 songs & lyrics Forget (This Side of Paradise, 2001)  This song, the final song on This Side of Paradise, was written after spending just under four years living in the Palestinian West Bank from 1994-1998. Arriving in the U.S. for the first time, and starting to play the coffee bar circuit, this was the hand grenade song to drop in that context. Writing began in a hotel in the Dakotas, as President Bill Clinton prepared for a large bombing campaign of Iraq, and the news networks started pumping out the standard green bombsight, video game images and the usual accompanying worship of military hardware. Final version of lyrics: Saturday, December 19th, 1998 Forget (This Side of Paradise, 2001) seen too many things i'd like to forget - the desire to civilise in a soldier's eyes seen too many things i'd like to forget - bleeding teenagers on stretchers not at all sure if they're still alive seen too many things i'd like to forget - september tanks on the hills around my town seen too many things i'd like to forget - not being sure if you'll make it when you say that you'll come around --arrest, arrest, arrest, arrest these things‹ seen too many things i'd like to forget - hope in a prisoner's eyes seen too many things i'd like to forget - belief that manifests in lies seen too many things i'd like to forget but i can't always ar-ar-ar-ticulate them all as yet because there's some things that i believe that we just weren't meant to know or see and i know that you know that we try to forgetseen too many things i'd like to forget - a border guard - knows he's your god for at least five minutes while you die inside and wish you were not one of the not chosen ones - the palestinian niggers of the middle east - i mean would you want your children to conclude that they should never have been born with a genetic tan or a different lan-lan-lan- language is a whore we fall in love with and beg for more i was never afraid until i realised that evil lives and breathes outside of horror movies in the sound of the cock of guns on third world city streets and i never realised that people even shot each other until i saw it with my own eyes doodle - my own eyes, i'd scratch them out if i thought for a minute it would erase my mind - you see i'm not ready to believe that people can read and not find funny about the 'accuracy' of a 'smart bomb' that lands in completely the wrong country have you ever thought about the technology that we use to kill? Have you ever thought that there's a design and testing process or do statistics make you ill? because it was former u.s. attourney general ramsey clark that pointed out that our sanctions offed over and above one and a half million iraqis before the first missile even hit the ground. 8 and 19 December 1998, Minneapolis, Minnesota. 
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