If You Love This Song, You REALLY Love It

Kalandra's 'Borders' for #FreedomMusicFriday

I was tired yesterday, after a long and somewhat annoying day. I didn’t even feel like watching TV. My wife is traveling and the kids were out, so I decided to blare music and play a game of solitaire. (With real cards—imagine that!)

I have very eclectic music tastes—not indiscriminate, but eclectic—as our #FreedomMusicFriday selections at least partially indicate. But I wasn’t in the mood for anything hard. No Bloodywood or In This Moment. No metal, no trance, no crazy-chick-fronted hard rock.

I wanted Eivor. I just love her voice so damn much. I wanted to be swept away.

So I turned on the big TV and found her on YouTube. The first thing the algorithm fed me was a live performance of “Falling Free.” Definitely a sweep-you-away kind of performance.

The algo then fed me another tune by Eivor, and then came the song below: a live performance of “Borders,” by Kalandra. Within 30 seconds, I put down the cards and just listened.

Music taste is a weird thing. You like what you like. Some like lots of stuff. Some like only a small range of genres, or even just one.

I am not going to try to talk you into loving this. All I am telling you is that if Kalandra’s “Borders” is the kind of music you can like, you’re really going to LOVE it.

The studio version (after the live one, below) has slightly cleaner production, obviously, but the live version has got advantages of its own. Maybe you want to just listen with your eyes closed, so as not to be distracted. Do your thing.

But wait—does this have anything to do with freedom? Let’s find out.

On the borders of safety
That's where I find peace
Where the black sand
Meets the raging seas

We’ve talked about it again and again. Do you fight the system or try to escape it? Do you try to fix the old world or build a new one?

As the Saxons moved across Britain, they slowly pushed the Britons westward into what are today Wales and Cornwall. Wales was a scene of constant conflict, as is evidenced by the line of castles from north to south along the border.

Long before those castles were erected, some Britons got sick of it. They got in boats and sailed over the Channel to the peninsula in France that is today called Brittany. They built a new life for themselves.

Some will say they chickened out. But maybe they were the smart ones. There is no end to the opportunities for violent conflict in this life. If it’s not one thing, it’s another. They just wanted to live their lives. Can you blame them?

I see the forces
For what they truly are

Kalandra might be talking about natural forces; I don’t know. But I hear it the way I choose. Forces, to me, means the powers that be. The big THEY. And a lot of us have come to see them for what they truly are.

But even if it refers to natural forces, this reminder is essential:

Yet I'm reminded
Of my beating heart

That is huge. The more I look at Clownworld, the more I tune out and turn inward. To family. The hearth and home. To me.

I don’t even bother calling it all “fake and gay and retarded” much anymore. I just smell my wife’s hair and then look at the deer in my mist-soaked backyard.

Among the lonely rocks
Is where I lay my head
I hear the ocean calling
"Come with me instead"
She sings me songs
Of ungrateful souls
Who once thought Gods
Could bring them home

Here too, I don’t know exactly what the artist was thinking. But when you hear “songs of ungrateful souls who once thought gods could bring them home,” what do you think?

I don’t think God in the sense of the Creator. I think of humans posing as gods. The system lords. The people who run the show, who so many of us believe they’d be lost without.

What are they ungrateful for? Maybe the unbelievable agency and free will with which we are all gifted … and which they so easily abandon as they surrender thought and choice and responsibility to our overlords.

On the edge of comfort
That's where I find love

Okay, so here’s what I hear:

Can we find perfect comfort? No. Life is too messy. People are too messy. And the world seems like it might be getting a little extra messy now.

But can we find some? Yes. We can try to live on the edge of comfort. We can do the best we can. And we should definitely try to find love there.

I want that for you.