Bodies Upon the Gears

Hello everyone,

So these few posts have all been about vulnerability so far, we will be taking a detour from that topic now. I was listening as I always do to my expansive itunes library. It helps me get through the tedium of work, writing etc. Anyway, I was listening to Linkin Park and I heard this amazing speech and thought I should write a post about it, after listening to "Wretches and Kings" for probably the 50th time now.

So naturally my next point of reference was my friend google. It took a moment or so before I found Mario Savio's speech on Wikipedia. I was discussing with my mother this morning, how lacking our current age is of truly motivating speech. It's funny how controlled our political figures are, the days of saying anything outside the box might be behind us. I mean my father was describing this software he sells and it scares me to think how monitored our lives are and how companies (the government included) are looking for new ways to improve productivity. Thus we use form speeches, we cut out all the unnecessary junk. We limit ourselves to the relevant...

What is lost in all of this? Well there's not much passion I can tell you trying to write to a bunch of criteria, which is probably why I failed writing at University and am now writing a blog of my own. But anyway, if anyone wants to share an awesome example of someone giving it to the man and delivering some truly inspiring words, feel free to post that speech there. Maybe we need some more creative speech writers, maybe that's the problem. In any case I give you Mario Savio's "Bodies Upon the Gears" speech.

Bodies Upon the Gears

There's a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious
makes you so sick at heart
that you can't take part
You can't even passively take part
And you've got to put your bodies
upon the gears and upon the wheels
upon the levers
upon all the apparatus
and you've got to make it stop.
And you've got to indicate to the people who run it
to the people who own it
that unless you're free
the machine will be prevented from working at all.

Sproul Hall Steps, December 2, 1964

What is this all about? Well I looked up the full speech and I want to make a disclaimer that my research may be inexact, but essentially it's a bunch of University students demanding that their education be a free one, not constrained by the narrow mindedness of the managers of Berkley Uni.

The unbridled passion. Its a powerful metaphor, completely emotional and perhaps unfairly biased. But man does this speech make you feel something.