If I was going to write an album of songs and put it out into this world, this moment, this heap of situations in which we find ourselves, I had to do something constructive about our many and layered sins, psychoses to reinforce the original sin of racism. This song gave me a chance to talk outside of school — things white people say sometimes

If I was going to write an album of songs and put it out into this world, this moment, this heap of situations in which we find ourselves, I had to do something constructive about our many and layered sins, psychoses to reinforce the original sin of racism. This song gave me a chance to talk outside of school — things white people say sometimes when they think everybody in the room agrees with what they’re saying.

Small towns have a way of drawing you back. The boomerang — we move away for whatever reason, but there’s a gravitational pull to bring us back to a place where people can quote our family tree even if they momentarily forget our actual names, where every meal tastes like home. I need that as much as anybody else. But sometimes it switches over to reverse polarity — the connection is so strong, but we see our home towns with such clarity that we know we could never go back for good. And it cuts both ways.