The Process of Possession Pt. 2
If America could talk
For the lyric of Possession, I wanted to explore the spirit of protest and justice. I wanted to capture the oppressive experience of feeling like a prisoner in your own country. You can read the whole lyric over here.
I remember when the words ‘love it or leave it’ were flying around a lot in Trump’s rhetoric during 2020. It was truthfully such an uncomfortable line for me to digest and prompted me to think deeper about what it means to ‘belong’ anywhere…. and further, how it feels to be forced out of the land you love.
In efforts to understand the immigrant experience in America better I imagined myself as someone seeking asylum in a country that was once belonging to my ancestors and now hostile to me.
‘Karma written inside of their hands, I’m an outcast even in my mother land.’
I wanted to capture that feeling of of being out of breath, running and the instability of being without a home.
‘Let the horn sound, tolerate zero til I’m off of your ground’
Deep down we all know there’s an absurdity to possessing land let alone excluding some from it and including others. We are all immigrants in the land we live in and perhaps, more than ever in human history, the greatest prisoner of our time is the land itself.
When listening to this song again recently, I realized it could also be interpreted as a song that America herself is singing to those of us living here. She cries:
‘I’m born between the lines, by no fault of mine, this land is whose to love? Feel like an animal and an automatic machine, I’m an animal and a part of the machine’
Till next time,
"Paid a good price but I still want my change". Good line.
“Love it or leave it” does feel... too fatalistic? It demands perfection and does not tolerate flaws, abandoning the ability to change. (Willingness, of course, is another thing.)
I think you captured it really nicely here.