And I want to do a few--
mostly, some ballads from this book, The Sleep That Changed
Everything.
I want to go to that mode.
The first one I'm going to do is--
this has five sections, this book.
And the middle section is called vibratory odes.
This is from that section.
I always ask people to think of neighborhood heroes
in your life, that might not have been sung about.
To make a song for them.
So this is what I made for Harry Golden, who
wrote only in America.
He's a civil rights worker in Charlotte, North Carolina.
And he had several publications I'll cite in the ballad.
It's called, "Ballad of Vertical Integration," for Harry Golden.
"Civil Rights was brewing in a Charlotte coffee shop,
at an orange juice bar called Tanner's down near the main bus
stop.
Cross of Trade and Tyron where the Cherokee once hunt,
Harry Golden cast his shining eye on a way to make his point.
In a country of strangers from either side of town,
there were only certain places everybody could sit down.
Here black and white, both alike,
stood up and drank their juice.
'Eureka,' Harry Golden cried, 'that's the way to call
the truce!'
Take out all the chairs from restaurants, cars and schools.
Take out all the benches make way for other rules.
If some folks can't sit down somewhere then everybody stand.
We'll learn and eat vertical integration in this land.
He printed up his paper, the Carolina Israelite.
Only in America, he then went on to write.
Gold dust shines in red clay, we pass on from the past.
Harry, thanks for tickling our funny bones
to help the changes last.
Now it's year 2008, just look around you now.
Things aren't quite as far along as they ought to be somehow.
This ballad is a call to arms to open up our eyes.
Each and every one of us, Golden can arise.
For each and every one of us, a rainbow is the prize."