Divided:
Deep down, if you could only feel it deep down
You are detached from feeling love
Leaving this emptiness to overwhelm
And you fear what you can’t comprehend so you run away
And hide in your complacency
Believing that you’re isolated
I feel categorized by all the things I haven’t done
Separated into expectations based on things I can’t control
Boundaries mean nothing when they’re undefined
And I refuse to let preconceptions influence what I think of you
It’s hard to see your true colors when you live in black and white
Am I dyed in the wool, is it so easy to pick me apart?
Am I dyed in the wool, because to me we’re both members of the same flock
I thought we had so much potential but complacency got the best of us
And I know that there will be loss but we can’t stay in the same place
Division only creates emptiness
But compassion and acceptance can bring us back again
It’s not me versus you, and it never was us versus them
The only difference was the time it took for you to understand
You can’t imprison our differences, you can’t divide us up by land
And I feel like you are living in fear
Letting boundaries of color, color your perception
And maybe that’s why I’m living in a box
Afraid of what you’ll think of me, because people are so quick to judge
The differences that make us who we are
Are so often held against us
Just because there’s been one wolf in wool
It doesn’t mean we all have fangs
Only by insisting on uniting can we be whole again
Division only creates emptiness
But there is empathy in me, not apathy
I’ll start off by saying Divided is the first political song I’ve ever written. There will always be political divides in ideology however it goes to extreme when people are literally divided from others based off where they are from and the color of their skin. The children separated from their families being detained is completely unacceptable and prompted me to write these lyrics.
“Boundaries mean nothing when they’re undefined” is similar to an Enter Shikari line in Meltdown “Countries are just lines drawn in the sand with a stick” and I hope to share a similar sentiment in my line. We completely neglect our humanity when we normalize treating people differently based off of where they are from.
“Am I dyed in the wool” introduces a metaphor I revisit later in the lyrics. This line asks if any one individual can be understood as different solely based of off their appearance, nationality, skin color, etc. “Because to me we’re both members of the same flock” reminds people that a lot of times the people that we chose to judge often are just trying to fit in and gain acceptance.
“Division only creates emptiness” means the more we divide or pick-out our differences, the only thing we are accomplishing is putting more space between us, a larger gap in our humanity that only serves to pull us apart.
“And I feel like you are living in fear, letting boundaries of color, color your perception” to me, the majority of any –ism results from some sort of fear or misunderstanding. When you don’t understand something you try to avoid it, or fear it. In this case, it’s a boundary of color that serves to color, or influence, people’s perception on how they view others. Additionally even though people tend to encourage individuality, often times the very thing that makes us individuals is “so often held against us.”
I end this song summarizing the earlier metaphor. “Just because there’s been a wolf in wool doesn’t mean we all have fangs.” This line illustrates that even if you have experienced one person who fit a stereotype, or one person who upset you in some way, they cannot represent an entire color, or nationality or religion, etc. We’re all humans, earthlings, we all experience life differently and should not allow any –ism to influence how we see and treat people.
“But there is empathy in me, not apathy” is what I hope that people feel in general, not just me. I hope that through empathy we begin to treat all forms of life equally, and we no longer allow our fears to influence our decisions.
I want to summarize this lyric set by admitting I am not perfect or innocent either. There is a really interesting study/site that Harvard has which details implicit bias. I try to think about how this effects other people and remind myself that people have to deal with this level of bias, and much much worse, on a daily basis, and it sucks. I hope that I can do better personally, and that as a nation and a people we can call this out as we see it and simply not accept it.
Harvard Implicit Bias Test:
