revival

We went to a music festival yesterday to see some friends and listen to music and toast our freedom with cold beer. One of our friends was performing, he's from Trinidad and does a mix of calypso, funk and soul. He was covering Marley's Redemption Song, folks were dancing and drinking and singing along. He sounds remarkably like Bob so every time I hear him sing one of his songs I always close my eyes and tilt my face up and soak it in.

M was running circles around me in full toddler fashion, falling and tripping and rebounding and smashing into me. My beer was sloshing around a bit, splashing my arm. J was a few feet away talking to a friend.

Our friend got to the part of the song Emancipate yourselves from mental slavery and then he repeated it Emancipate yourselves from mental slavery, and then he stopped the music and repeated Emancipate yourselves from mental slavery with no music and his voice loud and strong. And then the crowd had stopped their singing along and dancing, jolted out of the expected and stood silent, watching this man with long wild locks and wiry form rise up from his stool and repeat it yet again, as loud and deep as giant waves at the tide.

Emancipate yourselves from mental slavery.

And after the fourth time it sunk in. The crowd started cheering and applauding and there was a brief moment of solidarity and then our friend sat down and said This is your freedom. THIS is your freedom.

And then he finished the song without further ado. That moment stuck with me, that brief moment of consciousness mixed inside the sun. This IS our freedom, the one we owe to ourselves. None but ourselves can free our mind. And the path is curvy and dark and I stumble, and yet it's this that I know is true.