this is the original video (two of my least favorite words: “embedding disabled”; play on 240p for visual + audio, omg!) and this is the version i posted earlier w/ lyrics.
i’ve been playing the ish out this dang song today. i first heard it last night (well, 2 nights ago now) at safire’s end of summer event. in addition to a gallery walk and raffle, the evening consisted of performances from the program’s young women including dance, spoken word, a puppet show (!), and slideshows. other than the presentations that were in reflection of their summer session and the experiences of the participants, the content of the show were creative sharings of what the ladies learned about their families immigration and refugee experiences coming to the united states and the hardships and successes their parents and grandparents faced (this summer’s program focus was uncovering their family histories).
though all performances were well-executed and uber-adorable (i hope that doesn’t come off as patronizing; i say “adorable” in that nostalgic “i’m old, they’re young, i was once young, too and i remember how fun it was” kinda way), one of the slideshows, in particular, caught my attention because the editing was tight and synched seamlessly with the chosen audio, “dog days.”
like i said earlier, i’ve never heard this song until that night and tried to make out the lyrics so i could google them later, but sonically it proved a little difficult. luckily, the song and artist info was included in the slideshow credits and, hurriedly, i went for my purse to type the name and title in my phone so i could look it up later.
upon reading the words to the song, other than it being fkn amazing-sounding, i can see why the young lady responsible for the slideshow chose it as her soundtrack. i admit i am making an assumption here, but the following verse seems to me (as someone who does not share her family’s experience) to be a rather beautiful (ironically, so) and—simplified—summation of her parents’ and grandparents’ hardship:
run fast for your mother run fast for your father
run for your children and your sisters and brothers
leave all your love and your loving behind you
can’t carry it with you if you want to survive
the reason why i think the choosing of this song, with this verse especially, is so poignant and poetic as the sole audio for a slideshow consisting of family photos throughout the lifespan is because the family of the girl (and her sister, who also presented her own sharing) came to the united states as refugees from cambodia, fleeing the khmer rouge, pol pot, and what the american popular imagination recognizes as “the killing fields.”
in my recent internal waxing poetic at my anecdotal observations of the similarities (more than we realize; for example, this) between filipinos and (other) southeast asians, one definite—important—and/but politically (as opposed to cultural or religious) different experience is that filipinos are decidedly IMMIGRANTS and our viet, khmer, hmong, and other southeast asian cousins are REFUGEES.
now, one can argue just how “voluntary” immigration is when poverty is endemic, the government corrupt beyond repair (we don’t need reform, we need revolution), and our national sovereignty a fkn myth, but in discussion of just how involuntary refugee status is, there is no comparison and no conversation, period. though conditions in the philippines can be called war-like in the herculean challenge it is to not only survive, but provide a flourishing future for one’s children under semi-colonial, semi-feudal conditions when one is not member of the elite 1%, the actual lived reality of war, that is, having the sht bombed out of your country and your home military killing and being killed by a foreign one, is vastly different.
though the young woman’s slideshow was definitely a celebration of her family’s happiness they’ve built in the u.s. and her gratitude for their sacrifice and struggle to provide her and her sister with a comfortable life and bright future ahead (articulated not only by the numerous smiling faces in the photos, but this namesake lyric of the song: the dog days are over/the dog days are done), i couldn’t help but feel the bittersweet swell inside of me.
run fast for your mother run fast for your father
run for your children and your sisters and brothers
leave all your love and your loving behind you
can’t carry it with you if you want to survive
i think it is how unintentionally literal this lyric is that what gets to me.
run fast for your mother run fast for your father
if you don’t run, you will be shot, raped, and/or forced into a concentration camp
run for your children and your sisters and brothers
run fast because their survival—and possibility—depends on yours
leave all your love and your loving behind you
death does not make time for keepsakes or opportunity to dwell on that which only your heels now face
can’t carry it with you if you want to survive
not only the physical, but the emotional, most importantly
in a recent conversation with a friend who is viet-american, we briefly talked about how the experience of many vietnamese in the united states is one of ptsd, or post-traumatic stress disorder. in another conversation i had with him and, separately, with another friend who is also a viet-american male, both articulated that the trauma of war are internalized not only by their elders who lived through it, but our generation, the american-born children, as well. so engrained and on a wide-scale is the ptsd still thriving and mutating, more than 30 years later and an entire ocean away, that this long-over war still has power and the potential to (re)define the experience of what it means to be vietnamese in america for this generation and generations to come.
also, i think it is worthy and interesting to note that these identical observations/conclusions two different viet-american males from opposite coasts shared stemmed from conversations whose topics were totally unrelated, which i suppose is a reflection of how deep-seated and overarching a force in their life and that of their community’s this war still is and has.
though the young filmmaker-in-training is not viet, but khmer, and is of a generation twice removed from the end of that incredibly bloody era that not only involved vietnam in the “vietnam war,” but laos and cambodia, as well, i wonder what effect—whether it is as palpable as the ptsd my viet friends observe in their peoples or not—she feels of her family’s literal running, leaving behind, and can’t carrying? though the “dog days” are indeed over and done, the experience as refugees and having to flee one’s home under the threat of torture and death, i can imagine, is still a daily memory for her parents and grandparents.
and i wonder…if they were given the training and tools to author their own slideshow and an opportunity to present it to a rapt audience—what would their short film be like? would there be as many smiling faces in theirs as in hers? and, to convey the emotional rhythm and meter of their lives, i wonder most of all: what song would they choose?
