[2002-10-30] deHTMLized by script by Zrajm C Akfohg

Ani DiFranco: Revelling [?]
(c)2001 Righteous Babe Records

 1. Ain't That the Way
 2. O.K.
 3. Garden of Simple
 4. Tamburitza Lingua
 5. Marrow
 6. Heartbreak Even
 7. Harvest
 8. Kazoointoit
 9. Whatall Is Nice
10. Fierce Flawless
11. Rock Paper Scissors
12. Beautiful Night


1. Ain't That the Way

I love you
And you love me
And ain't that the way
It's supposed to be?

I swing my stick legs 'round at the root
And pile drive each foot into a platform boot
And I'm up and I'm out
Cuz I'm bouncing off the walls
And I come when I'm called
And you called

I got a super-cute three-piece suit
One piece for your body
One piece for your smile
One more little piece
If you stay a while

I gotta beeline double time
Leave my home sweet home for your honeycomb
Then I show up steady, ready and proud
And I find I've forgotten how to talk out loud

Isn't it just like you
To bring me to my knees
In my brand new stockings
While the cat is out with my tongue
Isn't it just like you
To bring me to my knees
In my brand new stockings
Love makes me feel so dumb


2. O.K.

(thanks to sara)


If you ask me
I'll say
Yes please
To you today
So don't ask me
Cuz I'm weak that way
Just don't ask me
O.k.

I'm so glad we got that
Straightened away

If you see me
Walk by
You better just let me
Walk by
You better not
Bat your pretty eyes
You better not
Stop me to say hi

I got a sweet tooth today
So you better not cut that pie

If you ask me
I'll say
Yes please
To you today
So don't ask me
Cuz I'm weak that way
Just don't ask me
O.k.


3. Garden of Simple

Some crazy fucker carved a sculpture out of butter
And propped it up in the middle of the bonanza breakfast bar
And I am stuffing toast and sausage into my pockets
Under a sign that says grand opening
While my dog is waiting in the car

I wake up, I check out
I fill the tank and wash the windshield clean
Then I'm back out on the highway
And BANG that's when I remember my dream:

We were standing in a garden
And I had a machine that made silence
It just sucked up the whole opinionated din
And there were no people on the payroll
And there were no monkeys on our backs
And I said, show me what you look like
Without skin

Science chases money
And money chases its tail
And the best minds of my generation
Can't make bail
But the bacteria are coming to take us down
That's my prediction
It's the answer to this culture
Of the quick fix prescription

But in the garden of simple
Where all of us are nameless
You were never anything but beautiful to me
And, you know, debt never really owned you
You just carried them around you
And then one day you put 'em down
And found your hands were free

So now it's early in the morning
At the longitude of memphis
And the sun is setting sweetly on hong kong
And the big plan is just to keep spinning
Cuz the big bang is only just beginning
And sometimes it's all that we can do just to hang on

And what I meant to say is xxoo which means I'm thinking of ya
Which means I've been thinking of you
All along


4. Tamburitza Lingua

(thanks to DG, sara)

A cold and porcelain lonely
In an old new york hotel
A stranger to a city
That she used to know so well
Bathing in a bathroom
That is bathed in the first blue light
Of the beginning of a century
At the end of an endless night

Then she is wet behind the ears and wafting down the avenue
Pre-rush hour
Post-rain shower
Stillness seeping upwards like steam
From another molten sewer
Summer in new york

They've been spraying us with chemicals in our sleep
Us / they
Something about the mosquitoes having some kind of disease
Them / me
CIA foul play
If you ask the guy selling hair dryers out of a gym bag
Chemical warfare
"I'm telling you, lab rat to lab rat," he says, "that's where the truth
Is at"
That's where the truth is at
That's where the truth is at

And everything seems to have gone terribly wrong that can
But one breath at a time is an acceptable plan
She tells herself
And the air is still there
And this morning it's even breathable
And for a second the relief is unbelievable
And she's a heavy sack of flour sifted
Her burden lifted
She's full of clean wind for one lean moment
And then she's trapped again
Reverted
Caged and contorted
With no way to get free
And she's getting plenty of little kisses
But nobody's slippin' her the key

Her whole life is a long list of what ifs
And she doesn't even know where to begin
And the pageantry of suffering therein
Rivals television
Tv is, after all, the modern day roman coliseum
Human devastation as mass entertainment
And now millions sit jeering
Collectively cheering
The bloodthirsty hierarchy of the patriarchal arrangement

She is hailing a cab
She is sailing down the avenue
She's 19 going on 30
Or maybe she's really 30 now ...
It's hard to say
It's hard to keep up with time once it's on its way

And, you know, she never had much of a chance
Born into a family built like an avalanche
And somewhere in the 80s between the oat bran and the ozone
She started to figure out things like why
One eye pointed upwards looking for the holes in the sky
One eye on the little flashing red light
A picasso face twisted and listing down the canvas
Of the end of an endless night

10 9 8 seven six 5 4 three 2 one
And kerplooey
You're done.
You're done for.
You're done for good.
So tell me
Did you?
Did you do?
Did you do all you could?


5. Marrow

(thanks to pj, sara)
The answer came
Like a shot in the back
While you were running from your lesson
Which might explain
Why years later all you could remember
Was the terror of the question
Plus, you weren't listening
You were stockpiling canned goods
Making a bomb shelter of our basement
And I can't believe you let the moral go by
While you were soaking in the product placement

Where was your conscience?
Where was your consciousness?
And where did you put all those letters
That you wrote to yourself
But could not address?

I'm a good kisser
And you're a fast learner
And that kinda thing could float us
For a pretty long time
Then one day you'd realize
You've memorized my phone number
And you'll call it and find
It's a disconnected line
Cuz I got tossed out the window of love's el camino
And I shattered into a shower of sparks on the curb
You were smoking me
Weren't you?
Between your yellow fingers
You just inhaled and exhaled without saying a word

Where was your conscience?
Where was your consciousness?
And where did you put all those letters
That you wrote to yourself
But could not address?

There's a smorgasbord of unspoken poisons
A whole childhood of potions
That are all bottled up
And so one by one I am dusting off labels
I am uncorking bottles and filling up cups
So go ahead and have a taste of your own medicine
And I'll have a taste of mine
But first let's toast to the lists
That we hold in our fists
Of the things that we promise to do
Differently next time

Cuz the answer came like a shot in the back
While you were running from your lesson
Which might explain
Why years later all you could remember
Was the terror of the question
Plus I'm not listening to you anymore
My head is too sore and my heart's perforated
And I'm mired in the marrow of my (well... ain't that) funny bone
Learning how to be alone and devastated
Where was my conscience?
Where was my consciousness?
And what do I do with all these letters
That I wrote to myself
But cannot address?


6. Heartbreak Even

It's a heartbreak even situation
Nothing lost and nothing gained
So I'm 10 years old again
Standing in the backyard waving at a train

I feel you make love to me slightly
Every time you let a little laugh slip too soon
And the moment passes over us so lightly
It feels like sand blowing over a dune

You try not to let your emotions show
But it ain't a balloon you can just let go
It's an ice cream cone dripping in the sun
Sticky hands
Sticky arms
Sticky situation

It's a heartbreak even situation
One part powerful elation
One part pitiful and frail
And I'm trying to feel my way around
A book of promises written in braille

There is pressure from within this
And pressure from above
There is pressure on our tenuous, strenuous love
And there's wet wool blankets one, two, three
Laid onto my chest
'Til I just can't breathe

And I try not to let my emotions show
But it ain't a balloon I can just let go
It's an ice cream cone dripping in the sun
Sticky hands
Sticky arms
Sticky situation


7. Harvest


8. Kazoointoit

I love us both but I don't feel good
So I keep pulling over
And looking under
The hood
I love us both but I'm at wit's end
Where does your compromise begin
And mine end?
I love us both but what
World's it gonna be?
The one according to you
Or the one according to me?

I don't feel good so ...
Now do my problems include
Talks with doctors who don't even understand
About food?
I think in ancient china they kinda
Figured out how the body works
But our culture is just a roughneck
Teenage jerk
With a bottle of pills
And a bottle of booze
And a full round of ammunition
And nothing to lose

And is it really the best we can do
To arm wrestle over whose world it's gonna be?
(the one according to you
Or the one according to me)

I love us both and I'll see ya
If you'll see me
So ... who are we?


9. Whatall Is Nice

(thanks to sara)

Today we are only whatall is nice about us
Today we turned on in the blue light of dawn
And made love

And you were not a dot dot dot
Waiting for me to complete you
And it was like I just forgot
To measure everything that I do

We woke up with the notion
That enough is not enough without more
And then we pushed with one motion
Like the ocean heaves a wave at the shore

(*actually sang with push & heave reversed*)

And you were not a dot dot dot
Leaning forward expectantly
And I was not in such a rush
To insure my autonomy

Today we are only whatall is nice about us


10. Fierce Flawless

She was cuffed to the truth like the truth was a chair
Bright interrogation light in her eyes
Her conscience lit a cigarette and just stood there
Waiting for her to crack
Waiting for her to cry
His face scampered through her mind
Like a roach across a wall
It made her heart soar
It made her skin crawl
They said, we got this confession we just need for you to sign
Why don't you just cooperate and make this easier on us all

There was light and then there was darkness
But there was no line in between
And asking her heart for guidance
Was like pleading with a machine
Cuz joy, it has its own justice
And dreams are languid and lawless
And everything bows to beauty
When it is fierce
And when it is flawless

On the table were two ziploc baggies
Containing her eyes and her smile
They said, we're keeping these as evidence
'Til this thing goes to trial
Meanwhile anguish was fingering solace
In another room down the hall
Both were love's accomplices
But solace took the fall

Now look at her book of days
It's the same on every page
And she's got a little tin cup with her heart in it
To bang along the bars of her rib cage
Bang along the bars of her rib cage


11. Rock Paper Scissors

(thanks to kelly, jennifer, sara)


It's rock paper scissors as to whether
I will get over you at all
It's hand against hand and both hands are mine
It's standing in a circular line
Which is not to say that I'm not also happy
A happy meal with a surprise inside
Surprise surprise here's another bright light in your eyes
Exposing all the stuff you're not calculating enough to hide

This melancholy that I carry makes me feel so grown up
At my kitchen table doing shots of resignation
I never thought I'd see the day when I would say I give up
And break the stallions of my wildest expectations

I do not want to know you this way
Surrounded by so much pain
But how am I supposed to let go of you this way
Like a bird into the sky of my brain?

I think I could accept all these dark colors
As just part of some bigger color scheme
If it wasn't for that drippy string quartet of sadness
Underscoring each smiling scene
Desire drags me right out of myself
A gas-soaked rope tied to a piece of coal
And I'm getting pretty good at looking at the bright side
While the flames rip along the sand and swallow me whole


12. Beautiful Night

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