Car Crash Boy Video (MV)

You had your epiphany,
About how bad life can be,
Now you can't stop telling me,
Before the car crash you were bored,
Food tasted like cardboard, you were flawed,
In this way or that.
In those days you got attention by wearing a hat.
Life felt so flat,
You couldn't see your way to creating a life of meaning,
It only consisted of preening, and no one was intervening,
Until circumstances did, dramatically,
And now you're proselytising so dogmatically,
And trying to make your point so emphatically
You forget that others have faced real adversity,
Had to deal with perfidy, infirmity
Have already made some sense of it,
Live a life with some insight into it,
Are forced by circumstance to be able to intuit.
We think you had it easy,
Responded in a way that was selfish and sleazy,
And honestly it made us queasy, uneasy...

You had to be literally hit by a truck to see the error of your ways, your privilege allowing you to delay,
And now you expect a pat on the back for the glimmer of empathy you display?
You think your experience entitles you to share your wisdom,
Yeah, you're the wisest boy in the kingdom,
Even though you were treated well by the system,
You still don't understand others' experience within it,
So can't contextualise yours,
That's why for your basic insight you want applause,
And offer words you think are cures
You still want to speak not listen,
You don't really get others have their own experience and volition,
Doesn't fit with your newfound mission.
You don't concern yourself with fighting for others,
Don't see them as sisters and brothers,
Their pain remains uncovered.

You'd rather speak in generalities,
You're an intellectual big boy aiming for universality,
Not realising their pains come from specificities...
The specificity of trans or queer or black or woman, and
The very real ills of poverty, and disease,
Is what you never see, of these you've always been free

So you're writing a self-help book,
You encourage me to take a look,
Being hit by the truck is your hook,
Snatching meaning from the jaws of death,
When some risk annihilation with each breath,
Just for being in a union,
Just for loving another woman,
Just for lying where they've fallen
So go ahead, car crash boy, share your newfound knowledge,
You can write a book, you've been to college,
But remember your adversity was a twist of fate,
And sure it has weight,
But mate, other people's adversity's in- baked.
You were unlucky, your recovery plucky, but that was lucky too.
Socialised medicine, plus you stayed with your mum and dad who took care of you,
Mates to cheer you up when you were blue.
It took having both your legs broken,
To see what went unspoken,
That your shallowness and luck
Needed to be replaced by this devotion, this emotion,
You're so swept up, you committed the same old sin,
In, ignorance and a blindness to how your so-called wisdom would be received,
The idea that you're still a novice, not even conceived.