Go ahead push your luck
Find out how much love the world can hold
Once upon a time I had control and reined my soul in tight

Well the whole truth
Is like the story of a wave unfurled
But I held the evil of the world
So I stopped the tide froze it up from inside
And it felt like
A winter machine that you go through and then
You catch your breath and winter starts again
And everyone else is spring bound

And when I chose to live
There was no joy it's just a line I crossed
It wasn't worth the pain my death would cost
So I was not lost or found
And if I was to sleep

I knew my family had more truth to tell
And so I traveled down a whispering well
To know myself through them

Growing up my mom had a room full of books
And hid away in there
Her father raging down a spiral stair
Till he found someone, most days his son

And sometimes I think
My father, too, is a refugee
I know they tried to keep their pain from me
They could not see what it was for
But now I'm sleeping fine

Sometimes the truth is like a second chance
I am the daughter of a great romance
And they are the children of the war

Well, the sun rose
With so many colors it nearly broke my heart
It worked me over like a work of art
And I was a part of all that

So go ahead push your luck
Say what it is you gotta say to me
We will push on into that mystery
And it will push right back
And there are worse things than that
'Cause for every price
And every penance that I could think of
It's better to have fallen in love
Than never to have fallen at all

'Cause when you live in a world
Well it gets in to who you thought you'd be
And now I laugh at how the world changed me
I think life chose me
After all


Lyrics submitted by aur0ra

After All Lyrics as written by Dar Williams

Lyrics © BMG Rights Management

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After All song meanings
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  • +1
    General Comment

    I think you're both right.

    To me, this is about getting over bad suicidal thoughts, possibly because of a relationship that she just broke up from or just because she's trying to control everything and finding it out of her control. It wouldn't surprise me that she has a song about getting over depression, just look at The House That Pain Built and What Do You Hear In These Sounds? for other examples of this theme in her life. In her early twenties Dar was diagnoised with clinical depression and credits her recovery for the emotional depth a lot of her songs carry.

    In the last part of the song, she's beginning to realize that there are more mysteries in life for her to find out. Though she's not exactly convinced at first (And when I chose to live/There was no joy - it's just a line I crossed/It wasn't worth the pain my death would cost/So I was not lost or found), she has a place in life and life did choose her.

    Now she can see the beauty of her life for what it is, with the bad and the good mixed together.

    Interviewer: Some of the imagery in the song is so powerful. You talk about a winter machine that you keep going through while everyone else is spring bound. Is that what the feeling was like?

    Dar: Yeah. It just kept on seeming like people could have a hard time and then get over it. I remember I, on one of the worst night, and again this is such a melodramatic sounding thing, but I remember I thought 'maybe I should just end this'. And I remember I started to write a will and I realized I didn't have enough, as I describe in the song, I didn't have enough things to give away to justify the fact that it would be so painful for people. Just the fact of my dying would be, I knew, hard. So I thought 'Okay, well I guess that means I'm going to live and maybe I should go talk to somebody'. I went to go talk to a friend of mine to finally sort of say 'this is what I'm going through'. She came out of her room in tears, grabbed my hand and said 'Your just in time!' She had just gotten into a big fight with her boyfriend and I just thought, there's just something so alive and colorful. She'd gotten into a fight, she'd told him how she felt, she stuck up for herself, she yelled, she screamed. He yelled, he screamed. She's in tears.. she just seemed to be living in color. Where as I felt frozen, as if I wasn't even daring to present enough of my real self, if that was even there, to engage in that dramatic way.

    Interviewer: Have you had any relapses or moments where you felt like you were in that level of depression or level of sadness?

    Dar: No. It turns out that I didn't. Depression was definitely a threat and I remember thinking 'uh oh, I'm depressed'. Then I would just see something. I would see a beautiful branch backlit by the sunlight or I would see a river or a kid smiling in a carraige at the supermarket and I felt myself getting very emotional. I thought, 'My Goodness, this is so weird. I'm not going to the deepest darkest place. I'm going to sadness that finds relief in the beauty of the world'.

    VampedVixenon November 07, 2004   Link

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