Laurie Anderson - Iron Mountain lyrics

It was so strange, the way
It happened almost overnight
There were soldiers
Everywhere in the city where there
Used to be just, maybe
One policeman – now there were groups of
Soldiers with machine guns, and
Riot gear almost immediately
It became normal they began to blend
In nobody talked to them but they were
Everywhere like ghosts and I thought
"when did that start to happen?"

We're trying to prevent it from happening
Instead of having to deal with it afterwards

So homeland security began to breed dogs
When the puppies were 13 weeks
Old they were sent to prisons
To be trained by prisoners
The smartest dogs were drafted to work
With police on patrols and
On bomb sniffing squads the homeland
Security slogan "If you see something
Say something" sounds like something the
Austrian philosopher Wittgenstein might say
And his books are full of
Cryptic sentences about logic
And about how language has the
Power to actually create the
World "If you can't talk about it, " he says
"it just doesn't exist"

After the "see something
Say something" slogan
Had been around for a while
Someone from Homeland Security must have had
Second thoughts about asking people
To report on each other all
The time i would've
Loved to have been at that
Homeland Security PR brainstorming session
When they decided to add this
Phrase to their slogan
There's so many trucks in
My neighbourhood now
Carrying information and data on their
Way to secure storage areas
Iron Mountain started as a network
Of caves for growing
Mushrooms and gradually turned into
A bomb resistant
Storage facility for corporate
Documents after
World War I I, the company began
Inventing new identities for
Jewish immigrants
Who arrived with nothing no papers – or at
Most their old library cards so Iron
Mountain created all sorts of
New documents for
Them and they became instant Americans