I can’t believe it’s been 20 years since the Berlin Wall fell.  I remember standing on the west side looking down the road that once was one in 1986.  3 years later I was offered a publishing deal with EMI.  During that deal I wrote this song inspired by the hope of a reunified country and the frustrations I was having with my father and others around the possibilities of a more unified society here in the US.

Here’s the lyric and story that I posted to my song a day for peace page back in March of 2003.

BLIND WALLS - Spring 1991*

Ditch these psychological ties that bind you
You talk about the problem as if you were the cause
But not one of us hasn’t felt the pressure
Your freedom lies in your value of the truth

You may be the poorest in the nation
Make less for a job of equal weight
But it’s not your fault someone makes out better by keeping you down
You make not see him, but his scent is around

Someone told me the black man beats black woman
Like white man beat the black
And with words black woman keeps black man down
And the white man taught her that
But it’s not white men, but what we’ve all perpetuated
That keeps you shackled down

You may think you’re sick cause you can’t get ahead
What’s sick are the walls placed in your way
Love yourself, take care of those with whom you share this world
One day I pray for this world’s sake these blind walls will crumble

Blind Walls Will Crumble (4X)

The black man is Korean
The Korean man’s a Jew
The white man’s an Appalachian
And the sickness eats at you
To hate one man is to hate yourself
Sure as one and one makes two
But one times one times one times one times one times one
Is one world for you

Now in school they called me White Boy
They called me Nigger Lips too
I told them “I’m just Indian”
I was just a fool
The colorblind man sees better than the rest
I’m trying to believe it’s true
If the Berlin Wall can come down, then Ignorance must fall too!

You know these
Blind walls will crumble
Blind walls will crumble
Blind walls will crumble
Don’t let yourself be shackled down

© Jason Luckett

*This song has a lot of significance for me. One was that the day the Berlin wall fell, I was offered my publishing deal. Then my third publisher (at the company of attrition) finally told me he understood this song a few weeks before I begged out of my contract–much to my wallet’s dismay–and six months after I delivered the song to ‘em.

But more significant were long conversations up at my dad’s house about black women writers, and his anger over the “dirty laundry” aired in public. All sorts of battles raged in so called intelligentsia at the time and me in my simple mindedness, just thought we weren’t the cause but we could create our own problems by not understanding the patterns that were set before we even got here. Have the dialogue, yell if you need, but read the whole story and see the humanity that we all exhibit. Most of all just be who you are, and don’t lash out at the author just because you don’t like the first paragraph of a book.

This is the like the second version of this recording. I had my friend Kevin Army come down from San Francisco to help me. We also had Craig roses play a little guitar on it (pre-Lenny Kravitz days) and Kevin Haskins making some noises on it from his old sampler (I think he’d just sampled a lot of stuff from the Beatles revolver album–please don’t sue). My main rhythm section in those days was Rick Markman and Mauro Rubbi from an Australian band called “Cry Charity.”

Despite the difficult conversations with older people like my dad and publisher, those were really hopeful times. Though I can definitely hear youthful haste in my singing on some of those old tracks.