Walking in the Dark

by @br0th3rh00d · @cosmicdogstudios

Liner Notes

UPDATE Now a *rocking* collab with @cosmicdogstudios See here for that demo! https://write.fawm.org/songs/14354

Walking in the dark is controversial. At least, for women (or people who look like women, like my afab enby ass). There are creepy ways to suggest women walk outside in the dark but recent attacks on companies for referencing it have a regressive, creepy edge to them. Especially in the socially conservative & blinkered untruth that women generally don't or shouldn't walk the streets or parks or go anywhere after dark. It does a disservice to women like Sarah Everard they keenly reference. I have long leaned towards reclaiming the streets or just living your life, walking outside as and when you need or want to, as more consistent with feminist goals and modes of action and say the general attitude to terrorism and I've felt that too much 'safety first' ends up victim blaming and controlling. I don't want to be controlled by pearl-clutching upholders of the patriarchy or rotten cultures in the official police and those related currents within masculinity.
After Everard was killed I walked the streets of my town sing loudly nearly every night for a fortnight! Mostly mashing up Little Eva and Kylie versions of the Locomotion. Badly.

This, the first written in February whilst going to the supermarket (my autistic family needed milk for breakfast!) - so far it has two tunes in my head. Originally it was nursery-rhyme-like with a walking rhythm, roughly using bits of Pussy's in the well. But when I just picked it up I sang it in a fairly generic rock style with fewer repetitions. 'Fark' is a humorous stand-in for the F-word. It's better-rhyming!

Lyrics

Walking in the dark (x2) (pussy's in the well musical line?)
Gives a little spark (x2)
Just a little frisson ('who put her in?' loosely: diminuendo)
Of not giving a FARK!
Of not giving a fark!

Just a little spark
of not giving a fark

Of not giving in (x3)
(bar long pause)
To terrorism!

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