Here is a claim for you –
“There is no art without beauty”
Either an artist strives for beauty – to reveal or represent it, or their art depends on beauty just as shadow is light obscured. Nordic Giants are described as performing “Dressed in feathers and shrouded in a ubiquitous fog the pair look more like residents of Middle Earth. The award-winning short films that accompany the live performance are each one a work of art; by turn poignant and powerful, dark and uplifting.“* and the shadow is the first thing you see when you look at the video thumbnail.
Take a moment to click play, tune in, and step sideways to escape the relentless grip of Chronos. Can you see the beauty, the salvation calling?
You can read the lyrics here https://genius.com/Nordic-giants-together-lyrics
Those who were born when this was released are now teenagers.
Reaching further back in time, the sample in the song draws from this speech by Martin Luther King Jr https://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/mlkatimetobreaksilence.htm
(Beyond Vietnam — A Time to Break Silence Delivered 4 April 1967, Riverside Church, New York City)
I encourage you to read the speech in full. There is darkness in it, and a recognition of the mirk which surrounds us. Nordic giants have found the beauty in it though. They have used this to see the world they live in and write what they see. More than this I think they encourage everyone to look for themselves.
In the blink of an eye those teenagers will inherit the world we leave for them, just as we have inherited a world we did not choose.
…We are now faced with the fact, my friends, that tomorrow is today. We are confronted with the fierce urgency of now. In this unfolding conundrum of life and history, there is such a thing as being too late. Procrastination is still the thief of time...
But what do you do when the light is switched on and you can see? There are many colours of witness. They cannot be imposed upon you. When you live in the light you will see, and in seeing find your path.
It is a sad fact that because of comfort, complacency, a morbid fear of communism, and our proneness to adjust to injustice, the Western nations that initiated so much of the revolutionary spirit of the modern world have now become the arch antirevolutionaries. This has driven many to feel that only Marxism has a revolutionary spirit. Therefore, communism is a judgment against our failure to make democracy real and follow through on the revolutions that we initiated. Our only hope today lies in our ability to recapture the revolutionary spirit and go out into a sometimes hostile world declaring eternal hostility to poverty, racism, and militarism. With this powerful commitment we shall boldly challenge the status quo and unjust mores, and thereby speed the day when “every valley shall be exalted, and every mountain and hill shall be made low, and the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough places plain.”
External Link to the King Center: http://www.thekingcenter.org/
This is not an encouragement to build motorways and a concrete future at the expense of the environment. Beauty is more subtle and complicated than that. When you are overwhelmed by a work of art, you are not bulldozed. It is a moment of #SensingSpirituality. It can be a lightbulb moment, as described in John’s gospel where he introduces Jesus as light. Those that see with this light are unlocked to fulfill the hope and potential which has been placed there since the beginning.
So take some critical moments of time and dream of possible futures, and be gentle with yourself and others when you work to make them happen.
And just before you go, here is another Nordic Giants track with another speech to inspire you.