There’s a lot of shit I didn’t have on my 2024 Bingo card.

In every regard.

On the personal tip, one was reconnecting with a friend I never thought I’d talk to again.

But we’ll get to that.

First, a close second, was finding myself at 10:00 p.m. on a Monday in early June, days after my 41st birthday, listening to Ani DiFranco’s “32 Flavors” on repeat. This shouldn’t seem surprising since I once sat at my desk in my dorm room at boarding school in Switzerland my senior year of high school listening to the track on CD over and over on my miniature boombox in a pale blue tube top from Bebe. And then again, many, many more times for many, many more years.

And it turns out, that while it wouldn’t be surprising for my 18-year-old self, it would be baffling for my 30-year-old self, and then every self after that for the next decade, until now.

I first heard “32 Flavors” in high school. I was out and about in the north suburbs of Chicago, where I grew up, having dessert with a friend (It’s worth noting that “having dessert”—in retrospect—feels super adult. I am—in retrospect—impressed with our 16-year-old selves).  

I remember the night distinctly, in part because they spent part of dessert breaking down various pieces of queer terminology to me (mainly lesbian lexicon), which is important to note, because it was the late 1990s, which means Google didn’t yet exist. Social media didn’t yet exist. This was a moment in time when information was shared human-to-human. We taught each other language and identity and culture while eating slices of cake at a restaurant in Hubbard Woods.

And this includes music. Music too, was a direct interpersonal transmission. Music was something we gifted and gave each other. Mixtapes. And just starting then, burned CDs.

Which is why when we got into my friend’s car (I can’t remember where we were going—somewhere else? Someone’s house? Was my friend driving me home?) they gifted me a song.

I’m not sure if we still know what it’s like to be gifted a song. I know we can send each other a link on Spotify or Apple or Amazon. Or send a video on social media. Or press play on a device.

Fine.

But when the only option is a cassette tape, there’s another level of committing to the bit. Gifting someone the first time they hear a song is not a casual act. It takes time to get to the right spot on the cassette. It takes time to sync up the moment so that it perfectly begins and you can say something along the lines of: Caroline, this is Ani DiFranco, and this is “32 Flavors,” and this album is called Not a Pretty Girl. And somewhere in there too they’re saying: this will change your life. Because it will. The moment. The gift. The song. The album. It will change my life.

Until I stopped listening to Ani DiFranco altogether at the end of 2013. It was my personal protest and boycott as a result of her shitty response to planning to host a retreat (that she ultimately canceled after receiving pushback) at a former slave plantation in Louisiana.

It was quick for me. Easy. To immediately cut her from my musical lexicon. To know how many moments her music had ushered me through. To know how tightly I held the rest of her lefty and progressive politics and all of the songs that did so much work to make a better world. But this was non-negotiable for me. You can’t support a bunch of causes, and then overlook another.

I went cold turkey. Stopped listening to her altogether. Didn’t go to concerts to which I was invited if I knew she was playing. Removed her from playlists. Removed her from my mind.

And then in early June, after 10 years of boycotting, a friend texted the group chat that they just passed Ani DiFranco out and about in New York City. “I figured some if not all of you might care,” they wrote, with a heart at the end.

Friends began to chime in.

My response was, “Was she beyond your peripheral vision?” which is a lyric from “32 Flavors.”

(Which I thought was pretty clever.)

Another friend followed my text up with, “So you might want to turn your head.”

(Which is the next lyric in the song.)

Some friends didn’t immediately know the lyric or get the joke, so while the confirmation of the references were clarified, I dipped over to a direct text with the friend who dropped the lyric too.

Mostly, I think I was realizing that if these lyrics were so deeply ingrained, if I could so quickly—on instinct—make the reference, it was maybe too deeply in my body to totally ignore.

“I know I’m incredible at finding legit ways to incorporate music lyrics and movie quotes into everyday conversation, but please tell me that was EGOT-worthy,” I texted my friend. “And then your immediately taking the baton—Pulitzer.”

“We are all heroes,” she wrote back.

Our chat then descended into a discussion about how there should be a tournament where people make movie and music references and quotes (and really, there should).

Anyhow.

Something inside me shifted that evening. I decided to intentionally put on Ani DiFranco for the first time. In over a decade. I started with “32 Flavors,” and made my way over to the other songs I’d been avoiding, but sometimes thought about, and sometimes wished I could hear.

Now back to the former friend.

They reached out to me in late 2023, wanting to make amends. At the time, I wasn’t in the place to stretch myself any further, what with what was happening in Palestine and Israel, what with what was happening in the United States and so many places on earth, what with what was happening inside my own head and heart, and plenty of other things on my personal plate.

But I did think to myself: if I’m asking for a world where we build towards collective liberation, what does it mean for me to harbor anything other than openness towards this former friend?

If I’m asking the world to stop killing Palestinians, if I’m asking the world to stop killing and discriminating against Arabs, Muslims, Jews—everyone—what do I have to also ask of myself?

What does reconciliation look like on a micro level in my own life if I believe in a world where it’s possible on a macro level? How wide and deep am I willing to stretch my own heart?

But I didn’t respond. I needed space to sit with it. I wasn’t ready yet to stretch.

When she reached out again in February, my plate had softened. I had space. To expand. I’d churned it over and over for a few months—with a loved one, in therapy—and decided to respond. I responded. We met up. And it felt really good. And so we met up again. And then again. And we’ve been building something fresh, new, expansive, and powerful ever since.

And it’s inviting me to ask: What else can I stretch? How else might I be able to expand?

There are these lines in “32 Flavors” that go, “God help you if you are an ugly girl / ‘Cause too pretty is also your doom / ‘Cause everyone harbors a secret hatred / For the prettiest girl in the world.” And like I said, rekindling with this friend wasn’t on my 2024 Bingo Card. It wasn’t on my life Bingo Card. Truly. But it’s offered me a profound lesson in healing and reconciliation. It’s had me rethink the secret boycotts I want to harbor, and the secret boycotts I want to release.

My Ani boycott wasn’t doing anything. And I’m not letting her off the hook for attempting to host a retreat at a former slave plantation. Or her shitty defensive response as a result.

And. What was the hatred I was harboring towards Ani really doing? I wasn’t using it to also help and facilitate and fuel the other antiracism organizing and activism and education work I’ve been doing throughout the duration of the time I wouldn’t listen to her music. It was letting it sit inside, festering, secretly, harboring something that I think was maybe harmful to myself.

The boycott lost endurance—in the end—because the harbored hatred became louder than the softness I want to harbor and endure in the role I hope to play in our collective liberation.

And like. I’m not saying stop boycotting in general. I actually think boycotting is a vital political and revolutionary tactic. It can be an essential tool in liberation of any and all kinds.

And.

I think it takes a whole village of tools to get us to collective liberation for all.

And different moments call for different tools.

I think that’s what happened with my friend. I wanted to know a deeper reconciliation for which I had not yet been at until February 2024. Like even a few weeks prior, I couldn’t yet respond.

And I really thought I was going to live the rest of my life without actively and intentionally choosing to listen to an Ani DiFranco song. And who knows, maybe I’ll change my mind again.

But for now, I’m trying to melt away that which I don’t need to harbor.

I want something else playing on repeat.

And I don’t know how much Ani has changed or grown in the past 11 years, especially with regards to racial justice. I know while I’ve changed and continue to change, I still fuck up all the time. I’m not saying we need to overlook harm. Accountability is as literally vital as it gets. Especially when we cause painful harm. Whether that’s hosting a retreat on a former slave plantation, or targeting a population of people and turning their homes into a mass grave.

I’m not suggesting you stop boycotting your Ani DiFranco. Whether that’s an artist or a product or a brand or a store or an entire country. Especially if they’re causing harm.

For example, I refuse to go to Chick-fil-A. And I stopped shopping at Urban Outfitters about a decade ago, and don’t plan to return. I won’t buy Sabra hummus. And I hadn’t gone to a Starbucks since October 7 (not that I did that often before that, but I did a lot when traveling, especially at airports) until I felt I had absolutely no choice a few weeks ago while en route from the dentist in Manhattan to yoga in Brooklyn, and passed a Starbucks and had egg bites and popcorn for lunch. I also spent a year or two boycotting Amazon a few years back, but then I adjusted my stance and do my best to use it only when I absolutely must. In part because there’s just some fucking shit that’s most convenient to get or cheaper to get or only available to get on fucking Amazon. And I hate it. And yet I didn’t give up my Amazon Prime Video because I wanted access to that content as an artist and content creator myself and consumer of art.

Here I am. Boycotting. And also not. And also divesting. And also not. And deciding what works when. And for how long. And sometimes that’s forever. And sometimes not. Like I really feel confident saying I will never go to Chick-fil-A ever again. Not that I ever really did before either. And still. Does that mean I prioritize queer and trans liberation above all else? Or is it because as a vegetarian of 17 years, and that’s an easier sand line to draw and hold firm?

I honesty don’t know.

I’m doing my best to do the “best pathway to liberation at every inch” math in a literally deadly ass and painfully harmful world.

What I think I’m maybe inviting myself—and you, if you want to play in this sandbox too—to consider, or maybe even reconsider, is what harbored hates are causing me/us harm and keeping me/us from showing up for our collective liberation at large?

In the song “Freakshow,” Ani repeats over and over, “You need a lot of love and compliance.”

And so maybe that’s it.

For what is the love?

And where is the compliance?

And also, where is the compliance not?

And where it is not, is there still too love?

And so maybe what I’m really asking—at least myself—is:

what is beyond my peripheral vision?

Both outside and within.