Feel Like Lettin’ My Freak Flag Fly
But I’m not givin’ in an inch to fear
Because I promised myself this year
I feel like I owe it to someone.
“Almost cut my hair” (1970) ~~~~ Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young (listen)
(and check out this awesome acoustic version)
[Update – read James Baldwin’s 1963 classic “The fire next time” last night, and serendipitously came across related ideas on “owing it to someone”. Baldwin powerfully wrote:
Perhaps the whole root of our trouble, the human trouble, is that we will sacrifice all the beauty of our lives, will imprison ourselves in totems, taboos, crosses, blood sacrifices, steeples, mosques, races, armies, flags, nations, in order to deny the fact of death, which is the only fact we have. It seems to me that one ought to rejoice in the fact of death – ought to decide, indeed to earn one’s death by confronting with passion the conundrum of life. One is responsible to life. It is the small beacon in that terrifying darkness from which we come and to which we shall return. One must negotiate this passage as nobly as possible, for the sake of those who are coming after us.
