Category Archives: Words

The Power of the Pen

When in the course of human events, the oppressed find it necessary to dissolve the political and psychological bonds which have joined them to the oppressor, revolutionaries have a choice to pick up either a pen or a gun. The true revolutionaries pick up a pen because they realize that violence truly begets violence and that any solution that is brought about by bloodshed will only be temporary; the powerful will change positions and the gorillas are in charge again.

[Geoffrey Philip, “Happy Birthday Sam Selvon“, May 20 2006]

That paragraph hit me for six.

Lively Up Yourself (abridged version)

Written for The Beaver, the newspaper of the Students’ Union of the London School of Economics

“The music is the message.”

Such were the words of Glen Da Costa, acclaimed saxophonist and one of the many talented musicians to have played with that mighty trio of Nesta Robert Marley, Peter Mackintosh and Neville Livingston. He is lounging on a tattered leather couch in a small, smoky dressing room backstage at the Shepherds Bush Empire.

Continue reading Lively Up Yourself (abridged version)