Vacation–And Motivation

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Often when I dream of vacation, I dream big. In a few weeks (provided the world and my family life hold stable), my partner, Shel, and I are headed to Vietnam and Cambodia. We’ve already been to more than 40 countries in 5 out of 7 continents and in all 50 states in the U.S. And while we’ve occasionally repeated a destination, the draw of going somewhere we haven’t been, with its promise of experiencing something entirely new and wonderful, has usually been a greater pull. We’re determined to get to many more hard-to-reach places before age or health drags us down.

And while all this travel has had its bumps, I can honestly say I haven’t regretted going anywhere I’ve been. I remember everything fondly: from the hours waiting on the side of the road for nearly non-existent buses to take us to the next town in Mexico, to trying to cross a street in India with eight lanes of cars, tuk-tuks, bicycles and motorcycles going every possible way and giving up, to randomly pointing at vegetables in the cooler at a restaurant in western China in expectation of a stir fry and ending up with ten separate vegetable dishes, to driving for days through the gorgeous but mostly deserted Quebec countryside to reach “au bout du monde” the place where “the world ends,” dropping off into the sea on the eastern edge of the stunning Gaspé penninsula.

But sometimes the small get-aways can pack a similar sense of wonder. Last week, to celebrate our 42nd wedding anniversary, we drove a whopping two hours across the state and spent three days exploring nature preserves and beaches in southeastern MA and southern Rhode Island. It was just what I needed.

Photo: D. Dina Friedman

While my home landscape (the one that evokes feelings of comfort, security and spiritual peace) feels firmly footed in deciduous forest here in Western Mass. and elsewhere in the Northeast (despite my birth roots in the littered concrete of Queens) I adore fresh breaths of beach: not only the damp salty air and heartbeat of the waves, but also the plants–rosehips bullrushes, searocket, and the quiet marshes with occasional glimpses of egret. All of it is just different enough to open up the wonder of being elsewhere. And my absolute favorite time to go to the beach is in October, when there’s nearly no one else there, especially when it’s tinged with fog, though we were blessed with the last of the sun before the winds picked up and a Nor’easter set in.

Going to a deserted beach, or really on any kind of vacation, is one of the ways I have of showing compassion for myself, which is not an easy thing for me. Today, as part of a 10-day meditation challenge focused on attaining a more positive self-belief mindset, I was asked to pick one thing I was annoyed with myself for. I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised that what popped into my head was: Not doing enough. That’s too general, I told myself. Pick one thing. But I couldn’t. Because, it’s rarely about one thing I’m not doing that I think I should do. It’s about everything I’m not doing–an onslaught of tasks, real or imagined, that spreads out before me like a “whack-a-mole” field.

But when I’m on vacation–whether, I’m in China or eastern Massachusetts, I’m able to put that ridiculous perfectionist-derived list aside and take pleasure in the beauty and wonder of the moment.

After we picked our “one” (or in my case–many) things we felt annoyed with ourselves about, we were instructed to first pay attention to the feelings this engendered. For me, that was sadness and a deep sense of inadequacy. Then we were asked to speak to ourselves with kindness and compassion, as we might speak to a close friend. I immediately flashed back to a conversation I’d had with a friend the day before who has been struggling with a number of challenges–how I told him, you are one of the most motivated people I know. Which was the absolute truth.

Now, can I say that to myself? Yes, I can probably give myself an A for motivation. Perhaps the issue is not my aspirational desire to do all the tasks I set before myself. I just need to give myself a reality check on what’s feasible, so I’m not mentally beating myself up for my inability to do more than I can possibly do.

It’s something to think about anyway as I look forward to another self-compassion break when we’re in Vietnam. Meanwhile, the blog is done. On to the next thing on my to-do list!

Rejection Blues? Avoid Crushing Out on Your Poems

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Last Friday at a workshop, I wrote a poem from the prompt, What is Home? My response went way beyond warm tea and apple pie into the grief, fear and horror I felt after hearing about ICE infiltrating a Chicago apartment complex in the middle of the night, dragging people out of their beds and zip-tying children. As I often do in my poems, I combined these bigger events with moments from my life: flashbacks to my own home as a child, a grief ritual I’d participated in the previous day on Yom Kippur, and a precious innocent moment with my three-year-old grandchild, who, so far, has been sheltered from the onslaught of anxiety-provoking news stories that further threaten the tottering foundations of the country we call home.

I thought the poem was good. Quite honestly, I was smitten with it, as I often am when I feel I’ve been able to use poetry to expel what’s deep inside me in an artful, not-too-didactic, and not-too-ego-driven way. So, even though I generally like to let first drafts sit for a while so I can revise them more objectively, I decided to send the poem to Rattle, which publishes a new poem every week that responds to that week’s current events.

Problem was, the deadline was that night, Friday, at midnight. And I had commitments most of the rest of the afternoon and evening.

10:00 pm is not my ideal writing time. But that was when I got home on Friday night. So I forced myself to sit at the computer and consider the poem, doing what I generally do in revision: cutting out things that didn’t need to be there, condensing lines, considering each verb and each noun image, determining if there were places I could use more metaphors, making language choices to improve the sound and rhythm of each line. As I worked, I felt even more in love with the poem, even as its flaws began to peek through. But, I reminded myself, justifying my crush-like state, if I only sent out poems that I thought were unflawed, I’d never send out anything at all.

At 11:15 pm I decided I was too tired to do anything else to the poem, so I sent it.

I knew that no matter how polished or unpolished the poem was, the chances of it being chosen were pretty slim. Rattle gets hundreds of poems each week for this feature and they publish *one* of them–sometimes two. Nevertheless, on Saturday, the day they respond to all of those who’ve submitted that week, I kept checking my email. Even as I told myself it was unlikely they were going to take the poem, my little fantasy brain couldn’t quite click off. What if they do take it? Wouldn’t that be amazing? While I knew this wasn’t a perfect poem, I still thought it was an important poem, with something crucial that needed to be said–or, at least, something I felt was vital to say.

At about 5:30 pm on Saturday, just as I was getting into my car after a hike that featured a visit to my favorite “best friend” beech tree I checked my phone. There was the rejection–a form one I’d received several times before, kind, as always, reminding submitters of the number of poems received and encouraging people to try again.

I wasn’t crushed. Hard, even, to be disappointed with a result I totally expected. Oh well, I thought, as I backed out of the parking lot and headed onto the road. But I know that for many, a rejection can feel far more more devastating–and even worse if you’ve let yourself fall too deeply in love with your own work.

Later, I looked at the poem again. It still felt relevant and important, but it wasn’t the most amazing poem I’d ever written. As the glow of the poem-crush began to dim, I realized that with a little time and distance, and feedback from my poetry group, I could do more with this poem. And while it was kind of fun to work myself up into a frenzied, deadline-induced revision session, sometimes impatience is really my enemy–like when I can’t even wait for the tea water to boil and end up with an unsatisfying lukewarm cup.

And as with the the other deep loves in my life, things usually get better once the crush phase wears off and I begin to see and appreciate people–and poems–for who and what they are.

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Atonement

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Tonight at sunset starts Yom Kippur, the Jewish Day of Atonement. And even for mostly secular Jews like me, YK is a big deal.

Because atonement is something none of us should ignore–on both a personal and a macro level.

The synagogue that I attend very occasionally (usually only on Yom Kippur or if a friend is doing a special event there) refers to atonement is “at-one-ment.” I’m interpreting this as the idea that forgiving yourself and others, asking others you’ve wronged to forgive you, and striving to do better can lead to an increased sense of wholeness. Though I think “at-one-ment” could also refer to an aspirational sense of unity between all people, or expanded even further–unity and connection between everything on our planet: people, animals, plants, nature, divinity, the heavens, etc….

And this is the atonement I think we need on a macro-level. To recognize that there’s no such thing as an enemy. All of us are connected as sentient human beings. All of us are one.

I say this not to be perceived as a Pollyanna, or a groovy guru. I’m not particularly enlightened. I can list many people I might perceive as my enemy. Most of them are currently in positions of power in our government. But part of the reason I perceive these folks to be my enemies is because they’re piling up the weight on the “enemy playbook,” and riling people up with an “us vs. them” mentality in order to maintain their power.

But since this is the season of forgiveness, I’m not going to go any farther with “the blame game” right now. Ultimately, we all have our ways of dividing ourselves into us and them. And this is not to guilt-trip, only to recognize. When we spend money on things we want but don’t necessarily need, or give loving but unnecessary gifts to friends, while giving nothing–or only small amounts–to those who are hungry and suffering, isn’t that a type of tribalism? Or when we ignore or glaze over the horror stories of people in Gaza starving to death, or immigrants taken from their children and disappeared into prisons, or black people killed by the police, or countless other issues, and then go about our daily lives as if all this stuff isn’t happening, aren’t we saying in some fashion that it doesn’t matter as much because it’s not about  someone in our inner circle–in other words, not about us?

This morning I read a post from T’ruah, the Rabbinic call for human rights about the holiday. It mentioned that even though personal atonement is only done for acts committed this year, our collective atonement also addresses two incidents in our biblical history as a Jewish people: the Golden Calf, and the sale of Joseph into slavery, which was done by his jealous brothers for 20 pieces of silver, enough to buy each of them a pair of shoes. This second story struck me as hitting far too close to the tribal ways in how we live our lives today–selling out others for our own privilege and convenience, and ignoring their suffering.

The Golden Calf story gave me a little more pause, as I’ve always hated that tale and saw it as a jealous spoiled brat divinity ranting for not being worshipped well enough. But today, I’m thinking that perhaps the Israelites built the Golden Calf because things felt so dark in the desert, they had given up hope and they needed a “quick fix” to lift their spirits. So maybe we revisit this tale to remind us that we even in the darkest times, we must somehow find and hold onto hope. Real hope, not a golden illusion.

That might be a hard lift for me today, but I’m willing to think about it. In the meantime, I invite you to listen to one of my favorite pieces… composer Max Bruch’s interpretation of the haunting melody of the Kol Nidre prayer (traditionally recited on Yom Kippur eve) played by cellist Jacqueline DuPré. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GNUkemxvsP4

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Speaking Truth to Power

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A few years ago, shortly after George Floyd’s murder by the Minnesota police, my late brother, Danny, asked me if I believed in critical race theory. He wasn’t particularly interested in my answer; he was just trying to goad me as he’d done all our lives, making fun of my favorite baseball players when we were kids, dissing the few rock stars I admired that he didn’t like when we were teens, and later tuning into our political differences as he sunk deeper and deeper into the influence of Fox News.

“I don’t call it critical race theory,” I told him. “I call it truth.”

I earnestly began to explain why I thought it was so important that we learn a true accounting of our history–the good, the bad, and the ugly–rather than a white-centered version that discounted or trivialized the experience of black people in the US. He didn’t really listen. I would have liked to chalk that up to ADHD rather than to our past history, except that he kept interrupting me with sound bites he’d clearly heard on TV that had little to do with the points I was trying to make.

Not so different from the sound clips from news pundits about a recent assassination of a right wing leader that Jon Stewart used in his “government-approved monologue” recorded after Jimmy Kimmel’s firing.

Just to be clear, I don’t condone political violence. No matter who does it to whom, and no matter what the underlying motivations might be.

But I also don’t condone this administration’s vilifying those that oppose their policies. I don’t condone their outright lying, or–as they would call it–“alternative facts.” I don’t condone their attempts to simply remove information that doesn’t speak to their political agenda, such as scrubbing DEI from government websites, removing the mention of slavery from national parks, and targeting exhibits at the National Museum of African American History, just to name a few of many examples.

While I agree that those grieving the dead should be respected, I don’t condone the administration’s and right-wing news media’s sanctification of the recently assassinated MAGA influencer after they ignored they ignored the assassination of Minnesota State House Speaker, Melissa Horton, for whom the flag was not lowered.

Narih Lee, CC BY 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

Sadly, this is the first time in my life that I feel I need to choose my words very carefully. The freedom of the press and the freedom to express our opinions that our (quite conservative) teachers taught us about so proudly in elementary school is at risk. Even though Jimmy Kimmel has now been reinstated on some, but not all, of the ABC-affiliate stations, others who commented with concern about some of the things this leader said about black people, Jews, LGBTQ, women and other marginalized groups permanently lost their jobs.

But as writers and as human beings, our moral imperative is to speak truth to power, no matter how much we might dislike being goaded, or cowed, or threatened to stay quiet. Coming out of Rosh Hashanah, I realize this one of the things I need to do more of in the New Year.

Poet Ilya Kaminsky nails it here:

WE LIVED HAPPILY DURING THE WAR
And when they bombed other people’s houses, we
protested
but not enough, we opposed them but not
enough. I was
in my bed, around my bed America
was falling: invisible house by invisible house by invisible house.
I took a chair outside and watched the sun.
In the sixth month
of a disastrous reign in the house of money
in the street of money in the city of money in the country of money,
our great country of money, we (forgive us)
lived happily during the war.
#art for change

 

Leaning Into the Light

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I spent a couple of days this week playing tourist in Philadelphia. A highlight was the Barnes Foundation, where one person’s awe-inspiring collection of impressionist, post-impressionist, Greek, Egyptian, African, and early American art is crowded together in a fairly random way in 23 compelling rooms.

  Notable was the number of paintings by Cezanne and Renoir. There were at least one or two, if not more, works by these artists in every room. In fact, there were so many paintings by Renoir, I found myself wondering how he ever had time to create all of these in addition to the many I’d seen at other museums in the world.

Back in my teenage and early adult years in New York City, where I spent many hours wandering the halls of the Metropolitan Museum of Art with friends, learning from several who were serious visual artists, I, along with them, was a bit disdainful of Renoir. Too romanticized, we agreed. Too much focus on what’s pretty. But looking at Renoir’s paintings in these unsettled times gave me a new layer of appreciation. He’s zeroing in on gratitude, I thought. On what’s good in the world. He’s leaning into the light.

And, indeed, it was the way light shone so brilliantly through the canvas that kept my eyes drawn to his work. Unfortunately, the pictures I took (below) don’t really show how brilliant the light was and how much it warmed the colors.

Later that evening, I was invited by an old friend to attend a different arts-oriented event celebrating the city’s community leaders. This was organized and sponsored by Philadelphia Legacies, whose mission is to uplift the work of individuals who are giving back to the city. Among them were Rev. Dr. Respie M. Warren, a woman who has dedicated her life to bridging the gap between deaf and hearing communities; Georgie Woods, an influential media figure and civil rights activist; and Wilson Goode, first African American mayor of Philadelphia, who has continued his work as a change-maker through mentoring children impacted by incarceration. Local artists were commissioned to make portraits of these and other community leaders (media and social change pioneer, Tiffany Bacon; and Tennis Hall of Fame inductee and President of Black Women in Sports, Traci Green) so that residents of the city would learn about these people in their community and be inspired by them.

Wilson Goode (seated) looks at his portrait created by artist Oranda Curry Johnson

One might think of my trip to the Barnes Foundation and time at the Philadelphia Legacies dinner as two separate events in my day, and it’s certainly true that there was a huge difference in the style and ambiance of the art itself and the general demeanor of both events. But I found it inspirational to think of these as examples of the many ways that art can lean into the light and change lives by inspiring people to be their best selves, whether it’s used to remind us to seek gratitude in the small pleasures of daily life, or to take larger, braver steps toward making the type of world we want to see. #artforchange

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Chainsaws Gone Wild

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Photo by haemd: https://art.ngfiles.com/medium_views/ 6994000/6994772_2373943_haemd_ chainsawman.88461deeb7794d08f5f 382a77717451f.webp?f1756587284

Last fall, I was outside with my grandchild, Manu, when he heard a motorized noise and asked me what it was.

It didn’t exactly sound like a lawn mower, or a weed whacker. “Maybe it’s a chainsaw,” I said.

“Let’s go see it.”

He got in the stroller and we took off in search of the noise, taking a few wrong turns before we found the perpetrator–a very scary industrial-size leaf-blower, sucking up everything around it.

“I want to go home!” Manu shouted as soon as he realized what it was. He’s always hated leaf blowers.

At the time I didn’t find this incident particularly significant, except that Manu wouldn’t let go of his desire to see a chainsaw. In fact, for nearly a year after, every time he heard any kind of motor after that, he asked me if it was a chainsaw, even if the lawn mower, or the motorcycle, or the helicopter was clearly in sight. And he also asked me–often–to tell him the story of “Manu and the Chainsaw,” where I’d recount the chainsaw-turned-leaf-blower-search” in detail, embellishing shaggy dog style with my purplest toddler-appropriate prose.

The story always ended like this: Manu was very, very sad that he didn’t see a chainsaw, but Grandma said, ‘That’s okay, Manu. We’ll get to see a chainsaw some day.’

Last week, two houses down from his, the neighbors were cutting up a dead tree. Manu stood mesmerized, holding my hand at the edge of the grass, a little scared, a little awed, as the neighbors ran the chainsaw over and over through the dead wood.

***

I’ve been thinking a lot about this story, and its relationship to how we deal with things we anticipate once we see them.

Especially things that are unpleasant.

For months, we’ve been told fascism is coming, hovering at the edges of our democracy, eating away at it in small bites. We’ve been told that if we don’t turn the tides in three months, six months, nine months, or by the mid-terms at the latest, we’ll be doomed.

But fascism is here. Because ICE is here: Masked thugs over-running our communities, lawlessly breaking car windows, pushing their way into houses, taking undocumented people who have been here for years, as well as people with legal status, green card holders and even U.S. citizens.

In other words, kidnapping.

We may not have personally seen ICE yet; those of us who are privileged may feel like we still have time because in our day-to-day lives, everything is normal. We still wake up in the morning, work, exercise, garden, parent, make dinner, watch our daily TV shows. If we don’t pay attention to the news, we can live happily in a pretend world where nothing has changed.

On Labor Day, I went to a rally in support of a local farmworker who is one of over 2500+ victims taken by ICE in Massachusetts alone. An organizer who spoke said she was in the car accompanying this man to a court hearing when three cars surrounded them, threatening a head-on collision if they didn’t stop. Six men surrounded the car, pointed a gun at her face, and dragged him out.

This man’s only crimes: a broken tail light and wanting a better future for his family.

The whole incident took two minutes.

This man was following government protocols. He was on his way to a court hearing. If the government wanted to get rid of him so badly, they could do that through due process. But due process is no longer a given in our fascist state.

I’m pretty sure Manu had no idea what a chainsaw was when he first asked to see one. And while he’s now seen one in action, I’m still pretty sure he has no idea what a chainsaw can do when used inappropriately. If his parents, and I, and the other caring adults in his life have our way, he’ll never find out about the Texas Chainsaw Massacre.

But too many of the authorities in our country–ICE, CBP, and any police department that cooperates with them–are chainsaws out of control.

Meanwhile, like my grandchild, too many of us are just standing at the edge of the sidewalk gaping. Not because we’re bad people, because we just don’t know what else to do.

This is not meant to guilt-trip. If I knew what to do, I would happily end this post by saying so. I do believe, however, that acknowledging the reality of what’s happening is an important first step. And that art and activism; connection, community, and kindness all have a role in bringing about the world we want to see. Let’s hope it will ultimately be enough. #artforchange

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Art for Change

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Next week, I’ll be launching a month-long series of social media posts on the theme of Art for Change. I’ll be spotlighting various artists and artistic projects, posting questions for us to contemplate in our own creative journeys, and offering thoughts in text and short videos on issues related to writing in dark times. I hope you’ll stay tuned and tell others who might be interested. (People can follow me on Substack, Facebook, or Instagram.)

But today, I want to write about joy.

We could think of joy as the flip side of darkness, but I think it’s more integrated than that. As I walked through the woods early this morning, contemplating my Elul challenges this year (Elul is the month before Jewish New Year, where it’s traditional to do an extensive “soul-accounting” of places where you’ve “missed the mark” and then work on setting new intentions and forgiving both yourself and others you may have inadvertently wronged), I had an insight that the biggest challenge for me would be figuring out how to simultaneously hold onto the joy and gratitude of being alive without abandoning my responsibility to do as much as I can to work for a more just, equitable and humane world.

As beloved Charlotte’s Web author E.B. White articulated so perfectly,

“I arise in the morning torn between a desire to improve (or save) the world and a desire to enjoy (or savor) the world. This makes it hard to plan the day.”

I got some inspiration from the offerings of our local biennial Art in the Orchard show, which I went to this past Monday. So many of this year’s works evoked fantasy or whimsy, and many of the artists said in their statements that the darkness of the times inspired them to look even more purposefully for a way to showcase joy. Maybe we need a little bit of magical thinking, like imagining this sleeping dragon playing with a fairy, rather than breathing fire, as explained in the artist’s statement below the photo. (All the pictures are mine.)

And I loved these playful caterpillars–and these rocks, dancing for joy.

 

And here’s another image worth holding onto: the phoenix rising again!

My first question (a bonus before we get to the campaign): How do you manage to balance the heaviness and the joy? I’d love to hear your thoughts.

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Or one of my favorites–the phoenix rising again.

Re-Claiming Voice

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A few years ago, I started to lose my singing voice. It was a long, slow process where first occasionally, and then more and more often, I’d find myself in mid-song and unable to reach the next set of notes, my voice unraveling into some gravelly, raspy shadow of itself.

When the issue first started, I could usually get some semblance of my voice back by drinking some water and singing more softly, but it got to the point where I could barely get through a line without croaking. And while I’ve never been a diva singer or even a karaoke regular, singing has always been extremely important to me. I mourned the loss of my ability to sing as an inevitable consequence of aging, exacerbated by vocal disuse (I’d abandoned weekly singing in various choruses when the pandemic started in 2020) and felt so sad that I’d ever again be able to feel the ecstasy and musical rush I got from singing in harmony with others.

I tried to console myself with reminders to feel grateful that compared to all the aging ailments I could have, this one didn’t significantly threaten my health or functionality, but I couldn’t quite let go of the grief. Mental health is also important, and while it’s not my “art,” the way writing might be, singing is a key piece in my creative and emotional expression toolkit that keeps me balanced and happy.

For more than a year, I didn’t do anything other than complain about my loss. Then, I did something that felt really risky: I took voice lessons. I’d never had a voice lesson in my life, because I never really considered myself a singer. But I thought if I could just take a few lessons, I’d learn to do some exercises that might help restore at least some of my voice, kind of like vocal PT.

Of course, it wasn’t that simple–or that quick–but a year later, I have nearly my entire voice back–including some notes that have always been hard to reach. It’s such a thrill to practice with karaoke sound tracks on YouTube. And last week, for the first time in years, I went to a community sing, and instead of feeling frustrated and shut down, I was euphoric.

In addition to now thinking about re-joining a chorus sometime soon, I’m also thinking about the metaphor of finding voice. We writers talk all the time about the importance of establishing a credible and consistent voice, and how that voice functions to engage a reader and drive a piece forward. But voice does more than that. Writer Meg Rosoff says, voice is “about finding out who you are.” In addition, she makes the following three important points.

  1. You need confidence and self-knowledge to speak in your own Voice.
  2. The only real block to writing truthfully is being unable to access what is in your head and heart.
  3. A distinctive voice will not just help you write well. It will help you do anything at all well. (https://www.megrosoff.co.uk/blog/2011/11/14/how-to-find-a-voice)

Not singing, but one of the first times I publicly used my voice, reading poetry at age 22 at Eric’s Backroom in New York City, Photo by Lew Holzman

I’m thinking about this third point as I consider another aspect of voice: the need to raise our collective voices against injustice. And I hope that this mini-miracle of re-claiming my literal voice will help me believe in the much bigger miracle: that our voices matter and can–and will–make a difference, whether we use them for activism, writing, or singing.

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