We’re the Ghosts, November 13, 2015
On the evening of November 13, 2015, I was getting ready to leave my apartment, listening to an a cappella version of Under Pressure by David Bowie and Freddie Mercury that I had happened to find online. Suddenly, I heard a loud, incomprehensible noise, like a truck unloading a load of scrap metal… But after 9 p.m., that seemed rather strange.
I went out to meet some friends.
On Rue Bichat, I headed in the opposite direction from Le Petit Cambodge, then walked up Rue du Faubourg-du-Temple without realizing that, just to my right, a massacre had taken place only moments earlier at La Bonne Bière.
I continued up toward Belleville, where a security cordon prevented me from turning back. With no other choice, I took refuge in a bar that pulled down its metal shutter. We spent the rest of the night locked inside, surrounded by smoke, dancing and alcohol, while punks played cards and complained about Hollande, who appeared on a small television as we gradually learned what had happened.
When I got home around four in the morning, a television truck was parked in front of my door, and the journalists’ dance began. For many days, my neighborhood turned into a 24-hour-a-day television set, looking like an improvised cemetery where journalists, onlookers and tourists jostled for space.
During the week that followed, I initially found my artistic practice rather futile. I felt that I could not go on working as if nothing had happened.
And yet, more than ever, I became aware that beyond the refuge art could offer me, it could also be a way of connecting with others and, perhaps, of doing some good.
So I wrote the lyrics to the song We’re the Ghosts.
However, I did not want to add another layer of sadness. Despite my state of shock, I chose an energetic approach and optimistic lyrics.
The ghosts speak: they return from our memories to help us make it through difficult times.
It is a deliberately idealistic song: We were one before it blew, we’ll mix colors with this blue.
Here, mixing is a way of resisting the logic of separation. I am the son of a French mother and an Iranian father, and I have always experienced the meeting of these two cultures as a fundamental part of my identity. In the aftermath of the attacks, it seemed all the more important to me to defend the possibility of a connection between East and West, rather than give in to the idea of a conflict between the two.
The song is therefore about memory, loss and fear, but also about what can continue to connect us. The ghosts are not only those who have disappeared: they are also memories, absences, what remains within us and can help us make it through the night.
I wanted to make a song that would not deny fear, loss or absence, but would oppose them with something else: memory, light, hope, and the possibility of coming together.
No matter where we come from.
We’re the Ghosts – from the EP “…Seeking something” by ADhAM
Lyrics
We’re the ghosts
Coming from the past
Bringing light in your shadow
We’re the ghosts
In a world so vast
Saying you’re never alone
We’re the ghosts
You don’t know what to say
You doubt what you know
If the wind could stay
I would make it grow
We’re the ghosts
Coming from the past
Bringing light in your shadow
We’re the ghosts
Memories will last
Giving hope to reach the dawn
We’re the ghosts
You don’t know what to say
You doubt what you know
If the wind could stay
I would make it grow
If you’ve lost your way
Here we come
Nightmare while awake
Will soon be gone
I just come to bring a sun
Where some thought darkness had won
We were one before it blew
We’ll mix colors with this blue
Missing loved ones stay in you
Where you thought nothing could grow
Memories will help you pass through
We’re the ghosts who make fears go
