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Ani DiFranco and Lauren Coyle Rosen, "The Spirit of Ani: Reflections on Spirituality, Feminism, Music, and Freedom" (Akashic Books, 2026)
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- [00:01]
Ani DiFranco
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Rebecca Buchanan
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Ani DiFranco
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- [00:18]
Caller/Customer
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- [00:19]
Ani DiFranco
No problem.
- [00:19]
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- [00:21]
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- [00:32]
Caller/Customer
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- [00:55]
Rebecca Buchanan
welcome to the New Books Network. Hi, this is Rebecca Buchanan, host of New Books Network. And today I'm here with Ani DiFranco and to talk about her latest book, the Spirit of Reflections on Spirituality, Feminism, Music and Freedom, which she wrote with Lauren Coyle Rosen. Ani, thanks for being here with me today.
- [01:17]
Ani DiFranco
Yeah, my pleasure. Thanks for having me.
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Rebecca Buchanan
Could you talk a little bit about why both of you decided to kind of write this book, how this book sort of came to be?
- [01:30]
Ani DiFranco
Well, it was Lauren's idea, I guess. She read my memoir that I released a few years back and was intrigued by some of the spiritual themes that came up there and wanted to explore that more with me. So, so she reached out to my management and said, I have this idea for a book. I don't know Lauren well, but she is an academic, a writer, a musician, a spiritual person herself. And so I thought, sure, that sounds interesting. And we had a series of conversations which we then sort of edited together to the book that we made.
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Rebecca Buchanan
Yeah, I thought that was really an interesting way to kind of talk about this is to have these conversations back and forth and you, you know, they're edited but they're, they're really kind of raw. Right. It's not. So was this something that when she came with this idea, was this the idea like we're just going to have conversations and sort of put the conversations in the book, or was this like sort of a discussion, seeing as we started to talk, like just putting these conversations out sort of as is makes a little more sense.
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Ani DiFranco
Yeah, I mean, I think we just kind of, you know, I just said that first. Yes. And we got together a few times over and we just sort of followed the process. We were, I think, you know, guided, as we would say, you know, by spirit through, through the process. We followed our noses, which ended up being maybe even more collaborative than Lauren had imag in the beginning. I think she was like, just talk to me for a bit and I'll make a book. But then we really did sort of make the book together.
- [03:27]
Rebecca Buchanan
I love that. So you go through, you have sort of. There's six different chapters where you talk about sort of different aspects of spirituality, of sort of feminism and kind of tie it into the music industry. So for folks who don't know about you, because you have been playing music for decades, right. It's been a long time. And so can you talk a little bit about that? I mean, in your, your. What you see. Maybe I should say what you see as kind of your position and your role in music. Since when? The early, like late 80s, early 90s, right?
- [04:07]
Ani DiFranco
Yeah, yeah, well, sure. I mean, I started playing music as a kid and I was even playing out in bars and coffee houses as a, you know, 12 year old, 15 year old and. And I just kept going right from the beginning. I was a very idealistic kid. You know, I had a. I was not enamored of things like capitalism, things like patriarchy. So I really always connected, wanting to, I don't know, make the world a better place with also wanting to make art and wanting to have that be all one thing coming from one motivation and moving in the world. And so I decided when I was very young to, you know, when I was coming up in the, on the folk circuit and in the music biz or whatever, you know, the going logic was that you needed a record deal, you know, to be a professional musician and have a career. So I just questioned that from the beginning because of course that smelled to me like just getting in bed with a big business with a profit motive and different priorities than myself. So I stayed independent. I started a record company called, you know, I call Righteous Babe. And in the beginning it was really just an idea, you know, it was. There was no there there. I had an idea mostly of what I didn't want to do with my life and my relationships and my focus. And so I was just sort of finding my way on a different path. And now it is 35 years later and Righteous Babe still exists. We're releasing all kinds of other young artists now. And so we've survived.
- [06:04]
Rebecca Buchanan
So, you know, in this book, there. There's a. I mean, there's many things we could talk about, but one thing I thought was really interesting is because we were started with talking about your music is this sort of connection to spirituality and how that kind of helps you to create and how the sort of the goddess in the world and all that helps you create. So can you talk a little bit about that sort of that you and what that means to you?
- [06:36]
Ani DiFranco
Sure. I mean, I think when I was younger, it very much meant what my culture and my society taught me it meant, which is that creators are individual geniuses creating things whole cloth from their individual selves. And as I get older, I really do understand the act of creation to be much more of a collaboration between the embodied and the disembodied. You know, I think that art, when it's really happening, is. Is a connectivity across the veil. I think that artists collaborate with spirit. They don't invent. It's all. It all already exists out there, and artists sort of bring it in, channel it in and share it. And so that's much more the way I see the process now. And I feel like I'm much more awake in that reality than I was because I had to, again, extricate myself from culture in the way we have to, you know, to find ourselves in our own truths. So, yeah, now when I have an idea or something, a spark of inspiration, you know, I just. I say thank you. Thank you.
- [08:00]
Rebecca Buchanan
Yeah, I. I really. I mean, and for your whole career, you've done this, but, like, I really appreciate how you talk about feminism. Right. And kind of. That our first big mistake is a patriarchal society. Right. And these. Because there is not this idea of collab. We don't value collaboration. We don't value listening to other people in the ways that we should or we could if we didn't have this kind of focus on this patriarchal society. And. Yeah. So can you talk a little bit about that, how you talk about that in this book and just in the world?
- [08:37]
Ani DiFranco
Yeah. Well, I just think it's important to remember that everything that's happening is happening within the structure of patriarchy, which just de. Emphasizes one half of our nature and prioritizes another half of our nature. And when I say that, I mean, you know, can break down pretty hugely into men over women, but it also just really in a more essential way breaks down into the masculine energies that we all carry, drowning out the feminine energies that we all carry. I mean, you know, it's not in vogue these days. To be into binaries, but I very much am, in my way. I see, when I look at nature, I see a whole system of binaries. I don't think that binaries are as humans or you know, the construction within patriarchy of sort of black and white with a line down the middle. That's what I think is the artifice that, that we need to abandon. But binary structures are everywhere. I mean, starting with dark and light, I just think that's the way that energy moves and we are energy and everything is energy. And it's that moving between opposites, it's that cycle of one to the other that is the essential flow, I think. And I think that includes, you know, just so much everything about being human. Starting, you know, our two arms and legs and eyes and ears and also the two halves of our brain, which are remarkably independent. You know, if you open up our skulls, you see two brains really that are just connected in that operate very independently and yet inform each other. And one of them, I believe, can be equated with the masculine energies within us, and one of them really utilizes the feminine energies within us. And so I think that we're living in a left brain world, you know, and until our nature, until both halves of our nature are sitting at the design table, when it comes time to make culture and government and society and the future, you know, we will always end up in trouble.
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Rebecca Buchanan
Yeah. You kind of brought up like one thing I really loved that really made me think I was like, oh, yes, I love that idea is you talk about, like we think of, like. I think you talked about the yin yang being sort of this flat, like two dimensional. But what if we think about things as this more three dimensional it's rising up to. And I love that idea. Can you talk a little, you know, bit more about that? Cause, yeah, yeah.
- [11:32]
Ani DiFranco
I just am so reverent of the yin yang symbol, like just as a rendering. I just think it's, you know, to my mind, maybe the most profound rendering of the human hand, you know, because it really describes the universe. Of course, when you're rendering, you're on a two dimensional surface. But yes, it really is not just three dimensional, but many more than that. You know, dimensions are infinite and fractal, which is why I sort of have come to understand that, you know, there are other levels of vibration that are existing concurrently with what we can actually see and experience with our senses. Yeah. And I just think that, that the reason that we are embodied right now is to be in relationship that we, when we are in our essential sort of light, energy, form, we are seamlessly integrated with the unified plane of consciousness. And we separate into these separate little bits in order to relate to each other. So it's very much the game is relationship and using those relationships and experiences and choices to move the needle towards love. You know, that is what existence is to me. And so I think that this what I consider, you know, it's sort of interrelated with what I consider the feminine side of our nature. The right brain. It's mostly the work of the right brain and the gut brain and the heart. You know, there's I think also our brain is not just in our head etc. But yeah, that's really more about this awareness, this being in the moment. It's not the storyteller of the left brain that defines itself and describes the past and thinks about the future. It's the part of our nature which exists in the now which is very focused on relationship, which is very present and intuitive and spin slicing information from our senses to create exponential awareness. I think these are our feminine intelligences. And so I think those are the things that are really missing in our structures in our world.
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Rebecca Buchanan
And when you open that up, you get to experience here, but you also get to make a more connection to the spirit world. Right. And to people around you who are with you in body but not with you in body anymore. And you talk about that a lot. Can you talk a little bit more about. Because I think that is important too. Like what do we miss when we just remain in that we miss a lot. Right. When we just left brain.
- [14:38]
Ani DiFranco
So yeah, I mean so much. I mean I'm sitting here missing 90% of it myself. You know, I have been blessed to sort of. When I go into this like I talk about in the spirit of ani book I. When I'm writing songs I kind of go into a trance place with my guitar and I. It's. I put down my thoughts and I think this, this quietness within me and this clearness emptiness within me allows for me to pick up on messages and they sort of come to my head as ideas or. And they become songs. But that's more of a gauzy process. I am fully believe that many people by various routes can experience other dimensions much more profoundly and vastly. I mean there are nde near death experience survivors who die, leave their body, come back to the same body. But there is a channel left open. They can tap into the Akashic record, they can speak with spirit, they can see spirit energy There are people who are non verbal autistic who are having transcendental out of body experiences and relationships that we're only beginning to know about now that they are communicating through spelling. There are so many or there's just super awake people who have whatever. Through a lifetime of practice of meditation of this, you know, who actually are. Yeah. Just ultra connected with other dimensions.
- [16:27]
Rebecca Buchanan
Yeah. And one of the things that you talk about that comes up a number of times in the book is your connection to your father. Right. And that relationship and what that means for you both throughout your professional work, but also your personal experiences and your personal relationship. I loved how you talked about your relationship with your son and your father. And can you talk a little bit about that connection and sort of how that not only in the book, but how that sort of comes out for you?
- [16:57]
Ani DiFranco
Yeah, well, my dad died when I was 35 or so, and I was very. He blessed. He was a great blessing in my life. He was a bestower of unconditional love for me and that the anchor. And he was a great blessing. He offered me this amazing gift even in death where he. It's. I mean, I think we talked about it a little more in the book, but I. I sort of just experienced it with him. This. This complete transformation of my consciousness and this peace and sort of bliss that I've never experienced before or since. And, you know, I think it was just him showing me many things like, don't worry about me and don't be afraid of death. And, you know, so. Yeah, and I, you know, and I. After he passed, I did have dreams where we had conversations and felt in my waking life like those were not just inventions per se, or memories. I really. My experience was that we were still breaking ground in our relationships. I was learning things. We were truly having new conversations. And then, yes, in the book, I did talk about how that sort of stopped. It sort of evaporated eventually. These dream rendezvous and. And then, you know, whatever. 12 or 13 years after my dad passed, I gave birth to a son. And I named him after my father. I did so before he even was born. Not even. Yeah. Knowing what the sex of the baby. I was just like, I'm gonna call this baby Dante. I don't. I just know that. And that was my dad's name. And. And I. And then it took me a few years of raising Dante to be. To think, oh, whoa, dad, is that you? Is that why we're not hanging out in dreams? Because we're hanging out playing, you know, patty cake Right now, I don't know that exactly, but that is just a feeling in me.
- [19:20]
Rebecca Buchanan
And I love that story. I love that idea that we can continue to see those people. You know, there. There's a way there. That connection continues, right? The connection continues into the spirit world and beyond. So throughout this, your music comes up, your lyrics sort of. You've been. Like you said, it's been 35 some years that you have been. You've. Your record company has been going. And so how do you. Can you talk a little bit about you people who have that kind of spiritual relationship to your music, to your work and kind of what that means for you and that connection to spirituality for others through you?
- [20:02]
Ani DiFranco
Yeah. Oh, it means everything. It just means everything to me to be able to unlock myself through art and also other people. That's like, whoa, bonus. You know, I mean, to help other people to find themselves, to know themselves, believe in themselves, harness their own brilliance. Like, it. It's just. I mean, it comes back to me in all kinds of amazing forms. You know, one of them is that I receive these just incredible letters where people really sit down over the years, so many times over, just. And take the time and the energy to tell me their story and how my music intersected their journey and how that altered their journey. And it's the greatest gift for me as a artist and a person, you know, and it gives my life purpose and it helps me to sort of get through the hard bits of my job. But yeah, just really that for me is what making music is. It's just a tool for making connection with my fellows, which I guess is really all of consciousness, not just other human beings, but all of it's a way of making that consciousness to consciousness connection. Music is a really powerful medium for that. So I think that's why it drew me and why it keeps me.
- [21:41]
Rebecca Buchanan
Are there times where you. I don't know how to say it, like, don't even remember. Like, you write a song you've been playing songs for. Like, you write a song and sometimes you don't even remember. Maybe this is not the case. You don't even remember you wrote the song or you forget about it and someone comes to you, like decades later and is like, you said this one thing and you were like, what? And you'd had no idea. Like, can, yeah, you know that idea or does that, like. I don't know if how often does that happen? Is a good question. But yeah, I'm wondering about that idea. Right? Like, sometimes you just are like, this is a throwaway, or I don't even think about this. And then years later you're like, that was the purpose.
- [22:20]
Ani DiFranco
Oh, yeah. Luckily for me, it happens so often over the decades. And I mean, I can go you one deeper and say, like, I mean, forgetting songs that I wrote and recorded, that's like the baseline. Then there's just all the stuff that I've created that I myself loathe, that I am ashamed of, that I is not good enough, which is really most of it, if you ask me. Or perhaps all, you know, and stuff that I cringe and I learned years ago, hey, wow, don't talk down about that song or that album because what I did start to have the experience is, oh, wow, that song or that album means everything to this person for whatever reason. And yes, that was exactly why I made that messed up thing that I regret because it had some use for somebody else. So I've learned to be. I'm trying to learn to be more gentle with myself and more forgiving of the process, that it's not about making the best sounding and most accessible recordings or this or that. It's just about showing up as much as you can in a moment and believing that somehow that process is. Is helping engage with other people who are also in that process. Even if you wish you could do everything better.
- [23:58]
Rebecca Buchanan
My yoga teacher would love that. She. Anytime anyone's like, like, my knee, I got a bad knee or I got a bad this, she's like, it's not bad. Give it love. Like it is just like, needs a little work or it needs help. You need to love your body and all of it. Right? Even if something's frustrating. Oh, yeah, now I totally lost my. You were talking. I'm always like, that is great, Nina. Another thing I want to come back because I think the feminism stuff is so important. And one of the things that comes up in this is really thinking about trauma and what trauma means and how people are impacted by it in different ways. I think you. You talk in here, the Brett Kavanaugh hearings come up, and this idea of how we assume trauma should. Or certain people assume trauma should look this way, and that's the only way trauma can look. And so when it doesn't look that way, Right. And usually it's men who decide, but it's not always men, but. Or people looking at it from this sort of more masculine point of view, then that be. There's. There's issue with that. And so, yeah, can you talk about that? Like, what that means? Because I Think a lot of what you talk about and sing about does get at that sort of, you know, thinking about those kinds of things as well.
- [25:17]
Ani DiFranco
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Well, yes. Yeah. There was a lot we were talking about when the Kavanaugh hearings came up in the book. And yeah, I mean, I guess I would start back again with this essential point of existence, which for me is to be in relationship with others and myself. This sort of to be in this binary world where you can play off of each other and, you know, recreate the energy between in the world. And so I think, you know, the tricky thing is that we really do know and experience ourselves through the eyes of others, beginning with our mother, you know, the. Whatever the child psychologists say that you don't know you exist as an infant until you realize your mother exists and she's separate from you. So then, oh, wait, and that means I exist and I'm separate. And so begins the whole illusion of embodiment, right? And being separate, you know, but in this body and in these lives that we're leading, we experience ourselves in relationship to everything else. And so that's what we. I was sort of talking about in the book was to be confronted with the other and to see in their eyes your non existence. If the other that you are facing does not see you recognize your humanity, your sentience, your fullness of being, you experience your own erasure. And I think so for those who do not experience things like sexism or racism or all the. Is a. Whatever, you know, who. For those who have not experienced actually being looked at but not seen, they would understandably not know the effect that that can have on a person's psyche, on their future, on their whole ability to know and believe in themselves and their own existence and worthiness and potential. And so these, I think, are the essential forces that the isms use, you know, to crush spirits and futures and potentials. And yeah, you know, in the reference to the Kavanaugh hearings, I was saying, you know, for those who don't experience like, traumas, again, it is understandable for them to think, well, why did she wait 20, 40 years before saying anything? You know, again, if you experience these kind of traumas, you fully understand how you can't physiologically or psychologically address these things necessarily in the moment or five minutes later or five years later, or you have to be actually in a whole other cellular, safe, transformed place in your life to face that demon. So it makes total sense to those who experience these kinds of things. So those who don't just need to listen, you know, to the experiencers, to get what the answers to these questions are. Again, in reference to the Kavanaugh hearings, you know, I can see. Whereas a man who never experienced such a thing might also say, hey, wow, he didn't even rape her. He just held her down and grounded on her a little bit is what's the big deal? You women need to, you know, get over it. And again, if you don't experience. But for me, that moment is profound. It's not about penetration or not penetration. It's about looking into the eyes of the other and seeing your annihilation. It's about not existing according to the world that is right in front of you, on top of you. And the erasure of your existence can haunt you, can change the course of your life.
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Rebecca Buchanan
And. And if you've experienced that, you will always remember that moment.
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Ani DiFranco
You will. It stains, I think, yeah, that's. It stains your brain.
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Rebecca Buchanan
Yeah. Even if you are like, if I've worked through it, it's still there. Right. One thing, you know, thinking of trauma, I. As someone who teaches and talks about teaching, I really. You talked about your daughter's school and what was going on. And I'm like, I really want to know what happened. Because a lot, I mean, this was written, you know, because I think that often school can be trauma. Right. For so many young people. And the experience in that relationship with adults and telling students and telling young people, you can't be a whole. You're not a whole person. Right. Yeah. So I just want to, like. Can you talk a little bit about that? And I wish I.
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Ani DiFranco
You. Good answer.
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Rebecca Buchanan
I'm sure you can answer.
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Ani DiFranco
Unfortunately, the microcosm of my kids school is still reflecting the macrocosm of our political circumstance in this country. The dictator leader who crushes the teachers and the students and their right to peacefully protest and breaks laws and is keeping all the money for himself and downgrading all the programs for the kid, all of that. It's still happening. Yeah. We unfortunately have a board of directors at the school that is just in his pocket. This dictatorial leader. For some reason, none of the rest of the community, the students, the teachers, the parents, can get through to the board, which is the only entity with power over him. So not a happy ending yet.
- [31:44]
Rebecca Buchanan
Yeah. Oh, God. You know, it's one of. Because I, you know, sometimes you like young people. People often are like, I mean, people say this every decade, every year, every. Young people don't. Aren't political. Young people aren't. And I'm like, whatever. Like, do you not remember being young? Like, young people have not changed. Like, there are young people who are, like, pushing and fighting.
- [32:04]
Ani DiFranco
And so, yeah, I mean, that was the great. Really hurt my heart when the young. When the students of my daughter's school, including my daughter, walked out to protest what this CEO, quote unquote, of the school is doing. And he gave them all. He suspended. He gave them all detention. And if you didn't go to detention, which my daughter also protested, he suspended her. So that was what they were taught, is that if you use your right to protest even illegal actions on behalf of authority figures, you will be punished. So that was, you know, I mean, luckily my kids, at least when they come home, they get high fives and they get support for being suspended.
- [32:55]
Rebecca Buchanan
Yeah. I grew up in Minnesota, so I followed all. And I have family there still. And it's very different than. I don't. May have been. Rochester, like a school basically put out a thing saying, our students are protesting, our teachers are leaving too, to make sure the students get to protest safely. Right. Like that's what you want. You want, like, teachers and you want administration to say, we're supporting the students. We'll be there so everything happens safely. We'll be, you know, standing there protecting their right. And you'd hope that would happen most everywhere, but no. So there's one other thing I want to ask you about. I won't keep you here forever, but I loved how you talked at the beginning about rocks and. Right. I have this. I mean, I don't have you talk about big, huge rocks that you've been dragging around. I have over there this collection of, you know, rocks that I pick up from. From places. So can you talk about that a little bit and that spirituality in sort of the Earth and like. Yeah, rocks.
- [33:53]
Ani DiFranco
Yeah. I mean. Right. I don't know. I have these fellow travelers that are rocks. I move them when I move houses. And it's all kind of ridiculous, but I. I love these rocks. And. Yeah, I just.
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Rebecca Buchanan
I don't know.
- [34:09]
Ani DiFranco
I think it's a worthy enterprise for all of us. People lost in our thoughts and our. A world of our invention to actually just try to slow down and open up our presence. Because rocks are also conscious. Plants are conscious. Trees are conscious. Water is conscious. The, you know, the. The air, the, you know, so the Earth, you know, so I think it's just consciousness that is so varied from ours that we have yet to recognize it again. Humans are so lost in their own stories that they can't recognize the consciousness of each other, you know. So we have so much work to get back to our original state of being in relationship and in communication with other forms of consciousness. But so for me, I think just trying to tune in with plants, with rocks, with animals, you know, is, is it is a practice of trying to quiet the world of human invention and discover the broader world beyond.
- [35:15]
Rebecca Buchanan
Yeah, I know you're in New Orleans or that area and like I said, I grew up in Minnesota, so I, I love, I love the Mississippi river for many reasons, but I always think about rocks and like the travel that like you the f. I loved how you talked about that because it is like I was actually at the mouth of the Mississippi this summer for something and, you know, like picking up a rock there and being in New Orleans and picking up a rock and thinking this rock, the travel that this rock could have done or, you know, and this kind of thing. So I love. And the shape of that. Right. As it changes shape as it travels. So. So this book comes out March 3rd. My final question is anything with the book people should know about anything that you're working, book wise or otherwise, that you want to kind of promote?
- [36:08]
Ani DiFranco
Oh, well, we are doing some book talks, Lauren and I, and some are just me. So yeah, just in a few select locations. So maybe we'll be coming to your town. But yeah, there's, I mean, there's, there's nothing much more to say except it's going out into the world to have its own adventure, I guess.
- [36:34]
Rebecca Buchanan
Well, Ani, thank you so much for talking with me again. Ani DiFranco, whose new book, the Spirit of Reflection, Spirituality, Feminism, Music and Freedom. Thanks for being on New Books Network.
- [36:46]
Ani DiFranco
Thank you so much for having me. Pleasure.