Saying Exactly What You Mean

“Life is too short to not say exactly what you mean all the time.”

Last night, in the midst of a particularly ugly 24-hour period, it’s likely that you missed Jesse Welles dropping that line, one of his best, at the 24th annual Americana Honors & Awards show. Dude was in the Ryman Auditorium, playing “War Isn’t Murder,” that song he felt so guarded about at first that he initially blocked comments on the video.

As the above video shows (and Saving Country Music points out), he found a way forward.

I feel like I’ve been having trouble saying exactly what I’ve been meaning lately. Part of it is just work and busyness. Part of it is just a struggle to formulate those thoughts. I just found myself staring at my laptop thinking, “What do I say next?”

This is not a problem I’m used to, but I think that the reason I’m experiencing this sort of morass is because I’ve created a slow-motion trap for myself. What is the guy who tries to lean into less obvious topics going to say when the news just feels like there’s constant chaos drowning it all out? That is my great squircle, the circle I must square.

Tedium was meant as my escape hatch from stuff like this. I had a feeling in 2014 that the political climate was going to get a lot uglier, so I got out of the way to find my own lane. And it worked for a while. But what are you supposed to do when the chaos makes your takes on twine feel smaller than ever?

The ability to ignore the outside world is hard enough most of the time. It gets harder when it feels like the bad parts are constantly streaming into your eyeballs, begging for your attention. It’s enough to make you pick up an Xbox controller and just give up on making a damn statement. After all, Silksong won’t get mad at you if you can’t fill up a page, and it gives you something to do besides get mad at yourself.

It’s hard to make an honest point that cuts through all the dishonest ones. Especially when those statements appear to be made by accident. Example: Google recently shared in a legal document one of the most honest things I’ve heard that company say in quite some time.

“The fact is that today, the open Web is already in rapid decline,” the company wrote.

That slip, caught by Digital Content Next CEO Jason Kint, nonetheless caught a bit of attention, and not of the good kind.

Google apparently realized it was being too honest and being taken out of context and immediately walked that bit of honesty back. But I, like you, can see the decline with my own two eyes, and perhaps that fundamental dishonesty is making it hard to put our voice out there. Because if they were honest about it, we as users could solve for it. We could find ways not to be funneled in the same handful of giant discussions.

We have a world of platforms dictating how we communicate with our audiences. And when those platforms feed us chaos, it can feel like there’s no room for ourselves in the discussion.

Which is why I’m a little floored that Welles was receiving a high-profile award last night—an award associated with the First Amendment Center, the organization that gave us the sadly departed Newseum. (Talk about validating your status as a singing journalist.) John Fogerty, one of the many artists he’s constantly compared to, handed the award to him. He was perhaps at the height of his career—and yet, there was this ugly thing sucking up all the oxygen in the room. The deadly public killing of the conservative activist Charlie Kirk could have had a silencing effect—or at least, it could have forced him to only talk about one very specific, dark thing. But instead, he had something to say.

“Folks don’t get into folk music ’cause there’s awards,” Welles said during his acceptance speech. “You know, they’re more or less compelled to by that shard of divinity that’s in each and every single person. It compels us to create stuff. All that being said, it feels nice to get an award.”

At some point, you have to feel like your mission is stronger than the waves of outside chaos, that it cannot distract you from your goal. The moment when you can find pliable point where it all makes sense, that’s when you can say something clarifying. I think my fascination with Jesse Welles comes down to the fact that it feels like this comes easy to him. He always has something to say, and in many cases it’s right.

I admire the prolific. I also admire the people who make compelling art in challenging times—folks like William Basinski, capable of responding to a tragedy designed to make us all feel helpless, like 9/11, by continuing to create. Welles is a rare beast that can do both.

We can let tragic or divisive things let us feel locked up inside—as I felt yesterday afternoon when I went to write, but I doomscrolled for a couple of hours instead. Or we can muddle through it and find our voice even when we’re scared or overwhelmed.

(We are currently witnessing pundits who never would have given Kirk the time of day falling over themselves to moderate their views on him as they honor him in his passing. It’s weird, but I guess I sort of understand the motivation. I won’t join in, but I also feel it’s wrong to dance on his grave.)

Today, Jesse Welles once again showed off his superpower, releasing a song directly addressing what happened with Kirk:

(Key line: “Well, you can’t hate the gun and love the gun that shot yer rival.”)

He designed his path out of the doom and gloom, without letting it overwhelm him. It’s possible, and I think we need a reminder of that. We need to fight the motivation to stay quiet and not share ourselves when the news wants us to do otherwise. After all, life is too short to not say exactly what you mean all the time.