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How Did We End Up Here? (Take A Knee)

from PS, You Are Brilliant by Steve Lawson

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There’s so much about where we are and the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves that makes no sense to me right now. Any yet, we’re blessed with the apparent inevitability of hindsight. Brexit, Trump, the total misrepresentation of a protest against police brutality, a UK foreign secretary who consistently makes racist comments, Russia choosing the US president... Politics in the West is properly astonishing but it’s all easy to see unfold as we look back. It still doesn’t make me any better at predicting or guessing what comes next, and I reach various levels of exasperation with those who seem to hang their sense of self on a need to predict the future with no attempt to properly understand or engage with the pain of the present.

This piece was originally called Logical From The Inside, and the two stories it tells as a soundtrack are in the two titles, and they both come from the same place. This has a LOT of that unfolding complexity, the unknowable quality of a load of layers that aren’t synced to one another, from which emerges a complex unplanned rhythm... the bass hook that starts part way through is accidentally in 7/8, but I wasn’t immediately aware of that, so the drum track is an in the moment attempt to make sense of this line that has both internal logic and consistency, but defies my immediate attempt to classify what it is and what it does to the music. It’s only after that it becomes clear what’s happening, and that inevitability becomes a rich, dense, nuanced logical unfolding. Like a microcosm of history, making sense as we look back at it but still offering little in the way of a clear path forward.

Still, in any consideration of how the world is and how we got here, there is a call to respond, to be counted, to amplify the voices of those so urgently need to be heard. To protest the catastrophic mess we’re in, and to point to a better way forward. To Take A Knee.

lyrics

There’s so much about where we are and the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves that makes no sense to me right now. Any yet, we’re blessed with the apparent inevitability of hindsight. Brexit, Trump, the total misrepresentation of a protest against police brutality, a UK foreign secretary who consistently makes racist comments, Russia choosing the US president... Politics in the West is properly astonishing but it’s all easy to see unfold as we look back. It still doesn’t make me any better at predicting or guessing what comes next, and I reach various levels of exasperation with those who seem to hang their sense of self on a need to predict the future with no attempt to properly understand or engage with the pain of the present.

This piece was originally called Logical From The Inside, and the two stories it tells as a soundtrack are in the two titles, and they both come from the same place. This has a LOT of that unfolding complexity, the unknowable quality of a load of layers that aren’t synced to one another, from which emerges a complex unplanned rhythm... the bass hook that starts part way through is accidentally in 7/8, but I wasn’t immediately aware of that, so the drum track is an in the moment attempt to make sense of this line that has both internal logic and consistency, but defies my immediate attempt to classify what it is and what it does to the music. It’s only after that it becomes clear what’s happening, and that inevitability becomes a rich, dense, nuanced logical unfolding. Like a microcosm of history, making sense as we look back at it but still offering little in the way of a clear path forward.

Still, in any consideration of how the world is and how we got here, there is a call to respond, to be counted, to amplify the voices of those so urgently need to be heard. To protest the catastrophic mess we’re in, and to point to a better way forward. To Take A Knee.

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from PS, You Are Brilliant, released October 30, 2017

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Steve Lawson UK

The UK's most celebrated and prolific solo bassist - alternating between solo and collaborative releases - have a rummage around and see what you find. The subscription is by FAR the best way to keep track of the many musical goings on!

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