"American Infidel" was written during the height of the Bush years, when reasonable people could still consider themselves to be liberals. I was a Bush-era liberal. I remember how strange it felt, standing in ideological opposition to the Patriot Act, the invasion of Iraq, and any number of other quaint, Bush-era atrocities alongside militant non-Christians of every conceivable kind. The American-ness of it was tangible. Even militant lesbians understood that to co-exist alongside their fellow serfs was not only essential, but desirable. You do you, I'll do me. I'll quit smoking weed and draw closer to Christ eventually, and you'll be forced to choose between hardcore militant stupidity and being excommunicated as a TERF by the ignorant, hateful youth of the future, but for the moment, we are as one. United we stand.
Or, perhaps, united you stand. As my guitar used to say.
Brooklyn 2006, photo by Bruce Soyez-Bernard
The Bush era marked the last days of the live-and-let-live, old-school Constitutional liberal. Vast numbers of those people turned into mindless lemmings when Obama came on the scene. Obama was the "cure" the establishment was waiting to release into the hearts and minds of thousands, perhaps millions, of frustrated old-school liberals. I felt the effects of the drug myself. The relief of losing Bush was visceral, but it didn't last long. Within 2 months of Obama's first term, I no longer considered myself a liberal.
But while living in New York in the summer of '06, I did. South Korean TV even used my song "George Bush What's Your Problem?" as the bumper music for a segment on dissent in America after 9/11. Another quaint idea.
Dissent in America after 9/11. Those were the days.
Man, do I miss Bush.
"American Infidel" is full of Bush-era liberal ideas, but for the record, I want to say that the verse about "high school kids with a fully-loaded AK" was never intended as a statement against the 2nd Amendment. I grew up shooting guns. We used to fire a .45 into the snow banks on New Year's Eve when I was in high school, and learned how to shoot and respect firearms. Happy New Year... BANG! Happy New Year! BANG. Etc. There was nothing violent about it. As the song states, it's the American way. Putting the verse in the song was an artistic decision, intended to elicit visions of armed high school kids. But it's naive. In the context of the song, it sounds like I'm against guns.
I was aware of it, but I had to keep the verse in anyway. The song demanded that I keep it in.
It is a Polaroid of its time.
Equally ignorant is the now-quaint, intentional illiteracy in the verse that says, "I seen" the hustlers on the street. My 1st-grade English teacher taught us to say, "I have seen," and I've known a few people, writers and street poets mostly, who have experimented with illiterate colloquialisms like a scientist experiments with chemicals, to see what melts, or floats, or bursts into flames. Me and my dumbass art and music friends played with words.
And chemicals, to be sure. We played with our share of chords, words, and illicit street chemicals. Of course, back in the day, street drugs were like vitamin supplements compared to what's out there now. I once saw some guys selling Mexican Black Tar Vitamin C in Tompkins Square Park, in the days before BLM and Fentanyl. So when I say we played with chemicals, I'm talking about old-school street vitamins. We watched the sunshine melt across the sky like a bead of dope down a sheet of aluminum foil, and it was clean enough. But we played with words and music too.
I only bring it up to say that these days, I'm not sure if anybody says "I seen" as an act of poetic intent. People seem to have genuinely forgotten how to talk. Back in the day, sounding like a dumbass was a poetic device; now, it's a job requirement.
As Vonnegut observed,
"So it goes."
The reason I'm sharing the song now is because of the message contained in the video above. Even if the bell tolling throughout the chorus of "American Infidel" is a Xylophone, and the light, melodic warning stands in stark contrast to the morbid reality of the situation nearly 20 years later, I believe it bears repeating. The Rapture is coming very soon. It's going to get weird, and it's going to get weird fast. Weird meaning, Biblical. I'm sad about the state of America as well, but as the song states, "There ain't no American flags in yonder Heaven." Time is winding down. The door of the Ark is about to slam shut, and the age of grace will come to an end. Possibly tonight. The time to examine yourselves to see whether ye be in the faith (2 Corinthians 13:5) is now. I'm talking to myself. Meet me on the streets of gold and literacy. No more pimps or presidents. No more militant machines. No need, even, for a Constitution. "Mutual respect" won't need to be mandated. It will simply be.
The xylophone is sounding like a foghorn. We're coming into harbor. Stay focused on the mission.
Don't crash against the rocks.
American Infidel
Gimme one more cup of coffee for the road
a handful of Xanax so I don't explode
I gotta interstate highway tattooed on my eyes
I got high cholesterol from my Freedom Fries
I can hear the tolling of the bell
of the man I was before,
I am a shell
cash my welfare check
and say farewell
I'm proud to be an American Infidel
There's something that I've known since I was seven
there ain't no American flags in yonder Heaven
ain't no Lone Star statisticians at the gates
ain't no mention in the Bible of the United States
I can hear the tolling of the bell
of the man I was before,
I am a shell
cash my welfare check
and say farewell
I'm proud to be an American Infidel
It's the American way
high school kids with a fully-loaded AK
cops for no reason bursting through the door
more wealth for the rich
no healthcare for the poor
I can hear the tolling of the bell
of the man I was before,
I am a shell
cash my welfare check
and say farewell
I'm proud to be an American Infidel
Well I seen the hustlers on the street
some's wearin' suits and some's packin' heat
I seen the pimps, the prostitutes, and hos
some's layin' in the street
some's got their own TV shows
I can hear the tolling of the bell
of the man I was before,
I am a shell
cash my welfare check
and say farewell
I'm proud to be an American Infidel
I did not vote for Arnold Schwarzenegger
Lord have mercy on me I need another shot of Jager
every nation sooner or later gets attacked
that ain't no reason to pass the Patriot Act
I can hear the tolling of the bell
of the nation I used to be,
I am a shell
cash my welfare check
and say farewell
I'm proud to be an American Infidel
©2006 Nathan Payne
