What Does It Mean To Be Free — Thomas Azier
#365Songs: January 30th
In college a hundred and fourteen years ago, I took an immersive independent study course on George Owell’s catalog. I read five of his six novels — NOT 1984, for whatever reason — his three nonfiction books and most of his essays, and was, as a result, indoctrinated against Fascism. And though I avoided 1984 for years, I finally read it in the early Trump era. The lines, “Who controls the past controls the future, who controls the present controls the past” and “the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one’s mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them” have stayed with me, like they have for so many in recent years.
To grow up truly free is a privileged experience, but to take that freedom for granted in the face of mounting threats is another thing entirely. When half a country believes a lie as fact, and the institution that can correct that lie instead promotes it, we aren’t headed towards Fascism, we’re already in its grasp.
Perhaps there are many ways to interpret Thomas Azier’s What Does It Mean to Be Free, one of my favorite songs of 2023, my mind can’t pull away from our doomsday path. It seems Azier tangles with the question of where we focus our attention, how easily we fall into the online rabbit hole — shallow distractions, memes, conspiracy theories and fake news — and how one day soon we’ll wish we’d paid more attention, screamed louder, fought harder.
The years are finally fading
My heart begins to crawl
And I can see just why we tumble
Right before it all
And I see years, ties and spinning lines
Oh baby, it’s hard to find us between the packages online
What is freedom when you take it for granted, when you fail to recognize how easy you can lose it, and what happens once you do. It seems we’re in the denial stage of our collective post-Trump grief, and Fascism feeds not on our fear but our apathy, on our willingness to let it play out.
So here’s a pile of dust
Upon my fears
I know I’m privileged
I’m on third base running home
But money’s running low right now
And freedom as a fallacy
Or a broken fantasy
Simplе truth online
Perhaps the only way to truly appreciate freedom is to consider its absence, to sift through the histories of those who thought it couldn’t happen to them, to reread the writers who warned us through the very blueprint playing out in front of us.
Now I would like to improvise
Floating like a leaf, a bird at night
That’s where my fears untie
And freedom as a fallacy
To find a common enemy
Reduced to a simple truth online
There has been so much to grieve in these past many years, through the Trump years, the social injustices, the book banning, police shootings, homophobia, a global pandemic that took the lives of our most vulnerable, the political hatred, but at least those of us with the most privilege have, for now at least, maintained our freedom to know enough of why that freedom must be protected. As our storied journalistic institutions continue to be gutted, as local news gets hijacked by oligarchs, as what remains of the once reputable news outlets position ratings over responsibility by giving Trump the amplification he needs, we slip closer and closer to whatever comes next.
What does it mean to be free?
And these words are losing meaning over time
What does it mean to be free?
And the heart is just as fickle as the mind
