People Live Here

I want to share a song with you.

This song is by a band called Rise Against; it's from their most recent album at time of writing, Black Markets. It's called People Live Here.

The first time I heard this song, I was in public, so I just...swallowed, and kept going. Then I got home and listened to it again, and really let it sink in, and that was a messy one. It's one of those songs - there's a few of them that really get to me.

The lyrics are below:

My god is better than yours
And the walls of my house are so thick I hear nothing at all
I followed you out in the storm, but it carried you off
And I burned every picture of yours, was that not enough?

My gun is bigger than yours
So let's arm the masses and see what the bastards do then
Walking tall once set us apart, now we're down on all fours
Do you cry my name in the dark like I do yours?

These storms are getting stronger now, the trusses all bend and sway
The lightning hits, the power goes out in the fray
As the waves crash high and the shoreline disappears
I will scream to the sky "Hey people live here"

But my dreams are not unlike yours
They long for the safety and break like a glass chandelier
But there's laughter and oh there is love, just past the edge of our fears
And there's chaos when push comes to shove, but it's music to my ears

May you be in heaven before the devil knows you're dead
And may these winds be always at your back
'Cause when we're all just ghosts and the madness overtakes us
We will look at the ashes and say "People lived here"

From the penthouse to the holy martyr, sea to shining sea
From the coffins full of kindergarteners, is this what you call free?
From the hate that drips from all your crosses, are your hands so clean?
There's a wildfire and it's spreading far, from sea to shining sea

When we're all just ghosts and the madness overtakes us
I will scream to the sky
Yeah I'll scream to the sky
Yeah I'll scream to the sky
"Hey people live here"

...do you...get it?

Like does it needle you like it needles me? Does it tug on that nerve inside of you, that runs right to your brain, and demands that you FEEL something?

Like all pain?

Just...god. For the last few days I feel like I've been rent open. I've been ill, that much I know - I can hear it when I lay down and breathe, like popping candy in my trachea. I've had some bad news that I don't want to go into publically, though if you ask I may tell. On top of all this, I've seen more racism, hysteria, xenophobia and bastardly behaviour in the past few weeks thanI recall seeing in the past few years.

I can understand why people get so frustrated at the world. Like identifying all of the individual ways in which it is fucked up and diagnosing causality, that is difficult, and takes time, and can be agonising - it requires a lot of reading in a lot of different areas. It can be very hard to identify one's own bias and try and work around that, too. If you even recognise that you ARE biased.p

I'm biased.

I'm biased because right now I'm seeing a war being prosecuted by a right wing organisation against everyone else, and another war of a different type being prosecuted by another right wing organisation against everyone else, and yet another war of yet another different type being prosecuted by yet another right wing organisation against STILL EVERYONE ELSE. And some of those right wing organisations are fighting each other, and everyone else at the same time.

I'm biased because I can't see how any of the parties involved can't see that they are doing a huge amount of harm to people that don't deserve it. It maddens me that grinning idiots and smirking madmen and flushed pompadours and furious fanatics deliberately hurt and kill people, some directly, some indirectly. Some pull the trigger, some pull the funding, some sit in the middle and point fingers and hate, and hate, and hate.

I want to grab them all by the shoulders and scream at them, yell and bawl and cry and shout until I can't feel my throat burning. Stop it. You know you're doing it. STOP IT. We're all just PEOPLE, you fucking monsters. We're just trying to live. Our lives are so FUCKING HARD before you even decide to weigh your shit into it and you just make it worse because of whatever fucking STUPID REASON you care to use to justify your abominable behaviour, and it's WRONG, and you need to NOT FUCKING DO IT.

I swallow that down. It's all I can do to swallow that down. I try and deal with my problems as best I can, a step at a time, and not resort to yelling, because yelling won't help anyone.

Right?

Right.

Right...