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Amy Ray and Emily Saliers have been writing and performing together as Indigo Girls for over 35 years. With a devoted following of listeners all of whom seem to want to live out the truth of their signature song “Closer to Fine,” Amy and Emily are that rare thing: internationally famous performers closely connected to grassroots activism and community. Courageous in their early public affirmation of LGBTQ people, Native American rights, ecological concerns, and especially creative feminism, they are a unique and beautiful expression of engaged artistry. This conversation took place between Amy and Emily and The Porch’s Brian Ammons and Gareth Higgins a few years ago - and we’re republishing it today in light of the welcome widening of Indigo Girls’ fanbase as a result of the wonderfully subversive Barbie.
Brian Ammons: Like a lot of folks here you’ve been the soundtrack for my life since I was sixteen. It’s just a real honor and I have followed you closely and am grateful for the extensive body of work and for your voice in our community and culture—particularly as a southerner and a queer person who has also wrestled with spirituality and social justice. Really I just want to say thank you for being a public voice in that for so long. Let me start there. Our conversation here is about making meaning and how we step into that sense of call of living more fully into who we are. I thought we might start, I know that you all knew each other first in elementary school. I’m wondering who were you as children?
Emily: Gosh I don’t think anyone has ever asked that before. For me I was playing guitar when I met Amy and that was really my main focus as a kid. I wanted to write songs and I just wanted to play guitar all the time. There was that but we grew up going to church and my dad is a Methodist theologian, and my mom [who has] passed now was Presbyterian. Anyway I was used to being around the church, but it was a liberal church. We were taught to think and question and all those things as young kids. I would say I was a very sensitive kid.
I was born in New Haven, Connecticut, and we moved down to Georgia when I was nine or so ten maybe. I was born in ’63, and the Vietnam war was going on and the rise of the Black Panther Movement. I grew up in a predominantly African- American neighborhood which was a formative experience for me in terms of culture and music and social reality. I got exposed to a lot of things as a young kid. I was sensitive and wanted to play music. Then when I met Amy she was like that other girl who played guitar.
Gareth Higgins: What was it like to be the other girl who played guitar?
Amy Ray: Well I didn’t practice as much as Emily did, she was well ahead of me. A year ahead in age but I remember thinking that she really knew how to play and was already writing songs and had a gaggle of people around her listening to her play the songs. I wanted to learn to play the guitar just because I just liked music so much. In my family we were all learning how to play piano but I just felt it was too disciplined to me.
I just took guitar lessons so I could play easy to play Neil Young Guitar Book songs and that kind of things. I grew up outside of Atlanta, in Decatur, a pretty sheltered suburb. I knew somewhat what was going on. Politically if you think about being born in ’64, all the stuff that was going down between then and 1973 especially in the Civil Rights Movement. I’m pretty blown away that I was too young to really be completely cognizant of it because I wouldn’t say that [my family] were ahead. There wasn’t a lot of racism around me but there wasn’t a lot of talk about political things. We were very southern and we didn’t really talk about that kind of stuff. But I had some awareness of the idea of the underdog and listened to a lot of music from Woodstock because of my older sister and immediately drew peace signs on everything that I could get my hands on. I was a hippie as a young kid. That’s where some stuff came from but I was brought up Methodist as well, my mom also was Presbyterian oddly enough and switched to being a Methodist when she married my dad.
My granddad and my great-uncle were Methodist ministers. I grew up going to my great uncle’s church down in Florida. Every summer we’d go down there and go to church a lot and he was a cool minister. I grew up in a more conservative church environment that was way more conservative and way more pro-life and anti-gay and a lot of things that I didn’t even understand. It was around me; but I went to church all the time and I loved it. I just picked what I wanted out of all that stuff.
Gareth: Was there a part of you that felt like you were rebelling against that? At what point did you realize there’s stuff in here that doesn’t work for me?
Amy: It took me a long time to realize it to be honest with you, because I went ahead and took on the idea of the pro-life movement when I was a young teenager. I got very self-righteous about abortion for instance, because I was listening to people that were writing songs about the unborn child and things like that. For me, [now], it’s a matter of everybody has an individual perspective of that in their faith but for me as soon I realized the whole issue [differently]. Probably at the end of high school I was like, “Oh a light bulb went off.”
When I was really immersed in youth group I wasn’t picking and choosing yet. I was just really immersed. But what I found is that I came away from that when I went to college and started to be more politicized. I discovered that the good things could still be there and I didn’t really wrestle with religion and my sexuality maybe until a little bit later. It was more of an internalized homophobia wrestling. It wasn’t like, “The church says this is wrong, so it must be terrible.” It was more like, “Something inside feels like I’m really bad all the time,” and then I got right with it and then my parents eventually got right with it. They have three gay daughters and we all came out at different times in my family’s history. There was a big need to reconcile and then in the end everybody did, it just took a long time.
Gareth: I want to ask you both a question about that internalized homophobia thing. I’m no stranger to that myself. What do you say to someone who you observe to be right in the thick of that? The story for me was the [internalized homophobia] stuff was there when I was a teenager and in my early twenties; but today in my forties, there’s still the seed of it there. But the stuff that felt like rebellion, the stuff that felt like sin actually turned out to be the sacred stuff. It took a long, long time for me to realize that the dissonance inside me was in my view the spirit of
God saying, “This is who you are, this is good, the system doesn’t understand that.” What would you say to people who are right in the thick of it?
Emily: It’s going to be okay. I’m still battling self- homophobia, it’s much better than it was but for whatever reason maybe because I was a second child or because I grew up in my first formative years in a chaotic environment, I just wanted everything to be okay and everybody to like each other ... Now I’m starting to really embrace the dissonance of which you speak because now I see it as a blessing.
I can remember moments in my life for instance, easily over twenty years ago, sitting next to a man on a plane, having him say to me, we were just chatting and having him say, “Yeah my wife went dyke on me.” That memory is so vividly clear to me and little things like that. Of course I wasn’t going to say, “Well my girlfriend went dyke on me too.” I was scared. I didn’t have the fortitude [to challenge him] because I had self-homophobia and the first time I saw a gay parade in Atlanta I was like, “Why are they being like that, they’re going to upset the mainstream and nobody is going to like gays.” These are the fears I went through, I would say to anybody it’s an evolution and for me I was just too sensitive to validate myself.
I was very affected by the oppressive force from culture and organized religion. Even though I had a loving, accepting family, I just for whatever reason in my journey was not able to get there until fairly recently. [So what] I would just say to someone is, “You’re going to be okay, it is an evolution.” I’m a firm believer in you don’t get there until you get there.
Gareth: Do you draw a connection between this and the work you do in the world which has been such an astonishing gift to queer identified people and to people who are questioning to feel safety in community? You’ve been giving that very safety to people that you seem to indicate you’re still evolving into the journey for finding for yourself.
Amy: These are great questions. When I sit down to write a song I’m not like, “I’m practicing my gift to the world.” These are really personal songs, they’re my way of getting through and making sense of the world and just what’s going on around me and it’s through my lens. It’s just my lens but I seek the community that we draw as much as the people who are drawn to us for the perpetuation of the community.
Gareth: Thank you for doing that because I would guess that it mirrors both ways.
Emily: That’s the beauty of it because we started playing in 1980 and we started putting records out in ‘85, [but] we didn’t really come to terms with coming out about our sexuality till probably ’90 or ’91. The trajectory of that is very similar to a lot of our peers and a lot of what was going on in the movement; the articulation of gender, the articulation of the trans movement. All of that has been going on around us and we’ve been informed with that in our own lives. For me I couldn’t have gotten even close to where I am now if it hadn’t been for the community around me, the audience we’ve had, the people that have come up and said, “I want to tell you about this group that’s doing this cool work,” and me investigating it and finding out it really brought something to me. [And] the other bands that we might have played with, that maybe were trans bands, and really brought this when we were younger and it was like, “Wow that’s a whole other world opening.” Because we were very sheltered in the ‘80s, we didn’t even know what [some things] meant.
When I fell in love with a girl I was like ... I didn’t even know what it [meant], it just felt okay to me but I didn’t associate it with all the bad things people were saying. We really don’t feel at all like we’ve been a mentor for the movement or anything. We came up in that window of time where we all had to evolve together and come out together and get brave together and all that stuff.
Brian: It’s interesting to hear you say that because you’ve been the soundtrack to my life. It felt like through that period of the late ‘80s and early ‘90s, that we were watching you as these incredible songwriters and musicians that were also going through a process of becoming more politicized, as we were all more politicized and then becoming more out. It felt like you were very much of that movement and became voices in that movement. I think it’s that you were part of the deep connection for so many of us because it felt like we were in it with you or you were in it with us. That we were doing this as something together. I’m curious because you named your late teens and early twenties becoming more politicized and you were already playing together by then. I wonder what it would have been like to have had a conversation partner and collaborator in that and how you influenced each other during that time?
Emily: We were both wired to be community members! Amy came from a conservative background, she was taught to be a community member in life and I was too. At the root of our activism is a very simple notion that you’re not on your own and you belong to other people and they belong to you and we have to be mindful of each other. When we first started organizing benefits in Atlanta it was awesome because we realized that it wasn’t that difficult to do and that it brought everybody together. Music is such a galvanizing force for change and lifts your spirits in tough times.
So, those benefits were a way for us to easily see how we could be part of community and connect community and raise not only money but awareness about issues. We’re firm believers in grassroots activism because it comes out of the community. Groups with super high overhead things like that and fancy affairs are not really our kind of activism. Our first forays into activism were very community based and simple in their approach. As we networked and got older and more politicized, we met more people [and learned so much. Take] a woman like Winona LaDuke who lives in the wider reservation as a Native American activist, a brilliant brilliant woman. She and others taught us about activism and we couldn’t see environmentalism anymore except through an indigenous lens. They were pivotal figures who influenced our activism. But Amy taught me a lot about activism because even though my beginning years were in all that social and political stuff, as I said for whatever reason I didn’t understand a lot of conflicting things and I was afraid of conflict. Early on when Amy would be like “Support a needle exchange program.” I would be like, “I don’t know about that.” She really helped me because Amy has always been more, well back then we called it “alternative.” She’s got a punk rock spirit that was a little more like a folk singer. I feel very indebted and grateful to Amy for the way that she helped shape my activism and helped politicize me.
Amy: That’s very nice. One of the things about wrestling with being queer when we first started to figure out how to be who we are, was that everything was always framed within the context of a gig for us because that’s all we did. Our demons came out in that framework and it was like, “We don’t want to play this all-women event because that’s going to pigeonhole us as this mediocre lesbian duo that only plays for women and none of our college friends that are boys will be able to be there.” It was just so fearful.
I made all the big mistakes like that early on and pissed off the women’s bookstore and things like that. I really had to learn first of all not to be so self-righteous but second of all what feminism really is, I had no idea. Because [as] I grew up my dad was very feminist - we mowed the lawn, we did everything together.
I just thought, “Well I don’t need to have that ...” I was one of those people that was scared of the word and scared of separatist events and scared of things that were lesbian and thought it would make our music less accessible. I wanted to play only punk rock clubs. I was very narrow minded in some ways and Emily and I really had to go through those experiences. We had some older women that were mentors who really were patient with us, I realize that now. Because we were real jerks probably about some of that stuff; and [there were also] some women that were teaching us not to be separatist too who I don’t totally agree with now. It’s like during that period we were really going through it in the framework of what gigs we picked and where we played and all that.
What happened is we just went through every experience and all of a sudden woke up one day and went, “Wow, we can’t not talk about who we are and we can’t not play to people that are being supportive of us. This is our community and they’ve come out and they’ve come to shows and they’ve worked and raised money with us for causes. How can we possibly say we’re singing about liberation and self-expression and not just be like yeah we’re gay?”
It takes a long time to get to that place sometimes. When you’re wrestling with it a home and in the public and in your church and every aspect. I mean everybody does it because everybody has jobs.
Brian: I’m wondering how at this point, because you continued to have to discern those kinds of questions and playing in North Carolina this summer doesn’t come without controversy in a time when many artists have chosen to pull out of gigs here. You chose to come and be with us. Thank you. I also honor particular Bruce Springsteen’s decision because it helped draw international attention to what was happening in North Carolina. I understand the tension in that. How do you discern those questions now?
Amy: I’ll just say that Bruce probably would have played this gig. You know there was a little bit of a struggle around it, we just wanted to make sure it would be addressed at the festival at all and of course it’s going to be. I think we felt like this was an environment where people were coming to. These are all the people that are working to change that and of course we need a meeting space and of course there needs to be engagement.
Brian: As someone deeply rooted in North Carolina and who has loved the unique space that North Carolina has played as a state that is decidedly southern and has had these multiple threads of conservatism and progressivism wrestling for a long time, it’s been a tough time to be here. Some of the most exciting organization that’s happening in the nation is happening in North Carolina in this moment as coalitions are building.
For the first time in my life I’ve seen LGBT people standing with the environmentalists, standing with the women’s health folk, standing with folks for immigration, standing with NAACP, really under the leadership of the NAACP: sending a message, saying if you come for any of us you come for all of us and we’re going to stand together. Thank you for coming and being a part of that by being a part of this. Glad to have you here.
Emily: When we were invited to come to Wild Goose we did think about it, we did think about whether or not we should play. We talked about it, we searched out our wise friends and asked their opinions. It’s always good to respect and talk to our elders because they’ve been around for a lot longer than we have, trying to figure these things out. We just sought wisdom but this is not like a normal gig, we’re not here to take a check and go on down the road. We’re here to congregate and learn and wrestle in the spirit so to speak. It was after we did some research and some talking with trusted people it was pretty easy to come to the decision that this wasn’t a normal gig. It’s a little bit different from an issue with Michigan Womyn's Festival that was painful because there’s no way to describe what Michigan Womyn's Festival has done for our lives and for thousands of women. It was very painful to not play anymore at festival because of the no trans, not a policy, “intention.” But this wasn’t painful this is very clear.
Brian: Thank you again. I’ve noticed there was a lot of direct allusion to your religious upbringing and to your religious context in your early work, and then I’ve noticed in your more recent work that seems to be re-emerging. You named it last night as your second coming out piece. It seems like it’s coming out more explicitly and in a different place. I wonder what’s going on at this point in your lives; why that shift and what’s calling you into claiming that now?
Emily: For me just like I was saying I couldn’t have gotten into it when I wasn’t there but now I’m here and I feel clearer about what I believe and what’s important to me. It’s just growing up and evolving and learning. Specifically, with coming out and talking about my belief in God because the hurt that [been] caused queer people and other people by the church, and not just the church but any organized faith if it’s Jewish or Muslim or whatever it is. I was very trepidatious about talking about my relationship with faith. Now it’s like I believe that this great benevolent spirit has really guided me though some very difficult times and has brought me to some understanding and some peace. There’s no way I’m going to apologize for it anymore. It’s like, “We will not be ashamed of the gospel. It took me fifty-two years but so what?”
Gareth: That’s a headline. Emily: I stole that from the Bible.
Brian: How about you Amy do you want to speak to that?
Amy: In Indigo Girls work I don’t know if I’ve used as much overtly religious language in the last few handful of records, maybe a few more political songs that are informed by the movement I witnessed in the South. In some ways it’s always very spiritualized in a good way. I used my punk rock to explore queer and gender stuff and I don’t know why and to be outspoken about certain issues. Then on my country stuff naturally I’m drawn to the gospel side of myself when I write country music.
Those songs I call “non-secular” because they just come out and I let them just come out, some of the gospel songs. A lot of that started happening because twenty something years ago I moved up to North Georgia and couldn’t help but be influenced by all the bluegrass players around me and mountain music people and people that were playing traditional music. It really seeped into what I was doing to live in a rural place for so long. There it is: the glory of God in nature for me. That’s just what happens, the early early Indigo stuff we were in college and we were writing songs that just had a lot of religious metaphors in them, because it’s such a beautiful creative tool to use. The Bible and every religious text [has] so much beautiful language. It’s like, “Oh wow this is incredible.” It gets into your songwriting.
Gareth: I want to ask you both to go further back. I remember the first time I heard a song and realized there’s more going on here than just nice songs, there’s more than just wanting to tap my feet, there’s a story here. It was Van Morrison’s song Whenever God Shines His Light. I was thirteen years old. I remember there was a verse in it that stretched me beyond the knowledge I already had. I’m wondering for you, who were the artists that woke you up? Do you remember those first times when you were like, “Oh.” Because I was listening to the Jungle Book soundtrack before then but it wasn’t teaching me great existential truths. I see those in it now actually. It doesn’t have to be a specific moment but who were the artists who you were thinking, “There’s something more here,” or maybe even, “This is what I want to do.”
Emily: So many. Ferron, a Canadian singer songwriter - just unbelievably gifted, turn of phrase and depth of lyrics and her voice was craggy or whatever the word is for it and it’s so engaging. Then Joni Mitchell, she’s a renaissance artist but when I went to college at Tulane in 1981 I listened to that song Hejira. I put it up my LP and lifted the needle again and again and again and memorized all the words. Just the expanse of that song blew my mind and debilitated me a bit because I thought, “I’m never going to write like that,” and I haven’t. She was key, Stevie Wonder was ...
Brian: You said, “The expanse of that song blew my mind,” can you go a layer down from that?
Emily: For instance, she’s talking about the cosmos and planets orbiting around the sun but how can I have that point of view and I’m always bound and tied to someone. She’s taking huge concepts and images and then tying them to the very human experience. In the church the light the candles and the wax rolls down like tears, there’s the hope in the hopeless I’ve witnessed thirty years. Holy shit.
Brian: That’s a prayer.
Emily: That’s really the song that blew open my mind as far as, from my experience, the expanse of it. Then Stevie Wonder because of his musicality and each song was awesome. I’m very tied to African-American music and he taught me about what was going on with some urban communities that I had no idea about. I could go on all day, I’ll stop with [the band] Heart because Magic Man came out, I was about thirteen and it scared me. I realized that it was like it was about sexuality and the power of rock music and it was a woman’s voice. It gripped me and frightened me and then after I got over my fear it was all I could listen to. It was very formative.
Amy: I can never answer this question. I always have a hard time with this question for some reason. When I was really young I was listening to a lot of the Woodstock era kind of stuff that was in my sister’s record collection. I can’t remember specifically - I just remember knowing more about the context of when they were singing and why they were singing than the lyrics specifically in that era. Jimi Hendrix is a pivotal person in that era; and then for me I was listening to Elton John and Carole King and James Taylor and all those people that were writing songs. I was always very engaged in the story. If it was a story about someone going through hard times I really attached to myself that too or like James Taylor’s Millworker. He takes on the role as a woman that works in a mill and I don’t know why but I was always very drawn to people that were going through oppression.
I don’t know where it came from necessarily, but later when everything just clicked for me was probably in the realm of Patti Smith and The Clash and hearing Rage Against the Machine. That’s later but it all came together for reason with some of those bands where I was like, “Oh okay this is what I want to do, I want to write about stuff,” and those songs are hard to write. Songs that are political, informative without being a drag or self-righteous or didactic, they’re so hard to write. I was really just looking up to these people as mentors and Steve Earle, Lucinda. Someone like Dolly Parton - what a brilliant song writer and what a strong woman. Everything for me was always contextualized not as much in my head, more in the idea of community and where it’s taking place and what it means and how these people in the DIY movement achieve what they achieve and things like that...
Gareth: I have an architect friend who says that the purpose of architecture is to help us live better. I think that’s brilliant because you know what a bad building is because it doesn’t help you live better and you know what a good building is because you want to stay there. I would extend that and say I think that’s the purpose of all art, and the purpose of music is to help us live better. Do you think that’s true?
Emily: I don’t know if it’s the purpose, [but] I think it’s the result of good art. I shouldn’t have even use that word (good), it’s subjective, it’s whatever really moves you. Art is us trying to make sense of the world and just trying to figure it out. I couldn’t paint a painting to save my life or do other forms of art and I’m just amazed as if it’s miraculous that someone could do that. That helps me, it broadens my perceptions of what’s [possible] in life and especially provocative art. As part of my evolution I’ve really come to embrace the benefits of provocative art that makes people uncomfortable and makes them think and so on. I’m a sucker for the masters too. I could look at a Dutch Master’s painting all day long. And then songs help me live better, they definitely do. It doesn’t even have to be the message of the song to live better, it’s just the experience of having your heart opened a little be more by it. The band Dawes - I love that band - they’ve got a song about the moon and the water it’s just ... I don’t know why and how if you’re sad you can listen to a sad singer over and over and over and it makes you feel better. It’s kind of weird. In that sense art helps you to live better because it opens you up.
Brian: What sustains you both as individuals and a collaboration that’s lasted for decades?
Amy: In our collaboration what sustains us is a respect for each other and a lot of space. I don’t want to say it’s like a good marriage we don’t hang out together, but we’re like siblings. We really don’t spend a lot of time together, we come together to play music and to arrange songs and work on records and we have very different lives. That gives us a real chance to just be who we are. We’re very different from each other and then we’re very happy when we come together and play and we’ve always respected each other’s music and are fans of each other’s music. We also know that what we do together ... for me personally it’s greater than what I could ever do alone and I know it and I don’t ever question that. I just I know it and that’s the centerpiece. I try to respect that all the time and I’ve always felt that way, and that’s one of the things that helps sustain the collaboration. Then the other things are we’re very careful about how much we tour and we make a different set list every night. We are constantly rotating who we’re playing with and who’s supporting us on the road as far as opening bands. It’s always friends of ours and people we play with. Just keep the environment, nurture that ecosystem constantly and make it really rich and something that we can evolve in and that everyone else could evolve in as well. It’s not supposed to be just built around us, it’s supposed to be a team.
Then for me individually, I live in the North Georgia Mountains and that sustains me because I’m not a city person. I go home from tour and I can just be by the river and go hiking and just immerse myself in that. It’s a blessing to have it and to be able to do that because it’s where my heart is. That and books and other people’s music and activism. My mentors that are activists inform a lot of what I do, and they sustain me and they energize me and they kick my butt and they make me get out there and do things when I’m scared to do them and say things when I’m scared to say them and they don’t let me back down. I count on them for that challenge and that sustains me.
Emily: Everything Amy said about our experience together is absolutely true and I have such gratitude for working with Amy and for our music together. Even though I may have written a song ... sometimes I sing a solo show without Amy and I just miss her parts, it’s kind of like, “Sorry all, sorry Amy is not here sing her parts.” She makes my songs better and that’s really, we have fallen into an awesome trajectory together. Who knows why but I’m grateful for it.
I get sustained, I like to take naps, I like to read, I like to spend time on my own. I thought I was an extrovert until I quit drinking and realized I wasn’t. Now I know that I’m an introvert and I have to retreat in order to sustain. It’s absolutely clear to me and I’ve got a three and half year old and that sometimes pushes the limits of that. I wouldn’t trade it for anything. I like to see live music like listening to Dar Williams, I almost died of happiness yesterday, listening to Dar. I haven’t heard that song Iowa in so long and she’s so true and good songwriter. Just being here at Wild Goose and hearing Dar was an ecstatic experience for me. Listening to music means as much to me as a fan, I know why you all like to come and see shows because I like to come see shows too.
Gareth: I have my last question. The point of this conversation is partly to get to know you a bit better and because you have deep and beautiful experiences. Also because everybody here has exactly the same level of significance in our lives and exactly the same gravity of purpose and possibility for joy and meaning. The question is what’s the best advice anyone has ever given you? And if you don’t know or don’t remember what the best advice anyone has ever given you, what would it be if you did know what it was?
Emily: Wow, holy cow... I just know I want to keep working on being as least judgmental as I can possibly be. To not underestimate the capacity of people because of what I might think of them before I really get to know them. That’s just a personal challenge. It’s so funny because I’m just me, always afraid of conflict as a kid and now I’ve gone through this and I accept conflict. The best advice I ever got was “It’s going to be okay,” which is kind of weird because it’s not okay in Syria for the children, you know what I mean? There’s so much that I don’t understand about the way things work, but I have to stop feeling guilty for the blessings that have been given to me and enjoy them and just use whatever I can that’s been given to me to spread goodness. Not to go, “Oh I can’t enjoy this football because of what’s going on in the world.” Those are the things I wrestle with.
Amy: That’s such a hard question, I don’t like to give ... I know I probably give a lot of advice and inside of me I’m saying, “Don’t do that, don’t do that,” because the thing I have a problem with is always saying, “You should, you should, you should.” My dad always said that to me and we always become someone in our family. Half the stuff he said was true or probably ninety percent of it was true. I don’t like to give advice and I like to just take advice as much as ... That’s what I’m trying to practice in my life, is to listen to other people because I’m such a loud mouth.
[But] I could think of two things that have been very important to me. One of them was our friend Winona LaDuke early on when we started doing activism [with] Native American [people]. Winona and I had a contentious relationship sometimes and in a good way we would just argue with each other and she said to me one time, “You know this isn’t always about you,” and I was like, “Whoa okay.”
She meant in a broader sense of me as a white person and I really took it to heart and tried to really keep that always in a political activist kind of way and as a white person.
Then the other thing is [something] my daughter who’s two and half said to me about six months ago. I’m OCD and I was basically rearranging all of her toys to go exactly where they’re supposed to be after she was playing with them and she looked at me and she said,
“Baba be still,” and I’ll never forget it because that’s what I need to do.
