted me out of there
with every righteous reason that you could think of
i had long since figured out that i was the wrong person in the wrong place at the wrong time for the most specious of reasons
but there i was
my clothing was rotting on my body
every exotic mold in the world was attacking my clothing and my person
my boots had big holes in them from the rot
i wanted to swim in the imjin river and get that feeling of death, that feeling of rot off of me
the chinese soldiers were on the other side
they were swimming, they were having a wonderful time
but there was a rule, a regulation against swimming in the imjin river
i thought that was foolish
but then a young korean, worked for us as a carpenter by the name of young-sik han
all of his family had been k!lled off in the war
but he said to me, in what english he had
‘you know, when we get married here
the young married couple moves in with the elders
they move in with the grandparents
but there’s nothing growing, everything’s been destroyed so there’s no food
so the first baby that’s born, the oldest, the old man goes out with a jug of water and a blanket
and sits on the bank of the imjin river and waits to die
sits there until he dies
and then he’ll roll down the bank into the river
and his body will be carried out to the sea
and we don’t want you to swim in the imjin river because our elders are floating out to sea.’
[verse]
that’s when it began to crumble for me, y’know
that’s when i… well, i ran away
not just from that, i ran away from the blueprint for self-destruction i had been handed as a man for excess
for violence in excess
for s-xual excess
for racial excess
we had a commanding officer who said of the gi babies
fathered by gis and korean mothers
that the korean government wouldn’t care for so they were in these orphanages
and he said, ‘well as sad as that is
someday this will really help the korean people because it’ll raise the intelligence level.’
that’s what we were dealing with, you know?
so i ran away
i ran down to seoul city down towards ascom
not to the army, i ran away to the place called the korea house
it was korean civilians reaching out to gis to give them some better vision of who they were than we were getting up at the divisions
and they hid me for three weeks
late one night, cause they didn’t have any clothes that would fit me
late one night, it was a stormy, stormy night
rain falling in sheets
i could go out, cause they figured n0body would see me
we walked through the mud and the rain
seoul city was devastated
and they took me to a concert at the ewha womans university
large auditorium with sh-ll holes in the ceiling and the rain pouring through the holes
and klieg lights on the stage hooked up to car batteries
this wasn’t the uso, this was the korean students association
the person they had invited to sing—i was the only white person there
the person they invited to sing was marian anderson
the great black operatic soprano who’d been on tour in j-pan, you see
there she was, singing “o freedom” and “n0body knows the trouble i’ve seen”
and i watched her through the rain coming through the ceiling
and thought back to salt lake and my father, syd
who ran the capital theater, which was a movie house
but it had been an old vaudeville house
and he wanted to bring live performances back to the capital
in 1948 he invited marian anderson to come and sing there
i remembered, we went to the train station to pick her up
and took her to the biggest hotel in town, the hotel utah
but they wouldn’t let her stay there, because she was black
and i remembered my father’s humiliation and her humiliation
as i saw her singing there through the rain
and i realized right then
i said, brandon, right then
i knew that it was all wrong
that it all had to change
and that that change had to start with me

- ani difranco utah phillips

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