The Free Woman.
One of the Western order and civilisation's greatest gifts to humanity.
Look at her for a moment before you read on.
The sweat, the laughter, the arms that work, the hair that flies - a woman filling the room with sound and not apologising for a single stroke.
Because why would she.
And then notice what you're not thinking about while you watch her.
You're not thinking about whether she's been allowed. You're not thinking about who gave her permission, or what it's going to cost her afterwards. It doesn't occur to you - and precisely that, that it doesn't occur to you, is the gift itself.
Because this is not a natural state.
In large parts of the world, today, at this moment, right now - the scene you just watched is unthinkable. Not because women can't play drums - but because the order around them has decided that woman's freedom and wildness is a threat that must be covered, dampened, owned.
There are civilisations where her laughter would be a transgression, her visibility a shame - and where performing music that hasn't been approved can cost imprisonment or what's worse.
Ours did the opposite.
Slowly, imperfectly, against its own resistance - but it did. It built a world where a woman can be wild without being anyone's property, free without being anyone's exception.
The Wild Free Woman is not a rebellion against the West.
She is the proof of it.
And proof of how deeply we love Her.
❤️🔥🪽
…
And notice what you just took for granted when you saw her. Not just that she may - but that it can never be otherwise.
That freedom is a ground state, something the world just is, and not something anyone has built.
But it can be otherwise.
And it becomes so - there, where the forces that keep the old order alive are allowed to grow in strength and in number. This is not a theory. It has already happened, in countries that once had universities full of women and streets full of music.
Tehran in 1975 took it for granted too.
Freedom is not a natural law. It is an inheritance - and an inheritance can be overturned by a generation that has forgotten it was ever created.
So let's not do that, shall we? 🙂
