It's Closer

Something about the Indigo Girls always spoke to me. Raised as I was in a cult-adjacent church (adjacent because we never went full robes and compound, but otherwise, cult), I don’t think I registered their significance to pop culture, that Ray and Saliers lived a lifestyle that the version of the Bible I was taught took exception to.

Looking back a few years after they first made it into the regular listening rotation, with the advantage of growth and time, I realized those things, but by then it didn’t matter to me as much. More of “Oh…right. Yeah, I guess that’s why my dad never bought us tickets to Lilith Fair.”

Their music has remained as part of the soundtrack of my life, their lyrics periodically peaking up above the waves, and reminding me that words matter, and words set to music can mean so much.

“Closer to Fine” came out in 1989, when I was in high school. I can’t tell you when I first heard it, because I doubt I heard it then. I was still pushing the boundaries of my parents musical tolerance by listening to a lot of Petra at that point, which should tell you more than you need to know about how I was raised.

Still, the chorus resonated from the first time I heard it.

And I went to the doctor, I went to the mountains
I looked to the children, I drank from the fountains
There's more than one answer to these questions
Pointing me in a crooked line
And the less I seek my source for some definitive
(The less I seek my source)
Closer I am to fine, yeah
Closer I am to fine, yeah

Having more than one answer was revelatory for someone raised to believe that there was only one answer and that was Jesus. Realizing that gray areas were ok and most of life was in the gray anyway so might as well get used to it was a necessary if sometimes painful realization at that point in my life.

Especially the line about seeking the source for some definitive, because looking back into my past usually ends up pointing me in all the wrong directions. Learning that how you were brought up means you’ll never truly grow up was a bitter pill to swallow.

But I gulped it down. More than once, because it’s a process. A journey. A work.

I’m not fine. I never will be. But I’m closer today than I was yesterday. And that’s enough.