By Camille Duhaime
Music can be a powerful tool to make people feel all kinds of emotions. For example, whenever I feel sad or want to be comforted, playing some of my favourite songs always makes me feel better. Given this, I thought it would be fun to create a playlist of some of my favourite songs from this past summer as well as songs that I think relate to my internship, as a way to reflect on the 12 weeks I spent working at Avocats Sans Frontières Canada.
1. Revolution by The Beatles
John Lennon originally wrote this song after being inspired by the anti-Vietnam War protests in 1986. As a response to the public’s demands for Lennon to speak publicly about his opinions concerning the “revolution,” the alternative lyrics saying you could count him “in” or “out” indicated his internal conflict between wanting to promote direct action to end the war as well as his disagreement with certain tactics used during the protests. As it relates to my time at ASF Canada, I had similar beliefs to Lennon at the beginning of my internship, believing that, in the end, everything’s “gonna be alright,” and that many questions of human rights were out of the control of induvial people and in the hands of large institutions. That being said, the following twelve weeks at the organization showed me how large of an impact small acts of justice can make in a local community and allowed me to realize that not all revolutions need to take the form of social violence but can look like ideological change on the inner level as well as greater access to justice and education.
2. Another Day in Paradise by Phil Collins
Collins wrote this song after taking a trip to Washington, DC, and noticing how many people were living in boxes on the street, as a way to shed light on the consequences of ignoring the houseless people and the people in need. In particular, it articulates how unconformable people can be when being exposed to uncomfortable realities and how hard people work to avoid facing such truths. While it may be uncomfortable, I learned through the summer that a lot of work in human rights exists in that area of awkwardness, of calling out extreme violations of rights and shedding light on stories of injustices. I learned that it only benefits the people in power, those perpetuating the violations of human rights and neglecting their citizens in need, to turn a blind eye to such atrocities and that in order to make meaningful change, you need to be comfortable acknowledging the original problem.
3. Hide and Seek by Imogen Heap
While on the surface, this song appears to be a typical breakup song, written about the divorce between Imogen Heap’s parents when she was 12, it has been interpreted by many to be an allegory for colonization, in the context of indigenous communities in North America. Through this interpretation, the message is that through indirect forms of systemic discrimination as well as the general apathy from actors who could have stepped in to stop such atrocities, colonial powers were able to take control of indigenous land and force populations into destitute. I included this song in this playlist because, through research on political systems and the history of various countries, I noticed how many governments are, still to this day, benefitting from a lack of international supervision and getting away with corruption and impunity as well as blatant ignorance of human rights.
4. House of Cards by Radiohead
I’m not really sure about the meaning of this song is, but it’s one of my favourites from Radiohead and I wanted to include it in this playlist for the simple title. While I strongly believe in the importance of human rights and feel very privileged to live in a country where there are constitutional protections for these rights for me, it is beginning to appear, with the more I spend time thinking about these, that the entire structure of international human rights is a house of cards, balancing on the never-ending work of passionate advocates and organizations.
5. Everybody’s Changing by Keane
On a personal level, this summer in Quebec City was the first that I spent away from home and from my family, and the first time that I related deeply to the lyrics in this song. Specifically, this song deals with the changing friendships and relationships that come with being in your twenties, at a time when people try to discover themselves and their values are well establish themselves in their careers. Being so far away from the people, I had grown up with my whole life, and choosing to prioritize experience in a field that I am passionate about over direct financial gains, I felt I was growing apart from many of the people I felt close to before. The distance forced me to reevaluate the relationships I cherished and prioritize the people I wanted to continue investing my time in. While not always being easy, this song helped me see that this is the price to pay for self-discovery and authenticity to oneself.
6. Home by Michael Bublé
On that same note, I included this song in my playlist to address the general feelings of homesickness I had at certain points in the summer. Bublé wrote this song after being on tour for quite a while, wishing to be home with his family. Having already spent two years studying in Montreal, it was a surprise to me how much of a culture shock moving to Quebec City would be and how much time it took to start feeling a sense of belonging in that city. I included this song because, although I believe that being pushed beyond your comforts helps you grow as a person, there were still many times throughout the 12 weeks that I felt tired of the challenge and longed to back home and taken care of by my mom. What I like about this song in particular is that, while Michael Bublé perfectly captures the melancholy I would sometimes feel, he was also able to balance this with simultaneous feelings of gratefulness for the rare opportunities given to him, which was a nice reminder for me not to take my position in Quebec for granted.
7. Suspicious Minds by Elvis Presley
This song is actually about a dysfunctional relationship and the distrust that can occur inside one of these, but I chose it once again because I like the song, and I think the title can relate to some of the ways I was feeling throughout the summer. While I started wanting to believe that I’d be able to make a lot of “change” during my internship, and directly help a great number of people, the closer I got to the end of my summer, the more suspicious I was becoming that this objective would be realized. It became more obvious that my internship would only be the beginning of my efforts to improve the rights of people and access to justice, and that in order to sincerely put my conscious at ease I would need to find a way to continue work in this field outside the twelve-week internship. In other words, this internship opened my eyes to the fight ahead and solidified that there’s no other field I’d rather work in, even if it isn’t always glamorous or easy.
8. Harvest Moon by Neil Young
This is probably one of the most played songs on my phone, perfect for pretty much any time or mood. When speaking about this album and its title track, Neil Young explained that whenever he needed to think, he’d go into nature, either taking a walk through the forest or along the beach and try to spend some time in the moonlight. Over the past summer, whenever I wanted some time to myself or found myself getting stressed, escaping to the Bois-de-Coulonge park near my apartment and people/dog/bird-watching, was just what I needed to put things into perspective and help me continue the work that I was doing.
9. Float On by Modest Mouse
Lead singer of Modest Mouse, Isaac Brock, wrote this song following the death of two of his close friends, after he was feeling fed up with how bad things were around and the world and in his personal life. It was in an effort to remind listeners that although things could seem horrible, everything would be alright in the end. With the upbeat melody and the catchy hook at the end, it almost makes me believe them. While similar to the themes of Revolution, I prefer the message in this song because it doesn’t antagonize the people attempting to revolt through their protests, but rather repeats a positive message that encourages resilience. Through my internship at ASF Canada, I was able to witness the importance of this resilience when working with teams around the world who, on a daily basis, were faced with extreme challenges in their fight to promote human rights.
10. I’ll Believe in Anything by Wolf Parade
As one of my favourite songs, I’ll Believe in Anything never fails to make me feel so many emotions. The title, along with the lyrics “Give me your eyes, I need the sunshine,” indicates to me that the singer wants to feel optimism again after the collapse of his worldviews. While not as dramatically, the internship at ASF Canada this summer has shattered a lot of the preconceived notions I had in human rights work and I feel like I’m in a similar place to Wolf Parade, open to believing in anything that will allow me to hope for better days.