lifeblood: listlogs: 2007v10n084-news

ig-news-digest        friday, october 26 2007        volume 10 : number 084

today's subjects:
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  [ig-news] amy interview from the sydney morning herald  [sherlyn koo <sher]

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date: fri, 26 oct 2007 10:46:24 +1000
from: sherlyn koo <sherlyn@pixelopolis.com>
subject: [ig-news] amy interview from the sydney morning herald

hi kids,

here's an article from the sydney morning herald (my local paper!).
you can read it online at:
http://www.smh.com.au/news/gig-reviews/indigo-girls/2007/10/25/1192941225550.html

i was looking online yesterday and there appear to still be an
embarrassing number of seats left for the canberra show and for the
second sydney show (the first show is almost sold out though).  so if
you have any friends either of those places let them know that they
should go buy their tickets right now!

brandi carlile and patty griffin are both in oz in november as well.
and disappear fear will be here in december!

whoohoo!
sherlyn

- ---begin forwarded article---
indigo girls

bernard zuel
october 26, 2007

when the first, self-titled indigo girls album came out in the us in
1989, it was during a very conservative period in american politics,
the country not long out of one small war and on the brink of a bigger
one. there was a sense that the former decade's social change had been
wound back or was under serious threat. yet there was some kind of
hope that change was around the corner in the songs of the two indigo
girls, amy ray and emily saliers.

there's a new indigo girls album this year and, just as their early
songs sound as if they could have been made today in this acoustic
folk-pop resurgence, in many ways it feels like american history is
repeating.

"yeah," ray chuckles. "it's pretty cyclical, isn't it?"

cyclical, or is it that perhaps things don't really change? "probably
both," she says, "or maybe that it changes so slowly that it's not
noticed in your lifetime. because it certainly is a different world to
what it was but human nature doesn't change, does it?"

even so, there has always been a sense of optimism in the girls' songs
and their vigorous political activism - no matter the issue - that
change is possible. how can ray maintain that faith that change is
possible if she thinks that human nature doesn't change or, if it
changes, it may only be at the edges?

"well, i think for me it's not about changing human nature, it's about
keeping the balance. in a small way, from day to day, there are the
small battles that we can win and chip away at the evolution of us
becoming better people," she says. "i think it's a really slow process
but i think we can make life less miserable for some people and
balance things out. if we didn't have any optimism, and we didn't even
try, it would just be crap. so for me i'm an optimist and a cynic at
the same time."

that attitude informs the girls' more nuanced approach to politics,
eschewing the easy position many others take of "they're all rotten as
soon as they decide they want to be politicians", as one local
musician said to me recently. to me, that is saying there is no chance
to change, that you can have no faith in any politicians as human
beings - which is, in effect, to say we have no faith in ourselves.

"i agree," ray says. "especially in the political system, a lot of
people give up because they think, 'why even vote?' there is a
visionary that comes along again every now and then and shifts things
a bit and it's worth having a little faith.

"human nature doesn't change but what does evolve is our ability to
control the negative things in our nature. it is easy to assume that
an older time was a purer time but that's not true necessarily. we
just have to use the knowledge that we gain and do the right thing.

"with the [us] democratic campaign at the moment, everyone wants to
pick all these negative things out of all of them, but a few of these
people i think are visionaries, the real thing.

"we have been so blindsided by how corrupt the bush administration is
that we don't even know how to fight. and we need to."

this story was found at:
http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2007/10/25/1192941225550.html

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end of ig-news-digest v10 #84
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