Dispatch from South Dakota

This past weekend I played at a festival in Montrose, South Dakota. I flew in to Sioux Falls late Friday night and wondered what South Dakota was like and if being an outsider -Jewish, a feminist, an anti racist - would put me at risk somehow.

The festival volunteer who picked me up was from a part Bolivian family and we spent the drive talking about ancestry and the importance of understanding where we come from and what those folks struggles were.

Saturday morning Jonathan Byrd and I were supposed to do a radio interview in Sioux Falls but the wires got crossed so a really generous fan named Tom took us out to lunch instead. We ate at a restaurant with a pride flag hanging outside and some non binary folks on the staff. I thought, this is South Dakota!?!

I hosted a songwriting workshop Saturday afternoon and was joined by one student, a man who was in recovery and had spent his recent years finding a spiritual connection with birds and support in that spiritual journey from Sioux communities. Listening to what he had to share was genuinely inspiring.

I’m thinking about just how non-binary our existence is. You might not look at me or listen to me talk about my worldview and say, “This girl belongs in South Dakota”. I wouldn’t have before this weekend. But at that festival, I did. The people were welcoming and exceedingly generous with their attention and hospitality. I don’t know how they all voted. I don’t know how it would feel for my friends who are queer or non white to be in a very “red” state.

And also, in a time of profound division and forces that be purposefully trying to keep us yelling at each other instead of at them, it feels like it matters to still find each other’s humanity however imperfectly we can.

All people - humans - are messy, and no one is just one thing.  That’s the biggest lie we’ve been sold - that somehow everything and everyone is binary, one or the other, this or that. 

I’m not trying to sound Pollyanna. There are people with truly evil intentions out there and people willing to blindly follow them.

And “good” people can do terrible things. Perhaps out of fear/shame/lack mentality, pride, shortsightedness, willful ignorance.  And yes, there absolutely has to be accountability for anything to truly heal. 

But also as soon as we remember our shared, messy humanity, we are not lost.

I know how vague this all sounds.  It’s political but it’s also not.  It’s really to my mind, a question of, are we going to hold on to our humanity? Will we recognize the ways people and communities are moving forward - if awkwardly, at times? At this point, it’s us or the robots, you know?

If you’ve felt love from a person who has also made some choices that feel reprehensible to you, you know what I mean.  We have to choose love; and love is not easy.  It’s a practice.  And it involves conflict. It requires boundaries. The people with the strongest boundaries are the ones with the biggest capacity for compassion. Brene Brown said that.

Life is often a struggle and that’s not a bad word. Think of a seed pushing up through the earth to become a sprout.  That’s a struggle, and a worthy one.  Think of trying to work through something hard with someone you love.  If there’s trust there or trust can be built, that’s a worthy struggle.

I’m just an artist, and most of the time the only thing I really feel qualified to do is write songs and sing them. But I’ve also traveled all over the world and met a lot of people, and even in the places where I thought I would never fit in, I found some folks who felt like beacons.

Some random thoughts on a sticky Tuesday morning, somewhere outside of Springfield, MO.

Terry Klein and I head to The Blue Door in Oklahoma City tomorrow night. If you like good music and you’re a messy human, we’d love you to join us:

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