Ani DiFranco
Popular folk-rock singer-songwriter and guitarist.
Somedays the line I walk turns out to be straight -
Other days the line tends to deviate.
I am still praying for revolution.
I am looking for the holes,
The holes in your jeans
Because I want to know:
Are they worn out in the seat,
Or are they worn out in the knees?
My country tis of thee,
To take swings at each other on talk-show TV.
If you're not angry, you're just stupid, or you don't care.
Because I know the biggest crime
Is just to throw up your hands
And say "This has nothing to do with me,
I just want to live as comfortably as I can.
The windows of my soul are made of one way glass
Don't bother looking into my eyes
If there's something you want to know - just ask.
Love sets fire to your schedule,
And then calls an end to time.
There's this brutal imperial power, that my passport says I represent.
But it will never represent where my heart lives, only vaguely where it went.
I think you're the least fucked-up person I've ever met,
And that may be as close to the real thing as I'm ever gonna get.
Because the world owes me nothing
And we owe each other the world.
We have to be able to criticize what we love,
Say what we have to say,
'Cause if you're not trying to make something better,
Then as far as I can tell, you are just in the way.
I still define myself by the places that I've been.
My life may not be something special
But it's never been lived before.
I used to be a superhero.
No one could touch me, not even myself.
You are like a phone booth that I somehow stumbled into,
And now look at me, I am just like everybody else.
Life is a b movie.
It's stupid and it's strange,
A directionless story,
And the dialogue is lame.
But in the he said, she said,
Sometimes there's some poetry,
If you turn your back long enough,
And let it happen naturally.
Girl, next time he wants to know
What your problem is
Next time he wants to know
Where the anger comes from
Just tell him this time the problem's his
Tell him the anger just comes
It just comes.
'Course numb is an old hat, old as my oldest memories.
See that one's my mother, and that one's my father, and that one in the hat, that's me.
It's a skill I'd hoped to abandon, when I got out on the open road,
But any more pent up emotion and I think I'm gonna explode.
I don't always feel lucky, but I'm smart enough to try.
I fight with love, and I laugh with rage.
You've gotta live light enough to see the humor,
And long enough to see some change.