Reckoning with our Roots with Kennedy Miller
TOPICS DISCUSSED
Waiting for News from Special Prosecutor Jack Smith
Grappling with being raised in the South and the Culture Wars with Kennedy Miller
Outside Politics: London and Opera
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EPISODE RESOURCES
TRANSCRIPT
Sarah [00:00:07] This is Sarah Stewart Holland.
Beth [00:00:08] And this is Beth Silvers.
Sarah [00:00:10] Thank you for joining us for Pantsuit Politics.
Beth [00:00:26] Hello and welcome to Pantsuit Politics, where we take a different approach to the news. It's Beth here for the last week of our summer schedule. It's flown by. Next week, Sarah and I will be back together on our regular schedule. But before that, on Friday, which happens to be her birthday, Sarah has a full episode for you about what she's learning from her son's experience with type one diabetes; so I hope you'll tune in for that. We have so many things planned for you in the Fall. At the top of our list is our live event in Paducah, Kentucky On October 20th and 21st. Tickets will go on sale to premium members the week of August 7th in order of support for the show. So our executive producers will have the first opportunity to buy tickets on Monday, the next tier on Tuesday and so on. Then we'll open tickets to the general public on Monday, August 14th. So if you are subscribed on Patreon or Apple Podcasts subscriptions, you'll have the first opportunity to purchase tickets and then everyone else will come in that next week on August 14th. We are very excited about this weekend with you. You can find much more information about what it will entail on our website, which we've also linked in the show notes. As I am recording at 12:50 pm Eastern Time on Monday, July 24th, I can feel the American news media holding its breath, wondering whether special counsel Jack Smith will indict former President Donald Trump again today, tomorrow, soon, ever? And how that potential second indictment will impact his run for the Republican Party's presidential nomination. The only thing new that I can share with you about the former president's legal woes today is that the classified documents case, the first federal indictment, is now scheduled to go to trial in May 2024. The judge in that case initially set the trial for August, but then the government asked to delay it to December because of the volume and sensitivity of evidence in the case. Trump and his co-defendant want now to ask to postpone the trial indefinitely. Running for president while fielding legal challenges from multiple jurisdictions is very time consuming and Trump is not in a hurry to have this or any case go to trial. The judge in the case heard arguments and settled on May. There will be numerous motions on a very tight schedule between August and May.
[00:02:43] And for what it's worth, I think setting the trial in May is very reasonable. The Iowa caucuses are set for January 15th. Given the big dealness of indicting a former president and Trump's history of fighting everything in court tooth and nail, I never expected his trials to conclude before the Republican primary. I think it's better for this case, like all criminal cases, to proceed fairly and justly. And I think this is still a really aggressive timeline for a case that involves highly sensitive national security information. Months of camera footage, numerous witnesses, and over a million pages of documents. For now I'm thinking about what it means that the frontrunner for the Republican nomination has already been criminally indicted and may be again. I'm thinking about my Facebook feed, which is populated almost entirely by Barbie reviews and thoughts on Jason Aldean's Try That in a Small Town. I'm thinking about whether or not to see The Sound of Freedom. A number of listeners have asked for my thoughts and I can't give my thoughts without seeing the film. And I don't know. Here we are in a world where Ben Shapiro is yelling about Barbie's wokeness, and a country music song has caused half my timeline to stand with a star, while the other half explains why the song is racist. And I can't decide whether spending $15 on a movie ticket is an irrational or ludicrous act. A few months ago, we received a message from a listener about her daughter's appearance on a podcast. The daughter, Kennedy Miller, was interviewed about her favorite show, which happens to be ours. Kennedy's mom was so proud and so enthusiastic that I just had to listen. In addition to being extremely generous about her love of Pantsuit Politics, Kennedy talked about how she'd love to be a guest on our show someday to discuss her complex feelings about being a woman from the South who was raised in the Bible Belt bubble and how she has since re-examined her life. Kennedy expressed her love for her place and her people, and also how she sees the world as much more expansive than she knew it to be as a kid. American culture is complicated right now. I think many of us are trying to figure out how to be who we are, where we are. Sifting through what made us and what we can hold on to versus what we reject. So today, Kennedy is joining me to offer her perspective. And I hope that you find this discussion as rich and relevant as I did. Kennedy, I'm so happy that you're here today. I would love for you to just take a minute and introduce yourself to all of our listeners.
Kennedy Miller [00:05:24] Yes, of course. First of all, I just want to say that I've been listening to Pantsuit Politics for almost six years now since I was a freshman in college. And the two of you have been such a safe haven and a resource and an admiration for me. So thank you for all the work that you do. It's absolutely surreal to be talking to you. So thank you.
Beth [00:05:46] Aw thank you.
Kennedy Miller [00:05:46] I am a 22, almost 23 year old, from Rocky Mountain, North Carolina, which is a very small town on the eastern part of the state. I currently live in London, England, where I am a Marshall scholar and an opera singer at the Royal Academy of Music, which is just absolutely the most rewarding and amazing thing I've ever done. And a lot of my work right now centers on the intersection of feminism and opera, which are two things that on paper I think don't look like go together. But given my background as someone who was very much indoctrinated into this bubble of very conservative Bible Belt Christian values and now I'm finding a way to reclaim some of that, it is work that I find to be really personal to me and important to me. So that is a lot of the personal and professional work that I've been doing at the moment.
Beth [00:06:40] Well, I'm glad that you went right to your sense of place because I was excited to talk with you after I heard you say you wanted to talk with us about being a woman from the South and what that imprints on your life, and how to hold this tension of loving the place that we're from while also being critical of the place that we're from. And I think that's just something that a lot of us are working through right now. How do we have an honest accounting of our history without losing the love and respect and joy that we find in our place?
Kennedy Miller [00:07:12] Yeah, absolutely. I definitely had a very white, middle class, conservative, traditional Christian upbringing, and very much did not realize until I was much older, late into my teens, early twenties, that was very much a bubble of an experience. And it wasn't until I got out of that bubble for the first time that I became critical of it and reflected on the very real damage and hurts that sort of upbringing did on me, while also acknowledging that was my life for most of what I can remember and the joys of my childhood are still very, very present and trying to find that dichotomy of being critical, but also being so in love with the South and being so proud to be a Southern woman. It's very complex and nuanced and dichotomous and it's hard, but I think it's work that I'm passionate about and must continue to do for the sake of loving the self and continuing to be proud of my identity.
Beth [00:08:09] Tell me about realizing that you had been in a bubble. When did you start to think, "Oh wait, not everything functions the way that it has functioned in my life," and what that felt like for you.
Kennedy Miller [00:08:20] I remember being 16 years old, and when I was 16 was the first time in my life that I had a deep, substantial conversation with someone who was not in the bubble ever. And I had gone to this summer camp called North Carolina Governor's School, where it was students from all over the state who are brought for six weeks to basically just talk about difficult topics and study specific things. So I was there to sing and do choral music, but I was also there to have conversations with students my age about current issues. And we played this game, I guess you could call it, where there was a spectrum on the floor of different issues and social justice issues, and we were told to stand on the floor according to how we fell on that spectrum. And I remember the Roe v Wade question coming up. And at the time I was very passionately pro-life and was indignant about it. And would have told you back then that women who commit abortions should go to jail. The whole thing was just a complete lack of nuance and lots of indoctrination going on there. And I was the only student who stood on like that side of the spectrum. And I remember just being completely and utterly shocked and mortified that I would be the only person who felt this way. And it wasn't until I had conversations with people my age that had the different backgrounds and experiences and upbringings that I realized that maybe I was the one that was missing a lack of knowledge or nuance or influence. And it was in talking to my peers who were very gracious and generous to have these difficult conversations with me that I began, for the first time at 16, to do a lot of the unlearning and processing and thinking about these things really, really deeply. And that was kind of the catalyst for a lot of the undoing that I've been continuing to do now.
Beth [00:10:10] That makes me smile because Kentucky has a similar program that I went to between my junior and senior year of high school (Governor Scholar) and I remember being at that program and being in a dorm room full of women who were on my hall, and there was a woman on our hall who was very kind of vocally atheist, and it was clearly the first time most of us had ever met anyone who would say that out loud. And there was like this incredibly intense conversation about whether she was going to hell taking place right in front of her among all these women. And I was listening to what all of the girls who identified as strongly Christian were saying to her. And I remember the dissonance of knowing that I guess that is what I have learned. I guess what they're saying is what I have been learning in Sunday school and church, but also everything about the conversation felt wrong to me and broken. And the word I would use now is like meager and sad. And so, I just hung out in the room. I didn't say anything during the conversation, but I stayed after basically everyone had left except for the two girls in the room. And I said, "Hey, I just want to tell you that I think that was awful what just happened. And I don't believe that you're going to hell. And none of this reflects the loving God that I believe my family and I worship." And it really struck me that maybe I was not in the bubble that I thought I was in; that I had exposure to that and attended a church that would fit in the scope of the beliefs that were being articulated, but that I was really rejecting the way that poured out when we we weren't in the bubble anymore. So I really strongly relate to that experience.
Kennedy Miller [00:12:03] Yeah, absolutely. I then had a similar story kind of to you of then being on the opposite side of that conversation. When I started doing that unlearning at 16, that very much followed me through the rest of my high school years. And during my senior year of high school, I went to my very last summer camp with the girls at my church, and I remember having a conversation with a friend of mine about the ways that we might raise our future theoretical kids, the way that we would interact with our future theoretical spouses. And I remember saying I want to have Bible study with my kids later on in adulthood, but I want to have an equal share of the teaching of my children in the world. I want to have an equal share of praying over them and reading scripture over them. I was told by my friends that I was twisting scripture for my feminist political agenda. I just remember feeling like, here I am so excited to lovingly teach my future children about a faith that I feel very rooted in. And the only thing that you can focus on is the ways that it doesn't match your interpretation of Scripture and your political views. And I just remember thinking like, if this is where that conversation leaves you feeling concerned, then that is a really real problem. And, honestly, that was the last kind of church event for that specific community that I ever went to. And with conversations with my parents, we kind of all decided to leave and pursue a community that better aligned with our values and our interpretations of Scripture. But it's just so frustrating, like you're saying, of just this very close minded attitude towards there's one way to interpret Scripture and there's one way for gender roles to look like in our society. It can be really, really frustrating to be on both sides of it as I've reflected on my teenage years, for sure.
Beth [00:13:59] So your friends accused you of being a feminist at that point. Was that sort of the first time that you heard feminism as an insult, or was that kind of part of the language of your upbringing too?
Kennedy Miller [00:14:10] That was definitely part of it. I mean, forever and always. I remember being seven years old the first time that I noticed the overwhelming maleness of my church community. And it was because I was sat in the back of my church where my family would always sit every Sunday morning. And instead of the usual line of older ushers in well pressed suits that were coming to pass out the offering plates, it was a group of rowdy young boys from my Sunday school class, and I completely freaked out as a seven year old because I thought that there had been some sort of administrative error that my parents forgot to respond to an email and that I was left out of this really special opportunity to stand up in front of my church and to serve in this way. I was always a very ambitious, well-behaved child who loved opportunities like that. It's no wonder that I'm a singer now. It kind of all makes sense. But I remember being told later, like, "No, we're preparing specifically our boys for the leadership that they will carry in the church one day. And you are not allowed to be part of that." And then that was kind of the catalyst at seven for me, realizing, oh, women never pass out paper bulletins with the order of service. Women never teach or preach or are allowed to be the head of any sort of committee, no matter how minor or small. And it was then as a child who, again, I've always been very naturally prone to leadership, prone to being excited about opportunities like that. It was instilled in me from a very young age that that is an aspect of myself to not trust and to suppress and to not agree with. And then if I saw other women being leaders in that very explicit way, that was something to not trust and to not agree with. So the whole idea of the feminist movement was absolutely something from a young age that was taught to me and instilled in me to be really mistrustful of, because I was taught the very opposite of what God's plan for society at large was supposed to be, which was really, really hard.
Beth [00:16:12] It sounds like your parents were supportive, though, when you were ready to make a change. I wonder how that unfolded for your family. Had they long had concerns about all of this and you were the catalyst to make change or what happened there?
Kennedy Miller [00:16:27] Yeah. To be honest, again, it wasn't until later that I started critically thinking about all of these things. I existed in that bubble and agreed with it and often felt the guilt and the shame and the hurt, but just thought that was part of it and that was okay. And my mother was born and raised in that same church. My dad didn't start going to church until he married my mom. So that was his first religious experience. So to be honest, the three of us and my whole family, none of us knew different or knew better. And it wasn't until they really saw the effects it was having on me as a later teenager. And as they started to critically think about, well, this happened and that wasn't quite right. And that didn't really align with our values that we decided as a family that it was appropriate to leave. But to be honest, they have been just the best support system in all of that. I mean, we still have very different interpretations of Scripture in certain ways. But my family, they are so open minded and so generous and so willing to have really deep conversations with me about things that are really difficult, that I still struggle with in regards to my faith. And I just couldn't love them more for all of their support and ability to be generous in the ways that they think critically about these things as well.
Beth [00:17:43] I think it is a really beautiful testament to your family that you all navigated all of this and you felt things like guilt and shame, like you have some of the language of being really hurt by a community of faith and you were able to transition into a new one and kind of hold on to what you liked without losing the whole picture to all of that hurt.
Kennedy Miller [00:18:03] Right.
Beth [00:18:04] That feels like a struggle that a lot of people are going through to me. Church has hurt me badly. I know there is some good in it that I would love to have back in my life, but I don't know how to have the good without the bad. And it seems like you all have held that really well. And I wonder if that is a model for how you think about being Southern too?
Kennedy Miller [00:18:24] I think definitely for sure. I think for a long time, in regards to the church, I struggled to differentiate the bitterness I had towards my specific experience with a bitterness for God and my faith. And it really hasn't been until the last couple of years that I've found this really comfortable, peaceful way that I think about my faith. I think my identity as a Southern woman has had a very similar trajectory. When I was in high school and throughout my childhood, I had a very strong Southern accent. I mean, the twangiest of North Carolina twang you've ever heard. When I went to UNC, I did not want people to assume that I was stupid or was conservative by my accent. So I very quickly learned how to suppress it. And now I talk like I do now, and I'm still struggling, but try to kind of get the accent back because I want to reclaim it. But I definitely blamed the South and accused my Southern identity for the reason that my politics were the way they were growing up until I kind of changed them. The injustice of the South I completely blamed. There was no nuance to it; it was just one large monolithic thing. And it wasn't until later that I started thinking critically and in a more nuanced way about-- you know, I love the accent. And, god, I love Southern hospitality. There's nothing like it. And that's something that I love implementing now that I live in London. I'm just known for being the one that you can come crash on my couch whenever. And, of course, I'll make you dinner any time. And that sort of hospitality that I used to kind of dislike because I thought that it was rooted in this gender to Southern womanhood type thing that I didn't align with. I tried to suppress it and now I don't anymore. And it's been this really beautiful, healing process of just reclaiming the things that I loved and feel proud of while being very critical of the things that have hurt me in a very deep way.
Beth [00:20:18] I worked to lose my accent too. I totally relate to that. I would love to have it back now. I just want to get it. Because what you practice is what you become. And I think also that I have had a sense about that hospitality element, that there is something unsophisticated in waving to every car that passes by or offering every person who comes to the door a beverage. Or the things that were just so normal we didn't even notice them growing up now feel a little bit like a reach. There's a vulnerability in it in the place that I live now versus the place that I grew up in. And I wish that we could figure out how to frame that up for people and say, look at this. Not just generosity, but the vulnerability attached to that kind of generosity. It is a really nice feature of a place, and it's a really important thing to keep in mind as you consider how to break through issues of racism and sexism that there is goodness here to build from. And how do we reach into that goodness and build from it instead of just identifying all of the bad and brushing the whole place with that bad?
Kennedy Miller [00:21:33] Yeah, absolutely. And I think that's precisely what I was doing, really until a few years ago when I realized I was probably going to move to London and was grappling for the first time with what it would be like to leave the South. And then moving to London and being really immersed in British culture has made me in a lot of ways fall in love with the South again because there's so many things that I deeply missed that I never thought that I would. And a lot of it is that kind of messiness you talk about, like, I love just going to my friends houses and, of course, people trying to make their homes presentable in a certain way. But there's no tension about everything has to be really perfect and I have to, like, make sure that this is spotless and that I have this food prepared just right. But it's just like come as you are and exist in my place as it is, and let's just exist in our innate messy, complex humanness together in this messy, complex space. And I absolutely adore that. And that's something that I want to always keep with me as I continue to move around and maybe live in London for longer. I think it's something I always want to have with me because it's really special and I think unique to the self as well.
Beth [00:22:55] I'm curious what you learned about race growing up?
Kennedy Miller [00:22:58] Well, to be honest, nothing. That experience when I was 16 was the first time that I learned about the injustices regarding capital punishment. I never knew that there was a disproportionate amount of black people in prisons or that were getting executed in my state. I just had absolutely no idea. My church was very, very white. There was another church like two miles away that was like the church with predominantly a black congregation, and that was just seen as very acceptable. After that experience, when I was 16, I began to critically think about why is this so segregated still? And I remember bringing this up in a Bible class because I went to a Christian high school which also endorsed some of these values that I struggled with growing up as well. So, again, just all these institutions in my life were existing in this one bubble. And I remember bringing up that concern in this Bible class and being told it's okay because we all have our own cultures and our ways that we like to worship and we don't need to pursue racial diversity because everyone has their own ways of doing things. And I was like, again, it's just this way to sleep over issues of injustice and make the Southern issues of race such a monolith. And I think that is the thing that I really begin to have a problem with, was just this generalization of white congregations act like this and black congregations act like this, and there's just no nuance and it's okay to have this sort of really explicit segregation as late as 2023. And it was just always seen as that sort of monolithic general thing. And it wasn't until later when I made friends who are different from me and have conversations with people that were different from me, that my eyes were open to the very real and ugly problem of race in the South, which is shocking because the South has such a history of obviously race issues with Jim Crow and obviously slavery. It's such a thing and yet it was never instilled in me to think about those things critically until I was much older and got out of that bubble, which is really, really important to think about now.
Beth [00:25:05] I will never forget being in a sociology class in college and the professor asked us to write down the top three words about our identity. And when we finished, he said, "Now I'm guessing that if you are a student of color, you first wrote down your racial identity." And the handful of students of color had. And he said, "I'm guessing that if you are white, it didn't even occur to you to label yourself as white." And that was true. And it was true for all of us. And he said, that is privilege. So that's what you need to understand about yourself, that you don't even consider your race. You don't have to, you don't have to think about it. And that really landed with me, especially when he said, "Now, I'm guessing that all of the women students put women down." Like, if you are a white woman, I bet woman went down as your first word. And I bet if you are a man, it didn't occur to you to write that down. That is another form of privilege." And he just kind of took us through this exercise. It was non-judgmental. It wasn't unkind in any way. In fact, I think it was just a really generous way of explaining through what filters does the world see you, and how should you understand that in relation to how other people understand the filters that the world sees them through? It was just a really transformative experience for me. And it landed with me for the first time that so many aspects of how I grew up, I never examined in any meaningful way because no one had put that type of question in front of me. So I'm curious, since you have been through these moments of eye opening and developed new relationships, and now have lived across the ocean from the place you grew up, how has that impacted your politics?
Kennedy Miller [00:26:50] I am so much more-- again, I think just nuanced is the best word that I can use. Growing up in the South and having just my community told me to believe this, and so I chose to believe it. And then kind of a really dramatic unlearning where I went to this way other side of like, okay, I hate everything about where I grew up and I hate everything about the South and about Christianity, and I'm just going to reject all of it, to now coming into this really beautiful, kind of healed thing. I think I've realized that my politics don't have to be a monolith either. I can be a Democrat and vote as a Democrat, but also be critical of things in the party and disagree with things in the party and be super left wing on some things and more centrist on others. And I don't think I had allowed myself to believe that was possible for a very long time until the unlearning of my own childhood and the values instilled in me as a child was work that I began doing. But I think a lot of my personal work now is just finding the balance and thinking about things as not one giant general identity, but rather what are the small things within this that I can think critically about and accept or not accept or endorse and not endorse? And it has become this really complicated but in a good way thing, I think.
Beth [00:28:18] Well, I feel like allowing for that kind of complexity indicates that you feel a sense of agency. And I feel like coming out of high control religious spaces, purity culture, the rigidity that some of that Southern hospitality can also lead to, feeling that sense of agency is a big deal. And there's a lot of growth to have experienced by your early twenties.
Kennedy Miller [00:28:44] I'm glad that you brought up purity culture because I think a lot of that has to do with the reason that the unlearning became necessary for my survival and my healing in a lot of ways. I mean, to be told from a young child like prepubescent that you have the ability with your body as it is to cause the hell bound damage of the boys in your life, can cause a very deep hatred and mistrust of the body that you live in. And to grow into that body as a woman with all of the changes that it comes with in order to survive in that body and be comfortable with it, you have to do that unlearning really, really quickly, which was really hard. And I'm still really healing from it because that stuff is really deep-seated. But on the good side, it's allowed me to think about all of these things critically from a very young age, which has been a really good thing for my identity at large.
Beth [00:29:45] What has been valuable to you in that healing and unlearning process?
Kennedy Miller [00:29:52] I definitely think it is just immersing myself into communities of really strong, passionate women who are also very different from me, but also very similar to me in a lot of ways. I have lots of friends who had a very similar childhood to me as growing up in the South, unlearning a lot of that type of purity, modesty, culture and coming into this idea of what strength can be. Two of my best friends are from New Orleans, Louisiana, and one is a black woman and one is a black woman from Kokomo, Indiana. And this trio of women has really changed my life in another way to not only experience this was a Midwestern way of growing up, and this was a way of growing up in the city of New Orleans and all of that beauty that comes with that, but also having friends of different races than me, which was not something that was available to me as a child, has been the most beautiful friendship of my life. And the circle of friends that I now have in London, here at home, abroad, elsewhere in the country, I think that this circle of women is just really like absolutely everything to me and continues to help me think about things critically and unlearn things while also learning more perspective. That also informs what I'm thinking about too. So just absolutely obsessed with the women in my life and couldn't love all of them more.
Beth [00:31:13] I'm so glad that you have that. And I think that's a wonderful answer because it's easy to look for tools or classes or this is the book that really shaped me-- and there's a place for all of that, but I think to find that in between, the place where you say, okay, for example, sex is is sacred and important and serious and also my sexuality is wonderful and beautiful and a gift and not anything to be ashamed of, I think that really takes conversation with real live humans who are working out the same questions that you are. I'm just not sure that we can find a theory out there that really gets us to feel comfort with that. And it's the feeling of comfort where I think all that agency comes from.
Kennedy Miller [00:32:04] Yeah, absolutely. And I think too it's about seeing the different ways in which a woman can be empowered. And that empowerment doesn't mean one thing. I mean, here I am, grew up in the South, went to college and have chosen this very explicit way to be independent by moving away, going to a foreign country, the whole thing. I have other friends in my hometown that also went away to college, also gained perspective, but chose to come home and to marry their high school sweetheart and to start families by the time they were 21. And they are so empowered and so undeniably happy because they chose that. And I am so undeniably happy because of what I chose. And I hope that when we have our respective hypothetical daughters one day, that we will introduce them to each other to be like growing up, you've had this mother that had this version of empowerment and independence, meet my friend who's done this. And it's about not indoctrinating womanhood to be one thing, which is how I grew up. But it's about just letting women be women and letting women have choices and choose what is empowering to them. And I think that is when the real beauty and healing happens.
Beth [00:33:15] Kennedy, I'm 20 years older than you are. I think a lot about what might come in the next 20 years for me in terms of my politics and my faith and my understanding of community and race and diversity. So I wonder what you think might be next for you. As you roll it forward and you think about how far you've come in a relatively short period of time, what are your hopes for what's next?
Kennedy Miller [00:33:43] I think that honestly for the first time I am content not knowing what's next in a very specific way, but knowing that probably for the next 10 years I'm going to be in school in some capacity. I love school. I'm good at school. I want to get my doctorate one day. That's kind of the trajectory. I don't know where that will be. I love living in Europe, but I love the South too. I could see myself coming home one day. And I just hope the next 20 years are about this slow but really constant and beautiful journey towards just learning more. I just crave to learn in an academic way and a life way. I hope I travel a lot. I hope that me and my girlfriends stay really close and introduce each other to our future spouses and kids and things. I think I just want to grow into this continual learning, continual socializing with my friends. That is just really the joy of life to me right now. I mean, obviously music is huge to me. That's the career I want to pursue. I hope I sing a lot. And I think everything that I'm doing right now, but more of it and more perspective on it would be really ideal.
Beth [00:34:53] I hope that for you too. I think that's a beautiful vision.
Kennedy Miller [00:34:56] Thank you.
Beth [00:34:57] Well, thank you so much for this conversation. If you would stick around for a minute, I would love to chat with you Outside of Politics too.
Kennedy Miller [00:35:03] Sure.
Beth [00:35:13] We always end our show talking about something Outside of Politics. And Kennedy, I want to hear about moving to London and singing opera.
Kennedy Miller [00:35:20] Moving to London and singing opera is such a funny niche thing that I am doing and I am just absolutely obsessed with it. I go to the Royal Academy of Music, so I'm in a cohort of about 25 singers. I'm one of two Americans and most of them are British or are from Europe. And getting to know the funny cultural differences between the Brits and between my upbringing has been absolutely hilarious. They love to make fun of my accent and vice versa. There's just lots and lots of banter going on. And then just the school experience of the British conservatoire coming from a giant public liberal arts university like UNC into a tiny British conservatoire, has also been a really interesting and hard transition. I don't think I realized how much I relied on academic validation to get me through on days when I thought my singing wasn't going great until I moved to London. And all I do all day is sing for hours and hours and hours, and I don't have essays anymore to make me feel good on the days when I might have a bad voice day. So it's just been a really big transition, but in a really beautiful way.
Beth [00:36:35] I want to know how you continue to love singing when it is your professional focus. So I went to college intending to major in voice, and when I was taking voice lessons that first year, I was really struggling with tongue tension. Looking back, that feels very obvious to me. I think I was struggling with tension all around. I think I was one big ball of tension, but I remember being in a practice room, looking in a mirror, just staring at my tongue thinking, like, relax, relax. Which, you know, was very helpful. So I realized this is not fun for me. I want to enjoy music and I don't know if I can enjoy it if I am trying to be really good at it. Have you ever had that experience or has it just been a joy all along?
Kennedy Miller [00:37:23] Oh, it is so hard. That is the constant struggle, right? It's like recognizing that singing is such a technical and anatomical craft. I deal with tongue tension too, but mine is really like a lot of high ab breath tension. And on days when I'm stressed or haven't slept well enough or depending on what I ate, the tension just shoots up and down and sometimes there's no rhyme or reason. And just knowing that your voice exists in your body and is ruled by your body can be a very frustrating thing. But I think in a lot of ways now, what I root myself in is that I kind of tie my voice and my vocal identity to my womanhood in this way. That’s because my voice exists in my body and it is embedded into my anatomy, it cannot be replicated and it is only mine and no one else can touch it or tell me how to use it or how to nurture it, or how to perform in any sort of ways. And it just gets to be mine. And for a long time growing up feeling like my body wasn't always mine, like having a voice and using it in the way that I want to use it is so healing and empowering to know that this instrument is something that I just get to have, and no one else even gets to look at it and it just gets to be this beautiful thing that I get to do. I think of that a lot. And on really bad, tough days, I'm just like, remember how much you're obsessed with the fact that your instrument is inside of you and is connected to the very breath that keeps you alive. And I think it's this very ideological, philosophical thing, but I kind of come back to it. But it helps because a lot of what I do is so technical and so specific, that I think rooting myself in the joy of these ideologies and values about my voice has been really helpful.
Beth [00:39:15] I love that. That makes me feel like we've made enormous generational progress. I don't have regrets about my life. I love the life that I have. I wouldn't change any of it. Also, if I were writing a different version of my life, I would give myself yoga as a teenager so that I could feel my body. I just think I didn't feel my body until my late twenties. And you can't sing if you don't feel your body. Like, you can't sing professionally for sure if you don't feel your body. I wish I could have had that sooner in life because now I do realize like, oh, all these things I was wrestling with, it was because I was still in that mode of treating my body like a taxi for my brain. And it really was the essay writing that validated me, as you talked about, that I think, cut me off from the beauty of that internal resonance that your voice represents. So I'm just thrilled for you. I'm delighted.
Kennedy Miller [00:40:15] Great. Well, I hope that you've also found a way to be in love with singing still. And I hope that that's still a place in your life as well, because what a beautiful thing to be able to have and a gift to be able to have for yourself, but also share for other people too.
Beth [00:40:30] Yeah, you know what? I really haven't, but I'm working on it. It is a priority for me in this decade. Well, tell me about living in London. Going from North Carolina to London, what's that been like for you?
Kennedy Miller [00:40:42] Oh, it's been so fun. I mean, hard at first like any transition is. But living in a really big city and having access to public transportation, which is on time and can get me across the city in like less than 30 minutes, it's crazy. And also having access to opera and classical music in a constant way, but also in a really accessible way. Like, that's not something I had growing up in the South. We have North Carolina Opera and Raleigh and North Carolina Symphony, and there's really not much going on here. And you have to wait like a long time to kind of see those things play out. So having just constant and affordable access to classical music has made me fall even more in love with the art form than I already was. London is such a gorgeous and artsy city, and I just am completely in love with it. I just know it's a great place for me to be at this stage of my life in my early twenties and absolutely, absolutely loved it. It's a great city.
Beth [00:41:43] Tell me about your favorite performance that you've had so far.
Kennedy Miller [00:41:46] I, for the first time this year, have fallen in love with a German art song. I never liked singing in German at UNC. I thought there were too many consonants. It intimidated me on paper. But I am really passionate about performing works by female composers. There's a classical canon of lots and lots of men who wrote really good stuff, and I love singing their stuff, but a lot of them had wives and sisters and peers who also wrote gorgeous stuff. So I'm really passionate about going through the library and finding these pieces and singing them. And I have been singing a lot of German songs by Clara Schumann, who was Robert Schumann's wife, and Fanny Mendelssohn Hensel, who was Felix's sister, and Alma Mahler who was Gustaf Mahler's wife. So there was all these women who wrote these gorgeous, gorgeous songs. And I've just absolutely fallen in love with singing their music. So I've had a couple opportunities to sing a program of their songs in public, and that's been work that feels really aligned to my personal values, but also it's just gorgeous music. So I love singing it.
Beth [00:42:53] That is awesome. Well, Kennedy, what a treat to talk with you. I am so happy that you mentioned that you'd love to be a guest on our show in that other interview and that you said yes to me. And I'm so honored that you listen to Sarah and I and have had us as a part of your life for these years. So thank you. All around.
Kennedy Miller [00:43:10] Thank you so much. I am absolutely honored to be here. And I will never ever stop talking about this to anyone ever. So thank you. And thank you both for the really important and hard work that you do. It is so appreciated by me and so many others in this really beautiful community. The work that you do never goes unnoticed and it's really important. So thank you for carrying on, even when it's really hard.
Beth [00:43:36] I am grateful that Kennedy agreed to join me on the show today. I'm grateful that all of you listened. Don't forget to save the date for our Paducah weekend on October 20 through 21st. We can't wait to see you there. Sarah will be back here with you on Friday. Until then, have the best week available to you.
Pantsuit Politics is produced by Studio D Podcast Production. Alise Napp is our managing director.
Sarah: Maggie Penton is our community engagement manager. Dante Lima is the composer and performer of our theme music.
Beth: Our show is listener-supported. Special thanks to our executive producers.
Executive Producers: Martha Bronitsky. Ali Edwards. Janice Elliott. Sarah Greenup. Julie Haller. Helen Handley. Tiffany Hasler. Emily Holladay. Katie Johnson. Katina Zuganelis Kasling. Barry Kaufman. Molly Kohrs. Katherine Vollmer. Laurie LaDow. Lily McClure. Linda Daniel. Emily Neesley. Tawni Peterson. Tracey Puthoff. Sarah Ralph. Jeremy Sequoia. Katie Stigers. Karin True. Onica Ulveling. Nick and Alysa Villeli. Amy Whited. Emily Helen Olson. Lee Chaix McDonough. Morgan McHugh. Danny Ozment. Jen Ross. Sabrina Drago.
Beth: Jeff Davis. Melinda Johnston. Michelle Wood. Joshua Allen. Nichole Berklas. Paula Bremer and Tim Miller.