Song: Closer to Fine
Album: Indigo Girls
Performer: Indigo Girls
Writer: Emily Sailers
Year: 1989

I love Indigo Girls. As someone who spent a lot of time listening to Bob Dylan and his ilk as some of the first music I chose on my own, their songs feel very familiar to me. A lot of their songs are written in a rambling and speech-like cadence, Closer to Fine being no exception.

This song is all about self discovery. It’s about looking for answers. It’s about finding out that most things in life that you’re taught are black and white really aren’t. All of that was so relatable to me when I heard this song for the first time at the age of 20. And it’s still applicable now… maybe it always will be. But I have a feeling that this period of life will be one where I feel the confusion and joy and sometimes anger of learning new things and, more often than not UN-learning a lot of things I thought would never change.

This song has been comforting to me so many times. I can listen to it and know that I’m not the only one who has gone through the messiness of taking apart a belief system, the way you know the world and re-examining almost everything you know just to be left with the momentous task of putting it all back together – hopefully in a way which will help you function with more clarity and ease. This song is proof that I’m not alone in that often dark, seemingly impossible task.

There’s more than one answer to these questions
pointing me in a crooked line
The less I seek my source for some definitive
The closer I am to fine