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Overview
Lines from a Mined Mind brings together lyrics and musings from the twenty-five-year recording career of John Trudell, an internationally acclaimed poet, musician, and leader of the American Indian Movement. More than a simple anthology, this collection goes deeper, revealing the incendiary intersection of music and activism.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781555916787 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Fulcrum Publishing |
| Publication date: | 04/01/2008 |
| Pages: | 280 |
| Sales rank: | 243,837 |
| Product dimensions: | 4.50(w) x 8.50(h) x 0.60(d) |
About the Author
John Trudell is an acclaimed poet, national recording artist, actor, and activist whose international following reflects the universal language of his words, work, and message. Trudell (Santee Sioux) was a spokesperson for the Indian of All Tribes occupation of Alcatraz Island from 1969 to 1971. He then worked with the American Indian Movement, serving as chairman from 1973 to 1979.
Read an Excerpt
Lines from a Mined Mind
By John Trudell
Fulcrum Publishing
Copyright © 2008 John TrudellAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-55591-873-6
CHAPTER 1
Tribal Voice
1983
When today feels like yesterday's leftovers and tomorrow's going to be more of the same kinda like dodging the bullet again and again time crawls because it knows what's coming
Listening:
Listening One Time Grandmother Moon Grandfathers Whispering
Voices Catching Up:
Last Rush in Babylon Arms Race Alone
Heart Taker:
Brown Earth Color Woman Heart Taker The First Time Sheltered Moments
Living in Reality:
Sung in the End Endure Living in Reality Diablo Canyon It Took the Times For Ronald America Industrial Slave Without Earth
The Cleansing:
Little Daughter Sister, Sister Tears of Salt For My Children Yesterdays Laughter Young Ones Listen
I Went So Willingly:
Trying to Forget When You Left Her Beauty I Went So Willingly Like a Butterfly All That Was Left The Ones Who Knew Me
Look At Us:
Never Too Loudly Very Eyes A Dimension Called Loneliness To God Look at Us
Listening
I was listening
To the voices of life
Chanting in unison
Carry on the struggle
The generations
Surge together
In resistance
To meet
The reality of power
Mother Earth
Embraces her children
In natural beauty
To last beyond
Oppressors brutality
As the butterfly floats into life
We are the spirit of natural life
Which is forever
The power of understanding
Real connections to spirit
Is meaning our resistance
Our struggle
Is not sacrifice lost
It is
Natural energy properly used
One Time
I was visiting with my relatives
The clouds the mountains
The sky the trees
My relatives touched my spirit
Nudged it lovingly
Listen to us impatient one
We are forever
You must remember the gentleness of time
You are struggling to be who you are
You say you want to learn the old ways
Struggling to learn when all you must do
Is remember remember the people
Remember sky and earth
Remember the people
Have always struggled to live
In harmony in peace
Struggle against selfishness and weakness
So the people may live as nations
The old ways are hard
The people have always had
To work together
Remember impatient one
Remember and live
Do not be afraid of truth
Respect discipline
Share your life
So the people may live
Honor sky and earth
Honor yourself
Honor your relations
Remember impatient one
The gentleness of time
Grandmother Moon
You are more than light in the night
You are more than the moon
You are spirit connection
Your energy is our life
You are memories to generations past
You are the creator of sensations
That will always last
You are the knowledge the teacher
The influence to keep the people sane
You are a healer for spirit pain
Grandmother moon
We love you and we are angry
At the invaders who trash you
And violate our universe with
Their mechanical uncleanliness
We pray for you for us and for the
Invader who just can't comprehend
Respect love or the balance of life
We do not join the invading madness
From the way they act
It speaks of spirit sadness
Machine money progress
Is the cause of our common abuse
We see you grandmother
We feel you
We love you
We know through your reality
We will endure
We are one
We pray for you
We pray to you
Grandfathers Whispering
Grandfathers whispering
In the wind
Rejoice at the life
You are a part of
Natural energy
Bound to natural laws
You will survive this
Temporary madness imposed upon you
Natural life is longer
Than oppressors illusionary insanity
Spirits experience human deeds
But need not end
This is just one place of changes
Spirit life is forever if you want
The universe is your home
You can survive here
Do not let them kill you
Keep your spirit strong
For distant stars and distant drums
Are the memories of spirit infancy
Children of earth let the spirit live
So you can grow in your place
In the universe
Last Rush in Babylon
Last rush in Babylon
Voices catching up voices catching up
Watch out child watch out child
Babylon falling down falling down
Society a broken promise
Economies war citizen whores
Political pimps
Leaving us flat on our backs
Trading today
Waiting for the promised land
Roles playing roles
Covering every days fear
Going off to work
Having the job done on us
In the eyes of god
Building the bomb
Loving thyself hating thyself
In the illusion
Voices catching up voices catching up
Watch out child watch out child
Babylon falling down falling down
Caligula laughs loudly through time
Twisting love to get at the sexes
Class is material consumed
Designer worlds create electric impulses
Turning down life the real good-bye
See it in our face see it every place
Last rush in Babylon
Voices catching up voices catching up
Watch out child watch out child
Babylon falling down falling down
Arms Race
Jackboots pounding earth
Military precision
Dissecting elements of life
Taking apart instead of healing
Generals and gods
Fascists and oil wells
Man images and machines
Petrochemical societies
Trying to hide the sun
Jackboots pounding earth
Creaking leather boots
Dead cows crying
In a world turned
To a planetary slaughterhouse
Wandering amongst the opulence
Wondering what not to touch
Times not knowing times getting bit
Times of temptation times of seduction
Wandering in the poverty touched by everything
Knowing the bite no time for temptation
Only time for doing
Babylon in terror
World run over by machines
The economics of captured dreams
The rich are the poorer
While the poor are waiting
Everyone pretending to live
Calling exploitation progress
Calling submission freedom
Calling madness profit
Calling earth a plan et
Plaguing her with civilization
Alone
We see you in your loneliness
Sometimes we wonder
Which is lonelier
Being alone together
Or being lonely
Alone
With no protection that you know of
Principles replaced by nothing
The lies becoming desperation
Outrageous violence
Internal and external
Forming distractions from life
Making the loneliness
A new type of alone
Alone with your machines
Alone with your fear
Alone with your oppressor
Alone with roles played
Alone from the past
Alone from the future
Stranded in the universe
Separated from earth sun moon sky
With only god to comfort you
While he sanctions war and greed
Messengers clubbing you
Heavenly threats and promises
A basis for exploitation of everything
Even yourself
Giving up together
Surrendering
Alone
Brown Earth Color Woman
Brown earth color woman
Takes me into the secrets of her sighs
When I step into the brown of her eyes
I find sight of special dreams
Fluttering eyelashes and fluttering hearts
Dancing in magic no one understands
When I step into the brown of her eyes
I find the comfort of a friend
A friend sharing shelter
When only a friend can know too
When I step into the brown of her eyes
She teaches loving through caring
Snuggling softly in my heart
Helping me to just feel good
When I step into the brown of her eyes
The mysteries are different from confusion
Illusions are handled by seeing through
Clearly there is life ahead
When I step into the brown of her eyes
Brown earth color woman
Takes me into the secrets of her sighs
Gentling me in a balance of passion
Heart Taker
Smiling into
Eyes hungry for smiles
You take me where I want to be
You're my heart taker
You're a brand new day
Bringing me in view of the sun
I see the sun rise in your laughter
I hear the forever songs in your kiss
I feel the future in your beating heart
I abandon loneliness for your embrace
You're my heart taker
Come to take my heart
Before it fades away
Blending into my dreams
Showing me secrets of life
Holding my hand in the universe
You put together a breaking soul
Smiling into eyes hungry for smiles
Enchanting today with your magic
Tomorrow can't help but be good
You brought the world back to me
When I thought I wanted to drift away
You're my heart taker
Taking me to joy
Gentling me during a life storm
Lifting me
Between the clouds and the sky
Bringing me in view of the sun
The First Time
The first time
Your eyes caressed mine
To say it was like magic is to tame
The gentle passion and moments
Shared in the seeing of a glance
You took my hand
And opened my heart
To the beauty
Of what I did not see
I tried to understand
Why and how
These things happen
But you explained so much
With your laughing eyes
To make me
Not waste my time worrying
Or wondering is this meant to be
The first time
Your eyes caressed mine
The winds sang their songs
The sunshine shivered with joy
Warming the life within me
Sheltered Moments
Tender love in sheltered moments
Blowing my mind from the beginning
I was drifting through trying
Trying to live a life
Good things happening suddenly
When the days were dark
You brought the sunlight nights
Touching me in your being
Tender love in sheltered moments
You were fame you were fortune
You were peace you were vision
Things I thought I wanted and
Things I really needed
Blowing my mind from the beginning
Your kiss melted the night
Beauty burned in forever fires
Heartbreak heart beating wildly
Flaming love sparks and stars
Showering the world
Tomorrow is today is yesterday
In your kiss time didn't have a chance
Tender love in sheltered moments
Blowing my mind from the beginning
I was drifting through trying
Trying to live a life
Sung in the End
The children laugh
The old ones laugh
The newborn cry
The elders weep
The knowledge of
Infants and elders
Separated only by years
Adulthood lost
To grown-up fear
The only security
Being insecurity
Changing crying
To weeping
The wisdom of
Infants and elders
Crying and laughing
Weeping and laughing
Songs in the beginning
Sung in the end
Endure
The people cry out
Tears of anger
Tears of sorrow
Flowing
Giving birth to resistance
Young ones
To remember struggle
For the people cry out
Tears of happiness
Tears of joy
Washing the pain
Cleaning the spirit
Giving strength
The generations
Remembering the past
To rebuild the future
For weeping is
Another way of laughing
And resisting and
Outlasting the enemy
Living in Reality
Calling us red Indians
We have been the colors
On a chameleons back
Changing with time
Altering the larger pattern
Surviving genocide
Because we have to
Living in reality
We are targets of your unfairness
With warriors for targets
You create your own destruction
This is how we bring you down
Target by target you wound yourself
Using your greed we watch
Your spirit fade
Living in reality
We can endure your cages
Your bullets your lies
Your confusion
We know you have
Destroyed your peace
Living in reality
You only exist
Diablo Canyon
Today I challenged the nukes
The soldiers of the state
Placed me in captivity
Or so they thought
They bound my wrists in their
Plastic handcuffs
Surrounding me with their
Plastic minds and faces
They ridiculed me
But I could see through
To the ridicule they brought
On themselves
They told me squat over there
By the trash
They left a soldier to guard me
I was the Vietcong
I was Crazy Horse
Little did they understand
Squatting down in the earth
They placed me with my power
My power to laugh
Laugh at their righteous wrong
Their sneers and their taunts
Gave me clarity
To see their powerlessness
It was in the way they dressed
And in the way they acted
They viewed me as an enemy
A threat to their rationalizations
I felt pity for them
Knowing they will never be free
I was their captive
But my heart was racing
Through the generations
The memories of eternity
I was beyond their reach
I would be brought to the
Internment camp
To share my time with allies
The last time I saw them
They were standing
In their twelve hour shifts
Addicted
To their chain of command
Waiting to be told what to do
Forgetting about me
Thinking
I was just another protester
They were finished with
Never understanding
I am not finished with them
For I am the resistance
And as always I will return
It Took the Times
It took the times
We didn't care
About living
To learn
Survivors survive
Whether they
Want or not
It took the pain the grief
And the dying
To remember
What gets forgotten
In the living
It took the lessons
Of a thousand generations
To get through the
Time of yesterday
It took the joyful songs
Of laughter to last
Beyond today
Into tomorrow
It took the fragrance
Of a womans touch
To realize
Brothers and sisters
Are never alone
It took the joining
Of earth and sky
To create
Centering the universe
For Ronald America
This time I almost wanted to believe you
When you said it would be all right
You wanted to end the suffering
And the deliberateness of the wrongs
Were only in my imagination
This time I almost wanted to believe you
When you implied the times of
Sorrow were buried in the past
Never would we have to worry
About shadows and memories
Clinging and draining the strength
From our souls
This time I almost wanted to believe you
When you spoke of peace and love and
Caring and duty and god and destiny
But somehow the death in your eyes and
Your bombs and your taxes and your
Greed and your face-lift told me
This time I cannot afford to believe you
Industrial Slave
Industrial slave
Capitalist and Communist
Imperialist
Smiling with false faces
Beckoning us
With their lies about progress
Wanting us to enjoy
The rape of earth
And our minds
Industrial slave
Forked-tongue
Legalistic contract chains
Turning our visions
To technologic nightmares
National security warmakers
Desecrating the natural world
And gods still trying to get over
What you done to his boy
Industrial slave
Material bound
Law and order
Religious salvation
Individually alone
Industrial slave
Without Earth
Without earth
There is no heaven
Streets of gold
Angels wings eternal life
Corporate reich nuclear regimes
Maximizing profit eating identities
Plundering natural allies
As though earth is dead
Allowing religious rite
Collection plate tributes
To church and state
With Christ still hanging
From the cross
Echoing industrial war cries
Warring against body and soul
Attacking spirit
Lying to enslave with an illusion
About freedom
Without earth there is no heaven
Earth and sky universal power
Life energies creative flow
In which we are a pattern
To keep balance
Harmony a gift
An appreciation to enjoy
Honor life
Without earth
There is no heaven
Little Daughter
Little daughter
You are so small
For a big woman
So soft for someone
Who must be so strong
Little daughter
I hold you in my arms
I laugh and am happy
At your baby girl smile
To say I feel good
Is not enough
Little daughter I walk with you
Through the dimension called time
For what are minutes days or years
Compared to father daughter
Places in eternity
Little daughter
You the delicate infant child
Carry the innocent reality
I pray for your protection
Prayers to help you through
This life experience
Little daughter the times I hold
You next to me I am flowing
An infinity of love to fill the times
I cannot hold you next to me
Little daughter
I am always with you
Even when
You cannot see me there
Sister, Sister
Sister, sister
I want to talk to the woman in you
We're under siege in a troubled time
Sister, sister won't you hear my voice
I'm your brother but I've made the mistakes
Of a man sometimes it's lonely being a man
The programming has its affect
Isolation is such a cruel thing
Sister, sister
Won't you understand
They took your brothers
Turned them into men
Like they took our sisters
Turned them into women
Sister, sister
We are all the family of earth
They have taken us away
In their new clear war
Taught us to compete and abuse
And blame each other
While we're all being used
Sister, sister hear my heart
It's time to bring the family back
Together we must remember earth
We must remember what life is all about
Sister, sister I am your brother
Every time I've ever hurt you
I've always hurt myself
Sister, sister hear my voice
It's all up to us
We have a choice
Tears of Salt
Crystal clear tears of salt
Come when my heart
Talks with sadness
The tears flow
My emotional rivers
It's no damn use to pretend
Pain will not rise again
Crystal clear tears of salt
Help my heart
To feel for something
When I do not want to
Clear my vision
See my peace
Men don't cry
Indians are stoic
I tell that to my heart
To my eyes
They just laugh at me
And sometimes
When my spirit hurts
They make me cry
Crystal clear tears of salt
Purify my memory
Help me understand
This is not the beginning
Nor the end
For My Children
To the people I can talk
When it comes to you
I know what to say
It's I just don't know how
I love you
That's not a question
Showing it has been confusing
My life has drifted all ways
Somehow I could just never stay
I've rationalized
I'm headed to a goal
Yet sometimes
My heart hears me running
To a future always from the past
I love you
Don't want you hurt
I want you to realize your potential
I've always been afraid to interfere
My bias my prejudice my doubt
The weaker sides of me
I had to protect you
Make you stronger
Compassion is to be
Your companion
As you head to your destiny
I've tried the only way I knew
Please try to understand
I didn't know what else to do
And
I love you
Yesterdays Laughter
Yesterdays laughter
Is the balance for today
Todays tears
Are the cleansing
For tomorrow
We started out so long ago
There was no one to teach us
What we had to know
The days were ours
The times they were extreme
We did our best and
We did our worst in
The constant struggle
To understand why
Illusions and fantasies
Battering us
Teaching us the hard way
Forcing us
To find a right way
Shelter and comfort
Coming where we found it
Constantly moving
It was like being chased
By something we did not
Understand
Many are the times we could
Have just laid down and died
But the will of life
Helped us to survive
As we travel through life
With yesterdays laughter
The balance for today
And todays tears
A cleansing for tomorrow
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Lines from a Mined Mind by John Trudell. Copyright © 2008 John Trudell. Excerpted by permission of Fulcrum Publishing.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Table of Contents
Contents
1. Foreword,2. Introduction,
3. Tribal Voice,
4. AKA Graffiti Man,
5. Heart Jump Bouquet,
6. But This Isn't El Salvador,
7. Fables and Other Realities,
8. Children of Earth,
9. Johnny Damas and Me,
10. Blue Indians,
11. Bone Days,
12. Madness and,
13. The Moremes,
14. Complete Listing of Songs,
