cover of Galileo by the Indigo Girls
April 6, 2020 9:15 AM
I’ve been working on a musical collaboration with a fellow musician friend of mine during these crazy coronavirus times, in hopes of generating something fun and creative while we have all this spare time not working or gigging. Here's the first song from that collaboration.
It's timely that we’ve finally finished the song this past weekend, because yesterday I received some dreadful news: a dear friend of mine from college passed away due to complications related to COVID-19. She was a brilliant writer, and funny as hell, and the world is undoubtedly worse off without her in it. She and I met in a creative writing class, where she and I were were two the only four students of color in that class and had to endure micro-aggression upon micro-aggression (and sometimes outright aggression) from the white students whenever it came time for our writing to be workshopped. We always made sure to have each others’ backs in that classroom, and even though we’ve all scattered across the country since college I’ve always felt like we formed a lifelong bond having gone through that experience with each other. I originally set out to record this cover because over the past five years I have struggled mightily when it comes to loving my own self, and as a result have also done a very poor job of loving those I do love the most in the world. The Indigo Girls meant this song to be a reflection on the idea of literal reincarnation from the lives of those long gone, but to me, especially after having gone through a lot of hard, intensive work over the past few months to better myself so I can be better to myself and my loved ones, this song is about the possibility of a personal reincarnation, of being reborn from a past version of myself that only knew hurt and how to hurt instead of how to love honestly and truthfully. As one of us four in that class put it last night on Facebook, we all loved each other hard in that class because we had to, and so I want to dedicate this song to Kimmy's memory, because I never want to forget the importance and the sustaining power of taking care of ourselves by taking care of each other. I’ll miss you a lot, girl. Thank you for always holding me up (and always cracking me up).
It's timely that we’ve finally finished the song this past weekend, because yesterday I received some dreadful news: a dear friend of mine from college passed away due to complications related to COVID-19. She was a brilliant writer, and funny as hell, and the world is undoubtedly worse off without her in it. She and I met in a creative writing class, where she and I were were two the only four students of color in that class and had to endure micro-aggression upon micro-aggression (and sometimes outright aggression) from the white students whenever it came time for our writing to be workshopped. We always made sure to have each others’ backs in that classroom, and even though we’ve all scattered across the country since college I’ve always felt like we formed a lifelong bond having gone through that experience with each other. I originally set out to record this cover because over the past five years I have struggled mightily when it comes to loving my own self, and as a result have also done a very poor job of loving those I do love the most in the world. The Indigo Girls meant this song to be a reflection on the idea of literal reincarnation from the lives of those long gone, but to me, especially after having gone through a lot of hard, intensive work over the past few months to better myself so I can be better to myself and my loved ones, this song is about the possibility of a personal reincarnation, of being reborn from a past version of myself that only knew hurt and how to hurt instead of how to love honestly and truthfully. As one of us four in that class put it last night on Facebook, we all loved each other hard in that class because we had to, and so I want to dedicate this song to Kimmy's memory, because I never want to forget the importance and the sustaining power of taking care of ourselves by taking care of each other. I’ll miss you a lot, girl. Thank you for always holding me up (and always cracking me up).
posted by nayantara (1 comment total)
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posted by nayantara at 11:23 AM on April 30, 2020