A song of hope in the face of a culture of despair

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This song was begun at a truckstop somewhere in California, and finished in an Oregon clearcut, while sitting on the stump of a 400 year old Douglas Fir tree.

Clearcut
(Ethan Miller & Kate Boverman)

I was driving on some highway somewhere
Going someplace
Through a town that looked just like the last
I passed a billboard that told me
If I’d buy their sh*** I’d feel better
I just pulled off to fill up the gas

And the truckstop TV showed the president’s face
With the stars and stripes waving in back
He said, “My fellow Americans, I can assure you today
Peace a freedom is why we attacked”

Oh it’s days like this I feel myself growing cold
Trying to hold the rage that I feel
In this country of hearts that are freezing like ice
In this nation asleep at the wheel

I feel like I’m clearcut
I feel like my rivers have run dry
And I’m raw beneath the open sky
And the rain, when it comes, will
Carry me away in a landslide

Everywhere I go I see people who know
That something is terribly wrong
They say, “there’s nothing anyone can do about it now
It’s been going on way too long”

And so all we can do is just learn how to cope
Try to make it through another year
Yeah who needs dictatorship or marshal law
When you’ve got TV, dependence and fear?

Meanwhile the kings and queens in their castles
Are trying to turn everything they touch into gold
And even the devastation they leave in their wake
Is a new market to be bought and then sold

(Chorus)

If this broken world was all I knew
If all I hear was sorrow’s cry
What would I know of anger and hope
Or for what would be worthy to die?

But I have seen forests as old as riverbeds
I’ve seen trees that rise up to the dawn


And I have known love that rises above
The despair that this cruel world brings on

I’ve seen beauty in the eyes of another
I’ve heard music you would not believe
And the source of my pain is the source of my hope
In a vision of what this world could be

(coda):

I have seen forests
I have seen mighty trees
I have known love
Love that rises above

Oh I have seen beauty
Beauty you would not believe
The source of my hope
Is what this world could be