I heard a song last night by Brett Dennen, a folk singer-songwriter who (at least according to excellent researchers at Wikipedia) has been compared to Bob Dylan, Tracy Chapman, James Taylor, and other excellent artists from past and present. I am just beginning to become familiar with Dennen’s work. But for the moment, let me share with you his latest single, “Ain’t No Reason.”
Lyrics (Sweets Lyrics) – and listed below
I find Dennen’s lyrics to be very insightful as he shares his concerns about the ways privilege, ignorance, and the daily routine of life get in the way of recognizing and addressing suffering all around us. Countless lives are being hurt and irreparably changed, our world is being destroyed, and the outlook is bleak for future generations. Because of war, poverty, hatred, violence, environmental degradation, genocide, and oppression, right? Well yes, of course. But more importantly, as Dennen emphasizes, because we fail to see the suffering around us and work against it. More specifically, as Dennen seems to suggest with the music video to “Ain’t No Reason,” those who reap unearned advantages (privilege) from this suffering, and have the power to correct it, do nothing. They merely live their daily lives – it’s what they know, and it’s what makes sense.
While Dennen’s message with this single is nothing new, especially for American folk singers (who have been responsible for many of the most influential “protest” songs), it can certainly strike up conversation among Americans about what it means to be conscious of suffering and what moral obligations we have to make change. The music video, which stands alone as a very powerful educational tool, features several characters (all White, middle-class, presumably American) living their daily routine – a couple watching television, a family of three at the dinner table, a woman admiring her jewelry in the mirror, a man pulling into his driveway, a young woman going to the refrigerator, a woman doing laundry, a young girl reading, and a young man watering a garden. In the latter half of the video, the scenes change. The characters begin to see terrible images of human suffering around them – the poor, the hungry, the homeless, and other flesh-and-blood examples of human suffering that dominate our globe but are deliberately hidden from view.
While all the images in the second half of the video are powerful, one in particular shows the woman doing laundry noticing a string hanging from a red t-shirt she has removed from the dryer. She follows the string, which extends to the other side of the room where three SE Asian women sit at a table operating sewing machines. The woman doing laundry is understandably shocked – I mean, dust bunnies in the laundry room, sure, but not a sweatshop! She sees the suffering of others and cannot escape her connection to it, symbolized by the thread and reinforced by Dennen’s line, “slavery stitched into the fabric of my clothes.”
Through his beautiful lyrics, Dennen identifies several significant social problems, including consumerism (”wearing paychecks like necklaces and bracelets”), hatred and violence (”it could be a bomb or a bullet or a pen, or a thought or a word or a sentence”), war and imperialism (”keep on buildin’ bombs, gonna drop them all”), and slavery (”slavery stitched into the fabric of my clothes”). The central premise, of course, is that there “ain’t no reason” for the world to be this way. It’s nothing we can justify. And worse, we often don’t bother to consider whether or not these atrocities are justified. Things are the way they are – it’s the way things have always been and the way they always will be (or at least that’s how the logic goes). Dennen does have the answer, though… love.
Yeah, it sounds a little hokey. I was actually really frustrated the first time I heard the song. I was so pleased with the subject matter – my gosh, you know, a singer who is addressing issues that matter. And then I heard the chorus (”Love will come set me free”) and was overcome with frustration. “Oh great,” I thought, “bring up all these issues that folks in America need to face and then basically let them off the hook.” Oh, it’s okay. Don’t worry about all that suffering and misery out there. Just let love into your life and (this is where I really began jumping to the wrong conclusions) be thankful for what you have (and ignore whose backs you’re standing on). To stave off feelings of guilt, they might give to a charity. In the end, though, they would still be reinforcing the same systems of domination and exploitation. And of course, add to that the notion that passively accepting love is the answer, and we may have an even worse situation on our hands! Rather than doing something – anything, whatever possible – to promote peace, justice, and sustainability, privileged folks might treat “love” as a sort of third party, waiting for it to sweep in and save the day.
Obviously, I was misunderstanding the moral obligations that are inherent to love as Dennen describes it. When thinking about love on a global scale – as a practice of compassion, kindness, and respect among all living things, including our planet – there is really no option to live disconnected lives. We are all parts of the same whole, dependent on each other for every type of survival one might imagine. To be socially conscious in any meaningful way requires a practice of living fully present in a way that allows others to be fully present with us. In other words, our thoughts and actions must not be self-serving or merely rooted in the well-being of family and close friends. We must strive to live peacefully with the rest of the global community. We must live by the philosophy of Satish Kumar, who declared, “You are, therefore I am.”
“Ain’t No Reason” by Brett Dennen
There ain’t no reason things are this way.
Its how they always been and they intend to stay.
I can’t explain why we live this way, we do it everyday.
Preachers on the podium speakin’ of saints,
Prophets on the sidewalk beggin’ for change,
Old ladies laughing from the fire escape, cursing my name.
I got a basket full of lemons and they all taste the same,
A window and a pigeon with a broken wing,
You can spend your whole life workin’ for something
Just to have it taken away.
People walk around pushing back their debts,
Wearing pay checks like necklaces and bracelets,
Talking ‘bout nothing, not thinking ‘bout death,
Every little heartbeat, every little breath.
People walk a tight rope on a razors edge
Carrying their hurt and hatred and weapons.
It could be a bomb or a bullet or a pen
Or a thought or a word or a sentence.
There Ain’t no reason things are this way.
It’s how they always been and they intend to stay
I don’t know why I say the things I say, but I say them anyway.
But love will come set me free
Love will come set me free,*I do believe*
Love will come set me free, *I know it will*
Love will come set me free, yes.
Prison walls still standing tall,
Some things never change at all.
Keep on buildin’ prisons, gonna fill them all,
Keep on buildin’ bombs, gonna drop them all.
Working your fingers bear to the bone,
Breaking your back, make you sell your soul.
Like a lung that’s filled with coal, suffocatin’ slow.
The wind blows wild and I may move,
The politicians lie and I am not fooled.
You don’t need no reason or a three piece suit to argue the truth.
The air on my skin and the world under my toes,
Slavery stitched into the fabric of my clothes,
Chaos and commotion wherever I go, love I try to follow.
Love will come set me free
Love will come set me free, I do believe
Love will come set me free, I know it will
Love will come set me free, yes.
There ain’t no reason things are this way
It’s how they always been and they intend to stay
I can’t explain why we live this way, we do it everyday.
