When I heard it a few weeks ago, I had a visceral reaction to the delivery, the intimacy and vulnerability. (When I watched this video, I also had a visceral reaction to the 1980s hair, but I digress.) I remembered a journal entry from college about the Indigo Girls, specifically Amy Ray, but until I looked at it the other day, I did not realize the visceral reaction I had some 16 years ago was to the same song:
Later that evening, Scott took me to the apartment of two men who go to Mercer. They and Scott used to be in a band together. Anyway, the three of them sat down in a semicircle to perform a couple of songs...they took all my Indigo Girls requests. They played numerous songs, but one just blew me away. With all three of them singing harmony, they played Blood and Fire, an IG song I had never heard before. It had a haunting melody. I just closed my eyes and let my mind wander. I imagined Amy Ray in her beautiful butch voice singing I am intense, I am in need, I am in pain...over and over.... my eyes began to water and I kept thinking: this, women, is what I need to make me happy. I got that wonderful content, happy, teary-eyed feeling, as if I was in heaven..I am intense, I am in need, I am in pain, I am in love (and it's not with a man!) I imagined her smooth voice in my ear...and the possibility that I'll have someone to sing to me. I am intense...That was my realization that I am sooo gay. I am a lesbian, dyke, whatever you call it. I love women. Everything about them. I just drink up the way (most) women look, and I have stopped liking straight girls because there is no need in it. Smiles, voices, breasts, soft lips, earrings, long soft hair or short hair, sweet toes and tummies. Ok. I'm getting gooby, but there is not doubt in my mind that I LOVE WOMEN. The dilemma, or challenge, I should say, is to know what I feel, know that it is what is right for me, and to not let the world make me forget or feel guilty or shameful.
I have no recollection of this impromptu jam session, but I don't think I was high. If I was, I would have written something like, "Oh my God, I was soooo high." OMG didn't exist back then, back in the pre-text dark ages. This song helped me revel in the rightness of my new reality. My orientation has evolved over the years, but back then things felt very pure and crisp. Guess things can be like that when you're 18.
Now I relate to the song in a very different way. I feel the vulnerability of, figuratively, cutting my chest open, taking out a part of me (I imagine it as a glowing orb, strange) and offering it to another person. It is a step one has to take to move to another level, but it is fucking terrifying. I want to be a person who is gentle with the feelings of people I care about, and I want people in my life who will treat my heart with the same care that they would treat their own.
Won't you wet my fire with your love, babe.
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Bonus: recent cover of Blood and Fire by Aaron Lewis of Staind (2010):
