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Dick Cheney

from 64x30 by Eli Resnick

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about

One of my biggest guitar influences (to say nothing of singing or songwriting) is Chris Smither. After years of practicing a few of his songs, I've finally clicked into a place in my brain where I can halfway ape his style without specifically covering one of his works.

This track was a lot of fun to record. I cranked up a freeware drum loop and just let it fly. It took a couple of takes to learn the words, but on the third try, it came out just right. What you hear is what it sounded like in the room.

At some point on this album, there will be time for a more mature, developed blues composition or two. Something with bass, sax, keys, multiple vocals. Something more studio and less living-room. For now, my living room looks like a studio and sounds good enough to me.

A note about the words: I'd just read in Popular Science that Dick Cheney has replaced his heart with a robotic device that pumps blood at a steady rate. The article put to rest any previous belief that the former Vice President and avid hunter of the most dangerous game may have a pulse.

I started thinking about the mythology of the body, and the way that we have attributed various emotions to various organs. It would be one thing to get a robotic spleen or a robotic stomach. You'd be more popular at parties: "Eddie'll eat anything. He's got a robotic stomach!"

But replacing our hearts with robots is a sentimentally challenging move. That's one of those places where (in spite of the conundrums enumerated in recent Paul Giamatti films) you'd really rather have someone else's version of the real thing than nothing at all.

I don't want to get all Rolling Stones and say I felt sympathy for the Haliburton executive and former senator from Wyoming, but I was at least able to think through the logic of the situation and write this song.

lyrics

I believe I got a second hand, used-up, old heart. Don't love like it should. Don't do me no good, liable to leave me broke down on the side of the road, used up old heart.

A note about the words: I'd just read in Popular Science that Dick Cheney has replaced his heart with a robotic device that pumps blood at a steady rate. The article put to rest any previous belief that the former Vice President and avid hunter of the most dangerous game may have a pulse.

I started thinking about the mythology of the body, and the way that we have attributed various emotions to various organs. It would be one thing to get a robotic spleen or a robotic stomach. You'd be more popular at parties: "Eddie'll eat anything. He's got a robotic stomach!"

But replacing our hearts with robots is a sentimentally challenging move. That's one of those places where (in spite of the conundrums enumerated in recent Paul Giamatti films) you'd really rather have someone else's version of the real thing than nothing at all.

I don't want to get all Rolling Stones and say I felt sympathy for the Haliburton executive and former senator from Wyoming, but I was at least able to think through the logic of the situation and write this song.

So while I believed the war in Iraq may have been founded on a lie, and may have been engineered in part to financially benefit multimillionaire military contractor and former Vice President Cheney, who reportedly earned over $13M per year during the war, largely from stock options in a military contracting company, and reportedly shot one of his friends in the face, this was primarily a song about medical progress, and a discussion about what makes us human, rather than a piece of political protest.

One needs to reference current events to be relevant, but there's nothing more timeless than the meaning of having a heart, or in that case, not having one.

Did the war in Iraq mentally and physically injure some friends of mine? Yes. But this is a science fiction song in the tradition of Frankenstein, not a song about our first Frankensteinian vice president's politics. Don't get it twisted.

credits

from 64x30, released September 20, 2010
Eli Resnick, nylon string guitar, vocals, lyrics, recording, mixing

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Eli Resnick Seven Corners, Virginia

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