INTERLUDE

Buffy Sainte-Marie on
uncertainty

Discrepancies are something that I’ve lived with since I was very little. I had an undeniable, irrefutable view of what the world said was so, and it was fine. I was fine with it. But I learned early on that what was “absolutely” true was not necessarily true for me. And I think it’s always drawn me to loners and to people who are creative. Think of the creative process of songwriting. On Tuesday the song doesn’t exist. You cannot prove that it exists. But on Wednesday, all of a sudden, something exists that didn’t exist yesterday. A lot of things that have happened to me are not true on Tuesday but by Wednesday, the world is different. And this is a huge concept for me. It reinforces my sense of health and well-being and sanity because of the way my life has been with airplane tickets and my non-9-to-5, five-days-a-week, weekends off—I don’t live that kind of life. I have a different life and I just became comfortable eventually with, you know what, it’s okay not to know because the future hasn’t happened yet.