Posted on December 14, 2014 at 5:49 pm
Something broke in me two years ago, and I have sat in mute amazement that so little of any real meaning has changed in our society and culture. There have been more than 30 shootings at schools since the unimaginably terrible killings in Newtown CT two years ago. Just two days ago, a shooting at Rosemary Anderson High School in Portland, Oregon injured four students. I see the headlines, swallow hard and resign myself to the reality of the New Terrorism, hoping against hope that I somehow won’t be directly victimized by it. But we have all been victimized by it, we are being destroyed by it day by day. I have waited for something that looks like leadership; I have not seen it.
I have sung this song several times in the past two years, but my initial pledge to sing it at every concert has proven too hard to honor. If it inspired people, I would sing it every night, but it just makes us unbearably sad. We didn’t do enough, we aren’t doing enough now. I shall try to sing their names when I can. I shall keep hoping for an answer.
2 comments
Beautiful, Mr. Brown.
That’s why, dear Mr Jason Robert Brown, you’ve got to keep doing what you do. And by ‘doing what you do’ I don’t mean trying to find any answer to these questions. Because these questions aren’t just unanswerable – they are unaskable. Unfathomable.
By ‘doing what you do’ I mean keep creating music. Keep creating music. Push through your despair and keep making music.
Music comforts us; it lifts us. It reifies us. It reminds us that we are not alone, even when we are alone. And even when we are alone, heartbroken, deflated and disconsolate, music burnishes our hearts and brings a hope of its own.
Keep doing what you do.
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