'Stay with the system or join us in the mountains'
'Battles' by Alpine Universe for #FreedomMusicFriday
We’ve had a lot of new folks come aboard the Freedom Scale train recently, so for those of you who are new…
#FreedomMusicFriday is our chance to explore music that, in some way or other, says something about our love of and need for freedom. There are no rules, really—you just share music that speaks to you on the subject. Unpack lyrics…talk about the messages and meanings you perceive—whatever you like.
Recently
and became the second and third dancers, so it is beginning to spread. That is a good thing. Our tastes may differ, but that’s okay. There is so much music out there these days that it can be overwhelming. Hearing selections from each other’s playlists cuts through the noise and allows us to be exposed to new things.Most of all—movements need music, and we need freedom! All living creatures need freedom in order to live. So there ya go.
Normally, I hear music first and the lyrics seep in later, but when I first heard “Battles” by Alpine Universe, it was the opposite. The words hit me right away. (Video below.)
You may not like Viking metal. (Personally, I prefer the folkier Nordic stuff, like Hedningarna, Heilung, and such.) You may find this song a bit cinematic or even perhaps a little contrived. But I know the lyrics will resonate with many of you.
I know because we’ve talked about these feelings and ideas a lot of late. In the face of an obvious budding totalitarianism, so many have been asking themselves, and each other—is it better to stand and fight or try to escape?
The urge to fight tyranny is totally natural. The urge to flee tyranny is also totally natural. The lyrics here speak to both.
This is our chance to break away
This is our chance to shatter these chains
[…]
These battles will set us free from our own doom
If you are a regular reader here, then you love freedom. You do not like being chained.
There is a good chance that at some point over the last few years, you started to question the mainstream narrative. Many of you will never trust anything the mainstream says ever again. Some have realized that the system itself is the problem. A few of you have, in your heart and soul, already declared your independence.
And yet, in spite of such realizations and declarations, many of you have still felt a lingering sense of doom. It seems that Alpine Universe feel the same, and wish to speak to that feeling in all of us. They want to fight…but they also want to escape.
They also know that the threat exists in the real world, but that part of the battle is mental:
It’s a new dawn it’s a new day
An evil order has risen
Battlegrounds in your head
When your mind is weak you become their prey
They are speaking to what Viktor Frankl discovered, under the worst of circumstances: “Forces beyond your control can take away everything you possess except one thing—your freedom to choose how you will respond to the situation.”
Our circumstances are not like Frankl’s. Yet we do have cause for concern.
They also hint at an interesting subtext. At first, they say “These battles will set us free from our own doom.” But the refrain cuts out the word “doom.”
These battles will set us free from our own…
These battles will set us free from our own…
So fight them
Are they speaking to what many of us discovered over the last few years—that the collective (“our own…”) constitutes a kind of threat of its own. A realization we did not want to have, but could not help?
Then they get to my favorite lyric—the one that caught my attention the first time around:
It’s up to you what will you chose
Stay with the system or join us in the mountains
Tell me you have not fantasized, at least once over the last few years, about escaping the system and finding or creating a mountain redoubt somewhere.
Personally, I think I have an entire lobe of my brain devoted to such thoughts now.
Enjoy, and as always—let me know what you think!
#FreedomMusicFriday elsewhere today…
Dang that was sick
We did move to the mountains.
Amish neighbors, community, locally sourced food, magical landscape.
It's what we always wanted but never thought possible.