The Story I Want To Be In & The Story I Want To Tell: Liberating agency and hope in the absence of a cosmic narrative

A reflection and three songs from Samuel Lockridge

I have written songs about capitalism’s incompatibility with life on Earth since I was a young teenager, practically a child – before I had ever read Marx, Engels, Lenin, or Mao. What I had read, and taken seriously, was The Bible. My Christian faith was a natural entry point into a radical political life, dedicated to the liberation struggle of all oppressed people and stewardship of the Earth. I understood revolutionary work as a necessary precondition for the eventual restoration of Eden. None of us are free until all of us are free. 

When I chose to leave Christianity behind entirely, several years ago, I lost my ability to write music. My whole creative practice revolved around the fundamental belief that no matter what happens, no matter how futile life seems, there is a grand cosmic narrative being told by a loving Storyteller, and that ultimately everything will end well. I understood my small role in that story as a humble mouthpiece for the Storyteller. That is what I badly needed to be true in order to justify existence. When the cognitive dissonance became too much to bear and I finally accepted the conclusion that the universe is indifferent to us, that we are truly alone, that each new life is as meaningless as all the forgotten lives that came before it, I felt I had no reason to continue the absurd experiment of living, much less write songs. Enter Camus and Sartre.

After a period of mourning the death of my best imaginary friend, who gave my life purpose and meaning, the pain gave way to the most freeing joy I have ever experienced. I realized that the values and principles I found so fulfilling in my faith were always just self-evident truths I held within myself that happened to first find expression in Christianity. I realized that the absence of a Storyteller grants us the liberating agency of telling our own collective story. I realized that if life is meaningless, then we get to be it’s meaning-makers. I realized that humanity’s aloneness in a cold and apathetic universe (as far as we still know) means that we are all we’ve got – it means that caring for each other and this tiny pale blue dot we call home is the one task we must succeed in, by any means necessary. That is the story I want to be in. That is the story I want to tell.

The protagonist of that story, the engine of history, is the global working class. Capitalism, ever hungry, must continuously open up new markets through a process called primitive accumulation. This is the original sin of capitalism, whereby someone gets something – land, labor, even an entire human being – for free, if not by direct force of arms then by the implicit threat of it. The moment that newly accumulated property is put to use to create new value out of thin air for the owner (e.g., a slave picking cotton for free), it becomes capital and the owner, a capitalist. At capitalism's global scale, this extractive arrangement is called colonialism. Within the borders of the U.S., our foremost internally colonized "nations" are the Black and Native American populations. Black liberation and Indigenous sovereignty necessarily entail decolonization. Decolonization necessarily entails replacing capitalism. Replacing capitalism necessarily entails a multi-racial, global revolution of the working class united in solidarity against the capitalist class. No matter how we've each been racialized, colonized, exploited, or relatively privileged under capitalism, our common cry must be "workers of the world, unite!" A truly free, equal, and ecologically sustainable union of the entire human race will only be possible when the inherent contradiction between the minority oppressor class and the great majority oppressed class is resolved.        

But our union can only be free if it is not compulsory. As the story of Eden goes, in order for humanity's love of God to be truly genuine, God had to give Adam and Eve the free will to choose otherwise. Similarly, only when all colonized and oppressed nations of the world have won the guaranteed right of self-determination can any union between nations truly be said to be free and voluntary. I no longer believe that the restoration of Eden is the inevitable happy ending to humanity's love story – right now our odds of survival aren't good – but I do have faith that if we choose it for ourselves, it can be our new beginning. I hope we get to sing songs about it one day.


When The Walls Come Crashing Down

As the wind does whisper once again
into our willing ears,
a voice speaks soft, “the hour is near
when the walls come crashing down.”

When the earth is red, and sea is black,
and sky has all but vanished,
a single seed will choke our greed
when the walls come crashing down.

If trees should bear their fruit no more
and bears cease to find honey,
you cannot eat or drink your money
When the walls come crashing down.

When man does shed his brother’s blood,
when woman serves but one purpose,
the day has come for everyone
to watch the walls come crashing down.

When kings and paper gods are slain,
laid to rest in salted ground,
O, how we’ll dance to that thunderous sound
when the walls come crashing down.

Though many are the nights we’ve cried,
the sun comes in the morning.
So have no fear of the wild, my dear,
when the walls come crashing down.

From When I Rise, released March 10, 2012

Go West, Young Man
 
Cain laid the murder weapon down
As the cornerstone of civilization,
Innocence to desolation.
And in 1492 Columbus sailed the ocean blue.
 
Now, Daddy here I am, working for the Man,
Trying to pay the rent, can’t you understand?
I don’t wanna die a slave, selling my soul for minimum wage.
Downtown Babylon’s a one-way street.
The stick and the carrot are not what they seem.
I’m waking up in a sweat from the American Dream.
 
Lincoln made a proclamation,
Indians got reservations,
Nixon signed his resignation,
If it’s any consolation.
‘Forty acres and a mule?’
Do you take me for a fool?
 
O, Mamma here we are, looking at the stars,
Weeping because heaven never felt so far
From our houses and our cars.
The truth that we seek is what we already are:
Victims of Manifest Destiny.
The world is coming apart at the seams,
And waking up in a sweat from the American Dream.
 
We’re still the same as our Cro-Magnon ancestry,
We’ve just got student loans, smart phones, and bachelor’s degrees.
 
From I Call The Living, released October 20, 2014
David Mahler: Hammered Dulcimer
Mason Self: Drums
Patrick Rush: Cello

​Anthropocene Blues
They say all good things must come to an end
but they say, "who's to say how or when?"
We came and we conquered. We had a good run.
Now someone must recon for all this dreadful fun.
All the treasure on Earth
or in heaven can't hold its worth
when the price of hubris grows
from bad to worse,
with no end in sight,
no end in sight.
 
Adam and Eve
got hammered and burned down their favorite tree.
Let's torch all our gods and our masters too.
Baby there's not much else you can do
when you've got these anthropocene blues.
 
All this blood-soaked splendor, there will come a day,
The moths and the rust will eat it away.
'til then history's pages burn
to forge our guided cages
it's a shit-show for all ages on repeat.
And you've tried keeping calm and carrying on
but you'd rather just watch it all burn 'til its gone.
 
Creators, life-makers,
better seize back the world from the takers and haters.
Nothing left to lose but our chains, it's true.
Baby, there's not much else you can do
when you've got these anthropocene blues.
 
Are we just God's favorite, his chosen tool?
The exception to all the rules?
The First National Church of Alchemists
making joy from fossil fuel?
Sign up for direct deposit fulfillment
just below the fine print.
Be your best self that money can buy
until nothing but ashes rain down from the sky.
 
Demand and supply
were perfectly balanced, so don't ask them why
slaves tend to perish and masters to thrive.
Baby, you know what we've gotta do
cause we've got these anthropocene blues,
and there's not much else you can do
when you've got these anthropocene -
mild misanthropy –
Gotta love these anthropocene blues.

 From Anthropocene Blues, released July 10, 2020
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Samuel Lockridge

is a singer-songwriter, producer, sound designer, and theatre artist from Lexington, Kentucky.