"Smoking Gun" and "Bones"

Two Songs and Reflections by: Katherine Parent

I. “SMOKING GUN”
Two years ago I was staring down a December deadline for finishing my dissertation on white Lutherans and the history of Midwestern racism, and going to meetings where my advisor said I'd "never find a smoking gun" of proof. Book after book in the seminary library started Midwestern church history in the late 19th century and centered it completely on European experiences, erasing the context of Indigenous Land and People, and settler violence. It was deeply disorienting. I finally wrote the song "Smoking Gun" about it.  

He leans back in his easy chair
Says, "I can't deny what has been done...
but you need more proof! It's not quite there
And you'll never find a smoking gun..."
 
These big white lies on every page
Find a nicer word for "hit and run"
If you tell enough you change the frame
To a hole the shape of a smoking gun
 
(No one here pulled the trigger!
Better get your facts straight, hun
Yeah so buy it, we deny there's
Ever been a smoking gun)
 
Who bought the shares? Who planned the war?
Oh my ancestors, what have you done?
It's the same old tale you told before:
that the other side "had a smoking gun"
 
(All the big shots made a killin'
We're still trying to hide the fun
Point the finger, still it lingers
This whole town's a smoking gun)
 
So fan the flame and spread the smoke
Try to silence every truthful tongue
But it's obvious, the whole world knows
That America is a smoking gun

II. “BONES”
 
"Bones" is a companion song that has haunted me for years. I started writing it at my great-grandpa's cabin, after seeing Amoke Kubat's play "Angry Black Woman and Well-Intentioned White Girl" in Minneapolis. I imagined what it might be like if a wiser white ghost met a more recent, very lost and disembodied one on the Great Plains, and what she might say to her. 

You were born to city people
a generation from the farm
I'm circling back, a restless spirit
Coming home with empty arms
There's not much left of the lilacs
Barn is tumbled open wide
Your grandpa's trees are growing wild now
They're familiar with the sky

There she goes, a' wandering through this land
Through concrete walls and magazines
Searching for a place to lay her bones
For a story to believe

But this town doesn't claim its history
Before 1891
Just plaid and green, a threadbare story
(What did it cost? When did they come?)
And all that you have brought to go on
Are tall tales and trite refrains
Of dirt-cheap land, hard-working settlers
Nobody lost, no one to blame...

There you go, such a well-intentioned ghost
But you still don't understand
That haunting antique stores, historic trails
You're trespassing on sacred land

oooOOOOOooo (ghosts singing)

There's not much that I can give you
You'll have to find your own release
In a land torn by such hatred
there's no easy road to peace
But it's no wonder you're still lost here
Out beneath the open sky
To find your bones, to face their stories!
To finally grieve, to finally die...

Oh my ghost.... oooh...
Oh my soul, my long-forgotten soul
Come and listen to your bones!

---

Katherine Parent

is a Minnesota artist/musician with a PhD in history. She is a neurodivergent queer creator who cleans houses during the day and writes folk songs at odd hours.