Heal
Let’s begin with a few questions, which you can interpret as rhetorically as you’d like to:
Have you ever changed your mind about one of your beliefs?
Did the change happen suddenly, or was it a gradual process?
What influenced you to change?
Did another person help convince you to change your mind?
What was your relationship to that person like?
Did they present their differing opinion to you in some way? If so, how?
Thinking about how your own belief changed, how do you think others might also be influenced to do the same?
I like to say that "Heal" is a spiritual successor to my song "Underneath the Mask" (which was first released on All of My Heroes Are Villains). Just as "Underneath the Mask" is a song about Return of the Jedi that isn't actually about Return of the Jedi, "Heal" is a song about The Rise of Skywalker that isn't actually about The Rise of Skywalker.
Oscar Isaac deserved better than to be made to deliver this line.
Full disclosure: I did not particularly care for The Rise of Skywalker. I still regard it as far and away the worst of the Star Wars movies. My husband and I saw it on its opening day in 2019 (not knowing this would be the last movie either of us would see in a theater for almost two years) and were both left deeply perplexed and more than a little unsatisfied by what was supposed to be the culmination of 40+ years of Star Wars stories. When I watched it again a few months later, I liked it even less. It feels like a film assembled by committee, whose writers were so desperate to give every viewer what they most wanted (even when those desires were mutually exclusive!) that they ended up never making any real story decisions or saying anything interesting or important. Yet even the messiest entries in the Star Wars saga usually have some worthwhile moment that sticks with me. Here, I found myself coming back to the scene where Rey hears the voices of the Jedi who came before her and draws strength from their presence, and the image of her healing the creature in the underground tunnels, and the attempt (however muddled) to show her engaging with the Force in its most basic sense as an energy field that binds all of life together and not just another flashy superweapon you can use to smack down evil (until the climax of the movie where they apparently forgot about all that and decided a bad CGI light show versus Clone Palpatine would be way cooler, argh make it stop).
The other major element that went into writing "Heal" was an online article I read in early 2020 about the practice of deep canvassing. With another presidential election on the horizon, I was eager to explore and support any effective tactic that might lead to a different and better outcome than the one we got in 2016. The process of deep canvassing rang true to many of my own experiences. It reminded me of times where staying present in a difficult conversation with someone close to me and listening to their point of view without judgment, even when (especially when!) their point of view was very far away from mine, opened a door to a deeper connection that ultimately led the other person to see things differently. And it reminded me of being on the receiving end of the same kind of grace: of connecting with people who brought their full and true selves to our relationship knowing they ran the risk of rejection, and how seeing them live with honesty and vulnerability expanded my awareness of the diversity of human experience and broke me out of my small-minded box. These meaningful interactions, born out of real affection and a desire to connect despite differences, made a bigger impact on my beliefs than any statistical analysis, TV attack ad, candidate stump speech, or Twitter flamewar full of zingers.
But deep canvassing also requires the one undertaking it to have done inner work to the point where they can listen calmly to what can sometimes be very bigoted or clueless rhetoric before expressing their own beliefs clearly and confidently, to walk the fine line between holding firm on non-negotiable values without throwing gasoline on an already raging fire: basically, to have put in the effort to heal and to change themself already, before reaching out to another person and expecting them to change too. None of this is easy. But if we could recreate these interactions on a larger scale, who knows what we might do?
The article I read (which I unfortunately haven't been able to track down again) pointed out that one of the potential pitfalls of deep canvassing is how much it asks of the people who engage in it. It hardly seems fair to ask the same people who have already spent their whole lives fighting to be seen as equal and worthy to spend even more of their limited time and energy on listening deeply to the same hurtful rhetoric they're already too familiar with. Well, that's where people like me come in, I thought. I can draw aggro, like a tank character in a video game, hearing somebody out until I find an opening to ask them if they've ever considered another way of thinking. I can try to keep a line of communication open between myself and another while still holding firm to my own boundaries and my own beliefs, making it clear that there are other ways to live. I can do this so that other people who have already been trying to slowly change someone's mind for their entire lives and are heartily and understandably sick of doing it don't have to anymore. It won't change everyone's mind. But maybe it will change a few.
I've come to understand in recent years that I am naturally inclined to want to build bridges, to find commonalities between people, to see and understand all sides of an issue, and to reach consensus (or at least a compromise). This is part of what has always drawn me to the Star Wars universe, with its frequent focus on redemption narratives and its assertion that it's never too late to use whatever power you have to do the right thing (like Han Solo, swooping in at the last moment in A New Hope to blast Darth Vader's TIE fighter off-course and clear the way for Luke's heroics). Yet in the particular social and political space I inhabited when I wrote this song, I often felt that my tendency toward peacemaking was viewed as undesirable, a weakness to be overcome. Certainly I have stayed too long in bad situations out of a desire to avoid conflict, and made excuses for others' behavior to myself and others when I really should have just ripped the Band-Aid on an inevitable confrontation. And there are people so entrenched in their bigotry that it's not worth trying to get through to them (even Luke didn't try to win Palpatine away from the dark side). But I'm also unwilling to believe that my approach is always wrong. (More on that when I talk about a future song on this record.)
Redemption is not easy. Star Wars, for all of its obsession with the topic, doesn't usually get it right. Far too often, redemption in Star Wars equals death, with the reformed bad guy going out in a blaze of glory that conveniently prevents them from ever having to reckon with the long-term consequences of their actions. The work of deep canvassing, of creating the conditions for someone to change their mind, is not work that everyone can or even should do - in the same way that not everyone is equipped to be a medic at a rally, or lead direct action, or argue against an unjust law in court - but I believe someone must do it. We owe it to ourselves and to the people around us to believe that people can change. We owe it to the world to believe that all of us can heal.