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The continuance
Jonathan Elias
Popularity ยท Low
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๐ฌ๐ง English ยท Original
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Lyrics
Original
Translation
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The American river lives inside our souls
It spills onto the soil we touch
And it spreads its wisdom to those within reach
Its struggle to remain pure is clouded by fear and deceit
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Alone on its journey through freedom
Traveling fast against rocky ideas
The questions are asked in silence
And the answers live in peace
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The river is life
And runs through the American spirit
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My ancestors on my father's side
Came to America in the middle of the seventeenth century
The original Cash was a mariner named William
From County Fife in Scotland
Who sailed across the Atlantic and settled in Salem, Massachusetts
His sons and daughters and grandchildren and great-grandchildren
Spread south to Virginia and Georgia and Arkansas
They never went farther west than the Mississippi Delta
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They were sailors who became southern farmers
But no musicians appeared until my dad, J. R. Cash
Was born in 1932
Now in the twenty-first century
The sailors and farmers have disappeared
But musicians, singers, and songwriters
Are spilling down through the modern generations
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I am part of the river of souls who make up the sliver of America
That belongs to mariners and musicians
Those who love the sea and those who make music
The ocean and the soil
The body and the soul
The words and the music
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I am at the congruence of sea and dirt
And it becomes a song
I am from a long line of Americans without illusions
We became who we were
The river I sail is one of longing for what I already have
An ache to be who I already am
American without illusions
A member of the world
Captain of melody
Sower of words
The river and the ocean it flows into
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