Comfort by Mark Stone
September 2024. In August of 2004 my wife and I attended a Natalie Merchant concert at a small Northern California winery. Her 2001 album "Motherland" hit big, leading to a worldwide stadium tour. The audience in this smaller venue was eager for a reprise of that earlier material.
In fact, Merchant was touring for her new album, "The House Carpenter's Daughter". After 2001 she had parted ways with Elektra Records, releasing her newest album independently. Most in the audience didn't even know she had a new album. I'd had to work to get the CD, finally buying it direct off the Natalie Merchant website.
I liked the album, a mix of old folk song covers and folk-oriented originals, but I recognized that it was eclectic, even by the standards of Natalie Merchant's already eclectic work (google Henry Darger, for example).
When the concert opened, Natalie Merchant took the audience through the entire album. People offered up quiet applause, and a lot of puzzled looks. About half an hour in, a young man near the front row shouted out, "Come on, Natalie, you're killing me!"
Merchant stopped the show, walked to the edge of the stage, looking directly at him, and said, "Really? How am I killing you? Tell me." A long silence followed, and she let it linger. Finally she turned back to the mic and finished up the first set.
Then, between sets, she brought out Julia Butterfly Hill, an environmental activist famed for having lived 738 days in a redwood tree to protest California logging practices. Hill gave a 15 minute sermon on environmentalism and the perils of clear cutting old growth forest.
By this time many in the audience headed for the exits, frustration clearly showing.
When Natalie Merchant came out for the second set, she delivering a riveting 75 minute performance through her best material, from 10,000 Maniacs up through the her solo career. I thought it was an amazing show.
In our celebrity driven culture, we look to performers as leaders. Some rise to that label. A good leader creates a safe place for us, but safety is not the same thing as comfort. Sometimes the safest way forward is profoundly uncomfortable. Conflict and discomfort can drive great thinking, and great art. When a great leader leads us away from comfort, they make us better for it.
That memory of Natalie Merchant's concert surfaced this month when my wife and I saw Joan Jett and Alanis Morisette. Joan Jett has made a career by giving voice to those that society has tried to label outcasts and weirdos. She's the ultimate rebel rocker. Watch the documentary "Bad Reputation" if you've not seen it. Alanis Morisette's deeply personal and fearlessly vulnerable songs have opened the door for a whole generation of female and feminist artists. Sometimes gently, sometimes raucous and blunt, she challenges each of us to be a better version of ourselves tomorrow than we are today.
Three women, three great styles of leadership. Each of them knows how to lead their followers beyond comfort.