This past weekend I had the chance to see the Indigo Girls play at Red Rocks with the Colorado Symphony. Each one of those are incredible on their own, but all together made for a pretty-prettty memorable evening. The Indigo Girls play their song, Closer to Fine, at every one of their shows. This song represents pure nostalgia for me, having listened to it on repeat at a young age, but the lyrics struck me in a completely new way. You know that a song is timeless when you can hear it 25 years later and it resonates in a whole new way.
There’s more than one answer to these questions | pointing me in a crooked line
The less I seek my source for some definitive |The closer I am to fine
In an interview with Emily Saliers, the author of the song, she explained, “that song is about not beating yourself up too hard to get your answer from one place. There’s no panacea, that in order to be balanced or feel closer to fine it’s okay to draw from this or to draw from that, to draw from a bunch of different sources. So it’s about being confused but looking for the answers, and in the end knowing that you’re going to be fine. No seeking just one definitive answer.”
Hearing the song at Red Rocks and then reading Emily’s explanation, reminded me of the Rainer Maria Rilke quote: “Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books that are now written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.”
Nothing like an evening in the red rocks of Colorado to remember to live the questions, keeping in mind that there is more than one answer to these questions.
No comments yet.