What will be written for your epitaph?
Have you thought about your death, your funeral, who'll be there, how they'll remember you and what they'll read on your tombstone?
My mother is a Tibetan Buddhist nun and one of the main practices is to visualise one's own death in order to come to terms with our mortality to eliminate fear around it to come to a deeper understanding of the impermanence of a lifetime. In this visualisation you see your friends and relatives mourn for you at your funeral, you read your epitaph and practice being unattached to your ego.
I was intrigued by this concept and wondered, not only what others would remember about me, but how I would affect my community, the people I met and the world overall with what I did in this lifetime.
What will you do in this life to make this world a better place after you leave?
Through this contemplation, I realised that one of my goals was to never enslave anyone with my beliefs, my behaviours and my actions and live my life being only the master of myself and not anyone else, by not being a slave to my thoughts and conditionings, nor be a slave to anyone else's indoctrinations, actions or behaviours.
What a better, safer, more loving and compassionate place this planet would be if everyone lived by that edict.
These philosophical musings were the fertile ground of where this song was birthed...
In this performance I am honoured to be collaborating with the brilliant Ben Lee @benleemusic
Instruments played -
Ben Lee - Acoustic Guitar played with an e-bow (a monophonic handheld electromagnetic bow); backing vocals
Nathan Kaye - Lead vocals; Lapsteel slide guitar (acoustic & electric pickups); Homemade electronic foot drums
LYRICS
Nobody’s Slave Nobody’s Master
By Nathan Kaye
Drifting along with the tide,
My actions as an innocent child,
I would hold the hands of a friend,
Too scared to swim in the deep end,
I wished I would be king of just me,
‘Cause I feared no one and no one feared me,
No one feared me…
I am nobody’s slave,
I am nobody’s master,
I am nobody’s slave,
I am nobody’s master,
We fingered rules in the sand,
And scratched them out with the other hand,
My laughter would scream wild and free,
‘Cause I feared no man and no man feared me,
No one feared me…
I am nobody’s slave,
I am nobody’s master,
I am nobody’s slave,
I am nobody’s master,
When I die and my body’s in the earth,
My soul returned to the place of it’s birth,
The inscription on my tomb you will see,
That I feared no one and no one feared me,
No one feared me…
I am nobody’s slave,
I am nobody’s master,
I am nobody’s slave,
I am nobody’s master,
©Nathan Kaye 2005
Original version released on the Burning the Candle EP, 2006
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