The arrival of this new season has announced itself with the echoes of gunfire reverberating around the world, mingled now with the loud voices of the affluent and the silence of solidarity; the minor fall of tragedy and the major lift of a new resolve. This is the birdsong of freedom, and the marching beat of united man to preserve it. Times where each person has a response, everyone a stake in collective freedom.
But, it seems, the entire nature of that freedom is being shaken out and turned upside down.
We stand fighting for freedom of speech, and yet we’re slaves to the fear of what might become with every next move. We’re defending this liberty as something indivisible, as something that gives us the right to be who we want, do what we want, speak how we like, to whoever we like. We’re marching off the back of tragedy with new breath in our lungs, the crowds standing together to protect the right to use our voices to sing to whatever rhythm we want. Marching to the rhythms of war drums and singing our songs of revolution.
But surely, in every song, the musicians have a responsibility. Each man and woman a piece of the orchestra; they have freedom to sing and to play in whatever key they want, but yet, for the sake of producing the harmonious masterpiece, they choose to play together, with one key, with one accord.
Freedom of speech is something worth protecting. But if we, as the songwriters and musicians in this world, use that freedom to play in our own key, we will only ever produce discord and clamor. By definition, we will be free, in that we can use the pulpit to offend or to encourage; to break down or build up; to defame or to love. But with the collective freedom, comes the collective responsibility. Our voice can be used for ill or for good, to produce a perfect melody or a discordant mess.
These tragic days have taught us the far reaching power of our freedom, for better or worse. Yet, in defending that freedom, it is all too easy to become imprisoned by the chains of fear and arrogance; fear for what our words may create, and arrogance as to our liberty to use them however we like.
On our tongues is a song of freedom, the choice to make a perfect utterance.
It’s time we used our song, our little utterance, to create something beautiful out of the ashes of these times. To proclaim freedom for the captives, and release for the prisoner, to speak out for the afflicted. To shed tears with the families of Parisian victims, to cry with thousands left despairing in Nigeria, to mourn with the children of Syria.
And then, with one accord, it is our time to take up our song born from the collective freedom. Not a freedom that breaks down and tramples on others. A freedom born in love, in keeping with justice, in hope. Hope for a world bright with the exultant out pour of sons and daughters singing in one united key.
Our song can change the world. With that responsibility, we can be the singers who end this world’s poverty, bring about peace in the ruins of violence, and build from the dust the freedom for all to coexist together in peace, without regard for race, religion or any other factor.