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" 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. "

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" I feel as though I came to music with something to say. It wasn't like that when I was younger. I didn't have the ability to articulate what it was I wanted to say. "

Mary Gauthier

Music

Say

Younger

" What I really like is this salted calamari - with jalapenos on top. "

Mary Gauthier

Top

Really

" When I became a songwriter, it was out of some sort of desperation. I needed to create something. I had to latch on to something, and the guitar was what I grabbed. "

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

" I'm from New Orleans, and I have a French last name - although I have no real relationship with my last name because it's not my name. I don't know my name. "

" I did not know that the wounds of war are often invisible. "

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

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

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

" When I first got sober, I hadn't read anything for six or seven years. I didn't have even that much focus. "

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

Mary Gauthier

Songwriting

Purpose

" I have got my story. Adoptees rarely get our stories. We only know what we are told. I don't even have my story, really. My mother won't tell me. She won't tell me who my father is. She won't tell me the story of my birth. "

" I long for real and true connection. It has been the theme of all the songs in my whole life. "

" I'm sort of stuck in adolescence in many ways, like most artists, and march to my own beat. "

" Art, when done well, creates empathy. "

" I'm a traveler and a vagabond and an observer, and the songs come through that. And that's just the way it's going to be. "

" By the time I got to songwriting, I had been faced with a lot of troubles as a result of my own collective of trauma. I was someone who instinctively figured out that writing songs about the struggle helps you with the struggle. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

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

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

" I'm a big fan of Lou Reed, and I do a lot of talking through songs. It's more effective with my vocal limitations and also more powerful to slightly sing sometimes. It depends on the emotion, but I'm never going to try to compete with great singers. "

" 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. "

" I learn something every time I go to work with a veteran. Every single time. "

Mary Gauthier

Single

Learn

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

" A lot of songwriters have written about soldiers and war, but very few have written with them. "

" I did not know that if a member of a family serves, the whole family serves. I did not know that the spouses of our service members carry such a heavy load. "

" I knew I had that Cajun heritage, that Acadian heritage; I just feel it. And my gut says Irish on the other side. Irish and French, that's what I feel. When you're young, it doesn't matter so much, but as you get older, I would suspect part of the ageing process is to wonder about your ancestors - who were they? What were their lives like? "

" I think having near-death experiences, they sure made me free. "

" I've come to terms with the fact that I'll probably be in therapy all of my life. "