Let’s go change the world

A Song for Election Day

To my friends and kin in America ♥️

I’m writing to you from the comfort of my home office just over the border, about 45 minutes from Buffalo. 

This election day I am holding you so tightly, with all of my love and all of my belief that change is possible and we are powerful together. I know in my bones that a more beautiful world is possible, that it is already here, waiting for us to catch up. 

If you don’t have the bandwidth for an email today, cool. But please take this song with you before you go—

Hold The Line by Karisha Longaker
Bandcamp | Apple | YouTube | Spotify

Feel free to skip this email and let that be your medicine for election day. 

~ TK

P.S. 

You can hear me sing the song on the audio version of this email.

_____

…and just in case you’re in the mood for a story…

It was the morning before Song & Story and I sat waiting outside the walk-in clinic at 7am. Crouching under an umbrella and balancing precariously on the low window ledge outside the office, I scrolled through emails trying not to be stressed about the surprise medical issue threatening to ruin all my plans.

Lo! The perfect distraction: 

An email from Bandcamp, the kind that tells me about what my favourite artists and song leaders are buying.

I popped my earbuds in and clicked through, immediately dissolving into a puddle of tears.

We have to sing this at Song & Story, I thought to myself. There will be weeping! It will be so special! We will sway and sing and have an unforgettable moment. 

(In case you don’t know this about me, I love to play the hero.)

Check yourself, Tarzan!, another voice in my head clapped back. You didn’t even register to vote.

The voice of Moana piped up in a tone you just know would come with crossed arms: 

“You’re no one’s hero.”

Wow, okay. You don’t argue with Moana. 

I went straight home to my office, prescription in hand, and used my last hour of retreat prep time to print and mail my application for an overseas ballot. 

Another thing you may not know about me: I’m also an American. 

This year, while many of my Canadian peers were making the decision to stop travelling across the border, either for safety reasons or as an act of political protest, I applied for my first U.S. passport. 

(Did someone call for a hero? 😉)

All year long I have been travelling back and forth across the border singing and crying and singing some more with my friends, work colleagues and chosen kin. My Song Leader teachers and mentors regularly start sentences with, “When you lead a song at a rally…,” which helps me stay connected to the lineage of community singing and what it’s for.

This election day I can only offer a song, which may not sound like much, but what I have learned about singing is that it is humanity’s original technology of belonging. It can build exactly the bridges we need in our scared, divided world. 

May it build a bridge in your heart all the way to Canada. 

We did end up singing Hold The Line at Song & Story, and it was every bit as beautiful and moving as I knew it could be. It reminded us that borders are actually just made up and we are all in this together. As the writer Karisha Longaker says, “We the people who do the simple things to keep the world going have the power to protect and care for one another.” 

Holding you tightly in my heart today. 

XO,
Tarzan

Tarzan Kay Consent-Based Business Educator
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