A Sense of Doubt blog post #1547 - Ani DiFranco wrote a Book and I watched!
Ani DiFranco wrote a memoir, and, last night, my friend Abbie and I went to see her talk about it in Portland at Revolution Hall sponsored by Powell's.
Here's my current favorite DiFranco song, my all time favorite, and then a bunch of shared text.
It was a great event.
Ani DiFranco is immensely inspiring.
https://www.revolutionhall.com/event/1834321-ani-difranco-in-conversation-portland/
Despite her rebellion against the music industry, Ani DiFranco became one of the most prolific indie artists — selling over 5.5 million albums and winning numerous awards, including a Grammy. In her new memoir, DiFranco shares the unconventional path that led her to become a music industry and activist trailblazer while maintaining an artistic integrity that has inspired and challenged many.
In No Walls and the Recurring Dream, DiFranco’s prose is as incisive and poetic as her songs, combining hard-won wisdom and personal expression to convey the power of music, feminism, political activism, storytelling, philanthropy, entrepreneurship, and much more. Passionate and candid, DiFranco shares her inspiring and radical story — from being an emancipated minor sleeping in a Buffalo bus station, to releasing her first album at the age of 18, to consciously rejecting the mainstream recording industry and creating her own label, Righteous Babe Records.
DiFranco’s memoir reveals how she became the musician whom Pete Seeger described as “the torchbearer for the next generation,” by leaning into an authentic, unpolished aesthetic in the face of the pristine, synthesized music of the ’90s. In addition to her musical success, DiFranco has worked tirelessly for reproductive rights, racial justice, ecological sanity, gender equality, and prison reform.
In a dialogue based on her life and memoir, No Walls and the Recurring Dream, DiFranco offers the bared soul of an artist who redefined what it means to be a successful musician and how to use a public platform for change. DiFranco will be joined in conversation by Cari Luna, author The Revolution of Every Day.
Price includes a copy of DiFranco’s No Walls and the Recurring Dream. Books distributed at event.
By the Book: Ani DiFranco
May 15, 2019
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The singer-songwriter, whose new memoir is “No
Walls and the Recurring Dream,” says her shelves contain “poetry for when my
mind is spinning” and “a bunch of learn-how-to-meditate books that don’t seem
to be helping.”
What books are on your nightstand?
“The Hidden Life of Trees,” by Peter
Wohlleben, and “A Thousand Mornings,” by Mary Oliver.
What’s the last great book that you read?
When I started writing a memoir, I went
and read a bunch of memoirs to get different people’s take on the whole thing.
I was really struck by Assata Shakur’s “Assata” and Dr. Willie Parker’s “Life’s
Work” (not technically classified as a memoir but I think of it that way).
Barack Obama’s “Dreams From My Father” and Bruce Springsteen’s “Born to Run”
were also real standouts, both particularly epic. “Miles: The Autobiography,” a
book put together by Quincy Troupe, sure left an impression, too. I was
captured for a time by each of these books, but I think it was Parker’s voice
that ended up providing the most guidance to mine as I was writing my own
story.
Who are your favorite musician-writers? Your
favorite memoir by a musician?
I
thought the Springsteen memoir was an amazing piece of work. I especially loved
how he wrote about his fellow musicians in the E Street Band and what it’s like
to be part of a musical family. I was impressed with how vulnerable he allowed
himself to be too, toward the end, when he shared with us the challenges of
facing advancing age. I thought he was brave not to end the tale before the man
“born to run” has to actually stop running and deal with himself. I also found
books by lesser known artists, such as Suze Rotolo’s “A Freewheelin’ Time: A
Memoir of Greenwich Village in the Sixties” and Dave Van Ronk’s “The Mayor of
MacDougal Street,” which I thought were great. Revealing of a whole cultural
movement and era and scene. And speaking of a scene, there’s nothing quite like
seeing all the greats of jazz through the eyes of Miles Davis! Now that was a gripping
autobiography. Goddess bless Quincy Troupe for weaving together what must have
been endless hours of taped interviews, with Miles and everyone, tons of
research and reading, listening and corroborating and cat herding — and coming
up with such a seamless and authentic-feeling narrative. Quincy wrote a story
that feels like it’s coming hissing right out of Miles’s mouth into your ear.
What
books might we be surprised to find on your bookshelves?
Hmm, no
real surprises here, I don’t imagine. There’s a bunch of learn-how-to-meditate
books that don’t seem to be helping. Some books of poetry for when my mind is
spinning too fast to even deal with complete sentences. A lot of feminist
theory and neuroscience for laymen. “The Tao of Pooh.” No murder mysteries. No
romance novels. I’m so predictable!
What
are the best books about music you’ve read?
I
remember really loving Joe Klein’s “Woody Guthrie: A Life,” but, truth is,
before my recent memoir-reading binge, I hadn’t read many books by or about
musicians. Let alone books about music itself. As Martin Mull famously said,
“Writing about music is like dancing about architecture!” I preferred to
just do music, or listen to it.
What
kind of reader were you as a child? Your favorite book? Most beloved character?
I loved
reading as a kid. I remember devouring a series of “Black Stallion” novels.
Later, there was Judy Blume and then other great American authors like Mark
Twain and James Baldwin, for whom I seemed to need no translator. I wanted to
be Huckleberry Finn (and, in a sense, I think I succeeded). Then, in my early
adulthood, came a wave of feminist writers, Audre Lorde, Alice Walker, Anaïs
Nin, and that’s when I really graduated from my own homemade school.
What’s
the most interesting thing you’ve learned from a book recently?
Trees
warn each other about danger. They care for their sick. They have
relationships. They communicate electrically, through root systems and fungi,
like underground computer networks, and also with airborne pheromones, just
like animals. They might even honor their ancestors by sustaining the root life
of an important or beloved fallen elder. Their consciousness, as in all
nonhuman beings, is higher and more sophisticated than we humans generally give
them credit for. (“The Hidden Life of Trees,” by Peter Wohlleben.)
If
you could require the president to read one book, what would it be?
It is humorous to even
try to imagine the president reading a book, but in my fantasy, I would kick
off his reading career with Malcolm Gladwell’s “Outliers.”
You’re hosting a literary dinner party. Which
three writers, dead or alive, are invited?
Oooooooo, O.K. Here we go. Howbout,
Zora Neale Hurston, Mark Twain and Harper Lee? Man, what a dinner that would
be.
What’s the one book you wish someone else
would write?
The Case for the Reproductive Freedom
Amendment: A 21st-Century Manifesto on Civil and Human Rights.
Who would you want to write your life story?
Ha! Well, I just did so myself, but I
was struck with how subjective and highly suspect even my own account seemed to
be at times!
What books do you find yourself returning to
again and again?
Books
that contain some kind of renegade theory in sociology, science, philosophy or
spirituality, like the kind that opens doors for me into new areas of awareness
— those books often get replays. Books like “The Alphabet Versus the Goddess,” by Leonard Shlain,
or “The Spell of the Sensuous,” by David Abram. Books like “The
Botany of Desire,” “Molecules of Emotion,” “In a Different Voice,” “The Power
of Now,” “Spiritual Midwifery” — these are my textbooks of science and
philosophy.
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A version of this
article appears in print on May 18, 2019, on Page 7 of the
Sunday Book Review with the headline: Ani DiFranco. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe
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- Bloggery committed by chris tower - 1905.16 - 10:10
- Days ago = 1412 days ago
- New note - On 1807.06, I ceased daily transmission of my Hey Mom feature after three years of daily conversations. I plan to continue Hey Mom posts at least twice per week but will continue to post the days since ("Days Ago") count on my blog each day. The blog entry numbering in the title has changed to reflect total Sense of Doubt posts since I began the blog on 0705.04, which include Hey Mom posts, Daily Bowie posts, and Sense of Doubt posts. Hey Mom posts will still be numbered sequentially. New Hey Mom posts will use the same format as all the other Hey Mom posts; all other posts will feature this format seen here.
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