Tracy Chapman Will Save Us All Today

Will you let her?

Photo by Ihor Malytskyi on Unsplash

I’m sitting in the living room, sipping my morning coffee. It’s doomsday or jubilee or just another day depending on who you are and what beliefs you hold about politics. For me, I’m a wreck with a bundle of emotions — cautious hope, despair over what we have become or what we’ve always been, indifference over anything of depth changing even if he is booted out, anxiety in the waiting.

I hear my other half begin to shuffle around the other room, followed by the sound of comfort only Tracy Chapman can bring. He has put on her self titled debut album as a balm for us to start this fateful day, and I instantly gain perspective.

For so many, this election is a case of life and death, rights and discrimination, acceptance and rejection; a whole host of real-life, everyday cause and effect. For me, as a woman who is white middle class cisgender relatively straight and non-disabled, it’s mostly a battle of emotion. I won’t downplay the impact politics has had on my psyche in the past six years. I also refuse to forget my privilege.

I continue to sip my coffee and remember the startling rapture I would feel as a little girl listening to “Fast Car”. I recall rediscovering the song in my teens and realise I used that piece of Tracy Chapman’s soul for my teenage angst-filled love…