#22 - apocalyptic lullabies
You can listen to the playlist on Tidal / Spotify or scroll to the end.
I started the longer version of this playlist over 4 years ago, in 2020, under very different circumstances. Mostly songs of calmness, love, acceptance, and/or just slowing down at the real, imagined or metaphorical apocalypse; the end of the world, or just a period of overwhelming crisis.
Around that time, unrelatedly, I was also thinking a lot about the end of the world, or this world. Two people had separately reminded me of the prophetic saying (hadith) that roughly translates to: “Even if the Resurrection were established upon one of you while he has in his hand a sapling, let him plant it.”
As a child of the Arab Spring, and its subsequent tragedies, I’d spent years negotiating with hope, but things finally started falling into place. Even if it’s the end of this world, if I will surely not see the tree grow, I should still plant it. I started accepting that hope may not be a sufficient framework to motivate my actions, at least not hope that I see the positive outcome myself, in my lifetime. I should still plant it.
I recently came back to this playlist out of circumstance, by finding a couple new songs I thought I could add to it. SNL, off Mustafa’s masterful debut full album, might be one of my favorite tracks released this year, a beautiful lullaby sung through pain, grief, and loss. HEALMODE, a quieter song off a much louder album (and discography), is budding with warmth and love. I played Vampire Weekend’s Hope on repeat at the Saratoga branch of the Brooklyn Public Library.
It is also, of course, and unrelatedly, a time of overwhelming crisis, unlike any I could have possibly imagined in 2020, global pandemic and all. I keep thinking back to that hadith, over and over, as I face the jarring disconnect between what I do and what is actually happening in the world. Last year, I felt such an urgency, a sense of importance, a clarity of mind, dedicating all my time and focus to protests, statements, banner drops, encampments, ‘[insert label] For Palestine’ meetings, for months on end.
I find it hard to trust, believe, or respect myself anymore as I continue to walk and write and shout and organize, all in ultimately different forms of begging our oppressors (and sometimes mildly disrupting them, till the cops show up) to stop murdering Palestinians, knowing that they do not care for our pleas. I don’t mean to diminish the work and bravery and steadfastness I have witnessed in the last year amongst even my own friends. It remains inspiring and affirming. But last night, journalists were reporting the deadliest night in Gaza, in Jabalia, since the beginning of the genocide. My brain short-circuits, how is that possible? How could there be worse, still? How am I still just walking and writing and shouting, knowing it has not brought an end to genocide for a full year? I know it’s not enough, I know it’s not working, I know we need new strategies.
This past Monday was the 1-year anniversary of October 7th. I kept thinking: I don’t know how I’m going to make it through this week. I kept thinking: I don’t know how I’m going to maintain my sanity. I kept thinking: I don’t know how I’m going to get through all my responsibilities.
The week ended. I taught classes, submitted conference applications, held meetings, travelled to DC and back, set a personal record for public speaking engagements. I read, I did my work. And I realize: I wanted to think that I can’t make it through this week, that I cannot keep my sanity, that I cannot get through all my responsibilities. I never wanted to be a person who can remain ‘productive’ amidst a genocide. I don’t know who I am when I do.
In the first few weeks after October 7, 2023, I was told, in a work context, that maybe I need to learn how to ‘compartmentalize’. As a teenager, I closed off my balcony windows, turned up the music, and finished my homework as downtown Cairo maintained its chaotic rhythm all throughout 2011/12. I didn’t want to ‘compartmentalize’ this genocide; that was absurd. It seemed all I should be fighting, talking, thinking about. What am I doing today?
Truthfully, a year on, it is still, obviously, top of mind. I bring up Palestine in quite literally every space I’m in: every talk, every workshop, every panel, every discussion, every friendship. But over time, I’ve “had” to get work done and live my life as hundreds continued to be massacred by the occupation on a daily basis.
On October 7, I walked for hours and hours in protest, fully knowing I was likely aggravating my foot injury, because I couldn’t imagine what to do with myself if I left. But I can’t believe I’m doing anything else on any other day, either. And I can’t imagine that a year on, all I could think to do was walk and walk and walk. The same routes, the same chants, the same banners, and the horrors escalate, escalate, escalate.
I don’t want to go on about being defeated, or overwhelmed, or losing my mind, from my nice desk chair in Brooklyn. We all know it — or those of us with a heart and any access to updates. But I am trying to figure out where to go from here.
I think back, again and again, to that hadith. I think of the act of planting a sapling, that specific reference, an intrinsically persistent, caring, nurturing act. One that is void of personal gain, material possession, or a promise of success. To put work into our Earth till the very end, till its very end. To remember that the end is just the beginning.
And I continue to grapple with my insufficiency, with the jarring, agonizing disconnect, with the urgent need to re-strategize, to be more creative, more committed, to resist and fight and find new ways to do it over and over. But as I figure it out, as we figure it out, perhaps as we spend the rest of our lives doing it, I think I should plant whatever sapling I have in my hand, and look for the next.
—
10 songs
SNL - Mustafa
HEALMODE - Jeff Rosenstock
Cherry Red - Storyman
Tell Me You Love Me - Sufjan Stevens
If the World Falls to Pieces - Young Summer
Apocalypse Whenever - Bad Suns
Hope - Vampire Weekend
Donut Seam - Adrianne Lenker
I Know The End - Phoebe Bridgers
After Hours - Christian Lee Hutson