Rebel Song
Bester Meyer
Man is born free but he is everywhere in chains
– Jean-Jacques Rosseau.
Man was fashioned in His likeliness but soon dwelled to the outer regions of loneliness. It is time to break the chains and travel back to the source. The route is known to the heart, but what about your mind? Rebel Song is a bequest to a nameless reader.
What does it mean to become the god of our own destiny? Isn’t it true that to become [G]od(s) would require us to accept crime? Albert Camus once remarked: “On the day when crime puts on the apparel of innocence, through a curious reversal peculiar to our age, it is innocence that is called upon to justify itself.” Yet, it seems as though changing times and their dark agents persistently prompt us, the collective, to say: “Come down from the cross, and we shall believe in you.”
There’s presently an invitation to take stock of the direction we, worldly citizens, have chosen to take. The investigation suggests that the status quo should not be measured lightly but with scales in hand. Rebel Song reiterates the invitation. To muster hope against the backdrop of a seemingly senseless plight of liberating us and enjoining us and them with the kind of goodness that can only be set in motion through a heart-centered and centering journey.
Rebel Song is a conceptual diptych consisting of this bundle as well as the author’s English translation of André Brink’s timeless novel Lobola for Life. It echoes past literary voices and applies them to our post-pandemic reality.
Are you liberated enough to be free?
About the author
Bester Meyer was born in Alberton, Gauteng. He studied law at the University of Johannesburg and completes his B. Com (LLB) in 2001. Meyer is a part-time musician and songwriter and released an EP with musician Albert Frost: Ontmoet jou onder ʼn Harvest Moon (2010). His debut poetry bundle Die Testament (which is the Afrikaans counterpart of Rebel Song) was released by Naledi in 2020. It was published with musical settings of the work of Breyten Breytenbach, Ingrid Jonker and Gisela Ullyatt entitled: Musiek vir jou ure. In 2021, Naledi published Meyer’s translations of the work of Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish entitled: Die Vlug van ʼn Vreemdeling. Rebel Song is to be released with Meyer’s English translation of the 1962 novel by André Brink: Lobola for Life. Die Testament, Rebel Song, Lobola for Life and Musiek vir jou Ure forms part of a greater artwork, which can be dubbed: The Will and Testament of a Nameless Citizen.
[Naledi, 2022. Formaat: Sagteband, 213 mm x 137 mm. Bladsye: 164. R240.00. ISBN: 9781776172092]