Acoustic cover of Pearl Jam's "Future Days"

Описание: I have been a Pearl Jam fan since grade school. I credit my younger brother, Gavin, for discovering grunge before I did (PJ, Nirvana, STP, Bush, Soundgarden), and I have especially followed Eddie Vedder’s musical path through rocking stadiums to more intimate configurations like creating the soundtrack for the film “Into the Wild”—I revere his songwriting, and I still site his voice as one of my most favored and as my top choice for a dream duet. 

Somehow the song “Future Days” evaded me until my co-creator, Jeff Hodges, a.k.a. Hi-Def-Jeff, asked me to sing it at his wedding ceremony. It is an unquestionably beautiful love song about finding a partner at just the right moment and about looking ahead at a life more complete with them in it… but I think there’s more to it than that.

Many of us find ourselves infuriated, reeling, and exhausted watching the decisions our own American government is making to divide, distract, weaken, and hurt us. Our sitting president embodies the very worst of our human capacity: not only is he a convicted felon who blatantly idolizes autocrats and threatens the tenants of our fragile democracy, but he is cruel, greedy, thin-skinned, ego-driven, hot-tempered, unstable, incompetent, a master of gaslighting, a sexual predator, and a liar. He is everything we teach our children not to be. And worse: he is effective. He has convinced a large swath of our nation’s voters, many of whom felt abandoned by their government, that he has their best interests at heart and that only he can save them and this country—a man who has likely never stepped foot in one of the dilapidated barns across America that have his name painted across them... or even stepped his foot insomuch as a real grocery store. And since he is doing many of the things he promised during his campaign, families are being torn apart; people are losing their jobs; and women, members of LGBTQIA+ communities, and our BIPOC citizens are losing their rights and suffering more overt discrimination than they have in years. It's easy to feel hopeless when we're going back in time at such an alarming rate. However—
Humans are intrinsically driven to create, and during the hardest times, when our own complex webs of words fail to soothe, uplift, or carve out clearer understanding, art steps in—art is SALVATION. 

“I believe… and I believe, ‘cause I can see our future days… days of you and me.”
Perhaps we're witnessing the death rattle of conservative Christian nationalism. The evidence of who we actually are is undeniable: we are not a homogenous populace made up of white, male, straight, cis, wealthy people, and the very truth of our diverse American identity will not and cannot be denied, contained, brainwashed or bred out of us, or punished forever. So this is the last grab, and then we will be free...

Maybe this moment, so wrought with aggression and oppression, is just another chapter in the never-ending tale-as-old-as-time of good vs. evil, and we are nothing more than microscopic players in a blip of a battle, comedically raging out and setting our little fires, so convinced that this is it—that we either fight like hell to overcome the bad guys now, or else we, along with our planet, are doomed. Angry little ants. But the idea that we live short and unimpactful lives shouldn’t keep us from fighting for all that is good in us... and it doesn’t.

To me this is a song about hope. My child is turning two years old this July, and my brother just told me on Mother's Day that he and his wife will be bringing a baby boy into the world this November. It is a terrifying, mystifying, and sacred gift of a responsibility to guide a growing human life through this complicated existence in the hopes that they will contribute more to its collective healing than to its collective pain. Drug addiction, car accidents, cancer, heartbreak, depression—there are so many awful things that could happen to my beautiful baby boy. Mothers and fathers are bound to worry for life. But knowing all this, I chose to see limitless possibility in him, and every single day I do my very best to show him rampant love, joy, magic, and wonder. I am watching the seeds of his empathy take root. I know the world is terrible. I know the world is magnificent. As his mother, I am learning how to stand behind him and give him my surest eyes when he looks back at me frightened—it is my mission to give him unyielding hope.   

I want to thank Eddie Vedder for writing this song (for writing so many songs that have been a part of the soundtrack to my life) and to thank all of the artists who are writing from dark places teeming with hope. Please keep going. The future belongs to us. 

With Love,
Maddy

Lyrics: https://g.co/kgs/KyoRGjp