Willie Nelson

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Hear ”A Peaceful Solution” by Brooks Faris

Brooks Faris sent Willie Nelson Peace Research Institute a cool contemporary jazz arrangement of Willie Nelson’s and Amy Nelson’s A Peaceful Solution. Brooks incorporates subtle yet significant changes to the lyrics that alter the meaning of the song creating his own message for a peaceful solution.

Three times Brooks substitutes the words struggle, conflict and strife for the word war. War connotes violence for many people and I feel Brooks wants to steer clear of naming or promoting anything that might engender violence.

Many people have emailed us to say the only way to win a war is to put an end to war.

Brooks makes a slight change in the lyrics and the meaning when he sings, “We’ll all take back America.” This becomes a wonderful appeal to all Americans to become involved.

Brooks proposes a position where We the People stand united.

Once again Brooks adds extra meaning to the song after the lyrics “…don’t have to do it again.” He sings, “…won’t have to do it again.” Brooks voices a positive affirmation with his additional lyrics to assert we will finally have permanent peace.

After these words Brooks plays a beautiful, dynamic guitar solo allowing us time to contemplate what a peaceful world will look like. More vocals follow and Brooks adds, “…bring back America.”

America belongs to We the People and we have an obligation to bring back what we have lost.

Brooks ends the song in a cappella recounting past events as a bard who sings of our historical victories. Brooks soothing voice assures us that we have achieved our peaceful solution.

* * * * * Artist’s Statement * * * * *

I am concerned about the very survival of not only our species but also the planet, as it appears the Present Resident seeks only war in perpetuity. I want to help save America, and have truly been visualizing the portentous crossroads we stand at for nearly all of my adult life.

I exhort my fellow Americans to pick a side in the obvious “battle lines bein’ drawn’ – the worst accidents occur in the middle of the road. I am confident this struggle will not be evenly divided, as

the consensus of most of the populace appears to support the peace movement.

To borrow from ‘The Big Lebowski’s Dude, ‘this aggression shall not stand’, especially if ‘we the people’ mobilize and coalesce to prevent it. I emphasize here that our efforts will fail if they are tainted by violence.

Look to Gandhi and King for counsel on effective dissent and civil disobedience.

I got into the peace movement when I was a student leader in high school. Back then I tried – unsuccessfully — to get the SDS to come to our school in California. Our school ‘adopted’ a POW/MIA during Vietnam, a captain who was missing after a plane crash. Neither he nor his body was ever found.

I would also occasionally skip class to protest the Iraq – er, Vietnam War, assembling with others outside the birthplace of Richard M. Nixon, conveniently located just four miles from my high school campus. (There’s now a multi-million dollar library where the old house and the lemon grove used to be).

I also participated in various protest rallies at local college campuses and a number of sit-ins in the area, through around 1972 or about ’73. I guess by then the draft had ended and we were no longer in imminent danger of being sent to kill or die. Perhaps the lack of a draft has a lot to do with why people, and particularly our youth aren’t congregating publicly in protest anymore.

Have we all retreated to our ‘virtual’ worlds now, busily sending emails to those in power we disagree with? I just wish someone famous would say, “OK, people. That’s it. Let’s get together in two weeks at the Washington Monument” or something like that. Maybe it’s unrealistic, and perhaps Americans are afraid, and understandably.

I have seen how people are beaten and even arrested for exercising their right of assembly these past few years. That didn’t happen that much back when I was younger. The police have become more brutal, but despite this I will not be cowed; too much is at stake here.

Only the people can restore the shining beacon on the hill, must remove the rust that now covers Lady Liberty. In short, we must be willing to sacrifice in order to save this great nation from the corporations that now control it.

Without reciprocal maintenance of Mother Earth she will eventually have to regenerate herself, historically through cataclysmic upheaval (When a system – or any entity, for that matter, becomes very ill, convulsive regurgitation is often necessitated).

Don’t any of the countries rushing to claim the oil under the melting Polar Cap remember learning about the Ice Age? It is painfully obvious our Present Resident does not.

Peace is an integral part of our Mother’s maintenance, especially considering the vast array of nuclear arsenals dotting her surface. Further consider whose ‘finger is on the button’ of our nuclear stockpile, and remember Kubrick’s General Jack D. Ripper (‘Dr. Strangelove, or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love The Bomb,’ 1964).

I’d like to see more large musical venues similar to Willie’s Farm Aid, entirely dedicated to the quest for peace and the conveyance of truth. Peaceful, civil assembly is most easily achieved through such efforts, and dollars raised can help fund the organization and expansion of the peace movement.

We must work tirelessly to foster awareness and understanding in the general populace, where a large number of our compatriots have become ‘comfortably numb’, as our government fully intended. I’ve heard ignorance can be blissful, but perhaps only until it hurts.

Art allows for a more complete and universal understanding of truth, beauty, and love, concepts that are much harder to convey via the written word. Words guide like maps, and we often make the mistake of substituting the map for the road.

Art, and especially music, has the ability to reach the greatest number of human beings, and I have always envisioned somehow contributing to my fellow man through my own study and music. Everyone holds a song in their heart, even if it’s become but a faint echo. If we are quiet enough we will hear it sing to us, regardless of the road each of us are on.

May peace be with all who read this.

Brooks Faris
Portland, OR

Hear ”A Peaceful Solution” by Brooks Faris

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Tags: Arts, Peace

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