Ethan Hawke

And to understand acting, I've gotten into directing.

And to understand acting, I've gotten into writing.

But music's one thing I can't really do.

I mean, I try, but I'm not good at it at all.

But I love it.

And my inability to do it well has only increased my fandom, my geekdom, my absolute hero worship of the people who can do it well.

And I think I really love being a fan.

Well, it was coming up on the last presidential election, and I had this realization that no matter who won, half the country was going to be absolutely despondent.

And I found myself thinking a lot about Merle Haggard and how much he crossed the boundaries between left and right and what a free thinker he was.

You know, he spent the first nine years of his professional stardom as the new Woody Guthrie,

And then he wrote this funny song called Okie from Muskogee that was basically a really, really funny song asking the left wing to consider how the right wing might feel.

And the left wing responded with absolute vehemence and felt betrayed.

And were angry at him.

And then he was claimed by Nixon and touted as the voice of the silent majority.

And then he went on and wrote songs about civil rights that weren't released and promoted because the label weren't excited by that or they were worried he was going to lose fans.

He wrote pro-immigration songs and those were ignored.

And then slowly the right wing lost interest in him as their spokesperson.

He just was always himself and he didn't follow anyone else's bandwagon.

And he was a humanist.

And I thought he might be a great person to revisit right now as our country is so kind of team oriented and not speaking to each other.