9 – With a little help from my friends

Day 9 of 100, Singapore

No, a camera post doesn’t count.

The last line of yesterday’s post now makes sense (I think). Late nights are conducive to many creative endeavors, but writing structurally sound sentences doesn’t appear to be one of them. Nonetheless, better eventually corrected than never. It’s ridiculously late now too, so this won’t be a long one. I’ve been out shooting all day and I’m tired, turning things over in my head while trying to keep focused on work, trying not to be distracted… ha.

Back in 2013, my friend Brian Miller introduced me to the music of one Amos Lee (we were enroute to Acoma Pueblo from Albuquerque, which is completely irrelevant to this story, but what’s life without good digressions?). 4 years later, those three albums – Amos Lee, Last Days At The Lodge, and Supply and Demand – are still what I listen to when my mind needs to rest.

I listened to “Freedom” for the first time in 2013. As time goes on, its message grows ever more urgent. I will share lyrics, because they’re good, as is the music they’re set to.

Freedom
from the album Supply and Demand

Don’t wanna be a martyr in this war
Don’t wanna hear the same excuses anymore
That everything’s a threat
And it’s only gonna get worse if we let it

Don’t wanna blame the rich for what they got
Don’t point a finger at the poor for what they have not
Though the politician and the priest
Live in the belly of the beast because we fed it

Freedom is seldom found
By beating someone to the ground
Telling them how everything is gonna be now, yeah

Now if the tables were turned tell me how you would feel
Somebody busted up into your house telling you to stay still
While the leaders will deny defeat
Innocents they testify by dying in the street

Freedom is seldom found
By beating someone to the ground
Telling them how everything is gonna be now.

– “Freedom” by Amos Lee, from Supply and Demand

The whole Supply and Demand album is exquisitely meditative and melodic. You can listen to the album preview here, read a short review here, and YouTube is bound to have tracks somewhere.

Thanks Brian.