Thursday, August 12, 2010

For a Song: As Cool As I Am


Dar Williams: As Cool As I Am

[purchase]


I thought, “Dar Williams is a folk sort of artist. Her songs are quiet, with mostly acoustic arrangements.” And then Mortal City came out, and our local college radio station started playing As Cool As I Am. This song is a rocker. Actually, if you take it apart, the instruments are still mostly acoustic. It even has the Nields on background vocals. But there are a bass harmonica and a digeridoo which combine to play a rockin’ riff, which is the first thing that catches your attention. It just goes to show that a song can be rock, even without plugging anything in.

The lyrics are another matter. I hear many songs where the intention of the writer is unclear. Some of my favorites do this, leaving the song open to multiple interpretations. Other times, there are songwriters whose lyrics are opaque because they are just not very good. But there are also times when the listener rebels against what the songwriter is saying. “That can’t mean what I think it means, can it?” Yes it can. The chorus of As Cool As I Am has the line, “I will not be afraid of women”. What’s that about? Finally, it dawned on me. The narrator of the song is describing a relationship by relating the events of a series of visits to a lesbian bar. From the sound of it, I would say that, at the beginning of the song, the narrator has never been to one of these places before. Possibly, she has tried to be straight until now. By the end of the song, the relationship has ended, probably badly, but still, “I will not be afraid of women”. She may not have found her lover, but she has found herself. And everything else must come after that.

1 comments:

Susan said...

Darius... first of all, thanks for the birthday nod with the posting of this song! - you know I'm a Dar-ling of the highest degree... :-)

I understand why you would understand the lyrics the way you did (after all, this song did appear on a Lesbian Favorites compilation years ago) - I interpret it differently, and have also heard Dar describe it, such that it's about a woman who's with a man who is always comparing her to other women, making her "feel like a little less"...

Her companion is trying to make her feel as though other women are her competition rather than her "sisters" - the bar scene illustrates another woman, drunk, dancing to gain attention... and the narrator has learned about marching, or dancing, to the beat of her own drum...

I love the last verse, when she lets him know she's leaving and that, rather than allowing herself to be pitted again other females, she understands "I am the others" - "I want somebody who sees me" completely sums it up, as she asserts her unwillingness to be an object... like the woman in the bar and others he has ogled while purporting to be with her...

Lyrics here: http://www.poplyrics.net/waiguo/darwilliams/005.htm