How twisted is the world, and does it ever stop turning? It has been said that “time waits for no one.” What happens with the rest of the world while we are busy building and living our own lives? It keeps on turning, things keep moving, and we must strike a delicate balance between our own world and the world beyond our own, lest we become out of sync and out of touch. This musical episode of The Axiom Amnesia Theory with Heit & Cheri explores a number of songs that touch on the issues of our twisted world.

You’ll hear songs by Bill Withers, Curtis Mayfield, Shirley Brown, Lil O feat. Billy Cook, Green Day, and Souljah Fyah.

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• Discussion about the vice presidential debate. Biden spanked Ryan. However, there are a lot of people who think Ryan won. People complained about Biden being rude.
• Immediately following the VP debate, the buzz was that Biden clearly won the debate. It didn’t take long, however, for the media to turn the tide with their coverage. Within hours, they had people believing that the debate performance was about equal between both men. Everybody wants to watch a close race, and that’s the illusion that’s in the media’s best interest to present.
• Ultimately people are just cheerleaders–like at a football game–and people just root for their side.
• These debates are not about truth and accuracy. It’s just about the political theater leading up to the vote. It basically just keeps people engaged.
• In the end, both candidates are for the corporation. The poor and poverty were hardly mentioned–only the middle class.
• Some people say that Biden came and did what Obama couldn’t do in the debates, with regard to his attitude and aggressiveness during the debate. There are a lot of people who feel that Obama would be viewed as the “angry Black man” if he were to be more aggressive, so Obama tends to play it safe in this area. It’s BS!
• If you are going to restrict yourself to certain behaviors because of being Black (to avoid negative stereotypes), that’s like saying that Blacks should act one way, while whites can do whatever they like. This is foolishness! Why is it always about changing oneself to fit others’ expectations?
• Obama is a lot more conservative than people give him credit for being. He adheres very closely to the expectations of social norms. In the long run, this will be harmful to him.
• Discussion about Obama’s relatability issues as compared with Bill Clinton, and the connection with race issues.
• Discussion about how Obama only relates to Balks in certain ways when among all-Black audiences–things like calling other Blacks “brother” or “sista.”
• Discussion about the media trying to make people believe that the race is much closer than it is. According to one poll, Romney was ahead by 0.8% going into the debate.
• Why do people give so much attention to every person who says something racist. People spend too much time on these distractions. They won’t mention drone strikes killing innocent people, but are obsessed with some fool wearing a racist shirt at a Romney rally.
• Discussion about how the news networks are doing a good job of trying to make the race seem close, when it’s not.
• Discussion about the lie the media and government are perpetuating that both unemployment and foreclosures have plummeted. BS! They happen to say this right before the election and holiday season. Take a look around you and you will see what the state of the economy is.
• Discussion about how formulas for stats change and month to month, it’s not necessarily an “apples to apples” comparison.
• No matter who wins, if you don’t have money you’re f*cked!
• Discussion about how the poor are never addressed in the campaign promises. You’re renting and don’t own a car, yet the focus is on mortgages and fuel-efficient cars.
• Discussion about celebrities endorsing candidates. Mention of how Stacy Dash got attacked for saying she supports Romney.
• People only want others to vote if they are voting for their team.

• Heit loves the way that Bill Withers starts the song and builds it.
• Withers talks about a variety of topics in his songs, and he is an excellent storyteller.
• His delivery brings out the soul and you can feel the emotion. There is a choppiness in the way that he tends to deliver his songs. His singing is always effortless.
• This is a wonderfully written song–it’s literal, but can be taken with a deeper meaning. It’s a story with a literal message. It’s a guy telling a story within a story.
• The women in the story could actually represent different events in a person’s life–he tried different things. The women could be life events personified.
• No matter where you go, or what stage you’re at, life moves on simultaneously. This is the main idea of the whole song. Cheri’s favorite lines were:
  

  Said it don’t make no difference how many places that you’ve been
  Said the world keeps going around and around
  Going around and around

• Discussion about how he mentions traveling. This reminds Heit of when people make mention of their travels around the world and think that makes them an expert of sorts about places other than the U.S. We can be fooled by viewing ourselves as more knowledgeable than we actually are.
• Heit liked the whole song, and didn’t have a favorite line.

• Heit loves Curtis Mayfield’s music, because he performed at a time when people actually had a message in their music. They were talking about socially and politically relevant things. At the same time, the music was wonderful–just like Heit & Cheri’s new album, “Improper Conduct.”
• The music is just phenomenal. Cheri thinks she’s heard the sample somewhere. Heit says he’s sampled the song.
• The best songs tell a story with a message, and this song left Cheri with a lot of questions. For instance, what did Billy Jack do to get killed? Was he mouthing off? Clearly the narrator saw Billy Jack as bringing it on himself and being a fool as evidenced in the lyrics.
• This song makes Heit think of a person’s image–how we’re always talking about how people craft an image that is different from who they’ve been know as. For instance, like how people create different personas on the Internet.
• Discussion of the idea that if you want to be known as something different than where you’ve come from, you almost have to reinvent yourself with different people than who you were raised around. It sounds like this is what Billy Jack did. Thus, he was known as an “alley cat” at home, and “boss Jack” in the city.
• Heit recounts a conversation with his nephew about a guy who was from Texas who came to their hometown in Louisiana and made a song about it. Discussion about how the fact that this guy who wasn’t from there did well as an unknown in their town.
• Discussion about how starting over in a new place allows people to start over and not have their history follow them. They can go somewhere else and be a different person.
• Apparently Billy Jack was still a hot head, and the person in his hometown, who presumably didn’t give him the same respect as the city folks, wasn’t gonna let him be a “boss” in his hometown.
• Discussion about the line, “Ah! Didn’t care nothin’ bout being Black.” This is like people who leave a circumstance and don’t care about the people who remain in the circumstance they left. The people who manage to get out will often turn around and exploit the very people who are victims of their circumstance. This happens a lot with drug dealers. Mention of Rick Ross and Frank Lucas and their experiences as drug dealers.
• Discussion of Episode 053: We’ll Get You To Crack, where Heit & Cheri discuss documentaries they viewed on the subject.
• Heit plays the beat that he made using this song. Heit & Cheri discuss possibly making a song out of the beat.

• What is Shirley Brown complaining about? Why is it a complaint that her man wants sex all of the time?
• Why do you have to sleep with one eye open though? Speculation that this is a song where they decided to do it in one take with a beat they already had in mind.
• Mention of the wife in the Richard Pryor movie, Which Way Is Up, in the scene where she has her ankles crossed and doesn’t want to give up sex.
• Speculation that this was a song recorded in one take where they had the beat and Shirley just sang whatever she felt, and sleeping with one eye open is what came out.
• Cheri always thought that the song was gonna be about domestic violence when she first heard of it.
• The beat in this song goes so hard!
• This song was all hook, whereas the last song didn’t have a hook.

• Heit says that he listened to this song all the time when he was in high school. In retrospect, it was rather atypical for him to be involved in listening to such a socially conscious song at that age. He was listening to these things back then, even though he wasn’t consciously thinking about social and political issues.
• Cheri really liked the singing in the hook, because it makes the song appealing even for people who are not into hip hop music. It has some cross-over appeal.
• Heit doesn’t like the line, “You can’t handle the truth.” It is overused at this point.
• Another example of an overused line is from the movie Jerry McGuire, where the woman says, “You had me at hello.” This line has been overused in song and poetry since it appeared in the movie.
  
• Cheri’s favorite lines were the following, because they point to the mindset of many people in the community:
  

  Why is it cool to be a killer, fraud to be about peace
  Why we can’t understand, too many of us deceased
  Do we hate ourselves, some think the mo’ yellow the better

• Heit’s favorite lines were the following, because it completely runs down the way the system works:
  

  Or should we keep em all in chains, till we get us a plan
  Well here’s a plan let’s give em jobs, better jobs than we
  No just enough, so they can get the minimal wants and needs
  They’ll still be in poverty, but with they hard earned bucks
  They’ll make us rich by buying shit, that was made by us you see

• Discussion of how slavery turned to wage slavery in modern day. Discussion about how technology has allowed jobs to be eliminated.
• Heit mentions how it bothers him when Cheri goes through the self checkout lane because technology is replacing human workers by making you check yourself out at the supermarket.
• The job aspect of this song reminds Heit & Cheri of their song, Human Resources. People sacrifice so much to be a human resource, while the corporation views them as a cog in a wheel–easily replaced. By the end of life, so many people are left where they were when they started–poor with no assets.
  
  
• Discussion about how companies don’t go above and beyond for the employees, but they expect employees to do this. The companies that are the most successful have figured out how to get the most from employees for the least amount of money.

• Cheri loves that moment of silence before they play the hook one last time.
• What does the “one” mean before they say “21 guns”? The 21 guns refers to the military salute that is the highest honor. It is unclear why they say “one.” Perhaps they are talking about two different people, “you and I.” So, each of the “ones” is in reference to a different person.
• Heit & Cheri’s favorite part was:
  

  When you burned down the house and home?
  Did you stand too close to the fire
  Like a liar looking for forgiveness from a stone?

• This is a reference to doing something that you know is wrong, then asking for forgiveness because you feel sorry for it. If you had never thrown the stone in the first place, an apology wouldn’t be necessary. When people play with fire and get too close, they get burned. Again, this is a reference to the self-inflicted pain caused by doing something wrong or risky in the first place.
• Cheri loves how the lead singer hit the high note on the word “guns” in the hook. The song is not oversung, yet is still emotional because of the music.
• Heit & Cheri also like the guitars on the hook. It gives the song an element of bigness that says, “Pay attention.”

• The whole song is very smooth, and she sings effortlessly. Cheri likes the tribal drums and reggae sound, and that there was a specific song in English about Rwanda.
• Cheri’s favorite line was, “Same old story all over the world, divide and conquer.”
• Discussion about people misusing the reference of “divide and conquer.”
• Discussion of Heit’s favorite reference, “black and blacker.”
• Discussion of the line, “the people with the power had it wrong from the start.” This reference works whether referring to colonizers or to how the latest rounds of violence.

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