Oh ****, I almost forgot "Greystone Chapel" from Johnny Cash's At Folsom Prison live album. It's a song about the power that religion can have to give men hope and purpose, which is not generally my bag as an atheist, but the lyrics, the performance, and the circumstances of the recording make it more than just a religious statement, but also a testament to the best of mankind, even in the worst conditions.
It's the last song on the album, and afterward the inmates making up the audience would be marched back to their cells to endure a pitiless existence of boredom and dehumanization, but this song was the perfect way to send them off with as much hope as possible. The fact that the song was written by an inmate of the prison, who was also in the audience, makes it all the more poignant and beautiful.
The second chorus at the end, when Cash's wife comes in, and you can hear the audience singing along, hits me hard every single time.
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Originally Posted by J.R.R. Tolkien
There is only one bright spot and that is the growing habit of disgruntled men of dynamiting factories and power-stations; I hope that, encouraged now as ‘patriotism’, may remain a habit! But it won’t do any good, if it is not universal.
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