It Means That I Won't Give In

"Everyone Is Here" (2004), The Finn Brothers

If your guts have been churning since 5 Nov 2024, as mine have been, then you need this.

What does it mean when
You promise someone
No matter how hard
Or whatever may come

It means that I won't give in,
Won't give in
Won't give in
Cause everyone I love is here,
Say it once, and disappear.

“Won’t Give In”¹

Less than a quarter of the population of America - about 23% of us - decided to give power to people who had made it plain that they wanted to hurt a lot of us very badly. Fewer people than that - about 22% of us - wanted the opposite outcome. That leaves slightly less than half of the country who didn’t vote for whatever reason at the mercy of the slim 1% majority. As of this writing, it’s not certain that the winner of the 2024 election even cleared 50% of the popular vote.²

The math doesn’t make me feel better. Like everybody else, I am doomed to wait until after January’s inauguration to find out how bad things are likely to get, and how quickly they will get that way.

I’ve been told by family and friends who voted in that slim majority that I shouldn’t be worried. They assure me they love me, and that we will all be fine. I just don’t believe they are including as many people as I would be in that “all”. I also read the big plan and I don’t think they know they voted to force me out of my job, or that they voted to end the recent marriage of my youngest child.

Maybe I’m wrong, and maybe none of that stuff that they voted for will happen. But I will have to wait to find out. When I don’t have control of a situation that threatens to affect me, I find comfort in music. No - that’s not right. “Comfort” is the wrong word. This album gives me something else.

Neil Finn and his brother, Tim, were part of the New Wave band Split Enz in the 1980s, and Neil formed Crowded House after that band broke up in 1984. Fellow GenX’ers might remember hits like “Don’t Dream It’s Over” and “Locked Out” from the latter band. I liked those songs, but I didn’t keep track of the brothers after the 90s, and I didn’t discover this 2004 record they made until almost a decade 1later when I found it for sale at the public library.

I was heartbroken for different reasons back then, and had no reason to expect this random album to hit me as hard as it did - but as the brothers sing, “Anything Can Happen.”

Day
Has begun
And I stumble
To the front
There's no
Real control
Of a random
Event

And I will take my chances
Cause anything can happen
I don't believe it's over
Cause anything can happen

“Anything Can Happen”

Good songwriters tell specific stories in ways that feel universal. There is no way that anyone knew 20 years ago that “Anything Can Happen” might refer to an incompetent clown bullshitting his way back into the highest office in the land, but they certainly knew what “random” meant.

Great songwriters turn those universal specifics into metaphors that can break through what you’re going through in a given moment and teach you something. Neil Finn isn’t the type of songwriter to tell you “Everything will be alright” - he knows better than that, and so do you.

I’ve been watching events unfold between Ukraine and Russia since 2014, when I saw how the invading Russian forces used a disinformation campaign to overwhelm the people living on the Crimean Peninsula to create an environment so confused, that no one could credibly claim they were even being invaded… even as tanks rolled through their streets and armed men in green uniforms with no insignia took over their government and press.

The same thing has been happening to America. You don’t need to believe me - the Mueller Report, the Senate Select Intelligence Committee, and the Department of Justice all tell us that they did it; and thanks to the Citizens United decision, we have a pretty good idea how they funded it.

But you can’t make people read. My dad claimed to be skeptical that the Russians did anything at all and when I suggested that he read those reports he said, “I don’t want to.”

How many millions of Americans made up their minds about who to vote for in 2024 without knowing these basic facts? Or worse, after getting those facts from the people compromised in our country by this campaign?

It's a slow parade

Down a dusty road

We've learned to take abuse

From devils we don't know

People who have lost all heart

Look for someone else to blame

You just keep on walking

When they call you a dirty name

They couldn’t have known the specifics ten years before the Crimea campaign - but that description sounds a lot like the past ten years. Slogging through Facebook comments, being driven off Twitter, and holding my tongue as my neighbors air their grammar and fact-free opinions on NextDoor like so much laundry.

Remember how it made you hurt

Even as you fight to go on

Turn it into something else

Turn it into something else

All the mud in this town

All the dirt in this world

None of it sticks on you

(You shake it off)

Cause you're better than that

And you don't need it

No, you don't believe it

“Nothing Wrong With You”

But the Finn Brothers aren’t done with you, yet.

This collection brings you a dozen songs as varied as a lifetime, each with a story to tell. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve lived through this one:

My hometown is feeling strange to me
In the stadium
Dark forces are gathering

Homesick, for the people that I live with
Homesick, for the spirit I’m missing
Homesick, for the country that I’m living in

First you make me hungry
Then you feed me something I don’t want
There’s no satisfaction for an aching heart
But life goes on
And when I complain I get thrown out
Of the restaurant

“Homesick”

The brothers don’t offer any easy answers. Arguably, they don’t offer any answers at all. For me, it’s helpful to feel seen and to have songs that know where you are. It will be up to us to find a way through, and to keep as many of us alive as possible on the trip.

I don’t know right now how to forgive what’s about to happen. I can only hope it won’t be as bad as they’ve promised. I’ll do my best - and hope there isn’t much to forgive besides hurt feelings.

Like I said, that’s not comfort. That’s something else. I don’t dare name it.

Because in the end we’re All God’s Children, and God is a woman…. but we still don’t know who the father is.

1. Neil has all of his lyrics on his website at https://www.neilfinn.com/lyrics

2. APNews as of 16 Nov 2024 counted Trump’s share of the vote at “50.1%” with votes still being counted in some states.