Music
I’ve been playing around with making music. Lyrics mine with lots of help from Claude; audio by Suno – hence the mackan&machine alias. “Mackan” is also the go-to nickname for “Markus” in Sweden. I never liked the name (it means “the sandwich”), but I’m reclaiming it.
EPs:
Some explanations of the songs on Unsung and Hustle Anthems below.
EPs:
Some explanations of the songs on Unsung and Hustle Anthems below.
Unsung
About people who did important things for the world, usually with great sacrifice and with little recognition.
The button (Petrov). On 26 September 1983, Stanislav Petrov was the duty officer at a Soviet early-warning bunker when his screen lit up with an American first strike – five missiles. The protocol said he should report it. He didn't. He figured a real first strike would involve hundreds of missiles, not five, and waited for ground radar to confirm. It never did. It was a false alarm due to clouds catching the sun the wrong way.
Under the apple tree (Sendler). Irena Sendler, a Polish social worker, smuggled around 2,500 Jewish children out of the Warsaw Ghetto, with her collaborators. She wrote each child's real name on tissue paper, sealed the lists in glass jars, and buried them under an apple tree so the children could one day be returned to their families. The Gestapo broke her legs and feet trying to get the names. She didn't talk. The jars stayed in the garden.
Water and lime (Semmelweis). In 1840s Vienna, Ignaz Semmelweis noticed that the maternity ward run by doctors killed 13% of mothers, while the ward run by midwives killed 2%. The doctors were coming straight from cadaver dissections. He told them to wash their hands in chlorinated lime; mortality dropped to 2%. He spent the rest of his life trying to convince people to wash their hands. The establishment took it as an insult, drove him out, and he died in an asylum.
4859 (Pilecki). In 1940, Witold Pilecki volunteered to get himself arrested in a Warsaw street roundup so he could be sent to Auschwitz, organise a resistance from the inside, and smuggle out the first detailed reports of the camp. Prisoner 4859. The reports reached London and were largely ignored. He escaped after two and a half years. Postwar communist Poland later tried him for espionage and shot him.
Two to one (Arkhipov). During the Cuban Missile Crisis, US destroyers dropped practice depth charges on Soviet submarine B-59, which was carrying a nuclear-tipped torpedo. Out of radio contact, sweltering, the crew assumed war had started. Of the three officers required to authorise a launch, two voted to fire. Vasily Arkhipov was the one no.
Wrong kind of man (Rustin). Bayard Rustin was one of MLK's closest strategists and the principal organiser of the 1963 March on Washington – a quarter of a million people, in eight weeks, without faxes or email. He was also openly gay, which in 1960 was enough leverage to weaponise. A congressman threatened to publicly invent an affair between King and Rustin unless they called off planned protests at the Democratic Convention; King accepted Rustin's resignation. The song is about what I imagine Rustin’s feelings to have been in that moment.
The button (Petrov). On 26 September 1983, Stanislav Petrov was the duty officer at a Soviet early-warning bunker when his screen lit up with an American first strike – five missiles. The protocol said he should report it. He didn't. He figured a real first strike would involve hundreds of missiles, not five, and waited for ground radar to confirm. It never did. It was a false alarm due to clouds catching the sun the wrong way.
Under the apple tree (Sendler). Irena Sendler, a Polish social worker, smuggled around 2,500 Jewish children out of the Warsaw Ghetto, with her collaborators. She wrote each child's real name on tissue paper, sealed the lists in glass jars, and buried them under an apple tree so the children could one day be returned to their families. The Gestapo broke her legs and feet trying to get the names. She didn't talk. The jars stayed in the garden.
Water and lime (Semmelweis). In 1840s Vienna, Ignaz Semmelweis noticed that the maternity ward run by doctors killed 13% of mothers, while the ward run by midwives killed 2%. The doctors were coming straight from cadaver dissections. He told them to wash their hands in chlorinated lime; mortality dropped to 2%. He spent the rest of his life trying to convince people to wash their hands. The establishment took it as an insult, drove him out, and he died in an asylum.
4859 (Pilecki). In 1940, Witold Pilecki volunteered to get himself arrested in a Warsaw street roundup so he could be sent to Auschwitz, organise a resistance from the inside, and smuggle out the first detailed reports of the camp. Prisoner 4859. The reports reached London and were largely ignored. He escaped after two and a half years. Postwar communist Poland later tried him for espionage and shot him.
Two to one (Arkhipov). During the Cuban Missile Crisis, US destroyers dropped practice depth charges on Soviet submarine B-59, which was carrying a nuclear-tipped torpedo. Out of radio contact, sweltering, the crew assumed war had started. Of the three officers required to authorise a launch, two voted to fire. Vasily Arkhipov was the one no.
Wrong kind of man (Rustin). Bayard Rustin was one of MLK's closest strategists and the principal organiser of the 1963 March on Washington – a quarter of a million people, in eight weeks, without faxes or email. He was also openly gay, which in 1960 was enough leverage to weaponise. A congressman threatened to publicly invent an affair between King and Rustin unless they called off planned protests at the Democratic Convention; King accepted Rustin's resignation. The song is about what I imagine Rustin’s feelings to have been in that moment.
Hustle Anthems
Three motivational songs about choosing to do hard, important things, in an over-the-top intense way.
Meet me in the arena. From the "Man in the Arena" passage in Theodore Roosevelt's 1910 speech. "It is not the critic who counts" – what matters is the person in the dust and sweat and blood, willing to fail at something worth attempting.
Do everything. Inspired by the chapter in Robert Caro's Means of Ascent (part of his excellent set of Lyndon B Johnson biographies) where LBJ, facing certain political death in the 1948 Senate race, decides to do everything – every handshake, every back-room deal, every hour the dark allows. Not an unambiguous role model (he bought plenty of votes!) but the chapter is still incredible.
Not because it's easy. From JFK's 1962 speech: "We choose to go to the Moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard." I've always thought it was a strange line – picking the hard thing because it's hard – but the thought is that’s what we need.
Meet me in the arena. From the "Man in the Arena" passage in Theodore Roosevelt's 1910 speech. "It is not the critic who counts" – what matters is the person in the dust and sweat and blood, willing to fail at something worth attempting.
Do everything. Inspired by the chapter in Robert Caro's Means of Ascent (part of his excellent set of Lyndon B Johnson biographies) where LBJ, facing certain political death in the 1948 Senate race, decides to do everything – every handshake, every back-room deal, every hour the dark allows. Not an unambiguous role model (he bought plenty of votes!) but the chapter is still incredible.
Not because it's easy. From JFK's 1962 speech: "We choose to go to the Moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard." I've always thought it was a strange line – picking the hard thing because it's hard – but the thought is that’s what we need.