I went to my first YRUU Con in my sophomore year of high school. It was a Social Action Con at my home church, but I still didn’t know many people and I was really awkward and I barely talked to anyone. But even though it wasn’t a perfect first Con experience, something about it still touched me and inspired me beyond anything I had known before. The workshops, the worships, the other kids- it was intense and unreal and important and fulfilling.
When I came home that Sunday night, suffice it to say my mind had been blown. I was sitting in my room just thinking about everything that had happened, when this song came on the radio. Very little production, not even drums, just a gorgeous deep voice and a simple guitar line-
I wanna be better than oxygen,
So you can breathe when you’re drowning and weak at the knees.
“Aw, that’s cute.”
I wanna speak louder than Ritalin,
For all the children who think that they’ve got a disease.
I wanna be cooler than t.v.,
For all the kids that are wondering what they are going to be.
“Huh.”
We can be stronger than bombs,
If you’re singing along and you know that you really believe.
We can be richer than industry,
As long as we know that there’s things that we don’t really need.
We can speak louder than ignorance,
Cause we speak in silence every time our eyes meet.
And with those lyrics Willy Mason summed up everything I felt at that moment.
The song continues to the chorus-
On and on, and on, and on it goes
The world it just keeps spinning
Until I’m dizzy, time to breathe
So close my eyes and start again anew.
I didn’t think much of it at the time, but now, I love that the chorus isn’t a rally cry or a call-to-arms so much as a moment of reflection and grounding in reality. It just makes the song more beautiful.
I wanna see through all the lies of society
To the reality, happiness is at stake.
I wanna hold up my head with dignity
Proud of a life where to give means more than to take.
I want to live beyond the modern mentality
Where paper is all that you’re really taught to create.
Do you remember the forgotten America-
Justice, equality, freedom to every race?
Just need to get past all the lies and hypocrisy
Make up and hair to the truth behind every face.
Then look around to all the people you see,
How many of them are happy and free?
At this point I was completely in love. On paper the lyrics might look like the idealistic-activist sort of silly naivety, but when he’s singing them they’re nothing but the truth.
I know it sounds like a dream
But it’s the only thing that can get me to sleep at night
I know it’s hard to believe
But it’s easy to see that something here isn’t right
I know the future looks dark
But it’s there that the kids of today must carry the light.
Once again, summing up everything that I felt about the Social Action Con and what it meant to me. Since then, the words have broadened to represent how I feel about everyone trying to do something good in the world.
If I’m afraid to catch a dream
I weave your baskets and I’ll float them down the river stream
Each one i weave with words i speak to carry love to your relief.
After this little bridge, the song ends with the first verse and the chorus.
When the song ended and the DJ came on the radio, I wrote down the name of the singer on a scrap piece of paper, and immediately went online to try and find more of his music. Most of Willy Mason’s other music deals with wildly different topics, but all of it is brilliant. Oxygen isn’t even my favorite song of his anymore, but it still speaks to me on a level that I can’t really explain. I guess the optimism in it- “I know the future looks dark/ But it’s there that the kids of today must carry the light”- is something that I really, truly believe in. I believe in it because I’ve seen it, at YRUU Cons and in my old youth group, in the Harry Potter Alliance, in the Project for Awesome, in the continuing ability of people to give and love and never stop giving.
