I just got back from a music festival in the town of Saint Malo in the northwest of France called Route de Rock. This town which is home to many famous french explorers, including Jacques Cartier, turned out to be a beautiful setting for a long weekend of music.

There was also one YBP shirt spotting (Bon Iver).

The National was the lone YBP band to take the stage and they played a great set. This was my first time hearing them play either live or recorded. I was so impressed by their level of talent. The lead singer really amazed me in his ability to channel so many different emotions even throughout a single song and with such a range of different voices. I had never really heard anything like it before. They craft there music in a really interesting and unique way. In some songs it is like they have 5 seperate concepts that they use and reuse throughout the song without an identifiable chorus or verse. That reptition had this very seductive quality that would really suck you into the music. The songs Runaway and  Afraid of Everyone are good examples of this.

The band that played after the National was the Flaming Lips whose music I was more familiar with beforehand because of some of their very famous songs like: do you realize, yoshimi battles the robots and waiting for superman.

The song waiting for superman was allegedly written about a conversation that the lead singer (Wayne Coyne) had with his brother as his father was dying of cancer. He asked his brother how his father was doing to which his brother replied “Its getting heavy”. To which he replied” I thought it was already as heavy as can be”.

The first verse goes

I Asked you a question
I didn’t need you to reply
Is it gettin’ heavy?
But then I realized
Is it gettin’ heavy?
Well I thought it was already as heavy as can be

I really like the imagery of the middle verse of this song although I am not exactly sure what he intended when he wrote it.

Is it overwhelming
To use a crane to crush a fly?
It’s a good time for Superman
To lift the sun into the sky

Peronsally, I think it’s a great metaphor for the damage we are doing to the planet. The distance between our actions and the sometimes tragic consequence are so large in time and scope that we are numb to it and unwilling to take responsibility. The image of using a crane to crush a fly reminds me of that distance.

Take for instance the recent tragic floods in Pakistan. The floods were influenced by the rapid melting of glaciers in the himalyan mountain range. It is a similar problem to what I saw first hand in Bolivia where I travelled earlier this year, where the glaciers are retreating so fast that they are devastating entire towns dependent on agriculture. The distance though between someone getting in their car and thus making a small increase to the carbon layer in the atmosphere in space and then someone dying years later in Pakistan is too big to affect most people. It’s a small world but one that can be equally distant and impersonal.

So, I’m proud of what Matt, Casey and the rest of the YBP community have achieved in briding that gap. There is obviously a lot of work to be done on all the issues that YBP supports, but as a community we can make a difference.