Yea, there was a time I didn't like the love, I liked the climbers,
I was no sister then, I was running out of time and one liners,
And I was afraid, like you are when you're too young to know the time, and
So I watched the way you take your fear and hoard the horizon,
You point, you have a word for every woman you can lay your eyes on,
Like you own them just because you bought the time,
And you turn to me, you say you hope Im not threatened,

Oh, I'm not that petty, as cool as I am, I thought you'd know this already,
I will not be afraid of women, I will not be afraid of women.

So now were at a club, you watch the woman dancing, she is drunk,
She is smiling and shes falling in a slow, descending funk,
And the whole bar is loud and proud and everybody's trying, yeah.
You play the artist, saying, "Is it how she moves, or how she looks?"
I say, its loneliness suspended to our own like grappling hooks,
And as long as shes got noise, shes fine.
But I could teach her how I learned to dance when the musics ended,

Oh, and thats not petty, as cool as I am, I thought you'd know this already,
I will not be afraid of women, I will not be afraid of women.

You tried to make me doubt, to make me guess, tried to make me feel like a little less,
Oh, I liked you when your soul was bared, I thought you knew how to be scared,
And now its amazing what you did to make me stay,
But truth is just like time, it catches up and it just keeps going,

And so Im leaving, you can find out how much better things can get,
And if it helps, Id say I feel a little worse than I did when we met,
So when you find someone else, you can try again, it might work next time,
You look out of the kitchen window and you shake your head and say low,
"If I could believe that stuff, Id say that woman has a halo,"
And I look out and say, "Yeah, shes really blond,"
And then I go outside to join the others, I am the others,

Oh, and that's not easy, I don't know what you saw, I want somebody who sees me,
I will not be afraid of women, I will not be afraid of women.


Lyrics submitted by aur0ra

As Cool as I Am Lyrics as written by Dar Williams

Lyrics © BMG Rights Management

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As Cool As I Am song meanings
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  • +1
    Memory

    This was my getting over someone song. I found so many parallels with a relationship I had in this song and I found her words just said all I was trying to say.

    I dated a guy who kept looking at other women while "keeping me on the hook" so to speak, and it made it difficult for me to recognize and maintain my own sense of value. I felt like he was pitting me against these other women and I knew that it wasn't their fault but it was hard not to be angry at them for being the objects of his affection when he was with me, hard to hear him wondering "is it how she moves or how she looks" and his clearly not understanding that "it's loneliness, suspended to our own like grappling hooks." or his wonderment over how beautiful other women were.

    When she sang about how she goes "outside to join the others. I am the others". I remember when I recognized that. That I was just another woman, not the one he really wanted, not the perfect relationship he was dreaming of. And as she says, it wasn't easy... but it was so freeing.

    This song also contains one of my favourite Dar lines of all time:"how I learned to dance when the music's ended." This phrase has hung around my life as a working definition of joy.

    Sylviedon April 04, 2011   Link

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