Time & Perspective Quote by Desmond Dekker

Dekker is pushing back against the lazy myth of the songwriter as a one-note confessor, endlessly mining the same wound for content. His claim is almost stubbornly practical: the world supplies new material daily, but only if you do the unglamorous work of paying attention. In that sense, “I don’t write about the same thing” isn’t just artistic variety; it’s an ethic. Observation becomes a discipline, not a vibe.

The subtext lands harder when you remember what Dekker’s best-known songs actually did. “Israelites” wasn’t a diary entry; it was a street-level report on work, debt, and dignity, the kind of pop record that smuggles social reality onto the radio. He’s describing a method rooted in movement through public life: listening, watching, catching fragments of other people’s pressure and joy, then “putting it all together.” That phrase matters. It frames songwriting as montage - taking scattered episodes, slang, headlines, gossip, labor, love, and making them cohere into narrative.

There’s also a quiet argument here about authorship. Dekker positions himself less as a solitary genius and more as a translator for a community’s daily churn, especially in post-independence Jamaica and its diaspora circuits where ska and rocksteady were both dance music and newsfeed. The intent isn’t to sound deep; it’s to insist that good songs are built from attention, and that attention is political. If you “look around,” you can’t pretend nothing is happening.