Never Let Go of Your Soundtrack

Most of the men I dated hated Ani DiFranco. It made me love her even more.

I grew up on my brother’s music. Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Alice in Chains, later ska, Bosstones, Operation Ivy. As an archetypal kid sister, I vacillated between loathing and adoring him. I fought to exist outside of his much-more-academic shadow, flirted with his friends, dissed him in public, and took the band posters he tore off his walls out of the trash and taped them back together on my bedroom wall. That’s how I ended up spending my early teenage years under the gaze of Les Claypool, Anthony Kiedis, and a handful of other alt-rock patriarchs.

My brother went off to college while I stayed home to bum rides off boyfriends and listen to Sublime in the back of pickup trucks at Falls Lake. I’m pretty sure my brother hated me (I was riotously annoying) but one winter break he came home from school, put a cassette on my bed, and said, “She makes me think of you.”

For the next couple of years, my brother Seth supplied me with mixtapes that had “Ani DiFranco” — or sometimes just “Ani” — written in Sharpie on the outside. I never knew names of the songs and never saw her picture. She was just a voice, words I could fast-forward and rewind until I’d memorized them, words sent directly to me from behind her guitar. I spilled coffee on those words, let them crack in the sun on the dashboard, and threw them into backpacks under my water bottle and a change of underwear. Those tapes carried me through the end of high school, helped me navigate a year in New York City wading through the wanderlust of 17, and rode with me into and out of a breakneck marriage at 18.

Most of the men I dated hated Ani. And in this way, I loved her. She could be singularly mine when they were not home. She wasn’t my mother’s feminism, Hillary Rodham, Gloria Steinem feminism. She wasn’t pretty feminism, glammed up Gwen Stefani feminism. She was imperfect — fumbling her politics, not always understanding intersectionality — but when I was 19, driving home from cleaning houses, radio blaring, it was all wind in my hair, all girl power and freedom, all open-up-your-face-and-sing.

In fact, I didn’t even register Ani as feminist at all. She was simply someone assuring me I was right to be skeptical of pretty and wrong to be vying for a man. She confirmed that I should trust women and carry a switchblade in my sleeve.

I finally stopped listening to Ani, partially because my music collection moved beyond cassette tapes, but also because I was shamed out of it by too many men.

But the men I dated knew she was a feminist. They didn’t like the sound of her voice. They called her music “annoying.” They knew better than to say what they were really thinking: She sounds angry, she sounds shrill.

Not liking a musician is no crime, nor even particularly offensive. But it’s not lost on me that when men make angry music we just call it “rock and roll.” As women, we spend much of our lives watching our experiences be dismissed, and we can’t get upset about it or we’d never catch our breath. When I finally stopped listening to Ani, it was partially because my music collection moved beyond cassette tapes, but also because I was shamed out of it by too many men. Buildings and bridges are made to bend in the wind. To withstand the world, that’s what it takes.

For most women, relationships with men are marked by losing quiet battles and silently giving in: I’ve agreed that I will be the one to work the steady job so you can pursue your art; I’ve agreed to date you because you are nice to my kid; I’ve agreed to let your friends tell their jokes and act like they don’t bother me; I’ve agreed that I overreacted; I’ve agreed to watch your dog while you travel, to watch your band, to watch my tone.

I can think of only two moments in my adult life when I’ve been reminded to return to myself. One was in a grocery store parking lot in the rain. I was pushing a cart with my then-infant son in my arms, and a woman I knew approached me. We hugged, hadn’t seen each other in a while. She said she’d left her husband and was much happier, and that I once told her if a relationship didn’t live up to our little-girl dreams, then it wasn’t worth being in. I don’t remember saying that, but I sure was glad to hear her say it back to me there in the rain. I made my own plans to move the very next week.

The second time was two weeks ago, when I received a package in the mail from a friend in Brooklyn. It was a copy of Ani DiFranco’s new book, wrapped up in a bookstore bag.

He included a note: “I remember you always liked her.”

There are people out there rooting for us, reflecting our best selves back into our own gaze. There are big brothers who help us find our own music and friends who remind us of the advice we’ve given and the smart things we’ve said. There are people who want to lift us up and celebrate what we celebrate, unabashed and unashamed, excited to know all the tiny pieces that make us whole. Find them and hold onto them, and to the rest, call their bluff and leave. Never apologize.