Happy Monday, and happy one-month anniversary to this project! Here's a song I've been thinking about a lot; please bear with me, and as always, thanks for reading.
If you are afraid, give more
If you are alive, give more now
Everybody here has seams and scars
So what? Level up!
Survival and resistance in this terrible time, it seems to me, requires many approaches. We need to figure out the basics: food, shelter, physical and financial safety (and advocate for those who lack them). We need space to grieve for what we've lost -- countless lives first and foremost, and livelihoods, and entire ways of being -- and to acknowledge the storm of emotions howling down our interior halls. We need to be forgiving of ourselves and compassionate with each other. We need to let go of what we can't control, and recognize and act on what we can. When we're able, we need to find moments of joy, because joy is a candle against the dark.
And when we have the strength, we need to level up.
It's time to come on out
There will be no sign from above
You'll only hear the knock knock knock of your own heart as signal
Vienna Teng's song is an anthem of radical optimism about human potential and community, and it fills me with such a surge of hope whenever I listen to it. "Level Up" calls on each of us to find within ourselves, no matter our situation, a reservoir of courage we may not have realized we had. It calls on us to act, to rise up out of our scars and disappointments and make a new beginning, because no one is coming to save us but ourselves. (This is a profoundly humanist notion, but whatever your personal religious beliefs -- or lack of them -- may be, I trust we can agree that our collective choices and actions are what will most impact our lives and determine the course of the world. As the old joke goes, praying to God to let you win the lottery isn't enough; you're still the one who actually has to buy the ticket.) And it reminds us that when we've got each other's back, we're never alone -- and we're stronger together.
Yes, you are only one
No, it is not enough
But if you lift your eyes, I am your brother
Teng's video reflects these themes on every level. Walls give way and closed rooms open up, leading to new spaces and vistas, making new connections. The song's call to action becomes a call to dance, as characters rise out of their circumstances -- a strained relationship, a hopeless moment in an alley, a house demolished by storm -- to engage in an intricate choreography of touch and gesture, hands clasping and arms interlocking, a conversation in movement. (Most inspiring and astonishing is the performance of breakdancer Tommy "Guns" Ly, who shatters our preconceptions about the limitations of differently-abled bodies.) A light-filled doorway beckons, but when the dancers pass through, they find no angels or saviors -- only each other, dancing together, a celebration of human connection and solidarity and the exuberance of the possible.
Here's the song. I do hope you read the lyrics in full; if ever there was a song whose specific message I think deserves to be taken to heart, it's this one. It's not something I live up to every day, or even most days. But "Level Up" reminds me to try.
And this is all we need
And this is where we start
This is the day we greet
This is the day, no other.
BONUS: I also highly recommend watching Teng's live performance (featuring her collaborator Alex Wong and a hilarious mix-up) which she prefaces with her own beautiful explanation of the song, in the context of her graduate studies in climate change and the rise of the "hopepunk" movement in fiction and art. Radical hope isn't a naive assumption that somehow all will be well; it's rooted in the knowledge that WE are the ones who will write the future -- and the sooner we realize our power, the sooner we can come together to write a better one.
The Vox article she references is also very much worth a read, and includes a recommendation list of "hopepunk" in books, music, film, TV, and other media.
Check out more of Vienna Teng's work and purchase her albums here.
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Listen to the Spotify playlist here.
Watch the YouTube playlist here.
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