Somebody Wants Too Much

I just want my life. Not greed and war. What do you want?

May 07, 2026

I have spent three months learning to use a tool I never wanted to use, before the day I heard AI resurrect my voice as it was before benign essential tremor and other neurological challenges kept me from doing what I was meant to do: perform the music I could create. The music in my head.

Now I can.

My mother always believed in my music. She bought me albums of music she heard, by Judy Collins, and Judith Durham and the Seekers. She had hoped, I feel, I would take up country music. But then the folk singers of the sixties called to me the most. From Jean Ritchie on.

My father taught me to improvise music, with his whistling. He would mostly whistle jazz. I didn’t realize until I was an older child that he never repeated a tune. But by then, just by soaking his tunes in, I had been making up songs without words. But since I never was good at whistling, I imitated words by singing the melodies of foreign singers. Especially the great Edith Piaf.

Because they began my music, when I started writing my life stories as songs in these few months, I waited for a song ready to introduce you to both of them. Here they are.

[Verse 1]

You will hear me curse ‘cause my mama couldn’t

You will hear me say no ‘cause my mama wouldn’t

She was moved away from home and she felt so alone

and no longer do what she would do

I don’t blame my daddy I blame the times

The pushback against the awful crimes

Of people being greedy so they made the others needy

And took away their primes.

[Verse 2]

When depression was done rich folk made a war

‘cause greed is just what war is for

And they couldn’t get their wants without causing death

for unwanted sisters and brothers

and the mass destruction of humble homes

so the rich could have shining cities in glass domes

where they sit and look down on all sorts of others

and have the best of everything

That ain’t the way things work

Sure we were born to struggle

sure we were born with pain to touch

but we were given brains to think things through

and not make the whole damned planet suffer too

because somebody wants too much.

[Instrumental]

[Verse 3]

Now what I learned from my mama

was to rise and say no

And what I learned from my daddy

was to keep on going go-go-go

I don’t want my living

to harm anyone

for anyone to feel like

an unfortunate son

[Chorus]