Finding HopeMusicians And The US Election
Posted on October 17, 2020
I think it’s safe to say that a significant number of us, in the US and abroad, are terrified of what will happen if Donald Trump wins the upcoming election and so a vast number of public figures are becoming more politically vocal than they ever have before, at least as far as I can tell. People from all kinds of professions are speaking out and sharing their views, sharing information, and encouraging people to vote. And for what feels like the first time, there’s a lot less of the ‘vote according to your beliefs’ and a hell of a lot more ‘vote Biden because voting for Trump will cause irrevocable damage, including the deaths of thousands of people.’ Personally, I’m grateful for that. It’s one thing to tell people to vote for the party they believe in when the parties just prioritise different aspects of society, it’s another when people’s lives, their families, their very homes and livelihoods are at stake. This isn’t about priorities; this is about turning a blind eye to greed and corruption or putting people’s lives above all else. Because that’s what this will come down to. Donald Trump does not care for the American people and that will affect everyone in America, regardless of whether you voted Democrat or Republican.
I accidentally went off on a bit of an emotional tangent there. What I really wanted to talk about are some of the people making political statements and taking political action and how they’re going about it, specifically musicians…
Sara Bareilles – While Sara has never shied away from posting about politics, she has dedicated her social media almost entirely to politics in recent months. She tweets and retweets a lot of political discussion and resources and continually calls out Trump – and other Republicans – for their terrible behaviour. She also doesn’t just share the major, nation-wide stuff; she shares state specific stuff as well, which I imagine is really useful to her American followers. She’s unapologetically loud and it’s fantastic to see.
She also recently started the #MoreLoveCampaign – named after her recent album but apt for the current times – encouraging people to vote…
Taylor Swift – While Taylor is relatively new to talking about politics, she is absolutely serious now. She did post about and encourage people to vote in the last election but she didn’t publicly endorse Hillary Clinton, who she’s since said she supported. During a recent interview, she said that she felt her endorsement could’ve been damaging:
“The summer before that election, all people were saying was, ‘[Taylor’s] calculated. She’s manipulative. She’s not what she seems. She’s a snake. She’s a liar,’” the pop star told Vogue. “These are the same exact insults people were hurling at Hillary. Would I be an endorsement or would I be a liability?” She described how the attacks might have gone: “‘Look, snakes of a feather flock together. Look, the two lying women. The two nasty women.’”
She’s since said that, regardless of that, she regrets not clearly stating that she was voting for Hillary.
In the last two years, she’s become increasingly political but she is very strategic about it. She doesn’t post about it a lot on social media but then again, she doesn’t post a lot on social media at all. So when she does, it’s pretty big deal, especially if it’s about politics. She publishes targeted, impactful posts that, as you can imagine, get a lot of attention, on social media and in the press. It’s a different approach to that of Sara Bareilles’ but with Taylor’s megastar status, that’s not surprising. It doesn’t make one strategy better than the other though.
She’s also recently been featured in V Magazine’s Thought Leaders Issue, which included multiple public figures and their views on the election and encouraging people to vote.
She’s also talked about the election repeatedly in interviews and has even been including ‘vote’ cards in her merchandise deliveries as reminders to fans.
Maren Morris – Maren is another musician who has been consistently posting about politics on social media. I don’t recall seeing anything that directly states she’s voting for Biden but everything she posts and reposts, tweets and retweets implies that she is: she’s talked about having a voting plan, the debates, voter suppression, publicly (and I assume privately) mourned Ruth Bader Ginsburg, shared posts about how Trump’s people were manipulating photos and videos of support, and so on. She’s not sitting back and staying quiet as country artists are so often encouraged to do.
But I think her biggest contribution has been her recent song, ‘Better Than We Found It,’ and its accompanying music video. The song itself is more general in its message, a message of always striving for a better world, but certain lyrics – “When the wolf’s at the door all covered in blue,” “America, America, divided we fall,” and “God save us all from ourselves and the Hell that we’ve built for our kids, America, America, we’re better than this” – point to this specific moment in time. It’s a very powerful song but the music video is more powerful still, highlighting three different stories, all far too common today: two young Mexican boys, beneficiaries of the Dream Act, who are being forced to return to Mexico; footage from the Black Lives Matter protests; family members of Daniel Hambrick, who was shot and killed by Nashville police in 2018, talking about his death. It’s a very emotional video. It makes me cry every time I watch it; I cried just writing about it.
As well as spreading an important political message, some of the proceeds from ‘Better Than We Found It’ are being donated to the Black Women’s Health Imperative.
You can listen to/buy the song here.
Halsey – Halsey has always been an activist but it’s never been more obvious than it has over the last few months. She marched in the Black Lives Matter protests in LA where she was hit twice with rubber bullets, going back the next day with medical supplies to help treat the injured protesters. She’s been very vocal about the movement:
“I’m mixed-race and white-passing, and part of the [Black Lives Matter] protests put me in a position where I was subject to being shot with rubber bullets, and where I was subject to violence. Part of the reason for my participation is because my family is Black. Every time I see a name in the news, it could be my family. Being subject to violence [at the protests] gave me a lot of perspective. I’ve always been a part of an activity like that since I was a pre-teen—I was in the streets for Occupy Wall Street—so I’m a seasoned protester.”
She’s since set up the Black Creators Funding Initiative to award $10,000 grants to Black artists.
She’s been featured in V Magazine’s Thought Leaders Issue and was on the cover of Time Magazine as one of their ten Next Generation Leaders. She’s constantly using her social media accounts to share information and resources about the political situation and the election, as well as challenging those who share problematic or hateful views, and she’s currently releasing a series of videos where she discusses different elements of American society with Bernie Sanders, while encouraging viewers to vote.
“You vote for humanity, or you don’t,” she says. “You vote for a racist or you don’t. That’s the black and white of it to me.”
Of course, there are multiple others in the music industry doing the same or similar, including Carole King, The Chicks, John Legend, Cher, Madonna, James Taylor, P!nk, Billie Eilish, Lin-Manuel Miranda, and so on. I chose these four because I know more about what they’re doing and so can more personally speak to their actions and motivations and also because writing about everyone who has been getting involved would probably result in this post going up after the election…
And a quick side note:
It also makes me really happy and proud that some of my favourite actors (including those behind some of my favourite characters) have also been using their platform to encourage people to vote and especially to vote for Biden. For example…
Mariska Hargitay (Olivia Benson from Law & Order: Special Victims Unit) has been posting consistently about the election, endorsing Biden, and providing resources through her social media. She’s also engaging with (the respectful) people in the comments about why Biden is the better choice and why Trump getting in again will be so damaging. Given what I know of her as a person through interviews and so on, this doesn’t surprise me but it means a lot to me to see someone I respect so much putting so much effort into this.
And Chloe Bennet (the actress behind my absolute favourite character ever, Daisy Johnson from Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.) has also been very vocal about the election and about voting Democrat.
She’s been politically active for as long as I’ve been aware of her, and longer if you scroll back through her social media. Something I particularly like and relate to in her approach to politics is that she’s equally as emotional as she is thoughtful and strategic. She gets sad and angry and she rages about the unfairness but she also finds ways to help and engages with organisations (even co-founding one, RUN AAPI) that will improve people’s lives. I think a lot of people need to see that: that you can be emotional about it but that that doesn’t have to leave you frozen. You can both feel and act.
She’s also been calling out Trump for almost as long as she’s had social media, the earliest one I could find being in 2013. If we didn’t know already, I think we could safely say who she’s not voting for…
It’s hard to be in the UK and not be able to do anything, as far as I can tell. We can speak out on social media, share resources for our American friends, and so on, but we can’t actually DO anything. It’s scary and I know I’m not the only one feeling helpless, waiting for this one moment that will change everything, one way or the other, without being able to affect the result.
Things I Did In Lockdown
Posted on September 20, 2020
Given how stressful I was finding the pandemic and the lockdown, I thought it might be helpful to keep a list of what I’d done (achieved, managed, spent time on – whichever word is most appropriate), whether it took a huge amount of effort or was simply something I’d wanted to do, just to remind myself that I was still doing things, that I was still capable of being productive during such a difficult time. Some of them are silly, some of them important, and some of them are just interesting. And I thought posting it would be a good record of sorts when it comes to looking back at this time.
I don’t consider us to be out of lockdown by posting this. It’s just that now I’m starting a new year at university – the second of my Masters Degree – so my life is going to change. I’m doing all of my classes online, rather than going in for half of the classes as is the current norm at uni; I’d be commuting and the risks still feel too high for just two hours a week. So in terms of leaving the house, not much is changing. But it’s a moment of transition in my life and so it seemed like a natural stopping point for this post. I may continue it as a series, depending on how things play out going forward but for now, this is what I did while in lockdown, from 13th March to 20th September 2020…
- Watched the entirety of Grey’s Anatomy.
- Bought a Kalimba.
- Went down a YouTube rabbit hole of Otomatone covers…
This one and this one are my favourites.
- Did the Enneagram test.
- Tried (unsuccessfully) to teach one of my cats to play fetch.
- Watched all of the Harry Potter films one after the other (more than once…).
- Continued therapy via Zoom.
- Released and promoted the ‘Clarity (Academic Remix)‘.
- Released and promoted the ‘Clarity (Academic Remix)’ Music Video.
- Wrote a 4000 word, fully researched and referenced essay about authenticity and imagery in ‘All Too Well’ by Taylor Swift for my Masters Degree.
- Finished the first year of my Masters Degree.
- Rescued one of my cats (the youngest) when she went missing, stuck up a tree for maybe twenty four hours, with the help of some kind neighbours (all of us masked and socially distanced).
- Rewatched many of my favourite films and TV shows, including…
Films: Hot Fuzz, The Martian, Miss Congeniality, etc.
TV Shows: Episodes, Lucifer, and Nikita, etc.
- Wrote and posted fifty three blog posts.
- Watched Season 15 of Criminal Minds, finishing the show after following it for ten years.
- Read a lot of Fanfiction…
This is something I did a lot of as a teenager but reverted to during my Masters as a form of stress relief: escaping into another world, a familiar and safe world. My most impressive achievements were reading all of the Ros Myers (Spooks) Fanfiction I could find and reading The Changeling and it’s three sequels (a Harry Potter alternate universe where Ginny is sorted into Slytherin, which totals nearly 600,000 words). Of course, there were more one off stories; these are just my greatest hits.
- Had multiple movie dates with friends and family.
- Had multiple Studio Ghibli movie dates with one group of friends.
- Multiple collaborations via video calling: working on my songs, working with new people, critiquing the songs of friends, and so on.
- Caught up with Law & Order: SVU.
- Received a grade I was really happy with for my Musicology essay on Taylor Swift’s song, ‘All Too Well.’
- Released and promoted ‘Sounds Like Hope.’
- Rewatched all ten seasons of Friends (multiple times – although mostly as background noise).
- Played the piano a lot, learning the songs of others and writing my own.
- Watched all of Little Fires Everywhere in one day.
- Released and promoted the music video for ‘Sounds Like Hope.’
- Bought a new cat tree for the cats (they’d practically destroyed the old one), one with beds for all five of them and eventually we caught them all in it at once.
- Had multiple panic attacks and meltdowns, some really severe.
- Watched all of Absentia Season 1 in one day.
- Watched multiple new films including What Happened To Monday, Isn’t It Romantic, Ocean’s 8, Studio Ghibli’s Castle In The Sky, Fantasy Island, The Half Of It, Official Secrets, The Accountant, and more.
- Watched multiple new TV shows, including Little Fires Everywhere, Absentia, Broadchurch, Agents of Shield Season 7, The Fix, Lucifer Season 5 (Part 1), Away, and more.
- Started watching Castle.
- Made multiple banana breads (and other things, like chocolate chip cookies, but that’s less uncommon).
- Signed petitions and made donations to various causes in the Black Lives Matter movement and collected a list of resources to educate myself more when I don’t feel so incredibly mentally and emotionally fragile (short pieces, like some of the infographics on Instagram have been really good and digestible but I’ve been struggling to absorb large amounts of new information due to my general mental state, which has included frequent meltdowns and panic attacks, all affecting my concentration and memory).
- Filled six diaries.
- Watched many of my favourite movies from childhood, including The Emperor’s New Groove, A Bug’s Life, and all of the Wallace and Gromit shorts and movies.
- Sorted through my clothes.
- Sorted through and reorganised my DVDs.
- Spent A LOT of time with my cats.
- Made a significant dent in sorting through all of my possessions.
- Sorted through my jewellery.
- Worked on my music theory knowledge during a series of piano lessons.
- Weaned myself off Pregabalin.
- Gathered up loads of stuff to donate to charity shops when they reopen/are able to accept donations.
- Cleared out my box of electronics, technology, cables, etc, only keeping the things I actually use and need.
- Cleared my eight USB sticks.
- Celebrated the kittens’ first birthday.
- Received my new laptop (plus other helpful equipment) from DSA, the process of which has been going on for months, only to find that it wasn’t the right laptop.
- Watched multiple online/streamed concerts, including ICMP Songwriters’ Circles, Kalie Shorr, Savannah Keyes, Song Suffragettes, Ingrid Andress, and more.
- Attended Ingrid Andress’ first livestream show with a meet and greet afterwards, which started at 2am and resulted in me staying up until 5am.
- Watched all of Absentia Season 2 in one day.
- Took part in multiple research studies looking at how the pandemic and subsequent lockdown are affecting mental health in general, specific mental health conditions, and Autism. I also participated in studies about experiences with therapy and about living with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome.
- Received and set up the new laptop from DSA.
- Loaded up my old Photos library onto the new laptop, only to find three (or more, sometimes up to seven) copies of basically every photo so I started going through and deleting the duplicates (getting the wheel of doom approximately every five seconds). Got down from 85,000 to just under 30,000 and then organised them all into albums, which took about three weeks. It was a mammoth job but it was incredibly satisfying to finish.
- I applied to be part of the Disability Pride 2020 Livestream, got a place, and saw myself on TV!
- Managed to go out for a haircut.
- Planned the ‘Back To Life’ music video, having had to scrap the original plan due to travel restrictions and anxiety.
- Dyed my hair orange.
- Dyed my hair red when the orange wasn’t the right colour.
- Filmed the ‘Back To Life’ music video on the beach with Richard.
- Watched all of Absentia Season 3 in one day.
- Was interviewed by a Dutch journalism student about being a new artist during a pandemic.
- Obsessively listened to and analysed Taylor Swift’s beautiful new album, folklore.
- Bought a Gretsch electric guitar (for my birthday but early so that I can make use of the time I have before uni starts, in whatever way it starts).
- Tried to go to the gym but didn’t feel it was safe.
- Finally saw Hamilton via Disney+.
- Met up with a friend for a dog walk, meeting her gorgeous new puppy for the first time.
- After experiencing serious and ongoing pain in both shoulders down to fingers, I had a Zoom appointment with my GP who referred me to an occupational rheumatologist (which would apparently take two to three weeks). And since any medication stronger than Ibuprofen and Paracetamol will cause side effects similar to those of my anti-depressants, she’s reluctant to prescribe anything stronger unless absolutely necessary.
- Finished Liar Series 2.
- Updated my photo albums, after getting eighteen months behind.
- Got up to date with Agents of Shield Season 7 so that I could watch and celebrate the finale of the season and the show itself with the show’s cast, crew, and fandom on social media.
- Watched the Perseid meteor shower and saw a handful of ‘proper’ shooting stars.
- Suffered severe electric shock like pain in my lower legs, requiring more doctors appointments. The information was added to my rheumatology referral and I started taking stronger painkillers.
- Watched Hamilton with some of my family who’d seen it live and loved it but not seen the film.
- Watched the finale of Agents of Shield, not just of Season 7 but of the whole show, and cried my eyes out, although sometimes I was laughing at the same time. I loved it and thought it was a really beautiful end to such a fantastic show. I’ll miss it more than I can say but I’m so grateful to have had it, to have had Daisy Johnson, and I’ll always carry with me what it’s meant to me.
- Released and promoted ‘Back To Life.’
- Did an interview with Vents Magazine.
- Went on several dog walks with my friend and her puppy.
- Contributed to #DaisyJohnsonAppreciationWeek2020 and #QuakeWeek on social media, posting edits on Tumblr and Twitter.
- Did an interview with Middle Tennessee Music.
- Filmed the Behind The Video for the ‘Back To Life’ music video.
- Went through my clothes a second time (sorting through my possessions, especially when I have an emotion connection to them gives me decision fatigue and I stop being able to make objective decisions – there was a lot to go through the first time).
- Did an interview with Zap Bang Magazine.
- Made the decision to do the next semester of my Masters Degree 100% online.
- Bought Bon Iver tickets for November 2021 – here’s hoping it’ll be possible to go!
- Put together the ‘Back To Life’ music video with Richard.
- Released and promoted the ‘Back To Life’ Music Video…
- Kept a two week photo diary for the CFS/ME research study.
- Finally captured the motivation to start learning the Kalimba only to find out there was a problem with the one I’d bought so I have to sort that out before I can really start learning to play it.
- Went through a traumatic few weeks worried that there was something seriously wrong with one of my cats but after multiple vet visits and lots of tests, she’s been given a clean bill of health.
- Attended the (online) Induction event for the new year at university.
- Acted as a guinea pig for one of my tutors as he fine-tuned a couple of things for the upcoming online classes.
- Was given a signed copy of folklore by Taylor Swift as an early birthday present.
- Signed up for a home recording course.
I doubt I’ll ever be able to look back on this time positively (from a personal perspective – in the wider sense, it’s clearly been catastrophic) but there have been moments and experiences that I am grateful to have had. As I’ve said, I don’t consider lockdown to be over so this post may become a series but with my Masters to focus on, I will have significantly less time to dedicate to bigger projects like organising my photos or sorting through my possessions. So lockdown continues; I’m just entering the next chapter.
Finding Hope 