#1 - little freedoms
You can skip to this week’s playlist on Spotify or scroll to the end.
On one of my happiest days in 2021, I told my Dubai friends I had plans, put on a new album, and took an electric scooter to the beach. On the way, I noticed a Turkish restaurant and stopped for impromptu Iskender kebap, my favorite. When I got to La Mer beach, I walked by the water as I listened to Bedouine’s self-titled album, then sneakily laid down in a private beach and read Toni Morrison’s Song of Solomon in perfect weather.
A few months later, I was in Bahrain for work. On a rare instance when I got out of bed before sunset on a weekend, I took a similarly rare walk on a different beach, and listened to, among others, a song from that same Bedouine album. Heart Take Flight starts with the lyrics:
Never thought I'd see the day
That I would be at ease to say
That everything around me is
Exactly as it should be
And any more than what I have
Would be too much for me to feel free
I feel so free
It felt so true. Then I thought of the irony; I was in a place I didn’t choose working a job I was about to quit, plus much of my life is spent thinking about oppression? Not to mention the song’s about being in love, which I of course wasn’t.
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Today, we’re in the 11th anniversary of the Egyptian revolution (Jan 25 - Feb 11). In those 18 days, I learned and lived the value of freedom. Since the 2013 coup, anniversaries have become a heightened reminder of its absence.
But this playlist isn’t about politics, or what I call capital F Freedom. It’s about the little freedoms we hold on to nonetheless, the ones I felt on those days in Dubai and Manama. Towards the beginning, Old Soul Song (For the New World Order) is relatively political, but still as intimately personal as the rest of Bright Eyes’ discography. Conor Oberst singing “yeah they went wild”, referring to anti-war protestors, perfectly captures the freedom, joy, and anger of a protest.
The following Chinese Translation talks of playing an escapade, and is itself one. The remaining songs I liberally interpret as seeking and finding freedoms, like the freedom in family and loved ones accepting you As You Are, in being true to yourself (Nothing Else Matters) and overcoming personal struggles (Watch Me as I Bloom), or in simply losing yourself to a good record (Blonde on Blonde) or a good book.
It can feel trivial to talk about these freedoms on the anniversary of the revolution so many sacrificed for and when thousands remain behind bars. But I remember jailed Egyptian developer and activist Alaa Abdelfattah’s words:
“We go to the square to discover that we love life outside of it, and to discover that our love for life is resistance.”
10 songs
(Spotify)
Ya Tair - Hamza Namira
Old Soul Song (For the New World Order) - Bright Eyes
Chinese Translation - M. Ward
Blonde on Blonde - Nada Surf
Watch Me While I Bloom - Hayley Williams
Wildflowers - Tom Petty
As You Are - Samia
Nothing Else Matters - Phoebe Bridgers (Metallica cover)
Ma Liberté - Georges Moustaki
Heart Take Flight - Bedouine
This newsletter is largely inspired by Bryan Waterman’s Research Paper Radio (RPR), which now plays Sundays 9pm - 12am GST / 12pm - 3pm EST at Howler Radio.