South Somewhere Else

         E                                                          A
It was assumed that the south was a thing that took place somewhere else
        B                                             A                             E
We grew up in a town that our parents just found on a job search and liked it quite well
        A                                                   E                       B
Who had so many friends who arrived just like them so their kids were our kin for a spell

         E                                                          A
It was assumed that the south was a thing that took place somewhere else
         B                                           A                           E
Like the feeling of home was a book on a loan from a college town private school shelf
        A                                               E                         B
We took in every chapter with interest and laughter but never quite a sense of ourselves


[Break]
E A B A E


[Chorus]
  A
A dangerous narrative, haunting, imperative
E                       B
Led us little kids to believe
         A
That the place we were from shed a sheen we should shun
         E                          B
Like the salt of the sweat dripping down from our sleeves


[Verse]
         E                                                          A
It was assumed that the south was a thing that took place somewhere else
         B                                                    A                     E
Like the sun that went down on the edge of my town progressed no further west as it fell
       A                                                 E                           B
And on visits to relatives couldn’t quite tell cause our pounding heart sank as they swelled

         E                                                          A
It was assumed that the south was a thing that took place somewhere else
      B                                            A                              E
As if Jim Crow geographies didn’t haunt all of the streetscapes we’d come to know well
                 A                                          E                          B
And not just the old neoclassical mansions we passed or the high school had stories to tell


[Break]
E A B A E
E A B A E


[Chorus]
           A
I mean the segregate sounds of that old college town
         E                     B
Rings so loud to me now I must say
      A
As we worked all white restaurants, trash-talking debutantes
    E                          B
Our nascent class conscience’ obnoxious displays


[Verse]
         E                                                          A
It was assumed that the south was a thing that took place somewhere else
    B                                                A                        E
And maybe it was which I say just because we weren’t noticing where power was held
     A                                   E                       B
Captivated, the capitol’s capitacratical white liberal logics prevailed

         E                                                          A
It was assumed that the south was a thing that took place somewhere else
     B                                             A                   E
Multiracial resistance to greedful ambitions, cast out in revisionist spells
A                                              E                     B
Power concedes ‘bout as much as it leads as we started to see for ourselves


[Break]
E A B A E
E A B A E


[Outro]
         A
It was assumed that the south was a thing that took place
     E
In a retrograde rendering of absolute space
          F#m
As though everything left in the world wasn’t traced
      B
By production, subjection, resistance, escape

     A
Seen squarely through this disidentified gaze
            E
And through textbooks and t.v.’s, our modernist ways
      F#m
Could never quite focus, our participating
  B                    A                  E
Renewing, rejecting, affirming, negating