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about
I wrote this song after George Floyd was murdered by Minneapolis police, while folks in Louisville were hitting the streets in big numbers to demand justice for the murder of Breonna Taylor. I heard a man I really admired talking about his experience being Black, having just watched the video of the infamous Karen threatening to call the cops on a Black birdwatcher in Central Park. My friend was like, “She knew what she was doing. Everybody knows what she was doing.” His words inspired me to write a song about American bodies being separated from the beginning into these disgustingly different privileges and punishments, by a racist society. I wanted to suggest that every one of our bodies knows, on some level, that this is wrong.
lyrics
see brutality we seen before
five centuries, even older
don’t want to fight the empire’s war
i don’t want to be a quiet soldier this time
not gonna swallow my rage and stand around
not while they’re pressin his face into the ground
you try to be neutral on this moving train
while the motion sickness screws up yr brain
and it shows
every body knows [2x]
some bodies sayin “i can’t breathe”
while some bodies on the other side of town
in the shade of the family tree:
blood on the leaves, blood on the roots, way down
whisperin: “i don’t want no body mad at me”
nah, you’d rather wallow in shame and apathy.
tell it to the newborn babe, cryin,
placed in the beartrap jaws of american irons
as they close
every body knows [2x]
hearin’ platitudes we hear every time:
that white noise, k-k-kodes of silence.
your body’s gonna walk that line:
the thin blue thread stitchin’ laws into violence.
O, my god, don’t you feel that fear and trembling?
oh and daddy don’t don’t you hear that rumbling?
coming from the deep-down place where the body heals,
the one that i can see in your face as you pretend not to feel
but it just grows…
every body knows [2x]
i don’t want your body to be let down, be let down [6x]
credits
released May 25, 2021
words and music arranged by Isaac Fosl-van Wyke. “Blood on the leaves, blood on the roots” is from “Strange Fruit,” written by Abel Meeropol and popularized by Billie Holiday; “neutral on a moving train” is from Howard Zinn; “thin blue thread stitching laws into violence” is from Ruth Wilson Gilmore.
guitar and vocals: Isaac Fosl-van Wyke
background vocals: Joan Shelley
final choir: Joan Shelley, Lacey Guthrie, & Charlie Walsh
drums: Rafael Freitas
electric bass: Andy Myers
trumpet: Charlie Walsh
synths: Lacey Guthrie
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