I'd now like to take an aside of sorts that should prove instructive in understanding my quest's motivation. The first time I saw the music video for Walk On was after the night of "The Rescue," on VH1 or MTV. It is filled with actors blending their drama with the emotion of the lyrics. As the song starts, a young man leaves his apartment putting on his jacket, then as he descends the staircase around one corner, his place is taken by a young woman putting on her jacket. Then at the street level entrance, the young woman's place is taken by another young woman in a fully buttoned, double breasted overcoat, who folds her arms as she braves facing life.
The band is featured performing the song a garage. The theme of the oneness of humanity permeates the video, as one person is replaced with another around corners, and such. Many of the people seem to be running away from something they fear, as they look over their shoulders for the unknown threat chasing them.
In one scene, a young teenage girl locks herself in her room to get away from her abusive mother, mounts a pedestal to the window, then becomes a vigorous-looking man who jumps out of the window. A young woman lands on the ground a few feet down, then becomes a man running away from the threat. In the music video's final scene, the original young man who left his apartment is pictured from above, and as the view of the camera widens, it becomes apparent that he surrounded by many other people.
As the shot ascends, the faces merge into the the pupil of another person's eye, that person is in a crowd of people, the shot again ascends, and the faces again emerge in the pupil of another person's eye. This cycle closes the Walk On video; clearly, the theme is of the general oneness of the human story : Hang in there, people.
When I bought the Walk On video on-line (actually I'm not on-line, but my brother is), I was initially a bit disappointed that it was not the same cut that had been on VH-1. However, as I watched it for a while and learned more about it I appreciated the focus the documentary style music video had. The song was written for, and dedicated to, the Nobel Prize recipient Aung San Suu Kyi (who donated the Nobel Prize award to the welfare of the impoverished children of her land), who is a social activist battling Myanmar's despotic military junta.
In the video, the band arrives in Indonesia and is filmed signing autographs, then performing Walk On in, I believe, a parking structure. The specific moral issue of the oppressed lower class in Myanmar gains full attention as destitute young ones are filmed during daily life. Home...hard to know what it is if you've never had one. The music video's final cut features Suu Kyi under house-arrest for many, many years, speaking on camera with crisp British inflection:
This is not yet the end. There is still a long way to go. And the way might be very, very hard, so please...stand by.
I appreciate the band's focus on the plight of the Myanmar refugees specifically, and also like the version of the video with the more general theme; on different levels, they both work. I think it instructive to glance at the cause of hope led by Aung San Suu Kyi, the diminutive democratic icon nicknamed "The Lady."
The classy Suu Kyi leads her oppressed nation by employing precursive faith. Her belief in the democratic liberation of Myanmar is live (not beyond possibility), forced (not taking a position is, for her, the same as choosing against democracy), and momentous (the lives of very many suffering people rest upon her slight shoulder- herself backed against the wall after twelve plus years of pretty-much solitary confinement at home, where she is denied use of the telephone or Internet). The Lady, whose supporters hold candlelight vigils for on her birthday, does not want a personality cult to develop. Instead the visionary longs for a civil society "where we can sort out our problems by talking with one another."
I now wonder, can my invisible hand- as Undercover Rogue Messiah--play a role in The Lady's noble quest? I think that perhaps, by an unseen casual sequence, I just may be such a hidden player. *L* Let us turn next to reexamine the essay on Thomas Hobbes' Leviathan that I wrote in April 1984, using the tools and insight we have encountered.
To understand reality is not the same as to know about outward
events.It is to perceive the essential nature of things.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
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