I Learned To Stutter/Coffin Car

Recorded live 3 june 1973 at the first international feminist conference, harvard university, cambridge, ma

While john is setting up the amp...
What happened to me was that I was living as an artist and, who had relative freedom
As a woman and was considered the bitch in the society
Since I met john, I was upgraded into a witch and I was...and I think that that's very flattering
Anyway, what I learned from being with john is that the society solely treated me as a woman, as a woman who belonged to a man who is one of the most powerful people in our generation, and some of his closest friends told me that probably I should stay in the background, I should shut up, I should give up my work and that way I'll be happy
And I got those advises, I was luck, I was over thirty and it was too late for me to change
But still, still, this is one thing I want to say, sisters, because, with the wish that you know
You're not alone, i...because the whole society started to attack me and the whole society wished me dead, I started accumulating a tremendous amount of guilt complex and in result of that I started to stutter. and I consider myself a very eloquent woman and also an attractive woman all my life and suddenly, because I was associated to john, that was considered an ugly woman, ugly jap, who took your monument or something away from you
And that's when I realised how hard it is for woman, if I can start to stutter, being a strong woman and having lived thirty years by then, learn to stutter in three years of being treated as such, it is a very hard road
Now the next song is called coffin car and this is a song that I observed in myself and also in many sisters who are riding on coffin cars

Okay

Coffin car, she's riding a coffin car
She likes to ride a coffin car
People watching her with tender eyes
Friends whispering in kindly words
Children running, waving hands
Telling each other, how pretty she is

Coffin car, she's riding a coffin car
She likes to ride a coffin car
Friends making ways for the first time
People throwing kisses for the first time
Showering flowers, ringing bells
Telling each other, how nice she is

Coffin car, she likes to ride a coffin car
She's riding a coffin car
Wives showing tears for the first time
Husbands taking their hats off for the first time
Crushing their handkerchiefs, rubbing their nose
Telling each other, how good she is

Half the world is dead anyway
The other half is asleep
And life is killing her
Telling her to join the dead

So ev'ry day, she likes to ride a coffin car
A flower covered coffin car
Pretending she was dead

Coffin car
A flower covered coffin car
A flower covered coffin car
A flower covered coffin car