Today's thought comes from Derrick May and can be found here. I've loved this ever since I first heard it sampled on E-Z Rollers' 'Retro' in the late 1990s.
Some of these guys will be poor and die alone, but in the process they've been the true renegades, and the true rebels always walk alone anyway.
Now I have to make an obvious disclaimer here for the benefit of those of the hard-of-thinking elite who avidly follow this blog even though they don't understand what's going on, rather like people who watch Pobol y Cwm without knowing Welsh or those people, back in the day, who used to like Monkey. I am not likening being a white middle class bloke in a well-paid, fairly privileged profession to being a member of an underprivileged, frequently oppressed, politically excluded, largely stifled urban ethnic minority. I'm not doing that. OK? I can draw you a picture if you like. Come to think of it, May himself isn't exactly from the ghetto.
Anyway, be all that as it may*, I do think that the sentiment is capable of a certain transposition into other spheres of life and creative endeavour. Such as trying to make a difference in British academic history without being from the usual socio-educational background and having the right sort of cultural capital. For myself I have always taken a certain amount of heart from it.
"the true rebels always walk alone anyway"
And I also love his voice. I wish I spoke with that mellifluousness**.
* See what I did there?
** Is that a word?
** Is that a word?
