New single “Fragile Being” explores the fragility of humankind at the height of the pandemic
Listen to Greyfade’s “Fragile Being” here.
Humans are social beings, not some noble gas, inert, stagnant, and unreactive. We are shaped by what and who we interact with. We thrive on connection and communication. In the best of days, one could have argued that we are not meant to be city dwellers, shacked up in concrete boxes with practically no connection to the earth, to the sea, to the stars and heavens above.
We are a product of our surroundings of the people we spend the most time with. And now, with both our social connection and natural connectedness at stake, we find ourselves lost in our own minds… For the luckier amongst us, upon whom these stars have shone, we still have jobs, passions, and relationships we can nurture in isolation. But for many, near and far, this is not the case.
Whichever way you look at it, everyone is feeling loss and grief; and worse still, we are largely all alone in facing this grief and dealing with it, with lots of worries weighing heavily on our mind. And you know what they say about an idle mind: it’s the devil’s workshop.
The haves and the have-nots are losing things they took for granted. On one end of the spectrum, there’s the man who has it all but can’t enjoy it, and on the other end, the man who has so little, and still struggles to even maintain that.
The seemingly apologetic nature of the lyrics in Greyfade’s latest song ring oddly true to me as a keen observer of human nature. One thing I found fascinating towards the beginning of this crisis, before identity politics started playing a larger role as is often the case, is that the most devout, and the most liberal amongst us have morphed into one heaping apologetic mass, bound by its remorsefulness, yet divided by way of whom they offer their penance to.
Whereas one might pray contritely to God, and sing mournful odes apologizing to Mother Nature, one would be hard pressed to argue that what they feel is one and the same. A realization of wanton hubris on mankind’s part. This is a profound realization. Although the stories we tell ourselves might differ wildly from each other, the way we experience them might be shockingly similar.
Granted, looking at the world through the lenses of ‘believer’ and ‘non-believer’ is just one over-simplistic way to segment the world. Regardless where you are on that spectrum, you can’t but marvel at the dissonance between man’s hubris, and his fragility.
Calamities like this can be seen as massive equalizers. They unite us in our grief and our loss, in our hopes, and in our optimism and belief in a better tomorrow, should it come.
Until now, one thing remains abundantly clear to me; mankind will never run out of subtle, and not so subtle reminders of said fragility. In terms of reminders, COVID-19 is not a very subtle one; as a direct health threat, the economic fallout, or the paradigm shift it will bring to our social lives and in turn, the potentially disastrous impact on our mental health.
Man is a social being, ergo, he is a fragile one.