Music Aside: Where Will You Be When You've Won?
Music Aside: Where Will You Be When You've Won?
This post-election moment is all about winners and losers, but what if there's a different way to prioritize and live?
I've been trying to write a post about Twitter's degradation in the ugly transion to Elon Musk's X, its persistent utility (yes, it's still unique and valuable, as George Monbiot explained in a thread today), and nascent alternatives like Bluesky Social. If you missed my recent Sustain What chat on Bluesky with a staffer, Emily Liu, and the disaster-prevention-focused former Twitter engineer Jim Moffitt, here it is.
But it's depressing terrain. I’ll get there, but today had to break away again to my music side and finally record a quick take on my updated tune about the rat race and alternatives, called "Where Will You Be."
A version long ago centered on the baseball commentator Ralph Carpenter's 1976 line "When the fat lady sings" - as in "When she sings, when the fat lady sings, where will you be when she sings?"
Yes, it might seem a tad woke, but I ultimately felt that song frame was not only distasteful but also missed a key idea - that we approach life too often like a win/lose race.
Here’s the song (a rough quick recording!):
The lyrics are below. You can download the tune at my revkin.bandcamp.com page. or share video versions on YouTube, Instagram, Facebook and even staid LinkedIn.
Where Will You Be
All of your life you struggle and strive
To get just a little ahead.
Days of rest few and far between.
You rush from your job to your bed.
Someday you’ll sit on a nice heap of money.
Your mate may wear silk and gold rings.
You’ll dine on food a’plenty.
But where will you be when you win?
When you’ve won, when your race is all run,
Where will you be when you’re won?
You spend all your days caught up in the game.
But where will you be when you’ve won?
When it’s time to account for your days and your ways.
When you’re asked to tally the score,
They don’t add up the piles of pennies.
They don’t measure the size of your floors.
They’re more apt to ask how you treated your friends,
How you dealt with your enemies, too.
When the going got tough did you turn tail and run,
Or stand firm and stick to the truth.
When you’ve won, when your race is all run,
Where will you be when you’re won?
You spend all your days caught up in the game.
But where will you be when you’ve won?
Bridge
Did you give more than you got?
Forgive more than you fought?
Relish every day, or let time…slip away?
All of your life you struggle and strive
To get just a little ahead.
Days of rest few and far between.
You race from your job to your bed.
But when you’ve won, when your race is all run,
where will you be when you’re won.
You spend all your days caught up in the game.
But where will you be when you’ve won?