I've must have been little when I started to listen to protest singers

 

I was  a child in the 1960s. My parents were playing music, with texts that made me startle, that made me want to change the world, to take some kind of action,  I felt responsible, a bit unclear about what. 

Maybe the love warrior in me, actually was born, already then? I wanted a fair world, a world were color didn’t matter, a world of equality, a world of love, a world were neither greed, not war would happen. I became a child pacifist. I wanted peace. I wanted wars to stop. I felt sick watching the pictures from the Vietnam war. 

One of the songs I loved, and I still know the lyrics by heart, is Peter Seegers ”Little boxes”. To me this song was a song about HELL. Are you surprised? In the song he talks about a world where everybody needs to be like one another, where there is one way to happiness, where you are learned to be a consumer, where you need to have the same life and dreams as others. And, already as a child, that thought suffocated me. Listening to Pete Seegers happy voice, made me want to puke. I knew I didn’t want to live in a box, or be put into a box. I wanted to make my own choices, longed for a fellow human beings who also did. A freedom that doesn’t necessarily have to include rebellion, just to have the opportunity to think freely, choose more freely. I wonder how much songs like that, in my early childhood, affected me and my values.

What experiences formed you and your values?

Charlotte Cronquist är kärlekskrigare
Love is the answer