How Your Love's Affecting Our Reality?

by C.A. Matthews

Have you ever experienced an “earworm” or a “sticky tune”? An earworm is a song or melody (or part of one) that gets stuck in your mind that you can’t seem to shake for days on end. You keep hearing it over and over again during the quiet parts of your day. You’re not even sure how or why it happens, but somehow it does. There’s nothing you can do to shake it loose, either. I know—I’ve tried!

I was infected with an unusual ear worm this past week. It’s from the chorus of a pop hit from 1999 that I must have heard playing on my car radio recently. What makes this earworm even more unusual is that it’s not from a song that I particularly like. I’m not even a fan of the group that recorded it. In fact, I don’t think either one of my daughters were a fan of the group or the song back when. So why are these words repeating constantly in my head?

All you people, can't you see, can't you see
How your love's affecting our reality?
Every time we're down, you can make it right
And that makes you larger than life

Chorus from the 1999 Backstreet Boys’ song Larger Than Life, written by Brian Littrel, Kristian Lundin, and Max Martin.

The one line that really haunts me is Can’t you see how your love’s affecting our reality? Yeah, it’s part of a catchy lyric and tune, but there’s something about that question that keeps bugging me. I really want to know what the answer to it is. It’s driving me crazy.

How is your love affecting our reality?

According to the song lyrics, we can’t see it. We can’t actually see or know how our love (and this could mean anything from romantic love to neighborly love to compassion and empathy for all humankind and the earth itself) affects the reality of the universe itself. But the next lines show us that our love does indeed hold tremendous power: Every time we're down, you can make it right/And that makes you larger than life.

Deep stuff, huh?

All I can guess at this point is this earworm is the universe’s way of telling me that all is not lost. So, when it comes to how we can end the horrible genocide in Gaza, all is not lost, even if it looks like it is. I don’t know why I’ve come to this conclusion, but I feel it in my bones. Call it intuition or a gut instinct. Even when things seem down (or impossible) for us, we can make them right (or at least better). Perhaps that’s what makes us all larger than life—we have more power than we could possibly dream of.

We need to start using our power for good and to save lives. Right now.

A lot of Substack commentators embrace various creeds and belief systems and tell us to think positive, but I’m not going to assume anything I write here will change your mind. Others are much more persuasive and eloquent than I am. But I implore you to keep an open mind for just a little while longer...

 

To see where I'm coming from and how this could make the world a better place, please continue reading the rest of this article on Substack. Just copy or click on this link: 

https://therevolutioncontinues.substack.com

There you'll see related article and video links, all the graphics, and be able to leave comments. You can become a free or paid subscriber and receive weekly posts in your email box, along with occasional special articles just for paid subscribers, too.

Subscribe to The Revolution Continues on Substack today. Power to the people! 

This article is the 533rd blog posting of The Revolution Continues. We began in June 2015, and we're still going strong. Please keep reading, sharing, and subscribing to help TRC continue for another ten years. 

You can make a donation at https://paypal.me/camatthews or Buy Me a Coffee or Ko-fi. Every little bit helps since this is my only source of income. Thank you.

 

An Anthem For Our Times

by C. A. Matthews

I wanted to do something different this week just to see where it would take me.

Last week’s post was on the longer side, and fact-heavy articles tend not to get re-posted as much. So I decided this time ‘round to share some more of my poetry, but this time by putting it to a tune. (Maybe this kind of audio post will help me break into the Substack Top 100? I’d be happy just to get my subscriber count over 2,000, including a few more paying subscribers.)

I won’t claim to be a poet. I’ve had some of my poetry published before, such as last year’s poem Dust From Gaza in For All, the Revolutionary Poets Brigade anthology. I know a lot more talented poets here on Substack (such as Dan Denton) who make my attempts at poetry pale by comparison. But I was inspired by two recent events to write this poem, which quickly became the lyrics to a song, an actual honest-to-goodness protest song.

I thought: “Every generation has a protest song, a song that sums up what’s really important and needs to change to make the world a better place. Why can’t I write that song?”

I know that sounds a bit arrogant, but one can always dream of being remembered for more than just writing a weekly sociopolitical column for the past ten years and pissing off more strangers, friends, and acquaintances than there are grains of sand on the beach in Gaza. I’d like it if people could say at my passing: “Wow, she cared enough to put herself out there and write a pro-Palestine protest song that made even more people hate her.”

The inspiration for my song came from Caitlin Johnstone’s brilliant in-your-face essay, Nobody Say “Fuck Israel, Free Palestine” which was in turn inspired by the Northern Irish hip-hop group Kneecap’s brilliant in-your-face protest screen at the recent Coachella music festival. Caitlin and Tim (they’re a writing team, so I don’t want to leave either of them out) stated that one should never say the phrase “Fuck Israel, Free Palestine,” as this could be considered hurtful by those folks who think “genocide is good.”

Well, let me state for the record that I’m certainly not one of those immoral, sadistic, sick and twisted bastards who thinks “genocide is good.”

 

To listen to a recording and read the protest song lyrics, continue reading the rest of this article on Substack. Copy or click on this link: 

https://therevolutioncontinues.substack.com

There you'll see related article and video links, all the graphics, and be able to leave comments. You can become a free or paid subscriber and receive weekly posts in your email box, along with occasional special articles just for paid subscribers, too.

Subscribe to The Revolution Continues on Substack today. Power to the people!

This article is the 518th blog posting of The Revolution Continues. We began in June 2015, and we're still going strong. Please keep reading, sharing, and subscribing to help TRC continue for another ten years. 

You can make a donation at https://paypal.me/camatthews or at Buy Me a Coffee or at Ko-fi. Every little bit helps since this is my only source of income. Thank you.