Fast car

Fast Car - Tracy Chapman


You got a fast car
I want a ticket to anywhere
Maybe we make a deal
Maybe together we can get somewhere
Anyplace is better
Starting from zero got nothing to lose
Maybe we'll make something
But me myself I got nothing to prove
You got a fast car
And I got a plan to get us out of here
I been working at the convenience store
Managed to save just a little bit of money
We won't have to drive too far
Just 'cross the border and into the city
You and I can both get jobs
And finally see what it means to be living

You see my old man's got a problem
He live with the bottle that's the way it is
He says his body's too old for working
I say his body's too young to look like his
My mama went off and left him
She wanted more from life than he could give
I said somebody's got to take care of him
So I quit school and that's what I did

You got a fast car
But is it fast enough so we can fly away
We gotta make a decision
We leave tonight or live and die this way
I remember we were driving driving in your car
The speed so fast I felt like I was drunk
City lights lay out before us
And your arm felt nice wrapped 'round my shoulder

And I had a feeling that I belonged
And I had feeling I could be someone, be someone, be someone

You got a fast car
And we go cruising to entertain ourselves
You still ain't got a job
And I work in a market as a checkout girl
I know things will get better
You'll find work and I'll get promoted
We'll move out of the shelter
Buy a big house and live in the suburbs

You got a fast car
And I got a job that pays all our bills
You stay out drinking late at the bar
See more of your friends than you do of your kids
I'd always hoped for better
Thought maybe together you and me would find it
I got no plans I ain't going nowhere
So take your fast car and keep on driving

You got a fast car
But is it fast enough so you can fly away
You gotta make a decision
You leave tonight or live and die this way


Sabado 3.40am 11/12/04

Chi sono io?

Chi sono io? Perche desidero essere qualcuno io non sono? Per cambiare a cualcuno migliore? Ma e vero? Voglio cambiare, si. Pero, dove vado? Percorso securo? Non lo so niente, purtroppo. Adesso, credo che faccio la giusta cosa. Non lo so. Non lo so ancora. La vita e non facile. Molti ostacoli. Dio, il misericordiosissimo, il clementissimo...sei la mia soltanto speranza. Aiuti questa anima.


un nessuno.

Dare no tame ni?

Sonnani okoranaide yo!
Tsugi wa doko e ikou ka?
Mattete kurete arigato.
Sushi nanka dou?
Tasukete kudasai.
Tasukete yo!
Tetsudatte.
Shokuji shiyoo.
Doushitanda/doushitano?
Dare no tame ni bangohan ni ryouri suru ka?
Kare wa doko ni imasu ka?
Koko e ikou tochu.

Soro soro ikimashoo. Ja mata!

Literati versus intelligentsia

In emphasizing two contrasing aspects of the functions and roles of the literate in the early and later civilisations, Childe and Toynbee point to a difference that might deserve the distinguishing terms that these writers give to the two kinds of literate people. Childe is impressed with the separation between craftsmanship and literacy in the early civilizations and with the "scholastic attitude" developed by those clerks who used writing to set down traditional lore and knowledge and who came to develop the exact sciences and philosophy. Some of these became custodians and interpreters of sacred books. In this aspect of their functions, internal to the developing civilisation, we might speak of the new type of men as literati. The literate elite of China illustrate this type. These persons are enclosed within the culture that has become civilisation. They carry it forward into a more systematic and reflective phase....

Toynbee, on the other hand, writes of the functions of those literate persons who mediate between the society out of which they arose and some other and alien civilisation which is impinging upon it. These people have learned something alien to the culture of their native community; they "have learnt the tricks of the intrusive civilisaton's trade so far as may be necessary to enable their own community, through their agency, just to hold its own in a social environment in which life is ceasing to be lived in accordance with the local tradition and is coming more and more to be lived in the style imposed by the intrusive civilisation upon the aliens who fall under its domination"....These people Toynbee calls by a word which developed for them in Russia, the intelligentsia. In contrast to the literati, the member of the intelligentsia "is born to be unhappy". He belongs to two worlds, not one; he is a "marginal man".

Robert Redfield