So this is what I do...
The song cycle I've told some of you about, well, I feel like sharing how exactly I go about researching and composing the songs. Here's an example I'm especially proud of. This is the song I wrote for Antonio Gramsci. Gramsci was an activist, founder, and leader of the Italian Communist Party. All of you people who have been inundated with theory, Gramsci's the one responsbile for the concet of hegemony in social theory. Gramsci was born on the island of Sardinia, where he worked various odd jobs for merchants and farmers at a young age, despite his precarious health (he had a malformed spine, which left him hunchbacked and various serious internal maladies). A brilliant student however, he earned a scholarship to the University of Turin in 1911. The newly industrializing city was a hotbed of socialist activity, and Gramsci joined the Sociality Party in 1913 and began organizing in factories while studying philosophy and linguistics. Gramsci became an influential journalist and intellectual in the Party as was known as an "abstentionist"; in other words, while he didn't attempt to waylay reformers like other Party members, he was a die-hard and did not believe in reformist politics. He endorsed an active militant resistance to state power as well as an effective intellectual engine driving the policies and tactics of the worker's movement. in 1926 however, he broke Party line due to the ascension of Stalin and aligned with Trotsky against him. That same year he was imprisoned by Mussolini's Fascist government despite the fact that as an elected member of the Italian Parliament, he was granted constitutional immunity. His health suffered and in 1934, after several appeals from his family and the Soviet Union, including several failed prisoner exchanges, he was granted conditional freedom to visit hospitals. However, this proved too late and he died at the age of 46 that same year. Gramsci's work focused on a belief that cultural hegemony was the source of capitalist authority, in other words he believed that it was the inculcation of liberal democratic/capitalist values, through a system of education, state coercion, and intellectual monopolization that reified the power of the capitalist state. Gramsci proposed an early form of autonomism, which believed that it was important to raise the class consciousness of workers through an active attempt to produce intellectuals from the working class who could self actualize the revolutionary potential of workers themselves, rather than the Party, by producing "organic" education, intellectual, and tactical movements to resist state control and bourgeois authority. Gramsci found ways to smuggle writing utensils into his cell and produced the multi-volume "Prison Notebooks", where he expounded on his concepts of hegemony, the organic intellectual, praxis, and other philosophical investigations. He also wrote important notes about fascism seeing it as an extensionof the hegemonic status of capitalism through an actualization of state coercion; in other words, they are cut from the same cloth. No wonder the prosecutor in his case famously told the judge "For twenty years, we must stop this brain from functioning." Ironically, Gramsci still managed to quote dense passages from philosophy, history, and the works of Marx from memory with astounding accuracy while isolated in prison.
Gramsci's continuing resistance, and his refusal to compromise or capitulate to Fascist demands for recantation or information of associates sealed his death, but in his letters home he remained defiant, lively, and a devoted father and partisan on behalf of the disenfranchised. He was not a dogmatic Marxist; in the "Prison Notebooks", he also wrote important critiques of economic determinism and historical materialism (Stalin's doctrine which stated the history demanded the prolngued dictatorship of the proletariat actualized in the Party). Despite his socialist leanings, his experiences as an organizer made Gramsci an indefagitable humanist and believer in the potential of the workers themselves. After reading the legnthy and informative introduction to the 1 volume selection from "The Prison Notebooks" (ed. by Hoare & Smith, International Publishers, 2005) and his letters from prison (Columbia Univeristy Press, 1993) I wrote these lyrics (the music's done too). Some of the lines are rough paraphrase from the letters (the chorus addresed to his wife, for instance is a collection of letters where he asks his wife to kiss the children and reasures her that though he misses them and fears for them, he is determined not to falter; I focused on these domestic issues in an attempt to seperate the theorist from the father and husband victimized by the repression of a Fascist state).
VERSE 1
I followed my heart
from the fields to the factories
I was crooked & frail, all hunched over in pain
I was sickly & cold
in the backrooms of Turin
But I learned to care
for much more than pain
Yes, I learned to care
for much more than pain
VERSE 2
I look at the machinist
as I admired the farmer
They carry a strength
I could never possess
Their backs made of iron
Their hearts great as emperors
Yet they're bent low
Just as I am
Yes, they're bent low
Beneath the burden of greed
CHORUS 1
So farewell my sweet one
Please kiss the children
Softly for me
And though I miss you
I am not frightened
Though my body is failing
My will is like fire
VERSE 3
This prison is cold
My cell damp & musty
But it cannot chill,
the warmth in my blood
To stop me from thinking
To stop me from fighting
They'll have to kill me
And it seems that they will
They'll have to kill me
And it seems that they will
VERSE 4
But why should I weep
when this fight that I die in
contains a love
much greater than just one heart
So to hell with the blackshirts
& the bankers and landlords
When their statues have crumbled
Our hearts will rage on
CHORUS 2
So farewell my comrades
Please keep throwing wrenches into the gears
Though this world that I've left
is a world that has changed much
There are still chains to be cast in the fire
Yes, there are still chains
to be cast in the fire
VERSE 5
I followed my heart
from the fields to the factories
I was crooked & frail, all hunched over in pain
I was sickly & cold
in the backrooms of Turin
But I learned to care
for much more than pain
Yes, I learned to care
for much more than pain
Hopefully the song conveys the lessons of Gramsci's determination and people, regardless of political affiliation, can admire him for his courage and conviction. I felt as if his example and his life and spirit could speak directly to this period in time, which is why, the final chorus is addressed specifically to us, here and now.
Gramsci's continuing resistance, and his refusal to compromise or capitulate to Fascist demands for recantation or information of associates sealed his death, but in his letters home he remained defiant, lively, and a devoted father and partisan on behalf of the disenfranchised. He was not a dogmatic Marxist; in the "Prison Notebooks", he also wrote important critiques of economic determinism and historical materialism (Stalin's doctrine which stated the history demanded the prolngued dictatorship of the proletariat actualized in the Party). Despite his socialist leanings, his experiences as an organizer made Gramsci an indefagitable humanist and believer in the potential of the workers themselves. After reading the legnthy and informative introduction to the 1 volume selection from "The Prison Notebooks" (ed. by Hoare & Smith, International Publishers, 2005) and his letters from prison (Columbia Univeristy Press, 1993) I wrote these lyrics (the music's done too). Some of the lines are rough paraphrase from the letters (the chorus addresed to his wife, for instance is a collection of letters where he asks his wife to kiss the children and reasures her that though he misses them and fears for them, he is determined not to falter; I focused on these domestic issues in an attempt to seperate the theorist from the father and husband victimized by the repression of a Fascist state).
VERSE 1
I followed my heart
from the fields to the factories
I was crooked & frail, all hunched over in pain
I was sickly & cold
in the backrooms of Turin
But I learned to care
for much more than pain
Yes, I learned to care
for much more than pain
VERSE 2
I look at the machinist
as I admired the farmer
They carry a strength
I could never possess
Their backs made of iron
Their hearts great as emperors
Yet they're bent low
Just as I am
Yes, they're bent low
Beneath the burden of greed
CHORUS 1
So farewell my sweet one
Please kiss the children
Softly for me
And though I miss you
I am not frightened
Though my body is failing
My will is like fire
VERSE 3
This prison is cold
My cell damp & musty
But it cannot chill,
the warmth in my blood
To stop me from thinking
To stop me from fighting
They'll have to kill me
And it seems that they will
They'll have to kill me
And it seems that they will
VERSE 4
But why should I weep
when this fight that I die in
contains a love
much greater than just one heart
So to hell with the blackshirts
& the bankers and landlords
When their statues have crumbled
Our hearts will rage on
CHORUS 2
So farewell my comrades
Please keep throwing wrenches into the gears
Though this world that I've left
is a world that has changed much
There are still chains to be cast in the fire
Yes, there are still chains
to be cast in the fire
VERSE 5
I followed my heart
from the fields to the factories
I was crooked & frail, all hunched over in pain
I was sickly & cold
in the backrooms of Turin
But I learned to care
for much more than pain
Yes, I learned to care
for much more than pain
Hopefully the song conveys the lessons of Gramsci's determination and people, regardless of political affiliation, can admire him for his courage and conviction. I felt as if his example and his life and spirit could speak directly to this period in time, which is why, the final chorus is addressed specifically to us, here and now.