A lot of the songs are pretty unmasked. If you listen to “As Cool As I Am,” it’s not all that different from what you were hearing from Ani DiFranco and some of the other indie women artists of the time. It was still in that context, still seen as folk music.
Women were making more money. Women were saying, “My voice counts. If we’re going out on a Friday night, I don’t want to see a Rambo movie. I want to go see a singer/songwriter who sings about my life”.
At this point, I feel like I have roots in a lot of places. I have friends who have put down roots, in Seattle and San Francisco and Portland, and I feel very close to them.
I’ve watched towns and cities evolve and become very resilient, and fun, and unique, and prosperous on their own terms. And the secret is bridging. It’s when the local church has a fun clothing swap fundraiser with a temple, and then the next year they bring in the mosque.
The best, most solid place to stand as you look at our present situation is on a foundation of history. The Roman Empire, the British Empire, and the Nazi empire all have things in common.
I came out of that and said I don’t want to go back to feeling depressed. So I asked myself, what can I be optimistic about, in terms of the course of the planet? And I discovered there was no end to the optimism I felt.
A straightforward capitalist society would’ve cut them off and let them die. So I was saved by my friends and by my family and by people who cared about me, and by modern psychotherapy that cared about women.
The summer ends and we wonder who we are And there you go, my friends, with your boxes in your car And today I passed the high school, the river, the maple tree I passed the farms that made it
There’s tons of anger and angst and peculiarity and eccentricity, and good towns know that that’s okay. But towns that are kind of bullshit don’t know what to do with all those feelings.
All the things you treasure most will be the hardest won I will watch you struggle long before the answers come But I won’t make it harder, I’ll be there to cheer you on I’ll shine the light that guides you down the road you’re walking on
God looks like a guidance counselor, God’s got that smile. God says, ‘How could this be? That’s really odd I guess I’ll have to check my records, silly me, you know, I’m only God.’
What was nice about the nineties is that it was an example of music that responded to a desire of the times. It spoke to the social conditions of the times.
[Mortal City ] was also the beginning of the reality of the fact that I was going to have little pieces of my personality identifying with all of these different parts of the country.
I really lucked out with that song [“As Cool As I Am”]. Men were becoming much more comfortable with all the different facets and parts of their identity, including their gentler, funnier, sillier, nurturing parts. They started showing up.
![Dar Williams Quote - [Mortal City ] was also the beginning of the reality of the fact that I was going to have little pieces of my personality identifying with all of these different parts of the country.](https://minimalistquotes.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/01/mortal-city-was-also-the-beginning-of-the-reality--683x1024.jpg)
![Dar Williams Quote - I really lucked out with that song [“As Cool As I Am”]. Men were becoming much more comfortable with all the different facets and parts of their identity, including their gentler, funnier, sillier, nurturing parts. They started showing up.](https://minimalistquotes.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/i-really-lucked-out-with-that-song-as-cool-as-i-am-683x1024.jpg)
