Being a guy at the women’s songwriting festival can feel like being a white guy in Baltimore, or even an atheist at church, but I have the context to know that that’s my cross to bear, and the education to understand that metaphor.
A women’s songwriting festival CAN be an awkward place for a guy. But not at Songbird. There was a huge sense of community, coming together, support and positivity. There was a GLOW to the day that’s hard to encapsulate, and I think ilyAIMY’s a perfect crossover entity for such an event. Our forty-minute set was tight, showed off beautiful parts of our strange and beautiful ways, kicked ass, broke hearts, and got out of the way.
ilyAIMY gets out of the way of itself. Its an exercise in ego stepping back and being greater than the sum of its parts. We create a safe space for ourselves within ourselves and we rarely have to defend it. But safe spaces are just part of the story. In my opinion, safe spaces for retreat are ONLY for retreat, ceding space… if you don’t welcome the right thing to fill that space, the wrong thing comes in. Vacuum and space. These things are the enemy. Pack your communities with what you WANT to have there, with what makes you stronger – and we are stronger together – don’t leave space for breeding room for the horrors.
Social problems aren’t eliminated. They’re not culled. Even violently, you can’t just carve out racism or extremism or misogyny as it simply breeds more. Social ills can only be eroded. Yeah, it’s a dissatisfying answer that “it’s a long process and we’re smack dab in the middle of it” but anything faster and it breaks.
WE break.
It’s something we don’t talk about much, but it’s a presence in the room. America’s been a white man’s space for a long time, but there’s got to be a balance between catching up and exclusion and if there’s one thing America doesn’t seem to be able to do, it’s “history”. So we really only have the context of ourselves. A white man today, sans context, sans history, can’t understand why there’s some place they can’t be. That’s not a failing in the man, it’s a failing in his education.
Yeah, funny-not-funny how the race for racist redistricting after the recent Supreme Court ruling just happens to coincide with the least-educated parts of the country.
Having had the opportunity of traveling the United States, and being a pretty well-read, imaginative, and – if not sensitive – than at least empathetic individual, I think I have a pretty good grasp on this stuff and so, even if I feel excluded or picked on or singled out or … whatever else… America and it’s history is bigger than me and my ego and my hurt feelings.
Today was actually nothing short of incredible. I got up early because Heather and I wanted to make it to the Songbird Festival as it opened to catch friends (Acacia Sears kicked off at 10.45am, which is just… silly). We stayed there ALL DAY because we wanted to catch friends and make new ones (SONiA disappear fear closed the main stage and my old, old friend Nicky Stacy was playing past HER set on the Cafe Stage) – and then Heather convinced me to go catch Madisun Bailey at 49 West in Annapolis. It was about a 13+ hour day of music plus driving to and fro and … it was incredible.
Shame about momstuff. But… momstuff worked out okay too.
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