One Song for My Old Kentucky Home

The sun shines bright on my old Kentucky home.

There are few words that can stir my heart like the lyrics of My Old Kentucky Home. They always have. Whether it be watching the Call to Post at the Kentucky Derby, or swaying with my fellow students after a University of Kentucky win (or the rare loss) at home. The song is an integral part of what it means to BE a Kentuckian. Like Kentucky, the song has a checkered past that we’re still working on fixing – recognizing, revising, and re-writing the flaws of our past and inserting the hopes for our future. But like Kentucky, we see these flaws and we love it still the same. Instead of a nostalgic look at the past it can represent a chance to be better in the future. In short, the song is rife with meaning for every Kentuckian, and there is no day the song means more than today.

Today is the 145th running of the Kentucky Derby. A day like no other in the state of Kentucky – a state so often marked by what it does not have – for this one day a year we celebrate the things that only we have – a horse racing tradition unlike any other and damn good bourbon.

The race is celebrated from the coal mines of Eastern Kentucky to the Horse farms of Central Ky, across to my ancestral home – the midwestern corn fields of Western Kentucky. But nowhere is it celebrated quite like Louisville Kentucky… I spent 4 years basking in the radiance of Derby week in Louisville. There was nothing like it. The air crackled with electricity – the streets were filled with music, food, and liquor every night – and work slowed to the point of near stopping as we all collectively held our breaths in preparation for the best day of the year.

But for two years now I’ve celebrated away from that electricity. The air is simply humid here – there is no static in it. I expect the air to infiltrate my bones and revive my soul as it did in Louisville, but no such spark occurs. The grocery store does not drastically increase their mint sales, and handles of bourbon are not prominently displayed in every ABC store. The sun does not shine especially bright, the birds do not make music all the day. Because today is just another day. The world turns, life goes on.

It makes me think about identity. About who we are at our core. The series of events and experiences that shaped all of us and our desires to continually seek out those experiences that most make us feel safe and comfortable. It is why we surround ourselves with people like us. With people that remind us of home. Shared experience is the root of all human companionship. This is not inherently right or wrong. It simply is.

So today, I share this as a way to remind you of the duality of human experience and the necessity for both comfort/nostalgia as well as discomfort/new challenges.

Life, like My Old Kentucky Home, does not have to be defined by only what was, what we’ve lost, and what once defined us – it is also about what can be.

Today I sing one song for my old Kentucky home, For my Old Kentucky Home far away.