Ok, by now folks know I'm ecclectic in taste and I just love Ani diFranco. She
is a cute little, bi-sexual lady from the rust belt....Buffalo, NY...She is
sassy, funky, and immensely talented.
As one of her albums goes she "Is not a pretty girl". Though I find her trully
beautiful.
She does it all, for she is a lyricist that is uncompromised since the advent
of Dylan. She is even more explosive and adventorous than he and others like
Boie in that she trancends and blends and outright fools with a variety of
sounds, and dimensions in the musical/lyrical experience from rap to folk to
jazz and blues with ever ebbing webs and complexities in-between. Oh did I
mention I love her in the best sense of that term?
Here is a sort of kinda bizzarro, but all too true story....
I was once upon a time a middle-aged white guy, albeit legally blind and with a
renewed sense of mission and experience, in 1998, while living in New Hampshire.
I had just shed myself of a bad marriage and was in the middle of my own
mid-life crisis for lack of a better term for it all.
About a year earlier I got turned on to ani....
I was running a main channel radio reading service for the blind out of Notre
Dame College in Manchester, NH. And I ran it rather in a funky fashion with a
live blend of straight newspaper readings, blended with traditional disability
program related segments/interviews and some really ecclectic musical bumps,
grinds, and blends.
So, anyway where was I?
Why, yes there I was a middle-aged white guy at the University of New Hampshire
in Durham circa 97, 98 or so at a concert. And I wasn't even stoned. In fact I
didn't even drink at that time. And suddenly there was my earth angel, my soul
mate, my goddess on the stage.
And, sadly it wasn't even a sexual thing. I just loved her for the words....Oh,
how pathetic that was.
And even more pathetic was the fact that at the time, and I was mostly naive
about this by the way, ani was a lesbian icon. Shit. I was practically the only
male in the throung. And I'm certain I was one of only a handful who was
straight. Man, oh man was I naive and man oh man was this a big time mid-life
crisis on steroids!
Regardless, I still got in to the concert and I still loved it and ani. In fact
while I was ssurrounded by all of the regions most beautiful, though
unnatainable women (at least to me) we rocked and rolled and conjived and
conjoled. I got to be rather popular, I guess as a sort of straight mascot, but
didn't care a wit. Though I might lament that the old saying is true in that,
"All the good ones are taken or gay/lesbian."
Sensuality, and all that is kind of a weird thing especially when represented
in an art form like music...Well not weird, but different, I guess.
Now, dig this though....I had a rather beautiful, but sexually repressed
ex-wife on my recent mind and in other places too, and then I was for some
reason thrown in to this milleau, at mid-life (still vital, but insecure as all
get out if you want to know the truth) and all of a sudden this lovely,
bi-sexual lady of many talents led me in to an exploration of areas within and
without I never new existed.
It is hard to explain. Quite hard.
Regardless, I was most impressed with the fact that it was "Shameless".
And whether or not one is bi, straight, or gay, one can live, even if
vicariously with the "shamelessness" of it all. (I loved the adventure...but
that is another story for another day...)
Link:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iR6MWSvk5N4
