Why Do We Try: The Rebirth Hidden in Heartache
INTRODUCING: Robert Glasper featuring Stokely Williams – Why Do We Try
I don’t remember exactly what landed me at Robert Glasper’s Black Radio album, but I am sure it had something to do with destiny. Hidden behind the scenes of a lot of music I have grown to love, this album was something different, genuinely. While it’s jazz, it’s in large part soul and a reflection of love, vulnerability, and anything that has to do with seeking and soaking in the art of giving your heart away. One of the album’s most heart-wrenching reflections of this, the remake of “Why Do We Try,” feels exactly like the roller coaster that love takes you on.
Why Do We Try is an introspective view of love that lives oddly in the spaces between jazz improvisation, neo-soul, and rhythm and blues. Opening up with Stokely Williams’ key brand of singing to introduce the song, keys, drums, and baselines flow together in pattern like a heartbeat just below the surface of the track. It imitates an instrumental melody quickly transferring to the song’s lyrics which mimic the deeply human events of life. It’s here where he purposely tosses us into another one of life’s most difficult questions: Why do we continue to open ourselves up to the turmoil of love when there is a strong possibility of experiencing the type of pain that can break us so easily?
The answer is simple from a Kind Rebirths perspective. Despite the skepticism and disparagement we all often carry, there is something attractive about the noise and conflict of it. When we win, we win hard. I mean really hard. But to the opposite, when we lose, we lose out equally as bad.
That’s what makes this song a triumph. It’s loud and kind of off balance. Isn’t that life in love? Isn’t it always tumultuous? Would we actually want it so easily? Don’t we want to feel every note that Stokely manages to bellow out – the ups and the downs similar to love? Stokely’s vocals on this track bring the emotional honesty we are afraid of but the honesty we need. He doesn’t try to over sing the song, he brings the inflection and modulation needed to represent heartache and despair, yet with a small, almost nonexistent air of hope. His repetition of “Why do we try”, isn’t that the exhaustive question we whisper quietly to ourselves constantly every time we are in a relationship that is seemingly going nowhere or in ones whose direction keep heading toward dead ends no matter how you try?
Truth be Told
I have been in relationships like this as I am sure many others have. Why do we try? Why do we cry? How do we say goodbye? I’m imagining that most reading this would rather be reading a way to avoid this. However, this ain’t it. It’s supposed to feel this way and I wouldn’t change one iota of it. This song, like a rebirth, is supposed to hurt and then heal. It’s supposed to give hope when there isn’t a real path to it. It’s messy as shit. It, too, is loud noise and confusion, many instruments going on all at the same time – organized confusion. This is the cycle of love, of life, and rebirthing. It is falling and losing, but it is hoping again (or never losing hope in the first place). Healing does not happen in straight lines. It is known to dance around pointlessly, to stumble clumsily, but then find that new rhythm. Glasper and Stokely capture the very essence of emotional rebirth through music. They have focused on that exhaustion of love and that bright-eyed part of us that keeps reaching for connection. I don’t believe this song to be a song of cynicism perse; it’s a hard smack of the truth of reality. It is that moment of truth between why do and why did we. There is a space there that is very pivotal as it controls your next action. The answer may not be to stop trying. Consider listening more deeply to the music of your own development.
Echo of the Philosophy – Kind Rebirths
When asked, “Why we try,” a rebirth responds because we are made to love; we are made to feel pain; we are made to heal; and we are made to evolve and transform. Any failed relationship or dream broken plants a new seed of transformation. And even if we feel uncertainty, we recognize that grace is still present in the face of doubt. The vibration of heartbreak can quickly transform into the trimmer of growth.
Take this with You
Why Do We Try, from a Kind Rebirth perspective, is expressively about resilience. It’s sustenance for the heart’s biggest contradiction and conflict – to continually long or to consider letting go, to pray for hope or to pray for recovery. This song intimately reminds us that trying, despite the pain we feel, in its own right, is prayer and relief. Trying is caring; caring is feeling; and feeling awareness is the kind of rebirth we need to continue moving forward no matter which direction we take. So now, when you listen to this song and compare it to your travels, take love further than just a mere destination and see it for what it also can be: an improvisation of the soul and of the spirit.
Stay mindful…
Rebirth
