A Brief and Vicious Musical Interlude

Three songs have been on my mind over the last 24 hours…

Garbage’s 2017 song “No Horses”:

They’ll use you too (They’ll use you too)
They’ll lie to you (They’ll lie to you)
They’ll steal from you (They’ll steal from you)
They’ll sell you too (They’ll sell you too)

They’ll turn on you
They’ll come for you
They’ll hurt you too
They’ll get to you too

And there will be no apologies
And no more security
There will be no cops
Just men with guns

Intense, chaotically enveloping, dark, and unfortunately relevant today. I have no idea how I happened across this track, nor do I understand why it went under my radar for so long. Originally, I didn’t want to post the video link as it may distract from the lyrics highlighted; however, the imagery and clips of protests, riots, and whatnot… well, that just fits the mood – with an appropriate accompaniment.

Listening for the nth time, I couldn’t help but recall a few of my previous posts: Post-War Perils, …Rules Go Out the Window, and The Monsters Are Due… Perhaps there is some inverted sense of purpose with those posts – a reminder of what is at stake if things are allowed to get progressively sideways.

Garbage (again) with an older song from 1998 – “Special”:

Do you have an opinion?
A mind of your own?
I thought you were special
I thought you should know
But I’ve run out of patience
I’ve run out of comments
I’m tired of the violence
I couldn’t care less

This one has been on my mind for a while now, and becomes the backing vocals for my own thoughts when reading the media commentary on whatever topic is being served for the day.

There have been many folks who, once upon a time, I respected; yet, when I hear the same words from different mouths quoting the same questionable sources… the use of the past tense becomes tinged with frustration, disappointment, and resignation. For many, I have simply run out of patience.

Interestingly, I acknowledge the use of others’ words to express my own feelings. In this case, it is a deliberate use for the purpose of analogy, and not to support what my expectations are for the reaction of the audience.

Finally, Sting’s 1985 song “Russians”:

Mister Krushchev said, “We will bury you”
I don’t subscribe to this point of view
It’d be such an ignorant thing to do
If the Russians love their children too

This song… it hurts and rekindles the nearly forgotten adolescent fears of nuclear war which should have been safely relegated to the traumatic memories of ABC’s The Day After and all the big hair of the mid-1980s.

There are no sides being taken, here; I haven’t enough information to take one single side and absolutes are always going to be problematic for me.

Rather, there is only another musical interlude which compels me to throw on the noise-cancelling headphones and write a bit more to capture the mood of the moment.

We made it past 1985…

We made it past 1998…

We made it past 2017…

We made it past so many yesterdays for the sake of today and the plans for tomorrow.

We all have to be vicious in our optimism – to find that purpose, that soundtrack, and that perspective that drives us to make more, write more, think more, and just be more.

That is our imperative.