5 Sept 2008

COFFIN CAR
song by Yoko Ono

from the album 'Feeling The Space' (1973)

Recorded live - 3 June 1973 at the First International
Feminist Conference Harvard University, Cambridge, MA.

(While john is setting up the amp...) What happened to
me was that I was living as an artist and, who had
relative freedom. As a woman and was considered the
bitch in the society. Since I met John, I was upgraded
into a witch and I was...and I think that that's very
flattering. Anyway, what I learned from being with
John is that the society solely treated me as a woman,
as a woman who belonged to a man who is one of the
most powerful people in our generation, and some of
his closest friends told me that probably I should
stay in the background, I should shut up, I should
give up my work and that way I'll be happy. And I got
those advises, I was luck, I was over thirty and it
was too late for me to change, But still, still, this
is one thing I want to say, sisters, because, with the
wish that you know You're not alone, i...because the
whole society started to attack me and the whole
society wished me dead, I started accumulating a
tremendous amount of guilt complex and in result of
that I started to stutter. and I consider myself a
very eloquent woman and also an attractive woman all
my life and suddenly, because I was associated to
john, that was considered an ugly woman, ugly jap, who
took your monument or something away from you. And
that's when I realised how hard it is for woman, if I
can start to stutter, being a strong woman and having
lived thirty years by then, learn to stutter in three
years of being treated as such, it is a very hard
road. Now the next song is called coffin car and this
is a song that I observed in myself and also in many
sisters who are riding on coffin cars.

Okay

Coffin car, she's riding a coffin car,
She likes to ride a coffin car.
People watching her with tender eyes,
Friends whispering in kindly words,
Children running, waving hands,
Telling each other, how pretty she is.

Coffin car, she's riding a coffin car,
She likes to ride a coffin car.
Friends making ways for the first time,
People throwing kisses for the first time,
Showering flowers, ringing bells,
Telling each other, how nice she is.

Coffin car, she likes to ride a coffin car,
She's riding a coffin car.
Wives showing tears for the first time,
Husbands taking their hats off for the first time,
Crushing their handkerchiefs, rubbing their nose,
Telling each other, how good she is.

Half the world is dead anyway,
The other half is asleep.
And life is killing her,
Telling her to join the dead.

So ev'ry day, she likes to ride a coffin car
A flower covered coffin car
Pretending she was dead.

Coffin car
A flower covered coffin car
A flower covered coffin car
A flower covered coffin car.

5 comments:

Lazare said...

o yoko. so lovely.
it's great to have you back around, A.

x

Russell CJ Duffy said...

Ditto that comment. Always a delight to see the M here.

murmurists said...

You're both very kind. Thanks.

I love the Yoko tract, whilst Lennon is setting up an amp. She's so utterly underrated as an artist; and the tract explains something of why. In my view, it was her who gave Lennon something he needed, as opposed to the reverse. Without her, I doubt he'd have developed much beyond dabbling with drug imagery. The more interesting early stuff was as a direct result of the influences she brought, I think - via her association with Fluxus, and the events she held in her Chambers Street loft apartment in New York.

I love Yoko. Genius in my opinion.

murmurists said...

Correction: early SOLO stuff.

Russell CJ Duffy said...

You have my total agreement with regard to Yoko. Overshadowed by a great songwriter.