We’ve updated our Terms of Use to reflect our new entity name and address. You can review the changes here.
We’ve updated our Terms of Use. You can review the changes here.

Look Away​/​In It

from Norman by Bradley Herr

/

lyrics

How do we start to break this down?
How do we pick apart this mystery
When we've been running round and round
In circles to defend our history?

You teach a lie, you acclimate,
You're turning children into factions,
You tell me heritage not hate
But it's the heritage of a fraction

Look around yourselves and stare
Defend your monuments and order,
But half our masses aren't there
Because their past is unrecorded

It isn't hard to understand,
It's just uncomfortable to see,
They say we built this land but they only mean white hands,
You see the branches, not the trees

Look away from the past, look away from the shame, look away from the hate, look away from the flames burning hot in our heads from these feelings we swallow that follow this sense that we're guilty of

Flying free living proudly and loudly and able when books give us figures that millions of others can only discover by mailing in spit to a company welcoming money

Just to know who they might be and where their grandparents were born in a world they don't know 'cause their people were torn from the soil to suffer and toil in sorrow maybe tomorrow

We might understand how our pride in this land isn't worth all the monuments built for the some when we should be including the whole of the populace, down to the letter it makes us feel better to look away


Look away from what haunts you
Look away cause you want to feel better
Look away from the shame of a nation who either
Ignores or forgets it
Look away from who’s crying
Look away from who’s dying
Look away from the people your monuments keep to
A history that you keep denying

Look away from what’s right
The exclusively white
Look away from the people who long for a story
That doesn’t result in a fight
You don’t have to take fault
You don’t have to take blame
But don’t look away from the children who grew up without
Knowing from where they came

There's no shame in admitting
All the sins we're committing
But there's honor in learning and value in turning
Away from the place we keep sitting
Look away from exclusion
To a culture suffusion
With worth put on valuing truth as it happened
Instead of illusion

this is our time to shine
To rewrite these old lines
Look our faults in the face and get past them
As one we unite
To find it within us
To rewrite the syllabus
If history’s written by winners then let’s win together
And write one for all of us

credits

from Norman, released October 30, 2020

license

all rights reserved

tags

about

Bradley Herr image

Bradley Herr Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

contact / help

Contact Bradley Herr

Streaming and
Download help

Redeem code

Report this track or account

If you like Bradley Herr, you may also like:

Bandcamp Daily  your guide to the world of Bandcamp

On Bandcamp Radio

Featuring interviews with LA music scene pillar Kamasi Washington, and new London-based duo Mrcy.

listen now