eli@uw-beaver (Eli Messinger) (12/26/84)
My girlfriend found this single on Buddha records in a 10-cent bin, and I thought I'd share the lyrics with all of you. The lyrics are spoken over a slightly folky background that seques into a harmonied hum of "My Country Tis of Thee" at just the right point. ----- "Letter to Dad" by Every Father's Teenage Son Dear Dad, In answer to your letter I'd like to say I appreciate your understanding of my generation's need for individuality and need to rebel against the long file of look-a-like faces. For us there was a simple answer, hair. Hair on the face and hair on the head. Lots of it. To prove that I'm me and not to be identified with the Establishment and the mixed-up state we find the world in now. If this were the time of Lincoln I just might decide to shave my face clean, just to prove I'm me. I also appreciate your promise not to judge me just as a teenager, but as an individual. I realize that mankind has always attributed to the many the misbehavior of the few, and I promise in return to judge you as a thinking, rational being worthy of love and consideration and not just as a parent. When we were discussing religion I remember having posed the question "Is God Dead?" By this of course I meant "Is God as we know him dead?" "Are the ideas of God changing?" He is no longer in my generation thought to be a vengeful old man with a white beard, or even as a separate existence. We have realized that God is in all of us, that, as you said in your letter, God is love, but our love, brotherhood. I'm glad to see that you think all the past wars were immoral, here we surely agree. But then you make a different assumption than I. You say they were necessary, and I don't agree. I've spent long hours over this question and find that I must hold that war is not inevitable, that man's greatest goal should be to avoid war at all costs. You use the phrase "fight for the right" two times in your letter. I pose that this one phrase is to blame for millions of lives and endless pain and suffering. It is not the lack of pride for my country, but an abundance of respect for my fellow man which demands that I must promise myself not to use violence no matter what. This I think will go down in history as the one truth discovered by my generation. And if after reading the words of Schweizer, Ghandi and other great men, and on the basis of all the available knowledge of history, and under- standing of a too ardent patriotism, I choose to burn my draft card, then Dad it will be you who will have to burn my birth certificate. And although you stop calling me son, I'll never stop calling you Dad.