My Inspiration: Ani DiFranco

Last week my husband and I went to see Ani DiFranco, a Grammy award winning US artist who, considering she has released almost 20 albums in the last 20 years, surprisingly few people know about. Well my husband is a HUGE fan and has all those albums. Her music will always be very important to both of us, her lyrics are very personal and always express so much

Here are the lyrics from her beautiful song, that I have always loved, Overlap from the 1994 album Out of Range I think the opening verse/chorus would make a lovey wedding reading or quote for an order of service too.

i search your profile for a translation

i study the conversation like a map

'cause i know there is strength

in the differences between us

and i know there is comfort

where we overlap

come here

stand in front of the light

stand still

so i can see your silhouette

i hope

that you have got all night

cause i'm not done looking yet

each one of us

wants a piece of the action

you can hear it in what we say

you can see it in what we do

we negotiate with chaos

for some sense of satisfaction

if you won't give it to me

at least give me a better view

come here

stand in front of the light

stand still

so i can see your silhouette

i hope

that you have got all night

cause i'm not done looking yet

i build each one of my songs out of glass

so you could see me inside them i suppose

or you could just leave the image of me

in the background i guess

and watch your own reflection superimposed

i build each one of my days out of hope

and i give that hope your name

and i don't know you that well

but it don't take much to tell

either you don't have the balls

or you don't feel the same

come here

stand in front of the light

stand still

so i can see your silhouette

i hope

that you have got all night

cause i'm not done looking yet

i search your profile for a translation

and i study the conversation like a map

'cause i know there is strength

in the differences between us

and i know there is comfort

where we overlap

© 1994 ani difranco / righteous babe music

Image courtesy of Steve Gerrard

Wedding Reading: 'Gift of the Sea'

'Gift of the Sea' by Anne Morrow Lindbergh

When you love someone, you do not love them all the time, in exactly the same way, from moment to moment. It is an impossibility. It is even a lie to pretend to. And yet this is exactly what most of us demand. We have so little faith in the ebb and flow of life, of love, of relationships. We leap at the flow of the tide and resist in terror its ebb. We are afraid it will never return. We insist on permanency, on duration, on continuity; when the only continuity possible, in life as in love, is in growth, in fluidity - in freedom, in the sense that the dancers are free, barely touching as they pass, but partners in the same pattern.

The only real security is not in owning or possessing, not in demanding or expecting, not in hoping, even. Security in a relationship lies neither in looking back to what was in nostalgia, nor forward to what it might be in dread or anticipation, but living in the present relationship and accepting it as it is now. Relationships must be like islands, one must accept them for what they are here and now, within their limits - islands, surrounded and interrupted by the sea, and continually visited and abandoned by the tides.

Image Courtesy of Marianne Taylor, here