Mary Gauthier

No artist ever knows quite where the muse will lead, but there’s something in the trusting and willing yourself over to the unseen that is magical, priceless, and necessary… if you want to continue to be creative. I had no idea where the muse or these songs would lead me, but the road the writing and releasing of The Foundling has taken me down has been adventurous one, to say the least.

I wrote my own adoption story in song, that I might know it. Simply put, I write that I might know.

I’ve been told that the release of such a “dark” record was not advisable in these “uncertain times”, but I wasn’t in a position to dictate what kind of art I was going to make.  Years of writing, creating, recovery and therapy led me to the source of my own personal strife, and to move through it to the other side, I had to embody it, then create from it.  I had to write my way out of the hole. The muse, the source…she tells me what to do, I don’t tell her.  Knowing that others had gone before me into their own mysteries was a great relief, and having the support of so many friends and colleagues around me was the torch that lit my way to the discovery that, as large as the darkness in me was, it was surrounded by light, by life, by love.

Having passed through pain and fear, my experience of sharing my journey with others has been life changing.  I have come to realize that not only am I not alone in that there are other adoptees who understand what it feels like to be “falling through space”, and who know what it feels like to eventually dare to wonder out loud where they came from, and to finally acknowledge the need to look for their origins, only to be met with resistance, rejection, and state sanctioned closed birth records. Many of us have decided to become activists, to try and change the system, to work for changes in the laws so that all adoptee’s birth records are opened once and for all, and the horrors of closed system adoption might become a thing of the past.

There are so many people involved in the Adoptees Rights Movement.  There are birth mothers who have grown and changed and come to a place where they want to meet their children, or have lost the chance to meet their own but recognize how valuable the knowledge of origin could be to the children who do seek.  There are adoptees who are working together to counteract the shame and deep loss they’ve experienced, and to co-create a world where children are no longer seen as commodities.  There are adoptive parents who see in their children their true natures, and honor them by letting the children keep their original names, taking them to where they came from, keeping in contact with birth parents when possible, showing them, quite literally, that their love for them does not hinge on them pretending to be something they are not.

These brave souls are working towards one of the last to be recognized ciivil rights issues – the right for human beings to know their origins, for all adoptees to know where they came from, to have unrestrained access the their own birth certificates.  As of now, we do not have that right. In all but 6 states, adoptees birth records are sealed shut by the state, and upon adoption birth certificates are  re-issued…. with adoptive parents names on them.

As a species, we devote so much time to tracing our history – archaeologists spend years out in the fields, hoping to uncover clues about our past, astronomers search the skies for the smallest clues to our most fundamental beginnings, spiritual people seek the inner realm to find truth, and yet…… there is a group of people who are being denied the right to view a piece of paper that would allow them definitive  and sometimes lifesaving answers, that would allow them to see themselves as part of a continuum, that would give them practical information that could profoundly affect their mids, bodies and spirits.

November is National Adoption month here in the USA, and while you’ll find the official website has a slightly different slant on things than we do over here  (well, maybe a bit more than slightly), we also want to honour those  who are working every day to create the best possible situation for adoptable children who need a home and a family.  Click here to add your name to the Adoption Reform Action List.

In November, I am going to post videos of  live performances from a show Tania Elizabeth and I did at Joe’s Pub in New York City in June 2010 on The Foundling You Tube Channel.  We’ll be posting every song on The Foundling, two a week in November, until we have made the entire concert available. Just a little something to add to the conversation for National Adoption Month.

Last night Tania and I watched about an hour of video’s on the It Gets Better YouTube channel. The channel was created to address the recent crisis of gay youth suicides in America. We both were moved to tears, and decided to make our own video to contribute to the It Gets Better website, since the YouTube channel created by Dan Savage reached the maximum allowed video’s (650) very quickly. Check out some of those YouTube videos if you can- there are some wonderful and moving pleas posted by people from all walks of life talking to the kids and trying to help them see that it gets better after high school. For me, high school was unbearable, and I quit when I was 15. Being a gay kid was hellish, and clearly, its still hellish for gay kids now. I wish I could go into schools and play this song and tell the kids there’s nothing wrong with them, but thanks to YouTube and the web, people like me can go directly to the kids, we don’t have to go through school administrators who would never let gay adults into their schools to talk to kids. Anyway, here’s our little contribution to the project:

Hello again from the road! We are on the east coast of the USA this week, driving thru some lovely fall color as the seasons change.

Tania Elizabeth made a video of a song from my first record called Goddamn HIV. We shot a lot of the video  with a little flip cam HD on the road this year, in Provincetown,MA., Santa Cruz, CA., and up in the redwood forest in Northern California. She edited it on her mac book and I think it came out great. It brings me back to the place I was when I wrote the song in 1995.

Check it out.

News from Nashville:

When home I’ve been hanging around the set of a new TV pilot/series shooting in Nashville called Outlaw country. It’s my first time on a TV location, and I’ve learned a lot, mostly that a TV series is very hard work and it takes hundreds of people doing their jobs in unison to pull it off. Here’s  a shot of me with the star of the series, Mary Steenburgen. After watching her sing the same song over and over again for days as the camera’s shot her from every conceivable angle, it dawned on me just how hard acting really is. Doing a scene over and over and over again is just how its done. I had no idea.

on the set of Outlaw Country with Mary Steenburgen

Listen

Singer-songwriter Mary Gauthier tackles very heavy and personal subject matter on her latest CD, The Foundling. The autobiographical concept album chronicles a child put up for adoption and the life experiences that follow.

Accompanied by Tania Elizabeth (formerly ofThe Duhks) on violin, Gauthier performs songs from The Foundling on this, her fourth appearance on Mountain Stage since 2002. She wrote “Blood is Blood” as a “protest song” to allow adopted children to have access to their birth records. Included in this concert is a performance of “Mercy Now,” from her 2005 album of the same name, not heard on the radio broadcast.

Gauthier will tour across the U.K. in November.