// So much good lyric discussion that I can't fit everything in 
// one digest...another one will follow tomorrow.
// And still no report from Austin????
// Enjoy...[BP]

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Subject: NN: Re: words to live by - "Hard Life"
   From: "pathowl" (pathowl@gateway.net>

Deb writes:
>It's always bugged me that in recent years she's spun off that tight line,
>singing "and I have been the root of all evil." She backs off too much by
>changing the verb. The old existential "I am" is the truest way to say it.
[part of quote deleted to save digest space...bp]

Deb, I enjoyed reading your post.  Yes, these are powerful lyrics which I
understand as a journey of healing our  separation betweem inner and outer
reality.  I see the writer as one owning her shadow, her dark side or
archetype.  Most of us are trained as children to split off good from evil,
we cannot hold or balance the tension in the opposites.  Our positive side
seeks out idealized heroes, our jaded side sees the worst in others.  The
hard life is in the split.   When she says "I am guilty, I am war and I am
the root of all evil," the writer is no longer the detached observer (the
backseat driver from America,) she has become the Other in an attempt to
heal her own split or lost self.   She owns her projection ("I am not at the
wheel of control, I am guilty...)

In the verse, "A cafeteria line in Chicago, The fat man in front of me...And
I'm thinking this man wears a white hood..."  if the shadow hides in our
projections, that being when we react intensely to a trait in others that we
fail to see in ourselves, we attribute it to the other person in an
unconscious effort to banish it from ourselves.  But what Nanci does is own
this dark side, bridges the split and by doing so is transformed and takes
us with her.   She sees the illusions of the sixties, of TV, "I believed, I
believed, I BELIEVED."  This is how the cultural shadow creates the
framework for the personal shadow.  She reveals her personal heroes, Disney,
Cronkite, Martin Luther,  and projects out her dark jaded side, the "fat
man...he's the only trash here I see..."  For me she is transmuted at the
point of surrender of the tension of opposites, "I am not at the wheel of
control, I am guilty, I am war...I am the root of all evil, Lord and I can't
drive on the left side of the road."   In this surrender she crosses a
bridge to own her own prejudice and takes us to a point of consciousness
(wisdom) that if both sides poison their children with hatred, there will be
nowhere for any of the children to go.   --have I gone too far out on a limb
here?

"I was a child in the sixties..."

"and I have been the root of all evil."

Of course I can only guess at why the change, but perhaps by using "I was"
and "I have been" she has healed the split?  Maybe she isn't at war with
herself any longer.    It would be an interesting question to pose to the
author.

Personally I'm learning the balance of relationship and solitude, expressed
in the following lines,

"Oh the grace that true love holds when hearts grow weary for
time alone
you give it room and the warm to hold
... and it'll always come home"

and

"Well, I'll be heading out of town
I may stop by next time around
Hell, it's raining, but at least
that's something real
I came shackled down with fears
about our dreams and wasted years
And now I know exactly how to feel"

Just something about "Hell, it's raining, but at least that's something
real" wakes me up every time the dew point reaches its saturation point.

Pat - hoping lack of sleep and allergies haven't pushed me off the limb
(why must the dreamers dreams be in their children at play?)


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Subject: NN: hard life
   From: "Deb Thornton" (68coyotes@onms.com>

To Pat and all the others who've posted and emailed me privately,

I appreciate your posts, especially Pat's look at the shadow and the need
for reconciling those parts and integrating them into the self. However, I
see the journey into the dark corners as a continuing process, one that
does not end, one that a person cannot put behind herself. We must continue
to map our heart of darkness---the soul's balanced growth depends on that.
I mean "we" individually and collectively (in the most complete Jungian
sense). That was why Griffith's lines were so stunning in the first place.
And that is why, to say "have been" is to detach from the process---to
dismiss it as a thing of the past. At the same time I can see the
tremendous appeal of wanting to think that one has dealt with such a thing
once and for all.

I wrote an extensive post about the song several years ago, showing how
every word worked toward a particular effect, and how the sounds of her
words also went in that direction, so I didn't want to rehash anything,
just to focus on the progression of

I am guilty 
I am war 
and I am the root of all evil

which appears in the lyric. To me, Dostoyevsky points the way out of the
labyrinthine tangles of individual and cultural struggles toward wholeness.

My nation is fighting an undeclared war at this very minute, and my tax
dollars are contributing to it, and my psyche's energy is in a state of
extreme grief. Grief for the refugees, grief for the slaughtered, grief for
the slaughterers who will one day realize the magnitude of their acts.

Grief for the children: "under the arc of sky they are unsafe" (Dylan
Thomas).

And when bombs are falling, their material reality is all that matters and
the sentiments and conscience of the people who paid for them don't matter
because torn flesh is torn flesh, and children traumatized are a collective
taint. "After the first death, there is no other," Thomas says elsewhere,
and so we cannot even mourn properly.

I teach English literature and composition for a living. Pretty tame stuff.
Or so it would appear. I have to try to live with the paradox that people
are getting killed by my efforts in the classroom, by my religious
injunction to "publish peace." In my world literature class last semester
we looked into the master texts to see if there were any answers to the
evil and suffering question. Hard solutions emerged: Restraint.
Self-control. Consideration of the other. The global golden rule.

Even as war ravages this planet and I am killing the earth with the exhaust
from my car burying my garbage in her and the rain forests that give us the
air we breathe are being hacked to cinders and children are killing
children and people succumb to chemicals that kill their spirits and
corporate materialism steals the lives of children so that other children
can play soccer in their Nikes and everybody's got the bomb and my own
materialism makes the very earth suffer, I listen. I hear "I am guilty / I
am war / And I am the root of all evil." I hear Dostoyevsky's words: "Know
the measure, know the times, study that. When you are left alone, pray.
Love to throw yourself on the earth and kiss it. Kiss the earth and love it
with an unceasing, consuming love. Love all men, love everything. Seek that
rapture and ecstasy." I have to believe that is possible.

And I wonder, what should I do? How should I live? What is the best way to
live my witness? To do the least damage? The transcendentalist says that
prison is the only place for a person of conscience in an unjust society. I
want to keep my eyes open. I have to believe that my own infusion into the
human soup can make small differences, hopefully balanced with the many
mistakes I make that hurt others' lives and my own. I teach these
principles in my classroom; try to help my students see that they, too,
must live their witnesses with full consciousness because the "I-Am" is the
existential root of the human thought and the basis of the human act.

In the end, it doesn't matter to me how Nanci Griffith now sings her lines.
It doesn't matter what loop she is in, or how her tenses shift, or whether
her current perspective has changed or whether she's above or below the
human fracas. She freely published peace; she gave the thought to her
fellow men (which is a hell of a lot more than I have done in my life).

For a moment recorded in time she held up the awful mirror and staked her
claim in the human terrain.

I'm sure this is all more than you wish to know, but those lines are still
driving the wheels of my imagination.

Here's a prayer to all the children who cry in their sleep:
May your open hearts find rest.

(dt)


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Subject: Re: NN: Re: words to live by - "Hard Life"
   From: John Alvord (jalvo@mbay.net>

"I believed, I believed, I believe"

is the way I have heard her sing it.

This is not one of my favorite songs. It has no "shades of grey" and is
extremely preachy. I am sure there are many thin KKKers in the world. 

john alvord                


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Subject: NN: Root of all evil?
   From: Amber L Gilbert (alorien@juno.com>

Hey folks!

     For me, hearing Nanci sing "I have been the root of all evil" is
more touching.  Maybe it's just because the day I heard her sing this
beautiful song for the first time... that day was not pleasant until
then.  Anyway, (I'm gonna bring in some religion here) the Bible states
that the root of all evil is the love of money.  I like to think of Nanci
of ahving conquered that love, that she no longer loves money.  Then I
think, if she can do it, we can do it.  It comforts me.  

                                Amber
*It's a hard life wherever we go,
And if we poison our children with hatred,
It'll be a hard life wherever they go...*

(Nanci words to live by?  Well, since I'm moving soon, I've been saying
abunch of goodbyes.  "don't forget about me" is a great song to wake up
to in the morning:-)


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Subject: RE: NN: Speaking of touching lyrics. . .
   From: "Humphreys, Jennifer" (jenniferh@metrouw.org>

I must add my favorite:

        So long to the blue days of wishing
        If wishes were changes there'd be no goodbyes
        So long to the heart I have given
        Cause' wishing wont bring back the love in your eyes


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Subject: Re: NN: intro, storms, and a question
   From: Rachel Strain (rjs@mail.utexas.edu>

I've been reading all the lyrics that people have posted to the digest, and
I keep thinking to myself, "Oh, yeah, that one's GREAT!"...   The ones that
really stick out in my mind, though, are the ones that describe Austin.
I'm not *from* Austin -- I'm from Corpus Christi, about 200 miles away.
But Austin has been home for me for the last 4 years as I've attended
school at UT.  (I'm proud to say I graduated just 2 days ago with a BA in
Plan II (a liberal arts program) and a BS in Radio-TV-Film.)  So the lyrics
I love are the ones that describe so eloquently Austin as it must have been
when Nanci was growing up here.  Some that I think of may not actually *be*
Austin, but they certainly could be!


Of course, there's "So Long Ago" :

"I saw you once in a crowded bar, and it was Christmastime" [Probably Sixth
Street, a cultural and alcoholic center here in Austin]
 -- and from the same song:
"One night I dreamed of you,
You were running from me in the rain down on Congress Avenue" [I've got
quite the visual picture of that passage!]

There are many other songs that mention Austin in one way or another, but
my favorite is "You Can't Go Home Again" from Poet In My Window.  This song
really conveys the mixed feelings of someone who has left home but still
has warm feelings in her  heart for her hometown.

Notable passage:

"Let the Colorado River roll on to the sea,
I will be crossing it in changes,
And this old town never did really care that much for me,
I don't know why I always come here in my dreams [or I only come here to
remember my  dreams]."

and
"Sleep tight, Hill Country town, Goodnight."

In Texas spirit,

Rachel "creeping back from lurkdom" Strain


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Subject: Re: NN: intro, storms, and a question
   From: dan.gerson@McKesson.com

       >_ nanci song that was kind of a "motto for life" kind of
       >thing,, what would it be?  Mine changes all the time, but it's
       >usually "You'll never learn to fish on a borrowed line, you'll
       >never learn to write if you're walkin' around cryin'" 

     Ah the commonality that Nanci creates. Just think, two people at quite
     opposite ends of the spectrum - a fresh young kid just out of high
     school, bright eyed with all her exciting roads before her, and a
     middle aged bald guy who's been down a few of those roads, dark and
     otherwise, lived to tell about them, and could best be described as
     optimistically cynical - and both of them picking the same line.

     Welcome to the Nancinet, Tracy, and remember what Kate Wolf said in
     "We've Only Got these Times We're Livin' In":

     If I could I'd tell you now
     there are no roads that do not bend
     Days, like flowers, bloom and fade
     And they do not come again

     still fishin' on my own line,

     Dan G.


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Subject: NN: Nanci in NYC and lyrics to live by..
   From: "Mark Tovey" (marktee@hotmail.com>

Hi all,
      Just quickly delurking to see if any other fellow NNers were going 
to see Nanci in Central Park in June 5th...even though it means a trip 
across "the pond" and will put me in debt for several months to come I just 
had to jump at the chance to see our aNGel in concert in one of my favourite 
places on this earth...and with Chris Isaak in support it promises to be a 
superb show...and a NNet gathering would make it that much more memorable, a 
chance to put faces to names and have a nice chat over a drink or 4...so if 
anyone out there is planning on going or a meeting is already planned, let 
me know by private email....
      And on the lyrics thread, i don't know if it's a lyric to live by 
(cos it may be a bit too melancholy for that) but a Nanci line that has 
always struck a chord with me is from Daddy Said (one of her very best IMHO) 
: "I'm just a little too old to be learning the rules of the game".  As the 
quieter, more introverted members of this strange species can attest (myself 
definitely included :), the lessons of life and love can sometimes pass you 
by and this line eloquently sums up the loneliness that can arise when this 
happens.  Any others thoughts on this?
Anyway, enough of my ramblings...i'll slink back into lurkdom for the time 
being :)

Mark "out here in the madness" Tovey

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Subject: NN: transatlantic sessions?
   From: kevin gibley (kevin.c.gibley.1@nd.edu>

Hey all,

sorry to take up your time with this, but I recall a mention of an album
entitles Transatlantic Sessions that is 2 discs, not available in the
States (where I am).

I was interested enough in this to originally save the digest in which the
details were provided; I have since lost that digest, though.

Can anyone help with information--please send responses to me via personal
e-mail.

Thanks in advance,

Kevin
Gibley.1@nd.edu


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Subject: NN: favorite Nanci quote
   From: wnyr (wnyr@flare.net>

One (of many) of my favorite Nanci quotes:

"I'm lookin' for that love of 22 here at 33"

Mike Smith
WNYR@Flare.net

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Subject: NN: Lyrics and Concert Dates
   From: nmrs@freeway.net

Wow, just as I started to read the digest, "I Wish It Would Rain" popped
into my head and I started singing it.  That is one of the songs that
comes to me whenever but there are many, many of Nanci's lyrics that
have touched me.

Just the other day I ran across and article my sister had sent me that
came from the 10-3-94 issue of Time Magazine.  This was written when
Flyer came out and says
"... Nanci Griffith, a wide-eyed Texas waif who may just be one of
America's best poets--and for sure is one of its best songwriters."
This article names Gulf Coast Highway as her most poignant song but
talks about other songs, too.  Read this article if you want to read
something uplifting.

On another matter, I just found out that I will be in the San Francisco
Bay Area the end of  July.  When is Nanci's concert in San Jose and are
there any tickets left, does anyone know???    I am going to be staying
with my sister who is also a huge fan so this would just make our whole
visit if we could get there!  I have never seen Nanci in concert (I saw
her last fall at the Ark in Ann Arbor which only whetted my appetite for
more, more, more) and the last time I had the chance, she cancelled out
on the Cheiftains tour.

Thanks!

Anne Pfluecke


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Subject: NN: More Song Lyrics to Live By
   From: "Humphreys, Jennifer" (jenniferh@metrouw.org>

Just thought of another couple lines that I love from "Goodnight to a
Mother's Dream"

        On this less traveled road
        Well who really knows?
        Maybe the hearts not taken
        Are truly made of gold

Ahhhhh - makes me sigh just to think of them.  Jennifer

Subject: RE: NN: words to live by
   From: David Lidz (dlidz@legstrat.com>

Hmmm - it's a cool idea (Tracy's optimistic interpretation below), but as an
increasingly jaded and frustrated (although ever-struggling to remain true to
my bleeding heart) optimist, I wonder how you're spin on the revised lyric
would jibe with another lyric that captures the sense that I feel, that we're
going backwards:

I've turned my cheek
As my history fades
While the clock ticks away
Any progress we've made
I never thought
I'd be ashamed to be human
Afraid to say
My time has seen it's day

Yikes!!  Talk about poignancy!!!  And, YIKES, talk about preachiness!!!  I love
it!!!

Having so pontificated, let me now confess a small smirk that still sits upon
my face from when I read Kenn Lippert's post noting one of his favorite lyrics: 

"You know that drinkin' always makes me sad"  (I also have to confess I don't
know from whence this comes).  I smirk because one of my favorites (albeit, not
written by Nanci, only covered by her, I know I know ~) is:

"The only time I feel alright
is when I'm in the drinking..."

nosdrovia!!
David Lidz
Annapolis, MD by nights, weekends and sickdays,
Otherwise confined to Washington, DC, Where the only voices heard have money in
their hands...


_________________________________________________________________


Subject: NN: Re: I Wish It Would Rain
   From: "Shawn Kimbro" (skimbro@bhset.org>

Hi Folks,

I wanted to respond to the question Liz posed about "I Wish
It Would Rain."  Of course everyone should have their own
interpretation, but I've always thought this song was all
about longing for a passion long lost.  "Love in a memory
sparkled like diamonds" - Doesn't it though. But when things
fail, those brilliant memories become painful--they "burn
like tears."  Sometimes we wish we could just rinse those
memories away and wash our faces clean from the tracks of
heartbreak.  But they stay.

In the first verse I think she's saying that, although she
has two other suitors, the passion doesn't come close to
what she felt for her "love from the Georgia pines."
Perhaps the Georgia boy has moved "a-way out West" or maybe
there's someone else out there for whom she has strong
feelings. Either way, she feels it's hopeless because "he
never will need me." Then, in the second verse, she tells us
she's getting away from those hearts she's "two-steppin"
with, and returning home because she feels the cure for her
broken heart lies in getting back to the people and places
where she feels most comfortable.

Warm Regards,
-Shawn


_________________________________________________________________


Subject: NN: Little Love Affairs
   From: "Shawn Kimbro" (skimbro@bhset.org>

Hi again,

In "I Wish It Would Rain," Nanci tells us she "once had a
love from the Georgia Pines."  In "Cradle of the Interstate"
she writes of a fellow in Tennessee.  There's a soft-spoken
guy in Alabama.  In what other states does she write of
boyfriends?

Warmly,
-Shawn

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Subject: NN: IWIWIA
   From: KSandersn@aol.com

Speaking of I Wish it Would Rain.........

Oh, I wish I was in Austin
Wish I could hop a fast plane
I missed my friends at Shelly's, I'll miss Nanci too
Oh, stuck in Memphis
Usually a fine place, but when you wanna be in Austin
It really stinkaroos. (g>
~~~~

Hey everybody down there who is silly enough to be reading e-mail on your 
laptop instead of running wiiild on Sixth Street! Have a wonderful time at 
the show and the reception! I'm really looking forward to reading your 
reports.

-Kelly

_________________________________________________________________


Subject: NN: Review from Nashville Tennessean
   From: KSandersn@aol.com

While eagerly anticipating concert reports from Austin, I thought I'd pass 
along this bit from the Nashville Tennessean. It's the first time I've ever 
seen a major publication refer to Nanci as a "superstar." Pretty cool.

From: http://www.onnashville.com/concerts/tenn/review.html#top

Old Friends' sparkle in benefit concert for dental clinic 

(pub. date: May 17, 1999, The Tennessean) 

By Jay Orr 
staff, The Tennessean 

Old friends Guy Clark, Rodney Crowell, Vince Gill, Nanci Griffith and Emmylou 
Harris shone Saturday night like the diamonds Clark compares them to in his 
song Old Friends. 

The superstar quintet swapped songs, performing together and in various 
pairings throughout a two-and-a-half-hour benefit concert at the Ryman 
Auditorium. They raised more than $100,000 for the Interfaith Dental Clinic. 

''Old friends, they shine like diamonds/Old friends you can always call/Old 
friends, you can't buy 'em/It's old friends, after all,'' they sang to begin 
and end the show. 

Throughout the evening, the performers kept tapping into the issue at hand. 
''Here's something akin to a dentist's drill,'' said Crowell to introduce a 
more energetic than painful performance of his Ain't Livin' Long Like This. 

''There's not a more beautiful thing on this earth than to see a smile,'' 
said Gill, leading into Whenever You Come Around, a song he said was inspired 
by a beautiful smile. 

''What I wanna know is, who works on y'all's teeth?'' Clark wondered before a 
stellar performance of his Dublin Blues, with harmonies from Griffith. 

A stage set with a sofa, chairs and a coffee table nearly gave the evening 
the feel of a living room session among the song masters. 

There was plenty of humor. Clark gave Gill a peck on the mouth at the end of 
an emotional performance of The Key to Life, a song Gill explained was 
inspired by Clark's The Randall Knife. 

Clark introduced She Ain't Goin' Nowhere as his favorite song, saying it was 
about 10 seconds in a woman's life, but ''not that 10 seconds.'' 

Each of the players took one song alone. Griffith chose Always Will; Harris 
did Prayer in D; Gill's was Whenever You Come Around; early in the second 
half Crowell did Rock of My Soul; and Clark, with guitar help from Gill, 
stepped out front on The Randall Knife. 

Just as in any informal song swap, there were miscues. Clark blanked on 
lyrics to the opening number, but poked fun at himself, so that his flub 
seemed to increase the feeling of intimacy that pervaded the evening. 

When Gill's guitar pickup seemed to malfunction, he tore off an amazing solo 
while holding the guitar's sound hole in front of the mike. 

The evening, a rare combination of talents that could have happened only in 
Nashville, was videotaped for a TV special, but no outlet has been selected 
yet.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

(Note from Kelly: There was a big eighteen-wheel tractor-trailer with TNN 
emblazoned on the side parked outside the Ryman, so, I still think the 
filming was done by a TNN crew, but, it looks like I might have been mistaken 
in assuming that the show would also be aired on TNN. I guess what they say 
about assuming is at least half true. (g>)

-Kelly

_________________________________________________________________

Subject: Re: NN: Little Love Affairs
   From: o416@erols.com

Well, judging from songs, she does get around--there's the boyfriend 
just outside New Orleans mentioned in "A Year in New Orleans" and of 
course, the Texas boyfriend(s), most memorably evoked in "On Grafton 
Street."  I presume that the town people talk around on FLYER is 
Nashville, so there's Tennessee again.

Of course this is nothing compared to Kris Kristofferon who once sang 
"I've known some women in every state/From New York City to the Gold 
Gate/I've lived with some and buddy I loved them all," let alone the 
Travelling Man, Ricky Nelson, who claimed "In every port I own the heart 
of at least one lovely girl."  (I've always yearned for Nanci to record 
a cover of this as "Traveling' Gal" a dream not only doomed to go 
unfulfilled but probably shared by nobody else on the list--in fact, now 
that I've put the idea in your head, I may have ruined everybody;s day.

Reid "there's a sweet fraulein down in Berlin town, makes my heart start 
to yearn/and my China doll down in old Hong Kong still waits for my 
return" Mitchell


_________________________________________________________________


Subject: Re: NN: Little Love Affairs
   From: Shawn Kimbro (kimbro@planetc.com>

Reid writes:

> Well, judging from songs, she does get around--there's the boyfriend 
> just outside New Orleans mentioned in "A Year in New Orleans" and of 
> course, the Texas boyfriend(s), most memorably evoked in "On Grafton 
> Street."  I presume that the town people talk around on FLYER is 
> Nashville, so there's Tennessee again.

If this list is any indicator, she's left a few broken hearts in some
foreign countries too!

-S


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