Day in America

Deadliest school shooting since Sandy Hook
 On Valentine's Day yesterday in Florida, it tore legs
 It's 5:30 AM, the news has been on since I went home
 Since 1 o'clock in the morning
 I've been waking up every hour or so looking at the CNN TV glow
 Came home, open my email
 My friend Kevin asked, "How are you processing this?"
 I said I was in the studio getting ready to sing
 And then the drummer walked in and said, "Hey, did you see this?"
 I said, "What?", he said, "Looks like another high school shooting"
 I said, "Where?", he said,
 "It looks like it happened about an hour north of Miami"
 I said, "How many?", he said, "It looks like fourteen, or something"
 I told Kevin from that point on my
 band discussed it for maybe 20 minutes
 Donny said,
 "Why don't they just get rid of
 the guns, like they did in Australia?"
 I sat there befuddled and said, "I don't know what to tell ya
 But the Republicans like having their right to bear arms
 Even if it blows kids off the planet
 They spend their lives without their legs or arms
 The Republicans believe in their right to bear arms
 No matter the rising death toll and the
 amount of harm it causes to innocent people
 They have their right to bear arms"
 And honestly from that point on, we picked up our instruments
 I got three musicians out here from
 New York and we're here to play music
 They were on the clock
 So until I got home tonight and saw your email
 All the thoughts about the Florida shooting, I blocked
 Another player had joined us last night around 6 or 7
 We were improvising on a piece of music
 he said sorta reminded him of Bill Evans
 It sounded good to me, it sounded like a slice of heaven
 Jim was playing his drums but Donny wouldn't play
 After about 15 minutes of this beautiful piano playing
 Donny stood up and said, "Guys, this doesn't sound like Bill Evans"
 I said, "What do you mean?", he said, "This is Bill Evans"
 I asked the drummer, "Did you notice?", he said, "Yes"
 And I said, "Well, what in the fuck are we doing?"
 I said to the player who had joined us here for fifteen solid minutes
 Eyes like "Damn, this piece of music is genius"
 And he said, "Like I said,
 it's this left-handed thing, and the style of Bill Evans"
 I said, "But Donny and Jim said it actually is Bill Evans
 And thank god they were here to tell me this, thank Evans
 Or I would have released this beautiful song
 And someone would have called me out
 and said, 'You ripped off Bill Evans'"
 I asked the guys, "Who is this guy, anyhow?"
 "It's Bill Evans," he said,
 "One of the most famous jazz pianists in the world"
 I said, "I think I may have heard of him
 Or maybe I'm getting him confused
 with the chain food restaurant Bob Evans
 Bob Evans, yeah I got that association, Bob Evans"
 I was with my friend's sister Debbie when
 I was 18 in Ohio below the thrash metal show
 We walked outside to have a cigarette
 It was freezing outside, the ground was covered in snow
 When a girl confronted Debbie outside and said
 "You think you're so fucking cool
 with your nose in the air, don't you?"
 Debbie said,
 "What are you even talking about, I've never even met you"
 The girl said, "You're a fucking snob
 I've been standing around observing
 you all night with your dyed black hair
 You think you're too cool for school, don't you?"
 Debbie got tense, raised her voice, and said
 "So I've traveled a bit,
 what do you know about anything? What do you know?"
 Debbie's tone was getting aggressive
 and escalating, she said to the girl
 "Where in the fuck have you ever been to in this world besides Ohio?"
 The girl just stood there and got this
 big smirk on her face and I thought, "Oh no"
 And she sucker punched Debbie, knocked her ass down to the ground
 And spit in her face and walked back to the thrash metal show
 I lifted Debbie from the snow and she stood there sobbing and sobbing
 Her brother came up to me and said
 "Mark, what's going on? What happened to Debbie?"
 I said, "Man, it happened so fast,
 I'm sorry I didn't do anything to protect your sister"
 He pulled me aside and said, "Let me tell you something, Mark
 Don't worry about it, she's always had a mouth on her"
 I said, "I know, but she's your sister and I've got her back
 We enjoyed the concert, I've got it from here"
 I said, "Don't worry about it, Debbie will shake it off
 Now let's get the fuck out of here"
 We got in her car and I told her I understood this humiliating feeling
 Well I got knocked out a few times
 myself and I know it's humbling and embarassing
 So we went to Bob Evans and sat and drank coffee
 I tried to talk Debbie into a calmer state
 She was so distracted and I tried to
 console her but she was clearly hijacked
 In too much emotional pain for conversation
 I said, "Debbie, drop me off"
 And from that point on I don't think I ever heard from her again
 I think it's because she associates me with that bad night
 That ended at Bob Evans, and I understand
 And on the way home I said to my friend
 "Why'd you kick off tonight with a Bill Evans song?"
 He said, "I was just trying to ease into things"
 I said, "That's cool but we're not a cover band
 We're here to make an album of original songs"
 He said, "Yeah, I guess that was wrong"
 I said, "Yeah man, I guess everything is sort of anticlimactic
 When you try to come up with fresh ideas when you play Bill Evans"
 He said, "Yeah you're right, I don't know what I was thinking"
 I said, "Hey don't worry about it,
 everything else seemed like it sounded amazing"
 So anyhow I came home and I turned on the news
 Angry as I always get when these
 things happen, thinking about what I could do
 To help the cause,
 to influence people, to do what I can to change gun laws
 For starters, I'm going to dedicate a song
 To the kids from Florida who didn't live long whose families grieve
 While the rest of the world gets on their phones and their lives go on
 And maybe in the song I'll share my own private thoughts
 In fact, I think I will
 I think they should go Django Unchained on the killer they caught
 Hang him upside down and cut off his balls
 Bleed him to death and leave a slow, bloody death
 When seventeen kids are murdered, you skip due process
 I don't care if he was vulnerable in
 a home full of drug abuse and incest
 Or allegedly brainwashed by white supremacists
 Whatever the case may be for him, yeah it's very sad and unfortunately
 Well, escorting this man from the
 planet is in everyone's best interest
 When a guy can kill seventeen kids, dispose of him quick and fast
 I live in San Francisco and my
 thoughts about this might go against the flow
 But yeah, I think they should torture him to death
 With whatever the methods may have been used at Guantanamo
 Make an example of him and hang him up to dry
 I say more aggressive action should be taken against mass shooters
 At least give it a try
 Anyone who laughs at the death of innocent kids
 Should not have the privilege of being alive
 Maybe the parents of the victim will
 get together and kill him vigilante-style
 Maybe somebody in the local jail
 will meet up with him in the infirmary
 And stab him seventeen times
 And justice will prevail, and that will be the end of the story
 Of the Valentine's Day killer's miserable life
 So I asked Kevin by email, "By the way, how are you processing this?
 It's gotta be harder for you than it
 is for me, you got a 13 year old kid"
 But Kevin's on New York time,
 it's 6:30 AM and so far from Kevin no reply
 Another day in America, another day in the life
 Another day in America, another day in the life
 Another day in America, another day in the life
 Another day in America, another day in the life
 Republicans will say, "This is a very sad day in America
 We're sorry for the families of the dead children"
 And then they'll go on about second amendment rights
 And stand there with their white dicks and their white hands
 And stand next to their white wives
 Another day in America, another bag of white rice
 I just woke up this morning, February 15th
 I had a dream about AR-15s, probably based on the news
 That said eight million Americans own AR-15s
 And I dreamed I was doing vocals
 I asked my engineer what kind of mic we're using today
 And he said, "An AR-15"
 I said, "Isn't that the name of the gun
 that did the killing at the school yesterday?"
 And he said, "No, that was an M-49"
 I said, "I thought we normally use the U-47"
 He said, "Sometimes,
 other times we use an Audio Technica 460 or the Shure SM-7"
 I said, "Well, they all sound like automatic weapons to me
 That send innocent kids off to heaven
 So I prefer if we don't use the AR-15"
 He said, "But it's the best microphone this studio has available"
 I said, "But that microphone is what
 politicians use at press conferences"
 And then I woke up from the dream
 So that's it,
 I got out of bed and took a bath and got ready to go to the studio
 And I got Kevin's reply by email
 I called him up and asked if he would kindly read it to me
 "I don't think I am processing it,
 unless reading about it on the internet counts
 Reading and internalizing what's
 being written about it, tweeted about it
 Which is that nothing ever changes
 And that another shooting will happen every sixteen hours
 That Columbine was 20 years ago now
 It was in the news at that time for months and years
 But Parkland will likely disappear from the news cycle in a week
 And George Carlin used the expression 'circling the drain'
 Circling the drain to describe the human condition in this hour
 This ceaseless, endless madness and violence
 The resulting information overload
 and the subsequent collective amnesia
 Has to mean we're so close to the drain at this point
 Circling it so intensely at this point
 That the experience can no longer be processed
 Because we're moving too fast
 And because we're being processed
 Pulsed, like vegetables"