Humanity

Short Coverage

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Tell me now of the very soul that look alike, look alike

Do you know the stranglehold covering their eyes?

If I call on every soul in the land, on the moon

Tell me if I’ll ever know a blessing in disguise…

The curse ruled from the underground, down by the shore

And their hope grew with a hunger to live unlike before

And the curse ruled from the underground, down by the shore

And their hope grew with a hunger to live unlike before…

– The Curse, by Agnes Obel

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Listen to the song The Curse by Agnes Obel before reading further –

Humanity as an unabridged version, dancing forwards, backwards, forwards, in joy, in pain, walking down the lane is moving too fast and swaying too slow, thought she and wrote it on the blackboard. The white words looked silly but good. She gave a date to this thought and it made a ‘gong’ sound that ricocheted for fun.

The curse is the boon, thought she, but only once in a while when seen thus.

Retracing becomes easier than stepping forth and so one forgets.

And in the search for meaning when they get tired, they choose to imbibe what they hear from others, what they find familiar.

The familiar good that is, not the familiar grim; nevertheless, it is an overwhelming experience, thought she.

Just so you know the underlying emotion here when in search, is that of love – love that doesn’t chase meaning… for it owns it. A simple smile, gesture, hello-hi wave, acknowledging the tata-goodbye, is love triumphing over time.

Time notices it and smiles, each time just so you know. And she followed this thought and it withered away, it withered peacefully.

Now you take this cool-cool mountain air to the riverside and let it gush, let it fall as droplets. Sit by the riverside, fall and rise as someone else who is thrilled to continue the search.

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So let the narrative grow

like a rhizome, spreading then like Time

Without boundaries, fast and slow.

Here’s the official video of the song The Curse –

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“The Curse” is a song I wrote after I read the book Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman. It’s a book about the mind, and there is a chapter in the book about narrative fallacies, and I thought that was really interesting – how we construct these narratives of our own lives, even though so many things, almost anything that happens, is the result of a lot of things outside of our own control and doesn’t have any meaning – it’s completely accidental. But our minds want to put meaning into everything and to make sense of them. We’re like these “meaning machines” – human beings.

I thought it was really beautiful and interesting, because in a way, he says it’s why we invented math, music, science, and poetry: this need for meaning. And religion, and so forth. But there is also the flip side, why we have all these wars and these hardcore ideas of national identity. That you can go out and kill other people. It’s a blessing and it’s a curse. I just thought it was interesting, and then I wrote this song about it. Some people couldn’t figure out if it was a blessing or a curse.

– Agnes Obel (Singer, Songwriter, Pianist)

Read the amazing Agnes Obel’s full interview here – Song Facts

Listen to the other three soulful songs that inspired the blogger to write this short coverage –

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Familiar by Agnes Obel –

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Just So by Agnes Obel –

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Riverside by Agnes Obel –

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