Fingerprints and Smudges

© Tom Drinkwater 2006

There was a poster behind the fridge,
With tatty brittle edges
It's torn faded and yellow,
It has fingerprints and smudges,
fingerprints and smudges

It's been forgotten in the corner,
Since 1974
We found it when the house came down,
To build a superstore,
To build the new mall

This fantastic faded paper,
Proclaims a carnival of change
In coloured letters 6 inches tall,
All the world to rearrange
Into something rich and strange

it's considered common knowledge
that the hope was an illusion
that light and love and rock and roll
were a huge collective delusion,
a youthful indiscretion

but the winners write the histories,
and it's mostly turncoats help recall
I question if they understand,
or were even there at all,
Were they truly there at all

You thought the times were changing,
but they never did
So you all sold out and got a job,
and left the problems for your kids,
left the unsolved problems for the kids

the kids you should not have had,
are standing crowded in together
they're just as foolish and confused as you were,
but you had better weather
a lot more hope and better weather

you had the world you had the wealth you were prodigious,
but you didn't have the knowledge
you lost the plot in a long war of attrition,
you lost your conviction and your courage
all that's left is fingerprints to salvage

now it's 30 years later,
the alright kids are so much older
I'm still banging on the drums of peace,
but the young ones are much colder
and the drums of war beat louder

now it's an old man's revolution,
and it won't win the election
but I won't get fooled again,
and it's time to take some action
force a conscious resurrection

I'm repainting the poster,
To pin its colours to the wall
A call to freedom written large,
In letters 6 feet tall
Put the writing on the wall

I read somewhere that the standard of living and material security for the average person peaked in the mid seventies. (In the affluent west) Better in fact than any culture anywhere in the world at any time before or since. Of course this wealth and relative equality was achieved on the basis of rapid oil depletion, massive destruction of the natural environment, and exploitation of the third world. Nevertheless the baby boomer generation had more opportunities than anyone else has ever had. (Anyone who doubts this and thinks we are better off now should try buying a house on the average wage.)

Those people also had a lot of good ideas (or at least promoted some pre-existing ones), about freedom and fairness, and individuality within collective action. In fact the original revolutionary ideals: Liberty, Equality, Fraternity. They also had a lot of fun with sex, drugs and rock’n’roll – before it all became totally corporatised.

They benefited from the peak of the economic boom caused by the discovery and rapid depletion of fossil fuels, and from the solidarity and socialist initiatives that were associated with recovering from the depression and the war (like the NHS) and somehow, for all that wealth and idealism and opportunity, managed to leave us a world that by and large is worse than it was in 1945. Sure we’ve won some personal/sexual freedoms, it’s not all bad, but what a wasted opportunity!

So, on one level this is just a song about blaming your parents generation for the world you find yourself landed with, but it’s more than that. There was a lot of hope about in the 60’s and 70’s, a feeling that ordinary people could both be free, and change the world for the better. Of course many of the actual attempts to do so were extraordinarily flawed or naïve, but at least they tried. Why did it stop? How can we make it start again? So far the generation and a bit since has done even worse.

We added harmonica and Hammond organ for 60’s verisimilitude. Can’t you just smell the flowers? (And the sweaty pot smoking hippies)