A Cry for Moksha in "I Wish I Knew How it Would Feel to be Free"

All day yesterday, I was internally singing this song. . . . At certain points of the day, I'd sing it aloud. While I walked up and down streets, say, or stood at bus stops, I'd sing "I wish I knew how it would feel to be free. . . ."

As with any earworm, I thought to find the cure and since Nina Simone is the singer who I first heard sing the song, I searched for one of her performances on YouTube.

I found what you are listening to above and realized that I had seen this Montreux performance from 1976 before and that this is probably one of my very favorite performances of the song that I have ever seen or heard.

One of the reasons I love this performance so much is because of the powerful statements that Nina Simone makes at the end of this tune: 

i already know
i found out
how it feels
not to be chained
to any thing
to any race
to any faith
to any body
to any creed
to any hopes
to any ...anything (!)
i know (!) how it feels to be free!

I know nothing of Nina Simone's spiritual background but her words reminded me of things I have read from the Vedic tradition about the freedom of freedoms, moksha and perhaps even the fleetingness of it in human form. She's tasted it, that freedom that I am pretty sure all of us crave, and wants to share it far and wide and of course, go back to that freedom, at last, unfettered.

Today, this is the interpretation that I am internalizing.

Whatever the case is, Nina Simone's interpretation of this song takes the meaning of it to a whole other level. It never hit me til yesterday and now this song means even more to me than it ever has.