Poverty Playlist: “The Box” by Johnny Flynn

Sweep my mess away
Leave my body, leave my bones
Leave me whole and leave my soul
Leave me nothing I don’t need at all
Nothing I don’t need at all

Catchy song about poverty, simplicity and self reliance, apparently inspired by Henry David Thoreau’s Walden.

“Thoreau’s saying that somewhere along the line we’ve gone horribly wrong in collecting all this stuff,” Johnny Flynn said in an interview with NPR. “It was really that whole thing set to a story basically in a song.”

More and more often I have the urge to just  ”go off the grid” (as my friend Katie puts it.) Maybe it’s just all the recent moves and career turmoil, but I feel really weighed down by belongings and obligations-It’s got to be that feeding the niggling desire to set up camp in a co-op somewhere and brew beer and raise honey bees. Or, you know… journalism is awesome too.

This entry was posted on Sunday, December 20th, 2009 at 8:05 pm and is filed under poverty playlist. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.