Bridges

Utah Phillips and Ani DiFranco

That’s what I do is I collect stories

(That’s what I do)

(That’s what I do is I collect stories)

Stories and songs and poems

(That’s what I do is I collect stories)

I seek out the elders

(I seek out the elders)

And garner stories and songs and poems

(Stories and songs and poems)

Characterized critically

(Stories)

Characterized critically as “Oh that’s that sixties stuff”

Like somebody doing old rock and roll would be doing “that fifties stuff”

Well, or “this is the nineties,” you know

I have a good friend in the east

A good singer, and a good folk singer, a good song collector

Who comes and listens to my shows and says

“You sing a lot about the past

You always sing about the past

You kind of live in the past, you know?”

And I say to him, “I can go outside and pick up a rock that’s older than the oldest song you know

And bring it back here and drop it on your foot

Now the past didn’t go anywhere, did it?

It’s right here, right now

I always thought that anybody who told me I couldn’t live in the past was trying to get me to forget something that if I remembered it would get ‘em in serious trouble

Heh heh heh

Y’know, it’s not that…

That fifties, seventies, nineties, that whole idea of decade packages

Things don’t happen that way

The Vietnam War heated up in 1965 and ended in 1975

Y’know, what’s that got to do with the decades?

No, that packaging of time is a journalistic convenience that they use to trivialize and dismiss

Important events and important ideas

I defy that

(I defy that)

(I defy that)

Time is an enormous long river

(Important events and important ideas)

(Time is an enormous long river)

(Time is an enormous long river)

(Important events and important ideas)

(Time is an enormous long river)

And I’m standing in it just as you’re standing in it

My elders were the tributaries

And everything they thought

And every struggle they went through

And everything they gave their lives to

And every song they created

And every poem they laid down

Flows down to me

And if I take the time to ask

If I take the time to seek

If I take the time to reach out

I can build that bridge between my world and theirs

I can reach down that river and take out what I need to get through this world

Bridges

From my time to your time

As my elders from their time to my time

And we all put into the river

And we let it go

And it flows away from us and away from us

Until it no longer has our name, our identity

It has its own utility and its own use

And people will take what they need and make it part of their lives

(Bridges)

Oh oh oh oh oh

(Bridges)

(Bridges)

Oh oh oh oh oh

(Bridges)

(Bridges)

(Bridges)

(Bridges)

(Heh heh heh)

(Heh heh heh)

I sometimes dwell at length

(I sometimes dwell at length)

(The past didn’t go anywhere)

(Heh heh heh)

(The past didn’t go anywhere)

(The past didn’t go anywhere, did it?)

Oh oh oh oh oh

Well lemme tell you a story…