This song deals with memory, especially within a genocide that still goes unacknowledged by the Turkish government. The song is specific yet general—I have in mind the war that served as a cover for the murder of millions of Armenians, Greeks, and other Christian groups, including my Macedonian ancestors; but the message is for all who see injustice and seek to make it right. 

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​This well-known yet hotly debated genocide shows, perhaps more than any other event in recent history, people’s willingness to turn a blind-eye to blatant suffering. Civilians saw the concentration camps. They joined in on the jeers and the taunts, the discrimination and outright aggression. And people around the world also saw. Now, hindsight rules the day, and “just following orders” and “never again” forever accompany the images of emaciated bodies and human-sized ovens. Isolationist impulses led us to forget our common humanity.

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Lyrics: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1DVKoBexzjNiTeot3KeoHf6rxZusW8vGszWiPN-lUcMI/edit?usp=sharing

​Fields in Buddhism indicate a pure manifestation of wisdom, a visualization of enlightenment. Fields also became the murder site of millions of Cambodians. Something religious and pure becoming so desecrated feels sacrilegious. This song seeks to specifically encapsulate the feelings of the children involved—the confusion as somewhere safe suddenly turns deadly.

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Lyrics: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1foWRegNUQj2Xbu8RNnPIzxxPJW0ID3AKcwnvmG9IjKY/edit?usp=sharing

​“Never again” turned into “over and over again” as genocides continued throughout the 20th century. There is no comparing of mass murder events, but the one whose impact sticks with me the most is the Rwandan genocide, perhaps because of the vivid images and video footage that exists from the 90s. The Convention created to prevent genocide spent the entirely of the murder spree arguing over whether this qualifed as a genocide. While they debated, people were murdered in the churches they claimed as sanctuary. The river ran with blood and bodies as the perpetrators disposed of the evidence of their crimes.

​Neighbor against neighbor. Of course, this applies to many of the genocides in this series, but in the Bosnian genocide, people turned a blind eye as their friends and neighbors were taken away to be killed. But in the second part of this song, the survivors take ownership. I’ve read and seen videos of survivors of various genocides, and one of their biggest struggles is the memory of what they endured. More than that, they deal with the memories of the people that put them through the trauma. No one but the survivor themself can decide to forgive, and nothing but complete and utter grace can prompt this. 

​Written about an ongoing genocide, the final song in this series is, like the first, both specific and general. It continues the theme of memory, but as it’s being created. We are seeing things happen now, in Sudan and elsewhere, and we must decide what to do about it. In a world of chronic forgetfulness and self-worship, speaking the truth is the first step—Acknowledgement of the past, Action in the present, and Aspiration for the future.