 Eliza Blue, and she is a folk musician, writer, environmental advocate, and Ranzer residing in one of the most remote counties in the contiguous United States, which is Perkins County. She writes weekly column about rural life, Little Passion on the Prairie, that is carried by 17 different print publications, writes and produces seasonal audio postcards from her Ranzer, from a Ranzer South Dakota public broadcasting and Prairie Public Radio, and released her first book, Accidental Ranzer in 2020. Her writing on rural life has also been featured in New York Times, The Guardian, and she's a regular columnist for the Daily Yonder, a national publication for and about rural people. Blue's latest project, a traveling concert television show for PBS that celebrates rural culture and arts called Wish You Were Here with Eliza Blue, was recently nominated for a Midwest Emmy and is now filming its third season. So we have a multi-talented Miss Blue here. Let's welcome her with her own applause and I'll just hand over this microphone to you. I'm gonna start out by playing you a song because I'm a lot more comfortable with the guitar than I am with PowerPoint. I was just saying the part about this that made me the most nervous was having the clicker to click through the slides, so. I spend my day like a hole in hay, hay now, hay now. I spend my drive the horses to the days done, hay now, hay now, to the days done. My name is Eliza Blue. 15 years ago, long before I really even knew what hay was, I'd listen to a lot of folk songs though, so I had some good ideas about agriculture that came mostly from old folk tunes and from reading Little House on the Prairie Books when I was a kid. And that was about all I knew. So I grew up in cities, I grew up in suburbs, I drove through the prairie on my way to get to my next gig and I didn't know anything, anything, anything. Well, then by some very strange twist of fate, I ended up in Perkins County, South Dakota. It was meant to be a temporary adventure. I was, I'd been working as a touring singer-songwriter, playing in other people's bands, just all over the country, Europe and I was really burnt out. So I decided I was going to go the complete opposite direction and move to this incredibly rural county, Perkins County, South Dakota. Our big joke there is that we are the furthest from a McDonald's of anywhere in the entire contiguous United States, which is pretty impressive. So our population density is one person per square mile. Cattle outnumber us three to one. So yeah, there's a lot of, there's a lot of livestock and grass and not very many humans. So when I first moved to Perkins County, I thought I was just going to stay experiment with or just have the experience of rural life, you know, like get in tune with the land and then go back to my urban life. And one of the first things that happened is I took in some bum lambs. I was teaching at the local high school, but I made friends with a rancher. When spring came, she had bum lambs and I, from the second I stepped into the lambing barn, it was like getting hit by a truck. I just was overwhelmed by this feeling that like this is where I was meant to be. And I've never had anything like that happened to me before or since of just this deep knowing like something about this is for me. So she had all these bum lambs. I offered to take a couple because I wanted to have the experience of bottle feeding the babies. And then I was going to give them back. Well, that didn't happen. Instead, the lambs became part of my family. And at this time, I also was had met another rancher and eventually we fell in love, got married. We now have two kids. And I now live on the ranch that is has been in his family for four generations. So his great grandparents were the original homesteaders on the piece of property that we still where we still live and work. So it's a very interesting juxtaposition to be a former urbanite, an artist now living in the place that I do doing the work that I do. And I often feel I mean one of the main main questions I get when I sort of introduce myself as these two different things is like how did that happen. And it's hard. It's it continues to be an interesting experience to try to make those two pieces work together. And it feels kind of like it's my life's work. So interestingly, just again as a little tiny bit of background, I read the omnivorous dilemma. Long before I made it to South Dakota. And if you are familiar with that book, they specifically or the author specifically goes to veil South Dakota, which is not very far from here. And in interviews, somebody who's at the beginning of this a rancher is at the beginning of the supply chain of the industrial agriculture model of beef production. So anyway, having read that whole book, I was already vegetarian before I read it that sort of solidified that that was the proper route for me. So you can imagine again my that the cognitive dissonance that occurred when I then moved to this very rural place where the main industry is raising cows for meat or cows and cattle for meat. Well, what I have learned, I mean, I've already written one book and I could write many more about the distance between what I thought I knew and the realities of our life and lifestyle. And by that, I think I don't know how many of you guys actually grew up on ranches or farms. Is there a lot of. All right, so it looks like I am preaching to the choir here and that we know that that obviously there's ways that we can keep improving our methodology. But when it comes to cattle production on the grasslands, this is when done correctly. And again, I know you all know this when using a regenerative model. This is a way to actually create soil health and to create a biodiversity within this ecosystem. So it's been, again, an interesting journey for me and a journey that I will presumably be on for the rest of my life because I don't think it's not that there's no destination. There's always more learning to do and more growing to do, literally and figuratively. So, but the purposes of this talk are actually related to a grant I got early, or I got early last year, and it's going to take place over two years. And this is what the grant was for. It is to create an artisan and residence program for short and long term residencies. The selection of artisans will focus on craftspeople whose source materials are readily available in our region with an educational component that will benefit the whole community. So that was the plan. And here, why artisans? Why did I think that would be a good idea for our community? Well, I'm going to back up so I can read this better. So last year, I had, or from 2020 to 2021, I was working for the South Dakota Arts Council. And the reason I was selected to do that work is because we obviously have some really great arts happening in our state, but they are by and large, they are happening in our more urban areas, which is the case, you know, pretty much any state. And obviously, we're a state that is predominantly agricultural. So they were really hoping to get my, to get me to go out into my rural community and get more of a sense of what they could be doing to support art and artists in rural places. So I've included a little quote up here. Is anybody familiar with Springboard for the Arts? It's an amazing organization that supports grassroots art and artists. It's artist centric. And it's just a very cool organization. They're based in St. Paul, but they do a lot of work with rural art and artists across the country and specifically in the Upper Midwest. So they, this is based on their research, research and creative place making and creative community development has demonstrated that there is great impact from arts projects and programs across almost all sectors of the community. Economic impact studies of the arts have proved that art activity is valuable asset to cities and neighborhoods. Well, I think it's funny that they even say cities and neighborhoods because again, where I live, it's mostly grass. But when I went out into my community, you know, trying to find out what could be done to support art and artists, inevitably, I would say like, well, what do you, what would you look for an arts organization or what would you like to see being done by the Arts Council? And inevitably the conversation would immediately turn to economic development and that any kind of arts initiative in our rural communities has to take that into account. I guess I would say that's my bottom line because the idea of rebuilding main streets, I mean, that's the top of mind for almost any rural person. And looking at trying to figure out ways to keep any materials in our communities, resources in our communities, because they've been bleeding out for two generations. So again, I know you all already know that. So what I was hoping is that we could create these artisan and residents programs for two different, with two different goals in mind. Oh, and here I guess I'll read this part too. We have an economic advantage in our rural communities because the agricultural products that are already being produced there, we don't have to ship them anywhere. They're there already. And in fact, it's, you know, again, one of the mysteries of capitalism in the supply chain that things leaving the place they're made is somehow economically makes more sense than keeping it in the home community. It's very strange. So if operators can find unique and regionally specific methods to brand what they are already producing by adding value in any myriad of ways, we could see a fundamental shift in our local economies. So again, I feel like you guys all probably already know this. This is things that you'd be well versed in. But my goal was twofold. We're looking at agritourism. And again, we are very, very rural. So a lot of models for agritourism just don't make sense to my neighbors because it's not like there's a city 45 minutes away with a huge population. Our closest city would be Rapid City, which isn't even particularly large if you compare it to a lot of other urban centers. And that's two and a half hours away. The next closest city is Bismarck and that's three hours away. So to people where I live, they just don't see that they are going to be able to bring tourists in. They just don't see that that would be something that would work for us where we live. So part of my idea was to prove that wrong. To show that you know what, in this day and age people are really starting to value experiences more than products in a way that's kind of new, generationally new. That's especially true for younger people. And what we offer with our remoteness is actually a unique experience and that's actually an asset and doesn't have to be a deterrent to agritourism. So that was my very first goal was just to show if we could create workshops, classes, retreat type experiences, then those that would just, I would be able to say, no, you can do it. See, we did it and worked. And similarly, I wanted to bring in the actual artists into our community. And as I say here, if that way other business owners would have the opportunity to bump into these creative solutions and innovative strategies for problem solving that inevitably, you know, artists and artisans, that's what they're bringing. They're bringing their unique way of creating and that mindset I thought would be really helpful in our communities. And the other one is what I already talked about, just the simple supply chain, which is that the more we can keep products being produced in the places that they are being produced or close to that place, the better for the, you know, the environment because we don't have the fossil fuels of shipping things all over. And again, bedroom for the communities. So as the last line says here, an artisan in residence program is an opportunity to jumpstart the conversation around some of these big ideas while also creating practical hands on instruction as to what that kind of shift could look like. So any questions so far? No, pretty good. So the first offering was this past summer. It was a fiber retreat with fiber artist Kelly Nisble. Do we have any fiber enthusiasts in the crowd by any chance? Do you happen to know Kelly? I was going to say she's kind of a rock star in the fiber community. So if you are into fiber arts at all, you probably know Kelly. So she has, she's just a perfect example of what I'm talking about. So she lives right outside Aberdeen, South Dakota. She has a mill, a small mill where she does custom carding. So she has a lot of connections to producers, small scale producers already in our state and people who just love the fiber arts. So in addition, so you can send her your raw wool. That's actually how I met her. You can send her your raw wool and she will send you back carded wool that can then be hand spun or used in felting. So that's her main job, but she also teaches. She's an amazing fiber artist in her own right. She also raises sheep and those are that this this is actually from her. I just pulled it from her website to kind of give you idea of some of the things that she offers. And that's her little flock right there. So this was kind of a safe way to start because I knew she had a built in crowd of people that would be excited to work with her. Again, I was a little bit going out on a limb because I believed that people would travel to get a chance to work with her, but I didn't know it for sure. So there was a little trepidation there thinking, are we actually going to be able to get people to drive and come stay on our ranch? Because she's worth it. She's really cool, but I just wasn't sure. So anyway, the other part that we built into the grant is related to what I was saying before. It was important to me that we not just be bringing people in using that agritourism model where we would have, you know, the urban dwellers who would come in and bring their money and buy things and be part of our community for the retreat weekend. But it was also important to me that we introduced the community to the project in a sort of organic way. So part of what I wrote into the grant was her coming and staying for longer than just the retreat and offering some community demonstrations and workshops as well. So here she is at our public library. And again, I wasn't sure if anyone was going to show up. I mean, our town is tiny. I can't overemphasize that. And so we always joke when we offer any kind of an arts offering or anything that might be a little bit like if it's not a sporting event that kids are involved in or like the choir concert, it's always a little scary. Is anyone going to come at all? But we say, you know, if five people come, that's like 10% of our population, which means that if we were offering this in Sioux Falls, it's like we just got hundreds of thousands of people just kidding, not really. But that we have to measure our success differently. So five people is actually a lot of people. Anyway, we got more than five though. So I was very, very pleased. And as you can see, it was a wide range. We had some very young people that came. We had some older people that came. Almost everybody who came, though, and this is what was surprising to me, had no experience with the fiber arts. And so we had a couple of people who have spent their life raising sheep and didn't know anything about the sheep to sweater process. And we're excited to learn. So I was very gratified that everything I had hoped we could accomplish, we did. So as you can see, she had a table with different types of, like different samples of wool and kind of explained what different types of wool could be used for, showed her carded fleeces, went through the whole process of what it takes to go from a raw fleece then to carded fleece, and then also did a spinning demonstration. And as you can see, interactive, so fun. She actually got some people to come up and try out her spinning wheel. And it was just a great, it was great experience. I was so pleased that it went as well as it did. So that was part one. The next part was the actual retreat. And I had said, honestly, I'd said, again, my standards were pretty, or my goals were pretty low. I was like, this is our first offering of this kind. Another part of doing this, what I needed to prove to myself, and again to my neighbors, is that you don't have to have, like an actual retreat center to hold an offering like this. So we, I mean, our ranch is not like an Instagram friendly ranch. It's very ranchy. Like there's a lot of poop, like I've got dogs that drag things from the, from way out in the pasture into the yard. I mean, like it's, my mom who has never lived anywhere other than cities, when she comes to visit, like she gets a little overwhelmed. Like she's like, ah, ah, walking through our yard. Cause I mean, there's, like I said, there's a lot of poop and bones and things like that. And especially in the summer, there's flies. So we held it in our literal, like this is my yard. We set up tables in the yard. I had offered that people could, there are accommodations in our town, but I offered that people could camp on our land if they wanted to. And we had some people that did take us up on that offer. But I also was very upfront, like it's an outhouse situation here. And so I just said that from the beginning, like this is, this is rustic. This is rough. If that's your scene, like this is for you. If it's not, then this is not for you. And so again, I had capped it at 10. Wasn't sure we'd get there. And we did like almost instantly. It was kind of crazy. All I did, I had thought I was going to do kind of more of a roll out and, you know, attract people. All I did was put something on Facebook. Fiber artist Kelly Nisbles coming for a retreat. Here are the details. If you want to, this is the event bright link. And like within two days, I had 10 people signed up, which was awesome. The only downside of that is that then I had people that had a lot of people reaching out wanting to be part of it. And I was like, it's already full. We'll offer another one, you know, in the future. But sorry. So, and similarly, when we did the workshop in town, which, you know, Kelly was already there, the people that had come had fun and we're wondering if they could then come to the retreat. And it was like, we, you know, I kind of opened it up like you can come if you want, but we don't have enough. You know, we already ordered all the supplies and things. So it would be more, you'd get to just kind of hang out, and then we'll go to the next. Oh, actually, maybe I should talk about these. So the sheep to shawl concept, this is just a phrase that's thrown around with fiber art community events, is that you can take some, a raw fleece and go all the way to, you know, yarn that you then be able to knit into whatever you want. They just say sheep to shawl because it sounds cool. So you can see on the table, this is a raw fleece from my flock. So we took that raw fleece, we washed it. And over here you can see, oh, I've got my little pointer. Is that going to work? No, all right, there we go. So there she is. I don't know if you can see it in the picture, but she's actually using a drop spindle there. So participants were taught how to use a drop spindle. She also did some workshopping on like the more traditional spinning wheel because we did have some people that came that were more experienced spinners. And then over here you can see there again, there's the drop spindle with this, with yarn that was created from them. This is what it looks like after it's been washed. And then this is a carding tool right there. That is what kind of pulls the wool apart. So when it's raw, it's kind of clumped together in these, like we call them locks. So that was the process she was walking us through as part of the retreat. The other part of the retreat was we did natural dyeing and sort of same concept. She brought, we've got here, a calendula that I grew in my garden and marigold, which is a great, a great, a great, a great, a great, a great, a great, a great, a great, a great, a great, a great natural plant dye. We also had, I don't know if you guys recognize, oh, she was in the last picture, but now I don't see her. But Trish Jenkins actually was one of the participants in the retreat who is holding a workshop after this. She's from Cycle Farms. Anyway, she had brought walnuts from her from Cycle Farms that had just fallen on the ground. It was like all the walnuts she collected from the ground. So that was another thing we used for the retreat was what we got from the calendula. And the walnut, on the other hand, makes a brown dye as kind of what, the color you'd kind of expect. And then finally we did, she also offered felting, which I really like felting as an entry. It's kind of like the gateway drug to fiber arts, because it's, you can, you can use even raw wool if you want to, you can use just carded wool. It's really straightforward and it's a lot of fun. So you can see we've got, you just need water bottles and soap, basically. And you can use, and Kelly had brought different samples of naturally dyed wool and carded wool from her, from her, from her mill. And then over here we've got some finished projects, which I think turned out so, so fun. Oh yeah, I think of the next picture. All right. Multi-generational skills sharing. So this was absolutely the best part of this whole experience for me. This is what happened at the very beginning. Like I was still running around kind of getting set, stuff set up and we had some people that we had one person that was pretty late and you know there was just different things that were happening and I was kind of trying to be the administrator, keeping everything smooth and chatting. And most of them had never met before. And it was just so cool because right away, I mean there was a camaraderie of course that developed. And so there's everyone just sitting in my yard with spinning wheels. It really was one of those moments where like it's happening, it's happening. So meanwhile Kelly had also brought this loom that with the idea that sort of as we were going through the retreats, people could also come over and just keep adding to the loom as we went through the retreat. So she had you know again as it ends like little ends of like right here you can see that that's actually raw wool that we put the locks through. And then people had brought projects with them and brought things with them. So they also contributed to make by the end this weaving that was kind of like little pieces and then this is my daughter and her friend who like super got into it. So I again like it was my dream come true because part of why I also like my secret goal is by sort of normalizing these type of activities for young people it's like they're just going to grow up like yeah this is what we do we just hang out in our yard and spin yarn with people like it's not weird to do that. And so again it was like it's my final slide here that's the finished you can see over there there's our finished weaving. This is the skeins of yarn. Those were the samples. Oh and part of it too is that we were able to send everybody home they with samples of skeins of dyed yarn with for some of the participants if they didn't already own a drop spindle we provided them a drop spindle like in here. So then this was kind of a really fun and really really amazing. But all right so that's the that was the happy part. Now we're going to get down to the brass tacks. So the reality is one thing that I didn't think of how could I have not thought of this it's July in the middle of the prairie and it just so happened that that weekend was the hottest weekend we had all summer. So it was over a hundred years. So you could see I'm like everyone looks pretty happy but like we were all super hot and like leading up to it as I realized that was going to be the weather that was like the biggest stressor because I had planned what would happen if we needed to be inside like I was like oh I've got this big canopy and like I had plans for what would need to happen if it rained. So it was very hot and that was you know again in retrospect we would probably hold it earlier in the summer and hopefully avoid those kind of temperatures. We did get extension cords out and had fans like on us and for the most part and that's this group is a little smaller because this was at the end of the retreat and we did lose a couple people on the second day because the second day was even hotter and I was like ooh okay good. Duly noted doing it mid-summer not a great idea. The other part that I wouldn't say was a failure but was definitely part of the learning curve is I wanted to offer this on a donation basis because again I wasn't really sure you know from a from a marketplace capitalist perspective like how much would somebody be willing to pay for a retreat like this. I had no idea like there's just no way I could make a difference. I had no idea what kind of offerings that are quite like this in our region and I also wanted it to be something that members of our community could afford to do. So I feel like the prices that maybe an urban person would be willing to pay would be different than the prices that someone in our home community might think were reasonable. So rather than like I mean there's I thought about doing all on donation and I told people sort of like this is the cost per person that you know to bring Kelly to get these supplies. So just to kind of see would we be able and I also said if we can make back the equivalent of what this cost to put on then next year when I don't have a grant I can also offer it on a donation basis and we can just keep paying it forward like that. Sadly we did not get up to that. So I think probably in the future would have to I think I think probably what we would end up doing is having the supplies be something you had to purchase and maybe the retreat itself be something that you could you could do a sliding scale donation and be a little bit more overt about you know again I told people what it cost but say like you really have to pay this much to be able to keep holding them. So that was kind of the caveat related to the financial part of it. Now again from an infrastructure oh my gosh time is going really fast from an infrastructure perspective like I said my dream continues to be you know have these events going forward to be able to offer them you know obviously I'm a touring singer songwriter and a writer and we run a ranch we don't set up a retreat center and hold these kind of events regularly but again part of what I want to prove is like you can do one or two of these a year it's a great way to be advertising your products whatever they may be whether it's wolf you raise sheep or I think there's so much potential in the local foods movement for bringing some you know having sort of a weekend retreat around food and products that are you know raised by your ranch I probably all know this and have thought of this but what I wanted to show and what I'm now happy to share with you is that like you just it doesn't have to be fancy for it to still be meaningful and for people to have a great experience. It doesn't have to look like Instagram for it to still be a really a really amazing experience that grows community. So that was my big takeaway and what I wanted to share with you is that I wanted to share with you some of the things that I wanted to share with you and then I'll open it up for questions. So I am in this process right now of working with some different artists on an artist collective that we're calling the kith ship collective and artist and artisans and again it's related to all of this work like how can we create placed based art to share that work whether it's an actual product like a weaving or a song or a poem how can we create more opportunities to share those in the places we are living and working how can we create those connections with our neighbors and how can we then share that story with people who are not our neighbors who live in these more urban settings. So I've been looking at a lot of different models of creating a nonprofit there's some reasons why that can be very challenging and difficult. The other is an LLC and so I was super inspired. These are my notes from listening to Hannah's talk how many of you guys got to hear Hannah before I was super inspired by this like worker own co-op model. I think that's really exciting so I just wanted to like touch really quick on some things that she mentioned I mean so we're talking about systems change is what it comes down to and when we're looking at these traditional models again LLC versus nonprofit with now this new worker own co-op I could easily have named this talk tending the roots and I would say that's true for all the work I'm doing because in the capitalist model that we currently have where it's all about growth again I know you already know this it's all about growth what that means in and that's literally true in a lot of agriculture models but it's also true in arts models it's true in nonprofit models and what that means to me is the kind of burnout that Hannah was talking about and again anybody who's worked in these fields knows another joke I always make is you don't think that like being a rancher and being a freelance artist would be similar but they're incredibly similar but there's no infrastructure to support the roots at this point and that's what we need to be thinking about and what we need to be building so again this grant was a wonderful opportunity because what I wanted to show and by you know getting the windfall of capital to do it without taking risk was hugely important because obviously we live on you know tiny profit margins just like every other operator and you know similar as a lot of people in the world and I think it's a great opportunity to get into that to make money but what we were able to prove is that we could create a retreat experience that met all of these different goals and we could do it quote unquote sustainably not just from the perspective of not using fossil fuels or you know not using like a ton of fertilizer but from the perspective of the human energy involved that I could do that I was able to create this with relatively minimal effort with the setup we already have and I feel like that's what we need to be thinking about as we move forward is not just how to create change like the change we want to see but to really be looking again at what Hannah was talking about with quality of life and when we want to make those changes the changes cannot come at the end of the day. It's not just about how we can do them sustainably for our own selves as individuals and how we can bring in you know rest and how we can bring in joy and the possibility of rejuvenation within the model so I'm going to leave you with that idea if you have any question specifically about the grant or in general I'd be more than happy to answer I don't know what if you want to just yell them out and you can't just yell them out and say it's a ship collective it's spelled K I T H and then ship and it's related to if you've ever heard the phrase of Kith and Kin most people think of Kin and Kith as meaning the same thing which is to say your relatives but the distinction is that your kin would be like your blood relatives people you're related to genetically your relatives and I my way of thinking about it is you know my neighbors are there's not a lot of human neighbors so my neighbors are bugs and plants and animals and so when I'm making the work that I make and doing the work I do I'm doing it in with connection and to build relationships with my Kith which is not just human beings so that's where the name came from anybody else I'm going to offer another workshop and it's with Sarah Miller who actually is based outside of Rapid City she's a bio regional herbalist and what she's going to come and do is offer the first part of the retreat will be a pasture walk where we go and do some different plant identification of different native plants and she's going to talk about different ways you can use them because it's much available at that point so we're going to use some dried herbs that I've collected and that she's collected and then offer some different body care like teach tutorials on body care products and also some different herbal remedies that would all be from plants that are available in our bio region and same thing she'll do some workshops at our library and then she will then we'll hold the actual session and then we'll start with our little oak apothecary and that's the name of her business so she's pretty awesome and I'm very excited and hopefully we'll see depending on the schedule we may hold another fiber retreat as well and this kind of goes back to tending the roots what I feel like I've learned in these years of working as a touring I'd have these big ideas, and I just want to make it happen. And I've really learned, like, you know what? You just have to start small, which is the title of the talk, start small. Like, you can have the big dream, but every dream, like, to make it a reality, it has to be built on these very small steps. So not trying to overwhelm the system by having the tree be so big that it just tapples over at the first wind. So on that note, would you guys like to hear one more song? We heard that this one sometimes falls over, but that's why there's the, my gosh, you guys, that's like the metaphor for the whole thing, right? It's so top-heavy, it could just tapple over, so we have to put a weight down there. All right, this is a song. I often finish my shows with this song, because I play with a singer-songwriter named Jamie Lynn, who lives down in Spearfish. If you don't know her, she's another one to just check out. We played some shows recently, and I finished with this, too, and she was like, I think it's your best work, which meant a lot coming from her. But I wrote this song, we were going to, for the TV show I do for PBS, we were going to this church called The Stone Church. It's on Standing Rock Reservation. It was built by congregants out of rock quarried from the creek, or there's a cliff that goes down to a creek that's Fire Steel Creek that's right behind the church. And you know, that's a complicated legacy. And so without going into all the details of that, I felt like we were going to film there, and I wanted to write a song about it, but I felt like I just wasn't sure what to say. And the song feels like it informs, or it feels like a good way to describe, again, all the work I've been doing and the work of my life and maybe all of our lives, which is just to be in a process of discovery. We don't have the answers. We don't have the answers. We'll never have the answers. And we also have very little control over the outcome, but if we can stay curious, if we can stay open, and if we can keep walking forward in love and working on building, again, just what Hannah said, building relationships, moving at the speed of trust, I love that. And I think that's what this song is about, too. Speak to me of history, of whispering.