music-power-pride-change

Late yesterday afternoon as I walked from work to the train I was taken off-guard when a song I didn't even know I had began to play on my ipod.
Proud and forceful trumpets gave way to a rousing and militaristic drum beat. Chimes rang out and the drum beat continued, stirring a life inside of me that is often hard to come by after a long day's work. Beaming from ear to ear I quite literally began marching to the beat, giddy with life's randomness. It took a moment before I realized that the music was John Williams' Olympic Theme, a download that probably occured somewhere between Harry Potter and Star Wars during a film score mass search months ago. To think that it had taken me this long to find the song again, and for the first time. To think that it had taken me this long to change the way I listen to music-- this long to let go.
Dare yourself to play your life on shuffle.
Dare yourself to let life surprise you.
You'll have yourself to thank when you do.

Today, alone in my office, I was met with a similar sounding music. Only this was fainter and slightly less persistant. Honestly, it took a good while before I even realized that the music was real. Then it took me even longer before I found that it was coming from the street 23 stories below my window. Climbing into my windowsill, dressed for a casual Friday in jeans and a dress shirt, I saw the marching along Fifth Avenue first and only then realized that I had maybe the oddest bird's eye view of the New York City Veterans Day Parade.
I was so high up that I only watched for a moment or two (this would be no dancing Ferris Beuller type scene) and I only really took note again later when what I gathered was a high school marching band started to play the highlights of the Pink Floyd songbook.
There were no vocals, not that I could hear anyway, but I sang along inside my own head
"We don't need no education"
"We don't need no thought control"
"No dark sarcasm in the classroom"
"Teachers Leave Them Kids Alone"
"Hey Teacher Leave Them Kids Alone!"
"All in all you're just another Brick In The Wall"
It struck me as an odd choice for a Veterans Day Parade for numerous reasons but mainly because the song has such a powerful voice in standing up to manipulation, standing up to lies and fighting against the disregard for our basic human experience. I want to believe that the vast majority of the young men and women fighting for us fight for these reasons. That the torturers are only a mere few. I simply can no longer believe that the powers who put them there can be trusted in any capacity.

Honored today are the veterans who have fought before and who are still fighting.
HONORED
I want to fight for them.
I want for their deaths to not be just another brick.
Because the bricks are stacking up.

And this wall of thought control must die
so as they can live.