All That Have Dark Sounds

This blog is named after and influenced by the Spanish writer, Federico García Lorca, murdered by fascists in 1936, right at the start of the Spanish Civil War. Nearly 100 years later and writers, poets, playwrights and artists continue to be killed by oppressive regimes across the world. The darkness of Gaza as we speak, the indescribable horrors being inflicted on millions of people there, is a heavy cloak hanging desperate over our heads. The sadistic brutality being meted out on a whole nation of people is beyond words until words seem futile.

Yet the Palestinian people, from within this bloodbath and carnage, continue to speak with their actions and their words: the selfless acts of people searching for survivors in the rubble; the respect paid at funerals for the thousands of the dead; the doctors and medical staff in the few remaining hospitals who work with the bare minimum of resources to care for the injured while corpses mount up outside and the bombs fall without mercy; the journalists who, mourning the loss of their families and colleagues, continue to bear witness to the atrocities all around; the UN and charity workers who, seeing their comrades killed and deprived of the humanitarian aid they need to give assistance, continue to speak out from this terrifying hell.

As Israel sadistically perpetrates its long-awaited act of genocide, with the shameful backing of the US and the UK, Palestinian voices have not, and never will be, silenced. They continue to speak out, to cry out, against evil. They cannot be silenced. They show us, in their agony and anguish, they show us the face of humanity. And it is our humanity that makes us bleed when they bleed, scream when they scream, want to hold them and protect them as they are dying. It is our humanity that wants to stop our children, our brothers and our sisters, our parents and our grandparents – we want to stop them dying. With all our humanity and empathy and sorrow, we want this atrocious genocide to stop.

Lorca lived, wrote and breathed the concept of duende, a Spanish word that has no direct translation into English. Duende is that vital impulse, that yearning, that need which balances on the knife-edge of life and death. Deep-rooted and unstoppable, it is a force that can never be silenced because it speaks to us, it embodies us, it engulfs us with the urgent necessity to find expression in the darkest of places. And we don’t have the means to ignore its call.

No wonder oppressive regimes hunt down the writers, the poets, the artists. No wonder they shoot us when we sing. No wonder they stamp their jackboots in our faces. They abhor the sight and sound of beauty. They despise the existence of truth. They hate all signs of humanity and goodness. They detest what it means to be human and so use obliteration as their bastard weapon of choice.

The pen is always mightier than the sword. Words have far greater power than guns. In the darkest night with all its blackest, darkest, bloodiest sounds, words can never be silenced. We will keep on singing till we bring the light.

All That Have Dark Sounds was first performed on Eat the Storms podcast Episode 2 Season 7 (May 2023). It was subsequently published in The Serulian (October 2023).