Lyrics and music by Marc Gunn
Performed by Marc Gunn
From CD: As Long As I'm Flyin'
The Long Arm is reaching for you
Wants to wrest and take control
It struck down your family
Now it's aimin' for your soul
It's grasp is filled with hate
It's fingers naught but fear
White knuckled, it grips you
Til your eyes fill with tears
* We fight for freedom, freedom
For poetry and song
We fight for actors and authors,
It's them artists who make us strong
The Long Arm took our planet
Down our throats, it done rammed
The promise of unification
But it left us all damned
Laid waste to our landscape
While its pockets grew fat
Left us homeless and cold
Now it's time we fight back
* We fight for freedom, freedom
For poetry and song
We fight for painters and potters,
It's them artists who make us strong
We're done running from the Long Arm
Browncoats rise again
We'll weaken your grip
And the stories that you spin
Like you done with all of your lies
That you packed in your fist
But you ain't seen the truth yet
Till you seen us resist
* We fight for freedom, freedom
For poetry and song
We fight for dancers and dreamers,
It's them artists who make us strong
We fight for freedom, freedom
For poetry and song
We fight for laborers and learners,
It's you who makes us strong
Background
This song was inspired by the TV show Firefly. In the episode “Out of Gas”, Malcolm Reynolds says, “No matter how long the arm of the Alliance might get… we'll just get ourselves a little further.” That was the comment of a soldier who lost both a physical and spiritual war. He was ready to flee, escape, and hide like I suspect many Browncoats did after the Unification War.
However, I felt like Mal regained his faith in people after they broadcast the news about Miranda in the movie Serenity. He had something to fight for again, as did many people in the ‘Verse.
What is there to fight for? Not governments and organizations, but for people, for individuals, for the arts.
One of the first things to go in a profit-driven world is the arts. They are not easily commoditized because art is subjective. However, art is also the sign of a civilized society. It satisfies the emotional and spiritual needs of the community, helping the it to grow, learn, and thrive. That's something that is difficult to sell and dangerous to promote.
