Why is my head so full of lies
Why is my head so full of lies
Because I’m free, leave me be
-- from “Birthday” (2003), Lucie Idbout
Freedom. As in, unburdened, free to do as we please. Or worse, labouring under its illusions, the kind that only ideology can provide.
Are we free to shirk our responsibilities? Freedom implies we are. Are we free of the consequences? Yes. Because we are free.
America. "Land of the free and the home of the brave." The last line of "The Star Spangled Banner" (1814), one of the few, if only, national anthems that has "bombs" in it -- "bombs bursting in air."
"The Star-Spangled Banner" was written by a lawyer, Francis Scott Key, while watching the British Navy bomb Fort McHenry during the Battle of Baltimore in the War of 1812. I am not sure where Lucie Idbout was when she wrote the lyrics to "Birthday", but I assume she had seen enough of freedom to know something of its contradictions.
When Jimi Hendrix was invited to Woodstock in August 1969, he said he would appear -- but on one condition: that he could close the festival. Which he did, with an instrumental version of "The Star-Spangled Banner" -- wordless but for those "bombs" he brought to life with his guitar.
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