Fascist Architecture (by Bruce Cockburn)

Lyrics:

Fascist architecture of my own design
Too long been keeping my love confined
You tore me out of myself alive

Those fingers drawing out blood like sweat
While the magnificent facades crumble and burn
The billion facets of brilliant love
The billion facets of freedom turning in the light

Bloody nose and burning eyes
Raised in laughter to the skies
I’ve been in trouble but I’m ok
Been through the wringer but I’m ok
Walls are falling and I’m ok
Under the mercy and I’m ok

Gonna tell my old lady
Gonna tell my little girl
There isn’t anything in the world
That can lock up my love again

Notes:

1994
“That was when my marriage broke up. And that fact broke a lot of things in me. The image ‘fascist architecture’ came from Italy. It was stuff that was built during Mussolini’s period that was a particular style where the buildings are really larger that life and what is supposed to celebrate the greatness of humanity actually dwarfs humanity. And it makes you feel tiny and helpless next to it. And everybody hates this stuff. It seemed to me a suitable image for the things in ourselves, the structures we build that are built on false expectations or pretenses. The things we pretend to ourselves. And then when some catastrophe comes your way, like a marriage breaking up or some other thing, those things crack and you get glimpses through them, the light comes through them. It’s not a comfortable thing.”

– from “Closer to the Light with Bruce Cockburn” by Paul Zollo, SongTalk, vol.4, issue 2, 1994. Submitted by Rob Caldwell.