Di Leva: Vi Har Bara Varandra
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Funny thing about hippies: they tend to be right. Oh sure, it's easy to sneer at the earnestness and positivity: after all, sneering is just what we do. They're so naive. And those clothes! They probably don't wash! I'll bet they smell bad... So we joke and belittle, look down our noses and snort, because we're just so much worldlier than them. But deep down we know: they're right.
You see, the world would be a better place without hatred and war. The love of one another and the planet we appear to be trying so hard to ruin may well be the only thing that can pull us all back from the brink. These ideas aren't really open to debate, but we debate them anyway because that's the only way we can think of to justify our cavalier behaviour. We're angry people, and we reserve the right not to want to move beyond that anger in order to try to find some positivity in amongst all the gloom and grime.
So it is that here in Sweden, Thomas Di Leva is something of a punchline. Resolutely hippy, happy in the childlike persona he wears like a comfortable kaftan, he sings about how all we have is each other and how everything is interconnected, and everyone snickers. Then they join in and sing along. And perhaps, just perhaps, the joke is on us because in that brief moment that catches us roaring along with the ridiculous, infectious chorus, we might understand the gleam in Di Leva's eye, and the fact that he made believers out of cynical-old us, however fleetingly.
As someone else once sang, Immerse your soul in love. After all, we only have each other.