Today, as I was driving around, running errands with my Ipod on shuffle, Ani Difranco's song Freakshow came on. Immediately it brought me back to my recent Circus experience.
Ani stands in her own realm of awesome. I've loyally followed her since my teens. She seems to have a song for every experience in my life. And I'm sure I'll post more about her in the future.
The last time I saw Ani in concert she opened her show with this song. It was a very powerful, crowd grabbing/pleasing intro to an incredible show. I could only find one live performance on youtube for your viewing pleasure. She's performing the song a little differently, but it's still fun.
life in the circus ain't easy but the folks on the outside don't know the tent goes up and the tent comes down and all that they see is the show and the ladies on the horses look so pretty and the lions are lookin real mad and some of the clowns are happy and some of the clowns are sad but underneath there's another expression that the makeup isn't making life under the big top it's about freedom it's about faking there's an art to the laughter there's a science and there's a lot of love and compliance welcome to the freakshow here we go... we live to hear the slak-jawed gasping we live under a halo of held breath and when the children raise up a giant shield of laughter, it's like they're fending off death and we can make something bigger than any one of us alone and then the clowns will take off their makeup and the people will go home but life on the outside ain't easy no sequins, no elephants no parading around oh the circus comes and the circus goes and they're stuck in this fucking town you need a lot of love and compliance welcome to the freakshow here we go
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