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The New Yorker Radio Hour
Podcast Extra: The State of The Union Songbook Live
01:06:18
Michael Friedman performs his State of The Union Songbook live — songs that capture the confusion, hope, and despair of the strangest presidential election in American history.
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- [00:02]
A
This is a special podcast bonus from the New Yorker Radio Hour. All this year, composer Michael Friedman has been a regular guest on the program, playing songs he's written based on interviews with voters across the country. On October 26, Friedman performed the State of the Union songbook at WMYC's Jerome Al Green performance space. A little warning. Some of the lyrics include rough language and racial epithets. Friedman talked about the songs and the interviews with the New Yorker. Sarah Larson Here's Michael Friedman.
- [00:37]
B
Hi. Hello. So I'm just going to cold open this. This is a song that I wrote yesterday. It's an interview. It's verbatim from an interview that I did in New Jersey this month at a. It's really new. Honestly, I like to piss certain people off. Like when I lived on the Upper west side, I used to wear a Don't blame me, I voted for Bush T shirt. And if it wasn't for my business, my car would have a sign saying, you know, vote Trump. Honk once, Hillary for jail, honking twice. But I'm tired of all the bs. Let's talk about issues. Who cares what Donald Trump said, who Bill Clinton screwed? Do you believe in smaller government? Do you believe in freedom or not? I'm a Midwestern boy. Quincy, Illinois Forgot Tonia, as PBS calls it, because you drive for two hours, never see a bigger city, and never hit a major interstate. Dad was a carpenter. Mom didn't work. The only time that she worked was for the census every 10 years. But she stopped when it got too dangerous. There's a lot of meth houses out in the middle of nowhere. Two daughters with my first wife. We don't talk about why we broke up. I don't talk about the infidelity. I don't tell them I left because their mother is crazy. Anyway, back when I was in the army in Kansas, I started buying property for nothing. Down. Then the first Gulf War started. Everyone left town and my properties were worthless and I'm bankrupt. So I bailed out and I landed on Wall street and on paper we were making beaucoup profits and I kept my money invested in the firm. Then lo and behold, the owners of the company have embezzled the customer's and when that happens, they indict everyone. So I'm under indictment even though they stole my money. So I bounced out of that, ended up at an Internet startup, really successful till the Internet went bust in 2001. So one of my clients worked in online poker. In two years I'm playing online poker for a Living. And then they banned Internet poker this time. I'm remarried and I have a new child, so I bought two vending machines. My wife grew up in a dirt farm in the middle of China. Think communist dirt farm, where they tell you what to farm. That's the way she grew up, in a hardscrabble existence. So she became a nurse and got the hell out of there. And she certainly thinks America's this shining beacon on a hill. I mean, we're either that a bastion of freedom or we're not. I think we are. We may be tarnished and we may have have done some screwed up things, but the spirit is alive and well. And the vessel that they found to put it in is Donald Trump. He may be imperfect, he may be crude, he may even lie, but he isn't corrupt. He represents a real change from what's going on. The embodiment of what me and a lot of people feel, that it's us versus the political class. And when I say I want to take my country back, I'm guessing your politics are left of center. I don't know how liberal or not, but I've heard Bernie Sanders. It's the same frustration on the left as we have in the Tea Party. I can't call myself a Republican anymore. The rule of law. I just want to see the rule of law because I'm still paying for a pretty minor mistake, having worked for a couple criminals, God forbid, and I'm still being punished for that. And Hillary can't go to jail for her fucking email. Why the hell not? If that was the Republican, look what they did to Scooter Living. Do we live in a banana republic or in a real republic? She lied. There should be an investigation. I want to see those investigations. I want a clean house. Justice Roberts, are you aware that he wrote both the for and the against opinions on Obamacare? Originally he wrote what would have been the majority if he voted with the conservatives. It was a scathing indictment. It's clearly unconstitutional. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out they got him. How did they get him? Go look up Justice Roberts adopting children. He adopted two white kids. Don't know why he didn't adopt American kids. Instead he goes and adopts two Irish kids via Argentina, which is illegal. And somebody found out about it and they threatened to expose him if he didn't change his vote. I will bet my life that's what happened. And when Trump says Hillary and Obama made isis, it's about the sale of arms to Syria after Libya fell. That's why the ambassador was in Benghazi, not Tripoli. I mean, it's not common knowledge. There's not a bit of proof, but it's been hinted at enough. So I'm pretty sure that's why they let the ambassador die. And that, my friends, is treason. You know, you know, when I was young and naive, you don't see these things, but the older you get, the more you see the progression of things. I started in the middle of nowhere without any advantages. My grandpa was a steel worker, my dad was a carpenter. And yeah, all right, I'm male, I'm white, I've got privileges. But I worked hard to get where I am from nothing. So I have very little sympathy for gays, blacks or women's cause. I know what it was like when I was a kid. And now you've got everything that you ask for. You've got everything that you want. What about me? And you know, this is the Flight 93 election and this is 911 and you are on a plane. Who do you want flying the plane? Wow. They were like, maybe start with one of the more empathetic songs.
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C
That's a perfect song for this moment. Thank you, Michael Friedman. Thank you for being here, everybody.
- [07:34]
B
Hi, everyone. Hello.
- [07:39]
C
So hello to everybody in the green space here. And we're also on Facebook Live right now.
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B
Scary Facebook Live.
- [07:48]
C
I just want to introduce Michael Friedman. Michael is the Obie winning composer and lyricist behind many great works of musical theater, most of which I've seen and loved. Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson, the Fortress of Solitude and lots of great works by the civilians which do investigative theater, including this Beautiful City, which is about Colorado Springs.
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B
And there's a Colorado Springs song. I had to go back to Colorado Spring.
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C
You return.
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B
We will hear back from Colorado Springs later this evening. For those of you, you who really care deeply about Colorado Springs.
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C
So that was a heck of a song. That was not on Facebook Live, but we just heard a great conspiracy song. Yeah, great angry white man song.
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B
Yeah. I call that song Freedom. That interview went on for two and a half hours. It was a very long interview. I really like the guy. He was very angry.
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C
A lot of good ideas.
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B
He has a lot of ideas. I hadn't gone down. I've interviewed. So this project, I guess I should explain. I started going to various states around the primary circuit in January, starting in Iowa. I kind of flew to Des Moines with a credit card and a dream. And I've been interviewing people around the country just. But not people who are involved necessarily. In, like, the political races or in the primaries themselves, but people who were in states where things were happening and just grabbed people, whoever I could get. And so a whole bunch of interviews and then found the ones that seemed interesting and got to turn those into songs, which is all stuff that comes from my work with the Civilians, which is a company that does all kinds of investigative work. But especially specifically, I've done a lot of work with Steve Kosson at the Civilians on sort of turning interviews directly into songs. And what does that mean to do verbatim, to take someone's words and turn it into a song? There are some ethical questions that get involved and release forms and other things, but that's been part of this process. Has been that. And then part of the process was. Honestly, Sarah, you were the inspiration for this.
- [10:04]
C
I was.
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B
Well, last year, I was in last summer. Summer of 20, 2015, I was up in Massachusetts, kind of feeling disconnected from the process of anything and a little disconnected from, like, the rest of the country or maybe from why I was making work.
- [10:20]
C
You were in Williamstown.
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B
I was in Williamstown, where you can be disconnected in the woods. And we had done a residency at the Met Museum, the Civilians. And I had gotten to write a song which was based on an interview with a young man about this amazing painting in the American wing of John Brown, the Last Days of John Brown, also known as John Brown Kissing a Slave Baby. Also known as John Brown Kissing a Baby Before His Execution. And you can see how even the titles of paintings have strangely political outcomes. And I'd gotten to write this song, which had felt, really. I hadn't written a song in a long time that I'd felt so connected to. And what was also cool was, like, we did the interview, and I wrote the song, like, two days later. And then an actor learned the song two days later. And then we performed it, and then it was done.
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C
And I just want to say that I saw that Met show, and it was so great. It was. The Civilians were at the Met Museum for a year, and there were three different shows, I believe. And I saw the last one, the American Wing one, And they talked to curators, and they talked to people looking at paintings and different American works of art. And it was incredibly moving, and it's such a simple, great idea. And it touched on all kinds of themes. That will come back up tonight.
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B
Yeah. Well, it was cool to look at the American wing as American, which I'd never. I'm such an idiot that I'd never thought of it as, like, oh, right. The American wing, like, defines some. I guess everyone in this audience. Something about America, that. That is what the American wing is, but still, it's called the American wing, which is a funny name. So that song from that show about the American wing, we have, I believe, Jeremy Pope, the amazing performer Jeremy Pope, coming out any moment now.
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C
And he will sing it.
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B
He's going to sing the song. John Brown. This interview is from spring of 2015.
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D
This painting, John Brown kissing the slave baby as he walks to his execution. Like, it makes me feel suspect, and it makes me feel. I don't know if I trust him. John Brown, I mean, okay, I see you kissing the slave baby, but why is this the one moment we chose to save up this man's life here? The abolitionists kissed the black slave boy. And what about the baby's mother? That unnamed woman forced to be the.
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B
Other.
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D
Made into a public spectacle, endangered so this man could kiss her baby and get made into a painting. And why does it have to say sleigh boy down here on the sign chest, baby. That's not history. That's not history to say slave boy. That's the bullshit of America forcing something on me. John Brown kissed the slave baby. John Brown opened his mouth to rally the slaves to tell you, you are this and you are that. Another man trying to tell me who I am. And I mean, I am who I am. I'm just me. I'm just representing the black man that I am. But specific kind of blind us in a way, you know, specifics are necessary. Like, please don't deny I'm brown skin, 5 foot 10, 154, and feeling great. Like, don't deny that. Cause it's rude. But also, don't walk up to me and say, hello, 5, 10, 1 5, 4 black men. Like, that's all you saw of me. That's the bullshit of Americ. Bullshit of America that makes me feel suspect. Like the woman in the painting who isn't sure about John Brown and why he needs to kiss her baby. And hundreds of years later, I'm still wondering what you need from me. And if we need to talk about this painting is a genuine thing, why do you need to talk to me? It's hundreds of years later and the only genuine thing I see is Ferguson in Florida. Oklahoma frat boys singing how they'd hang me from a tree before I sign with their fraternity. At least they're singing honesty. And the only white man in the painting I respect who seems genuine is the man looking away, holding his Gun. I was at work waiting tables. Gave the customer a menu, but I had to take another order first. The guy goes, I'm ready. I said, wait a second. And I turn around and say, how may I end? I hear lousy nigger. And. And. And I still felt the need to go ahead and serve him. I think it was proving that I wasn't lousy. You see, that word hurt me more than nigger did. Cause I can handle nigger. I've been called nigger before. I knew about nigger as a kid. I knew what it was. I can defend myself against it. Like the woman in the painting, hardened by the word slave. Hardened by the way words tell you. You are this thing. Now I feel like I have this hardened wall against that.
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B
Oh, God.
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D
I didn't expect us to get real today.
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B
I'm good.
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D
I'm good. This is exhausting. Have you ever seen the movie Little Princess? It's this movie about this white girl, and she used to live in India. She had this great life with her dad. Then her dad got in an accident, and they took her away from her dad to this boarding school for little girls. And she meets this little black girl. And those two girls get to know each other. They just say, hey, I'm a girl. You're a girl. And you know, the conversation these girls are gonna have, it's gonna be everything. It's gonna be.
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B
So that was the amazing Jeremy Pope that night. Sadly, now you get a lot of Michael Friedman. So, moving along, this next song, I'm not going to introduce them too much. This is Iowa in January. Remember Iowa in January? I remember Iowa in January. It was really cold. This is a song with a member of the mock caucus society of a high school in Carlisle, Iowa. He's a senior in high school. I moved here when I was 10. I like it here. You know everyone. Everybody knows you. I'm 18 years old, so I can caucus. I can do everything but drink and gamble. My generation didn't grow up with Gipper and Tip working together to get things done. We grew up with Bush against the Democrats, Obama, GOP tearing the fabric of the nation apart. So we started the mock caucus at school to have a way to hear different opinions. Like that guy there, He's a senior, and he calls himself a fascist. I don't really think that he's a fascist. And that guy Andy in the Trump shirt, he listens to his dad a lot. His dad listens to a lot of Rush Limbaugh. And he tends to, you know, repeat what he Hears. And sure, we're in Iowa, so our school is like 97% white. I was raised in a split household. Mom's a Democrat, Dad's a Republican. Never ever talked politics in our house. First election, I remember mom was for Kerry, dad was for Bush. We never knew why. We never talked about it. But last year, after the State of the Union, I got into a discussion with my dad. He's a businessman and a Reagan Republican, and he grew up with trickle down economics. And then mom got in there and they were really going at it, and they started shouting at each other. And that's why we never talk about politics. In my house, at my church, we believe everyone's welcome at the table. So I'm trying to use that to expand my political beliefs, even though I might not believe the same things as other people, like gay rights or the refugee crisis. Everybody says, oh, they're Muslims, they're probably terrorists, which is completely reductive. Or Black Lives Matter or feminism. Prison reform. If I want to support them, is that even allowed? And now there's this big issue now of don't offend people, that's pushed a lot of younger people, like, push them towards certain viewpoints as they don't want to offend anyone. Someone says, merry Christmas, and someone says, I'm Muslim or something not Christian, and they are offended. Like, we had this bomb threat my freshman year, and a friend of mine at the time, he jokingly posted one on Facebook that he was a Muslim in the school. We had like one or two Muslims at school. And at the time. So that when it gets more difficult and with all the problems we've had, like things with racism, sexism, homophobia, all the stuff that's really come up in the last few years that have really pushed people away from having strong viewpoints on things that have led to bigger problems, like shootings and stuff that have made people question whether they didn't just step in or maybe they just let things slide. When the Sandy Hook school shooting happened, I remember it still felt normal to see Twitter and the news. Well, another school shooting, and my brother was about five years old, the same age as a lot of those kids. And we shielded him from the news so he wouldn't be afraid to go to school. I am the owner of three guns, and I've been raised to respect guns and understand what they can do. And what kills me is when the San Bernardino shootings happened. At this point, my brother's been exposed to other mass shootings, and he asks my mom, why are There so many bad people. But I'm optimistic. I look for the silver lining. Looking at the future, my generation doesn't want to repeat the mistakes we're watching. And when I think about the future, I want to design video games like Infamous from Sucker Punch and Destiny from Bungee. Mass Effect from Bioware. The kind of games I like are sci fi shooters, the future ones where you can make any world you want. Where you can make any world you want. I have to go. I have a history exam at 9. 45. American history from World War I to present times. Yeah, I'm ready for it. Thanks. The next song was conducted in Dallas in February of this year. And it was in Oak Cliff at a very wonderful barbecue restaurant with this guy. Well, he pretty much tells the whole thing, but he is an undocumented activist. So my story is this. Born in Mexico, raised in the United States, undocumented. I grew up in south Oak Cliff, which is of the poor part of Dallas. Moved around a lot to a lot of places. Separated from my mother for 20 years, she stayed in Mexico to be a nurse while my dad stayed here to be an undocumented worker. When I was 13, my dad got deported. You come home to an empty house. He's no longer there. He's no longer there. But each time I come back to Dallas, I come back to Oak Cliff and I move to a better side. I was making pretty good money, so what I did was I found the most expensive apartment in Oak Cliff and I took it. It was nice, but from time to time, you'd hear gunshots and go, I guess it's still Oak Cliff. At the age of 18, I got my first job. At 20, I got fired. At age 22, same thing. I got fired again because my documents didn't match up. I decided I was going to deport myself because I was tired of all of the bullshit. Like, one time I saved $5,000 to buy a new. I end up spending it on getting my papers fixed by an attorney. Within three weeks, that attorney had $3,000. I never heard from him again. And eventually you get tired. But then there was this big march, and that kind of ignited the idea of, like, hey, there's a lot of us. I started doing more, like, radical work. Hunger strikes, planned arrests, until people were saying, oh, this guy is kind of crazy. I started doing small campaigns, but campaigns are, you know, flawed by design. The people are just a means to an end. When a politician says, I want to get out the Latino vote, they just want us to vote for Them. And I've sold myself to the highest bidder before, but now I'm like, to hell with that shit. I'm going back to my roots. If Trump wins, I see, like, Gestapo style raids, crazy stuff. Maybe people who don't give a shit who the President is will wake the hell up. Like I say, if you're under attack, you can either run or fight. Oh, Arizona. My mentor called and said, do you want to fight the sheriff in Arizona? And I was like, I have to go to school. He was like, to hell with school. And I was like, hell, yeah. We did all kinds of crazy things against him, sabotaged his events with, you know, with a political theater. We took like chickens into his office. But Arizona was. It was scary. I wouldn't drive in Arizona. I would be so scared because they can pull you over. Scariest thing, we were canvassing. They pulled us over. I'm not driving. The other guy next to me is driving. They asked for his license and registration. Then the cop asked me for the same. I'm like, I'm not driving. I'm from Texas. And he's like, yeah, but we still need your license and registration. And I'm undocumented. Have my Mexican passport, which is something you are never gonna show a policeman. And luckily, in my wallet, I had my Sam's card. And so that's what I showed him. I showed him my Sam's card and it had my picture. The picture was blurry. And he took it and said, okay, yeah, if you buy in bulk, you must be American. You must be American. I'm going to have a little water from my water bottle. So I have another song from Texas. This is a driving tour that I was given by one of the first reporters, African American reporters ever hired by the Maine newspaper in Fort Worth. And it was great. He was like, I don't want to do an interview, but I would love to drive you around in my car and. And show you Fort Worth. So I kind of got his vision of what Fort Worth is, which is. Have you ever driven around Fort Worth? It's a very complicated city. Fort Worth has always been the city where the west begins. And Dallas is the place where the east peters out. My great grandmother was born here. When there were not a lot of slaves, there were free blacks, Comanches, Mexicans. Till the south took over for a while. Three blocks that way is where I was born, in a hospital run by a colored surgeon. That's my high school, created as a colored school in 1882, but it was closed in 1973, when they integrated the schools and whites didn't want to have to go to the colored school. That was the Masonic Hall. It's been vacant for at least 15 years now. That's the old post office. It has marble floors, columns, brass tables. But it's vacant, too. Down that way is the stockyards. There was a time Fort Worth had both packing plants, Swift and Armor. They were killing I don't know how many thousands of cows a day. And they employed like. I'm not even sure. Now they run Longhorn down the street twice a day, eight or nine lazy cows. And the tourists gather and they love it. This is the old T and P building. There was a colored waiting room in there. And when they redid it, we made them keep the waiting room as a tribute to the railroad workers. This is the Santa Fe station. This is where the black business district was. These two streets, Calhoun Jones, all the way down to the courthouse were all black. Now, I'm trying to think. Today the only piece of property downtown owned by blacks is the church. Yeah, that was integration. And that public art there is a tribute to those black businesses. And the rest is a parking lot. It is what it is. This is the Fort Worth Star Telegram. They wouldn't print a picture of a black man in the paper unless he had killed or raped a white woman. So you can imagine my father's astonishment when I was hired as a reporter there. Across the street is the Fort Worth Club, where the muckety mucks are. The difference between Dallas and Fort Worth. Fort Worth has much better rich people. That's the police department. The police, well, they're better, though. We've had several incidents in the last few years that have ended up costing people's lives, costing the city millions of dollars. When a cop was drunk, there were eight of them drinking. And one of them ended up killing this pregnant lady two blocks from her house. They tried to make it look like she was drinking or had a drug problem. She was going to the McDonald's. The cop had been drinking on West 7th street and ran her over. That's the courthouse built where the old Fort Worth was. When I was growing up, there were major. Two major department stores there. There aren't any more. But Leonard Brothers was the largest department store west of the Mississippi. We used to come downtown every Saturday to go to the movie theater, the black movie theater. And we'd come downtown, play on the courthouse lawn. And Leonard Brothers had separate black and white restrooms. And the courthouse, of course, had separate water Fountains and restrooms. That was justice in America going back to slavery and Jim Crow. The poorest white person was. The only thing they had going for them was they were better than any black person. And that's what we see happening again. People think something has been taken from them. Their country, not my country. Their country, not my country. Over here is another public art project, the Vaquero statue. The Latino cowboy, which almost didn't get up. They had accepted the design, but the artist added a gun, which the people on the committee said, yeah, the vaquero was a cowboy, but he wasn't running around with a gun. So there was this big fight, but this is Texas, so they left the gun kicking my water over.
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C
Oh, Michael, those were great songs. There are a lot of guns in those songs.
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B
I, in my interviews, have interviewed, like, in like, over a hundred interviews, have interviewed, like, four people who didn't own guns. Even in. Even that high school kid. The high school. Yeah, well, the high school kids all had guns. But, yeah, no, no. That was one of the few things that was a constant, was. I started. It's like learning to ask people where they go to church, which is a thing for me as a Philadelphian who now lives in New York. Like, that's just the question you ask. And another one was, how many guns do you own? And they aren't loaded questions. They're just normal. So those are things that I. Again, I'm. I'm dumb about things, so I learn things slowly.
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C
Well, then I was thinking in the song about the Iowa caucus, which feels so fresh and innocent for just. I listened to these songs again today, and I was just thinking about. That was back in January, before so much of this awful stuff had happened. It's about this high school kid. It's. It's theoretical. They're doing a mock caucus. So it's sort of. There's like an innocence to it.
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B
It was. They were really. It was a very. I mean, that's part of. In all this process, trying to remember what that time was like. I mean, there's a song coming up, actually, that's about trying to remember the innocence of the Iowa. Of also those debates around that time. I mean, yeah, it does feel like. Remember when we were innocent in January of 2016? Which is something I never felt like I thought I'd be saying.
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C
No, I know, but he was talking about how he loves to play video games. He wants to be a video game designer and how he likes shooter games, and he wants to create his own world. You can create Your own world. And not to be too corny or heavy handed, but I was just thinking about that and John Brown and how the dream of America is to create our own world or create one's own world. And that's tied to guns.
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B
Yeah, well, and that this year, that's just how I've done is this combination of despair and utopia, which probably is like the most dangerous combination there is. But I think I found that on the left and on the center and on the right and on the far right and the far left and whatever these terms that don't mean anything anymore mean. But I feel it too, which is this weird sense of like desperation for some perfect future simultaneously with like the horror and despair of the present.
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C
Yeah.
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B
And I've never felt. I've never felt that was the universal. Every one of these songs, like, goes to very sad places and also these sort of. Yeah, I want to design video games so you can make any world that you want. It's like, oh, in video games, I guess.
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C
But the thing that's so nice about this project, I think is that it gives us perspective on all this stuff because, you know, for a minute we can kind of step back from it and think about all these people in non enraged or terrified ways though, I'll say.
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B
And I'm just looking at the order. Oh yeah, that's what we're coming to. So what I'll say is sometimes inhabiting. I found that inhabiting these things. I will admit that when I started singing about how much I wanted to jail Hillary Clinton, I got actually kind of an adrenaline rush, which explains maybe something.
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C
Even though you don't want to jail?
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B
No, even though I do not as a person. But when I was playing that and one of the questions I. Of this whole thing has been, I think we find in the next song was, which is from South Carolina, a song called the Plum Tree, where inhabiting this character was really complicated for me. And we all got in kind of some complicated arguments about the song. Yeah, maybe I should just do. I spent a very long dark week in Charleston, South Carolina. So this song is from Charleston, South Carolina, and it's called the Plum Tree. I grew up downtown, four or five blocks from here, but I really grew up in the woods, as you can tell by the way I talk. I think we have too many rednecks here standing on our guns like me. I'm Kappa Alpha Robert E. Lee waving the stars and bars. I mean, growing up as a kid, I was hunting all the time. Somerville, James island, where my Daddy was born. I used to hunt with my cousin. Well, my father's first cousin. So we're second cousins three times removed and one time dislocated or something like that. He and I lived on the river, shot dale quail, deer quail, woodcock, rabbits, doves, just about anything that was in season. I just thank God I came along when I did. It was a beautiful time. These days, you can hardly find any woods there. You can't hunt there anymore. And, Michael, I'm just nuts about the fact that character has gone to nothing in this country. And I don't know when you young folks are gonna wait to that. Well, something's gotta happen. I mean, our country's the Titanic going towards the iceberg. And I'm thrilled by Trump. I mean, I've got MC Emotions, but I'm glad that he's upset. The apple cart. So many politicians have made billions of dollars from being politicians, and it runs the gamut. Strom Thurman was in there for life. Harry Reid, who was a pauper when he came in, is now worth millions of dollars. And people in this country are more interested in yelling and screaming. We all have these phones, and the next person who says to me that time is money, I'm just gonna puke. Time is not money. And to me, it all comes down to character. Like how about the way we handled the tragedies last year, The Emanuel Nine. I mean, with as many black folks as we have around here, even that terrible shooting in North Charleston where the policeman shot Walter Scott, there was terrible outrage in the community about that. The policeman is in jail. And that family, when they made that statement, we don't want all you political activists coming here. You're not invited. That just spoke volumes about the community. I mean, when I was growing up, the only black people you knew were servants. We had servants. 15 cents an hour as servants. Otherwise, they were just people who lived somewhere up there. We had a maid, and we were not a wealthy family. We lived at 61B Montague Street. We rented, but we had a maid. She lived uptown. Her name was Rena, and she was a black woman. She was like another mother to me. And the most embarrassing thing I've ever faced in my life was I came out on the porch and I had planted a Japanese plum tree that, you know, had plums, and kids always liked them. There were three little black boys up in the tree. And I came out and I saw that they were stealing from me. And I yelled out, hey, you niggers, get out of My tree. And Lena was emptying the garbage. She came running out the front of the porch and she grabbed me and she said, let me tell you something. You better think before you use that word again. If I hear you again, I will wash your mouth out with soap. Thank you, Lord, that you've opened the eyes of our hearts to be able to see the fact that bringing down the flag in the state house, of all things, no, it needed to come down and we can still have it in our house, share the remembrance of it. But, you know, it was time. We've come a long way. Thank you, Lord, for bringing Michael into my life. Bless this. Amen. That song is hard to sing. The next song we're going to do is this song. I was in Colorado Springs at Colorado College, so this is our Colorado Springs song. This song is called Student Debt. It was with a a young woman that I met at Colorado College. And I have to say, one of the things that I found most upsetting about this process was discovering that I am a generation removed from college students because I like to think of myself as still totally the same age as a college student, but in that way that it also brought up some of the ways in which I the generations judge each other. And this I actually interviewed her. I was so confused and upset by our first interview because I admired her so much and found what she was talking about. So I went back and I actually flew back to Colorado Springs just to interview her again to have her explain some stuff to me. And we can talk about that after. Of like what? So hopefully do we have Kristaln Lloyd? There she is, Kristalyn Lloyd, who's now appearing. Thank you for just suddenly doing the song. Who's now appearing in the amazing show on Broadway, Dear Evan Hansen, which you should see. She's starring in that show. So very good. It's going to start previews very soon, so she's going to be performing. Student Deb.
- [44:37]
E
I'm registered in Colorado. Couldn't vote in the primaries. I had a class thing, so I wasn't able to do that. It's been hard to follow the primaries. I don't have tv, so the way I get my information is like Facebook where everyone is posting these arguments. That's been really hard to piece together because there's so much coming at me at once and I don't know which one is legit. I'm from Atlanta, but after being in Georgia forever, I was like, I need to get out of here first. I went to public school like my mom's an assistant principal and there's a lot of corruption, like with the standardized test. Supposedly some of the teachers changed some of the answers so they wouldn't lose their jobs. And then I switched to a private high school, one of like 10 black kids. And that was a total culture shock. It was like, oh, wow, people are actually rich and they have a lot of money and get cars when they turn 16. And politically it was like, they're gonna take my parents money. And it's like, they're not going to take your parents money. And senior year, I kind of took a break from religion, which was like a big deal. And I got in an argument with my mom. I'd always gone to church every week and I had always gone through these phases, like, yes, yes, God. Then like, I don't know. Yes, yes, God. I don't know. And my mom is from Perry, Georgia, where church is, I guess, really important. I mean, I wouldn't want to live there. People don't get out. It's. They know. Everybody seems to know each other and they all live near each other and they go to school together and they ride the bus together and there's a lot of cookouts. So I told my mom I didn't believe in God and was questioning it and she was like, I'm not gonna pay for college. So I had to apply for some loans and it came down to like, money. So I ended up here. Yeah, Colorado Springs is a very strange place. A lot of religious presence, a lot of military presence, and a lot of conservative presence surrounding us, which makes people not want to go out and meet people. And this is supposed to be like this liberal school, but I guess maybe I don't know what that means cuz people here are very hesitant to like try and really understand things they don't know. Like last year with the Yik Yaks. Oh, there's this anonymous app where you can post like anonymous content. And we had a whole week where all these racist things were posted, like, go back to the cotton fields, like black women aren't beautiful. And then we had to have an assembly on it. And that was a disaster. And the teepee. The teepee is for Nae sue, the Native American Student Union. And the teepee has always been disrespected. And they posted on Yik Yak, which I guess is always a bad idea. And of course people started commenting about how Native Americans are alcoholics, how the government is just giving them money and don't play the victim and shut up. You've Never lived in Atipi. And I think a lot of people don't even know that Nae sue exists. And I think there's a lot of things people don't understand and don't want to understand. Like with the election, I'm a little nervous. My friends and I don't know who to vote for for if Bernie doesn't make it. We, of course, don't want to vote for Trump, but we also don't want to vote for Hillary. There does seem to be on campus this big divide between Hillary and Bernie. But, like, what is the appeal of Hillary? Because the people I know who are for Hillary are very for her. And they talk about her a lot and they, like, worship her. And so she's like, really funny. She was on that TV show Broad City. But sometimes when you bring up the stuff she's done, that's not okay. They kind of just ignore it. I don't know. I actually really wanna know who my mom is gonna vote for. I think she's probably gonna vote for Hillary. She doesn't really talk about politics much. I asked her and there was no response. So I just don't know. I know a lot of people think, oh, Bernie can't win, it can't happen in America. It's not realistic. And that's the big thing, what they see as realistic to what America is like. I try not to think about how going to make money. It's like one of those things that I know is there one of those things I'm gonna have to think about what to do about after college that I'm trying to avoid because I haven't started getting any bills for my loans yet. I never think about retirement. I mostly think about ways that I can still live a decent life. And I've come to the conclusion a lot of people in my family had kids really young. Like my mom had me at 21, so she had to pay for kids and daycare and student loans. So I'm like, I'm not going to have any kids. I'm going to pay off my student loans and live in an apartment and have roommates. I'm never going to retire. I'm going to be working forever if I'm lucky.
- [51:19]
B
I've actually been texting her to be like, who are you voting for and who's your mom voting for? And she's like, stay tuned. So, because there was a weird period where her mom suddenly went violently anti Hillary and then she came back towards Hillary. Like, I've been want is she still.
- [51:33]
C
Tying her vote to her mom's vote?
- [51:36]
B
Well, no, I think she never was. I think that was part of what was weird about not talking about. She wanted to know, and she wanted to have the discussion. But I also think. I mean, her relationship with her. It turns out I was talking about this on the phone with somebody. Every single one of these interviews is like, and then that thing happened with my mother. It's like, no one has. And then nothing happened with my father. It's like, every interview I've done is like, my life was going along. That thing with my mother happened, and now I'm here.
- [52:07]
C
Well, I love that she was such an independent thinker, but is also really tied to her mother. So a couple things. One, I want to talk about the kinds of interviews you did that you didn't turn into songs.
- [52:17]
B
Yep, some of them were the best interviews. It really just turns out if there's, like, a story or a thing that hits or a thing where I'm like, oh, that's the song. Like, a little moment that I find that is, like, the moment it's on, like, in that Plum tree song when he finally was like, let me tell you the story about how I had a maid and this thing happened. And I was like, oh, everything else in your story can lead to this center point.
- [52:42]
C
The first time I heard it. I've told you this. I have not told them this, but I wept in my kitchen for a solid five minutes after listening to that song.
- [52:51]
B
That interview was like a. I think the best songs I've found because I'm pretty bad at, like, good song structure or really at structuring a song at all.
- [52:58]
C
Stop insulting yourself.
- [52:59]
B
No, I'm perfectly confident about the songs is if they're almost like a Russian doll like that. It's like, there's this part of them, and then there's this part, and you keep. Or an onion, you know, you keep finding. And if there's then, like, in an interview, if there's no center, then it's not gonna be a good song. If I peel away and peel away and peel away, and we finally hit that thing, then that is, like, maybe.
- [53:20]
C
Well, especially with that guy who's just so incredibly interesting and really willing to go further and further and talk about all this stuff and then pull back out and be thankful. I mean, for the Lord and for.
- [53:33]
B
You and for me to be. I mean, that's. I've, like, never been implicated in an interview like that before in my life. Just so we. There's two more songs And I want to do both of them. So let's not run out of time. Yeah, yeah. This is from California. I did this interview in May, in 2016 covering the election here in California. It's a lot like how we cover all these wildfires. It's always like visually stunning, but you could almost air the same story each time and like the same language, like the burned out homes or the same speech again and again. The story about Hillary flipping pancakes again. It's easy to get jaded. Since I started as a fact checker, a job that doesn't exist anymore, I wanted to do stories that would make my mom cry in Ohio at the end of the day. 9 11, Hurricane Katrina, the tsunami in Asia, to how to show death and devastation on that level when I'd never even seen a dead body before. I don't do those kinds of stories anymore. Like this week I'm interviewing Miley in Orlando at the Billboard Awards. I know people have always been hemming and hawing about the decline of network news. And it's true, there's still a legal team, but their main concern isn't acting accuracy, it's not getting sued. We have all these brilliant 22 year olds who, well, we pitch them like an interview with Carol Burnett and they're like, who is that? But they're good at Snapchat and demographics and what women want to see. And they love, they love weather. For some reason, those women in the Midwest between 54 and 70 and caught on tape a 911 call, like those terrible tornadoes in Oklahoma. They released the 911 tapes. They don't really move the story forward, but they love 911 calls. So we pitched them and we pitched weather and caught on tape to drive up ratings. So when Trump showed up with his Mar A Lago ratings juggernaut of tackiness at the debates, it was the first time I'd ever seen the entertainment shows like Entertainment Tonight show up for the Republican debates. Like paparazzi and like pushing and shoving. I'd never seen anything like it in the spin room before. And one girl who worked for us covering Jeb Bush, she was like literally run over by like the fanatic craziness when Trump came in the room. And now the conventions were anticipating so much protest. We've added a whole team in case stuff gets really crazy. And it's funny too. Think about the debates the last time around with Mitt Romney. How quaint it all seems. Like, how can we ever go back to someone like that? Who am I voting For, I mean, we're just so trained not to make our feelings known. But I am. I'm for the practical. I am for Hillary. I mean, I appreciate Bernie Sanders and would vote for him if he were the nominee. But I think that I am, I am for Hillary. And Hillary is not so good. She needs help. I'm in new, so I have to appear impartial. But when a friend posts on Facebook, I for one am excited to see a female president. And everyone, you know, gets in line and starts skewering that person on their computers and phones. I mean, now even the idea that people could sit down at 6:30 every day to watch the stories that made my mom cry in Ohio seems pretty antiquated. When 911 happened, I wanted to hear Peter Jennings, Dan Rather, Tom Brokaw. I wanted a voice, a voice of God. When are we going to come together? I thought we'd come together by now. But you know, for better or worse, Trump's made people watch and participate and think and talk. Water cooler moments. I mean, I don't think there were any water cooler moments after Rick Sandwich Torum Hettesinger and it's scary, but the only thing you see as a beacon of hope is at least people are paying attention. And this is the last, this is an interview with in Arizona last month. It's, it's a, I guess he says, I grew up in Texas. You know, it's hot and it's humid and it's a pretty conservative place. We were a solid Republican family. Moms event, Evangelical Christian, Dad's Ukrainian Catholic, so like we were forced to go to church for four hours every Sunday and dad would lay in the backyard and sunbathe when I came out. My father was very supportive, but my mother was not. And it took a long time but you know, I still love my mother and I've come to feel a compassion for the way she believes. But it's been a long process. But you know, it could have been worse, but it definitely wasn't easy. It's a really long, difficult process. I got into porn. I think I was 21. Cause you know, after college I'd taken out a shit ton of loans and there was no possible way on earth I could ever pay it back. But you know, education shouldn't only belong to the rich. So like, fuck it, I took out some loans and I started doing porn. But the problem with porn, it's a big corporation, they just need content. You know what I mean? And you know, I'm older, I'm not necessarily Getting offered as much work. And it's not like there's, you know, a retirement plan. And it's not like they put models on a healthcare plan so they could get Truvada or, you know, make an effort to protect their lives or their health because it's too expensive. But it's like it's my only source of income, really. So, yeah, I mean, there are worse ways to make money. So my project to film sex in every state in America, well, the inspiration partly was practical. I'd been evicted from my apartment that I'd lived in for 10 years, and I had all this stuff and really no money. So I gave away every single thing that I owned, like shoes, socks, glasses, everything gone. So the project was a way to have fun, see the country, but also try to provide content to allow people to participate in this process with me. You know, I love road trips and travel and I'm homeless, so why not make the best of it? You know, the easiest states to find people to have sex with were red states, you know, like Kentucky, Oklahoma. I call myself far left, maybe anarcho socialist. I think that America's in really bad shape and it's getting to a point where it's no longer sustainable. I mean, like, what kind of world are we creating here? What kind of country are we creating? And God, the infrastructure is falling apart and people are hurting. Cause, like, the Democratic Party's not good for people and the Republican Party's the same. And when you have politics driven by outright corruption for decades, it catches up with you. And what I worry about is the next 30 years, global warming is going to devastate the planet. It's going to be incredibly difficult to maintain order, to maintain the kind of government we maintained in the past. And of course, someone on the left, I would like to see the best possible version of these politics realized before it's too late. I mean, just to frame everything, you have to remember what happened with Bernie Sanders. The Democratic Party could have decided, hey, we have this candidate who's pretty damn popular, who's pretty progressive, and instead they decided to stop that process. There is simply to say there's no hope. They don't believe in progressive politics. They don't believe in economic mobility. They don't believe in helping poor and working class people. They believe in war and not being honest. And so I'm fed up. I'm like, anything we can destroy, it's a good thing. So I'm honestly more on the side of the Donald Trump supporters. So that's Maybe the silver lining in this election cycle that people get used to this authoritarian figure who might be the wrong kind, the Donald Trump kind, and see what kind of rule is like, and like, you know, ask for a better version of it. Because honestly, after the election, Michael, can you see a way forward that's positive? Michael, when you imagine the future, aren't there whole parts of the earth that are uninhabitable? Are we going to be this palace nation that lets people starve to death? But where are all of these people gonna go? Michael, you'll want to protect yourself. Cause that's what people's instincts are. Can you see either party getting us through these crises? Because that is the future we face. And you know, it's gonna be pretty horrible here. Don't you think that too, when you think about it at all? Don't you? Don't you? I'm probably not gonna vote, but one thing I think I have going on in my favor, at least at this point in my life, is this whole network of really beautiful human beings. People who will be there for me, who have been there for me. And yeah, that's my only hope. I don't think, you know, that it's a big hope, but, like, that is my salvation, I think, for me in the future, like, for people to work less and travel the country and not have a lot of possessions and, you know, eat good food and see natural wonders and incredible cultures you didn't know existed. I mean, that's what we should all be doing. And so I think part of it is just to live out that fantasy and make it real for myself and make it real for anyone else who wants to tag along. Like, if we can imagine a world like that and can work towards a means to get there. And it's beautiful. It's beautiful. It's beautiful. Thank you. So we should wrap it up.
- [65:26]
C
I think both of those songs should re motivate all of us to vote all these songs.
- [65:34]
B
Hi, everybody. Thank you all for coming so much. We have some thank yous. I want to thank Sarah Larson for being amazing. Wow. Thank you. Thank you, Michael Friedman and especially David Krasnow and everyone at the New Yorker Radio Hour and David Remnick at the New Yorker and Jennifer Sendrow and everyone here at the Green Space and everybody who came tonight and especially some of the institutions that supported this process, the Civilians, the Public Theater, Dallas Theater center, and Center Theater Group, I just have to give a shout out to. So thank you all. Go vote. These were not my political opinions.