Welcome to FalastinVision!
- Welcome to FalastinVision!
- Smallholder
Smallholder is the musical project of Annie Spencer. Annie is a writer, artist, and scholar-activist from the US who lives in southern Sweden. Their first book How to Break an Addiction: A Method-in-a-Manifesto for Quitting Capitalism will be published in November 2024 by Common Notions Press.
Dianne is about the everyday ravages of life under imperialism. It recounts an encounter I had with a 70-year-old American woman I met on a train ride from Oakland, California to Los Angeles. I share parts of her story—having chosen to join the US Army and be deployed to the Vietnam War, Dianne seemed to never have recovered from the trauma she experienced there. Returning home to PTSD, chronic pain, an addiction to pain pills, and abandonment by the very state she naively, as an 18 year old girl, chose to ‘serve.’ Her body and life retell the horrors of the American war machine and paint one portrait of the infinite human suffering it takes to maintain and reproduce an empire. This recording is a demo I made on my phone from a friend’s couch in Copenhagen in March 2024. This version of the song is a bit slow and exceeds the three and a half minute length. If Dianne advances to the finale, I’ll re-record a faster version that fits! : )
Song Title: Diane
Diane – Smallholder
I met you pulling out of Jack London Station
I was in my assigned seat along with your things
You shoved me from behind
And said, hey can’t you read?
It was twelve more hours till LA
The seats in coach were fairly cozy
I figured I’d try talking to you
You had hot pink hair and a tarot tattoo
Oh Dianne
Oh Dianne
Dianne from Spokane to San Diego
Left home and enlisted at 18
Secretary or housewife wasn’t your thing
You figured you’d try something new
And a handsome army man recruited you
But what you saw there, you knew it wasn’t right
And the violence wasn’t just from enemy lines
Your male comrades took your body from your mind
Oh Dianne
Oh Dianne
Dianne from Spokane to San Diego
And for all your plans
For after Vietnam
They seem to have dried in the sun of New Mexico
And you feel it calling in your bones
It’s been calling you since you got home
You thought you’d try love and start a home
And you were on your way
But that fear it settled in your spine
And those damn pills have got you in a bind
Three grown kids you haven’t seen since ’99
But you’re on your way now
Oh Dianne
Oh Dianne
Dianne from Spokane to San Diego
And for all your plans
For after Vietnam
They seem to have dried in the sun of New Mexico