“Beyond Sundown” by Adrian H. Molina w/ Mannequin Rituals, featuring Day Acoli & Helen Changthongthip, CHiTT Productions (2008) 

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Mass deception, coups d’etats left and right, shared confusion, no way to tell what’s real and what’s fake—a collective inability to ascertain truth from lies because the spin doctors are that good.

Polar ice caps melting, mass global poverty ignored, apocalyptic natural disasters, conspiracies linking what was once natural to what is now claimed to be man-made.  Seemingly no empirical way to make sense of it all, so the masses don’t even try.  They just wait for 2012.

Not that anybody is waiting.  People are awake, in all corners of the world, resisting global dominance by the few, pushing forward with HOPE—an elusive word in an Obama Era of Bush III politics and continued Reaganomics, or Neoliberal economics (as it is known in Latin America), or Neoconservative economics (as it is known in the U.S.), or “unfettered” free market capitalism or globalization, as it is known worldwide.   It’s all the same game: global dominance.

What I’m saying is that it really depends on where you’re at in your head, because this reality really is that schizophrenic.  One day it’s all love, and the next day it’s all fear, and it’s up to you to find the balance therein and stand strong.

“Beyond Sundown” it’s like waking up from a nightmare, over and over and over again, because The Unconceivable layers the air, brick upon brick.  At the end of the day, you look in the mirror and decide which side you’re on, knowing that the question will look and sound different the next day, and the next day after that, and so on and so forth.  But it’s all the same struggle.

Truth, freedom, justice, equality, some sliver of democracy.

And then there is the age-old question: “Would you die for it?”

Today’s question: Would you live for it?

- Molina

Respect to my people at CHiTT Productions, and to Day Acoli and Helen Changthongthip for their contributions to this track and the Up Before the Sunrise project.

Video by Dustin Neal, Mannequin Rituals