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This morning I was struck with this overwhelming realization that in times as polarizing as these, it is the exact time when we need the soul to rise up and create.
My husband shared a new (to me) rendition of the Simon & Garfunkel justice anthem "The Sounds of Silence" reimagined and performed by Disturbed (I don't always like remakes but this is really good). You may just need to stop reading now and go watch/listen. It will move your soul. I have no doubts.
We need this song now. today. It was originally written and released in a very tumultuous era...an era I was birthed from. We were in a wicked and senseless war where our children were drafted from their homes to serve out a mission steeped in controversy. We were a nation wondering what would happen if we shared drinking fountains with black Americans. We didn't know how we felt about governments, religion or women.
One of the beautiful things that came from this societal conflict was art. Songwriters, painters and creatives were communicating the pain of the soul and reimagining what life could or should be like. Our souls wanted to make it right. Our souls wanted to be heard.
I was born in 1974. My parents music and relationship with this conflict became the sounds I heard. It was the music of this time that filled my soul. Their relationship with this societal trauma became a language my soul new how to sing from a very young age. Their "art" became my worldview. I watched my uncle, a Vietnam veteran who was a medic at the Battle at Hamburger Hill, learn to live "normal". I watched him react to watching Platoon when it first released...his whole being had to wrestle with his truth being released to the world in this way.
So this song, The Sound of Silence, is nostalgic as well as moving. But it made me think of all the similarities we have today to when this song was written. The song came from the soul's pain of existing in a story line that it could not reconcile. The soul had to communicate its struggle and longing. The soul birthed many things that we now call "relic" or "the oldies". But I call it "The voice of the soul". Art.
We need it again. We need the voices of the souls of us. We need to have others put into words or pictures or melodic experiences the pain, hope, conflict and longings that our humanity needs. This is being community. This is living in truth. This is connecting back to ourselves.
I am not a song writer and I can't paint a stick figure to save my life. So I need you.
Creatives...this is your time. This is your palette to express what people like me can not. I need your words. I need your pictures of how you see the world, our world. I need your reimagined societies. I need your innovative community concepts. I need your expressions of freedom. I need your talents to put voice to the chaos that is submerging my soul.
Creatives...do your thing! The world needs the story you have to tell. Because it might just be our story too.
