It is currently my second of four years spent prostrate to the higher mind, and despite my toiling and toiling away, I feel no closer to fine. There have rarely been times in American history when queer people have been as visible and violently despised as today, and I have personally spent more than my fair share of mental energy trying to make sense of the chaos. In the interest of not adding to a thoroughly bloated economy of death and despair, I will not detail the horrors of the current historical moment, but the times are dizzying. To attempt to understand it all, I’ve found myself devoted to queer artists who have undergone similarly uneasy times. Of that ensemble, currently most dear to my heart is the Indigo Girls — particularly their song “Closer to Fine.” While most songs about the unintelligible nature of life, morality, and the world might read thoroughly emo, “Closer to Fine” takes the bleak sentiment and uses the absurdity to satirize life itself.
The song states plainly that however much one desperately desires an easy, pretty answer to life’s important questions, those answers will remain elusive. Listening to the song now, considering the questions we might be asking now are of a more immediately existential nature, such an appeal to ignorance seems petulant and lazy. However, this plea to the unknown is an invitation to nuance. While quick and easy answers are useful thought experiments, they rarely get at some universal truth of the world, and rather skirt the edge of what truly is meaningful. A million contradictory answers to the narrator’s questions have pointed her “in a crooked line,” and in order to resolve the contradictions, she instead turns to the invocation and commendation of the unknown. It is possible for her to delight in not having strict, legible explanations of every experience, and to take that as the good that it is.
Most relevant to the Swarthmore community is the song’s third verse, satirizing the collegiate education and, broadly, academic philosophy. As a student currently enrolled in an introductory philosophy course, I’ll admit that jabs at the department did get a chuckle out of me. However, the song presents critiques of both the academy and of ancient philosophers themselves. In seeking answers to serious global concerns, we can abandon the reality of our lives, and when we devote ourselves totally to abstract ideas and questions, we can lose our sense of simple joys essential to the human experience. The Indigo Girls describe college as “four years prostrate to the higher mind,” which they escape to become “free.” While I don’t necessarily agree with this statement, many of my classes encourage us to contradict and challenge academic hierarchies, the notion of an oppressive institution of truth creating a hierarchy denoting which ideas do and do not merit discussion reigns true in the academy’s contemporary role. Whenever I meet someone who is going to college solely for a lucrative engineering career, or who goes through their classes with no emotional connection to their work, I feel a deep sense of melancholy and dissatisfaction with the academy.
The Indigo Girls might challenge the current iteration of academic philosophy, but the text of the song itself presents as a deeply philosophical work. When listening to the lyrics, embracing the notion of ridding oneself of the strict need to categorize and, rather, delighting in the in-betweens, I immediately thought of Zhuangzi and the Daoist worldview. Zhuangzi believed that the Way was not approached by conscious, aware attempts to hold the world in your hands and look down, but that the world was best understood when existing in contradiction. By refusing the immediate aim of individual comfort and ease by embracing the difficulty of the world, the narrator extricates herself from this cycle of eternal meaning making and allows herself to sit at the crossroads. That might just be where the truth finds itself. The song also plays with the idea of with whom one can discuss serious questions of the world and it specifically disputes ancient wisdom. While Confucius remained adamant that the only people who are able to truly and thoughtfully engage with text are those who are serious in their pursuit of the Way, The Indigo Girls look to their friends as confidants because they help them “take my life less seriously” rather than more. Some of the most revealing conversations we have in life about philosophical issues will take place in deeply unserious conditions: at the dinner table, on the train ride back from Media, while pacing the rocks at Crum Ledge. Engaging with philosophical questions doesn’t have to be this deeply boring, strictly academic procedure, and playing with these questions in an approachable, common way allows us to get closer to answering our questions and to approach the deepest truths about our world.
While the song finally arrives at a sense of happiness, one of its most delightful metaphors is found in how we internalize global, existential fears. Rather than repeating boring aphorisms in the vein of other banal anthems, “Closer to Fine” understands that by avoiding fear and keeping oneself safe from feeling dangerous emotions, we only harm ourselves further. Rather than “sail[ing] my ship of safety,” riding a rickety boat through vicious and raucous waters, the Indigo Girls embrace the notion of “wrap[ping] my fear around me like a blanket.” The core of this notion explains that constantly seeking to negate the world’s hurtful aspects is an act of hubris only remedied by accepting your fear, allowing yourself to hold it, make peace with it, and feel it, however deeply as is necessary. In a time as thoroughly messy as today, this narrative of making peace with my reactions to world events, personally and communally, is a healthier and more appealing notion than some anthems that cast fear off to an uncomplicated resolution.
