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Songs of the Sprouting Seed’s Quiet Rebellion (Video)

“The Inner Life of Rebellion,” our podcast with Courtney Martin and Parker Palmer, has struck a chord with activists, artists, and dreamers young and old. One of them is Katie Krupin, a 23-year-old woman who “lives on curiosity, musicality, and anything that infuses the world with a little more mirth.” She’s an education director for the Kirkland Boys & Girls Club, who, in her spare time sings, writes, and studies environmental philosophy.

While writing a song about the house (lovingly called “the fort”) where she lives with her friends for NPR’s Tiny Desk contest, Krupin happened upon our episode on rebellion. Palmer and Martin’s reflections resonated with her, and she found herself integrating their ideas into her lyrics. In particular, you can hear echoes of Parker Palmer’s words on the expanding horizon of change:

“I feel like I’m standing somewhere down the curvature of the earth. I cannot see the horizon that you folks see, where you’re standing higher on that curvature. I need your eyes, and I need your ears, and I need you to tell me what it is you’re seeing, because that same horizon is coming at me, even though I don’t know it.”

For Krupin, the song is an embodiment of the rebellious energy she senses within herself and her generation. It’s at once hopeful and sobering, mirroring the cautious optimism of our two guests, and its closing lines are sage ones:

On the coast of those with pioneer souls
Shadows are sewn to the foot with care
Courage is grown with callous and bone
And fear is known not as foe but friend

Forefather’s land, on their shoulders we stand
Further we see o’er horizons

Oh we’ll build a fort
Beside the ocean
Dangling over cliff and rock
High winds will blow
Waves will crash below
But our fort will hold through it all

Tend to the ground, hard though it’s found
Tilth to the soul, whose work is love
Amend the sound of youth’s hope stricken down
With songs of the sprouting seed’s quiet rebellion

Forefather’s land, on their shoulders we stand
Further we see o’er horizons

Oh we’ll build a fort
Beside the ocean
Dangling over cliff and rock
High winds will blow
Waves will crash below
But our fort will hold through it all

Damage done with the best intentions
We won’t hide, we won’t run;
Be the surf to the sun
Lean into the tension; converse with the foreign
Through the dissonance comes creation

You can also download this song from Krupin and the group “Second Child” on SoundCloud.

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