Description
About the Song
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POWER IN THE VEINS
CATEGORY
Primary Emotion
Awareness
Also Fits
Control, Responsibility, Frustration, Dependence, Survival, Power, Freedom, Questioning
This song connects with people who have started looking more closely at the systems surrounding their lives.
It connects with the person who opens an electricity bill and wonders how something so necessary became so difficult to understand. It connects with the worker who spends every day helping build roads, pipelines, power lines, buildings, plants, and cities, but rarely hears people speak about the physical work that keeps those cities alive.
It connects with families who know that heat is not a luxury when winter arrives. It connects with business owners who know that one interruption in electricity, fuel, transportation, or communication can stop an entire operation. It connects with farmers, truck drivers, equipment operators, construction workers, mechanics, manufacturers, nurses, store owners, and ordinary people who understand that modern life depends on systems most of us never see.
A person can live for years without thinking about where electricity comes from. They walk into a room, touch a switch, and expect the light to come on. They turn the thermostat and expect heat. They open a tap and expect water. They drive to work and expect fuel to be available. They plug in a phone and expect it to charge.
Most of the time, everything works.
That is when people think about it the least.
The moment something stops working, the entire relationship changes.
The power goes out and suddenly the house becomes quiet. The furnace stops. The refrigerator stops. The internet disappears. The traffic lights go dark. Elevators stop moving. Businesses close their doors. Hospitals move onto emergency systems. People begin looking for candles, batteries, generators, blankets, fuel, information, and answers.
In that moment, power is no longer an invisible service.
It becomes survival.
That is where POWER IN THE VEINS begins.
This is not a song telling people what political position they must take. It is not telling them to reject progress, technology, renewable energy, oil, natural gas, electricity, or change.
It is asking them to pay attention.
Who provides the things we depend upon?
Who makes the decisions?
Who sets the prices?
Who owns the infrastructure?
Who controls access?
What happens when a necessity becomes unaffordable?
What happens when people are promised more freedom but become more dependent on a smaller number of systems?
What happens when the language surrounding change sounds beautiful, but the ordinary person feels less secure?
Those are not questions belonging to one political party. They are not questions belonging only to people on the left or the right.
They belong to anyone who pays a bill.
They belong to anyone who has ever worried about keeping the heat on.
They belong to anyone who understands that freedom is difficult to claim when another person controls everything required for your survival.
POWER IN THE VEINS connects with people who do not want slogans in place of answers. They want to understand what is happening, what it will cost, who benefits, who carries the risk, and what happens when a system fails.
They do not necessarily oppose change.
They oppose being kept in the dark.
WHAT THIS SONG IS ABOUT
POWER IN THE VEINS is about the relationship between energy and control.
Energy is usually discussed as a product. We talk about electricity, oil, natural gas, gasoline, diesel, batteries, solar panels, wind turbines, transmission lines, pipelines, and power plants as separate things.
This song looks at what they have in common.
They all give people the ability to do something.
Energy allows a truck to move. It allows a hospital to operate. It heats a home. It powers a factory. It keeps food cold. It moves water. It runs communication systems. It lights streets. It carries people across cities, provinces, countries, and oceans.
Energy is not simply another item on a shopping list.
It is the force behind almost everything else on that list.
That is why the song uses the idea of veins.
Veins carry what the body needs. They are beneath the surface, mostly unnoticed, but life depends on them. In the same way, pipelines, wires, roads, transmission corridors, fuel lines, and underground infrastructure move the energy that keeps society functioning.
You may not see the natural gas line beneath the ground.
You notice when the furnace stops.
You may not see the transmission line feeding your neighbourhood.
You notice when the lights go out.
You may never visit a refinery, generating station, control room, compressor station, or substation.
You still live every day with the consequences of what happens inside them.
The song is also about how easily people accept a system while it is working.
When electricity is flowing, most people do not question it. They are busy living their lives. They are getting children ready for school, going to work, cooking meals, paying bills, running businesses, caring for parents, repairing homes, and trying to make it through another week.
They do not have time to study every regulation, market decision, energy policy, infrastructure proposal, pricing formula, environmental report, or government announcement.
That distance creates an opportunity for power to become concentrated.
The person paying the bill may understand the result without understanding the process that produced it.
They know the bill increased.
They know the fuel price changed.
They know another fee appeared.
They know something that was affordable is becoming harder to manage.
They are told the change is necessary, responsible, modern, sustainable, efficient, temporary, or good for the future.
Sometimes those explanations are honest.
Sometimes they are incomplete.
Sometimes important costs are hidden inside complicated language.
Sometimes the people making decisions are so far removed from the people living with the consequences that they no longer understand what those consequences feel like.
POWER IN THE VEINS lives inside that tension.
It does not say that every decision is a conspiracy.
It says that every decision affecting a necessity deserves examination.
It does not say that all change is wrong.
It says that change should not be protected from questions.
It does not say that society should remain frozen in the past.
It says progress should improve human life rather than making ordinary people frightened of opening another bill.
The central idea is simple.
When someone controls what you require to survive, that control carries enormous power.
How that power is used tells us something about the society we have created.
THE STORY BEHIND POWER IN THE VEINS
I have spent most of my life around work that people depend on but rarely think about.
Construction is like that.
A road looks simple when you are driving on it. Most people do not think about the grading, drainage, excavation, compaction, material, machinery, planning, weather, labour, maintenance, and mistakes that had to be corrected before that road could carry them safely.
They see the finished surface.
They do not see the work beneath it.
The same thing happens with a building. People walk through the door and use the space. They do not see every pipe behind the wall, every wire above the ceiling, every connection beneath the floor, or every person whose hands were involved before the lights could come on.
I have worked with graders, loaders, skid steers, excavators, dozers, and trucks. When you spend your life around machinery, you understand something that can easily be forgotten in an office.
Nothing moves without energy.
A machine may look powerful sitting in a yard, but without fuel, electricity, maintenance, and a person who knows how to operate it, it is a large piece of steel going nowhere.
The same is true of a city.
A city looks powerful. It has towers, hospitals, roads, airports, shopping centres, neighbourhoods, schools, factories, computers, and millions of moving parts.
Remove the energy and watch how quickly that power disappears.
That thought has stayed with me.
We have built a world that looks independent on the surface but is deeply dependent underneath.
A person may feel independent because they own a house, operate a business, drive a vehicle, choose what they buy, and make decisions about their life.
But their independence still rests on systems controlled by other people.
They need access to electricity.
They need access to heat.
They need transportation.
They need communication.
They need water.
They need banking.
They need supply chains.
They need roads.
They need fuel or another reliable source of energy.
That does not mean independence is an illusion. It means independence has conditions.
POWER IN THE VEINS came from thinking about those conditions.
It came from watching the language surrounding energy become more polished while the subject itself became more confusing.
People hear words such as transition, modernization, sustainability, efficiency, affordability, reliability, decarbonization, electrification, innovation, resilience, security, and progress.
Those words can describe real goals.
They can also become a curtain.
A word can sound so positive that people feel uncomfortable questioning what is being done in its name.
Who wants to sound against progress?
Who wants to sound against clean air?
Who wants to sound against the future?
Who wants to sound as though they do not care about the planet their children will inherit?
Those are powerful emotional pressures.
The moment a discussion is framed as good people against bad people, honest questions become harder to ask.
That concerns me.
Any system strong enough to survive should also be strong enough to answer questions.
How much will it cost?
How reliable will it be?
What happens during extreme cold?
What happens during extreme heat?
Where will the materials come from?
Who will build the infrastructure?
How long will construction take?
What happens to existing workers?
Who pays when a plan fails?
Who profits when it succeeds?
What backup systems remain available?
How much control will individual households have?
What happens to people who cannot afford the new system?
Those are not attacks.
They are responsible questions.
I live in Alberta. Cold is not an idea here.
Cold is physical.
It enters machinery. It affects batteries. It thickens fluids. It changes road conditions. It finds weak points in buildings. It punishes anything that was not properly maintained. It can turn a small failure into a dangerous situation quickly.
A person discussing energy in a warm room may treat heat as a number on a chart.
A family living through an Alberta winter understands heat differently.
Heat is the difference between a safe home and frozen pipes.
It is the difference between comfort and danger.
It is the difference between checking the thermostat casually and watching it with fear.
That reality helped create this song.
I wanted to write about energy without pretending energy is only an environmental argument or an economic argument.
It is a human argument.
It is about whether people can live, work, travel, build, communicate, produce food, operate hospitals, and keep their families safe.
The environmental part matters.
The economic part matters.
Reliability matters.
Affordability matters.
Security matters.
Workers matter.
Communities matter.
The problem begins when one of those truths is used to erase all the others.
I have never believed that life is improved by refusing to look at the whole picture.
A decision can have a good intention and still create a bad result.
A policy can sound compassionate and still hurt the people it was supposed to help.
A new technology can be valuable without being ready to replace everything that came before it.
An older system can remain necessary without being perfect.
Two things can be true at once.
That is difficult for people who want every issue divided into heroes and villains.
Real life is rarely that clean.
Oil and natural gas have environmental costs.
They have also powered hospitals, transportation, agriculture, manufacturing, construction, emergency services, homes, and economies.
Renewable energy can reduce emissions and expand energy options.
It also requires land, materials, transmission infrastructure, storage, backup capacity, maintenance, and honest planning around changing output.
Electricity can replace some direct uses of fossil fuels.
That change also places more responsibility on the grid.
None of those statements should frighten anyone.
They should begin a better conversation.
The song is not asking people to choose one side and close their minds.
It is asking them to notice when choice itself begins disappearing.
That is where the line between service and control becomes important.
A service gives people something they need.
Control begins when the provider of that service can use dependency to silence, pressure, punish, or limit the person receiving it.
Most people understand this instinctively.
That is why the words, “If you don’t pay, you don’t get a say,” carry weight.
We know bills must be paid. Workers must be paid. Infrastructure must be built and maintained. Energy is not free to produce or deliver.
The song is not arguing that people should consume anything they want without responsibility.
The deeper question is what happens when payment becomes the only voice people are allowed to have.
You are expected to pay, but are you allowed to question?
You are expected to adapt, but are decision-makers required to listen?
You are told that costs are necessary, but are those costs explained honestly?
You are told that the system is being improved, but is your life actually becoming more secure?
You are told that more control is required to protect the future, but who protects the public from the misuse of that control?
That is the uncomfortable territory inside POWER IN THE VEINS.
It is not simply anger at a bill.
It is concern about the relationship forming between institutions and ordinary people.
The more dependent people become on centralized systems, the more important transparency becomes.
The more essential a service becomes, the more responsibility belongs to those controlling it.
The more power an institution receives, the more carefully that power should be watched.
That should not be controversial.
It should be common sense.
The title arrived naturally because energy moves through society the way blood moves through a body.
A body cannot live when circulation stops.
A modern society cannot function when its energy systems stop.
The wires are veins.
The pipelines are veins.
The transmission corridors are veins.
The roads carrying fuel and materials are veins.
The people operating and maintaining those systems are part of the circulation.
The title also carries another meaning.
Power is not only electricity or fuel.
Power is authority.
Power is the ability to decide.
Power is the ability to provide.
Power is the ability to deny.
Power is the ability to raise a price, close a valve, disconnect a service, approve a project, cancel a project, change a regulation, create a fee, or redefine what people are allowed to use.
That kind of power is also in the veins of society.
It moves quietly.
Most people do not notice it until it reaches their home.
The song came from wanting to pull that hidden movement into the open.
Not to create panic.
Not to tell people that everyone involved in energy is dishonest.
Not to pretend that complicated systems have simple answers.
I wrote it because people should understand what they depend on.
They should understand that electricity does not begin at the wall socket.
Fuel does not begin at the pump.
Heat does not begin at the thermostat.
Every one of those things has a chain behind it.
There are workers, machines, resources, regulations, companies, governments, markets, transmission systems, maintenance schedules, environmental responsibilities, safety procedures, and physical limitations behind what appears to be a simple switch.
The more we understand that chain, the harder it becomes for anyone to manipulate us with easy promises.
That is Educational Rock to me.
It is not standing in front of people pretending I know everything.
It is using a song to open a door.
It is saying, look at this.
Think about it.
Ask where it came from.
Ask who controls it.
Ask what happens next.
Do not let anyone do your thinking for you, including me.
Read.
Learn.
Question.
Compare.
Decide.
The song should leave people more curious than they were before they heard it.
That is the purpose behind it.
WHY THIS SONG FITS MOITA
POWER IN THE VEINS belongs in the MOITA catalogue because MOITA is about the forces shaping real lives.
Some songs come from love.
Some come from betrayal.
Some come from illness.
Some come from family.
Some come from grief.
Some come from memory.
Some come from watching the world and asking whether the direction we are travelling makes sense.
This song comes from that last place.
MOITA has never been built around one subject. Life does not give us one subject.
A person can wake up thinking about a relationship, go to work worrying about money, hear news about the country, visit a sick family member, remember someone they lost, question their own purpose, and return home wondering how they are going to pay another bill.
That is one day.
Why should songs pretend human life is smaller than that?
POWER IN THE VEINS fits MOITA because it takes something people encounter every day and asks them to look beneath it.
That is the same thinking behind many MOITA songs.
Do not stop at the surface.
Do not accept a title in place of a truth.
Do not assume the person speaking the loudest is the person who understands the most.
Do not confuse a promise with a result.
Do not let polished language prevent you from noticing what is happening to real people.
This song also fits MOITA because it respects work.
Energy discussions often focus on executives, politicians, corporations, activists, experts, and policies.
Behind every one of those discussions are workers.
Someone digs the ground.
Someone welds the pipe.
Someone drives the truck.
Someone repairs the line.
Someone operates the plant.
Someone climbs the tower.
Someone maintains the equipment.
Someone answers the emergency call.
Someone enters the control room in the middle of the night.
Someone goes outside when the temperature is dangerous because a community needs the system restored.
Those people are rarely the face of the debate.
They are still the reason the system functions.
MOITA comes from a life of work.
That means I cannot talk about infrastructure as though it appears because somebody approved it on paper.
Paper does not build anything by itself.
People build it.
Machines build it.
Skill builds it.
Experience builds it.
Mistakes teach people how to build it better.
Maintenance keeps it alive after the politicians have moved to another announcement.
POWER IN THE VEINS remembers those people.
It also fits MOITA because it refuses the comfort of a simple answer.
The easy version of the song would choose a villain and blame everything on that villain.
Real life deserves more effort.
Governments have responsibilities.
Companies have responsibilities.
Regulators have responsibilities.
Consumers have responsibilities.
Every one of us benefits from energy while also living with the consequences of how it is produced and used.
We cannot demand endless supply, perfect reliability, low prices, no environmental impact, no infrastructure near us, no taxes, no risk, and no compromise.
That world does not exist.
But neither should people accept poor planning, hidden costs, dishonest claims, political manipulation, corporate greed, or systems designed to make the public powerless.
Responsibility has to move in both directions.
That balance is part of MOITA.
Strength without responsibility becomes domination.
Freedom without responsibility becomes carelessness.
Progress without honesty becomes propaganda.
Power without accountability becomes control.
That is why this song belongs here.
LYRICS
READ THIS FIRST
Before reading the lyrics, think about the last time the power went out.
Think about what stopped.
Think about what became difficult.
Think about how quickly an ordinary room changed when the light disappeared.
Then think about the systems beneath your life.
The wires you never see.
The pipes buried beneath the ground.
The stations, plants, lines, roads, workers, machines, and control rooms operating while you sleep.
This song is not asking you to fear those systems.
It is asking you to understand your relationship with them.
It is asking what happens when something necessary for freedom can also become an instrument of control.
Read the words slowly.
Do not decide too quickly whether you agree or disagree.
Let the questions remain open long enough to become your own.
LYRICS
POWER IN THE VEINS
Lights come on with a flick of a switch
But nobody sees what it costs to exist
Pipes in the ground, veins in the earth
Fueling the system that’s feeding our worth
They say it’s progress, they say it’s clean
Dress it in words to make it sound serene
But behind the curtain, behind the stage
It’s control written page by page
You don’t question when the power flows
You don’t see what nobody shows
But the second that the current dies
You start to see through all the lies
If you don’t pay — you don’t get a say
That’s the game they built, that’s the price you pay
They cut you off just to make you kneel
Then sell it back like it’s a better deal
They call it change — they call it right
But they’re pulling strings in the dead of night
It ain’t about saving anything
It’s about control, control of everything
Oil in the dirt, gas in the line
Power in the hands of the ones who decide
Flip the switch, shut it down
Watch a whole damn city drown
They raise the price, then raise the fear
Say it’s for tomorrow, say it’s sincere
But the truth don’t hide in a polished speech
It’s in the grip they never release
Dependency wrapped in a plan
Keep‘em needing what we command
You don’t fight when you’re kept in line
You just survive one bill at a time
If you don’t pay — you don’t get a say
That’s the leash they hold, that’s the chain you wear
They shut you out just to pull you in
Make you feel like you got to depend
They call it help — they call it care
While they tighten fists you don’t see there
It ain’t about what they claim to bring
It’s about control, control of everything
Take the oil, take the gas
See how long your world will last
Take the grid, take the flame
Now tell me who controls the game
You think it’s choice, you think it’s free
Try living life without their key
No heat, no light, no voice, no way
Now tell me you still got a say
If you don’t pay — you don’t get a say
That’s the truth they hide but live every day
They hold the spark, they own the flame
And we’re all just players inside their game
They sell you hope while they draw the line
Between your survival and their design
It ain’t about what they’re gonna bring
It’s about control, control of everything
Power in the wires, power in the ground
Power in the silence when they shut you down
LYRIC BREAKDOWN
WHAT I LIVED, WHAT I FELT, AND WHY THESE WORDS EXIST
“Lights come on with a flick of a switch”
That is where the song had to begin because that is where most people’s relationship with electricity begins.
A switch.
One small movement of a finger.
No visible fire. No turning machinery. No fuel being poured. No worker standing beside you. No explanation of the distance that electricity travelled before entering the room.
The simplicity is almost perfect.
That simplicity is also what hides the system.
In Alberta, the electric grid must continuously balance the electricity being produced with the electricity being consumed. The Alberta Electric System Operator describes this as a constant responsibility because supply and demand must remain matched to keep the system reliable. (AESO)
That means the light does not come on simply because a switch exists.
It comes on because generating facilities, transmission lines, substations, distribution networks, control systems, retailers, regulators, equipment, and workers are functioning together at that moment.
The AESO says Alberta has about 26,000 kilometres of transmission lines delivering power across the province to more than four million people. (AESO)
That is what sits behind one flick of a switch.
I wanted the first line to show the difference between what people experience and what exists beneath the experience.
We touch the switch.
Somebody else carries the weight of making sure it works.
“But nobody sees what it costs to exist”
This is not only about money.
There is a financial cost, but there is also a physical cost, an environmental cost, a human cost, and a social cost.
Energy infrastructure requires land, labour, materials, maintenance, planning, capital, and time.
Workers can be injured.
Communities can be affected.
Land can be disturbed.
Wildlife can be affected.
Families can struggle with bills.
Companies can make investments that succeed or fail.
Governments can make decisions whose consequences last far beyond an election.
Every energy source has costs.
The argument should not be about pretending one source has no cost.
The argument should be about understanding the full cost honestly and deciding which combination of systems gives people the best balance of reliability, affordability, responsibility, and long-term security.
When people hear that something is clean, they may assume it arrived without mining, manufacturing, construction, transportation, land use, maintenance, replacement, or waste.
When people hear that something is traditional, they may assume its risks and environmental effects no longer matter.
Both assumptions prevent honest thinking.
The words “what it costs to exist” are there because modern life has a footprint.
The question is not whether we have one.
The question is whether we are honest about it.
“Pipes in the ground, veins in the earth”
I have always been drawn to what sits beneath the finished surface.
Construction teaches you that the visible part is often the smallest part of the story.
A person sees a road.
I see what had to happen beneath the road.
A person sees a building.
I think about what is behind the walls and below the foundation.
A person sees a city.
I think about everything buried beneath it.
Pipes carry water, sewage, natural gas, oil, and other materials. Cables carry power and information. Roads, railways, pipelines, and transmission lines connect communities that could not function alone at their present scale.
Canada’s energy infrastructure is enormous. The Canada Energy Regulator states that it regulates more than 71,000 kilometres of interprovincial and international pipelines and more than 1,600 kilometres of interprovincial or international electricity transmission lines. (Canada Energy Regulator)
Those numbers are difficult to picture.
That is why I used the body instead.
Everybody understands veins.
You may not see them working, but you know what happens when circulation stops.
“Fueling the system that’s feeding our worth”
This line asks an uncomfortable question.
How much of what we call worth depends on energy?
A business may be worth millions of dollars, but what happens when production stops?
A tower may be worth hundreds of millions, but what happens when it has no heat, water, elevators, communication, or electricity?
A truck may be expensive, but without fuel or a charged battery it cannot perform the job it was bought to do.
A city may appear powerful, but its power depends on a constant flow of energy and materials.
I am not saying people have no worth without energy.
Human worth is not measured by production.
I am saying the economic value we place on buildings, machinery, companies, transportation, and technology depends on their ability to function.
Energy is what allows much of that value to become real.
“They say it’s progress, they say it’s clean”
These words are not an attack on clean energy.
They are an attack on words being used as shields.
Progress is a good word.
Clean is a good word.
Right is a good word.
Care is a good word.
Help is a good word.
A good word can still be used to prevent a good question.
The moment someone describes a policy as progress, anyone questioning it can be made to sound opposed to progress.
The moment something is called clean, anyone asking about manufacturing, mining, land use, cost, reliability, or disposal can be made to sound opposed to the environment.
That is not a healthy discussion.
Real progress should survive examination.
Real environmental responsibility should include the complete life of a technology, not only the stage that looks cleanest in a photograph.
The International Energy Agency recognizes that expanding electricity use through electric vehicles, heating systems, cooling systems, and other technologies places greater demands on power grids. It describes grids as the backbone of electricity systems and warns that infrastructure has to expand and modernize as electricity takes on more roles. (IEA)
That does not mean electrification is wrong.
It means electrification must be planned honestly.
A promise to use more electricity is also a promise to build and maintain the system capable of delivering it.
“Dress it in words to make it sound serene”
I have listened to enough people in life to know that the calmest language does not always describe the calmest reality.
A difficult decision can be dressed in beautiful language.
A price increase can be called an adjustment.
A loss can be called a transition.
A restriction can be called protection.
A failure can be called an unexpected challenge.
A transfer of power can be called modernization.
Sometimes those words are technically correct.
They can still be emotionally dishonest.
Ordinary people tend to speak more directly.
Can I afford it?
Will it work?
Will my family be safe?
Will I still have a job?
What happens if the system fails?
Those questions may not sound sophisticated, but they are often closer to the centre of the issue.
“Behind the curtain, behind the stage”
Every public system has a visible performance and an invisible process.
The visible part includes speeches, announcements, advertisements, debates, promises, charts, slogans, and ceremonies.
The invisible part includes negotiations, contracts, technical limitations, market rules, legal obligations, lobbying, financing, risk calculations, and decisions most people never witness.
That does not automatically mean something dishonest is happening.
Large systems require complicated work.
But when decisions affect necessities, the public deserves more than a polished performance.
They deserve enough information to understand the tradeoffs.
That is why trustworthy, accessible energy information matters. The Canada Energy Regulator describes part of its role as providing neutral energy information and helping Canadians access information about pipelines, power lines, and other infrastructure. (Canada Energy Regulator)
Information does not remove disagreement.
It gives disagreement a better foundation.
“You don’t question when the power flows”
This may be the most human line in the song.
People usually question a system after it fails, not while it is serving them.
That is understandable.
We cannot spend every day investigating everything.
We trust that the bridge will hold.
We trust that the water is safe.
We trust that the furnace will start.
We trust that the power will remain available.
Trust allows society to function.
Blind trust makes society vulnerable.
There has to be a place between paranoia and passivity.
That place is awareness.
Awareness means learning enough to recognize when an explanation does not make sense.
It means accepting that experts may know more than we do while remembering that experts are still human.
It means listening to evidence without surrendering our right to question the people interpreting it.
“You start to see through all the lies”
This line does not mean every blackout exposes a lie.
It means failure changes perception.
When a system works, people may accept every promise made about it.
When the system fails, they begin comparing promises with reality.
Did we prepare?
Were warnings ignored?
Was maintenance delayed?
Was the system carrying more demand than it could reliably support?
Were emergency reserves available?
Did decision-makers tell the public the full truth?
Alberta’s system operator issues Grid Alerts when the power system is under stress and emergency reserves may be needed. During serious conditions, consumers can be asked to reduce electricity use to help avoid more severe measures, including rotating outages. (www-integ.aeso.ca)
That is not evidence of deception.
It is evidence that reliability requires constant balancing and preparation.
The song uses strong language because people feel deceived when reality arrives after years of confident promises.
The lesson is not that every official statement is false.
The lesson is to ask difficult questions before an emergency makes those questions unavoidable.
“If you don’t pay, you don’t get a say”
People sometimes hear this line only as anger.
There is more inside it.
A service has a cost. Nobody can honestly argue otherwise.
Workers need wages.
Materials cost money.
Infrastructure requires investment.
Equipment wears out.
Systems need maintenance and expansion.
The problem is not that energy has a price.
The problem begins when access to a necessity becomes the only relationship between the individual and the system.
Pay the bill.
Accept the fee.
Follow the rule.
Do not question how the price was formed.
Do not question which choices were made on your behalf.
Do not question whether a cheaper or more reliable path existed.
Do not question who benefits.
That is when a customer begins feeling less like a participant in society and more like a source of revenue.
A person should not receive free energy simply because they disagree with a bill.
But paying a bill should not be the only role they are allowed to have.
Citizens should be able to ask whether public policy is responsible.
Consumers should be able to understand charges.
Communities should be heard when infrastructure decisions affect them.
Workers should be part of conversations about transitions that may change their livelihoods.
That is the “say” in the line.
It is not a refusal to pay.
It is a refusal to disappear.
“They cut you off just to make you kneel”
Disconnection is powerful because energy is essential.
Losing access to a luxury is inconvenient.
Losing heat or electricity can become dangerous.
That is why the rules surrounding disconnection, emergency support, consumer protection, and affordability matter.
The line is written emotionally because the experience is emotional.
A system may describe disconnection as an account procedure.
The family inside the home experiences it as fear.
That distance between institutional language and human reality is one of the main concerns in this song.
“They call it change, they call it right”
Change is inevitable.
Right is more complicated.
People often treat change and improvement as though they are the same thing.
They are not.
Change means something became different.
Improvement means life became better according to a standard we can explain.
Better for whom?
Better at what cost?
Better over what period?
Better under ordinary conditions or only under ideal conditions?
Better for the environment but less reliable?
More reliable but more damaging?
Cheaper today but more expensive later?
Expensive today but more secure later?
Those are the arguments that deserve attention.
I am not against change.
My own life has required change repeatedly.
You adapt or you remain trapped.
But adaptation should not mean obedience without thought.
“But they’re pulling strings in the dead of night”
This is the language of suspicion, and suspicion usually grows where transparency is weak.
When people do not understand how decisions are made, they fill the empty space with their own explanations.
Sometimes those explanations are wrong.
Institutions have a responsibility to prevent that gap from becoming enormous.
Explain the decision.
Show the evidence.
Acknowledge uncertainty.
Identify who benefits.
Identify who carries the cost.
Admit what could go wrong.
Do not treat public concern as ignorance simply because the subject is technical.
Respect creates trust.
Contempt destroys it.
“It ain’t about saving anything”
This line is not intended as a literal claim that nobody involved in energy policy cares about the environment.
Many people do.
Scientists, engineers, workers, policy makers, community leaders, and citizens can sincerely want to reduce pollution, protect land, improve efficiency, and build a safer future.
The line expresses what people begin to feel when the public message and personal result move too far apart.
If a policy is described as saving the future but leaves people unable to afford the present, frustration grows.
If a transition is described as compassionate but workers and communities are treated as disposable, people question the compassion.
If a system claims to offer freedom while increasing centralized control, people question the freedom.
The line is a challenge.
Prove that saving something is truly the goal.
Show it through results.
Show it through honesty.
Show it through responsible planning.
“Oil in the dirt, gas in the line”
Oil and natural gas are physical realities in Alberta and throughout Canada.
They are not simply political symbols.
They are resources, industries, jobs, exports, government revenues, environmental responsibilities, safety challenges, and sources of energy used by millions of people.
Canada’s pipeline system carries energy for domestic use and export. The Canada Energy Regulator notes that the country has a large pipeline network serving refineries and export markets, and that the regulator oversees interprovincial and international pipelines. (Canada Energy Regulator)
A serious conversation about oil and gas has to hold more than one truth.
The industry has supported livelihoods and modern life.
It has also created environmental impacts that cannot be ignored.
Workers should not be treated as enemies.
Environmental concerns should not be treated as inventions.
The country needs enough maturity to discuss both without turning every person into a stereotype.
“Power in the hands of the ones who decide”
Every system needs decision-makers.
The question is how much authority they hold and how accountable they remain.
A control room must make decisions quickly.
A regulator must establish rules.
A company must manage its operation.
A government must create policy.
The existence of authority is not automatically oppression.
Authority becomes dangerous when it is separated from accountability.
Who reviews the decision?
Who can challenge it?
What information is public?
What happens when decision-makers are wrong?
Can the system admit a mistake?
Are the people affected treated as partners or obstacles?
This is where power must be watched most closely.
“Flip the switch, shut it down”
The line is deliberately blunt because physical systems can stop.
A shutdown may come from equipment failure, extreme weather, insufficient supply, excessive demand, wildfire, damaged infrastructure, cyberattack, human error, maintenance, or an emergency measure.
Energy security is partly about preparing for conditions beyond ordinary planning. The International Energy Agency describes resilience as the ability of energy systems to cope with events that exceed normal expectations, while long-term security requires sufficient infrastructure and diverse sources of supply. (IEA)
That is a valuable distinction.
A system can operate well most days and still be poorly prepared for the day that matters most.
Reliability is not proven only when conditions are easy.
It is proven when conditions become difficult.
“Watch a whole damn city drown”
The word “drown” is not about water alone.
It is about the feeling of a city being overwhelmed.
Remove electricity and problems spread through connected systems.
Communication becomes difficult.
Transportation changes.
Businesses close.
Food storage becomes vulnerable.
Heating or cooling may stop.
Water and wastewater systems can face pressure.
Healthcare depends on backup systems.
The people most vulnerable before the outage often become even more vulnerable during it.
This is why energy policy cannot be treated as an abstract argument.
Failure reaches human beings.
“They raise the price, then raise the fear”
Fear can be used in every direction.
People can be frightened about climate change.
They can be frightened about blackouts.
They can be frightened about job losses.
They can be frightened about fuel shortages.
They can be frightened about prices.
They can be frightened about foreign dependence.
They can be frightened about new technology.
They can be frightened about old infrastructure.
Some dangers are real.
The existence of real danger does not justify manipulating people.
Fear narrows thought.
When people are frightened, they may accept decisions they would otherwise examine more carefully.
That is why facts matter.
Not selective facts.
Not facts chosen only to support one side.
A complete picture.
“Say it’s for tomorrow, say it’s sincere”
I believe we should care about tomorrow.
A society that spends everything today and leaves damage for the next generation is not responsible.
But tomorrow can also become an excuse for ignoring people living now.
The future child matters.
So does the child in a cold home tonight.
The future worker matters.
So does the worker whose livelihood is being changed without a believable plan.
The future environment matters.
So does the family choosing between food and heat.
Good leadership must hold those realities together.
“The truth don’t hide in a polished speech”
Truth shows itself in outcomes.
Did the system become more reliable?
Did people become safer?
Did emissions fall as promised?
Did costs remain manageable?
Were workers given real paths forward?
Was infrastructure completed?
Did the public receive honest information?
A speech can begin a plan.
It cannot prove the plan worked.
That proof comes later.
“It’s in the grip they never release”
Once institutions gain control, they rarely surrender it easily.
That is not unique to energy.
It can happen in government, corporations, organizations, relationships, and families.
Power tends to explain why it still needs more power.
That does not mean every expansion of authority is wrong.
It means temporary authority should not quietly become permanent.
Emergency measures should be examined after the emergency.
New systems should include public oversight.
The person holding power should never be the only person deciding whether that power is being used properly.
“Dependency wrapped in a plan”
Dependency is not always avoidable.
Modern society depends on cooperation.
Nobody can build a hospital, power grid, highway, or communication network alone.
The danger is not dependency itself.
The danger is dependency without alternatives, transparency, accountability, or protection.
A household with one energy option has less flexibility than a household with several.
A country dependent on one supplier has less security than a country with diverse supply.
A grid dependent on one type of generation may face different risks than a grid with a balanced mix.
Diversity is not only an environmental idea.
It is a security idea.
“Keep’em needing what we command”
This is where the song moves from infrastructure into human behaviour.
Control is strongest when the controlled person cannot leave.
That principle appears in unhealthy relationships, abusive workplaces, monopolies, political systems, and economic arrangements.
The person with no alternative has less negotiating power.
That is why choice matters.
Real choice is not being offered five names for the same dependency.
Real choice means people retain practical options.
“You don’t fight when you’re kept in line”
Most people are not looking for a fight.
They want to live.
They want to work, care for their families, enjoy some peace, and make a future.
That can make them easy to pressure.
When every month brings another bill and every day brings another responsibility, people may not have the energy to challenge a system.
They survive it.
That is why institutions should not confuse silence with consent.
A quiet population is not necessarily a satisfied population.
“You just survive one bill at a time”
This may be the line closest to everyday life.
Large debates are often measured in billions.
Families live in smaller numbers.
A higher electricity bill.
A higher gas bill.
A grocery bill.
Insurance.
Rent.
Mortgage.
Fuel.
Medication.
School expenses.
Repairs.
One increase may appear manageable on a government chart.
Families experience several increases together.
That accumulation changes life.
People cancel activities.
They delay repairs.
They buy less food.
They keep the house colder.
They work more hours.
They borrow.
They lose sleep.
Affordability is not a public relations word.
It is a condition people feel in their bodies.
“That’s the leash they hold, that’s the chain you wear”
A leash does not always look like force.
Sometimes it looks like necessity.
You comply because the consequence of refusing is greater than the cost of surrendering.
That is why the song uses the image of a chain.
The chain is dependency combined with the inability to influence the system.
“They call it help, they call it care”
Help should increase a person’s ability to stand.
Control disguised as help increases a person’s need to remain dependent.
That distinction matters.
A good support system helps people through difficulty without taking away their dignity.
A bad system makes people grateful for receiving back a small portion of what was taken from them.
The song asks people to examine the structure, not only the label.
“Take the oil, take the gas, see how long your world will last”
This is not a demand to reject every alternative.
It is a reality test.
What would stop if oil and natural gas disappeared immediately?
Transportation would be affected.
Construction would be affected.
Agriculture would be affected.
Manufacturing would be affected.
Heating would be affected.
Petrochemical products would be affected.
Supply chains would be affected.
That does not mean society can never reduce fossil fuel use.
It means replacement has to be physical, practical, reliable, and scalable.
A promise is not a replacement.
A target is not infrastructure.
A slogan is not energy.
“Take the grid, take the flame”
The bridge removes both sides of the usual argument.
Take fossil fuels away.
Then take electricity away.
What remains?
The point is not that we must keep every system forever.
The point is that energy security requires us to understand what each system is doing before we remove it.
A safe transition builds the replacement before destroying the bridge behind us.
“Now tell me who controls the game”
The answer is not one person.
Control is spread among governments, regulators, utilities, generators, producers, market participants, investors, infrastructure owners, technology companies, and consumers.
But control is not distributed equally.
That is what the song wants people to notice.
“You think it’s choice, you think it’s free”
Freedom is easy to claim in theory.
The real test is whether people can act differently without losing access to basic life.
Can they choose another provider?
Can they generate some of their own energy?
Can communities build local resilience?
Can consumers understand their bills?
Can citizens challenge policy?
Can workers question a transition without being labelled enemies of progress?
Can environmental concerns be raised without being dismissed as attacks on jobs?
A free society should make room for all of those voices.
“Try living life without their key”
The key represents access.
Access is where infrastructure becomes authority.
You may own the house, but you do not own the grid.
You may own the furnace, but you depend on a fuel supply.
You may own the vehicle, but you depend on energy, roads, parts, and maintenance.
Ownership gives us some control.
Connection gives someone else control too.
Recognizing that does not make a person helpless.
It makes them more aware of where resilience needs to be built.
“No heat, no light, no voice, no way”
The loss of energy can become the loss of participation.
Without heat, safety is threatened.
Without light, ordinary life changes.
Without communication, a person can lose information and the ability to ask for help.
Without transportation, movement is restricted.
Energy access is tied to modern citizenship more deeply than most people realize.
That is why debates about energy should include dignity.
“They hold the spark, they own the flame”
This is the oldest image in the song.
Human progress has always been tied to control of energy.
Fire changed survival.
Fuel changed transportation.
Electricity changed work, communication, medicine, and daily life.
The person who controls the flame controls more than heat.
They control possibility.
“And we’re all just players inside their game”
This line expresses how powerless large systems can make people feel.
I do not want the reader to remain in that feeling.
Awareness is the first step away from helplessness.
Learn how the system works.
Read the bill.
Ask questions.
Attend meetings when decisions affect your community.
Support reliable information.
Listen to workers.
Listen to engineers.
Listen to environmental evidence.
Listen to families living with costs.
Do not hand your mind to a political party, company, celebrity, activist, or songwriter.
Think.
“They sell you hope while they draw the line”
Hope is powerful because people want to believe tomorrow will improve.
Hope becomes manipulation when the seller knows the promise cannot be delivered as described.
The line being drawn is the boundary between those who can absorb increasing costs and those who cannot.
Wealthy people often experience policy as inconvenience.
Poor people experience the same policy as loss.
A person with savings can replace equipment, retrofit a house, buy a new vehicle, install technology, and wait for long-term savings.
A person living from bill to bill cannot always cross the first cost.
Any transition claiming to care about people must recognize that difference.
“Between your survival and their design”
Plans are designed on paper.
Survival occurs in homes.
That distance has to be closed.
A good plan must work when it reaches the person at the bottom of the page.
It must work in winter.
It must work during emergencies.
It must work for renters.
It must work for seniors.
It must work for rural communities.
It must work for people who cannot afford the newest equipment.
It must work for the workers expected to build and maintain it.
If it does not work there, it is not finished.
“Power in the wires, power in the ground”
The outro returns to the physical world.
The song has spoken about politics, prices, dependency, fear, control, and choice.
In the end, the system still comes down to physical things.
Wires.
Ground.
Fuel.
Machines.
Heat.
Current.
Infrastructure.
People.
“Power in the silence when they shut you down”
Silence can be the loudest proof of dependence.
The machine stops.
The furnace stops.
The room goes dark.
The familiar hum disappears.
In that silence, the system becomes visible.
That is where the song ends because that is where the listener is left.
Not with an answer.
With awareness.
WHY THIS MATTERS
POWER IN THE VEINS matters because energy is becoming more important, not less.
More of modern life is being connected to electricity.
Vehicles, heating, communication, banking, healthcare, business, entertainment, education, and public services increasingly rely on connected systems.
The International Energy Agency has reported that global electricity demand has been growing rapidly as more activities become electrified. (IEA)
That creates opportunity.
It also creates responsibility.
The stronger our dependence on electricity becomes, the stronger the grid must become.
The more centralized our systems become, the more carefully authority must be watched.
The more technical decisions become, the more important public education becomes.
People should not need to become electrical engineers to understand whether their system is reliable.
They should not need to become economists to understand their bills.
They should not need to become lawyers to know what rights they have.
Institutions have a responsibility to communicate clearly.
Citizens have a responsibility to remain engaged.
This song matters because the energy conversation has become too divided.
One side is told it does not care about the planet.
The other is told it does not care about workers or affordability.
Most ordinary people care about all of it.
They want clean air.
They want reliable heat.
They want good jobs.
They want affordable bills.
They want responsible development.
They want technology that works.
They want a future for their children.
They want honesty.
Those wishes do not contradict each other.
The difficulty is building systems that respect them together.
That work requires people who can disagree without treating each other as enemies.
It requires evidence.
It requires engineering.
It requires experience.
It requires listening.
It requires admitting that no energy source is free of consequences.
It requires admitting that environmental damage has a cost.
It also requires admitting that poverty, unemployment, unreliable power, and unaffordable heat have costs.
The environment is real.
Human hardship is real.
Responsible policy has to see both.
The song also matters because control rarely announces itself honestly.
It does not always enter by force.
Sometimes it enters through convenience.
People surrender a little responsibility because a system makes life easier.
Then they surrender a little knowledge because the system becomes too complicated.
Then they surrender a little choice because alternatives disappear.
Then one day they discover that a small number of institutions hold the keys to most of their daily life.
That does not mean every modern system is evil.
It means convenience should not replace awareness.
A person can use a system and still question it.
A person can support progress and still demand accountability.
A person can care about the environment and still defend workers.
A person can value oil and gas while supporting research into new energy.
A person can support renewable energy while asking serious questions about reliability, materials, land use, storage, and cost.
That is what mature thinking looks like.
POWER IN THE VEINS does not ask the listener to become afraid of the future.
It asks the listener not to enter the future asleep.
Learn where your energy comes from.
Learn how your local grid works.
Learn which level of government makes which decisions.
Learn what is included on your bill.
Learn what plans are being proposed in your community.
Learn what protections exist for vulnerable people.
Learn what emergency preparations make sense for your home.
Learning does not solve everything.
It changes your position.
You are no longer only reacting.
You begin participating.
That may be the most important meaning inside the song.
Power is not only something held by governments, corporations, utilities, regulators, or system operators.
People have power too.
They have the power to learn.
They have the power to question.
They have the power to vote.
They have the power to organize.
They have the power to build alternatives.
They have the power to demand clear information.
They have the power to reject easy lies from every side.
They have the power to change their own habits.
They have the power to recognize that responsibility belongs to all of us.
The song sounds angry because the subject deserves urgency.
Underneath the anger is something more hopeful.
Awareness is still possible.
Conversation is still possible.
Better planning is still possible.
Accountability is still possible.
A future with reliable, affordable, responsible energy is still possible.
But it will not be built by slogans.
It will be built by people willing to look beneath the surface.
CLOSING COMMENTS
POWER IN THE VEINS began with a simple switch.
That switch opened a much larger question.
What supports the life we take for granted?
Most days, we do not think about it.
The light comes on.
The furnace runs.
The truck starts.
The phone charges.
The city moves.
Everything appears normal.
Behind that normal life are systems so large that no single person can fully see them.
That can make us feel small.
It can also remind us why attention matters.
I did not write this song to give you a political answer.
I wrote it because I do not believe people should stop asking questions simply because a subject becomes complicated.
Complicated subjects need more questions, not fewer.
Energy is life.
Energy is work.
Energy is heat.
Energy is transportation.
Energy is communication.
Energy is security.
Energy is also power in the other meaning of the word.
The power to decide.
The power to provide.
The power to restrict.
The power to shape the future.
That power should never become invisible.
The next time you touch a switch, take one second before the light becomes ordinary again.
Think about the distance behind it.
Think about the people behind it.
Think about the systems beneath it.
Think about what it gives you.
Then ask the question this song leaves behind.
Who controls the power, and who is making sure that control still serves the people?
MOITA
WHERE EVERY SONG TELLS A STORY
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