The Power of Collaboration

When friends come together for creative collaboration, the results can produce art that would never be possible as a solo pursuit.

Sara recently wrote about one of our favorite famous friendship pairs, Ben Affleck and Matt Damon.  Another pair I’ve admired for even longer is Emily Saliers and Amy Ray, more popularly recognized as the Grammy Award winning folk-rock duo known as The Indigo Girls. Although they are not individually household names like Ben and Matt, their identities are even more intertwined. As Amy shared in a recent interview about her longtime friendship with Emily, “We’re so different, but it’s also what makes us work.”

This summer, I was lucky enough to see the Indigo Girls perform at Ravinia Festival near Chicago. with my colleague turned friend, Joselyn. I had last seen them live over 25 years ago when they toured as part of the Lilith Fair concert series, and decades later the mutual trust and admiration built over the years made their 2024 performance even more powerful.

The pair first met as elementary school kids in Georgia, but it was in high school when they first came together as musicians. They share their story in the recently released documentary, It’s Only Life After All.  The archival footage is fun to watch, and it’s interesting to learn how their friendship, sexual identities, music and activism has evolved over time.

While I was at the concert with Joselyn, I was thinking about how we had collaborated in my early days with Lipman Hearne. It didn’t take long for us to become true friends. We last worked together 15 years ago, yet I know our shared experience on project teams paved the way for us to support one another as parents and through other life changes.  

The emotional connection between friends makes a collaborative relationship different from professional partnerships, where efficiency often takes precedence. But it doesn’t mean there aren’t challenges along the way. Emily shared in the documentary: “When you have two completely different personalities, there are tensions that arise.” Yet, for the Indigo Girls, their shared history and trust enabled them to navigate challenges with resilience, turning obstacles into genre-spanning music.

When emotional investment transforms the process of working together, it becomes a shared adventure. The joy lies not only in the final result but also in the memories created along the way.

With every lesson learned a line upon your beautiful face. We’ll amuse ourselves one day with these memories we’ll trace.

– The Indigo Girls from the song “Get Out the Map”

Julia and Joselyn ready for the Indigo Girls opening night at Ravinia in August 2024!