Time for the medicine only Your hero can bring

I bought the album Not a Pretty Girl in the summer of 1997 -- the summer I took to lingering in downtown D.C., a subway ride away from my sparse Maryland suburb. I started to recognize the homeless people whose walking routes intersected with mine. I would hide out in the gay and lesbian section of Olssen Books, catching up on my elusive cultural history. Sealed into my dad's tiny old protest T-shirts, I camped out under historical statues, diary in hand, and took notes. All the while, Ani Difranco sang to me, encouragingly, "I am not a pretty girl, I don't really want to be a pretty girl, I want to be more than a pretty girl." Since then, I've discovered I wasn't alone. Ani Difranco concerts have always been primal, sweaty gatherings of like-minded political leftists, rainbow punks and gender outlaws -- conventional prettiness never dared show its boring, emaciated head. So Friday night, entering my fourth Ani show, I was unsettled to find: fitted Calvin Klein sweaters, tight black DKNY pants and Kate Spade bags. This wasn't your local folk venue -- this was Carnegie Hall. The ushers wore bow-ties and there was no room to dance. I saw neckties and leather dress shoes -- accessories not necessarily indicative of the wearer's personality (let's not be superficial). But one simply does not wear a tie, a symbol of patriarchal oppression, to an Ani Difranco show. Out of respect for the victims of lookism, sexism and poverty, it just isn't done. But it was done, and the tie-wearers and upper-lip-waxers all joined in the thunder of praise that greeted our beloved folksinger as she entered the bare stage, guitar across her chest, walking to a single, isolated microphone in an eerie green spotlight. No sooner did she launch into her first number than did the first cell phone go off -- the first of many. From my still-rather-expensive fourth balcony nosebleed seat, I heard people talking well above whispers. I saw Gap-encrusted young men answer their rude cell phones and engage in conversation, to the visible annoyance of the neighboring pairs of buzz-cut, nose-ring riot grrls. "Time for your medicine," Ani quipped when a beeper went off during her between-song tirade on affirmative action. I was too far away to see her facial expression, but when she sang, "Imagine that you are the weather in the tiny snow globe of this song / and I am a statue of liberty one inch long," I imagined a look of fear on the Statue's face as she bore down through the ice storm of audience disrespect. During a guitar solo, the Statue backed away from the spotlight and into the darkness, as if retreating from our objectifying stares, but she was followed instantly by a battery of camera flashes, rooting her out, searchlights on an escaped convict. When she returned to the microphone, she looked like the center of a bulls-eye, the proscenium and spotlight zeroing in on target. Since I am bemoaning a loss of intimacy here, I feel I must address You, or at least those of You who don't know what I'm talking about, but have been kind enough to read this far, in hopes of finding a universal conclusion You can relate to. Well think about it this way: the Democratic Party, in the abstract, has some really great ideas. But out of the abstract, and into reality, it must face issues of money, power and compromise. It must incorporate itself into a corrupt system at the risk of corrupting itself, as must any vehicle for change short of an atomic bomb. Whenever politicians, or activists, or folksingers get close to achieving their goals, or at least spreading their views, they run the risk of overextending and losing perspective like a presidential candidate before a mammoth, faceless crowd at a convention center, or a folksinger performing for people who look frighteningly like right-wing enemy spies. Ani, however, seems to be coping better than the Democratic Party, and while You may not really care, I do; and just as she, my column's namesake, can punctuate her political anthems with heavy doses of the first-person-singular tense, I'd like to claim this simple moment for a personal note, in hopes that You enjoy watching: I wish everyone could have a summer stranded in the city to find themselves and a hero; and I wish everyone could then see that hero threatened, could then sympathize with that hero, but then move on because they don't need heroes anymore. It's nice.

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