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" Melody's like tweezers that go into the infection and pull out the wounded part. You can almost not stay silent in the face of a melody that matches your emotion. You feel seen. "

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" I spent my 18th birthday in jail. Charges were dropped as long as I promised never to return to the state of Kansas. My parents took me home to Louisiana. I lasted there a week. Then I ran away. "

Mary Gauthier

Long

Parents

" Art, when done well, creates empathy. "

" Being in recovery for a lot of years now, I've worked with a lot of people who've gotten sober and sat with a lot of folks who are suffering. Bearing witness is a really underrated thing; it's a big damn deal. "

" In my early years, I couldn't find a community. I couldn't find anybody like me. I felt so isolated. There was nothing but shame and loneliness. "

Mary Gauthier

Early

Loneliness

" Fundamentally, our job as songwriters is to sit down and listen. "

" We can't see ourselves very clearly. This I learned as a songwriter. I'm forever trying to figure out what my own truth is. "

" I got interviewed by one writer who started with the line, 'Mary Gauthier is a woman who clearly doesn't care how she looks.' I do too. It's just that I'm not very good at it. "

" When I finally got sober, I moved towards what I might have been if I hadn't been destroying myself when I was young. "

" I've got lots of problems. Being gay isn't one of them. "

" I think music is the highest form of healing. "

" They send women into combat without being prepared for women in combat. The men resented them being there, and it was just very, very difficult for them, and they had to fight for the respect they were earning. And that's all they want is the respect. "

" There's such a thing as a tribe - and family of choice. "

" I think, because of the kind of writer I am, I can't do it halfway. I can't do it without dedicating my entire life to it. I have to give it a hundred percent. "

" Recovery stabilized me; songwriting gave me a purpose. "

Mary Gauthier

Songwriting

Purpose

" I'm an old-fashioned folk singer. I stand in front of an audience with a guitar and a barstool. "

" My experience is that the universal is the personal. If you can get past your navel-gazing into the deepest part of yourself as a writer, you find everyone - we're all there. "

" As a songwriter, I was always mining my own depths, which were filled with confusion and darkness. "

" I have such a good life. It's something I couldn't have imagined in my wildest dreams. "

" Songs have been my greatest teachers and continue to be really important in my life. "

" Ultimately, what I want is for my songs to outlive me: I want my songs to keep being played even after I'm gone. "

Mary Gauthier

Gone

Even

" A lot of times, a bunch of songs have to be written to get to the next really good one. "

" I don't play everything I write. I mean, everything I write is not that good. I bring out into the world the ones I think that are really worthy of an audience's attention. "

" There's a universal inside of me. So if I tell my story, you're going to see parts of your story in it. I don't know which parts, but we all overlap. We're all very much alike. "

Mary Gauthier

Story

Know

" A song is an emotional lightning bolt - a good one, anyway. "

" I think each veteran's soul has something that it needs to say. I know from my own personal traumas, it's very hard to know what that is. But when I'm watching someone else struggle, it's not as confusing for me, 'cause it's not my struggle, so I can help identify that. "

" I got issues. Boy, have I got issues. "

" I don't ever want to tie a song in a little bow. Life doesn't work that way, and war doesn't ever work that way. "

" What I've found at 48 years old is that there's nothing about me that's unique. "

" I think it's a stereotype that soldiers don't talk, because my experience is that they will talk if they are met with empathy and no judgment. "

" It can take me many months to write one of my own songs. "