Islands only just released their latest album What Occurs in June, and now leader Nick Thorburn is sharing a benefit single, “Hold (Song For Aaron Bushnell).” Per a press release, 100% of the proceeds will go to Glia, a medical support initiative on the ground in Gaza.
Here’s what Thorburn had to say about “Hold (Song For Aaron Bushnell)”:
On February 25th, the 25 year-old active US serviceman Aaron Bushnell took his own life in an extreme act of protest. 250 days later, on the eve of a presidential election, I’m still haunted by Aaron’s decision. He’s been largely forgotten in the public consciousness, but I can’t seem to shake what he did. Was he trying to show us that his life was his and his alone, and by extension, his to take? Was he highlighting the stark, dark contrast between the extremely grim privilege of taking one’s own life while the Palestinian people have theirs taken from them on a daily basis?
You either see what is going on or you choose not to. It becomes clear that this is the greatest moral failure of my lifetime. Unfathomably, the situation has only worsened in the six months since Aaron Bushnell chose to set himself on fire outside the Embassy of Israel in Washington, D.C. There is an immense pain in understanding that, without our consent, we are collectively complicit in a genocide. I think that pain was too much for Aaron to bear. With this song, I wanted in some small way to hold that pain for him.
Free Palestine,
Nick Thorburn, Islands
Listen below.
