"Empathy Is the First Ingredient" A Profile of Singer Eliza Gilkyson
Jensen, Robert
"Empathy Is the First Ingredient" A Profile of Singer Eliza Gilkyson By Robert Jensen Illustration by Jacqui Oakley Eliza Gilkyson cracks oneofher more mischievous smiles and introduces a new...
...And so awaken to themselves and to all peoples of this world...
...The 2000 election pushed her to be more openly political...
...For a year after reading the book Stolen Life, which chronicles Johnson's life of rape and abuse that led to the killing, Gilkyson struggled with how to write about it...
...Gang of goons and his big war chest, fortunate son he was doubly blessed/Corporate cronies and the chiefs of staff, bowing to the image of the golden calf," Gilkyson sings, her voice crackling...
...I'm saying we have to understand where it comes from...
...Tender Mercies," also from Land of Milk and Honey, looks at the world through the eyes of three mothers: of a child who becomes a suicide bomber, a child forced to play in a toxic environment, and a child safe in an affluent American home...
...At the core of her current political mission, beyond opposition to the Iraq War or other specific issues, is the need to "normalize dissent"-to show that one can speak out, survive, and make a difference...
...He can be reached at rjensen@uts.cc...
...For me, ['Man of God'] was more of a visceral song, an angry song...
...I can't stand 'message music,' in which the songwriter is trying to drive home a political point too much," she says...
...For me, it's empathy," she says...
...utexas.edu...
...She rephrases: "I think art can help us learn to think for ourselves, to de-anesthetize ourselves...
...I was trying to communicate that at the core, we all want a world in which our children are safe, but not everyone has the same chance to give that to their kids," she says...
...She finally drew directly on Johnson's own words, as well as her own experience of sexual violence...
...What is the bridge...
...Although some of her songs are political, "Man of God" is unusually blunt...
...I don't think of myself as particularly capable politically, but I guess I have been dragged into it...
...I understand that lots of people are afraid...
...in Austin, Texas, as "one that may get me in a little trouble...
...After the first line of the chorus- "Man of God, man of God, that ain't the teachings of a man of God"-the audience explodes, Gilkyson grabs hold of the crowd's energy, and the fifty-five-year-old singer/songwriter finishes a passionate rendering of the song from her new Red House Records CD, Paradise Hotel...
...It's a little vain to think that art has some super power to change things, but art can make people feel safe to feel," she says...
...Empathy Is the First Ingredient" A Profile of Singer Eliza Gilkyson By Robert Jensen Illustration by Jacqui Oakley Eliza Gilkyson cracks oneofher more mischievous smiles and introduces a new song to the overflow summer crowd at the Cactus Caf...
...But that's not the point, of course...
...We struggle with ourselves, which means we should be able to connect with other people's struggles...
...For Gilkyson, politics in song usually means trying to find the common ground...
...typically, she doesn't like songs that are preachy...
...Grant them love and peace so they may understand I'm sorry...
...Gilkyson has always lived on the progressive side of the fence-from her California childhood with a folksinger father, to her back-to-the-land days in New Mexico, to her brief 1980s tour as a New Age diva (a role for which she was miscast and from which she escaped quickly), to her return to her folk roots that culminated in her first Red House release, Hard Times in Babylon...
...Before that election, I thought of politics as kind of hopeless...
...But that's just not possible anymore...
...It gives us opportunities to choose between healing and destruction...
...I had it all theorized, about why I shouldn't bother...
...I'm not justifying it...
...The song doesn't flinch from the brutality that Johnson endured but also conveys the woman's strength and humanity, which is beautifully summarized in Johnson's prayer that ends the song: "Help me to make my amends to those that I have harmed...
...It can create a safe environment that lets people experience things, whether it's the shadow or the beauty...
...For information about Gilkyson, go to www.elizagilkyson.com...
...Help me share my shame and pain so others they might do the same...
...So, I stayed out of it...
...the turn-the-other-cheek type who can't contain her anger...
...Robert Jensen, a professor of journalism at the University of Texas at Austin, is the author of "The Heart of Whiteness: Confronting Race, Racism and White Privilege" and "Citizens of the Empire: The Struggle to Claim Our Humanity...
...It starts with "Hiway 9," a song about the destructiveness of the U.S...
...The cowboy came from out of the West, with his snakeskin boots and his bulletproof vest," she sings, and the audience jammed into the small club-quickly figuring out where the song "Man of God" is heading-leans into the song...
...the moody romantic who wants to talk politics...
...For me, music and politics are both about trying to find that place to connect...
...But the reaction I get to these songs is mostly positive...
...It makes us aware of the choices...
...That search for understanding is also at the heart of "Ballad of Yvonne Johnson," a haunting song based on the true story of a woman serving a life sentence for murder...
...Startin' up wars in the name of God's son, gonna blow us all the way to kingdom come...
...You need the facts, the analysis to figure out what to do, but empathy is the first ingredient...
...What does Gilkyson believe such songs can accomplish...
...That's where Gilkyson seems to sit these days, stuck in contradictions: The person who wants everyone to like her and doesn't care if some think she's a traitor...
...When Bush got elected, I felt like my back was to the wall," she says...
...Much of her attention these days is focused on the high crimes and misdemeanors of the Bush Administration, though she doesn't believe the country's problems will be solved by putting a Democrat in the White House...
...I suppose I'm an introspective type dragged into politics, and I'm always looking for the bridge between the two," she says...
...There's no reason to back down...
...There are musicians who are afraid to speak up," she says...
...I'm actually a nonconfrontational person-I want everyone to like me," she says a couple of weeks after that June show at a diner in Austin, her home since the early 1980s...
...I've been accosted after my shows about that song, by people saying that I am justifying suicide bombers...
...Gilkyson pushed herself on the 2004 release Land of Milk and Honey, which was nominated for a best contemporary folk album Grammy...
...war in Iraq that sounds like a classic truck-driving song but slips into lyrics about the war's aims: "go on and liberate my people and their o-i-l...
...When I point out that her language constantly moves between the political and the introspective-she sounds part political radical and part therapist, pulled between the world's conflicts and her internal life-she laughs and doesn't disagree...
Vol. 69 • September 2005 • No. 9
