05.01.09
The Chinese Are Coming
This is the spoken intro that goes before the song “The Chinese Are Coming.” Sometimes it’s just spoken, and sometimes it’s spoken over an extended piano intro.
You know, sometimes I like to take a walk in the park.
It’s relaxing – takes my mind away from distractions.
But it seems inevitable in the park that someone will come up to me,
and often these people have something to say,
and sometimes these people are interesting.
Many times they are not, but sometimes they are.
One day, two people came up to me.
It seemed to me that these two people represented the very extremes of American society today, and I’ll tell you why. And then I’ll tell you why, I thought, it’s only a matter of time before the very ground we walk on will be covered with fine, silk, parachutes.
It used to be that Americans were tough.
~The lower class was tough, because they had to scrape and scratch for food to eat, clothes to wear.
~The upper class, they were tough because they were afraid, you know, of class warfare, socialism.
~And the middle class, they were just trying to hang on. We’ve all been there, the middle class. It’s comfortable, you remember. Maybe you were born there, been there all your life, or maybe you passed through on the way up, or down. It’s comfortable. you got enough that you weren’t hungry, but not so much that it was worth anyone’s time to take it away from you.
But the poor aren’t tough anymore. They’ve had too much handed to them.
And the rich, they aren’t tough anymore either, not enough taken away from them.
And the guy in the middle, he’s just trying to hold on to what he’s got.
And I thought, it won’t be long…fine, silk, parachutes, filling the sky, covering the ground.
