Words Will Come

“Above my bed, Bob’s face I saw, my daddy looking at me so passionately, little brother.
Well, in his eyes I saw the truth, mommy, the truth of a Rastaman, the truth of a iyaman.

We understand, however, that things must come, and we have to let them out, let them happen. Not supernatural experience but inspiration and vision: real, not magical. At times I wonder if I myself have some knowledge of things beyond my existence, but I don’t think too deep, just lightly. The spirit lives on. The spiritual sense will always be here, as the music will be here; my father’s music lives as he lives in the music.

I was born at home in Trenchtown. And the experience of the ghetto in those days, when I was coming up, was not the same as what my father experienced in terms of the violence and the mind-set of the people. My life didn’t have sufferation. We did not go through the same things that my father went through, but it’s not only physical experience that makes you what you are:

Jah gives the inspiration and my music is based more upon a spiritual level than a physical one. The music comes from Jah, but I use my own inner eye, my third eye, to make the music.
If it takes another century for people to understand, it is all right. I don’t rush it. I wait. If a song makes sense, it will always be there for people to understand. Sometime, some way, somehow, they will get the message. Maybe not in the time that we expect, or want. But the work that we’re doing is not just for now. It is for all time. Naturally, you may doubt and question (it’s all right to do so), but when I think of Jesus Christ, Marcus Garvey, my father—who am I to complain or question? Jesus Christ suffered so much—if I get a little doubt, it means so little. A couple of years ago a reporter asked me, “Will you live to see the freedom of South Africa?” and I answered, “Of course.”

My generation is a positive generation, and there’s so much more to go, as the self is changing. Most important, the human creature needs to evolve into a loving creature. I mean, if you don’t love, what are you? But we can never stop the struggle. I have dreams for the upliftment of my people, but I am not at the point where I can reach the fulfillment of my dreams. Still, the struggle cannot be taken away; it was not given to us, it was born in us. And it runs through our veins and creates the urge to help people. It was not something that I read in a book, or heard from a friend. I was always this way. So no matter where I live, or what fame comes to me (these things can be taken away—money comes, money goes), the struggle is always in the blood.

Each person must go through his own tribulations until spiritual enlightenment takes place—until he sees love of life, love of self, love of tree, love of bird, love of bee. Everybody has to go through this. But to those who see me perform, I am perhaps only a thought in their minds. They see what they want to see, not knowing what I have been through in order to reach the place that I have come to. So it’s not just my father that made me what I am—it’s me as well. And people who see me sing cannot see the struggle that is behind the words that I sing. And it’s as I said in the beginning, it is all in the mind, like the calendar of our beginnings. And these words here, now. Jah said to me, “Don’t worry about what you are going to say. Don’t worry, the words will come.” And like the words in the Kebra Nagast, they come in their own time.”
~ Ziggy Marley