lifeblood: songs: backgrounds: oh city man

2018-08-24: an interview with amy ray of indigo girls, qnotes:

gs: i love the duality of "oh city man," which features the builders of skyscrapers juxtaposed with moonshine makers, and the image of you walking down broadway during a manhattan blackout in "fine with the dark." even though you've long lived outside of a city, would it be fair to say that you feel the pull of urban living?

ar: i think that i'm mostly a country person. but i feel the pull of the dynamics of urban living, and the poetry of it. i've spent so much time in new york city, and cities like london and berlin, places where i feel the darkness and light, the pull of that, the patti smith of it. jim carroll and the basketball diaries and all my great punk rock icons. i feel their personalities and art in those spaces. i often have to have those spaces in my life and get down and walk the streets and spend all night long out on the town with myself and the city. it informs what i do. but i find it interesting that, even in the city, and the country, too, you have to think about what came before you; how things got built. what was sacrificed so that you can have what you have. all those things. that's the tie between the land i live on in georgia, which was cherokee land, and then you go to new york and you're walking among these incredible buildings built by people that were, in essence, slave labor. proud artisans working for rich people that were brilliant at their craft but none of it was for them. do you ever think about this when you're here? people in new york will say, "they just don't build buildings like they used to", when they are around historic areas. i'm like, "that's because they don't have a hundred people working for ten cents an hour, slave labor." it's like saying, "why don't they build castles anymore?"

gs: or pyramids.

ar: exactly!