Hello. I am e.n.d. Once upon a time I came from Minnesota. But then I moved everywhere.
Curiosity didn't kill the cat. Complacency did.
Catching Elephant is a theme by Andy Taylor
After a long, beautiful and sobering day filled with a personal account of pre-and-post-conflict history, I was able to top it off with a ride up to the higher hills on top of Sarajevo.
Just in time for dusk.
Starting with graves. Ending with a beautiful melting sky.
“If you can keep the hills, you can keep the city.
They were always hiding in the hills.
Only their gunfire could identify them.
We had to keep the hills.”
Intersection of awesome.
A much-awaited trip to Sarajevo to satisfy another leg of a historical personal obsession with post-conflict resolution. And my favorite modern fusion-classical composer.
Sarajevo by Max Richter (2002)
Sunday. Cafe Roses. Complete Calm.
“I’ll take a quiet life.”
My Mom was a single mother. I am an only child. Eventually she met my Dad. He’s rad.
Throughout my pre-teen years, she was a waitress, bartender, stressed-out college student, and all around music-junkie. So you might imagine that in those first 12 years of just being on our own together, she played a lot of music for me.
I mean, a lot.
She first played this track for me when I was probably 10 or 11. As Peter Gabriel sang of nationalism, manipulation, symbolic games, and finally, freedom, she found a way to use various songs, including this one, to make clear to me what was tolerable and what wasn’t when it came to people, politics and progress. Schooling me at probably too young of an age to fully understand, she planted the seed of early thoughts on egalitarianism, human rights, and just generally, mutual respect.
Records, tapes, eventually CDs, and hours of my Mom saying things like, “Emily, did you hear that? He’s talking about cross-cultural communication, transparency, and conflict”.
Most of the time I was all, “Wait, huh? Can I go outside now and play?”.
But thankfully, those endless hours are probably some of the early reasons I ended up becoming so obsessed with conflict and resolution in various fields and areas of life.
Music was and still is a way for her to passively protest and actively communicate. For me, this is also sometimes the case. She was the one who taught me to read into some songs, identify the symbolism, if it’s there, and when you want, apply it to your own life. Or just learn from it.
Years later, still, nearly every morning a song pops into my head that I have to put on the player.
This is today’s selection.
Oh, the games kids still play these days.
It’s a knockout.
If looks could kill, they probably will.
In games without frontiers, war without tears.
Games without frontiers, war without tears.
Jeux sans frontieres.
